Our Cities, Our Future

Who Lost the Cities? | National Review Online:

Well done article that covers the costs of wishful thinking in key American cities -- and gives some good hints as to what we can expect for the country as a whole in the coming decades.

The following paragraph is what has happened to our cities, but they are only in the lead, the most "progressive" -- the pathology is well at work across the nation:

1. Higher Taxes (on the productive) -- we are actively taxing work and subsidizing sloth with predictable result. 
2. Defective Schools -- with active measures to limit school choice and private schools. 
3. Crime -- Less outside the cities, but back on the rise everywhere. 
4. Declining economic opportunity -- With the exception of a few bright spots, North Dakota, Texas , Oklahoma, we are in steep decline -- where we are not, the federal government is seeking to damage the progress.

For years, our major cities were undermined by a confluence of four unhappy factors: 1. higher taxes; 2. defective schools; 3. crime; 4. declining economic opportunity. Together, these weighed much more heavily upon the middle class than upon the very wealthy and the very poor. In the case of Philadelphia, the five counties in the metropolitan area have had a mostly stable population, but the city itself lost more than a quarter of its population between 1950 and 2000 as some 550,000 people fled to the suburbs or beyond. How many people matters, but which people matters, too: They were the ones with the means and the strongest incentive to relocate. Over the same period of time, Chicago lost a fifth of its population, Baltimore nearly a third. Philadelphia is one of the few U.S. cities to impose a municipal income tax (one of the taxes Mayor Rizzo raised), creating very strong incentives to move across the line into Delaware County or Bucks County. This is sometimes known as “white flight,” but that is a misnomer: In Detroit, the white middle class got out as quickly as it could — and the black middle class was hot on its heels. Upwardly mobile people and those who expect to be — i.e., those with an investment in the future — care a great deal about schools, economic opportunity, and safety. And they know where the city limits are.

The cities are the vanguard of the "progressive" movement -- expect those results to swallow our once great nation, soon to be the equivalent of Detroit.

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Shooting, Robbery, Looting, Race

Police: Brown suspect in robbery before shooting - CNN.com:

The "standard model" of "white" -- or rather "non-black" as in George Zimmerman, and in the case of some of the officers in the Rodney King case, "not truly black" -- shooting, beating, sometimes killing of a young or younger black man has repeated yet again.

The first portrayal of the "assumed victim" is always complete innocence, almost beautification. Then, inevitably we find a little robbery, a little gangsta activity, some drugs, some booze, some whatever -- and the equally inevitable charge from the black community that whatever the previous history -- or even the actual facts of the incident, "it doesn't matter, it is an attempt to blame the victim".

Then we have the looting. For some cultural reason, black communities always need to do some looting. Somehow a few flat panel TVs, jewelry and maybe some custom rims are a good way to show your solidarity with the victim dejour.

This is a major cultural difference that I'm quite certain that sociologists have fully explained, but it never seems to happen in white, Jewish, Korean or even very much in Hispanic communities. Some white kid can take a wrong turn and end up beaten, shot, raped or otherwise damaged or dead in some altercation with blacks and nobody ever seems to say "Hey, let's go loot the neighborhood Best Buy".

I have this backward idea that culture drives human behavior far more than race, economic status or even education. I don't believe that soccer hooliganism in certain stadiums in Britain or the wearing of the cheese in certain stadiums in WI are racial at all -- I believe they are cultural. But then I'm so foolish as to be a conservative, so what do I know.

So we will have another standard scripted "discussion" made up largely of talking past each other. The cops are racist, circumstances are beside the point, the kid is dead.

Am I the only one that finds it all way way too predictable? I have no idea what happened between the cop and the kid, hopefully some obvious evidence will show up. I CAN imagine that determining someone is armed or not in an encounter where physical pushing and shoving ensues with an officer is not as easy as even reading an NFL defense with a 300lb lineman bearing down on you. Robbery or not, if he was unarmed, it is a tragedy he is dead -- as it is that the guy that Tony Stewart hit is dead, or a friend guy from IBM I knew is dead because someone failed to see him and made a left turn in front of him when he was on his Harley.

Tragedy, bad decisions, death -- they all happen with way too much regularity, and sometimes we can even do something to reduce future ones -- like NASCAR deciding that there should be a rule on the obvious, stay in your car. Left turns in front of nearby oncoming motorcycles are already illegal -- maybe look twice?

I wonder if getting in any kind of physical altercation with an armed police officer will ever be perceived as a bad idea?

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Siberian Craters, Methane, CO2, Vostok, Profit

Siberian craters are worrisome (Opinion) - CNN.com:

The chart is from the Vostok ice core data drilled from Antarctica. It goes back no farther because the ice melted there between 400-500K years ago.

The last time there was this much atmospheric CO2 was 3 million years ago, when seas were 80 to 100 feet higher. Since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric methane has more than doubled, and the amount now gushing from the seas alone is 34 times what we thought just seven years ago.

The top squiggle on the chart is temp, the next one is CO2, the bottom is methane. So the article from CNN is either misinformed or lying on C02 ... it was higher 120K years ago, not 3 million, and there is an obvious pattern. Carbon dioxide and methane both rise as we hit peak temperature prior to the onset of the new big cooling cycle. It has happened 4 previous times in the last 500K years and we are clearly rising to the 5th.

Second, we admit that this loop began with us. By now, the link between fuel that jet-propels our industrialized civilization and excess CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is challenged only by those who profit obscenely from it.

Did the previous 4 rises in Co2 and methane "begin with us"? Can you look at this chart and say that this link is ONLY challenged by those that "profit obscenely from it"? I can't believe that the purveyors of the climate scare are not aware of this data. I believe that they saw these patterns and were smart enough to profit from what they knew was a natural phenomenon -- but they miscalculated how close we were to the peak -- I suspect we are now on the cooling side of the peak.

WHY do we continue to see article after article like this when the information that I have posted is publicly available on the web, easily accessible by a simple Google ... published by NOAA and other government organizations?

My view is that the reason is just as simple as the motives applied to those who "profit obscenely" -- the climate change industry has also profited obscenely -- giant fields of subsidized wind turbines and solar cells, 100's of billions in subsidies for "green energy" and countless studies, grants, offsets, etc. People like Al Gore becoming worth 100's of millions of dollars and more by not producing a blessed thing but text equivalent to the linked article.

Anyone who had basic science in school knows that this planet cycles through climate changes with or without humans and that the normal state is much colder than what we have seen in the last 10K years. I believe we are in the early stages of being rudely (and very coldly) reminded of this fact.

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A Bit Of Chill Reporting

The Big Chill | National Review Online:

There has been no actual Global Warming in nearly 18 years and record cool temps continue to be broken all across the US.

I report this because the MSM doesn't. We have seen the reverse -- have a good hot spell or two, a mild winter, a streak of storms, and the MSM is chocked full of headlines breathlessly reporting the "proof of warming" -- when you report only night, it might seem to a media believer that the world has gone dark.

Does a cool summer and a very cold winter "prove" there is no warming or that there is cooling? No, but then neither does the opposite! Does it cast some doubt? Well certainly, which is exactly why it is not reported!

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No Victor, No Vanquished - Ignorance Aligned With Power

Obama’s map of misreading: A comment | Power Line:

If you can stomach reading the linked BO discussion with  sycophant automaton Tom Friedman, the main thing you will get out of it is "no victor no vanquished". BO apparently read a book or got the phrase got stuck in his head somewhere else and keeps repeating it in the interview like he is high or something. Perhaps he is hoping that the rest of the world buys into the self-esteem movement, no grades, prizes for everyone,  and potentially even all the sports teams will go to no keeping score in any of the games and everyone getting a trophy at the end of the year. I guess Vikings fans would be for it -- they would finally get a Lombardi Trophy!

I find the following paragraph to summarize not just BO, but a lot of a generation of Americans to come of age around the millenium :

This was allied with a personal drive for High Moralism, the felt need to build a castle around yourself behind a moat of 12-foot thick walls from behind which you could shoot moral arrows at everyone else to demonstrate your superiority and quickly destroy any emerging criticism of yourself. So from this position of invincible ignorance allied with moral perfection and then allied with power, you could become able to cross a line in history to reach a new world shaped by your conviction of your perfected sensibility.

Certainly there have always been smug people, and many Christians were and still are more smug than they ought to be, however this PERSONAL drive for "high moralism" is largely a very recent phenomenon that I find to be very related to the post-Christian world.
I grew up in a very "fundamentalist" Baptist sect where "goodness" was a game of one-upmanship along the lines of "What is it that you DON'T do" ... no smoking or drinking were mandatory, but no dancing, no movies, no TV, no rock music -- etc, etc were all on the list of potential "moral winners".

Today it is environmentalism, recycling, vegetarian, vegan, no plastic bags, etc, etc -- the kind of moralzing that used to be confined to a few fairly obscure sects has broken out into the general public as a plague a zealotry -- in the ignorant hope that people can PERSONALLY effect a "world shaped by your conviction of your perfected sensibility".

Both "the enemy" in the case of foreign policy, and more commonly considering the current level of ignorance involved, simple reality, definitely get a vote ... no matter how smug someone is.

As I've observed since '08, when the smugly ignorant person is president, we are all in grave danger -- a fact which at least more people are now developing increasing awareness of.

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Not BO's Fault We Left Iraq

Obama: Hey, it wasn’t my idea to leave Iraq « Hot Air:
The Jews have the right term -- "Chutzpa". Just go ahead and say whatever, and if there is a D next to your name, people will buy it! Leaving Iraq was almost as much of a BO promise as "if you like your healthcare you can keep it" ... but truth has never gotten in the way of any BO position in the past, so why start now? The lapdog media will buy anything.

So BO couldn't get a deal with Malaki, tsk, tsk. I'm betting a "negotiation" with Putin and Malaki would have been extremely short ... something along the lines of "Here is what the agreement is, any questions?

We know the real answer -- BO was getting out of Iraq and could care less about the consequences. Then the consequences started looking bad, so he no longer accepts responsibility for his action. Hopefully the term "feckless" now just as a picture of BO under it.

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Saving The World, Hating Your Dad, The Humanist Bootstraps

Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing Asshole | Village Voice:

This is an excellent article by someone that has a lot of wonderful sentiments but I fear has not studied much of human history and has therefore a naive view of what is humanly possible. It is the ultimate division -- humanities perpetual hope that it can think itself to heaven on earth -- in this case by a "will to love", but no matter, the concept is that man unaided by any transcendent entity or factor can pull itself "up" (assuming man even has a clue as to which way that is) by his own bootstraps.

The basic pulling by bootstraps argument is old and common -- for Nietzsche it was "the will to power", for William James, "the will to believe".  For all our basic problems with human frailty including even getting up, procrastination, organization, weight, drugs, alcohol, etc, we humans really really want to believe in our "will".

The world isn't being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist -- the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world. The world is being hurt and damaged by one group of people believing they're truly better people than the others who think differently. The world officially ends when we let our beliefs conquer love. We must not let this happen.

The mechanism that has moved masses of humanity in unison and at least for large groups of people converted masses to a common goal historically is religion. There is one world religion that comes very close to the paragraph above, although the author is loathe to mention it.  Christianity. The rest of them answer this basically as follows:

Buddhism -- Ignore the world, don't be attached
Hinduism - It's a big cycle, do good and it will get better eventually
Judaism - God has a plan, follow his rules and it will work out.
Islam - Win Baby win -- convert or kill everyone else and Sharia will be superb.
Secular Humanism -- Essentially the view espoused in this column. We are asserted to be very capable of loving one another (they may have to redefine "love" for you a bit)  ON OUR OWN if we just pay a lot of attention and focus on "love is the answer", "walk a mile in your oppositions shoes", or maybe John Lennon's "imagine".

Or to use the column authors words ...

So we must protect and respect each other, no matter how hard it feels. No matter how wrong someone else may seem to us, they are still human. No matter how bad someone may appear, they are truly no worse than us. Our beliefs and behavior don't make us fundamentally better than others, no matter how satisfying it is to believe otherwise. We must be tireless in our efforts to see things from the point of view we most disagree with. We must make endless efforts to try and understand the people we least relate to. And we must at all times force ourselves to love the people we dislike the most. Not because it's nice or because they deserve it, but because our own sanity and survival depends on it. And if we do find ourselves pushed into a corner where we must kill others in order to survive, we must fully accept that we are killing people just as fully human as ourselves, and not some evil abstract creatures.

The basic flaw in the authors wishful view aside from the insufficiency of "will"  is the existence of evil. Really? ISIS is "just as fully human as you are"? Hitler? Pol Pot? Your favorite serial killer? The authors view requires that man is "basically good". Christianity asserts we ARE all equivalent to ISIS, Hitler, etc -- equivalently evil at heart and 100% in need of a Savior to fix our broken condition.

Rejection of that Savior condemns the world to the condition that the columnist seems to abhor -- but he is clearly not willing to accept that, and instead fervently hopes that SOMEHOW the obvious result of what he recognizes as the characteristics of humanity -- the need for simple answers, the need to be on the "winning side", the apocalyptic view of the world engendered by our own mortality,  the oft proven insufficiency of our "will", our nature to each see our own personal views as "special",  etc can be modified by "will, thought and love".

He fervently wishes and hopes that somehow, good words and intellect can rise above the human condition with no transcendent God or religious practice/framework and manufacture "love".  It would be an interesting trick since we don't  have a handle on consciousness, and one hopes that the authors definition of "love" would require consciousness. We certainly can't manufacture consciousness.

I too fervently wish that children could manage to love their parents even if the parents were so backward to hold differing political, religious, economic or other views, but aside from Christ, it is simply not to be. I've seen it time and time again and way too personally -- children reject God, and very quickly they reject their parents in all but the most shallow of connection. "Honor your Father and your Mother" is just one more tired old doctrine to be rejected.

No, there is one division that counts. Christ. Those that have Christ have love, those that do not will always both hate Christ and his followers -- no matter how much they may claim to have "open minds", "love", "enlightenment", or some other high sounding thought or emotion, the reality of their relationship to those with Christ will always be something along the lines of hatred, avoidance, condescension, discomfort, etc, while those with Christ will continue to fervently love, hope and pray -- with a deep sorrow for those that they love that have been lost.

The world isn't BEING destroyed -- it WAS destroyed, by sin, and Christ and Christians have been trying to save as much of it as possible for two thousand years. There have  been long periods with a lot of success, and there are periods such as now when darkness seems to be ascendant, but ultimately the end will be according to plan -- not our plan, but Gods. Thanks be to God.

The author of the column would likely protest, "See, there is the problem" -- which is what humanists have been protesting for at least a few hundred years. The 20th century was a century of extreme optimism in the secular community. Their perceived historic foe of religion was seen to have been finally vanquished -- "God is dead" as Nietzsche shouted (although he was well aware of the terror involved in that phrase).

Communism, Fascism and Socialism were all seen as related and nearly certain to be successful utopian plans by the elite. Hopes were high -- human confidence for social and political science was as high as engineering confidence was in the early century for the unsinkable Titanic. By mid-century it was obvious to all but the most doctrinaire peddlers of "isms" that after 100's of millions dead, the project was at least going to be much more expensive in lives and treasure than any had imagined. The fall of the USSR near the end of the century might have given some social science alchemists pause in their plans to turn human nature into the embodiment of love -- but as we see in the column, such is not the case.

Secular Humanism, the religion ashamed to claim it's faith, continues as optimistic as ever in spite of the cosmic body count.

Humans WILL cleave to a religion -- one that explains their universe and transcends the day to day informational noise that seeks to pound all meaning from their existence. As we see above, it will be a religion like the great world religions listed (or some thinly updated variant), or it will be the modern biggie -- some variation of Secular Humanism  -- man as god, earth as heaven, with only a little more fervent wishing and appropriate education (or sometimes RE-education) required to close the deal. Let's call it "love".

Christianity begins from the other side -- with humility. "The Fear of God" -- acknowledgement that what the author of the column believes that we "ought to do" -- love those that hate us, realize that the world is WAY to complex to be understood by man, and accept there may well be more that exists than what we can even perceive  -- is just not possible without something that transcends our existence. Pulling ourselves by our bootstraps is futile, so God humbled himself to human form, died on a cross and rose as the first fruits of a life that is what the columnist dreams of. We ALL dream of it -- we are homesick for heaven, and many -- politicians, media people, self-help charlatans, and even the columnist in his own way -- prey on our souls yearning with false promises.

Christ is the side of love. Christ is the side of the ultimate open mind -- of belief in more than this mortal coil, which is the only way to rise above the constant noise of thousands of viewpoints demanding equal attention -- the authors desires for man are reachable, but not by man without Christ.

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BOcare, Get Poor, ASAP!

Articles: More Bad News for the Middle Class and Their Health Care:

Good article that explains what I've explained a few times. The primary purpose of BOcare is to move more middle class, and even "rich" ( if you make $120K, you are RICH!) into either the real or just income based "poor".

In the new world of BOcare, if you are not "poor" (something around $40K or less), then you have to pay for a now more  expensive insurance plan, PLUS a $5 - $10K deductible. Often a swing of well over $10K a year from what the "middle class" had prior to BOcare.

BO doesn't much care if he succeeds in destroying middle class Americans just financially, or if they die trying to avoid paying deductibles. If they are destroyed financially, they will likely vote D -- if they are dead, due to the magic of "The Chicago Way", they will vote D as well! The BO version of "win win"!

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Haiti, Poverty, Corruption, Culture, Voodoo

Why Is Haiti Poor? [With comment by Paul] | Power Line:



I've always been struck by the stark difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the very same island, and naturally wonder "why". This is a rather academic little column that doesn't reach a real conclusion -- to the extent it does, it is "corruption' and possibly "early exit from colonialism".



I'm not going to go do the research this AM on specifics, but I believe that the history of Haiti is French Pirates, French overlords, lots of slaves, Voodoo, and being the first black republic at like 1800.



I'm a big believer in CULTURE being the big determinant, with RELIGION being the main determinant of that. I'm of the opinion that Voodoo is a poor base for a culture!



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Welcome Back Vietnam, Can We Way-back to 1775?

Consider the magnitude of a U.S. general killed in a war zone | Dallas Morning News:



BO is on new ground now, beyond even Jimmuh in the '70s -- even then we never had a General KIA in a war zone!



Democrats always accuse Republicans of "wanting to turn the clock back", but Democrats are the Mr Peabody of politics with the Way-back machine!



We are back in the '70s on work force participation, back to prior to May 5, 1961 when Alan Shepard made it into space -- no longer able to put a human in space, back to WWII on national debt, soon to be back to pre-WWII as in no longer the worlds largest economy -- if we can leave Democrats in charge we will likely be back to prior to 1776 in a decade or so and a colony of the Chinese!



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Trek, Politics, Truth, Hypocrisy

In the middle of political firestorm, Trek Bicycle rolls on:



Mary Burke is running neck and neck with Scott Walker in the WI Governor race.



The Burke family is Trek, Mary has been involved and has benefited from the success of Trek. Have to applaud that! A Democrat that at least has had SOME experience in business! (rather than just inheriting the money, as in Dayton, Kerry (through wife), the Kennedys, etc, etc)



Richard Burke, the brother that is the real business guy sounds like a stand-up guy. Voted for W, so clearly not a doctrinaire D. His comments seem generally reasonable except for this one very large whopper that is never the less the kind of rationalization that is very human.

"I make my decisions on what is in the best interest of the employees," he said.

No, he does what is best for the BUSINESS -- because keeping that going is in even the medium term what is going to provide ANY jobs for any employees at all. Moving the jobs off-shore, or even moving some between communities in WI often stinks for SOME employees, but it is in the interest of the business, so it is the right thing to do.



One us stuck of what the world might be like if media outlets treated Romney in the same way as they are treating Burke here. The article is a study in being seemingly even handed but subtle. Specific numbers are used for how many employees are in WI, how long, payroll growth, etc, but while the "charge" that Trek manufactures 99% is listed as if it COULD be refuted, it never is. It is also softened with the statements that they "build bikes in Germany and Holland ...".



The article is a nice little microcosm of business, truth and hypocrisy in politics.



It is a global business world. It is absolutely impossible to compete in many many areas without using "The China Price" for at least some of your production. This article is very kind in making that soothingly clear. When it was Mitt Romney, there was no explanation, merely the in your face "he shipped jobs to China", with a few ex-employees to explain their pain and no soothing discussion of how everything is global and if you let the business die, then NOBODY in the US has jobs ...



Republicans are not against outsourcing to keep your business alive, or even to make it thrive,  but the calculation of politics is that you have to hypocritically define the hypocrisy of your opponent -- something like BO decrying "the 1%" at a $30K a plate fundraiser. It would be nice if the media would do it for you, but if you are a Republican, they are not, so you better do it yourself.

Democrats constantly make blanket claims against ALL outsourcing, so it is certainly fair game to call them on it when one of their own is connected to it -- it is one of the reasons that Democrat candidates tend to have no association with business at all, which is counterproductive to their side having any sensible position on business issues! Such problems are rife in the world of politics -- which is in many ways the definition of hypocrisy itself, which is one reason that our founders wanted to LIMIT government. On balance, truth is a far better basis for dealing with reality than hypocrisy.



The article is an excellent example of how media bias operates. For Romney, just never do any article at all -- let the opposition hammer away at him on outsourcing and maybe even pile on with some specific stories about workers hurt or poor conditions in China. As close as this article comes is "$2 an hour". For Mary, have the nice vision of the "Red Barn", busy workers and lots of accolades about her work, coupled with hard numbers of "all the good employment in WI", while nothing very specific about the validity of the "99% of bikes overseas" -- one can tell that neither Mary, Rochard nor the Journal Sentinel like the charge, but they are clearly not going to show us "total Trek Bikes manufactured, number manufactured offshore".



And so it goes. Business requires real hard decisions to be made correctly with limited information. Politics and the media are like blood brothers -- it can all be smoothed out with the proper wording and visuals, we don't REALLY need to get all specific like the real world. So the deficits build, the political trumps the real, the businesses die or flee, and eventually it all tumbles down because we refuse to see.



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Antarctic Cold, Arctic Warm But Not Record

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag:



It looks like the Warmists might do a report or two on ice melt in the Arctic, but if you look at the graphs, it is well less than 2012 and staying in the "standard deviation range".



The Antarctic would be another story though if these records were on the opposite side of what they are -- sea ice is possibly going to break an "all-time" high extent record (satellite observation, those are strongly weighted to the recent part of the last 100K years). This will not be due any coverage.

 "On July 1, Antarctic sea ice extent was at 16.16 million square kilometers (6.24 million square miles), or 1.37 million square kilometers (529,000 square miles) above the 1981 to 2010 average. More notably, sea ice extent on that date was 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) higher than the 2013 extent for the same day, and thus is on pace to possibly surpass the record high extent over the period of satellite observations that was recorded last September. 

For June, sea ice concentration and extent were higher than average for the Amundsen, Southern Indian Ocean, and far southern Atlantic (Weddell and eastward) sectors. (See Antarctic reference map.) The regions on either side of the Antarctic Peninsula were among the few sections with lower-than-average concentration and lower sea ice extent. 

Cooler-than-average ocean conditions are present near the ice edge along the Wilkes Land, Amundsen Sea, and Weddell Sea ice edge, which will favor continued expansion of sea ice in these areas.

Weather patterns over Antarctica during June were characterized by a strong low-pressure pattern over the Amundsen Sea, and lower-than-average air temperatures (1 to 6 degrees Celsius, or 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit below average) in the same region. Cool conditions (2 to 3 degrees Celsius or 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit below average) surrounded most of the coastal areas of the Antarctic, with the exception of the Peninsula region where, as has also been seen in the first two weeks of July, northerly winds brought warmer-than-average conditions and reduced sea ice extent.

"

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Pelosi Gone Wild, Turnabout?

House Minority Leader Pelosi Confronts Rep. Marino Over Comments | Fox News Insider:

The MSM has given this very little coverage for obvious reasons. We have seen examples in the past of less egregious breaks of decorum with massive outcry from the MSM calling for "apology", "resignation", "censure", etc. when a Republican is the instigator. I believe a Congressman that not all that loudly mentioned the obvious -- that BO was lying, obvious because he was moving his lips, was rather thoroughly tried in the media.

Let's see, when BO said "If you like your healthcare you can keep it", what is it that he was doing?

We no doubt see such outcry again, it just has to be a Republican that gets angry or speaks "truth to power". Now there was a common phrase of the W years that somehow seems strangely missing these days!

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History Started in 1960

George Packer on Rick Perlstein’s “The Invisible Bridge”:

An interesting little column to understand the liberal view of the world. Things were OK through the '60s, then there was "the rise of the right" and everything has been sketchy ever since.

One could take an alternate view that America was generally dealing with history and it's own problems in an imperfect but "American" way until say the Wilsonian version of "progressivism".  It lurched hard left in the '30s, partially corrected itself in the '50s, then lurched hard left again in the '60s ... the '70s were indeed a time of "what do we do now, who are we"? Reagan gave us a brief reprieve that mostly lasted up to '06 and since then we have lurched hard left again -- back to at least the '70s, and really worse.

But that isn't how the left sees it ... there is some sort of "cosmic progress" ordered in the same way as the inevitability of communism as per Marx that inherently moves nations to more and more centralized statist control -- and that is good (from their POV). Both inevitable and good -- except for evil. Conservatives -- the past is inherently bad, the future is inevitably good -- with the exception of those horrid "divisive" conservative voices. Eventually, they always have to be silenced.

In other ways, though, the conservative agenda of Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan never took. If we see the seventies not as an apocalyptic war between two Americas but as a time of profound uncertainty, in which conflict and contradiction were found just as often within as between Americans, it’s possible to imagine the country, at the end of the decade, turning for inspiration to a vision quite different from Reagan’s brand of denial. His vision was the one on offer—but a majority of the country didn’t vote for the destruction of blue-collar America in 1980, or the creation of a new plutocracy, or the rigging of legislation in favor of organized money. Most Americans still want their social programs kept intact, dislike being told how to conduct their private lives, and don’t want their country to go looking for foreign dragons to slay. What Perlstein calls the “cult of official optimism,” founded by Reagan, requires our leaders, including Barack Obama, to genuflect ritually before America the innocent. That rhetoric has grown extremely thin, however—not many Americans these days are optimistic. Reagan won, but the seventies never ended. 

Somehow they seem to have figured out that we have returned to the 1970's -- but their view is that it is this "divide" that is the issue. Politics is the ultimate force in the "progressive" brain -- only possibly inferior to the mysterious universal force driving all nations inevitably to centralized ultimate control of which the left is certain is completely benign -- pay no attention to the 100's of millions murdered by Fascism and Communism in the 20th century. The mysterious force will get it right this time ... if only the voices of conservatives can be silenced.

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Biting The Hand That Feeds

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/01/opinion/kohn-market-basket-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

First of all, I know NOTHING about Market Basket -- history, current situation and business model, etc.

I do know what organized crime and government has known forever -- you can pay people off to do what you want! Calling it "The Chicago Way" is as good as any ... it has been true from Al Capone to Rahm Emanuel, and it will be true forever.

Our founders knew it to be true, which is why they wanted to make sure that government was heavily hobbled in it's ability to reward it's "friends" and punish it's "enemies".

Certainly Market Basket may be 100% in the wrong ... in which case employees and customers have every right to abandon them. That is how the market works.

It could be that Market Basket was more generous with employees than made sense and now some of them feel "entitled". They are not. It could be that $40K for a  cashier is over the top and $30K would serve as well ... or maybe not. That is up to them to discover.

I'm willing to bet that the author of the column knows no more than I, but they seem very certain that they do.