Today's New York Sun carries an article about Sue O'Malley's law suit against Sharad Karkhanis. O'Malley had been an elected officer of the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents CUNY faculty and is a crony of the Barbara Bowen/Steve London group that is up for reelection in a few years.
The Professional Staff Congress, led by Barbara Bowen, who made a speech at the Manhattan Institute a few years ago in which she vehemently insisted that Aristotle was a misogynist, has every reason to aim to silence Karkhanis. Karkhanis's widely read newsletter Patriot Returns has a circulation of 17,000 readers and has exposed incompetence among the PSC leadership. Given O'Malley's insider status, my speculation in the Sun article below that O'Malley is suing to help the PSC stands to reason although admittedly I have no direct evidence.
The PSC denies that it has anything to do with the law suit, much as they avoided disclosing that they had given a donation in honor of now-convicted terrorist Sami al Arian.
Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson has a blog on History News Network which raises an interesting question:
>"PSC president Barbara Bowen has suggested that “academic freedom” protected Shortell’s assertion (in a non-academic blog) that all religious people were “moral retards.” Will she now similarly apply her flexible definition of the concept, and rebuke O’Malley’s attempt to silence Karkhanis?
If O'Malley is suing Karkhanis to further the PSC leadership's reelection bid, as I claim, then we would expect the PSC leadership to remain hypocritically silent about O'Malley's aim to suppress Karkhanis's speech, even as the PSC leadership apologizes for terrorists like al-Arian.
>NEW YORK SUN
Emeritus Professor at CUNY Is Sued for Defamation, Libel
BY ANNIE KARNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 30, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/65483
A former head of the faculty senate at the City University of New York is suing an emeritus professor for $2 million for accusing her of recruiting terrorists to teach at the university and campaigning for administrative positions to avoid teaching classes herself.
Susan O'Malley is accusing professor Sharad Karkhanis of libel and defamation for writing in a widely distributed anti-union newsletter that she was "obsessed" with finding jobs for terrorists at the university. Mr. Karkhanis, a former professor of political science at Kingsborough Community College, wrote that Ms. O'Malley was "recruiting naïve, innocent members of the KCC faculty into her Queda-Camp to infiltrate college and departmental Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission — to recruit terrorists in CUNY."
Mr. Karkhanis made the claim last spring after Ms. O'Malley, a professor of English at the Brooklyn college and an officer of the faculty union, proposed to rehire Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic-language translator convicted of supporting terrorist activities. He was fired from York College.
"Given the opportunity, she will bring in all her indicted, convicted, and freed-on-bail terrorist friends" to the university, Mr. Karkhanis wrote in the newsletter, the Patriot Returns.
Mr. Karkhanis also criticized Ms. O'Malley for defending the right of an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College, Susan Rosenberg, to teach at the school after press reports showed that she was a member of a radical group, the Weather Underground, and had served 16 years in prison for keeping explosives in her apartment. The Patriot Returns is a newsletter that has been distributed since 1992 to about 13,000 faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees at CUNY, and is available online. A lawyer for Ms. O'Malley, Joseph Carasso, said in a letter to Mr. Karkhanis that the statements were made with actual malice and intended to "inflict harm through their falsehood."
Mr. Karkhanis said he viewed the lawsuit, which was filed in state Supreme Court last month, as an attempt to infringe on his freedom of speech. He said he would rather serve time in jail than retract his statements.
The professor defended his use of the phrase "Queda-Camp," saying it was meant as satire, and he said it is his right to criticize a leader at CUNY.
"She's a public figure, and I have a right to say that, based on the evidence I have and the pattern I've seen of this woman," Mr. Karkhanis said. "Why would someone try to assist the terrorist people when you have good Americans who are looking for the job?"
A professor of business and economics at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, said Mr. Karkhanis was acting within his rights. "Sharad is an extremely influential force," Mr. Langbert said. "The union, an ingrown left-wing group, has every motivation to try to silence him. Getting him embroiled in a lawsuit like this would be advantageous to the union leadership."
A spokeswoman for the Professional Staff Congress, Dorothee Benz, said yesterday that the union had nothing to do with the lawsuit.
Ms. O'Malley, reached at her home in Brooklyn, said she did not want to discuss the case. "It's all very, very silly," she said.
No trial date has been set.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Liberals Should Be Called "Suppressives" Rather Than "Progressives"
I have recently blogged about Peter Levine's book New Progressive Era and note that although Levine claims that public deliberation ought to replace free markets, public deliberation is impossible because progressives dislike speech that disagrees with their own and because progressives' choices, which are mostly erroneous, become institutionalized. Upon institutionalization, discussion about them is foreclosed. Some examples are the rat-infested New York City subway system; the near-bankrupt social security system; and the income-inequality and poverty-generating Federal Reserve Bank.
As well, a key problem with progressivism is the willingness of progressives to distort facts, to lie, in order to secure programs or institutions that are bound to fail. The public finds it difficult to debate when, for instance, the Fed claims it is managing the "federal funds rate" rather than increasing the money supply (or more to the point, counterfeiting). Likewise, the public finds it difficult to debate about "social security" when its proponents claim that it is a fair insurance program rather than primarily a welfare or transfer program.
Perhaps the worst lies of all concern the names that the "progressives" call themselves. When I was growing up in New York,the high crime rates were attributable to "limousine liberals". Liberals became associated with the ACLU, welfare, corruption and incompetence. Rather than divulge the truth, today's liberals call themselves "progressives". It would be much more conducive to intelligent dialogue for all of us, and much fairer, to call liberals "suppressives".
As well, a key problem with progressivism is the willingness of progressives to distort facts, to lie, in order to secure programs or institutions that are bound to fail. The public finds it difficult to debate when, for instance, the Fed claims it is managing the "federal funds rate" rather than increasing the money supply (or more to the point, counterfeiting). Likewise, the public finds it difficult to debate about "social security" when its proponents claim that it is a fair insurance program rather than primarily a welfare or transfer program.
Perhaps the worst lies of all concern the names that the "progressives" call themselves. When I was growing up in New York,the high crime rates were attributable to "limousine liberals". Liberals became associated with the ACLU, welfare, corruption and incompetence. Rather than divulge the truth, today's liberals call themselves "progressives". It would be much more conducive to intelligent dialogue for all of us, and much fairer, to call liberals "suppressives".
Progressivism and Authorianism
I am beginning to read Peter Levine's New Progressive Era: Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy (Lanham, MD., Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 255 pp.) and am intrigued by Levine's discussion of deliberation in a democracy. The concept of deliberation resonates with me, in part because of its Aristotelian foundation (deliberation is the foundation of Aristotle's ethical model in Nichomachean Ethics). But the progressive model that Levine proposes is totalitarian in its implications. The campus left's intolerance of and refusal to hire political conservatives, for instance, is intimately linked to its claim to be deliberative via collegial processes. Excessive emphasis on deliberation induces tyranny of the majority and suppression of minority views. It is only through the limited state that deliberation's implicit authoritarian threat can be contained.
The problem with the deliberative solution is that it faces the cost and information constraints that all democratic processes face. Deliberation devolves into authoritative nostrums proposed by authoritarian progressives.
Importantly, the advantages of marginalism are lost when the public becomes overzealous in making decisions. Most or all economic actors make errors. Distorted decisions result in social losses. If there is no equation of marginal costs and benefits, the errors become massive. Such massive errors are characteristic of totalitarianism. Marginalism involves the equilibration of costs and benefits by firms and consumers who bear the costs of their own decisions. They also must cope with the possibility of counter-strategies by economic actors who have insights (either because of intuition or better information) that counteract the mistakes of the infra-marginal establishment. Much of the establishment is made up of conformists who are wrong much of the time. Mutual fund managers do not beat the stock market, for example. Without marginal decision making society will become stagnant. Nikola Tesla, the eccentric inventor of AC electricity, could not have succeeded in a deliberative society. If Peter Levine has his way, we will be living in primitive huts working in farming as serfs. It is only marginalism that can induce progress, not deliberation.
The results of excessive emphasis on deliberation are extremism, poverty and exclusion. Levine does not address what to do if democratic processes result in, for instance the Nuremberg Laws. Indeed, these outcomes have been intimately linked to progressivism in the past. The first "progressive" state was Bismarck's Germany, which preceded Hitler's Germany by fifty years.
Levine's discussion of deliberative democracy and the progressives' ideas is inspiring, but deliberation's totalitarian implications become evident when he talks about the "marketplace" (p. 17). He emphasizes that economic power is distributed unequally, suggesting that markets are inequitable. But he neglects to comment about the skewness in progressives' definitions of the terms of public debate that typically also are distributed unequally.
Thus, for instance, intelligent debate about the Federal Reserve Bank is difficult when the field of economics, the news media and politicians cloak a simple relationship between money supply and inflation in nonsensical terminology such as "reducing the federal funds rate" and claim, as does the Economist this week, that the people who expand the money supply at the Fed are geniuses whose work in causing inflation is really fighting inflation and cannot be understood by ordinary people. Levine does not address this kind of distortion, on which most of the progressives' successes have depended. Rather he emphasizes that sellers of goods are larger than buyers.
Worst of all, Levine claims that "through the democratic process I can advocate general rules that will bind me and all of my fellow citizens permanently." This is a frightening argument. Levine argues that although people say that they would be willing to pay more for a better environment, when it comes to actually buying they do not favor environmentally friendly merchandise. So Levine feels that it would be advantageous to for people to be able to force each other to live by the self-important statements they make to polling agencies.
It doesn't occur to Levine that mass psychology and cognitive dissonance favor nice-sounding public statements, but those statements may be unrealistic. Millions of Germans saluted Hitler. Levine seems to think that it is all to the good that they weren't forced to pay up out of their own pockets for the policies that Hitler implemented, the war, the concentration camps, etc., all of the massive costs that deliberation in Germany caused.
The problem with the deliberative solution is that it faces the cost and information constraints that all democratic processes face. Deliberation devolves into authoritative nostrums proposed by authoritarian progressives.
Importantly, the advantages of marginalism are lost when the public becomes overzealous in making decisions. Most or all economic actors make errors. Distorted decisions result in social losses. If there is no equation of marginal costs and benefits, the errors become massive. Such massive errors are characteristic of totalitarianism. Marginalism involves the equilibration of costs and benefits by firms and consumers who bear the costs of their own decisions. They also must cope with the possibility of counter-strategies by economic actors who have insights (either because of intuition or better information) that counteract the mistakes of the infra-marginal establishment. Much of the establishment is made up of conformists who are wrong much of the time. Mutual fund managers do not beat the stock market, for example. Without marginal decision making society will become stagnant. Nikola Tesla, the eccentric inventor of AC electricity, could not have succeeded in a deliberative society. If Peter Levine has his way, we will be living in primitive huts working in farming as serfs. It is only marginalism that can induce progress, not deliberation.
The results of excessive emphasis on deliberation are extremism, poverty and exclusion. Levine does not address what to do if democratic processes result in, for instance the Nuremberg Laws. Indeed, these outcomes have been intimately linked to progressivism in the past. The first "progressive" state was Bismarck's Germany, which preceded Hitler's Germany by fifty years.
Levine's discussion of deliberative democracy and the progressives' ideas is inspiring, but deliberation's totalitarian implications become evident when he talks about the "marketplace" (p. 17). He emphasizes that economic power is distributed unequally, suggesting that markets are inequitable. But he neglects to comment about the skewness in progressives' definitions of the terms of public debate that typically also are distributed unequally.
Thus, for instance, intelligent debate about the Federal Reserve Bank is difficult when the field of economics, the news media and politicians cloak a simple relationship between money supply and inflation in nonsensical terminology such as "reducing the federal funds rate" and claim, as does the Economist this week, that the people who expand the money supply at the Fed are geniuses whose work in causing inflation is really fighting inflation and cannot be understood by ordinary people. Levine does not address this kind of distortion, on which most of the progressives' successes have depended. Rather he emphasizes that sellers of goods are larger than buyers.
Worst of all, Levine claims that "through the democratic process I can advocate general rules that will bind me and all of my fellow citizens permanently." This is a frightening argument. Levine argues that although people say that they would be willing to pay more for a better environment, when it comes to actually buying they do not favor environmentally friendly merchandise. So Levine feels that it would be advantageous to for people to be able to force each other to live by the self-important statements they make to polling agencies.
It doesn't occur to Levine that mass psychology and cognitive dissonance favor nice-sounding public statements, but those statements may be unrealistic. Millions of Germans saluted Hitler. Levine seems to think that it is all to the good that they weren't forced to pay up out of their own pockets for the policies that Hitler implemented, the war, the concentration camps, etc., all of the massive costs that deliberation in Germany caused.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Stop the Internet Tax
Oct 23, 2007
Senator Charles Schumer
United States Senate
313 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0001
Dear Senator Schumer,
I urge you to support Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Sununu (R-N.H.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in their drive to enact a permanent ban on Internet taxes. New York State does not need more taxes, especially since so much of our bleeding economy depends on the Internet.
Last week, the House passed a bill that would extend the existing moratorium on Internet taxes until 2011, and the Senate is scheduled to take up legislation this week. Sens. McCain, I urge you to propose an extension until 2211. Better yet, I urge you to support a permanent ban.
Congress wisely decided some years ago that Internet access and commerce should not be encumbered with multiple state and local taxes. Due in no small part to this decision, the Internet and e-commerce have thrived. Today, approximately 70 percent of the U.S. population uses the Internet, and it has become a vital engine for economic growth.
Enacting a permanent ban will provide much-needed consumer and business confidence and help keep our economy robust and strong.
I urge you to support any effort to make the Internet tax ban permanent.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
PO Box 130
West Shokan, NY 12494
Senator Charles Schumer
United States Senate
313 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0001
Dear Senator Schumer,
I urge you to support Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Sununu (R-N.H.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in their drive to enact a permanent ban on Internet taxes. New York State does not need more taxes, especially since so much of our bleeding economy depends on the Internet.
Last week, the House passed a bill that would extend the existing moratorium on Internet taxes until 2011, and the Senate is scheduled to take up legislation this week. Sens. McCain, I urge you to propose an extension until 2211. Better yet, I urge you to support a permanent ban.
Congress wisely decided some years ago that Internet access and commerce should not be encumbered with multiple state and local taxes. Due in no small part to this decision, the Internet and e-commerce have thrived. Today, approximately 70 percent of the U.S. population uses the Internet, and it has become a vital engine for economic growth.
Enacting a permanent ban will provide much-needed consumer and business confidence and help keep our economy robust and strong.
I urge you to support any effort to make the Internet tax ban permanent.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
PO Box 130
West Shokan, NY 12494
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