racial preferences

Obama Administration Hid Role of Politically-Correct Discrimination in Spawning Fort Hood Massacre

by Hans Bader on February 10, 2011 · 1 comment

in Culture, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

Discrimination and politically-correct blinders can be deadly. It was obvious in the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings that the killer was inspired by Islamic extremism. Obvious, that is, to anyone but officials in the Obama administration, who continue to cling tightly to a culture of political correctness and preferential treatment that helped make the shootings possible.

Nidal Hasan shot dead 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood, while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”  But the Obama administration’s inquiry into the shootings falsely suggested Islamic extremism was not a factor in the shootings.  Its report on the Fort Hood massacre did not even “mention the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ once,” referring to the killer simply as the “alleged perpetrator.” Instead, it claimed the tragedy resulted from “bureaucratic shortcomings” in the “sharing of information.”

But now Senators like Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins are taking issue with that whitewash report: “the federal government needs to drop the political correctness and call violent Islamic extremism what it is, according to a newly released report on the Fort Hood shooting by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.”

The shooter’s Islamic extremism was obvious.  Prior to the shooting, he had said that Muslims should rise up against the military, “repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers,” was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and engaged in hate-speech against non-Muslims, publicly calling for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, and talking “about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.”  “In addition, Hasan openly had suggested revenge as a defense for the 9/11 attacks, defended Osama bin Laden, and said his allegiance to his religion was greater than his allegiance to the constitution.”

But the military did nothing to remove him from a position where he could harm others. Although his views were common knowledge, “a fear of appearing discriminatory . . . kept officers from filing a formal written complaint,” the Associated Press noted. Moreover, “a key official on a review committee reportedly asked how it might look to terminate a key resident who happened to be a Muslim,” as NPR noted.  Instead, the military effectively exempted Hasan from rules of conduct that apply to everyone else, in order to promote its conception of “diversity.”

As military attorney Thomas Kenniff notes, there was a climate of “obsessive political correctness” in the military. As Major Shawn Keller pointed out, in a column entitled “An Officer’s Outrage Over Fort Hood.” “There was no shortage of warning signs that Hasan identified more with Islamic Jihadists than he did with the US Army. . .But just like September 11, those agencies and individuals charged with keeping America and Americans safe failed to connect the dots that would have saved lives. Jihadist rhetoric espoused by Hasan was categorically dismissed out of submissiveness to the concepts of tolerance and diversity. . . . the leaders in Hasan’s chain-of-command failed to act . . . out of fear of being labeled anti-Muslim and receiving a negative evaluation report.”

Indeed, even after the shootings, government officials worried more about the fate of “diversity” than about the lives of their troops:  “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength,” Army Chief of Staff George Casey told NBC’s Meet the Press. “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse,” Casey said.

The military is not like the outside world.  In the civilian world, hate speech and anti-American speech are protected by the First Amendment (under Supreme Court decisions like R.A.V. v. St. Paul, and court rulings like Dambrot v. Central Michigan University).  But in the military, soldiers get punished for bigotry or disloyalty all the time – but not Nidal Hasan, who escaped any punishment due to obvious favoritism.

In court cases like Goldman v. Weinberger, the Supreme Court has said that soldiers have fewer First Amendment rights than civilians. The military cites this all the time when it wants to punish soldiers for politically-incorrect speech, like the soldier who was punished for a sexist insult about liberal Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.) in the aftermath of the Tailhook Scandal. But the military did not apply its policies against seditious speech and hate-speech to Hasan, because of political correctness. Instead, it kept him working with injured American veterans, a position for which he was manifestly unfit.

Obama could barely bring himself to mention the tragedy, much less express sympathy for the victims, in his initial remarks about it, in which he buried any expression of sympathy in the middle of a speech filled with “wildly disconnected” ramblings about an unrelated topic, starting with a “joking shout-out.”  Even for liberal journalists, President Obama’s initial response to the tragedy was embarrassing.  Even the liberal Boston Globe, which endorsed Obama in 2008, chided the President for a speech lacking in ”empathy” for the victims.  Despite the shooter’s open hatred towards America, the military, and America’s non-Muslim majority, Obama’s remarks insisted that the shooter’s motive for the killings was unknown.

The Obama Administration then did its best to hide the role of political correctness in spawning the tragedy by appointing two supporters of racial preferences in the military – former Army Secretary Togo West and Admiral Vernon Clark – to handle the federal inquiry into the tragedy. This was like appointing a fox to guard a henhouse. At the conclusion of their inquiry, West and Clark came out with a ridiculous report that did not even mention the word “Islam” or “Muslim,” much less address the Islamic extremism that motivated the shootings.  Based on these men’s track record, the Obama Administration expected – and wanted – exactly such a whitewash report.

“Clark was such an enthusiast for ‘diversity’” that “he redefined the Navy’s concept of special minorities to include religious (read Muslim)” groups, not just racial minorities. Similarly, Togo West,  a supporter of restrictions on politically-incorrect speech, “never saw an affirmative action policy or minority preference policy he didn’t like,” and  was such a diversity zealot that he filed an amicus brief in an affirmative-action case that didn’t even involve the military, unsuccessfully urging the Supreme Court to uphold racial quotas in the public schools – something it instead struck down in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District). Clark’s devotion to preferential treatment was reflected in his order “that the Navy increase the number of minority candidates for officer commissions by 25 per cent,” which “led to a double standard” at “places like the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where the entry standards for minorities are noticeably lower than for white applicants.”

Even today, military leaders remain wedded to the concept of “diversity” at the expense of equal treatment and the Constitution, engaging in racial discrimination at the military academies in the name of “diversity,” including mandating racial preferences in admissions. The Naval Academy illegally retaliated against a faculty member who criticized its use of racial preferences in admissions (the Naval Academy listed “diversity”as its “number one priority,” above learning), violating the First Amendment and anti-retaliation provisions contained in the civil-rights laws.

Military leaders, catering to liberal congressional leaders and the Obama administration, cling tightly to the “diversity” dogma, demanding that those in the military keep silent rather than saying things that might call into question their ”diversity” obsession:

“Naval Academy senior commanders decided during the World Series to remove two Midshipmen from the color guard that appeared. What was their offense? The color guard was deemed too white and too male.  .  .Two members of the color guard were removed and replaced by a Pakistani and a woman to achieve the requisite ‘diversity.’ The Pakistani unfortunately forgot his cap and shoes. He himself had to be replaced at the last minute by one of the two middies removed earlier. The midshipmen have reportedly been ordered not to speak of these events.”

I am definitely not arguing for a ban on Muslims in the military, or discrimination against them — quite the opposite. The military has a critical shortage of, and need for, translators who speak languages like Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan), Urdu (spoken in Pakistan) and Arabic. These translators are often Muslim, and they should be welcome in the military. But neither should the military exempt Muslims from the rules of conduct imposed on soldiers of other religions.  That is an insult to the principle of equality under the law. Hasan’s anti-American rants would not have been tolerated even in the armies of Muslim countries allied with the U.S., like Albania.

Dodd-Frank Financial “Reform” Violates Property Rights and Equal-Protection Guarantees

by Hans Bader on January 9, 2011 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Property Rights, Regulation

Last week, I described how the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law passed last summer violates constitutional separation-of-powers safeguards by giving unaccountable bureaucrats the power to seize companies and legislate through administrative fiat.  But that is not the only way Dodd-Frank violates the Constitution.  It also violates property rights and equal-protection guarantees.

For example, it contains racial preferences that were criticized by members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It “imposes race and gender employment quotas on the financial industry,” noted economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth in the Washington Examiner. Its ”Section 342 states that race and gender employment ratios must be observed by all government agencies that regulate the financial sector, as well as private financial institutions that do business with the government.”

This unconstitutional requirement is the brainchild of Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Castro-loving, left-wing ideologue who earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising” against injustice. Waters once told a CEO in a public Congressional hearing, “This liberal will be all about socializing . . . .uh, uh . . . would be about, basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies.”

Law Professor Richard Epstein notes that Dodd-Frank is also an unconstitutional “taking” of private property, since it deliberately forces certain banks to process debit card transactions at a loss. (That provision is being challenged in a lawsuit called TCF Bank v. Bernanke. Debit cards did not contribute to the financial crisis in any way, but Dodd-Frank regulates them at the behest of large businesses that objected to being charged any fee by banks for processing debit card payments. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, some customers will now be charged annual fees for their debit cards.)

Dodd-Frank itself contains little “reform,” reinforcing the very features of the status quo that spawned the financial crisis.  Congressional Democrats blocked a GOP amendment that would have reformed the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Obama administration lifted a $400 billion limit on bailing them out and showered their executives with $42 million in pay — even though Treasury Secretary Geithner has admitted that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong” in the financial crisis.

Fannie and Freddie helped spawn the mortgage crisis by buying up risky mortgages and repackaging them as prime mortgages, thus creating an artificial market for junk: “From the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly subprime.”

At the direction of the Obama administration, Freddie Mac ran up more than $30 billion in losses to bail out mortgage borrowers, some of whom had high incomes. Federal regulators sought to make Freddie Mac hide the resulting losses from the SEC and the public.

Dodd-Frank is not unique in containing racial preferences. Many bills backed by Obama are riddled with racial set-asides, including the health care law passed last year. Obamacare has attracted criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for containing both racial preferences and lower standards for treatment in predominantly-minority institutions, potentially harming both white applicants and minority patients. This racial discrimination appears to violate court rulings like the Supreme Court’s Adarand decision, and the Rothe and Western States Paving decisions issued by the federal appeals courts.

Automakers Face Potentially Massive Race-Discrimination Class-Action Lawsuit Thanks to Obama Administration

by Hans Bader on July 23, 2010

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, Legal, Nanny State, Odds & Ends, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

“Decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry bailout — closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and Chrysler — were based in part on race and gender, according to a report by Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky: ‘Dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships.’ Thus, to meet numbers forced on them by the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler were forced to shutter other, potentially more viable, dealerships. The livelihood of potentially tens of thousands of families was thus eliminated simply because their dealerships were not minority- or woman-owned.”

It’s likely that these race-based closures of auto dealerships violated Supreme Court rulings like Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995), which say that the federal government can’t use race except to remedy the present effects of its own past discrimination, as I explain below. What this means is that terminated dealers could bring a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit challenging the use of race under 42 USC 1981 and the Constitution, based on cases like Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) (that Supreme Court decision let white college applicants bring a reverse-discrimination class action over a university’s use of race as a factor in admissions, even though it’s seldom clear in such cases exactly which white applicants would have gotten admitted if race hadn’t been used to admit some minorities).

This is just the latest harm the Administration has inflicted on automakers and dealers.  Its incredibly wasteful Cash-for-Clunkers program cost taxpayers and used-car and car-parts businesses billions, and drove up the cost of car-parts and used cars for dealers and consumers alike.

It doesn’t look like the automakers and the government have a valid defense to any lawsuit over the race-based car-dealership closures. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern or practice of discrimination against minorities in the auto industry that could conceivably have justified the use of race as a remedy under the Supreme Court’s Adarand decision (indeed, the automakers have long had affirmative action programs that provide a leg up to minority businesses), and in any event, the Obama administration doesn’t seem to have had any such remedial rationale in mind for using race. If it didn’t have a remedial rationale in mind for the closures, it can’t rely on one later, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shaw v. Hunt (1996). And it can’t rely on a “diversity” rationale for using race (except in universities), according to federal appellate court rulings like Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod v. FCC, 141 F.3d 344 (D.C. Cir. 1998) and Messer v. Meno, 130 F.3d 130 (5th Cir. 1997). The government may be able to invoke sovereign immunity to limit any such liability to the terminated dealers, but the automakers won’t.

(Ironically, Cash-for-Clunkers, which was designed as welfare for the automakers, actually did virtually nothing for the U.S. automakers it was supposed to help, since it simply shifted auto purchases earlier, encouraging  Americans to buy cars earlier (during the program)  rather than later (after the program ended).  Indeed, it may actually have harmed GM and Ford, since their market share was lower during Cash-for-Clunkers than later on, when car buyers were turned off by Toyota’s safety recalls and bought more GM and Ford vehicles than before.  People who participated in Cash-for-Clunkers bought lots of Toyota vehicles as replacements, which did nothing for the U.S. automakers.)

Financial “Reform” Bill Engages in Racial Engineering, While Ignoring Corrupt Mortgage Giants

by Hans Bader on June 15, 2010

in Bailout Watch, Culture, Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Congress and the Obama administration refused to do anything about the corrupt government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even though administration officials admitted that they were at the “core” of “what went wrong” in our financial system.  Doing so was just “too hard,” they claimed, and too time-consuming.

But they did find time in their financial “reform” legislation to push racial quotas at the Federal Reserve, requiring each Federal Reserve Bank to establish an “Office of Minority and Women Inclusion” to “increase the participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in programs and contracts.”  This requirement is the brainchild of Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Castro-loving, left-wing ideologue who earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising” against injustice.

Forget about those pesky Supreme Court decisions saying that racial preferences are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny, and not permissible to promote “racial balance.”  Apparently, they are obsolete in the era of “hope and change.”  Plenty of other changes are afoot too.  Obama fired an inspector general for exposing corruption by one of his cronies.  And the Obama Justice Department illegally defied the Civil Rights Commission to cover up the fact that the administration let members of the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party get away with voter intimidation.

Experts Question Enormous Cost and Constitutionality of Healthcare Legislation

by Hans Bader on January 13, 2010 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Nanny State, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

The health care legislation backed by the president and congressional leaders will increase Americans’ health care costs by more than $200 billion, concludes an expert at the federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

Earlier, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a lawyer, argued that the “individual mandate” in the health care bill legislation, which forces people to buy health insurance, is unconstitutional.  Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum likewise is questioning whether it is constitutional to force people to do so.

This so-called “individual mandate” is unprecedented and appears to exceed Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.  As the Congressional Budget Office noted in 1994, “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

As a news story notes, in Supreme Court rulings issued in 1995 and 2000, “the high court said the commerce clause is limited to economic activities that substantially affect interstate trade.”  (I was an attorney in the latter ruling, United States v. Morrison (2000).)  As UPI notes, “the weight of Supreme Court jurisprudence seems to favor a Commerce Clause challenge” to the health care legislation.

The individual mandate does not regulate activities, much less economic activities, but rather inactivity, by penalizing those who decline to buy health insurance. That exceeds Congress’s powers under the Supreme Court’s Morrison ruling, as I explained earlier.

The health care legislation also contains unconstitutional racial preferences for minority applicants, and lower standards of care for patients in predominantly-minority institutions.  These drew criticism from the Civil Rights Commission.

Most Americans oppose the health care legislation. It would reduce lifesaving medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums and the deficit, break many campaign promises, and impose heavy burdens on state budgets.  It  would also jeopardize the quality of medical care for many, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level, and ignoring advice from federal and academic experts, and lessons from countries with universal health care, about how to keep costs down.

Florida Attorney General Questions Constitutionality of Healthcare Bills in Congress

by Hans Bader on December 31, 2009

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is questioning whether it is constitutional to force people to buy health insurance, as the health care bills backed by the Obama administration require.  This “individual mandate” is unprecedented and appears to exceed Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

As the Congressional Budget Office noted in 1994“,

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.

As the news story about the attorney general’s concerns notes, in Supreme Court decisions issued in 1995 and 2000, “the high court said the commerce clause is limited to economic activities that substantially affect interstate trade in goods and services.”  (I was involved as an attorney in the latter of those two decisions, United States v. Morrison (2000)).

The individual mandate does not regulate activities, much less economic activities, but rather regulates based on inactivity, by penalizing those who decline to buy a product, health insurance (a product that young people generally do not need — as a young man, I did not go to the doctor or dentist, or purchase any drugs, for a 10-year period, and if I had become ill, my family could have easily paid my expenses).

That exceeds Congress’s powers under its Morrison and Lopez rulings, as I explained yesterday in a more extended analysis of the issue.  However, it is likely that at least four members of the current Supreme Court would vote to uphold the individual mandate, since the Morrison and Lopez decisions were 5-to-4 decisions.

Other aspects of the health care bills have also attracted legal criticism, such as their racial preferences and racial discrimination (it discriminates against white applicants in some provisions, and against minority patients in others; both forms of discrimination drew criticism from the Civil Rights Commission), and the manner in which they regulate insurance companies.

Regardless of whether the individual mandate is constitutional or not, it is certainly controversial — as are other aspects of the health care bills, which most Americans oppose.  As noted earlier, the bills would reduce life-saving medical innovation, raise many taxes, drive up insurance premiums and the deficit, break many campaign promises, and impose heavy burdens on state budgets.  They would also jeopardize the quality of medical care for many, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level, and ignoring advice from federal and academic experts, and lessons from countries with universal health care, about how to keep costs down.

Reid Health Care Bill Adds New Tax Increases, Costs Twice As Much As Promised

by Hans Bader on November 19, 2009 · 3 comments

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

The health care “reform” bill drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid adds new tax increases, and costs twice as much as its promised $849 billion price tag.

The tax increases (in billions) include:

1. 40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). . .
2. Additional 0.5% Medicare (Hospital Insurance) tax on wages in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers) – begins in 2013 – $54 B tax increase
3. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs – begins in 2010 – $22 B tax increase
4. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2010 – $19 B tax increase
5. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2010 – $60 B tax increase
6. Cut in half (to $500K) the amount of an executive’s compensation that a health plan can deduct from its corporate income taxes – begins in 2013 . . .
7. Impose 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures – begins for surgery in 2010 – $6 B tax increase!

The bill will cost far more than projected. The bill uses “accounting tricks” to keep the short-term costs down, by temporarily raising taxes before spending explodes. But in every year thereafter, it will increase the deficit, notes an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. “In its true first decade (2014 to 2023), CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion — double the price Reid is advertising.”

The Dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey S. Flier, gave the health care bill a “failing grade” in an analysis published yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, saying that it would drive up costs and stifle medical innovation.

The health care “reform” bills “would reduce senior care,” increase “medical costs,”  and “jeopardize access to care for millions,” reported experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.    They will explode state and federal deficits, and contain payoffs for trial lawyers and racial preferences.

ObamaCare spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health care.  In a speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health care.

A CNN commentary noted that Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” such as the freedom to choose your doctors, keep your existing plan if you like it, and choose what’s in your plan.

Unemployment Skyrockets: “U.S. now beating European unemployment rates”

by Hans Bader on November 10, 2009 · 15 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Healthcare, Insurance, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere

Unemployment is now higher in the U.S. than in Europe,  reports the Washington Post.  “The official U.S. unemployment rate, reported last Friday, now stands at 10.2 percent,” compared to “9.7 percent” in Europe.   This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe, such as in France.

Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus package, and only 7.6 percent in Germany, which adopted a stimulus package that was smaller relative to its economy than ours was.  (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated President Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

A “broader measure of U.S. unemployment,” including discouraged workers, puts U.S. unemployment at 17.5 percent, reports the New York Times.

As the Post notes, “For many on the left, the lament for years has been: Why can’t America be more like Europe? Why can’t rustic Americans be more like sophisticated Europeans? The sentiment has resurfaced in recent months as the health-care debate has raged on — why can’t the American health-care system be more like Europe’s?”

Well, America is now more like Europe when it comes to unemployment.  But not when it comes to social benefits and protections.  The American Left knows how to import Europe’s failures, but not its successes.

The massive health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday is a classic example.  It would expand health care coverage somewhat, but not to European levels, and it would vastly increase the costs of our health care system, rather than reducing it to European levels.   It would also increase taxes to “European levels of taxation.”  The health care bill contains politically-correct provisions that Europeans would never put up with, like pork for trial lawyers and racial preferences.  And restrictions on national competition in health insurance, which do not exist in Europe.

In France, doctors don’t need to be paid as much, because competing professions, like lawyers, are paid less.  French law is much more conservative than American law when it comes to lawsuits, including lawsuits against doctors.  There are NO punitive damages, and France discourages lawsuits by making unsuccessful plaintiffs pay the other side’s legal bills.  (Other European countries have specialized health courts, rather than American-style jury trials, to cut lawyers’ bills, speedily compensate the injured, and prevent American-style baseless lawsuits against doctors.)  There are no racial preferences — even my Marxist father-in-law, a French trade unionist who likes Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men, thinks that racial preferences are evil.  French people do not let political correctness shackle their minds the way American leftists do.

Europe is not as far to the left of America as people think, and America’s business climate is already not much more favorable than Europe’s.  For every three ways in which Europe is more socialistic than America, there are two ways in which it is less socialistic than America.  The Obama administration is getting rid of our advantages, but not our disadvantages.

American tort law and family law are much more burdensome, anti-business, and bent on redistribution of wealth, than Europe’s.

Confronted with the specter of new burdens under the health-care bills and global-warming bills backed by the Obama administration, many businesses with the money to do so are afraid to hire people and create jobs lest they be stuck with a large tab for things like health care benefits for newly-hired, less-skilled employees.

The Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly admitted that Obama’s stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.”  It contained welfare and repealed welfare reform.  Unemployment is higher now than if Congress had voted it down.

Fort Hood’s Lessons: Treat People Equally, Without Politically Correct Double Standards

by Hans Bader on November 9, 2009

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Intelligence officials knew that Nidal Hasan, the soldier who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, was trying to contract Al Qaeda.  (He once attended the same mosque as 9/11 terrorists.)

Although the killer’s extremist rantings were common knowledge, “a fear of appearing discriminatory . . . kept officers from filing a formal written complaint,” reports the Associated Press.  As a result, he escaped any disciplinary action or review of his fitness.

The Fort Hood shooter had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, “repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers,” was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and publicly called for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, talking “about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.”  But thanks to a politically-correct double standard, nothing was done to remove him from a position where he could harm others.

The lesson of the Fort Hood shootings is that applying politically-correct double standards, rather than treating people equally, can be lethal.

In a desire to curry favor with the liberal Congress that funds it, the military has increasingly adopted politically-correct policies that abandon equal treatment, such as imposing racial preferences in admissions to the military academies in the name of “diversity.”  (In practice, “diversity” seems to mean “racial proportionality:” it is harder for Asians to be admitted to the academies than for whites and Hispanics, and harder for whites and Hispanics to be admitted than for African-Americans.  Such preferences are of dubious legality under Supreme Court precedent.)

In this climate of political correctness and double standards, it is understandable that officers were afraid to file complaints about Hasan, for fear that they would incur the wrath of the “diversity” police.  Even now, the Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, seems mainly concerned that the shootings will undermine the army’s commitment to “diversity,” rather than being concerned about the double standard that spawned this tragedy.  He seems more concerned that “diversity” will become a “casualty” of such shootings than that his soldiers will.

President Obama’s initial response to the tragedy was embarrassing, even for some liberal journalists.  Obama’s initial remarks about the tragedy came buried in the middle of a speech laced with “wildly disconnected” ramblings about an unrelated topic, starting with a “joking shout-out.”  Even the liberal Boston Globe chided the president for a speech lacking in ”empathy” for the victims.

In an absurd display of political correctness, early media reports chose to harp on the false claim that the killer had PTSD (which he didn’t: he never even served overseas) or the unsupported claim that he had been subjected to harassment (support groups for Muslim soldiers say they have received no recent reports of a Muslim soldier being harassed “simply because he was Muslim”).  They also jumped to conclusions in denying (as Atlantic Magazine’s Max Fisher did) that the shooter’s motives had anything to do with his extreme religious beliefs or “any related political causes.”

In the aftermath of the shootings, some commentators have criticized a gun-control policy that disarms soldiers while on military bases to create “gun-free zones,” leaving them defenseless in the face of an attack.  The policy succeeded in disarming the killer’s victims, but not the killer himself.

Obamacare’s Provisions Have Already Been Tried, and Failed, at the State Level

by Hans Bader on October 7, 2009 · 1 comment

in Features, Healthcare, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

When the Senate Finance Committee votes on President Obama’s health care plan, it won’t even have the text of the bill in existence.  It will just be voting on a summary of what the bill will supposedly contain. Senate Democrats voted down Republican proposals that the bill’s text be made available to Senators and the public 72 hours before the vote.

And the bill itself is likely to be changed by Senate leaders at the last minute, right before the Senate as a whole votes on it, “to add the public option provision they have long favored,” but removed from the Committee version of the bill to appease moderates.

The desire of Obamacare’s supporters to avoid any scrutiny or review of their bill is understandable, because its provisions have already been tried, and failed, at the state level.  As Peter Suderman of Reason (and formerly of CEI) notes in today’s Wall Street Journal, “The major provisions of ObamaCare already have been tried.  They’ve led to increased costs and reduced access to care” for people who once had private insurance.  The states that adopted these “reforms” have the most expensive and unaffordable health insurance.

Despite these state-level failures, President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing forward a slate of similar reforms. Unlike most high-school science fair participants, they seem unaware that the point of doing experiments is to identify what actually works. Instead, they’ve identified what doesn’t—and decided to do it again.

Obama is relying on $2 trillion in imaginary savings to pay for his health care plan.  Even Democratic governors have criticized its huge cost, much of which would be passed on to state taxpayers through higher state-government Medicaid costs. One of Obama’s economic advisers said his health-care plan would lead to “crippling deficits” and “higher taxes.”

It also breaks Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.  Americans for Tax Reform summarizes the tax increases in the trimmed-down version of Obamacare revealed by its principal drafter, Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Here are just a few of those tax increases: an individual mandate tax of $900 per individual or $3800 per family (if you don’t have health insurance); an employer mandate tax of $400 per employee if health coverage is not offered; an “excise tax on high-cost health plans”; a “medicine cabinet tax”; capping flexible-spending accounts (FSA’s); abolishing most health savings accounts; and increasing tax penalties for HSAs.

This is part of a long line of broken promises, such as Obama’s pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” which he broke with huge budgets that will explode the national debt through $9.3 trillion in massively increased deficit spending.

Fact-checkers, including the Associated Press and Washington Post, say Obama has made many false claims about his health-care plan. For example, Obama claims that nothing in his health-care “plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” But that’s not true of the House and Senate versions the plan. AP noted that, “the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it.”

ObamaCare has other dubious provisions, like its racial preferences, which drew criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

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