WASHINGTON, DC – The American Conservative Union (ACU) Chairman Al Cardenas announced today that U.S. Representatives Tim Huelskamp (KS-1), Peter Roskam (IL-6) and Joe Walsh (IL-8) will address CPAC Chicago–the first of two regional Conservative Political Action Conferences slated for 2012.

Scheduled for Friday, June 8, 2012, CPAC Chicago takes the fight for the future of America directly to President Barack Obama’s backyard. The event will energize and mobilize Midwestern conservatives, giving them the tools needed to defeat the liberal agenda in 2012, while also featuring national conservative leaders such as U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (MN-6), Herman Cain, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus among many others, and highlighting rising conservative stars in the region.

“Republicans like Representative Huelskamp, Representative Roskam and Representative Walsh have been some of our most ardent champions in Congress working to stop or reverse many of the destructive policies pursued by this administration over its first term. They have held the Executive Branch accountable, supporting legislation that would cut waste and reduce the deficit,” said ACU Chairman Al Cardenas. “We will be proud to welcome Representatives Huelskamp, Roskam and Walsh to CPAC Chicago next month as conservatives take the fight for the future of our country directly to President Obama’s backyard.”

The ACU has hosted CPAC since 1974, and it now stands as the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the nation. When CPAC heads back on the road this summer for its second-ever regional event, ACU is teaming up with United to Restore Freedom (URF), home of Right Nation, and the Heartland Institute to bring national and regional leaders together with local grassroots activists for a day of blockbuster speeches, policy discussions and networking opportunities-all celebrating the shared principles of smaller government, a strong national defense and traditional values.

CPAC Chicago will be held just minutes from O’Hare International Airport at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, on June 8, 2012. To register for CPAC Chicago, receive more information on this exciting event, or learn more about the American Conservative Union, visit www.conservative.org.

Founded in 1964, the ACU represents the views of Americans who are concerned with economic growth through lower taxes and reduced government spending and the issues of liberty, personal responsibility, traditional values and national security.

For Immediate Release: May 9, 2012
Contact: Larry Hart, (202) 550-5018, lhart@conservative.org

WASHINGTON, DC – The American Conservative Union Political Action Committee has endorsed George Allen for the U.S. Senate in Virginia in the Republican Primary June 12.

ACU Chairman Al Cardenas issued the following statement:

“George Allen is the clear choice for conservatives who want to win in Virginia this November.  George Allen’s lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 93 while serving in the Congress shows a consistent commitment to conservative principles on a wide range of issues.

In 2006, George Allen was one of only 35 Senators in a Republican dominated Senate to vote for a rules change that would have made it harder to increase federal spending each year. He later was one of only 41 Senators to vote for an amendment that would have forced Senators to disclose the earmarks they proposed.

Whether the issue is runaway spending, 2nd Amendment rights or the rights of the unborn, George Allen was there for conservatives.  I urge all conservatives to support George Allen in the Virginia Republican Primary June 12”

The ACU recently announced its 2011 Ratings of Congress, the 41st edition of the conservative ratings guide. For more information on the ACU PAC or to download the full 2011 Ratings of Congress, please visit conservative.org. To support, or learn more about, George Allen, visit www.georgeallen.com.

WASHINGTON, DC –  The American Conservative Union (ACU) Chairman Al Cardenas announced today that U.S. Senator Rand Paul will address CPAC Chicago – the first of two regional Conservative Political Action Conferences slated for 2012.

Scheduled for Friday, June 8, 2012, CPAC Chicago takes the fight for the future of America directly to President Barack Obama’s backyard. The event will energize and mobilize Midwestern conservatives, giving them the tools needed to defeat the liberal agenda in 2012, while also featuring national conservative leaders such as U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus among many others, and highlighting rising conservative stars in the region. The conference agenda, released today, may be found at http://conservative.org/cpacchicago/program/agenda/.

“Senator Paul is among America’s most strident advocates for small government and individual liberty in the United States Senate,” said ACU Chairman Al Cardenas. “We are proud to welcome Senator Paul to Chicago this summer as conservatives take the fight for the future of our country directly to President Barack Obama’s backyard.”

The ACU has hosted CPAC since 1974, and it now stands as the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the nation. When CPAC heads back on the road this summer for its second-ever regional event, ACU is teaming up with United to Restore Freedom (URF), home of Right Nation, and the Heartland Institute to bring national and regional leaders together with local grassroots activists for a day of blockbuster speeches, policy discussions and networking opportunities—all celebrating the shared principles of smaller government, a strong national defense and traditional values.

CPAC Chicago will be held just minutes from O’Hare International Airport at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, on June 8, 2012. To register for CPAC Chicago, receive more information on this exciting event, or learn more about the American Conservative Union, visit www.conservative.org.

Founded in 1964, the ACU represents the views of Americans who are concerned with economic growth through lower taxes and reduced government spending and the issues of liberty, personal responsibility, traditional values and national security.

Issue 203 – March 9, 2012

What Entitlement Crisis? :: Download the entire issue in one PDF document

In his widely praised book Dangerous Nation Robert Kagan writes that ”despite four hundred years of steady expansion and ever deepening involvement in world affairs, and despite numerous wars, interventions, and prolonged occupations of foreign lands, … Americans still believe their nation’s natural tendencies are toward passivity, indifference and insularity.”

Dangerous Nation aims to correct this “lack of self awareness,” by showing us how our “liberal ideology” makes us a “frightening power” bound to remake the world in our image or die trying. Hence it counsels that we commit, consciously, to meddling in others’ affairs – indeed to imperialism for the sake of liberty. Kagan promises a second volume, in which he will no doubt describe George W. Bush’s Second Inaugural’s formula – that to be truly free we Americans must free the whole world – as this commitment’s apotheosis.

In this volume, which takes us from “America’s earliest beginnings” to the 1898 Spanish American War, Kagan argues that, false consciousness not withstanding, America was created in the image and likeness of what today we call “Neoconservatism.” He sees that point of view as the essence of what America has always been about rather than what it is: one branch of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Progressivism not so different from others. But that is another story.

Kagan writes as if he had discovered that everything we thought we knew about American history was baloney, the realities heretofore buried by simpletons, if not conspirators. Mostly crude historicism, the book is crafted to score points in current political controversies. It presents the personages of American history without regard for their own understanding of what they were doing. Kagan pretends that he and the commentators he cites understand them better than they understood themselves. Thus we read a chapter on Lincoln and the Civil War in which the words “Dred Scott” do not appear.

Kagan’s style smuggles his and his favorite historians’ opinions into history by weaving them seamlessly with the thoughts of the people he describes. Many narratives consist substantially of passages in quotation marks. Without an eagle eye on the footnotes, the reader never knows whether he is reading Kagan’s, Lincoln’s, or Mr. X’s opinions. But failing to explain why the reader should find the quoted passages authoritative, and sometimes not even identifying the authors in the text, amounts to “plagiarism with footnotes.” The final chapter, based as it is on primary sources, is different. It proves that humanitarianism and a sense of responsibility convinced most Americans to fight Spain on Cuba’s behalf. But this narrow point is slender support for the book’s massive thesis.

Kagan’s America was a place of “ugliness.” Quotations from trendy historians (but no facts) inform us that America provided “fortunes for a few and misery for many…[and ] treated men as things” until “laws and institutions modeled after England’s “ made it livable. The Revolution was really a capitalist plot. One gets the impression that the people would have been better off as Canadians. “In the end, however, civilization, religion, and even security were justifications for and by products of conquest and expansion….” Arguing that American history’s protagonists were really representatives of impersonal forces, regardless of what they said, Kagan deconstructs them. Thus we see that Neoconservatives’ evolution from Marxism carries them only to contemporary versions thereof.

Note Kagan’s treatment of religion in America. John Winthrop’s Massachusetts was a “theocracy”- a present day pejorative that did not exist at the time. Never mind that Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” speech plainly calls for government by cooperating equals. Americans might shout their devotion to God. But for Kagan, all that was either “reactionary revivalism” or cover for worshiping “at altars [of] mobility, growth, and the enjoyment of life.” Tocqueville witnessed religion’s palpable pervasiveness, and wrote that, together with the sentiment of equal liberty and responsibility for local affairs, it formed a culture of peace. But for Kagan, American culture was never “godly” or “peaceful.” From the beginning, Americans were “secular,” and differed from Europeans only in their greater capacity to get their way.

Kagan dismisses “the quintessential American yearning for aloofness from a corrupt and corrupting world.” By noting that “This is not the way others viewed Americans in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.” Indeed, Europeans who did not like Americans accused them of being insatiably greedy meddlers (as they still do). Kagan takes them at their word. Does this tell us about America, or about Kagan? For him also, immigrants came to the New World not so much to leave the Old World behind as to reform it. He does not explain why so few went back to meddle.

The source of American meddling, says Kagan, is the “ideology” expressed in the Declaration of Independence. He notes, correctly, that Jefferson and most other Founders thought that the Declaration was relevant to “all men” at all times and in all places. Most said, repeatedly, that all men had the right to do what Americans were doing, and that they hoped the world would follow America’s example. But the people who made “novus ordo seculorum” our national motto also said that for imitation to be genuine, it must be voluntary. Kagan however argues that the Founders understood their Declaration’s relevance to mean that they had the right and duty to deprive other peoples of their independence and liberty as they might understand it, in the name of independence and liberty as Americans understand it. For this there is zero evidence in word or deed. Kagan takes that absence to mean that early Americans were merely too weak, and that when they spoke, as they often did, of their future strength, they were salivating for imperialism. Had they been stronger, they would have ignored their own often stated preoccupations with America’s own rectitude in favor of rectifying others.

How much of a stretch this is may be seen by the fact that Woodrow Wilson who, like Kagan believed that America would become better by making others good, scorned as priggish Washington’s concerns for America’s character. But for Kagan, the Founders were closet Wilsonians. Kagan’s George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, far from having written into the Farewell Address a set of rules for statecraft generally valid for all nations but especially for America, actually put together a set of thinly veiled cheap shots at their Republican opponents of the 1790s. By telling the reader that Washington’s warning about inordinate affection or distaste for other nations was nothing but anti French propaganda, Kagan hides Washington’s point: Look at the world from the perspective of our own interest, not that of others.

Kagan also does not seem to understand that Washington’s words, “observe good faith and justice toward all nations” meant what they said – namely that Americans should deal with the world, irreducibly diverse and foreign, on the basis of reciprocity. Rather, on the basis of Washington’s hope that strength would enable America to deal with foreigners as “our interest, guided by justice” might counsel, Kagan thinks that he set America on the path of imposing its justice on the world. Similarly, he takes Hamilton’s vision of the US Navy as “the arbiter” of Europe’s navies in the Western hemisphere as hope not for a shield, but for a sword.

John Quincy Adams and the Monroe Doctrine that is his principal legacy get the same treatment. Kagan transmutes the Doctrine’s categorical renunciation of intervention in Europe’s affairs, and refusal of anything that might look like a commitment to any action whatever in Latin America, into an assertion of empire over the Western hemisphere and “a statement of international republican solidarity.” Kagan notes Adams’ conviction that Spanish Americans lacked “the first elements of good or free government,” and that he had “little expectation of any beneficial result to this country from any future connection with them…” But because he, like Henry Clay and Americans in general, preferred republican to monarchical institutions and thought connections between Latins and European monarchies to be dangerous to the United States, as well as because Adams saw the US as the hemisphere’s center of attraction, Kagan sees Adams as a hemispheric imperialist. Further, because Monroe and Adams agreed that Americans were necessarily “anxious and interested spectators” of events in Europe, and because Metternich – among others – thought, correctly, that Americans’ pro republican sentiments were “aid and comfort to republicanism everywhere,” as well as because Adams’ famous 1821 speech urged un free peoples to look at Americans and “go and do likewise,” Kagan believes that Adams’ legacy in foreign affairs was not to set geopolitical priorities (what is nearest is dearest,) but rather “to draw ideological distinctions.”

The importance of ideology is one of the book’s major themes. But it is problematic because Kagan describes Americans as “Lockean.” To him this means they were driven by the desire to acquire. Again and again he alleges that whatever Americans said about their expansion across the continent and beyond was mere cover for acquisitiveness. Thus whenever Kagan mentions that Americans believed that the lands into which they were expanding were “empty,” or inhabited by “savages,” or that they were “civilizing” the country, he puts these words in quotes, belittling the ideas behind them without disputing them. He even calls these ideas “civilizationism” (just like racism, of which all are guilty except the author) and suggests that the Americans were the real savages.  Yet, just as often, Kagan alleges that these Lockean savages had ideological consciences that were somehow related to the Declaration of Independence. Clearly, ideas cannot be serious and what Marxists call “superstructural” at the same time.

Kagan resolves his own dilemma by dividing Americans sharply between Southerners, who wanted empire for the sake of slavery, and Northerners, who wanted empire of the progressive kind. In his scheme, Southerners were eager to conquer anything and everything Latin, Lincoln’s Republicans were abolitionists who wanted the Civil War to cleanse America. Hence for Kagan, the Civil War really did result from Northern Aggression, just as the Dixiecrats say. But this too is a caricature. In fact the 1848 movement to take “all Mexico” was small, diverse, and contained Northerners (including Walt Whitman) eager to spread the blessings of liberty. Meanwhile Congressman Alexander Stephens, a brilliant defender of slavery who became the Confederacy’s vice president, opposed taking any part of Mexico because he thought it dishonorable for the strong to take from the weak, and because he thought Mexicans had the same rights as Americans. As for Lincoln, Kagan gives no hint of his willingness to appease the South with everything except expansion, including a Constitutional amendment explicitly protecting slavery. Kagan does not take seriously Lincoln’s expressed reasons for his devotion to law, and to peace. For him, the legalism so prevalent among American statesmen is mere artifice.

The book’s treatment of the Civil War and its aftermath is most revealing. Kagan fails to note Lincoln’s expressions of his paramount objective before, during, and after the war, namely holding the nation together as close to the Founders’ design as possible. He ended his first inaugural by pointing out that, if North and South were to fight, “we cannot fight always.” Sooner or later, there would be some kind of peace. But both sides would still exist in close proximity, and so would the problems that had divided them. Better to deal with them amicably. He waged war to bring the earliest possible peace. Yes, the Emancipation Proclamation became a political – military necessity, and Lincoln neither wanted to retreat from it, nor could have. But Kagan’s suggestion that Lincoln would have followed it with a “reconstruction” policy aimed at full equality for Negroes flies in the face of all the evidence.

Perhaps more correctly than he knows, Kagan describes “reconstruction” as the US government’s first venture in “nation building.” Quite so. Instead of Lincoln’s mutual binding up of wounds, it rubbed salt into those wounds and nursed corruption. The immediate results were electoral rotten boroughs on one side, and the Ku Klux Klan on the other. A generation of Northerners waved the bloody shirt and touted moral superiority, while southerners retaliated against the Negroes for a hundred years. Kagan, however, argues that there was too much peace, too soon. For him, the Radical Republicans should have pushed harder, stayed the course longer. Never mind that the Civil War would have gone on and on. Without relating ends and means, he assumes, but does not argue, that Negro equality would have resulted, and racists would have learned their lesson once and for all. Really?

Among this book’s many failings is neglect of the fact that the stewards of American foreign relations in the century from John Adams to William Seward were masters of the balance between ends and means. As they dealt with the rest of the world, they sought to serve one overriding purpose: the maintenance in the United States of a freedom as fragile as it was unprecedented. And while Americans disagreed about what virtue required, none dissented from the Founders’ consensus that freedom depended strictly on righteous living. Until Stephen Douglas in the 1850s, none pretended that greatness was an end in itself. Though they had no doubt that war is a necessary tool of statecraft, not even Douglas advocated increasing America by violence.

While Kagan mentions John L. O’ Sullivan, who popularized the concept of Manifest Destiny, he never quotes his formulation:

“The nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High… Its floor shall be a hemisphere – its roof the firmament of the star studded heavens, and its congregation an union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions.”

Settlement of the present United States was the inevitable result of free people moving freely where they chose to go. Additional millions would come together by adherence or immigration, and relate to one another as equals. Nearly all Americans agreed that possession of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Panama Canal Zone was necessary to defend the country’s peace. But by the same token, most Americans, including nearly all who had thought otherwise, including Theodore Roosevelt, agreed that governing foreigners, like the Philippines– even to raise them up – was not to be repeated. In short, Americans sought to be a certain kind of people, rather than to achieve dominion over others.

As the nation had grown, its need for interaction with others had grown as well. But until the twentieth century American statesmen practiced geopolitics without confusing America’s interest in being itself with any other nation’s or mankind’s. Focus on that national interest dictated priorities and means. But Progressives – Liberal Internationalists and Realists as well as Neocons – imagined that mankind wanted just what they wanted, and that they are the rightful teachers of all. They were going to harness the American people’s talents, treasure, and blood to build a world so congenial to America that it could blend itself into it. America has no interest distinct from mankind’s. Statesmen from Elihu Root to Woodrow Wilson to Gorge W. Bush have tried to convince Americans that building such a world is their duty. But the American people have remained skeptical.

That is because no conceivable set of means matches the end of transforming mankind, and because Americans have learned from experience that the grander the enterprise sketched out for them, the worse the resulting disaster is likely to be. This is the “self awareness” that limits the dangers to which Progressives’ overactive imaginations expose America. Dangerous Nation is part of that imagination. 

Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, a fellow of the Claremont Institute, and a senior editor of The American Spectator, was a Foreign Service officer and served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and 1985. He was the principal author of the 1980 presidential transition report on intelligence. He is the author of The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility.

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The Constitution is crystal-clear — the national government lacks any authority in state and local education.  Even the 1958 National Defense Education Act that mobilized U.S. scientific talent, enacted post-Sputnik I, drew congressional ire as unwarranted federal meddling.  After the 1960s Washington might assist school districts for specific purposes — e.g., helping the disadvantaged — but micro-managing the school was, and correctly so, deemed unconstitutional.

Obama’s anti-bullying campaign violates these longstanding principles, but alas, nobody seems to care.  Who wants to be pro-bully?

Some background.  Bullying is part of human nature.  All social groups, including chimpanzees and dogs, have social hierarchies enforced with beatings, intimidation, insults, and favoritism.  Eliminating bullying is not at all different from Soviet efforts at undermining the family or stamping out religion — ideologically driven re-engineering of deeply rooted human nature.  In the battle for survival, hierarchically organized groups undoubtedly defeated their disorganized egalitarian rivals.

Nevertheless, society has developed norms to handle conflicts lest these battles escalate to debilitating levels.  Traditional conflict-reduction mechanisms include physical separation, the intervention of higher authority, or strict rules to dampen conflict.  In the old West, for example, real men did not bully women and children, and if they did, other men stepped in.  ”Pick on somebody your own size” sums it up.  It was no accident that the six-shooter was called “the equalizer.”  If bullying escalated, there was recourse to the law.

More relevant today, most teachers and other school officials intuitively know how to curtail bullying provided they possess adequate authority and can exercise it.  It hardly takes much — a strong scolding — to punish a ten-year old bully, even without corporal punishment.  Or the person bullied successfully fights back — recall the Kenny Rogers song, “The Coward of the County.”  The vulnerable can also organize for self-protection — strength in numbers.  The catalogue of proven remedies outside federal intervention is extensive and has always existed.

So, given this hardwired bullying and a decent already pre-existing effective repertoire of anti-bullying, what can Washington add?  The short answer: nothing beyond a blizzard of obtuse regulations overseen by yet more functionaries that will only undermine education and increase taxes.  Anybody surprised?      

This stealthy, unconstitutional, and expensive overreach has already been skillfully accomplished.  It began by characterizing bullying as a “serious problem” deserving immediate national attention.  In a December 16, 2010 “Dear Colleague” letter, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that “[r]ecent incidents of bullying have demonstrated its potentially devastating effects on students, schools, and communities and have spurred a sense of urgency among State and local educators and policymakers to take action to combat bullying. The U.S. Department of Education shares this sense of urgency and is taking steps to help school officials effectively reduce bullying in our Nation’s schools. Bullying can be extremely damaging to students, can disrupt an environment conducive to learning, and should not be tolerated in our schools.”  (Emphasis added.)

It gets worse — it has become a dangerous plague.  Duncan further adds, “According to recently released data by the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 70 percent of students play some role in bullying, whether as a bully, a victim or a witness, demonstrating the need for increased awareness. Other research suggests that bullying and harassment can lead to poorer educational outcomes, lower future aspirations, frequent school absenteeism, and lower grade-point averages.”  At last, the true culprit of our multiple educational woes is exposed: the bully!

Think about this.  For 175 years, the U.S. educational system has survived, even thrived, without federal anti-bullying efforts.  So what is the current urgency for meddling into 98,817 K-12 schools enrolling some 98,706,000 students?  The secretary surely knows the obstacles to promoting basic literacy, let alone controlling the behavior of millions of students in schools, many of which already verge on chaos.  Taken at his word, Arne Duncan is demanding a multi-billion-dollar totalitarian state complete with security cameras everywhere, paid informers, and hoards of school police.  Has Arne ever encountered the term “opportunity cost”?

But a thousand-mile journey starts with a single step, and Uncle Sam is on the march.  A government website advises what citizens can do to stop bullying, notable for giving special attention to gay/lesbian/bisexual and transgendered K-12 students, though this population probably constitutes less than 5% of all students.  Also joining the anti-bullying campaign are the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture (Agriculture?), Interior, Defense, and Justice.   Naturally, there is gold in these hills.  The Education Department has already awarded eleven Safe and Supportive Schools Grants to states to develop measurement systems to assess schools’ conditions for learning, including the prevalence of bullying, and to implement programs to improve overall school safety.  The government’s website also provides cartoons, videos, and advisories on how to spot and prevent bullying.

Equally predictable: Washington has raised the specter of school budget-draining litigation if bullies are not thwarted.  To quote, “under certain circumstances, bullying may trigger legal responsibilities for schools under the civil rights laws enforced by OCR and the Department of Justice that prohibit discrimination and harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, and religion.  Schools must protect students from bullying and harassment on these bases, in addition to any obligations under state and local law.”  In other words, if the schoolyard dodgeball game turns ugly, here come the lawyers and the parents of harmed students, demanding cash settlements.  Just what financially stressed school districts need — more litigation.

Watch out, bullies: new regulations and enforcers are on their way.  The Department of Education has already drafted “effective” anti-bullying laws and is standing by to supply technical assistance to schools, and, we are assured, more help is on the way.  Indeed, taking their cue from Washington, forty-five states have already enacted anti-bulling laws.  A recent Bullying Prevention Summit was a two-day event hosted by the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with eight other federal agencies that make up the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Steering Committee.  The event engages representatives from federal agencies, national organizations, parents, teachers, and students to discuss and share progress on anti-bullying efforts across the country.

There’s more, but this must suffice.  Ironically, of course, this bullying problem is largely government-created.  It is an open secret that many of today’s teachers rationally take a laissez-faire approach to student misconduct.  After all, punishing too many bullies with the “wrong” traits may bring a Department of Justice lawsuit, outcries from overly protective parents (“my son is a good boy”), and the usual grievance group complaints (see here).  How many contemporary parents reflexively side with teachers?  Just as the police often ignore petty infractions in certain neighborhoods, teachers often look the other way.  It’s just not worth all the bureaucratic fuss and risks to stop one youngster taunting another.  Better to seek sanctuary in the faculty lounge.  

In the final analysis, bullying is an ancient problem, and strong teachers and principals, not a hyperactive rule-issuing Uncle Sam, make for the correct solution. Uncle has more pressing obligations.

Robert Weissberg is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus at The University of Illinois-Urbana, occasionally teaches in the NYU Politics Department MA Program and often blogs at The American Thinker, where this first appeared.

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Over a combined total of nine and a half hours of programming, CBS, NBC and ABC allowed a mere 72 seconds of coverage to the news, that Social Security will go bankrupt three years earlier than previously expected. ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News skipped the subject entirely.

The same networks that offered copious amounts of stories to a vague threat of future global warming disasters, found little interest in the coming problems of Social Security.  Scott Pelley briefly explained on Monday’s Evening News: “Medicare will run out of money in 2024. Social Security retirement benefits run out in 2033. But Social Security disability benefits will be exhausted long before that, in 2016.”

2016 is before the end of the next presidential term, so perhaps there’s a reason why the big three networks showed little interest.

Good Morning America donated one news brief and 16 seconds to the story. News reader Josh Elliott explained the new bankruptcy date as a result of “the flood of retiring baby-boomers, longer life expectancy and the ongoing fiscal crisis.”

On CBS, Charlie Rose allowed 13 seconds. Monday’s Evening News had the most, 28 seconds. NBC’s Today also spared time for just one news brief, a scant 15 seconds.

In 2005, a Media Research Center study looked at how journalists covered President Bush’s efforts to reform Social Security:

The Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute studied 125 Social Security stories on CNN’s “Inside Politics,” “CBS Evening News,” “NBC Nightly News,” ABC’s “World News Tonight” and Fox News’ “Special Report with Brit Hume” between Nov. 15, 2004, and March 15, 2005. This time included Bush’s call for reform shortly after his re-election into his “60 stops in 60 days” campaign. Among the findings:

CBS and CNN Most Biased: On “CBS Evening News,” 56 percent of stories were liberal with just 20 percent conservative. CBS reports were loaded with extreme examples that played up liberal points.

The entirety of the coverage can be found below:

GMA
04/24/12
7:05
16 seconds

JOSH ELLIOTT: Meanwhile, some new warnings about your retirement. The government now says Social Security will run out of money in the year 2033, three years sooner than expected. Thanks to the flood of retiring baby-boomers, longer life expectancy and the ongoing fiscal crisis.

CBS This Morning
04/24/12
7:17
13 seconds

CHARLIE ROSE: The Wall Street Journal reports the Social Security trust fund will run dry by 2033, according to a new government report. That’s three years earlier than previous estimates. The government blames the bad economy and high energy costs.

CBS Evening News
04/23/12
6:33
28 seconds

SCOTT PELLEY: Here’s another economic story. When will Medicare and Social Security hit empty? We got a new estimate today. The government said that if something isn’t done to shore up the trust funds, Medicare will run out of money in 2024. Social Security retirement benefits run out in 2035. But Social Security disability benefits will be exhausted long before that, in 2016.

Today
04/23/12
7:06
15 seconds

NATALIE MORALES: Rising energy prices and a weak economy are hitting the Social Security program hard. The government says the program’s trust funds are now set to run dry in 2033. That is three years earlier than previously expected.

Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

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Ten years ago, perky actress Jennifer Love Hewitt tried to jump-start a music career with a song titled “Bare Naked.” Now she’s trying that attention-grabbing tactic again with a sleazy new Lifetime series called “The Client List.”  She plays a massage therapist who turns tricks.

That network has adopted a new slogan: “This is not your mother’s Lifetime.” That’s appropriate for a new drama with a single-mother whore at its sympathetic center. We learn she was forced into being a sex worker when her husband mysteriously left her – you know, the way of the world for single moms.

Hewitt first made “The Client List” as a TV-movie in which the sex worker ultimately learned the error of her ways. Not any more. It’s now a weekly series with no storyline of error and redemption in sight.

After tremendous hype, its debut – on Easter Sunday, no less – scored 2.8 million viewers, second only to the 2007 launch of Lifetime’s show “Army Wives.”

Slate.com calls it “Ultra-Soft Porn” and on its Facebook page, the show asks women to “rate the clients” to see which john is the most attractive. You can rate them “Dud or Stud” and enter to win a $5,000 prize. Somehow, all of Hewitt’s TV clients could double as models – another dose of non-reality.

Speaking of which, the group Licensed Massage Therapists is very upset at how their profession is being merged with prostitution weekly in the public mind. But Hewitt protests that her show only projects “reality.”

“At the end of the day, it’s a television series,” she argues. “I’m not saying every massage parlor in the world gives happy endings, nor do I know which ones do, but it is a part of our society. And even if it wasn’t, it’s just a part of our story. It’s entertainment.”

When that line of argument collapses, she claims her sex-worker character is just too lovable to protest.

“I tried to make a joke on Twitter that I wondered why people were not writing to ‘Dexter’ about killing people, or to ‘Nurse Jackie’ about taking drugs on the job. Those are big, big television characters audiences love and adore….so if there can be a serial killer we all like, I feel like a happy-endings specialist is the least of our worries.”

Doesn’t that quote sum up just about everything that’s wrong with our popular culture these days? Viewers are expected to adore serial killers, drug-abusing, adulterous nurses, and prostitutes disguised as massage therapists?

But Hewitt isn’t done whining. When she starred on “The Ghost Whisperer” on CBS, “No medium ever complained that I was playing a medium who had too much cleavage. In fact, they were all like, ‘Thank you so much!’ I mean, I constantly had cleavage up to my chin, and not one medium had a problem with it. They were like, ‘People think we’re hot!’ Now, if massage therapists could just feel the same.”

Like most people in Hollywood, Hewitt wants to push the envelope in what she calls a “provocative, unapologetic manner” to make her millions. Then she demands that no one ever protest that she’s making prostitution look glamorous and morally acceptable.

Hewitt wants to avoid being “judgmental” about prostitutes. “It’s an easy industry to have a judgment on, but I feel like that judgment comes from lack of knowledge and fear and maybe not knowing the whole story.”

So Dr. Hewitt’s offering an educational “whole story” on her program? Even worse, Hewitt wants to declare that prostitution is okay with her. “I respect people doing what they have to do in order to try to live and be happy.” This woman has the brain of a text message. K?

But what if the prostitute is helping wreck a marriage and a home? No problemo. Reviewer Brian Lowry at Variety explains how Hewitt’s character Riley gets softened around the edges. She “spends a lot of time counseling her clients — providing helpful, homespun marital advice to stroke them emotionally, not just physically.”

Cheat with the husband, then tell him to buy the wife flowers? Love is never having to say you’re faithful.

None of this has anything to do with reality. Lifetime based its TV movie and subsequent series on an Odessa, Texas massage parlor called “Healing Touch.” But the real story ended up with 68 arrested clients – including an assistant district attorney, a city planner, the owner of an insurance company, several teachers, and a well-known rancher. Two of the three sex workers there were strung out on cocaine.

It wasn’t the glamorous life you can fictionalize on TV. Ironically, that reality is too “edgy” for the envelope-pushers. It might cause someone to become – perish the thought – “judgmental.”

L. Brent Bozell III is president of the Media Research Center.

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Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.

The next lobbying effort will focus on getting E15 registered as a fuel in individual states and persuading oil companies to offer it at service stations. But according to the Associated Press and Washington Post, Team Obama already plans to provide taxpayer-financed grants, loans and loan guarantees to “help station owners install 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years” and promote the use of biofuels. 

Pummeled by Obama policies that have helped send regular gasoline prices skyrocketing from $1.85 a gallon when he took office to $4.00 today – many motorists will welcome any perceived “bargain gas.” E15 will likely reduce their obvious pump pain by several cents a gallon, thus persuading people to fill up their cars, trucks and maybe even boats, lawnmowers and other equipment with the new blends.

That would be a huge mistake.

E15 gasoline will be cheaper because we already paid for it with decades of taxpayer subsidies that the Congressional Budget Office says cost taxpayers $1.78 every time a gallon of ethanol replaced a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol blends get fewer miles per tank than gasoline. More ethanol means even worse mileage. People may save at the pump, but cost per mile will increase, as will car maintenance and repair costs.

Ethanol collects water, which can cause engine stalls. It corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Pre-2001 car engines, parts and systems may not be able to handle E15, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect engine, fuel pump and sensor durability. Older cars and motorcycles mistakenly (or for price or convenience) fueled with E15 could conk out on congested highways or in the middle of nowhere, boat engines could die miles from land or in the face of a thunderstorm, and snowmobiles could sputter to a stop in a frigid wilderness.

Homeowners and yard care professionals have voiced concerns that E15’s corrosive qualities could damage their gasoline-powered equipment. Because it burns hotter than gasoline, high ethanol gasoline engines could burn users or cause lawnmowers, chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and other outdoor power equipment to start inadvertently or catch fire, they worry.

As several trade associations have noted in a lawsuit, the Clean Air Act says EPA may grant a waiver for a new fuel additive or fuel blend only if it has demonstrated that the new fuel will not damage the emissions control devices of “any” engine in the existing inventory.  E15 has not yet met this requirement. EPA should not have moved forward on E15 and should not have ignored studies that indicate serious potential problems with this high-ethanol fuel blend.

Largely because of corn-based ethanol, US corn prices shot up from an annual average of $1.96 per bushel in 2005 to $6.01 in 2011. This year we will make ethanol from 5 billion bushels of corn grown on an area the size of Iowa. E15 fuels will worsen the problem, especially if corn crops fall below expectations.

Ethanol mandates mean more revenues and profits for corn growers and ethanol makers. However, skyrocketing corn prices mean beef, pork, poultry, egg and fish producers pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers pay more for corn, meat, fish and corn syrup; and families see prices soar for almost everything on their dinner table.

Farmers like pork producer Jim A were hammered hard. Over a 20-year period, Jim became a part owner in a Texas operation and planned to buy out the other shareholders. But when corn and ethanol subsidies went into effect, the cost of feed corn shot from $2.80 per bushel in 2005 to “over $7.00” a bushel in 2008. “We went from treading water and making payments, to losing $100,000 a month,” he told me.

His farm was threatened with foreclosure and the ominous prospect of having to make up the difference in a short sale. After “never missing a single payment to anybody” in his life, he almost lost everything. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, a large pork producer leased the property, the bank refinanced his loans and Jim arranged a five-year lease. But thanks to ethanol he almost lost everything he’d ever worked for.

Even worse, the price of tortillas and tamales also skyrocketed, leaving countless poor Latin American families even more destitute. Soaring corn and wheat prices have also made it far harder for the USAID and World Food Organization to feed the world’s malnourished, destitute children.

Simply put, corn ethanol is wasteful and immoral. And yet E15 advocates want to go even further.

Right now, we are burning our own – and the world’s – food, to fuel cars and trucks. And to grow corn, convert it into 14 billion gallons of ethanol, and ship it by truck or train, we are consuming one-third of America’s entire corn crop  – and using millions of pounds of insecticides, billions of pounds of fertilizer, vast amounts of energy (all petroleum-based), and trillions of gallons of water.

Just imagine how those numbers will soar, if E15 is adopted nationwide.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.cfact.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death. 

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President Obama stood in the Rose Garden and pledged to prosecute “oil speculators.” Bill O’Reilly goes on TV night after night and blames “speculators” for gas pump prices, while guest after guest tell him he’s wrong. My wife asks” “What’s an oil speculator?”

Most of the speculators are common folk who buy futures contracts for oil to be delivered at some later date. The speculators actually have a lot in common with the rest of us who buy and sell stock when the price and product are attractive. If you want to play, go on line and find a futures broker. You’ll have to buy in big units—1000 barrels per contract—but you pay only about 10 percent of that value up front. Thus you have a lot of leverage. A small price change could yield a lot of profit. Know, however, that your position will be “marked to market” thru the life of the contract, so be prepared for “margin calls” demanding more of your cash if the market moves against you.

If the buying price is $90 per barrel, you’ll be hoping it goes to $92 or $95. If the price drops instead, you’ll think seriously about selling out before you lose more of your money.

Believe it or not, your speculation is good for the economy. You’ve assumed some of the inherent price risk in owning oil during volatile times. You’ve bought that risk from the oil producer or refiner, who just wants to process the stuff for his normal margin without risking huge losses on the value of the commodity itself. You take on that risk, using “spare” cash, hoping to win.

Right now, your fellow oil speculators are betting the price will rise because of President Obama. He’s shut down every oil production facility in America where he can deny a permit. He made it very clear during his election campaign that he wants oil prices to rise so we’ll use less. We know he is dragging his feet on the pipe line and all new oil drilling opportunities. He’s also just unleashed the EPA to suppress the coal burning that provides half of our electricity, thereby ensuring that other fuel prices will rise.

I spent eight years as a federal regulator with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees oil (and other commodity) speculators. What keeps the futures markets honest is the threat of delivery. If you still hold your oil futures contract at the delivery date, you suddenly get physical possession of 42,000 gallons of oil! You’d better have a very big storage tank, or you’ll have to sell the oil back to the industry at whatever price you can get. Mostly, speculators settle their contracts before they incur the big expense of taking delivery.

But not always. The oil-rich Hunt Brothers decided in 1977 that soybeans would be in short supply, and they bought (with other family members) 22 million bushels of soybeans for fall delivery. As it happened, the South American soybean crops were bigger than expected, and the price of soybeans went down instead. The Hunts took delivery on 600,000 tons of soybeans, delivered in Toledo as the St. Lawrence Seaway was freezing for the winter! They had to pay massive storage charges and then sell the beans at a loss in the spring.

In another famous attempt to corner the silver futures market, the Hunts lost a reported $1.5 billion. They bet they could control the silver market by buying huge amounts of futures contracts, hoping industrial demand for silver in computers and photo film would drive up the price. In a counter-move, the sellers bought huge amounts of silver jewelry from village women in India, had it refined, and dumped it at the Hunt’s feet—within a few weeks.

The President’s energy policies are still tied to the environmental movement’s belief that humans have to give up most of our current energy, live in high-rises so we can walk to work, or alternatively live on a farm and plough our land with horses.

I wrote after Obama came into office that “Only a fool would try to limit greenhouse emissions during a recession and while global temperatures are falling. But the grand green dream of a small human population living sparsely is dying hard.

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. Readers may write to him at PO Box 202 Churchville, VA 2442; email to cgfi@hughes.net. Visit our website at www. cgfi.org

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