Maggie's Farm

OK, PETA didn't really make that demand so that horses aren't abused by being ridden. (Sounds like something they'd do, though, doesn't it?)

Actually, in a bid for triumph over sense or learning, a Queens, NY congressman demands that a statue in front of the borough hall be taken down, titled "Triumph of Civic Virtue," because the male figure has his foot on the neck of a female.  It was sculpted by a famed 19th century US artist and unveiled in 1922 to depict, as its defenders write "a strong, muscular, heroic man overcoming temptation represented by two female sirens representing corruption and vice." The sculptor is quoted: "The heroic figure, the sculptor said, "looks out into the distance so concentrated on his great ideal that he does not even see the temptation" of the pleasure and luxury that lead to "devious ways".

His sin, according to the congressman who wants the statue removed: "it is ugly and sexist" because "The statue by sculptor Frederick MacMonnies depicts a nude male figure standing atop two women who represent evil sirens."

The congressman, Anthony Weiner, will next week have his last name changed from a synonym for putz.

 

P.S.: Veterans statuary does not get respect from the Left, either.

 

The following post has just gone up at New Criterion's blog, Arma Virumque, one of the most prestigious in the blogosphere. The editor, Roger Kimball, also runs Encounter Books, one of the best sources for serious considerations of issues. I am most grateful, and humbled, to be included as a contributor to serious discussion of a serious issue.  Thank you Roger Kimball for all you do. 

The stereotype of ruler-wielding, dogma-enforcing Catholic nuns has nothing on the parody-proofing self-image being created by the AAUP of college professors as academic thugs.

In its latest draft document to define academic freedom, the American Association of University Professors has gone abroad to authoritarian regimes and overboard to try to suck the air out of critiques of academia.

Who is to blame for the AAUP’s draft? It seems that I am, at least in major part as the stimulus to putting the fear of criticism into AAUP. I launched critiques last Fall and again for the Spring semesters of politically biased practices at Brooklyn College, my alma mater. My critiques reverberated throughout New York City and nationally.

The AAUP denigrates and seeks to negate the views of anyone other than the usually incestuous faculty majority or insider group in control. Although couched in proceduralism, the AAUP’s Executive Summary reveals the motivation and the cure for insulating faculty from critique: 

Current political threats to academic freedom have intensified with the rapid growth of new media and Internet connectivity that has made it possible for talk-show hosts, bloggers, and well-funded interest groups to supplement the trustees, politicians, corporate and religious groups, and journalists who previously put untoward pressure on the university.

Therefore:

1.Complaints regarding alleged classroom statements forwarded by outside agencies or individuals should be generally ruled out of consideration in initiating or conducting personnel reviews.

2.When complaints regarding alleged classroom speech arise from or are promoted by student political groups, the complaints should be respected only to the extent merited by the complaints and only when they are based on evidence from students who were actually enrolled in the course or courses in which the alleged inappropriate conduct occurred and who were present to observe that conduct.

Who is to judge?

1.It is essential that the hearing committee be elected or appointed by an appropriate elected faculty body.

The “Battle Hymn of the Jewish Mother” is a reply to the Wall Street Journal article last month, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” that caused quite a stir.  At root, the difference is between raising a mensch and raising a child to be a self-centered person with primary responsibility to self, above all striving for success, wealth and status, separated from and above society, and even the child’s own nature.

In Yiddish, there’s no higher goal or compliment than being a mensch. In simple translation from the German, a mensch is simply a man. In Jewish culture, a mensch is the highest compliment, a person of the highest character who knows and acts with a strong sense of what is right and responsible toward others. It is believed that success in life is in being a mensch, and though material success is a possible outcome through the respect from others, success in being a worthwhile, contributing human being is a sure thing and most to be desired.

Only a year too late to recognize the blatantly cooked numbers used to justify the passage of ObamaCare, the New York Times can’t avoid reporting the awakening because the Obama administration had to fess up to the new Congress.

In March 2010, I wrote about ObamaCare’s CLASS Failure. CLASS is ObamaCare’s long term care program, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act. The primary motivation for its inclusion in ObamaCare was to game the Congressional Budget Office’s calculation of budget gains from ObamaCare.

The best objective and factual summary and analysis of CLASS I’ve found is that by one of the preeminent global consulting firms on benefits, Towers Perrin.

“The Senate version is projected to bring in $72 billion, with an average monthly premium of $123. The initial positive cash flows come, of course, from the five-year period before participants vest, when premiums are paid but benefits are not. Tens of billions are foreseen to flow into the trust fund during those five years. In later decades, however, the flows would turn negative and increase the federal deficit.”

Well, guess what?

HHS Secretary and chief commissar of ObamaCare now admits the CLASS program was flawed from the inception and requires major overhaul. CLASS, reports the New York Times, “is too costly to survive without major changes, Obama administration officials now say.”

To make the program viable, Ms. Sebelius said, she is considering changes in the eligibility criteria, including employment and earnings requirements, to ensure that only active workers may enroll. She also said she favored adjusting premiums to rise with inflation.

Even then, experts say, CLASS will fail, in what is called an insurance death spiral: premiums rise to meet costs, which drives away the healthier, leaving those more likely to use the benefits, and further increase costs, further driving away the healthy and those unable to afford premiums, leaving a yet higher proportion most likely to need benefits, and so on.

Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College; and leaders of the American Academy of Actuaries all said the program would be unstable if, as expected, it attracts disproportionate numbers of people with health problems.

Mr. Foster said his analysis showed the program faced “a significant risk of failure” because people who are or expect to be sick or disabled were more likely to sign up. In a study issued this month, Ms. Munnell, an economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, said more stringent work requirements and an effective national advertising campaign could help attract young, healthy people to the insurance pool.

Even so, she said, “premiums may never reach an affordable level for middle-class households,” so “the program faces enormous challenges.”

Mr. Obama’s debt-reduction commission, a bipartisan advisory body, said in its report late last year that Congress should “reform or repeal” the program.

“The program’s earliest beneficiaries will pay modest premiums for only a few years and receive benefits many times larger,” the panel said, “so that sustaining the system over time will require increasing premiums and reducing benefits to the point that the program is neither appealing to potential customers nor able to accomplish its stated function.”

Well now, there's another fine kettle of fish(iness) you've gotten us into, Obama. 

ObamaCare reduces the number of tax-paying Americans while increasing unemployment and adding to the personal and government costs of providing medical insurance.

It’s not just the 800,000 fewer workers seeking jobs under ObamaCare, as the CBO Director admitted last week to Congress, because  the law will reduce "the propensity to work" in order to get medical insurance. With subsidized guaranteed issue of medical insurance, there will be less incentive to find a job with benefits. At the same time, medical insurance premiums will increase for all as ObamaCare’s guarantee issue creates an incentive to wait until ill to obtain insurance.

Further, due to higher required levels of benefits within allowed medical insurance policies, the premiums are increased for tens of millions, only deferred for this and maybe next year by the temporary waivers issued by the Obama administration.

On top of that, there will be untold tens or hundreds of thousands lower wage workers who want to work who will not be hired, because the required cost to employers of their medical insurance under ObamaCare is too high. The cost of medical insurance to employers under ObamaCare will be near as much as lower wage workers earn, especially for those with a family. Indeed, many are not being hired now, as businesses restrain hiring to prevent being locked-in when this 2014 job-killing effect of ObamaCare kicks in.

In 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time employees, 30 hours a week or more, may only charge employees 8% of their income for their contribution toward employer-provided medical insurance. For a worker earning $125,000, that amounts to $10,000 toward the typical $20,000 annual cost of family coverage. That leaves the employer with $10,000 to pay, or an additional 8% above wages.  For a worker earning $25,000, that amounts to $2,000 toward the typical $20,000 annual cost of family coverage. That leaves the employer with $18,000 to pay, or an additional 72% above wages.

Many sane employers will think twice and more before hiring that will bring its head-count to 50 or more. Many sane employers will hire those who are single, instead of with families, because of the required 8% of singles’ lower medical insurance premium. Many sane employers will seek efficiencies and technologies to avoid hiring lower-wage workers. Many sane employers will reduce hours worked by lower-wage workers in order to reduce its full-time head-count. Many sane employers will rather pay the $2,000 per worker ObamaCare penalty by ending its medical insurance program and letting the government provide medical insurance.

The ultimate toll of ObamaCare will be far greater than the $trillions in budget costs already estimated. ObamaCare’s budget costs will actually be even larger, and so will the as yet uncounted costs. The US tax-base will shrink while the number of unemployed will remain high.

The Constitutional challenges to ObamaCare center on the individual mandate, and on that causing the whole of ObamaCare to be thrown out of court. There is no other court recourse against these other travesties of ObamaCare. Only a Congress with both houses overcoming a Presidential veto can save us, or 2012 bringing us more in the Senate willing to vote for repeal and a new President willing to sign off.

Religious as well as non-sectarian writings all contain various prescriptions and injunctions related to their view of morality. Most Americans recognize the difference between individual morality and state morality, as exemplified in the two versions of the Golden Rule. Individual morality is violated when state morality is violated.

The prescriptive Golden Rule – rule for a better life by individuals and voluntary associations --  comes down to do to others what one would want done to oneself. The variation, the injunctive Golden Rule – the prohibition, not to do to others what one wouldn’t want done to oneself, is more limited and more applicable to manmade laws that have restraints upon the extent of state power.

When the latter, the injunctive Golden Rule, is violated by the state, there is an intrusion into the former, the prescriptive Golden Rule. To some or many affected, there is a denial of their individual moral rights. The state mandates behaviors that force individuals to act in ways that they would not want to be done to themselves.

The upholding of the injunctive Golden Rule is closest to our Constitution and to the philosophy of libertarianism.  The violation of that injunction is closest to those philosophies or political movements, whether from the Left or Right, which seek to force their particular moral political agenda upon others.

Our Constitution works to restrain these violations.

The legal debate is moving through our courts over whether the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution allow the mandating of purchasing medical insurance. Advocates of the mandate argue for it as increasing the ability to obtain more affordable medical care by increasing the breadth of the insurance pool. Opponents challenge that affordability assertion due the impracticalities of creating such a broad pool without unacceptable draconian measures, and due to the sheer demand-cost inflation created for more medical services by many more. However, the Constitutional issue is whether the state can require activities, as compared to enjoin activities.

Those not at the poles – either libertarian or moralistic – are the majority of Americans. In most cases, once the poles have argued, and courageous individuals entered the fray to focus the discussion regardless of the heat from the poles, the majority of Americans do not so much compromise as recognize the necessary interaction between the prescriptive, individual Golden Rule and the injunctive, state Golden Rule.