Outrage: West Point footballer exempted from Iraq duty

West Point cadets train to lead men in combat. When a war is on, they get shipped straight to the front.

Not Caleb Campbell, a football star for Army. AP reports:

In full cadet uniform, Army’s Caleb Campbell sat upright in one of Radio City Music Hall’s plush seats. On his head was a Detroit Lions ballcap.

Cupped in his left hand was his ticket out of Iraq.

It was the card the Lions turned in to take Campbell 218th overall on Sunday at the NFL draft, changing his post-graduation plans to lead a platoon, one that may well have seen combat.

“I’m very fortunate,” Campbell said. “Without the Army and the academy … I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

Campbell is the first Army football player to benefit from a new policy allowing athletes with a chance to play professionally to complete their service by serving as recruiters and in the reserves.

He’ll still be an Army officer, just working as a recruiter as he earns millions as a safety for the Lions.

It’s a common story: Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.

If you’re among the powerful, like Bush, Cheney, and Campbell, you get out of wars and profit from them. If you’re a peon, you fight and die.

World War II heroes

This also shows America’s Elite doesn’t take the Iraq War seriously (despite their lying rhetoric). In World War II, the wealthy as well as sports and showbiz figures were expected to fight, and maybe die.

Joe Kennedy Jr., Glenn Miller, and Leslie Howard were killed in the war.

Ted Williams was a war hero, a fighter ace — then went on to fight in the Korean War. Jimmy Stewart was a decorated bomber pilot; the French gave him the Croix de Guerre, with palm. Robert Montgomery became a lieutenant commander in the Navy. Clark Gable, though in his 40s, according to Wikipedia:

as an observer-gunner in B-17 Flying Fortresses between May 4 and September 23, 1943, [he earned] the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts. Adolf Hitler esteemed Gable above all other actors; during the Second World War he offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and bring Gable unscathed to him.

Jackie Robinson wouldn’t break baseball’s infamous “color barrier” until 1947. But in World War II served in the Army and missed combat only because he resisted the Army’s segregation of blacks and was discharged.

My favorite director, John Ford, was a Naval Reserve officer nearing 50 when the war started. He was put in charge of film crews for Naval Intelligence. At the Battle of Midway, he was wounded. He filmed the D-Day invasion. He later became an admiral.

The policy will backfire

Showing its usual cluelessness, the Bush administration thinks this new policy somehow will increase recruits. The opposite will happen as youngsters see the obvious double standard at work.

Instead of Lt. Caleb Campbell going to Iraq, Lt. Kilroy Smith will go. Lt. Smith believed the Army propaganda about “An Army of One” and joined to get help with his college education. Although in good shape, Lt. Smith obviously isn’t an NFL-caliber athlete. Maybe on patrol his reflexes will be a little slower than Lt. Campbell’s would have been, and he’ll get himself and his platoon killed; whereas if Lt. Campbell had been there, everybody would have survived.

In the past, athletes starring at the service academies knew they would not be treated differently. They would have to put in five years of service after graduating. Then they could go to professional sports. Roger Staubach graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, then served in Vietnam. After his service, he joined the Dallas Cowboys as a 27-year-old rookie, and won 2 Super Bowls. He’s in the NFL Hall of Fame.

Napoleon McCallum starred for Navy. He briefly played for the L.A. Raiders while serving in the Navy. But then he began his full-time, five-year “active duty obligation,” as it’s called. After his commitment was met, he again played for the Raiders until a busted knee ended his career. The Navy named the Napoleon McCallum Trophy after him, giving it to the Navy player who gains the most all-purpose yards.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be: You get your free education at the taxpayers’ expense, you fulfill your active duty obligation as a member of the president’s officer corps, maybe you go to war — and only then do you go on to the NFL and make millions.

Caleb Campbell, if he went to Iraq, might get killed or badly wounded. Or he might just get a minor wound — say a broken leg — that would end his NFL career, keeping him from getting those millions.

But at least he would have honorably kept the promise of service he made when he went to West Point.

It’s Pythonesque

West Point’s players are called the Black Knights. That’s because, historically in Europe, the knights got to run things in return for training to defend the country, duchy, principality, etc. Fighting was their job. Jousts were to get ready for fights, not to be just entertainment.

The Caleb Campbell escapade turns the the West Point Black Knights into the Black Knight from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (YouTube here.)

“Tis but a scratch!”

Outrage: Mother jailed for nothing

Marie Walsh is a wife and Mom from San Diego. Just in time for Mother’s Day, she’ll be extradited to Michigan because she split from prison 32 years ago after being convicted of dealing drugs. She could spend 10 to 20 years in prison. Her original name was Susan Lefevre

Her kids and grandkids will know her from now on only through a thick Plexiglas screen.

How absurd, like the whole “war” on drugs.

She made the mistake of getting a Gestapo ID card — otherwise known as a California Driver’s License, which includes a thumbprint. (Your papersz pleasz! Jawhol, mein Kommandant!) The thumbprint was compared to a Michigan thumbprint, part of our increasing police state.

Why couldn’t the authorities just leave her alone? Did they already catch all the murderers, rapists, and terrorists out there?

She’s supposed to “pay her debt to society.” What debt? She raised a family. Seems to me like “society” owes her a debt.

Government today has no mercy — and no chivalry. Can one imagine one of the great knights and kings of the past, such as St. Louis or Richard the Lionheart, perpetuating such an outrage against a wife and mother? St. Louis advised his son:

In order to do justice and right to thy subjects, be upright and firm, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, but always to what is just; and do thou maintain the cause of the poor until such a time as the truth is made clear. And if anyone has an action against thee, make full inquiry until thou knowest the truth; for thus shall thy counsellors judge the more boldly according to the truth, whether for thee or against.

Why not me for O.C. Sheriff?

Out here in beautiful Orange County, we’ve had an ugly mess over our O.C. Sheriff, Mike Carona, who recently was indicted and resigned. The Board of Supervisors is looking for a replacement candidate. A couple articles on the matter are by my former Register colleagues Steven Greenhut and Frank Mickadeit.

While mulling their commentaries over some Booker’s and a Macanudo, I realized that, to serve great people of Orange County, I’m throwing my hat into the ring. As Jimmy Carter insisted in 1976, “Why not the best?”

Here are my qualifications:

1. Extensive law enforcement experience. I was in the U.S. Army from 1978-82. From 1979-82 I was a member of an elite Military Intelligence Unit, the 533rd CEWI Battallion, stationed athwart the Fulda Gap in West Germany. (CEWI = Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence.) During that entire time, the evil Red Army didn’t dare attack. We — I — stared them down. And the commies had more than 40,000 nukes (that’s the Joe 4 explosion in the picture, named after mass-murdering commie dictator Josef Stalin; Russky name: RDS-6s, or Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina). Quit a bit more dangerous than dealing with drunks and pickpockets, wouldn’t you say? We — I — won the Cold War and saved America. Without us — me — right now you’d be speaking Russian and picking oranges on the local collective farm.

2. I grew up in a Law Enforcement Family. It’s in my blood. My late father was a District Judge for 25 years, from when I was 5 until I was 30. In high school, kids called me “judge.” I grew up around judges, sheriffs, cops, lawyers, and other law enforcement types. I know this stuff cold.

3. I’ve actually read the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. How many other candidates can say that? I hope the Board of Supervisors actually asks us candidates about the Bill of Rights. Here’s my answers to a couple of questions:

Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms? It’s absolute. That means all state and local laws on guns are void. You don’t even need a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Use by sheriffs of tasers that kill people? Banned.

Secret inquiries into alleged sheriffs’ and police’ abuse of powers? All now will be made public.

Federal aid to the Sheriff’s Department? All unconstitutional, and therefore denied. We don’t need the Feds’ blood money to defend our local people.

4. My model for sheriff sure won’t be Mike Carona or his brutal predecessor, Brad Gates. Instead, my model will be America’s Sheriff: Andy Griffith. Deputiy sheriffs will be expected to be like Sheriff Griffith’s deputy: Barney Fife, carring only an unloaded .38 with a single bullet kept safe in the shirt pocket. By the way, did you notice that the city next to Mayberry is Siler City (a variant spelling of my name)? Another qualification.

I expect I’ll hear from the supervisors soon. I’m going to lose some avoirdupois so I’ll look great in my new uniform.

U.S. Snooze: More Big Government needed — right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right

Bush has increased Big Government faster than any Supreme Leader since LBJ. His Big Government Iraq War is costing from $3-5 trillion. Big Government’s Federal Reserve Board is inflating the dollar, forcing us all to pay big money for gas, food — eventually, everything. Big Government chokes our lives as never before, riding herd on our once-free people.

So what does U.S. News & World Report say we need? Why, even more Big Government! —

Here’s a little straight talk: Whether you pull the lever (or fill in the oval or touch the screen) for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or even John McCain in November, you’re probably still going to end up in 2009 with a push for Big Government of the sort not seen in a generation. More taxes. More regulation. More spending. “It’s going to be like watching That ‘70s Show,” says Daniel Clifton, political analyst at Strategas Research Partners, which provides research to institutional investors….

If we are about to see the onset of Big Government 3.0 in earnest, future economic historians might well point to the housing-spawned credit crunch as the catalyst. The Federal Reserve’s recent power play—instigating the takeover of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase and backing up the deal with $30 billion in loan guarantees—was unprecedented, as was its move to open up its discount borrowing window, previously limited to commercial banks, to investment banks.

But it was the Fed itself that caused the crisis by creating too much money, igniting inflation — and so boosting interest rates and crashing the housing market!

Injecting reality

Well, reality does intervene. And I’ll give all America a big dose of it right here:

Chinese stocks soared Thursday after the government cut a tax on stock transactions in a move widely seen as an effort to boost slumping markets.

The rebound came as many global markets are recovering modestly after being battered since the start of the year amid worries about the U.S. credit crisis and slower global growth.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index surged as much as 9.6 percent in early trading, as investors resumed buying after weeks of holding back in hopes of market-boosting news. By midday, it was up 6.7 percent at 3,498.61.

The jump came after the government announced late Wednesday that it was cutting a stamp tax on share transactions to 0.1 percent from 0.3 percent. That reversed a tax increase May 30 when regulators were trying to cool surging stock prices.

That’s from a report on CNN.com.

Which 1970s?

U.S. Snooze said it was going to be like the 1970s. Except that until 1976, the mass-murdering socialist Mao ran China. It wasn’t until 1978-79 that they began their capitalist reforms. In 2008, Mao is long dead and the Chinese capitalist dragon is roaring. Their slogan: “To make money is glorious!” And there are 1.3 billion Chinese compared to 300 million Americans.

U.S. Snooze’s slogan: “To increase Big Government is glorious!”

Get it, America? The Chinese are coming down the railroad track right at us. And this time they’re not 19th century Coolies building the track, or 1960s Maoists shouting Cultural Revolution slogans. They’ve learned capitalism from America and now they’re out to best us. The 2008 Beijing Olympics is their coming out party. Given the poor quality of our “leadership” — Obama, Hillary, McCain? Ha! — they just might do it.

How can we stay ahead? Do what the Chinese are doing: cut taxes, keep spending low (no stupid, expensive wars, like in Iraq), innovate, compete.

Contra U.S. Snooze, there’s no other way.

Layoff mania at the O.C. Register and NY Times

 Newspapers are being hit with another round of layoffs. The Orange County Register, where I worked for 19 years, today announced it was laying off another 80-90 people, about 5% of the work force. It’s the fourth round of job cutting — beginning with the buyout in November 2006, which I took.

Even the NY Times, home of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Duranty, is laying off his successors.

I feel for the people who are losing their jobs in the midst of a recession.

It’s likely to get worse. I’ve been writing about the new inflation, caused by he country not being on the gold standard since 1971. Bush, Greenspan, and Bernanke have been creating too much money, dropping the value of the dollar to that of toilet paper .

Gold — the only real money — has been gaining in value against the increasingly worthless dollar. Other commodities are closely tied to gold. The Bushflation is driving up newsprint prices, by 20% the past year. That should bring even more newspaper layoffs.

Maybe if newspapers had put some talent onto the gold standard story, instead of just parroting what government officials say about monetary policy, we’d be back on gold and wouldn’t have any inflation at all. Newsprint prices would be steady, and low — postponing newspapers’ inevitable deaths by a month or two.

But I’m one of the few newspapermen who ever wrote about gold, and I’m not in newspapers anymore.

“Perfect storm”

This is a “perfect storm” for the newspaper industry. The Internet keeps chewing up circulation and advertising. Newsprint prices are rising. A general recession is fast approaching, and could be deep. Demographic are changing: more immigrants come here who don’t read much English.

And unlike past recessions, when this one ends there’s no reason to believe that readership and advertising will return. Online, free resources just keep getting more plentiful, while computers and the Internet keep dropping in price as technological improvements avoid the inflation in other areas of life.

The Register’s circulation in the last six months that ended March 31 crashed by 11.9%, to 250,724 daily. Just a few years ago daily circulation was around 350,000. The big circulation drop, according to the Register, partly was due to ending freebies in hotels and other places.

But the Register now has dropped from the third biggest circulation paper in California, a position it long held, to the fifth biggest. So, comparatively it has done worse than other California papers in a similar media and demographic environment. Indeed, without a real local TV news market — except for a couple hours on KDOC every morning — one would think the Register would have an advantage.

It seems to me that the cause is a breakdown in management, which keeps failing to find out how to retard circulation erosion while transitioning to the Web. It still bothers me that my talented multimedia friends, Jocelyn Leger and Mike Shelton, were tossed overboard.

20% profits?

Part of the problem may be that newspapers, including the Register, long have expected, even demanded, 20% profit margins. This was because most papers in recent decades have been monopolies, or near-monopolies like the Register (the L.A. Times circulates in O.C., but a decade ago cut most of its local coverage). But the Internet changed that equation, bringing competition in news from global news sources, in commentary from blogs, and in advertising from Craig’s List and other sources.

Maybe, instead of insisting on perpetual 20% profits, newspapers should have invested some of that dough in new technologies and in maintaining more journalists and artists. Maybe profit margins now should be around 5%, as in the grocery business. I don’t know. I’m just speculating.

But the market has hammered newspaper valuations, indicating that the current model isn’t working for investors. Here’s an update on a graph I’ve included before, of the stock prices of the NY Times, Gannett, and McClatchy. These companies are publicly traded, unlike Freedom Communications, the parent company of the Register; so the graph allows us to extrapolate Freedom’s value from the value of similar companies.

Here’s the last 5 years:

Here’s a graph for the past year alone:

The NY Times is doing better in recent months, but Gannett and McClatchy are not.

It just doesn’t look good for anybody. Historically, this is a classic shakeout of an old industry by a new one. It’s cars replacing horses and buggies, planes replacing trains, and iPods replacing CDs, which earlier had replaced LPs.

What lies ahead probably is more newspaper consolidation until, in half a decade or so, the print editions finally give up Great Caesar’s Ghost.

An idea…

In the interim, here’s an idea to help boost circulation and online readership: Have every newspaper manager, from top honchos such as Freedom CEO Scott Flanders down to copy editors, write a weekly column and daily blogs. Let’s see how well they can write, and think.

And their words would fill the spaces of those they fired.

Why you can’t afford to send your kids to college

The biggest racket in America isn’t politics, or polygamous Mormons in Texas, or welfare. It’s colleges and universities.

Consider this story:

UC Berkeley officials are defending an unusual arrangement that allowed Police Chief Victoria Harrison to retire last year with a $2.1 million package and then return to the same job right away for more money.

“No laws were broken,” Cal spokeswoman Marie Felde said Thursday. “That’s very clear.”

UC spokesman Paul Schwartz said the retirement package was consistent with university policy and reflected benefits she rightfully earned.

“She did not receive anything special,” he said.

That’s just for being a cop. Granted, with kids shooting each other like ducks in a pond nowadays, campus police work is more demanding than in the 1950s, when the biggest threat was panty raids.

But she’s still just a cop. And she’s returning to the same job!

And the key phrase is: “She did not receive anything special.” It happens all the time.

College tuition costs are high and getting higher because subsidies force up prices. And the subsides grow for several reasons:

First, university folks are, by definition, smarter than the rest of the populace. So they know how to wheedle money for themselves.

Second, almost every congressman or state legislator went to college, and generally has positive memories. It’s good to remember those carefree days of smoking dope on the quad and discussing Sartre with your buddies, before the inevitable post-graduation sellout to the special interests. They want other kids to have the same experiences.

Third, some university departments — the sciences, engineering, math, medicine — do stellar work that contributes to society.

Fourth, politicians don’t want to go up against the leftists who run the social science and humanities departments. So what if generations are brainwashed that Washington and Jefferson were tyrants and Mao and Stalin were exemplary leaders?

So the massive taxpayer subsidies, especially from the federal government, continue, grow, and force tuition prices even higher.

The best thing would be to end the taxpayers’ subsidies and let free-market forces determine price. But that’s not going to happen. Why work for a living if you can get others to pay for your luxury?

Why McCain will lose

Gas out here in California now tops $4 a gallon for 91 octane. Soon, it’ll top that for 87 octane.

That’s why McCain is going to lose, probably to Obama, maybe to Hillary. None of these candidates has a clue what’s going on. They all have “energy policies” that would reduce American independence on “foreign oil” (although most U.S. foreign oil comes from Canada and Mexico) and force conservation.

But the problem isn’t energy policy, it’s monetary policy. It’s inflation. It’s not returning to the gold standard, which would keep the value of the dollar constant, instead of inflating it.

I can understand why McCain doesn’t want to touch inflation. It’s Ron Paul’s issue. And Paul is still out there campaigning, even though McCain has enough delegates to win the nomination. Paul wants some more delegates so he has a greater presence at the GOP convention. McCain is clueless on economics, and sure won’t give any credit to Paul.

Republicans used to understand this stuff cold, how inflation was caused by the Federal Reserve Board creating too much money. Now, aside from Paul and a few other exceptions, the GOP is as clueless as Democrats. I remember how in 1976 Republicans, especially conservatives, ridiculed their own president, Jerry Ford, for his ridiculous WIN campaign (Whip Inflation Now), which was supposed to encourage people to refrain from asking for pay raises. Ford passed out WIN buttons (as in the picture above). It didn’t work. Jerry was urged to return to the gold standard Nixon had abandoned in 1971, but didn’t. Must have played football without a helmet too many times for the University of Michigan (as Reagan once quipped).

It wouldn’t surprise me if Bush brought back WIN buttons. In addition to his own mistakes, he seems eager to repeat every mistake of his predecessors.

Democrats also clueless

For Democrats, they just don’t get it. They should. The three biggest inflators in history were Republicans: 1. Nixon (the worst); 2. George W. Bush; 3. Lincoln.

The fourth was FDR.

Democrats should return to the gold standard espoused by every Democrat up to JFK, and to some extent even LBJ. That means only two Demo presidents didn’t favor the gold standard: Carter, who was done in by inflation; and Clinton, who enjoyed a rare period of low inflation off the gold standard. (FDR, after debasing the currency in 1933, didn’t do so again. This meant World War II was paid for on low-interest, gold-standard money, easing debt payments during and after the war.)

Inflation slams the party in power. It helped defeat LBJ in 68, Ford in 76, and Carter in 80; and helped push Nixon to resign in 74. Sure, there were other factors for these political defeats. But when the economy is crashing from inflation, people just want a questionable president out.

And for a lame duck like Bush, with his Bushflation, people just want the incumbent party gone and the other party put in power to try something new. In addition to $4 gas, we have rice rationing at Sam’s Club and Costco — sort of like China under Mao. And and I’ve noticed that bourbon has gone up in price at least 10% in recent weeks, a real tragedy.

So McCain is toast — which, by the way, costs more that it used to because of the inflated price of bread.

Free Wesley Snipes!

The evil federal government just sentenced actor Wesley Snipes to 3 years in prison for three misdemeanor charges of not filing his taxes. It was the maximum penalty.

Three misdemeanors.

How about accepting his apology and accepting his check for payment? Nope. Not enough.

What a vicious government we have. The feds alone waste more than $3 trillion a year on unconstitutional wars, unconstitutional welfare schemes, unconstitutional assaults on our liberties — unconstitutional everything. And even that isn’t enough to steal from us. So they’ve put America’s citizens — even its children, born and unborn — in hock $9 trillion.

To get that kind of money they need to terrorize citizens into coughing up their hard-earned dough.

The news story reported:

“There’s nothing unusual about prosecuting a celebrity,” Judge William Hodges said. “[Snipes] never mentioned the words tax or taxes in his apology.”

Our Masters want us to grovel before them.

And the government loves to prosecute celebrities because it publicizes their terror and gets the little people to more readily go along. Remember how the odious Rudi Guiliani framed, demonized, prosecuted, persecuted, and imprisoned Leona Helmsley and Michael Milken?

This is not a free country. Just ask Wesley Snipes.

California should secede from George IV’s tyranny

Gov. Arnold’s regime is upset that Prez Bush’s regime won’t let California impose its own socialist environmental laws. The Sacramento Bee reports:

The U.S. Department of Transportation proposed rules Tuesday that would raise the combined fuel economy standard for automobiles and light trucks to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015 but also block California and other states from imposing their own regulations for greenhouse gas emissions.

California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols called the specific restriction on states “a buried time bomb ticking away,” “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and “a direct attack on the states.” The state intends to declare its opposition during a federal 60-day comment period, and Nichols vowed that California would sue if the Bush administration were to adopt the restriction on states.

Why sue when you can secede?

Personally, I don’t like the new California regulations, which as usual for this state overdue things. But it’s our state, and we can mess it up however we wish.

California’s Legislature should declare that the Golden State has seceded from Bush’s tyranny and now is the free and independent California Republic . I’ll write the words they can use, and won’t even charge a consulting fee:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Has a kind of ring to it, don’t you think?

Ron Paul No. 2 in P.A.

Ron Paul is garnering 16% of the vote in Pennsylvania, putting him in second place.

That means if McCain returns to sanity and quits, Paul would be at the top of the list for a replacement.

So, Republicans, wise up and support the only candidate who would end the unconstitutional Iraq War, end Bush’s war on our civil rights, abolish the income tax, appoint pro-life judges, and end inflation by restoring the gold standard.

He’s also the only Republican who can defeat Obama.

Oh, and there’s no question about Paul’s mental stability.

It’s not too late.