Free Speech For Sharad

Phil Orenstein has written an excellent blog about the O'Malley v. Karkhanis case. Phil argues that the PSC aims to silence Sharad and so has encouraged Sue O'Malley to sue. Indeed, the PSC has refused my repeated efforts to arrange for a Judge Judy hearing of the case.

The PSC's attempt to suppress speech and academic freedom is met with indifference by the American Association of University Professors, whom I have contacted about the case (they haven't responded). Phil notes:

(Sharad's newsletter The Patriot Returns) has carefully documented the PSC leadership’s pursuit of revolution instead of their jobs, elaborating on their campaigns to devote more time and resources to future global crusades. This includes such activities as mobilizing the membership to protest the Republican Party at the Republican National Convention in New York. Additionally, the PSC has passed a resolution sympathizing with Hugo Chavez, sponsored a conference called Educators to Stop the War, calling for teachers to develop an anti-war curriculum. The PSC leadership has organized and funded New York City Labor Against the War and Labor for Palestine, donated $5000 to support the legal defense of Lori Berenson, in prison for helping Peruvian Marxist terrorists, and donated...(on behalf of) Sami Al-Arian convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to TPR, the PSC even hosts an “International Committee” replete with a foreign policy spokesperson, who has issued public statements against economic and military aid to Israel and a statement condemning the war in Afghanistan, “joining in solidarity with the victims of U.S. military power,” namely the Taliban. The New York Sun, reported that while the leaders of the PSC have been running amok in politics, their union failed to deliver a new contract and in the past five years the member’s health and welfare fund reserves fell by 97% “with only a trickle of money remaining for faculty members' prescription drug, dental, and medical insurance plans.”

As Phil outlines, the leadership of the Professional Staff Congress are left wing extremists who oppose academic freedom and aim to suppress all who disagree with their reactionary and incompetent left wing views. I have heard that although O'Malley has publicly described her case as silly or frivolous in a New York Sun article, the courts will be willing to waste the taxpayers' money in this transparent attempt at suppression of a union member by a union leadership.

Needed: Across the Board Deregulation--And Fast!

My old friend Lenny Rann just forwarded a report that analyzes the proximate sources of the current dollar decline. The report argues that the investment banks had packaged sub prime loans with AAA loans when they sold mortgage backed securities to foreign investors. In turn, the foreign investors realized that they had been duped and this in turn eroded confidence in the ethics of the American dollar. They are now withdrawing money from dollar investments and turning elsewhere because of the erosion in confidence in the good faith of the American investment community and declining confidence in the dollar. I had put 1% of my portfolio in Powershares's dollar bearish fund, but it may be smart to put more as the dollar is declining daily. This is a massive phenomenon and will disrupt many of our expectations. A breakfast in Dublin runs close to $100 now. Your bank account is being turned into monopoly money by the Fed and the Bush administration.

The last 30 years has been a disappointment. I had hoped that the early gains in deregulation in areas like transportation would continue and that a trend toward greater freedom in economics would be matched with enhanced emphasis on the rule of law and markets. Instead, America has opted for a different course. Enhanced emphasis on whimsical regulation; the nanny state of Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York; continued regulation and protection of big business; refusal to repeal tariffs in fields like sugar; continued incompetence in education and refusal to introduce curriculum reforms advocated by Diane Ravitch and others to improve primary education; continued emphasis on credentialism and college degrees as opposed to results and productivity in the marketplace; and a perverse Wall Street Capitalism facilitated by the Fed and high income tax rates that inhibit imagination and new business formation. The result is that more and more Americans work in stores and in pointless economic activity.

The regulated economy will not function when the dollar loses global support. There will be widespread poverty if the left's nostrums, more regulation, more taxation, more power to incompetent elites and more credentialism are put into play. Instead, what is needed to respond to the failure of Wall Street capitalism is a return to fundamentals. It is only through deregulation; hard money; lowered income taxes; and an end to the wholesale waste and corruption of big government that America will be able to return to a leadership position and improve wages.

O'Malley v. Karkhanis in the New York Post

Dareh Gregorian has written an article in the New York Post about Susan O'Malley's lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis (also see earthtimes.org coverage here). While the article is a good one (see below), Gregorian fails to ask a few critical questions:

(1) Why haven't O'Malley and her attorney contacted the producers of Judge Judy, which is a more appropriate venue for a case that O'Malley herself describes as "silly" than is the New York State Supreme Court?

(2) Why are the people of the state of New York being asked to subsidize a case that the plaintiff describes as "silly"? Here are the synonyms of "frivolous" from dictonary.com :

barmy*, childish, dizzy*, empty-headed*, facetious, featherbrained*, flighty, flip, flippant, foolish, fribble, frothy, gay, giddy*, harebrained*, idiotic, idle, ill-considered, impractical, juvenile, light, light-minded, minor, niggling*, nonserious, not serious, paltry, peripheral, petty, playful, pointless, puerile, scatterbrained*, senseless, shallow, silly, sportive, superficial, tongue-in-cheek*, trivial, unimportant, unprofound, volatile, whimsical

(3) Why is the Professional Staff Congress unable to provide a dispute resolution mechanism that will spare the public the cost of resolving this "silly" dispute through the courts?

(4) One of the chief justifications of unionism is the provision of low-cost dispute resolution mechanisms. If unions like the Professional Staff Congress utilize the court system as a dispute resolution method of first resort, can such unions be justified from the standpoint of public policy?

(5) Has the Professional Staff Congress ever established guidelines for competent hiring?



CUNY PROF WAR
LIBEL SUIT OVER 'TERROR'
By DAREH GREGORIAN
November 5, 2007 -- A CUNY professor has filed a $2 million lawsuit against a fellow Ph.D. who's been lambasting her for allegedly trying to "recruit terrorists" to teach within the City University system.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Susan O'Malley charges that professor emeritus Sharad Karkhanis defamed her by accusing her of having an "obsession with finding jobs for terrorists" in recent issues of a newsletter he's been e-mailing to CUNY faculty members for 15 years.

Citing O'Malley's efforts to land jobs for convicted activist lawyer Lynne Stewart's co-defendant Mohammed Yousry and former Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg, Karkhanis wrote:

"Has Queen O'Malley ever made a 'Job Wanted' announcement like this for a nonconvicted, nonviolent, peace-loving American educator for a job in CUNY? . . . Why does she prefer convicted terrorists bent on harming our people and our nation over peace-loving Americans?"

The retired Kingsborough Community College political-science professor said O'Malley, an English professor there, "is recruiting naive . . . faculty into her Qaeda-Camp to infiltrate . . . Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission - to recruit terrorists in CUNY. Given the opportunity, she will bring in all her indicted, convicted and freed-on-bail terrorist-friends."

O'Malley believes the terrorist-recruiter claim to be libelous. But an unapologetic Karkhanis, 73, told The Post: "Give me a break. I'm going to fight this vigorously."

He added that he considers what he wrote to be satire but that he was also "raising questions I believe are appropriate."

He said O'Malley crossed the line when she tried to land a job for Yousry, who's out on bail pending appeal of his conviction for helping Stewart disseminate messages from 1993 World Trade Center bomb plotter Omar Abdel-Rahman.

O'Malley, on leave from CUNY, could not be reached for comment.

dareh.gregorian@nypost.com

Gold and Commodity Exposure in Your Portfolio

John Maynard Keynes quoted Lenin as saying that best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. There is debate whether Lenin said it or not. In any case much harm can be done from inflation. Since 1979, the compound inflation rate in the United States has been 3.7%. This has accompanied a lengthy stock market increase and a much larger production of dollars by the Federal Reserve Bank. The US money supply has increased several times, but there is a much larger amount of dollars in circulation around the globe, perhaps as much as 8 or 9 times the number of dollars in circulation in the US. The result of this is that the dollar is at all-time lows against a range of currencies, and has the prospect of depreciating further. The reduction in the buying power of the dollar is beneficial for exporters and may attract some factories back to the US. But it will harm those who hold dollars. In particular, those who hold savings accounts and long term bonds will be harmed as prices increase. Similarly, those on pensions and annuities will be harmed. The days when inflation was merely a domestic affair are over. The depreciating dollar means that many prices are increasing now. If Ben Bernanke continues to inflate the number of dollars (reduce the Fed Funds rate) then there could be a sell-off by foreign governments, who are holding trillions of dollars that are depreciating in value. In turn, this would cause inflation here.

This kind of instability poses as serious a risk to your portfolio as the risk of a stock market decline. A stock market decline is a possibility if the Fed reacts to the sharp dollar declines appropriately, that is, by raising interest rates. If the Fed continues to cater to Wall Street and America's wealthy on food stamps (those who benefit from the stock market increases that unrealistically low interest rates have caused) then the stock market might continue to go up until the inflation gets so bad that nominal interest rates are forced up by inflation. Jim Cramer will literally be forcing senior citizens to eat dog food just so he can see his portfolio increase.

It is conceivable that given the irresponsibility that the Bernanke Fed has demonstrated so far there will be a major inflation. This will exacerbate the income inequality that liberal economists harp on but erroneously attribute to fiscal policy.

Gold stocks have been performing very well this year and I have been quite happy as a result. As well, the metal itself as well as other commodities such as oil and grain have been going up very nicely. If there is a massive dollar depreciation, which is not an unrealistic risk, having a good share of your money in commodities will protect you.

One way to invest in commodity stocks is through the Ivy Natural Resources Fund . The trailing 5 year returns are 34.05% versus 21% for the S&P 500. As well, the Powershares index fund family has a number of commodity and dollar bearish indexes. These include gold, silver, oil, energy, agricultural, commodity index, dollar bearish and a number of others.

The frightening thing about massive inflation is that the investment that you naturally think of as most safe, cash, gets trashed. A dollar held since 1979 is worth about 34 cents today. In a massive inflation, the depreciation would go much further much more quickly.

Friends, I urge you to cover yourselves. The "economic miracle" of the past 25 years has been a three-card-Monty game. The 25-year old bliss in the stock market results from currency depreciation that is inherently unethical (because it is based on stealing from the poor to give to the rich). It will have serious consequences for conservative investors, and possibly end with a major stock market decline. It could be much worse than what I am describing if there is a major sell off of the dollar.