Niall Ferguson at the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival on July 6th. (Photo: Daniel Bayer / Aspen Ideas Festival) Even the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual gathering of the country’s brightest lights, isn’t Obama country anymore. Lloyd Grove on the president’s waning support among the intelligentsia.

You’d think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festival—which is running all week in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders—would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own.

In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave pairing the Aspen Institute think tank with the Atlantic Monthly magazine might even be seen as President Obama’s natural base.

Apparently not so much.

“The real problem we have,” Mort Zuckerman said, “are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers, and his departing budget director, Peter Orszag, can expect heavy weather when they land in Aspen later this week to make their case to this civic-minded clique of wealthy skeptics.

“If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Monday’s kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.

“The curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.”

Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Both lambasted Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program—in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown—as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.

“We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,” Zuckerman said. “The real problem we have…are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

Zuckerman added that he detects in the Obama White House “hostility to the very kinds of [business] culture that have made this the great country that it is and was. I think we have to find some way of dealing with that or else we will do great damage to this country with a public policy that could ruin everything.”

Ferguson added: “The critical point is if your policy says you’re going run a trillion-dollar deficit for the rest of time, you’re riding for a fall…Then it really is goodbye.” A dashing Brit, Ferguson added: “Can I say that, having grown up in a declining empire, I do not recommend it. It’s just not a lot of fun actually—decline.”

Ferguson called for what he called “radical” measures. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.” He praised “really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system” and “unleash entrepreneurial innovation.” Otherwise, Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”

This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. “Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. “So exciting. Wonderful!”

Brolin’s assessment: “Mind-blowing.”

In a session Tuesday morning, Silicon Valley guru Michael Splinter piled on. “From an industry standpoint, it’s below what a lot of people in industry have viewed as the solution to the jobs problem,” Splinter, president of the Applied Materials solar energy company, complained about Obama’s economic performance. He was speaking to an agreeable audience in an interview with Atlantic Media owner David Bradley. “When I talk to venture capitalists, their companies are starting to move their manufacturing operations out of the United States…Our corporate tax rate, on a worldwide competitive basis, is just not competitive. Taiwan is lowering their rate to 20 to 15 percent in order to stay competitive with Singapore. These countries have made it their job to attract industry. You don’t get that sense here in the United States.”

The consensus was similar in an afternoon panel discussion on the decline of the American middle class. “He said jobs were going to be his No. 1 priority—there’s a huge disconnect between Washington and what’s going on out in the country,” nominal Obama supporter Arianna Huffington said. “The president’s economic team kept talking about a ‘cyclical’ problem. Larry Summers said jobs were a lagging economic indicator. All these things are simply wrong. The president put all his trust in the wrong economic team—an economic team that didn’t understand what was happening.”

Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.

Welcome To Maywood, Mexico (SoCal)

By Roger Hedgecock
7-6-10

Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.

The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.

How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for “brown power” politics.

Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first “sanctuary” cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty to all illegals.

Council meetings were conducted in Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.

The City of Maywood started out quite differently. Back after World War II, Maywood was a booming blue-collar town with good jobs, a multi-ethnic suburb of Los Angeles.

On the 25th anniversary in 1949 of Maywood’s incorporation as a city, the town celebrated with a beard-growing contest, a rodeo, and wrestling matches in City Park. Chrysler operated an assembly plant there until 1971.

But the early 1970s saw these industrial jobs in aerospace, auto and furniture manufacturing, and food processing evaporate under the pressure of higher taxes, increased local and state regulation, and the attraction of cheaper land and cheaper labor elsewhere.

The multi-ethnic Maywood of the post-war years was transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by wave after wave of Hispanic immigrants, many of them illegal.

In August 2006, a “Save Our State” anti-illegal immigration rally in Maywood drew hundreds of protesters-but a larger number of defenders of illegal immigration. The pro-illegal protesters carried signs which read “We are Indigenous! The ONLY owners of this Continent!” and “Racist Pilgrims Go Home” and “All Europeans are Illegal Here.”

According to newspaper reports at the time, objectors to illegal aliens were subject to physical attacks. A 70-year-old man was “slashed,” a woman attacked, and cars vandalized. Pro-illegal demonstrators raised the Mexican flag at the U.S. Post Office.

The illegal population and their sympathizers became increasingly radicalized. Elections to the City Council saw “assimilationist” incumbent Hispanic council members ousted by La Raza supporting radical challengers.

For years, the Maywood City Council authorized police checkpoints to stop drunk driving. Drivers without licenses had their cars impounded. Illegals in California cannot get drivers licenses. By 2005, the number of such impounds were in the hundreds. A community campaign was launched forcing the City Council to suspend the checkpoints.

Cars were still being impounded whenever a police traffic-violation stop resulted in a driver without a license. Felipe Aguirre, a community activist with Comite Pro-Uno, an “immigration service center,” coordinated a new campaign against any impounds. He was elected in 2005 to the City Council. He is the mayor of Maywood today.

Aguirre and a new majority of the council dismantled the Traffic Department. Illegals were given overnight-parking permits and impounds stopped. You didn’t need a license to drive in Maywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote glowingly of this “progress” in a story entitled “Welcome to Maywood, Where Roads Open Up For Immigrants”.

The Maywood Police Department was restructured by the new council. A new chief and new officers were hired. Later it turned out that many of the new officers had previously been fired from other law enforcement agencies for a variety of infractions. The Maywood P.D. was known as the “Department of Second Chances.”

Among those hired was a former L.A. Sheriff’s deputy terminated for abusing jail inmates; a former LAPD officer fired for intimidating a witness; and an ex-Huntington Park officer charged with negligently discharging a handgun and driving drunk.

Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood Police Department a “haven for misfit cops.” Their story alleged that a veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive; that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage police-explorer scout.

Charges of corruption and favoritism led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls are heard to this day.

Maywood is represented in the state Senate by Democrat “One Bill” Gil Cedillo. He earned the nickname by introducing every year in the state legislature a bill to grant drivers licenses to illegals. Maywood is represented in Congress by Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard, a staunch advocate of amnesty for illegals.

Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.

Maywood is the warning of what happens when illegal immigrants, resisting assimilation as Americans, bring with their growing numbers the corruption and the radical politics of their home countries. Add the radical home-grown anti-Americanism of Hispanic “leaders” and groups like La Raza and you get schools where learning is replaced with indoctrination, business and jobs replaced by welfare and gangs, and a poisonous stew of entitlement politics.

In too many American communities, this sad tale is all too familiar.

=========================NO PROSECUTIONS FOR VIOLATION OF WHITES’ CIVIL RIGHTS

American Third Position

Black Panther: Kill White Babies

Posted: 07 Jul 2010 08:17 AM PDT

Not only did he intimidate voters outside a Philadelphia poll on Election Day 2008, Samir Shabazz shouted over a microphone at a street fair: “You gonna have to kill some of they babies,” referring to “crackers” (White people).

See the video: Before the Obama Justice Dept Dropped Charges Against Him, Black Panther Advocated Killing White Babies

On Tuesday, former Justice Department employee J. Christian Adams testified before the Commission on Civil Rights that the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers was dropped because the Justice Department did not want to pursue cases involving violation of the civil rights of Whites.

New York Times: Racial Motive Alleged in a Justice Dept. Decision

On Tuesday, Mr. Adams argued that the New Black Panther Party case was solid. He also portrayed the civil rights division as a place where many officials are hostile to the idea of using civil rights laws to go after black perpetrators with white victims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/us/07rights.html

* * * GLENN BECK ON SHABAZZ AND HOLDER

Department of ‘Social Justice’?

Wednesday, July 07, 2010
By Glenn Beck

FNC Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson hate white people

Here we are, picking up the slack for the rest of the media again; they seem fairly disinterested in the New Black Panther case that was dropped by the Justice Department and Eric Holder. Remember the footage from the 2008 presidential election? It’s of New Black Party members who were standing in front of a polling location in Philadelphia in full uniform wielding a police-style baton weapon. They were clearly trying to intimidate potential voters. Now how many times have you seen guys in uniform with baton weapons in front of your polling place? I know, it happens all the time, right? Well, a complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia against Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson. They were part of a national effort by the New Black Panthers to station members at polls and intimidate. After the case was effectively won by the Department of Justice and a default sentencing was imminent in May of 2009, the DOJ made the unheard of move to suddenly file a notice of voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit for two of the defendants. There had to be some reason for the sudden turnaround, right? Some logical explanation. Maybe the defendants were unaware that they were standing in front of a polling location and it was all a big mix up. Maybe they were very, very sorry for violating Americans’ rights and engaging in an activity that African-Americans, of all people, should be offended by.

Or maybe they just really, really hate white people?

Oh, I’m sorry, that’s really presumptuous of me. Let me ask Samir Shabazz directly: How do you feel about white people?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMIR SHABAZZ: I hate white people — all of them. Every last iota of a cracker — I hate him. Because we’re still in this condition.

We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore (expletive) on our arms.

You want freedom? You’re going to have to kill some crackers. You’re going to have to kill some of their babies. Let us get our act together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OK, I think he hates white people. He doesn’t like one iota of them. In fact, he wants to kill them. He also seems upset at black men in African garb who are with white women. Wow. And the Justice Department just let this guy walk?

Now, I’m not a justice expert, but I am a thinker. This doesn’t really sound like justice. Maybe it’s this new thing “social justice” I keep hearing progressives talk about. Nancy Pelosi cries about the rhetoric of the Tea Party; the media tried to paint people who want a restoration of our Constitution as racist or violent — but this man is both. Calling for people to kill white people and babies — and the DOJ does nothing.

They go after the “racist police officers” in Arizona and this “racist law” well, injustice maybe. I mean, I’m called a racist by various progressive blogs and critics because I support policies like the Arizona immigration law. Yet the DOJ can just walk away from these racists and Bill Clinton can excuse Robert Byrd’s KKK past as just getting votes. Robert Byrd’s actual KKK past can be forgiven, but being for smaller government makes you a racist?

When things don’t make sense you have to come up with a different answer. Maybe the DOJ lost interest because of the testimony from former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams, who says the NAACP lobbied the Obama administration to dismiss the Black Panther case:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Do you know whether anybody was consulting as to whether to proceed or the merits of the case with NAACP legal defense fund?

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS, FORMER JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LAWYER: Well listen, this is not firsthand, but I was told by section management that NAACP members or staffers were talking with a voting section attorney in March of 2009 and asking when is this case getting dismissed? Which of course is interesting to hear for the first time that someone is thinking about dismissing the case that you’re in the middle of building…. It seemed strange.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

But why worry — as Nancy Pelosi has warned us, she has heard rhetoric like this before. In case she missed it the first time:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHABAZZ: I hate white people — all of them. Every last iota of a cracker — I hate him. Because we’re still in this condition.

We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore (expletive) on our arms.

You want freedom? You’re going to have to kill some crackers. You’re going to have to kill some of their babies. Let us get our act together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

There has to be some reason for the flip, because seeing video the guy who wants to kill white people, standing with a club outside a polling location really doesn’t help the defense’s case. Maybe it was a little favor for all the support the New Black Panthers gave Barack Obama during the election. I interviewed their top guy leading up to the election and, in one of the creepiest moments on TV, he called Barack Obama the only hope for America’s salvation:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALIK SHABAZZ, NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY: If you had to understand that your ancestors had been in slavery and bondage for 300 years, that your ancestors had been denied the right to become policemen, firemen, attend schools and get mortgages, how would you feel if…

BECK: I’ll tell you — I would feel — I’ll tell you, I would feel — I would feel so unbelievably proud that that country has made so much progress that the richest woman in America is Oprah Winfrey and possibly the next president is also an African-American. I’d feel pretty darn good that we’ve made an awful lot of progress.

Obama’s message is to come together, yet your message — according to your website — is the trials of blacks only, by all black juries, end of all black cooperation with police departments and a separate country for African-Americans. How is Obama your man?

SHABAZZ: Obama is my man, because I believe he can change America and I pray to almighty God that America will listen to and follow Barack Obama, black or white or whoever you are. I say that Barack Obama is the true salvation for America and to bring us beyond the negative and the nasty and injustices that have caused persons like Reverend Wright or myself to speak out. Barack Obama, I pray, Glenn, that you will support him —

(END VIDEO CLIP)

He’s praying that Obama would get us past the injustices. Isn’t this case being dropped an injustice?

Why would Barack Obama want to side with these nuts from the New Black Panthers who were clearly intimidating voters? You have to stop thinking like a rational human being and start thinking like a radical one. Because these tactics are accepted as the norm in the radical world.

Compare the 10-point plan for the original Black Panthers with the New Black Panthers’ plan — these guys don’t associate with each other, but they are both pushing the same ideas. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

But let me back up for a minute and take a look at who this president is surrounding himself with — his circle of influence. We know about ACORN’s use of intimidation tactics. The president has made it clear that he’s walking in lockstep with ACORN:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA: And I definitely welcome ACORN’s input. You don’t have to ask me about that. I’m going to call you even if you didn’t ask me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

And remember what Bertha Lewis recently told her people:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERTHA LEWIS, ACORN: It is going to dwarf the internment during World War II.

They are coming and they are coming after you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

The president has also made it clear how closely he works with SEIU:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Just imagine what we could do together. Imagine having a president whose life work was your work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

And SEIU has not hesitated to use intimidation and violence:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDY STERN, SEIU: We took names. We watched how they voted. We know where they live.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

The president hired Van Jones — and they knew who he was:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VALERIE JARRETT, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We have been watching him really — he’s not that old — for as long as he’s been active out in Oakland —

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Jones was head of Ella Baker Center and started the communist STORM organization whose manual stated: “Revolutionaries need to be militant in street actions. As leaders in the fight for liberation, we should be role models of fearlessness before the state and the oppressor.” They also said: “Marches were be militant and confrontational, regularly defying police commands and occasionally plunging through police lines and barricades.”

So the president had no problem associating with militants who intimidate.

But militant intimidation can sometimes go one step further and become terrorism. Bill Ayers founded the terrorist organization The Weather Underground. Jeff Jones, also of The Weather Underground, helped draft the stimulus package through the Apollo Alliance. Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers’ wife, was part of the Gaza flotilla and they partnered with Jodie Evans from Code Pink.

So homegrown terrorists are literally deciding where to send your tax money.