Oprah Winfrey's 2012 Campaign Donations

Oprah Winfrey is a Democrat par excellence.  She was number 184 on Forbes's list of the richest Americans in 2012.  Rich Democrats get to support candidates who help them financially, but they can also go around telling people that they put others first.   We can thank Oprah for making us all a little poorer, yet at the same time we can admire her conscience with sincere gratitude. She is a saint.

Obama Victory Fund                 35,800

Obama Victory Fund                 40,000

DNC Servcies Corp.                 30,800

Obama Barack                            5,000

Colorado Dem. Party                  3,181

Ohio Dem Party                        10,000

Dem. Exec. Comm. Florida       6,818

Dem. Party Va.                           4,090

Dem. Party WI                           5454

Iowas Democratic Party             4545

Nevada State Dem. Party           4545

New Hampshire Dem. Party      1363

Ivy League Schools and Progressivism

William Deresiewicz critiques the performance of Ivy League colleges in The New Republic.   Herbert Croly, Walter Weyl, and Walter Lippmann founded The New Republic as a cornerstone of the early twentieth century's Progressive movement, and it has long advocated policies that impose hierarchy, expand government, and gut the economy on behalf of economic elites. The policies include the higher education system. Unsurprisingly, Deresiewicz's critique of the higher education system retains Progressive assumptions and ultimately serves to reinforce them.

Progressive policies have included the monopolization of credit by large, money center banks through their banking cartel, the Federal Reserve Bank; the income tax, which inhibits saving that facilitates capital formation among blue collar and lower-income workers; the inheritance tax, which by depriving later generations of capital forces them to seek corporate jobs that depend on the banking cartel; and a wide range of economic regulations that deter entrepreneurship and self-actualization.  Regulation disadvantages entrepreneurial, smaller firms by raising costs per unit and increasing economies of scale.

In the controlled, hierarchical, high-income inequality, militaristic, and centralized American economy that Progressivism has created, higher education plays an important part.  Deresiewicz makes valid criticisms.  At the same time, his criticisms are couched in his assumption that higher education is an independent variable, capable of manipulation, and that the forces that deter broad education are merely limited to universities.

Deresiewicz, who was on the admissions board at Yale and is a leading academic, notes that Ivy League schools manufacture students who have little intellectual curiosity, lack passion about ideas, avoid risk, and have not been taught to think.  Such students are conformist and concerned with fitting into the highest rungs of American society.  The great advances in America's economy have never come from its elite, though. America's elite has always concentrated on banking, law, and power. The great American inventions such as the assembly line, scientific management,  and AC electricity had little do with such elites.

Colleges cannot teach one how to think. They can demand that one thinks; provide material about what to think; and offer models, heuristics, algorithms, and solutions that illustrate thinking processes.  Thinking, though, is a natural reflex that a person must cultivate on his own.  The best thinkers, such as Einstein, Tesla, and Gauss, and the best leaders, such as Jefferson and Lincoln, received minimal schooling, most of which was unrelated to their intellectual achievements.  Wikipedia quotes Des Cartes, who had attended a Jesuit school through his ninth grade:

I entirely abandoned the study of letters. Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth traveling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me, and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way so as to derive some profit from it. 

Deresiewicz is surrounded by the hierachical, suppressive cult of Ivy League universities, and his solution to the poor quality of education is to attend universities lower in the cult's assigned hierarchical ranking. It doesn't occur to him that the lower-ranked schools and professors are also cult members.

The solution is not to partake of lower-ranked participants in the same failed cult but to reinvent it.  There is no need for undergraduates to attend research universities, and there is no reason for science, the main achievement of the Progressive university, to be done in undergraduate institutions. It can be better done in research institutes that serve graduate but not undergraduate students, a claim that Robert Maynard Hutchins cogently made 70 years ago.  Too many students attend college, employers place too much emphasis on college attendance, and Americans take college degrees too seriously.   Americans did not make the latter mistake before The New Republic was founded.

As well,  American society can be transformed so that widespread wealth can be accumulated and so that independent thinkers don't need to depend on the corporate hierarchy for which places like Yale and Princeton as well as Minnesota and LA City College,  prepare their students.

It Is Time to End the Critical Ethnic Studies Con Game

Dear Senator Seward:

I urge New York State to eliminate tax breaks and financial subsidies for colleges and universities that support involvement with the Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanctions movement.  Such support is already illegal under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code, which prohibits the use of tax-exempt money for political and ideological purposes.

Recently, a group called the Critical Ethnic Studies Association has issued a statement supporting the BDS movement.  I urge you to eliminate funding and tax exemption to higher education institutions that support faculty involvement with it. That includes the portion of faculty salaries allocated to writing papers and traveling to conferences.  Such expenses are not entitled to tax exemption or public support, and I resent that my tax dollars are being used for these purposes.

A perusal of the website of the Critical Ethnics Studies Association indicates that all it does is political and ideological.  There is no legitimate academic study called critical ethnic studies. Its website, at criticalethnicstudies.org/content/about, indicates that it “aims to develop an approach to scholarship, institution building, and activism animated by the spirit of decolonial, antiracist, and other liberationist movements that enabled the creation of Ethnic Studies and which continues to inform its political and intellectual projects.”

Universities are supposed to engage in scientific and intellectual, but not political projects.   The Critical Ethnic Studies Association is a political advocacy group, and it openly says so.  Although the higher education institutions involved with the Critical Ethnic Studies Association are by law engaging in tax fraud, a separate bill is necessary because the university sector is rife with such fraud—i.e., political advocacy masquerading as legitimate academic study.  The Department of Finance will need guidance as to how to begin to address it.

Among the New York higher education institutions that may engage in political advocacy by paying faculty to participate in the Critical Ethnic Studies Association are Barnard College, the College of Mount Saint Vincent, and SUNY Fredonia. It is time that this con game is ended.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Thoughts on Israel

War is  a terrible thing, and it is terrible that Israel has been involved in conflict for most of its existence. I do not apologize for Jewish self-defense, and I also note that if the Israelis were not careful, the civilian death count would have been much higher in Gaza.   The problem that makes Israel necessary is that the Jews had nowhere to go, hence Israel can only be discussed in its historical context.  Now that it exists, the many who say that it should not exist is proof enough for me that it needs to exist, for those same people are the ones who murdered the Jews.  Do you think that the always large number of Jew haters love Israel?  Where did the followers of Father Coughlin and Henry Ford go?  Many went to Ron Paul. When people shoot rockets at a country, there are many responses possible, but condemning the response but not the rocket firing is evidence enough that the critics are bigots. 

Why I am a Zionist

Land area Gaza strip: 139 square miles

Population Gaza Strip: 1.8 million

13,000 people per square Gaza mile

 Land area Singapore: 276 square miles

Population Singapore: 5.3 million

19,202 people per square Singapore mile

Chief occupation of Gazans; Hating Jews, shooting rockets at Jews

Chief occupation of Singaporeans: trade, business

GDP per capita Gaza: $6,100

GDP per capita Yemen: $2,250

GDP per capita Singapore: $51,709

I had sent this email to Gerald Celente, who considers himself a courageous hero because he's jumped on the anti-Zionist bandwagon.

Much of the anti-Israel narrative is based on the lie that the Israeli land was stolen from Palestinians.  This link offers an alternative perspective.  The land was a barren hellhole, but the Jews bought it from large Arab landowners.  The anti-Israel narrative also omits half of Israeli Jews’ being Sephardic or Mizrahi, i.e., they come from other Arab countries.  In Arab countries Jews are routinely brutalized. People like Gerald Celente omit that history.  The only remaining Middle East country with Jews is Iran, with about 15,000.  Wikipedia says this:

Thirteen Jews have been executed in Iran since the Islamic revolution, most of them for alleged connections to Israel. Among them, one of the most prominent Jews of Iran in the 1970s, Habib Elghanian who was the head of the Iranian Jewish community was executed by a firing squad by the Islamic government shortly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 on the charge having had contact with Israel, among others. In May 1998, Jewish businessman Ruhollah Kadkhodah-Zadeh was hanged in prison without a public charge or legal proceeding, apparently for assisting Jews to emigrate.^[68] 

Since 1979 about 70-80,000 Jews have left Iran, presumably mostly for Israel.  In the other Arab countries conditions are worse. In Yemen Jews must pay a jizya, a special tax on non-Muslims. I haven’t heard Celente talking about the Yemini jizya; apparently he approves. Almost all Yemini Jews have left for Israel. Did the Yemini Jews steal the Palestinians' land, or did Yemen still the Jews’ land?  The same can be said about the 75,000 Jews who’ve left Iran.  I haven’t heard Celente or his friends comment on them.

Christians and Jews are not allowed to be citizens of Saudi Arabia.  According to Wikipedia

There is virtually no Jewish activity in Saudi Arabia in the beginning of the 21st century. Jewish (as well as Christian and other non-Muslim) religious services are prohibited from being held on Saudi Arabian soil.^[12] When American military personnel were stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, permission for small Christian worship services was eventually granted, but Jewish services were only permitted on US warships. Yet, Celente and his friends do not protest American arm sales to Saudi Arabia (from Wikipedia):

On October 20, 2010, U.S. State Department notified Congress of its intention to make the biggest arms sale in American history - an estimated $60.5 billion purchase by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The package represents a considerable improvement in the offensive capability of the Saudi armed forces.

Jews have also fled Syria.  According to Wikipedia, “Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: those who inhabited Syria from early times and the Sephardim who fled to Syria after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492 AD).  There were large communities in Aleppo, Damascus, and Qamishli for centuries. In the early twentieth century a large percentage of Syrian Jews emigrated to the U.S., Central and South America and Israel. Today only a few Jews still live in Syria. The largest Syrian-Jewish community is located in Israel, and is estimated at 80,000.”  Much of this immigration has to do with ill treatment. Again, I haven’t heard  protests about this from Celente or the anti-Semites-masquerading-as-anti-Zionists about this treatment:

The Syrian government passed a number of restrictive laws against the Jewish minority. In 1948, the government banned the sale of Jewish property. In 1953, all Jewish bank accounts were frozen. Jewish property was confiscated, and Jewish homes which had been taken from their owners were used to house Palestinian refugees.^[46]

Again, did Syria steal Zionists’ land, or did Zionists steal Palestinians’ land?  My own ancestors came from various places, including the Middle East and Central Asia but predominantly from Europe.  During the postwar period Poles were literally murdering Jews in the street. Hannah Arendt documents this in Eichmann in Jerusalem.  Perhaps out of concern for Celente’s moral opinions the few Jews remaining in Poland should have remained there and been murdered.  Maybe people with morals like that don’t need to be taken seriously.

I too find the warfare and killing of Palestinian children troubling.  At the same time, if someone shot rockets at my home, I don’t think I’d be charitable.  Like Celente, I’ve lived my whole life in a safe environment. 

Liberalism Unrelinquished

George Leef wrote about the Liberalism Unrelinquished site a few weeks ago, and I signed my name to its declaration, which reads

We the undersigned affirm the original arc of liberalism, and the intention not to relinquish the term liberal to the trends, semantic and institutional, toward the governmentalization of social affairs.

The signers are academics and journalists.

The word liberal meant of or pertaining to freedom until collectivists began to misuse it during the late 19th century.  Over the past 130 years the word, in Orwellian fashion, has been transformed from its root Latin meaning to of or pertaining to collectivism and authority.

The reason it was necessary for collectivists to claim that they are for freedom was that freedom, which lasted a few centuries here, increased the standard of living and quality of life.  Millions of immigrants flocked here for a reason that they did not understand: the opportunities here due to liberalism.   In contrast, the effects of the policies of the Democratic Party and its copycat sister, the Republican Party, has been increasing government, increasing control, and declining wealth.

Instead of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, today's America watches bleak futuristic films like The Congress, which sees technological advance as escapism attendant upon widespread decline and impoverishment.  Liberalism in its true meaning requires the opposite world view: Freedom results in innovation that makes us wealthier and frees us from oppression.

My wife just told me about Elizabeth Warren's 2011 statement:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.

Obama picked it up when he said, "Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own... If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help...Somebody else made that happen."

Of course, if you're unsuccessful you didn't get their on your own either.  If you're unsuccessful it's because of violent thieves like Obama and Warren.

In any case, when I think of all the Americans who died fighting for freedom, and I realize that their descendants elected the people whom they were fighting against, people like Hitler, Stalin, Obama, and Warren,  I was reminded of the importance of language.

Calling authoritarians liberal leads to authoritarianism, and I thank Kevin Frei and Daniel Klein, who started the Liberalism Unrelinquished site, for reminding us to use the word in the right way.

My Article on Harris v. Quinn and the CUNY Faculty Union in Frontpagemag

My article "Time to Rethink Government Unions" appears in the current issue of  Frontpagemag. I had researched the material about the CUNY faculty union several months earlier, and the Supreme Court's Harris v. Quinn decision on June 30 gave me a context in which to embed the CUNY material. I relied on interviews with David Seidemann and an anonymous officer of the PSC who gave me reams of information about the bizarre goings-on at the PSC Delegate Assembly and Executive Council meetings. The most striking phenomenon I observed during my research was the PSC leadership's omertà. The unwillingness to talk to me extended to the out-group led by former candidate Richard Boris and retired union president Irwin Polishook. 

Especially boorish was Stanley Aronowitz, who agreed to be interviewed by phone at specific times, yet when I called at those times he didn't answer.  He didn't four times.  The PSC's leadership advocates a suppressive ideology, socialism, so it's not surprising that they don't refrain from using violence to take money from members, using the money in violation of the members' free speech rights, and then covering up their actions.  Cover-ups are only problematic when Republicans engage in them.

Democratic Foundation Finds That Tea Party Donations Came from Average Americans

One of the misleading tales about the Tea Party that media sources have spread is that the movement has been supported by wealthy-one percent donors.  The Roosevelt Institute, whose aim is to further the aims of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, funded a study that found the opposite:  Much of the Tea Party candidates' donations have come from average Americans.  

It is true that the authors, Ferguson, Jorgenson, and Chen, conclude "The Tea Party and its allies cannot sensibly be treated solely in terms of mass politics."  They also note, of course, that Obama, the Democratic Party, and their allies cannot be treated solely in terms of mass politics. Indeed, that is the gist of Ferguson's extensive writings: Capital intensive and pro-free-trade industries supported Roosevelt, and among the supporters were Standard Oil and an array of investment banks that opposed JP Morgan Jr.  In other words, the authors are willing to concede that there is public support for free market-based candidates just as there is public support for collectivist ones. 

That shows considerable integrity.  It is inconceivable to most collectivists that average Americans might prefer freedom; it is inconceivable to them that hardworking, blue collar workers might prefer lower to higher taxes; it is inconceivable to them that those who prefer to support themselves free of government authority might prefer being paid fairly for their labor instead of living off government subsidies, welfare scams,  or the Social Security pyramid scheme.  

Although I disagree with their politics, the authors of the study are exceptional scholars who have carefully tested the lead author's, Thomas Ferguson's, insightful investment theory of politics.  They write this: 

The statistics in Table 1 provide the answer, which is somewhat surprising. Bachmann, Cain, and Paul attracted truly significant percentages of unitemized funds – essentially half or more of all their funds. Though we suspect Republican donors are likely to be somewhat wealthier than most Democratic donors, we do not doubt that most of this money streamed in from people reasonably described as “average Americans” too.  Gingrich and Santorum also attracted significant amounts from this quarter. By contrast, Huntsman’s and Texas Governor Rick Perry’s contributions of this type were plainly derisory.

Twin Peaks

I'm watching Twin Peaks for the fourth or fifth time.  I put the following review up on Netflix. Some of the commenters claim that Netflix is thinking of doing a sequel or remake. In January 2008 I suggested that HBO do one, but Netflix would be even better.

This is one of my favorite TV programs.  It combines imagination with satire, comedy with spirituality, sci fi and horror with social commentary.  The eerie music is  a metaphor for the unconscious: Maddy Ferguson's murder occurs in a  gap in Julee Cruise's song, for it is through art that inner forces, including terrible ones, are revealed. The program is about immanence, the truth within, and transcendence, the greater truth. False immanence, Killer Bob, takes possession of souls, and true immanence, both the  corruption beneath the town's surface and the good in the Bookhouse Boys, Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle), and James Hurley (James Marshall) intersect.  Agent Cooper's (Kyle Maclachlan's) struggle, like that of any seeker, is to reveal immanence and seek transcendence.  Good as well as evil are satirized; as in some of WH Auden's poems ("As I Walked Out One Evening"), cliches expressed as satire transcend themselves as art.  Through art we achieve understanding. Lynch's cast, a hodgepodge of talented actors and amateurs, comprise a bohemian  Diane Arbus-like ensemble. (Is it a coincidence that Cooper continually records messages to "Diane"?) The cast is an expression of Lynch and Frost's artistry. It is tragic that ABC allowed the show to run for only 35 episodes, but yes, we are fortunate that ABC allowed it to run at all.  

Defund the IRS

Steve Forbes hits a home run in the current issue of Forbes: Because of the IRS targeting-of-conservatives scandal, which is reminiscent of the fascistic Europe that Obama and his morally diseased supporters idealize and hope to emulate, the IRS should be defunded until the scandals are resolved.

Forbes notes that the current Obama administration is wracked with scandal more significant than the Teapot Dome in the 1920s, which preceded Warren G. Harding's death, and Watergate.  For some reason the totalitarians in the Democratic Party claim that their Fuehrer did not know, a claim that they would have ridiculed in 1974 when Nixon was president.

Forbes does not go far enough, of course.  The IRS is a criminal organization that should be permanently closed, not just until the Obama scandal is investigated.  With a crooked, fascistic president in Washington, the claim that the federal government is a force for good is nonsense.

Professional Staff Congress: a Left-wing Tax Scam

She thinks she's Che Guevara

In Harris v. Quinn, decided last week, the Supreme Court suggested that coercing public sector employees who prefer not to join a union into paying an agency fee may violate the First Amendment.  Agency fees are charged to those who prefer not to join a union, and they usually equal the dues less the amount the union spends on unrelated political activity.  Other forms of union security arrangements are the open shop, the union shop, and the closed shop. The open shop gives employees the freedom to neither join nor pay dues. The union shop coerces employees into joining after they are hired. The closed shop coerces employees into joining before they are hired, and it coerces employers into hiring union members.

The rationale for the agency fee is that nonmember employees benefit from the union's collective bargaining, and were they not to pay an amount equal to the dues, they would be free riders.  In the 1977 case that has governed agency fee arrangements, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that agency fees are legal, but the union must be willing to refund the proportion of dues spent on political lobbying unrelated to bargaining activities.  The reason is that violently coercing nonmembers to support lobbying with which they don't agree violates their freedom of speech. 

But what if a union spends little time on collective bargaining and other workplace-related activities so that all dues either are for unrelated lobbying or are otherwise unrelated to improving working conditions?  That has to be the case with the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC),  because it contributes nothing to my wages.  I earn less than I would in a nonunion environment.  Hence, the Abood claim that I would be a free rider were I to not join my union is nonsensical. 

In the recent Harris v. Quinn case, the court has raised the question as to whether agency fees can ever not involve violations of agency fee payers' First Amendment free speech rights.  The reasons are manifold:  It is difficult to extricate political from other activities; unions lie about how much they spend on politics; ultimately, all public sector union activity may be political.

In the case of Seidemann v. Bowen  (also here) decided in 2009, Brooklyn College geology professor David Seidemann sued to determine the actual amount of  dues that the PSC spends on political activity.  The union repeatedly lied about the amount; initially, they claimed less than one percent, yet the case was settled at a point at which Seidemann and his pro bono Jones Day attorney had determined that they spend 14%.  Seidemann believes that the true amount is closer to 20%, but the cost of further pursuing the case has been prohibitive. Part of the settlement was that the union paid $250,000 in legal fees to Jones Day. Few foundations can afford that kind of money for a venture with an ambiguous outcome.

As left-wing extremists led by President Barbara Bowen, an authoritarian, left-wing kook who thinks she's Che Guevara, the union leadership thinks little about using government-enforced violence to coerce dues money from faculty who do not agree with them.  They have repeatedly refused to represent faculty with whom they disagree, and they chiefly support the left-wing Working Families Party, a simple-minded band of economic illiterates who favor failed, reactionary, big-government solutions.  In choosing to openly affiliate itself with and pay the lion's share of campaign contributions to a third party, the PSC has ensured that conservative Democrats and Republicans will have little interest in supporting its cause.

The union serves as a conduit of tax-favored money from the taxpayers to the fringe left.  Public money is budgeted to CUNY and used for faculty salaries; as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization CUNY pays no taxes; faculty dues are collected on a tax-deductible basis; the union does not pay taxes, and as a 501(c)(5) tax-exempt organization, it donates the dues tax free to the Working Families Party, likely claiming that all of the issues it lobbies about are related to its purpose, which is what 501(c)(5) requires. That, of course, is nonsense.   

The June 19, 2014 minutes of the Delegates Assembly of the Professional Staff Congress states that the assembly resolved that the ROTC should not be institutionalized at CUNY. It spent much of its time discussing how situations in which it, and the American Federation of Teachers, to whom it contributes, should coordinate situations in which the two organizations make donations to different candidates.  It also passed a resolution favoring restitution of pensions to Detroit municipal employees.  It also developed a foreign policy.  Its resolution says this:

Resolved, the AFT concur with the AFL-CIO National Executive Committee, which declared in August 2011: 'The miliatarization of our foreign policy has proven to be a costly mistake. It is time to invest at home,' and that the AFT call for funds freed by reductions in military and national security spending to be reallocated to many urgent human needs; and

Resolved, that the AFT call for US foreign policy regarding international conflicts to be guided by strategies that prioritize the needs of working people everywhere and the use of negotiation and diplomatic means over military deployment, whether in Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Pakistan, or other 'hot-spots' as they may emerge...

In addition, it passed resolutions concerning the legacy of slavery, the Mayday$5K national movement for slavery, and Coca Cola's abuse of children and violation of human rights. Coca Cola's exploits overseas are indubitably within the purpose of a New York faculty union. Obama says so, for why should the PSC pay taxes if Tony Rezko and Timothy Geithner didn't?

In addition, about 5% of the minutes describe a collective bargaining update in which Bowen describes two contract settlements at the UFT and TWU.  The minutes do not explain why CUNY has not drawn up a contract with its faculty since 2007, nor do I sense from the minutes that they  care.

The question the Supreme Court should have raised and didn't is whether public sector unions serve as scams to avoid income taxes on contributions to left-wing Democrats, the Working Families Party, and other left-wing causes.  

Is Climate Science Data Falsified Junk?

A July 5 article in the UK Daily Mail (h/t Mike Dovich) says that UN climate data and climate predictions are falsified junk. The article starts by noting that there is more polar ice in the southern hemisphere than there was 35 years ago. The article also says that 40% of temperature gauging stations are down and that  "authorities" have been imputing temperatures using neighboring stations without revealing the gaps in their data. That may or may not be a serious problem depending on the representativeness of the working stations.  Ethical scientists would discuss the data gaps and the limitations, if any, on their estimation procedures. The article seems to imply that the gaps have not been openly discussed, although that is not clear. If they haven't been, then the scientists are not doing a good job. 

A bigger problem to which the article alludes is this:

It has also been discovered that the  US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is using estimates even when perfectly good raw data is available to it – and that it has adjusted historical records.

Why should it do this? Many have noted that the effect of all these changes is to produce a warmer present and a colder past, with the net result being  the impression of much faster warming.

 
 If the article is right, i.e., if climatologists are revising data in a biased way and replacing real data with estimates that flatter their hypothesis,then, well, I could just scream. In that case universities are even worse than I thought, and that's pretty bad.  I'm not surprised when the dummies at the United Nations make up whoppers about things like climate change, but if scientists are yanking our chain, just what purpose do universities serve?

Immigration, Monetary Policy, and the Impoverishment of Americans

According to Karen Zeigler and Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, all job growth since 2000 can be matched to immigration into the US.  In other words, Americans who were living in the US in 2000 have experienced negative job growth.  That is on top of declines in the real hourly wage, which is lower today than it was in 1964.  

A basic economic principle is that if you cut a price, demand will increase.  Wages have been cut, and demand has indeed increased, but because of immigration none of the gains--increased job opportunities-- has gone to the people whose wages have been cut.  

The expansion of the money supply has been accompanied by vast foreign holdings of dollars and US Treasury bonds.  China and Japan combined hold a value of US treasury bonds equal to the total US money supply.  Estimates of the amount of US currency held abroad varies from 65% to Edwin Feige's 35%  of the $1.2 trillion of US currency in circulation.  The entire US money supply is currently $2.8 trillion.

The large amount of overseas dollar holdings props up the dollar, keeping manufacturing jobs out of the US.  Thus, America's monetary policy is a source of stagnant job opportunities. It is also the source of stagnant real wages and income inequality. The reason is that wages lag inflation while monetary policy, the source of inflation, props up the stock market. 

The supposed income-inequality issue on which Obama and his dumbed-down followers harp is a direct function of the Keynesian money-printing orgy that has occurred since the Fed's founding.  The Fed’s increasing the money supply reduces interest rates, so the present value of future stock dividends is increased. 

A dividend dollar payable next year is worth more today with a lower interest rate because the alternative use of the dollar, putting it into a savings account, draws less interest.  If you put a dollar into a bank account that pays 1% interest, you have $1.01 (1.01 x $1) next year.  If you put a dollar into a bank account that pays 2% interest, you have $1.02  (1.02 x $1) next year. 

Conversely, the present value of a dollar at 1% interest payable in one year is $0.99 today (1/1.01 x $1) while the present value of a dollar at 2% interest payable in one year is $.98 today (1/1.02 x $1).  By reducing interest rates from 2% to 1% you increase the present value from $.98 to $.99.  The same occurs with stocks. 

That is why Keynesian and monetarist economists, virtually all economists in universities, are great friends of the super rich.  The advocacy of monetary expansion is tantamount to the advocacy of stock market gains at the expense of wages.  Both parties, Democrats and Republicans, have advocated increasing the money supply, stealing wealth from employees, and handing it to stockholders. I'll bet you didn't hear that on C-Span or CNN, but who owns C-Span and CNN?

Wages don't keep pace with inflation, though, which Keynes points out in the beginning of his book.

Thus, this is what stock market growth looks like despite stagnating real wages and declining job opportunities: 

People who've been invested in the stock market have done well thanks to the Fed, while people who hold cash or earn wages, the working class, have done miserably.  Yet, they keep voting for Democrats and Republicans because America is an idiocracy, and they are the idiots. 

Obama the Least Competent but Not the Worst Postwar President

A July 2 Quinnipiac University poll finds that 33% of voters consider Obama to be the worst post-World War II president while 28% consider Bush to be the worst.  None of the others comes close.  The largest percentage of voters, 35%, like Ronald Reagan best.  Journalists who say that it takes years for historians to determine the true quality of a president so that the numbers aren't meaningful are misguided.  First, most historians are left or statist biased so that their opinions mean zero.  Historians are ideologues, and they frequently place their ideology before the facts. Second, historians are filled with future-oriented biases and typically lack a full grasp of the gestalt of a given era.  Future historians will be at a disadvantage in interpreting today's facts.

That said, I don't agree that Obama is the worst postwar president because Nixon did more to expand government than Obama did.  Obama is a traitor and a dummy, and his freeing a traitorous soldier a few weeks ago was the result. As well, his ill-conceived healthcare act is and will be a disaster, and he has magnified the economic errors of the Bush and preceding administrations.

The opinions of Americans mean little, for America is a dumbed down idiocracy. For example, a slightly greater number say that they like Obama better than Bush on the economy, but I doubt any can identify real differences between the policies of Bush and Obama because there have not been any.  The great debate between Democrats and Republicans about the economy during the Obama years was the $800 billion stimulus spent on crooked Obama cronies, but Bush had also overseen a stimulus. I recall getting the check for a few hundred dollars.

David Vogel's Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America traces the history of business-government relations in the postwar era.  The book was copyrighted in 1989, so it doesn't tell the whole story, but the book makes clear that if you consider the president to have been worst who has most expanded government, then Nixon is worst.

Vogel describes how Nixon got into a pissing contest with Senator Edmund Muskie to see who could pass the more aggressive environmental regulation. He signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act,the Cigarette Advertising Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. Regarding the Clean Air Act, Vogel writes this (p.73):

With the passage of the House bill, the Nixon administration had firmly established a preeminent position in the field of environmental protection. It had initiated a significant strengthening and broadening of the federal government's regulatory authority over what was literally the most visible dimension of pollution control...

Vogel adds (p. 90):

The period of industry's greatest vulnerability--at least in the areas of social regulation and tax policy--coincided with the presidency of Republican Richard Nixon.  Just as it took the presidency of Lyndon Johnson to enact the legislative agenda of John Kennedy's New Frontier, so were many of the most important regulatory initiatives of Johnson's Great Society approved during the presidency of Richard Nixon.

As well, Nixon introduced what was probably the most socialistic American policy of the post-war period: wage and price controls and controls on oil prices. Not only did this policy fail; it generated Soviet Union-style lines at gas stations and was punctuated with the worst inflation since the one following Woodrow Wilson's venture into wartime socialism during World War I.

Vogel barely mentions the chief harm that Nixon did to the US: the abolition of the remnant of the gold standard that had survived under the Bretton Woods agreement. This opened up the door to ongoing expansion of government and money printing, which continues today.  I have to revise my former belief that Johnson was the worst president; Nixon was even worse than Johnson.

It is also true that the three presidents who introduced unnecessary wars, Truman, Johnson, and Bush, deserve demerits.  When you put the Vietnam War together with the Great Society, Johnson comes close to Nixon.  The abolition of the gold standard, though, was so far reaching that it reduces Nixon's position to worst.

It is shocking that a candidate as inept as Barack Obama received the adulation that he did, not only from dumbed down college students who have trouble spelling their own names but also from their professors.  It is the students who will ultimately pay the price for their choice, though.

Despotism Light

Clyde Warren Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has an excellent piece in Forbes on what he calls despotism-lite: Barack Obama's use of executive orders to circumvent the legislative process.  What is the difference between a dictator like Saddam Hussein's giving an order that's obeyed without question and Obama's giving an executive order that's obeyed without question?

Warren refers to Obama's imperious style, and he lists a number of major executive orders whose execution usurps Congressional authority.  These include executive orders concerning work-life programs, student loans, and establishing a quadrennial energy review.

Besides these programs' being useless crap, the pattern confirms that the federal government is neither a republic nor a democracy: It is an authoritarian dictatorship that lacks legitimacy.

Red States versus Red, White, and Blue States

According to Wikipedia the Today Show introduced the terms "red state" and "blue state" during the 2000 election.  A quick look at the Today Show's website suggests that they have some great-looking babes working there, but I do not think that the Today Show's crew of televised mannequins ought to influence my or anyone else's political terminology. 

"Red" refers to socialism or communism. As Wikipedia also points out, the color red is linked to communism through its red flag and red star.

The Today Show is on globalist NBC, and they seem to have accidentally on purpose switched the meaning of "red" in keeping with a longstanding globalist theory of convergence.  One of the longstanding tactics of the descendents of the German historical school of economics and of Hegel, i.e., what might be called social democrats or members of the totalitarian Democratic Party of the United States, has been to confuse discussion by reversing symbolism.

For example, they have long called themselves "liberals," although they are not at all liberal; they are the reverse.  Having incurred public enmity toward the term "liberal," which never occurred when it was used to refer to libertarians, the social democrats then started using the equally deceptive term "progressive."  There is nothing progressive about their big-government ideas; government is the policy of stagnation. The social democrats advocate medieval policies, policies that were associated with centuries of the absence of progress.

The use of the term "red" to refer to backward, communistic states like New York and California is another of the Hegelians' word games. 

I don't see how anyone can use the term "red" to refer to freer states and "blue" to refer to the communistic states.  Rather, "red" should apply to New York, Illinois, California, and Michigan, and "red, white, and blue," the colors of the flag, should apply to the free states.

Scorecard of Brooklyn Dodgers v. New York Giants Game on the Day I was Born

On the day I was born, May 29, 1954,  my father and my cousin attended the Brooklyn Dodgers v. New York Giants game in the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. My father was a Dodgers fan, having grown up in Brooklyn.  My cousin posted this scorecard on my Facebook timeline.  He recalls Peewee Reese's and Gil Hodges's home runs in the sixth and seventh innings.  Willie Mays, who 12 years later tossed my friends and me a baseball when we were at Shea Stadium, also hit a home run. The Dodgers won.  Little did they know that within a few years both teams would move to California. 

Howard Stern: Democratic Party Is Communist

In 2008 Howard Stern was right (also see discussion on Bizpac Review): The Democratic Party is communist.  As Americans confront the failure of their political system, many are unable to assess that this is a gangster-ruled land.  Stern had the imagination, but only when the government directly affected his own dealings concerning the merger of Sirius Communications and XM Radio.  The Cato Institute subsequently pointed out that the FCC's authority over mergers should be ended; the communists in Washington lack the competence or honesty to regulate economic behavior.  The merger that the FCC later permitted had so many requirements that the new technology will likely be impeded for years.

Like the Germans under Hitler, Americans are not yet suffering from tyranny that they have put in power.  The Germans changed their minds about totalitarianism when they lost the war, and their own lives and futures were sharply reduced. It is when their own interests are directly threatened that Americans may decide that liberty is preferable to communism. Until then expect declines in the American economy and standard of living.  Stern states that he had voted for Hillary Clinton and Al Gore; it wasn't until his own interests were harmed that he questioned his pattern of voting for totalitarians.

Because of the might of the once-free American economy, the ill effects of American communism have taken the form of stagnation rather than decline.  Over time, though, stagnation will become decline.

The dollar may strengthen in the coming weeks, and there may be a decline in the stock market, but I don't think that the stock market will fall sharply in the near future.  The reason is that due to monetary expansion interest rates may take years to increase, and inflation awaits a shift in global support for the dollar. That also may take years.  Eventually, there will be dollar depreciation--inflation--and real wages will decline rather than stagnate. The massive stimulus that nourishes the current anemic American economy will ultimately turn into monetary inflation.  The increasing population will not be able to proportionately expand its output.

At that point I see either more extreme totalitarian steps or a call for more freedom.   There is little reason for optimism.  Ultimately, ownership of hard assets may protect Americans, but there is no reason to feel safe becaue the future America will likely be one where private property is not safe.  Franklin Roosevelt used government violence to take possession of privately held gold; there is no reason to think that private property, especially outside the private property of government cronies, is safe in the United States.

Supreme Court Finds That Illinois' Public Employees Lack Free Collective Bargaining

George Leef posts in Forbes about the case of Harris v. Quinn, which was recently decided in favor of the workers and against the union.  The case involved home health care workers who own their own tools, or whose employers own their own tools, but receive healthcare dollars from the USSA. The Service Employees' International Union struck a deal with now criminally convicted Governor  Rod Blagojevich and later Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois to force the private sector healthcare workers to join the SEIU.  The SEIU, Governor Quinn, and Illinois had no interest in whether or not the employees wanted to join a union; they were happy to sign a law to compel them to join, undoubtedly in exchange for the SEIU's contributing to Blagojevich's, Quinn's or some other Democrat's campaign coffers.

The court overturned this authoritarian arrangement.  In deciding the case, the court addressed Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which held that public sector employees who do not wish to join a union can be compelled to pay an agency fee although they must be refunded monies spent for political and ideological purposes unrelated to the union's workplace responsibilities.

The Supreme Court seems to have brought that entire approach to public sector union dues paying into question. Under the union contract at CUNY, for example, nonmembers of the union are compelled to pay an agency fee equal to the dues. Since the dues are 1.05% (1% for part-timers), there would be a significant reason not to join the union if the agency fee were to be eliminated. The court seems to say that the agency-fee arrangement is a First Amendment issue:

Preventing nonmembers from free-riding on the union's efforts is a rationale generally insufficient
to overcome First Amendment objections...and in this respect Abood is something of an anomaly. The Abood court also failed to appreciate the distinction between core union speech in the public sector and core union speech in the private sector, as well as the conceptual difficult in public-sector cases of distinguishing union expenditures for collective bargaining from those designed for political purposes. Nor does the Abood Court seem to have anticipated the administrative problems that would result in attempting to classify union expenditures as either chargeable or nonchargeable. 

The time may be ripe to reopen the question of compulsory agency fees in the public sector.

More on Brooklyn College

My piece on the refusal of Dean Willie Hopkins to consider a multimillion dollar grant proposal that supported AACSB accreditation because he was too busy pursuing AACSB accreditation (which requires funding for faculty that the college cannot afford) appears in the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy website at http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=3033#.U7RhObEzTzM .

Income Inequality Is a Bogus Cause That Covers Up Wage Stagnation Due to Government

Recently, the media and a wide range of crackpot academics have been banging the income inequality drum. Charges of income inequality have been fundamental to socialism since its inception. When that inception was is subject to debate; Karl Popper claimed that it goes back to the ancient Greeks.

The Spartans had a communistic society based on the village's raising children, common dining, common schooling, and shared equality.  There was no room for individual expression or self-actualization. The chief reason the Spartans are remembered today is their wars.  The movie 300 celebrates their victory against Xerxes in the Battle of Thermopylae.  More so, they are remembered for their leadership of the Peloponnesian League of Hellenic states against Athens in the Peloponnesian War.  Although Athens abused its power, it was a quasi-liberal democracy; Athens invented democracy along with liberalism, science, philosophy, rhetoric, law, and theater.

Athens was a precapitalist society based on serfdom and slavery--as was Sparta--but it recognized private property.  There was a considerable degree of income inequality in Athens, and Aristotle spoke of the importance of magnificence, what today might be called corporate social responsibility.  The Greeks had a primitive view of private enterprise, but Aristotle began to see that private economic transactions are based on equivalent value; he saw such economic transactions as the foundation of human civilization.  He did not, however, understand that technology can replace slavery as a source of value.  That understanding began with capitalism in Europe, especially in 17th century Great Britain.

Communism sees all wealth as due to labor; hence, it discourages progress.  Innovation under communism occurs through imitation of capitalist progress.  If there is no capitalism, as is occurring in healthcare, then there will be no innovation because there is no reward for innovation. Marx saw no value as coming from innovation.  He lifted this fallacy, the labor theory of value, from classical economist David Ricardo, but it is also consistent with Aristotle's philosophy, which Marx admired. Marxism, like Progressivism, reflects a medieval world view in which the universe is static and human intellect can grasp all knowledge.  Marxism presses this superstition further by claiming that the dictatorship of the proletariat can run a command economy.

There was perfect equality among the citizens of totalitarian Sparta. In contrast, there was considerable income inequality among the citizens of Athens. Sparta is remembered for its warrior skills. Athens is remembered for innovation.  Income equality is code for totalitarianism coupled with violence.

The Spartan economy was appropriate for its time; it was the Athenians who were well ahead of their time. The classicist Michael Rostovetzeff claims that in the fifth century BC the Hellenic colonies in Italy achieved a standard of living not again equaled until the 19th century.

All progress requires inequality.  At the same time, inequality often occurs where there is no progress. Private ownership is necessary but not sufficient for innovation.  The periods of great innovation, in fifth century BC Athens , 14th century AD Florence, and 19th AD America, were characterized by income inequality. Sparta had a much more equal society than Athens did, much as North Korea and Cuba have more equal societies than we do.  The claim that there needs to be income equality is a claim that there needs to be suppression and exploitation.  Such suppression and exploitation will benefit those who live off government: academics, investors, Wall Street executives, corporate executives, government officials, and public employees.

The issue these special interests must deflect is the stagnant real wage. This has been caused by government policy, regulation, and monetary expansion, for wages lag inflation.  In the late 19th century, during the gold standard period, Americans could save.  In the post-1970 inflationary period, Americans have slaved, not saved. Americans have become the serfs of bankers, corporate executives and public employees.

News Coverage of My Struggle against Political Correctness at Brooklyn College

The New York Post, Inside Higher Education, and the New York Observer have covered my struggle at Brooklyn College concerning the dean's refusal to provide funding for ideas I had that do not fit the college's socialist ideology.  It saddens me that institutions of higher learning cannot tolerate a  diversity of ideas and opinions.  Since I have arrived in higher education, I have been repeatedly attacked because of my free-market views.

One thing that the articles did not make clear is that all of the ideas that the dean turned down were my own. There were no "strings attached" to anything, and the foundation did not encourage me to pursue anything.  Rather, the dean refused to allow me to get funding for my ideas because the faculty will not tolerate them.

Talk about academic freedom as a reason to refuse funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation and other freedom-oriented foundations is pretext.  The faculty of Brooklyn College have squashed my academic freedom to pursue ideas that interest me.  That the bigots do so in the name of academic freedom is telling.  Just as their fellow totalitarians inspired George Orwell's image of Newspeak in 1984, so do universities claim that their suppression of libertarians' academic freedom is in the name of academic freedom.

New York Lynch Mob

I had dinner last night in El Quijote, a wonderful Spanish restaurant next to the fabled Hotel Chelsea.  Although I work one day a week in New York City, I rarely spend time there because my wife and I prefer our neighborhood in the Kingston-Woodstock-Saugerties-Phoenicia corridor in the eastern Catskill Mountains.  Because my cousin was visiting, though, I took a bus down, and we had a nice dinner in Chelsea. 

I came early and had a martini at the bar, when a young man, probably around 30, walked in and ordered a drink.  He told me that he is an unemployed piano worker, and he used to work in the Steinway piano factory.  I happen to have grown up near the original Steinway factory in Astoria, Queens, and we got into a conversation.  

I suggested that he consider moving to North Dakota, where the jobs are plentiful.  Truck drivers in North Dakota are making $80,000, according to the Bismarck Tribune, and a Williston politician has told me that people who get off the bus in Willistion, which is in western North Dakota, find a job within six hours.  The reason, of course, is the oil boom brought on by hydraulic fracturing, fracking, and horizontal drilling.  These technologies involve going down two miles into the earth, then turning the drill at a 90 degree angle, horizontally. High-pressure water mixed with a chemical solution breaks up the shale rock and releases oil or natural gas.  

According to Hannah Coman,* since fracking was invented in the 1940s, there have been about a million fracking applications with about 1,000 reported cases in the five states where fracking has occurred, Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In other words, fracking is safer than driving a car. 

That is, the five states where fracking has occurred have a combined population of 36.6 million, according to the 2010 census, so there’s a probability of .027% (1,000/36,600,000) of an incident.  In contrast, there were 6.4 million car accidents in 2005 compared to 208 million licensed drivers in 2008. The median age was 37.2, and assuming a starting age for driving of 18, Americans experienced about 19.2 x 6.4 million = 125 million car accidents over their 19.2 driving years; 125 million / 208 million is a 60% probability.  In other words, car accidents are 2,222% more likely than fracking accidents. 

Nevertheless New Yorkers are convinced, undoubtedly by the media, that fracking is a great evil.  Most don't know what it is or why it's evil. They just know that it's evil. 

When the young man asked me why there were so many jobs, I said that there was a great deal of oil extraction because of the fracking in North Dakota.  He suddenly went ballistic, and he started screaming at me: "I will NEVER be involved with fracking. Fracking is evil. I hate fracking."  I suggested that he do a little reading on the subject, and he answered, "I've read on it . You should read on it."  I asked him whether he had learned about it from Youtube video or The New York Times. He didn't respond. I added, "OK, I'll remember you as the guy who preferred unemployment to fracking." 

I then sat down with my aunt, to whom I described this interaction. "I hate fracking," she said. I don't think that she could cite a clear reason either.  

New York is a city in which the City Council has called Wal-Mart's donations to charity "dangerous dollars" and "toxic money." It is a city governed by a lynch-mob mentality, where conformity to national socialist** rumors is a rule, a cornerstone of a culture governed by lockstep, illiteracy-inducing public schools, which indoctrinate the city's population in the city's national socialist ideology.  Never mind that fracking has been done for 70 years; never mind that natural gas has always been obtained using fracking. Fracking is evil, according to  New York's national socialists. 

New York has become a place that I'd rather avoid. The people, indoctrinated and intolerant, don't interest me;  the politics upsets me.  The food is good, but I'm past the age at which I can afford the calories. When the jury comes in on the outcome of the Fed's recent tripling of the money supply, I don't think I want to be anywhere near New York City. I can envision the city's national socialists hoisted by their own petard, blaming George W. Bush for all their own bad decisions.

*Hannah Coman, “Balancing Our Needs for Energy and Clean Water: The Case for Applying Strict Liability in Hydraulic Fracturing Suits.”

**In popular American parlance, followers of Hegel and the German historical school of economics had been called "liberals" and now call themselves "progressives." Neither term is accurate. They are national socialists, with the same intellectual heritage that Hitler's Nazi Party had.

Obama Impeachment Idea Suggests Idiocratic Rule

I just received an email from former congressman Allen West, who is looking to impeach Obama.  Obama is not the problem, and impeachment is not the solution.  America's problems are deep, and they stem from government bloat, money printing, and special interests ranging from the food, banking, and healthcare lobbies to the government-union and environmentalist lobbies. The problems result from too much regulation, too much spending, too much government suppression, too much subsidization of the rich, too high taxes, too many government programs, and too much public greed. 

Both parties are at fault. Impeachment would be a diversion, not only because the Democratic Senate will never find Obama guilty of anything but also because impeachment will not solve a thing. The Republicans are as socialist as the Democrats.


I just wrote a report on North Dakota, and North Dakota's Republican history is largely one of a big-government Republican Party led by what was called the Nonpartisan League, a spinoff of the state's Socialist Party that came to dominate state politics and the state's Republican Party until the 1950s.  The claim that the Republican Party is the party of small government is so far from reality that its existence reminds me of the Mike Judge film, Idiocracy.

>Friend – I wanted to make sure you didn't miss this.

GOP Congressman Lou Barletta just announced that he thinks there may be enough "yes" votes in the House of Representatives to impeach Barack Obama!

Now – more than ever – we need to get the Guardian Fund's impeachment survey into the hands of every conservative in America. Can you help me?

Please make an emergency donation of $5 or more right away by clicking on this link to help me promote this critical survey on the impeachment of Barack Obama.

Make no mistake – Obama is ignoring the Constitution, our laws, and the system of checks and balances that safeguard this country.

He's committed high crimes and misdemeanors and it's time to kick him out of office.

Are you with me?

Thanks,
Allen

New York Now a Toxic City

Bigotry takes many forms.  One form of bigotry involves intolerance of others' political views or economic behaviors. Such bigotry can be as violent as racial or religious hatred.  Dissidents in big-government states have been prevented from working, have been incarcerated, have been tortured, and have been killed.  Examples include the McCarthyism of the 1950s, when communists were prevented from working in the film industry; the suppression of the Soviet Union and China, which often involved incarceration in prison camps, torture, and murder; and the  suppression of dissidents, along with Jews, Gypsies, and uncooperative Catholic leaders, in Nazi Germany.* 

New York increasingly exhibits political bigotry.  The New York Post reported on June 4 that 26 of 51 New York City Councilmen wrote a letter to Wal-Mart demanding that the firm stop giving charity in New York.  The Post reports that Wal-Mart had announced $3 million in gifts to New York this year. It adds, "Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito called the donations “toxic money,” and accused Walmart of waging a “cynical public-relations campaign that disguises Walmart’s backwards anti-job agenda."

Rather than Wal-Mart's charity being toxic money, New York has become a toxic city. It is New York that destroys jobs and destroys wages through its inept regulatory regimes, specifically including the state ban on fracking, whose harms are vastly exaggerated. The high cost of regulation in New York has driven hundreds of corporate headquarters out of the city.  When I was a child, a quarter of the industrial firms still had headquarters there. Because of the policies of jobs-destroying politicians like Melissa Mark-Viverito, three quarters of the headquarters are gone.
 
*When I visited the Dachau concentration camp in 1975, I learned that many Catholic priests had been imprisoned there along with Jews.  American universities today are frequently anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic, just as Hitler and Stalin were.

New York Times Finds That Brooklyn College Grads Have Trouble Finding Jobs

The New York Times  has published an article about the difficulty that Brooklyn College business program students, in effect the students whom I teach, are having trouble finding jobs.  That is not surprising because the program does little to identify what jobs are available and what the program can do to offer skills that specifically target the job market that the students face.  My response to the Times is as follows:

Dear Editor:

Thank you for “Degree? Check. Enthusiasm? Check. Job? Not So Fast” (New York Region, June 8, 2014), concerning the inability of Brooklyn College grads to find jobs.  Over the past decade one or two Brooklyn business faculty have proposed that the college establish an objective outcomes assessment system to measure  job placement,  but Brooklyn College has resisted.  The public ought to demand that higher educational institutions publish measures not only of job placement but also of objectively measured performance improvement in skill areas like writing, mathematics, and interpersonal skills. In order for Brooklyn College to improve the job placement outcomes that you describe, the first step for us educators is to objectively know what the outcomes are.  The second is to deliver competencies to our students that enable them to do better. The Brooklyn business program has resisted objective measurement; you have done it for us. 

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.