The New American articles from January 2009

The New American archives from January 2009

Alinsky and his tactics.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
January 5, 2009... Your story on Saul Alinsky ("Alinsky: A Radical Who Matters," November 10) caused me to go to my collection and pull out a tape recording I made of Alinsky, "Plain Talk on Civil Rights," at the Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in San...

Smaller often better.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
January 5, 2009... The "law of diminishing returns" is a universal law that attests to the fact that in getting bigger and bigger, there is a point where businesses' profits start to diminish. This is brought about in that the bigger you are, the slower you are...

Correction.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Correction notice)
January 5, 2009... CORRECTION: In the "Inside Track" section of our December 22 issue, we incorrectly stated that James L. Jones, President-elect Obarna's choice for national security adviser, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. On October 4, 2006,...

Iraqi shoe tosser becomes Arab world celebrity.(Inside Track)(Muntazar al-Zaidi)
January 5, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] During the press conference in Baghdad for his December trip to Iraq, President George W. Bush hailed progress in the war that defines his presidency, but got a reminder of his unpopularity when a man hurled two...

Grass-roots pressure kills Ohio constitutional-convention resolution.(Inside Track)
January 5, 2009... On December l0 the Judiciary Committee of the Ohio House held a hearing on House Joint Resolution No. 8 (HJR 8), "Applying to the Congress of the United States pursuant to Article V of the United States Constitution to call a constitutional...

Accounting procedure hides debt size.(Inside Track)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... The Associated Press reported that if the federal government employed the same accounting procedure used by private companies, the deficit for Fiscal 2008 (ending September 30) would have exceeded $1 trillion. But the government figure has been...

Court won't hear Obama citizenship case--but may soon.(Inside Track)(Barack Obama)
January 5, 2009... On Monday, December 8, the Supreme Court unsurprisingly decided not to hear a case by retired lawyer Leo Donofrio claiming that Obama is not eligible to be president because Obama had dual nationality at birth, so he wasn't a natural born...

Joe the Plumber "Appalled" at McCain's support for the bailout measure.(QuickQuotes)(Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, John McCain)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... "I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him." During his fleeting moments' of fame, which included meeting with Senator John McCain on his campaign bus, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (a.k.a. Joe the Plumber)...

Top NATO Commander in Afghanistan expects a long struggle.(QuickQuotes)(David MeKiernan)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... "At least three or four more years [are needed] until we get to the tipping point where the Afghan army and the Afghan police have both the capacity and capability to provide security for their people." Calling for a doubling of the current...

Listed as a terrorist, she wonders why.(QuickQuotes)( Nancy Kricorian )(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... "I have no idea why I made the list. I've never been to the state of Maryland, except maybe to stop for gas on the way to Washington." A leader of the anti-war group Code Pink, novelist Nancy Kricorian was surprised to find her name among those...

State governors told they can expect help from the Obama administration.(QuickQuotes)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Forty-one of the states that are represented here are likely to face budget shortfalls this year or next, forcing you to choose between reining in spending and raising taxes. Jobs are being cut. Programs for the...

Recession officially admitted.(QuickQuotes)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... "We will write the record book on length for this recession. It's still arguable whether it will set a new record on depth. I hope not, but we don't know." After the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what many already knew about...

Criticism of the Federal Reserve on target.(QuickQuotes)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... "It literally prints its own budget. It pays for its operations out of the interest it receives. Talk about the ATM that keeps on giving.... This is an intolerable situation for an agency that now has such enormous power over the American...

Top Bush adviser likes Obama's team.(QuickQuotes)(Karl Rove, Barack Obama)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... "Monday's announcement of Mr. Obama's economic team was reassuring. He's generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers [who have] a market-oriented imprint." Former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, Karl Rove...

Bailout mania! The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve are spending trillions--and Congress is letting them get away with the biggest theft in history.(ECONOMY)(Cover story)
January 5, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Jet-setting CEOs battered and humbled by outraged lawmakers." This, or some similar title, may be affixed to what will undoubtedly become for many people the iconic event of the unfolding economic debacle known as...

Bernanke's money maneuvers: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's radical policies have prompted alarm that they might worsen our economic recession/depression.(ECONOMY)
January 5, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For a man who once worked at South of the Border, the kitschy South Carolina tourist trap on I-95, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has come a very long way. From his hometown in Dillon, South Carolina, where...

Auto bailout: lemon or lemonade? Will a bailout of the Big Three automakers--General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler-refresh the auto industry or further sour the economy?(ECONOMY)
January 5, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With the total tab for Washington's bailouts in excess of $8.3 trillion and with one economic sector after another looking for handouts, it is perhaps not surprising that the struggling automobile companies would...

A crisis of dollars and sense: the "dollar" bills that we routinely exchange for goods and services are not genuine constitutional dollars, but promissory notes substituting for the real thing.(CONSTITUTION CORNER)
January 5, 2009... Every day, millions of Americans receive and pay out what they think are "dollars." Yet, in almost every instance, they are deceiving themselves. For the "one-dollar" (picture of George Washington on its face) Federal Reserve Note (FRN) that...

Ron Paul: a man of ideas and ideals: Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas, the first book-length biography of the noted congressman, tells the back story of the man behind the revolution, a best-selling book, and the Internet phenomenon.(Book review)
January 5, 2009... Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas, by Christopher Homer and Karen Kwiatkowski, Winnipeg, Manitoba: Variant Press, 2008, 256 pages, paperback, $14.95. "Great and good are seldom the same man," Churchill once pointed out, and with considerable...

Hard times, not hard hearts.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)
January 5, 2009... For the past seven years, the 13 employees of SLM Financial in Fayetteville, North Carolina, have staged their annual Christmas party for the residents of Falcon Children's Home, a Christian home that cares for children who can no longer live...

It's all for free.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)
January 5, 2009... On November 27, CNN honored their Top 10 Heroes of 2008 during a star-studded gala presentation. Last month we profiled one of those 10, Tad Agoglia. Another so honored on Thanksgiving was David Puckett of Savannah, Georgia, along with his...

What goes around comes around.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Teodora Petrova of MERS Goodwill)(Brief article)
January 5, 2009... On November 3, 26-year-old Teodora Petrova was working her first day at the MERS Goodwill Store in Glen Carbon, Illinois. As she was unpacking a box of donated shoes, she discovered stashed in the box $7,500 in cash? Rather than pocketing the...

Socialism's broken promise: even in the United States, the Utopian economic and political system known as socialism remains attractive to those who are not familiar with its track record of broken promises.(HISTORY--PAST AND PERSPECTIVE)(Essay)
January 5, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America," said Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). "The action proposed today by the Treasury Department will take away the free market and institute socialism in...

Tale of two men.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Biography)
January 5, 2009... Plaxico Burress and Francis Lewis, two prominent residents of the state of New York, lived three centuries apart. Burress is a New York Giants football player, and he was the star of football's Superbowl XLII, catching the winning touchdown for...

Bad economics & medicine.(Correction, Please!)(Essay)
January 5, 2009... ITEM: In an article entitled "5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System" in the Washington Post for November 23, 2008, Shannon Brownlee and Ezekiel Emanuel write that the United States lags behind "many developed countries on virtually every...

Ponzi, Madoff, and the Fed.(THE LAST WORD)(Charles Ponzi, Bernard Madoff, Federal Reserve Board)
January 5, 2009... Poor Charles Ponzi is getting another media drubbing. News stories, of late, have been declaring Bernard Madoff's spectacular in- vestment fraud case "the biggest Ponzi scheme in history." Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange,...

Democrats ascend.(Letter to the editor)
January 19, 2009... Charismatic golden-voiced FDR brought about 20 years of Democratic rule when he ran his 1932 campaign against the "Hoover" depression. Yet the depression deepened for the next eight years, and FDR ushered us into WWII. His election base was the...

Timeout on time creation.(Letter to the editor)
January 19, 2009... I have read your fine magazine since its inception, and before that time, I read AMERICAN OPINION. It is one of the few publications I have made a point to read through each issue. AO and TNA have come the closest to being totally accurate...

Asthma sufferers victimized by UN ozone madness.(Inside Track)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As of January 1, 2009, millions of asthma sufferers are no longer legally able to obtain the low-cost albuterol inhalers that enable them to breathe. The inhalers have been outlawed by FDA regulations under the UN...

Money for nothing, and blue chips for free.(Inside Track)(interest rates)
January 19, 2009... The Federal Reserve on December 16 announced a record-setting cut in interest rates, targeting the federal funds rate at zero to a quarter of a percent. There were hosannas and flourishes on Wall Street, with the Dow surging more than three...

Rooting for world government.(Inside Track)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "And now for a world government." That is the title of an important op-ed by Gideon Rachman that appeared in the Financial Times of London--important both for the showcase in which it appeared and the smug admissions...

Conservative leader Paul Weyrich passes away.(Inside Track)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... A leader of what became known as the "New Right," veteran conservative activist Paul Weyrich passed away on December 18 after a long bout with diabetes. A native of Wisconsin, he began a career in the world of politics as an aide to Colorado...

She wants to be a senator but doesn't always vote.(QuickQuotes)(Caroline Kennedy)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "She has not voted on a handful of occasions over the last two decades." Anxious to succeed Senator Hillary Clinton as a New York senator, Caroline Kennedy didn't bother to vote in New York's 1994 senatorial...

No backing down about torture.(QuickQuotes)(Dick Cheney)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process approved." Outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News that he believed the form of torture called waterboarding is appropriate.

Choice of Rick Warren for inauguration invocation riles many.(QuickQuotes)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... "It certainly doesn't help the pro-life movement to... participate in this kind of public way in the inauguration for one who holds to a very radical pro-abortion position." Insisting that he would not deliver a prayer at the Obama...

Iraqi who threw shoes at George Bush asks for pardon.(QuickQuotes)(Muntader al-Zaidi)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... "It is too late to reverse the big and ugly act that I perpetrated. So I ask for your pardon." Facing two years in prison for his insult to President Bush, Muntader al-Zaidi--a hero to many in Iraq and other Muslim countries--addressed his...

Chrysler shutdown sends a shock wave through auto industry.(QuickQuotes)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... "If I were a Chrysler worker, I'd be worried that the plant won't reopen." After Chrysler announced a 30-day shutdown of all 30 of its U.S. factories, Barclays Capital industry analyst Brian Johnson worried about the future of the company.

Environmentalist movie star wants to block oil and gas drilling in Utah.(QuickQuotes)(Robert Redford)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... "These lands do not belong to Bush and Cheney. It's our land--public land--and the BLM is supposed to protect lands on our behalf." Environmental activist and movie actor Robert Redford objects to the Bureau of Land Management's selling of...

D.C. City Council issues tough gun ordinance.(QuickQuotes)(Wayne LaPierre)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... "The DC Council continues to try to make it harder and harder for law-abiding citizens to access the freedom [to be armed]." Still stinging from the Supreme Court's ruling favoring private gun ownership in the nation's capital, the city...

Defense Secretary worries about sending troops to Afghanistan.(QuickQuotes)(Secretary of Defense Robert Gates)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... "I am more mindful than most that with 120,000 troops, the Soviets still lost because they never had the support of the Afghan people." Referring to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan of 1979 that lasted for several years before the USSR...

Stay healthy: government-improved healthcare will mean ailing sickness care.(HEALTHCARE)(Cover story)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If they had been designing a health system from scratch, the change agents assuming power in January would have done things differently. Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy would have given us a Single Payer for medical...

Is conservatism dead? The rise of the neoconservatives within the GOP has not only discredited the Grand Old Party but tarnished the image of conservatism.(POLITICS)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Republican party suffered an overwhelming electoral defeat this past November. The establishment media were all too quick to proclaim that conservatism is dead and we're now at the dawn of a liberal age. Peter...

Neoconservatism in the Obama age: neoconservatives are elated with Obama's appointments, recognizing that the new guard is very much like the old.(POLITICS)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Some traditional conservatives were hoping that with Bush leaving office and Obama coming in, the neocons would be put out of power, but sadly, they're not going away that easily. Contrary to the public's perception...

Socialism's success: socialism, once abhorrent to most Americans, is increasingly being embraced by them. But is more socialism likely to reinvigorate the U.S. economy and help Americans?(ECONOMY)(Column)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] According to the CIA World Factbook, nine European countries place ahead of the United States in terms of per capita Gross Domestic Product--Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden,...

"To save a generation".(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Bennett Chapel)
January 19, 2009... On November 19, ABC World News with Charles Gibson aired a story about the tiny town of Possum Trot, Texas. This hamlet in the eastern part of the state claims a population of only about 300 families, and is the home of Bennett Chapel, a...

Helmets to hardhats helps mother of fallen soldier.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)
January 19, 2009... On October 3, Laurie Fraher walked through her new home for the first time, according to the December 3 issue of The Paper (Dwight, Illinois). Fraher's 19-year-old son, Lance Corporal Ray Holzhauer, was killed in Iraq on March 15, 2007. At...

Hero with a hammer nails escaping rapist.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... On November 20, the Jacksonville, Florida, sheriff's office officially recognized Brad Barnett as a hero for putting his life on the line to rescue a woman who had been kidnapped and raped. As reported by news4jax.com, in June Steven Wilson...

Framer of the framers: John Witherspoon was not only a Founding Father, but in his roles as preacher and professor he taught and influenced many of the great men of the Founding era.(HISTORY--GREATNESS OF THE FOUNDERS)(Biography)
January 19, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On November 15, 1794, a 72-year-old Presbyterian preacher lay dying on his farm near Princeton, New Jersey. In some ways he may have welcomed death. His wife had died five years earlier, and for over two years he had...

Armed citizen bests thugs.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... WSOC TV in Charlotte reported that on December 9, Randy Willis, the owner of Willis Packaging in Catawba, North Carolina, went to his business to check an alarm that had gone off. As he arrived, a man exited the building with a shotgun. Willis...

Victim captures robber.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... William Six of Burson, California, opened his front door late in the day on November 10 to a robber armed with a 10-inch knife. Would-be thief Mike Nicholson III, 24, brandished the weapon and told Six to give him the keys to his best truck....

Wrong choice for a friend.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... If young Malik Hameed, 17, of Birmingham, Alabama, is remorseful over his involvement in a robbery on November 30, it is likely the outcome that he most regrets. Hameed is now charged with the murder of a family friend, Patrick Levert, 26,...

Elderly couple nabs crook.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Brief article)
January 19, 2009... Joshuah Scott Rutledge, 26, of Oakboro, North Carolina, picked the wrong neighborhood to burglarize. He was first chased from a home he intended to burglarize by an alert 70-year-old woman early on November 23. Her identity and how she...

Skepticism about second amendment support.(Correction, Please!)
January 19, 2009... ITEM: The Chicago Sun-Times reported on December 8: "As gun sales shoot up around the country, President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday that gun-owning Americans do not need to rush out and stock up before he is sworn in next month. 'I believe...

Ready to be an extremist again.(THE LAST WORD)(Column)
January 19, 2009... Back in September 2005, I wrote a short column for THE NEW AMERICAN stating that "I'm okay being middle-of-the-road." The column chronicled how acquaintances and family had mistaken my stinging criticisms of the policies of the Bush...