The Bishop Trust

I don’t believe in long-term successful conspiracies, but I was privy to the disclosure of a successful one in 1997 in Hawaii, when the worlds largest Trust was brought down.

Now, this is not an anti-Democratic Party screed because although everyone who was part of the conspiracy was a high Democratic Party operative, the conspiracy was also brought down by other high Democratic Party operatives.

The Bishops Trust was (and is) HUGE! It was dedicated to developing money and schools for Hawaiian youth, and it was (and is) larger than the combined Trusts for Harvard and Yale!

For decades it was run as a cash cow for the Trustees, who were paid nearly $1 million, each, per year.

ANYONE who is involved with support of foundations of any sort, needs to read a recently released book “Broken Trust.” I am just starting to read it tonight, but I have written columns on the subject before and followed it daily for several years, so I know how it turns out – but I also know that it is a fascinating, real-life story of greed, conspiracy, politics, sex and violence.

I can commend it without even reading it!

God’s Sense of Humor

You have heard of the Gore Effect — the unseasonably cold, wet weather that always strikes when Gore goes to speak on Global Warming — well, it happened again and Gore wasn’t even there!

 

Today, in London the Parliament was discussing the final edition of the British answer to Global Warming through the reduction of greenhouse gases — and it snowed!

 

The first October snow in London since 1922!

 

And some people think God has no sense of humor!

Where is The Times When We Need Them?

In 1940, the WSJ tells me, the reliably Democratic Party organ, the New York Times endorsed a Republican candidate rather than a third term for FDR.

One of their complaints with FDR was “fostering the idea that there exists a great fund of wealth which has only to be divided more equitably in order to make everyone prosperous” and “permitting important members of his Administration to preach the doctrines of class jealousy and class hatred.”

Where is the New York Times when we need them?

A Warning, Probably Unheeded

Interesting comments today in the Wall Street Journal by the Co-Founder of the Federalist Society, and current law professor at Northwestern University, STEVEN G. CALABRESI

 

(Quote)The legal left wants Americans to imagine that the federal courts are very right-wing now, and that Mr. Obama will merely stem some great right-wing federal judicial tide. The reality is completely different. The federal courts hang in the balance, and it is the left which is poised to capture them.

A whole generation of Americans has come of age since the nation experienced the bad judicial appointments and foolish economic and regulatory policy of the Johnson and Carter administrations. If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants; ruinous shareholder suits against corporate officers and directors; and approval of huge punitive damage awards, like those imposed against tobacco companies, against many legitimate businesses such as those selling fattening food.

Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election. We should not let Mr. Obama replace justice with empathy in our nation’s courtrooms. (UNQUOTE)

What Obama Thinks

From the Toledo Blade:

 

“Mr. Obama responded to The Blade’s question by agreeing that every American willing to work should be able to find a job at a living wage. But he stopped short of accepting that as a right.

 

U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D. Toledo) whipped the crowd up before Mr. Obama took the stage yesterday telling them that America needed a Second Bill of Rights guaranteeing all Americans a job, health care, homes, an education, and a fair playing field for business and farmers.”

 

Government guaranteeing homes for everyone — isn’t that what triggered the mess we are in?

 

Guaranteed jobs — and what is the guarantee someone will actually work at those jobs?

 

My fear is that even this list is the shortened version!

What Obama Says

There have been many complaints that people take Obama out of context, with sound bites, so I decided to research his actual comments.

They provide me with no solace!

Excerpt of Obama 2001 NPR interview as provided by NPR Station in Chicago (emphasis added): If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay.

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. “

Interesting Comments on MSNBC

From The Holywood Reporter:

In a room full of television industry executives, no one seemed inclined to defend MSNBC on Monday for what some were calling its lopsidedly liberal coverage of the presidential election.

The cable news channel is “completely out of control,” said writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat.

She added that she would prefer a lunch date with right-leaning Fox News star Sean Hannity over left-leaning MSNBC star Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann was criticized by many who attended Monday’s luncheon sponsored by the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The event was dubbed “Hollywood, America and Election ’08.”

Bloodworth-Thomason and others seemed especially critical of the way MSNBC — and other media — has attacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin while demeaning her supporters.

“We should stop the demonizing,” she said, adding that Democrats have been worse than Republicans as far as personal attacks on candidates are concerned. “It diminishes us,” she said of her fellow Democrats. She stressed, though, that its Palin’s small-town American roots she wishes to defend and not her politics or policies.

Bloodworth-Thomason even suggested a defense of Palin and her supporters should be written into TV programming, just as she went out of her way to portray Southern women as smart in her hit TV show “Designing Women.”

Attendee Michael Reagan, the radio talk-show host and son of President Ronald Reagan, said he no longer will appear as a guest on MSNBC because “I actually get death threats.”

“I’ll stop sending them,” joked Larry Gelbart, the writer, producer and director best known for the “M*A*S*H” television series and such movie screenplays as “Tootsie” and “Oh, God!”

Wassup With This?

I have played and replayed this YouTube clip several times. As I get it the subject is redistributive justice, and this is an exact quote as i copied it down:

“I think we can say the Constitution reflected a(sic) enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on to this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot …I don’t think the two views are contradictory to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, but it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

 

Once a group of liberals on another Blog have “parsed” this, I will get you their take.

 

Good News — For a Change

From the Financial Times:

Unexpected rise in new US home sales

By James Politi in Washington

Published: October 27 2008 16:25 | Last updated: October 27 2008 16:25

The pace of new home sales in the US rose by 2.7 per cent last month – a much better figure than forecast by economists – as low prices fostered a flurry of activity in the stricken US housing market amid an intensifying financial crisis.

New home sales rose to an annualised rate of 464,000 units after dropping by a steep 12.3 per cent in August, the US commerce department said on Monday. The inventory of unsold homes also dropped, from 11.4 months’ supply in August to 10.4 months’ supply last month. The median sale price for a new home fell to $218,400, its lowest level in four years.

The data roughly trace encouraging figures on sales of previously owned homes, released last Friday, indicating that a bottoming in home sales might be taking hold and that could pave the way for an eventual rebound in the US housing market – the root of the global financial turmoil.

But economists have cautioned that the stabilisation of home sales reflected buying conditions in July and August, and could be threatened by the deeper economic woes in late September and October.

Media Bias Exposed

The media bias is so pronounced this time that even Dan Rather admits it is pervasive!

Those few who share my interest in media, its bias and its rapid financial decline, might be interested in the ABC News column today (Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline) by Michael S. Malone, who is described by ABC News as:

“Michael S. Malone is one of the nation’s best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation’s first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times.

He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world’s largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling “Virtual Corporation.” Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, “The New Heroes.” He has been the ABCNews.com “Silicon Insider” columnist since 2000.”

Google it. It is a great read!