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EducateWorthington.org

The 912 Project - Glenn Beck

912 Group of Central Ohio

Please let me know if you'd like your link added

[Edmund Burke]

I'm opening this thread as a counterweight to all the egregiously inaccurate letters to the editor I've seen in the Columbus Dispatch (although letters from other local media in other Ohio cities would be welcome   ).  Let's start with this stinker...rather than critique it myself, I'd like to invite our more Libertarian-leaning members to do it (it's about economics, and in that I think Libertarians excel).  Fire away, friends![/size]

______________________________________________________________
U.S. economy’s growth comes at a steep price (Columbus Dispatch)
Thursday, December 23, 2004

The U.S. economy is growing faster than that of most of our trading partners, as measured by gross national product. Does that mean that the United States is more productive, more efficient than the others? Naw, it does not.

It means that the United States is getting artificial stimulants that the others are not getting. Cheap money, governmental debt and cheap gasoline are propelling the U.S. economy.

This economy violates my moral code. It is immoral for a fast-growing economy to transfer debt we have created and should pay for ourselves to our grandchildren.

Too many people live too far from their jobs. Too many people have concluded that perpetual personal debt is the way to live.

A faster-growing economy encourages the growth of the trade deficit.

This is the worst consequence of the artificial stimulation. The cheaper goods produced overseas disrupt the U.S. economy.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. This is the main reason wages and salaries are not growing for the average citizen.

The rewards of a growing economy are siphoned off by the stock market.

Our economy is producing extreme wealth at the top. These wealthy folks have taken charge of the federal government.

The rest of us cannot depend upon the federal government to protect the interests of the average citizen.

Other economies survive without artificial stimulants. I want a return to a natural economy, one with a growth rate created by internal productivity, not cheap money, governmental debt and cheap gasoline.

W. RAYMOND MILLS

[Edmund Burke]

Here's what Professor Louise Antony thinks of the Academic Bill of Rights Bill pending in the State House.  First, the letter:

‘Academic bill of rights’ is an enemy of freedom
Saturday, February 19, 2005
 
I respond to the Feb. 15 editorial "Challenge to colleges." In regard to the so-called academic bill of rights, the editorial conceded that the bill is unworkable, yet alleged that "the issue that spawned the bill is real." This is pernicious nonsense.

Nonsense, because neither the Ohio bill’s sponsor, Sen. Larry A. Mumper, RMarion, nor his puppeteer, conservative commentator David Horowitz, author of the bill, has produced a scintilla of evidence either that liberal professors are abusing their authority or that conservative students have suffered for their beliefs.

We professors pride ourselves, rightly, on our ability to bring multiple points of view to bear on the issues we teach and to give each a fair hearing. (This much used to be acknowledged: Rightwingers used to criticize us for being relativists, because we encouraged students to make up their own minds about values.) Moreover, there is no evidence that any conservative student has been downgraded or otherwise penalized for his or her beliefs, certainly not at Ohio State University. There are, in any case, established grievance procedures in place to aid students — if there were any — who fear that instructor bias affected their grades.

Which brings me to the pernicious part. There are people in academia who are under siege because of their political beliefs, but they are hardly victims of liberal bias. They are far more apt to be individuals who have had the audacity to criticize U.S. foreign policy, particularly on the Middle East. I’ll mention three such cases.

First: M. Shalid Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University, has been made the target of a hate-mail campaign and has received death threats because of an essay he wrote in Counterpunch arguing that the 9/11 attacks were part of an Islamist insurgency but also that "these attacks were the result of a massive political failure of Muslims to resist their tyrannies locally."

Second, there’s the case of Joseph Massad, an untenured professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University. He is undergoing a "review" by his university because of unsubstantiated allegations by Zionist extremists (not his students) that he is biased against Israel. His own students, Zionist and non-Zionist alike, line up to defend his integrity, but this counts for nothing.

Finally, there is the notorious Ward Churchill. What columnist and professional whiner Jonah Goldberg forgot to mention in his pity party for Larry Summers (Forum column, Monday) is that Churchill is in danger of losing his job because of his political incorrectness, whereas Summers has only to endure polite rebuttals of his ignorant remarks. His job is secure.

The truth is that Mumper’s bill is the work of genuine outside agitators: Horowitz’s Campus Watch. This organization has a very specific political agenda, namely, to suppress criticism of U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world. (They don’t like feminists or race theorists, either, but that’s another story.) Their Orwellian spin should fool no one. They are enemies of academic freedom, not champions. True defenders of free speech do not agitate to deprive dissidents of their livelihoods; nor do they try to intimidate into silence those with whom they disagree.

LOUISE ANTONY

Professor of philosophy

Ohio State University

Columbus

________________________________

My response to Professor Antony is this:  Where were YOU when speech codes were being considered for the OSU campus?  Where were YOU when they tried to force a Christian club on campus to open their leadership to non-Christians?  Where were YOU when direct control of the curriculum in the name of diversity was being considered?  I'll tell you where...nowhere!  The plain fact is that Professor Antony and her ilk believe in free speech so long as it is from the Left.  When it comes time to defend speech from the Right, such people are always the most eager to censor, ban, and suppress.

FEB. 18, 2005: (HARVARD) PRESIDENT'S DAY; David Frum

The Wall Street Journal news section has a front-pager this morning on Larry Summers, president of Harvard. The story focuses on Summers' "management style." (Although if you read the story with a media archaeologist's eye, you can detect tell-tale signs that it originated as a hit-piece on Summers for his defiance of ideological taboos and was rearranged by an editor into a supposedly more neutal critique of Summers for being brusque and overbearing.)

Time was when university presidents were leading figures in American public life. Robert Maynard Hutchins of Chicago, Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia, Nathan Pusey of Harvard - each in their way, each with their flaws and limits - were once people whose views commanded attention and respect.

Those days are long gone, undone by the degeneration of the moral and intellectual integrity of the universities that presidents lead - and maybe even more, by the ever more squalid cowardice exhibited by the presidents those universities have more recently selected for themselves. My friend Andrew Peyton Thomas has just published a withering account of the hasty retreat of the once-promising dean of Harvard Law School, Robert Clark, in the face of the ideological zealots who have done so much damage to his once vital institution of learning.

Larry Summers, a former Clinton Treasury Secretary, is no less liberal than his fellow university presidents. But unlike most of them, he believes that scholarship ought to hold a higher place on a university campus than political conformity. He forced out the embarrassingly preening Cornel West. He has challenged Harvard's easy grading standards. He even - in what may be his finest moment - chided Harvard for its lack of respect for the military. Speaking in November 2001 at the Kennedy School's annual Public Service Awards dinner, Summers addressed K-School dean Joe Nye directly:

"Joe, I hope that when you have this award next year, among those who will be recognized will be those who have served our country in uniform. Because I think we need to remember that of all the kinds of public service, there is a special nobility, a special grace to those who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for our country. And if these terrible events and the struggle that we are now engaged in once again reignite our sense of patriotism--reignite our respect for those who wear uniforms and bring us together as a country in that way--it will be no small thing." (Alas this hope went unfulfilled.)

The best verdict on Summers comes from the great Harvey Mansfield, who is quoted in today's Journal story: "He is being attacked for his strengths and not for his defects."

Let me add one more reflection: The corruption of the universities is a terrible shame upon the United States and a cause of profound sadness among American conservatives. When we complain about the abuses on campus, it is not out of glee at scoring a point against an ideological opponent, but out of terrible regret that some of the most essential institutions of this great country - the institutions at which learning and inquiry ought to be honored and served - have so often perverted their best natures to serve bad causes.

America suffers from a dangerous separation of its mind and soul. Its elite intellectual institutions are too often hostile to the country's culture and founding values. As the Journal reporters mention, Harvard continues to ban ROTC from campus for fear of offending the university's militant gay lobby; as Samuel Huntington details in his important book, Who We Are, elite institutions like Harvard regard themselves as multinational, multicultural enterprises independent of the nation and the people that created, sustain, and defend them.

This separation serves nobody. It makes places like Harvard effete and irrelevant. I had lunch a little while ago with a representative of another prestigious school. "We see it as our mission," he told me, "to train leaders." But how can you do that, I asked, when you are instilling your leaders with an ideology that is despised and mistrusted by their potential followers?

At the same time, it badly disserves America to lose the services of places like Harvard. Despite the health and strength of its soul and sinew, a country cannot thrive in a dangerous world with a diseased mind.

So all power to Larry Summers. With a half-dozen more university presidents like him, the day may come when America's great universities will again be great in something more than endowments and pretensions.

[Edmund Burke]

G3 -- shouldn't your old friends over at the Buckeye Institute be ALL OVER this dumb letter advocating urban planning?  What little I know about "smart growth" and the "new urbanism" suggests higher prices all around, violated property rights, and pinched job markets (and economic growth) in the long-term.  Since Staley and crew have written extensively on this, shouldn't they respond ASAP.

____________________________________________________
OHIO BADLY NEEDS A COHESIVE LAND-USE POLICY
Published: Saturday, March 26, 2005
EDITORIAL & COMMENT 10A
If Ohio is to advance to Gov. Bob Taft's vision of a "Third Frontier'' high-tech economy, the communities that make up that frontier need to be well-planned.

That is why organizations such as Greater Ohio and 1000 Friends of Central Ohio are asking Taft and Ohio's legislative leaders to create a blue-ribbon task force to comprehensively re-examine the state's land-use policies.


Development in the state is increasing much faster than population: In the 1990s, Ohio was eighth in the nation in conversion of rural land to development, but only 22nd in population growth.

Fifty years ago, Ohio had large factories and small farms. Most people lived in the towns where they worked. Cities still thrived, suburbs were smaller and townships were rural. But as people chose suburbs over neglected cities, Ohio grew steadily more suburban and less industrial. All of this required new roads and new schools, even as the old roads and schools still had to be maintained. The size of government grew in the new communities and the old ones.

In this time of great transformation -- a period that saw construction of the interstate highway system, the emergence of regional malls and industrial parks and the development of bedroom communities -- the state made only piecemeal changes to its planning and zoning statutes. Now it must adapt to change and provide stewardship for Ohio's natural resources and its cities.

Central Ohio, for example, is one of the few parts of the state experiencing job and population growth, but there's no easy way to plan for it. The region has a single economy, but it has seven counties, 80 municipalities, 116 townships, over 1.5 million people, and no formal, legal mechanism for them to cooperate on planning, public spending or tax policies.

Using taxpayers' dollars, communities compete to move companies and jobs around the area with no net gain to the regional economy. Older suburbs, such as Grandview Heights, hunger for new economic development, while newer ones, such as Pickerington, struggle to manage the pace of growth, even resorting to moratoriums on new housing, which invite legal disputes and rarely solve problems. Such moratoriums arise only when planning efforts have failed.

Ohio once was a pioneer in planning and zoning. In 1925, Cincinnati became the first major American city with a long-range plan. And zoning became the norm nationally only after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Euclid zoning code in 1926.

The state has an opportunity again for leadership and vision. Ohio's leaders have a chance to revitalize cities, preserve farmland and open space, create transportation alternatives, promote safe and healthy neighborhoods, where people can walk to shops and businesses, and make the state attractive to the young, well-educated people who will drive the 21st-century economy.

If sprawl meant jobs, Ohio would have full employment. Instead, our cities continue to spread as manufacturing jobs vanish and college graduates leave the state.

For the Third Frontier to succeed, Ohio will need more than dollars to create technology jobs. It also will need the commitment to keep the countryside alive with crops, forests and parks -- and the cityscape alive with historic buildings in modern use, bustling shops, offices and nightspots. That's what has attracted technology workers to Seattle and the Twin Cities.

A statewide panel should keep the twin goals of stewardship and economic development in mind as it reviews Ohio's land-use policies.

The task force could include developers, planners, bankers, environmentalists, farmers, Realtors, government leaders and citizens. It should have a broad mandate to look at urban revitalization, farmland preservation, cities, counties, townships, school districts, annexation, transportation, economic development and regionalism.

A grand framework for growth could be this administrations' legacy and legislative leaders' contribution to the state's future.

Ruth Gless is a member of the American Institute of Architects and is chairwoman of the board of trustees of 1000 Friends of Central Ohio, a land-use planning advocacy group.

1000friendsohio@columbus.rr.com

 

Well, The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram (one of my 2 local papers) had this horrible editorial about Christine Whitman:

http://www.chronicletelegram.com/2005_Arch...tml/local4.html

Here is my response (I scanned it since the CT website stinks and they don't publish a lot of what they print):

[Edmund Burke]

Does anyone know Mr. Auer?  I'd sure like him to be a part of our group.

_______________________________________________
Reagan not responsible for U.S. spending habits
Saturday, April 02, 2005
 
A recent Forum column by Dispatch Senior Editor Joe Hallett was loaded with so many things that demand response. Hallett is critical of Republicans for what he says is their deification of President Reagan. Maybe so, maybe not.

What about Democrats who similarly have lauded Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy for decades? I guess he doesn’t think that’s the same thing.

Hallett asserted, "Reagan poured money into the military," as though there was something wrong with that. Reagan had little choice. What made that necessary was his Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter, who gutted the military.

President Clinton claimed that he cut the number of federal employees during his time in office. He did — all in the military. Other federal employment increased. When Democrats cut, it’s the military they go after.

Hallett asserted: "Ironically, it took a Democratic president, Bill Clinton in 1996, to pass the welfare reform that Reagan couldn’t get through a Democratic Congress."

Clinton signed a welfare bill, all right, but it was the third one the Congress had sent to his desk, the previous two having been vetoed. His supporters criticized him for signing the measure, but polls showed him to be on the wrong side of that issue. Remember, Clinton ran his presidency by what polls said.

As he signed it, he and his liberal Democrat colleagues in Congress vowed to come back later and "fix it." Well, they never fixed it. Why? Could it be because it has been quite successful?

Hallett asserted: "During his eight years, (Reagan) failed to shrink the bureaucracy, federal spending nearly doubled and deficits soared."

That totally overlooks the Congress. No president, Republican or Democrat, can spend a dime that the Congress does not appropriate. By the way, Reagan had a Democrat-controlled Congress to deal with. At best, there may be culpability here. Also, despite tax cuts, federal revenue nearly doubled during the Reagan years.

Hallett asserted: "With massive deficit spending, Reagan convinced Americans they could have it without paying for it. Today’s politicians are saddled with that expectation; they are defeated if they raise taxes and vilified if they cut services."

As to the last sentence, true enough! However, Reagan is not responsible for that attitude; a selfish and ignorant electorate is.

Hallett asserted: "Where we are now is broke at all levels of government. President Bush, mimicking Reagan’s rule, has cut federal taxes and transferred the burden of paying for services to the states, which are transferring them to local governments."

What’s wrong with that? Reagan and Bush have it right. Stop sending tax money to Washington, and let it be collected at the local level where it can be spent more effectively.

If any of the above is news to Hallett, he must be a poor observer of the political scene. However, I don’t think that’s the case. His liberal bias won’t allow him to be objective.

JOHN J. AUER

Columbus

http://www.dispatch.com/print_template.php...0402-A9-01.html

I just searched Google and he is on there. We may want to give him a call.

JOHN J. AUER columbus ohio

Yes, Dain, BI should be interested, but I think their primary focus at this time is fiscal policy.  I'll send a note to a friend who will most likely be interested and probably write an oped.

[We could say [Democrats] spend money like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors. It would be unfair, because the sailors are spending their own money. --Ronald ReaganAl Gore didn't invent the internet, he invented global warmingThe welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants - CamusThe person who advocates government planning of the economy always assumes that it is his plan that will be put into effect. --Hayek]

Some ding-dong in the Dispatch is yet again calling for light rail in Ohio (HERE).  The Buckeye Institute published an excellent rebuttal a few years ago and their conclusion was that it would be cheaper to lease ALL potential light-rail riders a Ford Explorer.

Stupid liberals....

Ah yes....the most famous quote from The Buckeye Institute!

I just searched Google and he is on there. We may want to give him a call.

JOHN J. AUER columbus ohio

Who's calling?

[Edmund Burke]

Isn't the PM our new leader (at least, wasn't he the only one foolish enough NOT to resign)?  In all seriousness, TonyBlair should do it or solicit a volunteer (not me...we hates people).

[Edmund Burke]

Wow, another great letter in today's CD.  It's true that john powell makes racist statements like the one's this author noticed.  Why does OSU honor such a man with a high station?  Just more evidence that something's SERIOUSLY wrong with university administration.


I wonder if Mr. Hopkins knows about CTH.  Sounds like our kind of guy!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Does OSU really think minorities are victims?
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
 

In the May 29 Insight article "Local blacks, Latinos seek to bridge gap," a quote suggests that the tensions between the two groups are caused by a conspiracy of white people doling out welfare money and jobs.

Normally such a statement would not be taken seriously, but it was said by the executive director of the Kirwan Institute on Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

The comments by john powell were not challenged in the article, nor were they subsequently backed up by any facts. Can it be assumed that powell’s comments, that blacks and Latinos are helpless victims of whites, are reflective of the university’s views and are being taught in its classrooms and auditoriums?

It is a good thing that the many college students whom I have known or met are just too ambitious, with such positive outlooks on life, to allow one course in their curriculum to slow them down.

DAVID HOPKINS

Columbus

 

[Edmund Burke]

Hey, another moonbat letter in the Dispatch.  Now, upon reading this, can anyone tell me WHY the CD would publish such a thing?  Mr. Barkley's letter contains no information, no evidentiary basis for the rant...nothing at all except pure bile.  In short, it is a pristine example of what the Democrat party has become...a mob of enraged LOSERS.

______________________________________________________________________
Bush backers, paper ought to be ashamed
Monday, July 04, 2005
 
I’m having difficulty understanding why everyone is calling for White House adviser Karl Rove’s apology and resignation after his heartfelt comments the other day. After all, he was only saying what he believes ("Democrats demand apology for Bush adviser’s 9/11 remark," Associated Press article, June 24).

That’s allowed in America, although it won’t be for long with the Bush administration’s warped vision of America.

This is just another stark example of the most arrogant, immoral, unpatriotic, indecent, dishonest and incompetent administration in our nation’s glorious history.

The ones who should be apologizing, or at least hanging their heads, are all those who were duped into voting for this embarrassing crew. And that last observation includes The Dispatch, for endorsing this outfit for re-election, thus proving that its owners don’t read their own paper very carefully, as the majority of news coverage pointed to exactly the mess we are in both internationally and domestically.

BOB BARKLEY

Worthington

[This time, speculators and wild profits by oil investors are the driving forces in current gasoline prices. Sowell’s attack on environmentalists and government are simply well-worn straw-man arguments designed to resonate with the simple thinking of his devotees.]

Yet another Lefty "economist" who thinks he understands how the world works.  His point about Enron and California is partially correct (although it was not ALL corruption), but the fact that we haven't been able to increase our refining capacity nor drill in many locations DOES have a lot to do with the current "shortage."

In this guy's book, the government apparently drills for oil!  He needs to examine consumption levels vs. supply before he writes such drivel.

________________________________________________
Columnist still wrong this time around
Monday, September 05, 2005 (Columbus Dispatch)
   
I always can rely on columnist Thomas Sowell to ignore intellectual honesty and give it to us the way he wants us to believe it might be.

He didn’t fail me in his Aug. 24 Forum column on gasoline prices. Interestingly enough, he also didn’t fail me in a column in January 2001, when he wrote that California’s energy crisis was also an issue of supply and demand forced out of whack by environmentalists and government regulation.

As Enron later showed us, he was wrong then and he is wrong now. In 2001, Californians were using 8 percent less electricity than in the previous year, yet neoconservatives such as Sowell were blaming everything except the corrupt practices of corporate energy officials, emboldened by the rollback of government regulations.

This time, speculators and wild profits by oil investors are the driving forces in current gasoline prices. Sowell’s attack on environmentalists and government are simply well-worn straw-man arguments designed to resonate with the simple thinking of his devotees.

Why does Sowell continue to think he has the answers after his embarrassingly wrong diatribe in 2001? Because he knows that his column will be forgotten by the time anyone figures out that we’ve been taken to the cleaners again.

Will The Dispatch ever require the slightest modicum of intellectual honesty from its syndicated columnists?

JOHN ASENDORF

Columbus