We've Moved!

I'm now hosting the blog at my own domain. The new url is gilesbhoward.com/blog. The layout is new, easier to navigate and the blog has some new features. I'll also be unveiling an essay contest at the new site in the coming weeks so make sure to check it out.

Giles

Students Have No Future in Ravenstahl's Pittsburgh

The following column was recently published in The Pitt News.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s proposal to tax students and hospital patients as a partial fix to the city’s pension crisis lacks specifics. But one thing is clear: Another Ravenstahl administration will cost students hundreds of dollars.

The proposed tax has escalated in recent weeks from a flat $100-per-year fee to a 1 percent tax on tuition, and the mayor said he will not release a specific proposal until November 9 — six days after the mayoral election.

The mayor’s refusal to propose specific new taxes before the election demonstrates the political opportunism that you’d expect from a man running as both a Democrat and a Republican, and it’s this crass opportunism that defines Ravenstahl’s relationship with young people in the city.

The problem is that the mayor knows we don’t vote with any regularity the way unions do and we also don’t give thousands of dollars to his campaign the way that prominent development companies like the Forza Group and the Rubinoff Co. do.

Coincidentally, we are much more likely as a group to be gassed and shot with rubber bullets than members of unions or corporate executives.

Ravenstahl mocked the post-G-20 Summit grievances of students at “Off the Record IX,” the Post-Gazette’s annual variety show, on Oct. 1. The Pittsburgh City Paper reported that Ravenstahl appeared on stage in riot gear and said, “I heard we’re going to face a free-speech lawsuit. Well, I have some free speech for you: F*ck you, Vic Walczak.”

Ravenstahl’s tirade against Walczak, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, was not just childish and crude but demonstrative of the contempt the mayor has for civil liberties and the men who defend them.

One of the few voices publicly condemning the mayor’s behavior, independent mayoral candidate Kevin Acklin, said Ravenstahl’s appearance was “offensive and inappropriate.” I contacted the mayor’s office to get his side of the story but my request for comment was declined.

Acklin said that it sent a message to students and others affected by the G-20 Summit that Ravenstahl isn’t waiting for a trial and that “he’s already made up his mind that it’s okay for the mayor’s office to militarize Oakland, to abuse students’ rights and then to use those offenses as a punch line for a cheap laugh.”

But Ravenstahl’s vulgar outburst was more than just a cheap joke, it was a jab made by a man who thinks he exists above civilized discourse in a city where very few institutions or individuals have the power to stand up to him.

Indeed, Ravenstahl seems to be right, as it took two weeks for the story of his conduct to even appear in the press. The Post-Gazette, at whose event he made such crass remarks, endorsed him on Sunday as the only candidate who “can handle the job” of mayor.

Clearly, the mainstream institutions of this city have failed to hold the mayor accountable and would rather remain on his good side than demand that he shape up and articulate a viable future for the city. This is the crux of the matter: the Ravenstahl Administration has never articulated a vision of the city’s future, but has instead devoted its energies to getting even with the mayor’s enemies and enriching the mayor’s campaign contributors.

Remember, this is the mayor that tried to cut City Council’s staff over a budget disagreement and an Administration that has overseen the awarding of lucrative contracts to campaign donors even when they aren’t the lowest bidders.

The mayor’s approach to students is simply one aspect of his inability to transcend daily politics and lead the city — young and old — toward a better tomorrow. By arbitrarily taxing students and ignoring their legitimate grievances about the city’s handling of Oakland during the G-20 Summit, Ravenstahl is ignoring the very people who are going to be part of this city’s future.

As Acklin said of the mayor’s plan to tax students, “It’s no way to treat the young people so vital to our city, and it’s no way to roll out the welcome mat to tens of thousands of our most eligible future residents.”

And that’s what many of us are: potential future residents of Pittsburgh who should be courted rather than penalized. Many of us work here, we pay taxes, we’re a vital part of the city’s economy and it’s time that we vote in local elections to secure this city’s future and our place in it.

Columbus Day a Losing Battle for Libertarians, Conservatives

TThe Pitt News just published this piece on the recent controversy among libertarians, objectivists and conservatives over Columbus Day:

Scattered across the country in small towns and large cities are countless statues of Christopher Columbus.Once an Italian-American icon and renowned explorer, Columbus’s power over the American consciousness has waned in the past decades. But this year’s Columbus Day saw a resurgence in support for the largely disgraced adventurer.

Surprisingly, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has spearheaded this revival on the national level with an article by Tom Bowden entitled “Let’s take back Columbus Day.” In the article, Bowden writes, “By effectively abandoning Columbus Day, we’ve cheated ourselves out of an opportunity to celebrate the core values of Western Civilization: reason and individualism.”

But Bowden’s identification of Columbus as a representative of Western civilization who brought reason and individualism to the Western Hemisphere ignores the historical record.

Far from Bowden’s construction of Columbus as a Promethean figure who brought liberty and reason to the Americas, contemporary records and Columbus’s own writings depict him as a savage governor, representative of two anti-liberal pillars in Western history: fanatical Catholicism and the government of Ferdinand and Isabella.

It’s easy to put a positive spin on the grand impact of Columbus’s actions because, after all, none of us would be here today and the United States would not exist if it weren’t for Columbus’s “discovery” of the Western Hemisphere in 1492. That being said, it’s much more difficult to defend Columbus as a man rather than a historical idea because his personal conduct reveals a profound barbarism.

Not only a mariner and adventurer, Columbus was the governor of Hispaniola — modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic — where he presided over the enslavement of the indigenous people. Columbus’s treatment of the natives was so harsh that, according to Yale’s Genocide Studies Program, only 32,000, of an estimated pre-Columbian population of several hundred thousand to 1 million, survived by 1514.

Columbus’s journals reveal his intent to enslave the natives of Hispaniola when, upon observing them for the first time, he wrote, “With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Indeed, Columbus’s rule was considered so savage during his own time that Ferdinand and Isabella had him arrested, brought back to Spain and imprisoned. Whatever his supposed role in the expansion of Western civilization, Columbus was understood during his own time as a barbaric tyrant and his actions, as recorded by his contemporaries, reveal him as a savage man who instigated countless atrocities in the new world.

In spite of the historical record, Bowden’s defense of Columbus resonated across the country and found supporters among conservatives and libertarians everywhere. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published an editorial entitled“Columbus Day still worth celebrating” that directly cited Bowden’s argument.

The Trib also published a glowingly pro-Columbus news article entitled “Columbus honored as brave beacon of hope for Italian-Americans,” in which Pittsburghers like Councilman Bill Peduto laud Columbus as a symbol of identity and pride in the Italian-American community and a historical figure representative of America’s immigrant spirit.

It is fascinating that support for Columbus has emerged nationally from an objectivist think-tank that’s reasoning was adopted and echoed by a local conservative publication. For some reason, elements of the libertarian Right have adopted their hemisphere’s first slave-trader as a symbol of Western civilization’s “reason and individualism.”

By picking a fight with the historians who did so much to discredit Columbus and the indigenous movements that continue to identify Columbus Day as an inappropriate celebration of genocide, conservatives and libertarians are staking out positions in a cultural struggle that should never be fought.

It puts rational, secular elements of the Right in a position where they’re defending a man whose personal record is indefensible and whose motivations were more the spread of violent Catholicism than of liberal Western civilization. The Ayn Rand Center should leave such battles to the religious Right that Ayn Rand herself so disdained and continue to do good work in the service of individual liberty rather than shoddy historical revisionism in the service of Italian-Americans.

Students for Justice in Palestine Seek $4,000 to Hold Anti-Israel Conference at Pitt

Displaying a profound disrespect for the educational process, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) joined local anarchists in calling for students to “disrupt schools” in response to the G-20 Summit and now they’re asking SGB for $4,077.51 to fund an anti-Israel conference at Pitt.

            

Scheduled to begin October 23^rd, the “BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) conference” is a collection of workshops including “How to research corporations profiting from occupation and apartheid” and “Academic and Cultural Boycotts.”

            

Organized with the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the conference will host the usual speakers condemning Israel as an apartheid state and a general force for evil in the Middle East. 

            

I’m not writing to discuss the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa nor do I think that that is the most pressing issue raised by the upcoming conference.

            

Putting aside our different positions on Israel, I think we should all be outraged that a student group that called for the disruption of schools around the country three weeks ago is attempting to appropriate more than $4,000 of our money in order to further its fringe agenda on campus.

            

Now, I fully support SJP’s decision to have this conference at Pitt. In fact, I’d encourage people to attend it and witness the farcical logic that underpins the divestment movement.

            

However, it would be unconscionable for Pitt’s diverse student body to have to pay for such a conference. The student activities fee is levied against every student and it would be wrong for anyone but SJP and its supporters to fund a conference that hosts speakers who support terrorist organizations.

            

For instance, the conference is scheduled to include poet Remi Kanazi as a speaker. A man who claims that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, Kanazi wrote in his Twitter feed, “Wow, a marine recruiter just called me! [I] told him, ‘You probably don’t want me with a gun in the Middle East.’”

            

Kanazi’s suggestion that he would be some sort of danger to the United States or its interests if he were armed and in the Middle East is troubling and particularly revealing of his character and politics; both of which no student at the University of Pittsburgh should be forced to fund.

            

His support of Hamas demonstrates a callous disregard for the facts. Objectively, Hamas is an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying terrorist organization with a history of carrying out suicide bombings.

            

Kanazi has a right to defend them if he wants but no student at Pitt should have to subsidize a conference that includes a man such as this among its speakers.

            

The allocations committee recommended that SJP receive $1,748 but neither the University nor SGB should spend a single cent to bring friends of Hamas such as Remi Kanazi to our campus.

            

SGB will make the final decision Tuesday night at 8:45 in room 837 of the William Pitt Union. Students should attend this meeting and make it clear to SGB that no student group that calls for the disruption of schools should receive student activities fee dollars nor should any conference that hosts the like of Remi Kanazi be paid for by students.

            

Make your voices heard; attend Tuesday’s SGB meeting. 

The Independent Alternative to Ravenstahl

The column below was recently published by The Pitt News.

Eschewing the typical ideological identity and principled policy positions that identify a politician as either a Democrat or a Republican, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is running for reelection as both a Republican and Democrat.

            

Ravenstahl, a life-long Democrat, finagled this by defeating a challenger in the Democratic primary and winning the write-in contest for the Republican nomination with 607 votes from Pittsburgh Republicans.

            

With the two-party system successfully broken to Ravenstahl’s will, two independent challengers, Franco “Dok” Harris and Kevin Acklin, emerged to contest the election.

            

Acklin, a business lawyer who grew up in South Oakland and holds degrees from both Harvard and Georgetown, said he launched his campaign “to wrest control of this city from the Machine.” Acklin said that this election is about bringing stronger leadership to the mayor’s office and eliminating the corruption that has flourished during the Ravenstahl Administration.

            

Acklin’s got a point. Ravenstahl’s tenure in office has been dogged by unexplained no-bid contracts, the awarding of city contracts to campaign contributors when they’re the highest bidder and Ravenstahl’s personal misuse of city resources such as the SUV purchased with Homeland Security dollars that he took to a Toby Keith concert.

            

It’s hard to disagree with Acklin when he says, “[the Ravenstahl] Administration is being run for the benefit of a few.” And just in case you think you're one of the chosen few who benefit from the Ravenstahl Administration, remember that Pitt students are Ravenstahl’s new cash cow.

            

Ravenstahl recently proposed levying a $100 fee against undergraduate students in order to help resolve the city’s pension crisis. Both independent candidates came out strongly against this fee with Harris characterizing it as a cynical attempt to extract money from a constituency without the political clout to contest it.

            

Harris said that it made no sense to saddle students with an extra fee when students are prevented by their studies from holding down fulltime jobs. The city should instead look to wealthier non-profits like UPMC and others that own large amounts of land throughout the city but pay no taxes, Harris said.

            

Like Acklin, Harris said that he’s running to bring leadership to the mayor’s office and described himself as a social progressive, economic liberal and fiscal conservative. Harris will appear on the ballot as a candidate of the “Franco Dok Harris Party” and he said that Ravenstahl’s decision to run as both a Democrat and Republican reflects poorly on his personal character and demonstrates that he’ll do anything to win.

            

But the same can’t be said of Harris whose campaign has imposed caps on contributions of $2,400 per individual and $4,800 per household. Harris said that these caps are necessary because it’s impossible to show voters that you’ll bring change to the city if you don’t change the way campaigns are run in the first place.

            

Neither Ravenstahl nor Acklin have joined Harris in this self-imposed campaign finance reform and Acklin said that it simply isn’t feasible. Acklin said, “we’re running to win” and Harris’s contribution caps would make it impossible to defeat Ravenstahl’s well-funded campaign.

            

Although Acklin and Harris disagree on this question of campaign contributions, both candidates said that the best way to keep young people in the city is to promote small businesses and help start-ups establish themselves in local neighborhoods in order to create jobs for college graduates.

            

Harris said that the role of the mayor should be to forge public-private partnerships investing in start-ups and encouraging entrepreneurship. If elected, Harris said he would work to rebuild business districts and help connect entrepreneurs with free legal and business help from local schools.

            

Acklin is equally focused on creating jobs for young people and he stressed the importance of competition and entrepreneurship in rebuilding the city’s economy. As a business lawyer, Acklin said he worked closely with start-ups and green job providers who he thinks are key to the city’s future and its ability to keep young people in the area after graduation.

            

Acklin said that, if elected, he’d make the mayor’s office a “one stop shop” for entrepreneurs where they could be connected with local resources that would help them build a business and create jobs.

            

One thing is clear: There is no room for young people in Ravenstahl’s version of Pittsburgh where business deals are tied to campaign contributions and students are treated as an easy source of revenue in times of crisis.

            

Instead, we must look to the independent candidates because their vision of Pittsburgh’s future includes students not as a $100 a year revenue source to be exploited but as partners in creating a more vibrant city.

Obama Engages Dictators, Abandons Pro-Democracy Movements

The column below was published in The Pitt News today. Enjoy, read and comment:

Two nights of clashes between students and police have stolen the local media spotlight in the aftermath of the G-20 Summit but the major story for the international community to come out of Pittsburgh is the disclosure of Iran’s second nuclear facility.

            

Located on a military base outside of the holy city of Qum, Iran’s second uranium enrichment facility raises the stakes in tomorrow’s talks between Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia.

            

These talks, to take place in Geneva, constitute the fulfillment of one of Obama’s key campaign promises to engage Iran diplomatically and it is a promise that Obama has adhered to in the face of Iran’s June 2009 coup, its continued funding of terrorism and its recent missile test.

            

Indeed, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done everything in his power to communicate his regime’s intransigence to the world. He even appointed a wanted terrorist to the cabinet position of Defense Minister, thumbing his nose at international norms and laws.

            

Ahmadinejad is closely following the North Korean playbook of outrageous international provocations and his conduct is a clear indication that he cannot be trusted.

            

Instead of recognizing Ahmadinejad’s government as the illegitimate and brutal farce that it is, Obama has blindly adhered to his vague foreign policy of engagement. This policy is not only harming the interests of this nation but also damaging the Iranian people whose pro-democracy movement has been largely ignored by the Obama Administration.

            

Rather than denounce the Ahmadinejad government and materially pressure it to abandon its nuclear program, Obama has handled Iran’s leaders with kid gloves and granted them international legitimacy by engaging them diplomatically.

            

Obama should recognize that the Iranian government thrives on illusions and requires international sanction in order to exist. For instance, every time that Obama refers to Iran as an “Islamic Republic,” he is participating in the Iranian illusion of representative government.

            

To call Iran a republic is to ignore the fact that an unelected religious despot known as the “Supreme Leader of Iran” and his council of Medievalist mullahs control the foreign and domestic policies of Iran. This Supreme Leader appoints the heads of the military, media and judiciary as well as the 12 members of the Guardian Council tasked with deciding who runs for president and what laws are ratified.

            

It is impossible to treat this government as representative of the Iranian people but Obama continues to do just this in his desperate attempt to placate the American Left and its nonsensical belief that Iran can be engaged diplomatically.

            

Not only is this policy of engagement a dramatic betrayal of American principles, it is an insult to the Iranian people who have taken to the streets in support of democracy. We should be engaging with these pro-democracy activists and aiding them in their attempt to establish a true Iranian republic not actively undermining them by treating their dictators as legitimate rulers.

            

Indeed, a democratic Iran unfettered by the tyranny of theocracy would have no need for nuclear weapons and would pose no threat to the United States or our allies in the region. Promoting democracy in Iran is the only sure way to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of Ahmadinejad and being used in his genocidal plans to wipe Israel off the map.

            

But what’s most troubling about Obama’s engagement with Iran is that it’s part of a larger foreign policy that fails to delineate between democracy and despotism, right and wrong. Obama has shown a remarkable propensity to reach out to dictators and treat them as legitimate rulers and potential partners with the United States.

            

He has warmed American relations with the Castro dictatorship in Cuba, reached out to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and sent high-level American politicians to meet with despots in Myanmar and North Korea.

            

Dictators crave international legitimacy and whether it’s shaking Chavez’s hand in a photo-op or trading meetings with powerful American politicians for the release of hostages, Obama has consistently delivered this legitimacy to some of the world’s most despicable rulers.

            

It’s time for Obama to tell the truth about despots in Iran and throughout the world and to stop treating them as trustworthy diplomatic partners. Only by standing with the oppressed, pro-democratic elements of nations such as Iran can our nation secure its national interest. 

Interns Deserve Pay Too

This column was published in The Pitt News today. After considering the issues in greater depth, I'm not sure I fully stand by this published position any longer but that's a post for another day.

Internships are a popular way for students to learn valuable work related skills while also getting their foot in the door at a corporation of their choosing. While many interns are paid for their work or at least granted a stipend, the unpaid internship is a fixture of college life.

           

Students in the social sciences flock to unpaid internships working at non-profits, political offices and news publications because they perceive the experience of working for these outfits as vital not only to their college experience but also to their future career.

           

In this process of working for experience rather than money, students are harming themselves and the labor market.

           

First, by working for free, students are telling employers that their labor is not valuable. Remember, internships vary from five to 40 hours a week and many approach full time employment.

           

Working these kinds of hours without any compensation except for “experience” signals that students don’t take their skills and time seriously in the context of a capitalist free market. Keep in mind, we function in an economy where hiring and pay are largely determined by skill.

           

Certainly, nepotism and affirmative action skew this metric but in a majority of situations it is an applicant’s ability that secures them a paying job. And the fact that it is paying is important because exchanging your skills and time for nothing but a letter of recommendation is a reflection on how you view yourself in a job market.

           

Remember, if companies weren’t able to dupe a student into photocopying, answering phones and writing internal memos for free, they would have to hire a paid secretary to perform these tasks. In any other economic system, this demand would give the applicant leverage to secure meaningful compensation for their time.

           

But this isn’t only about the individual college student and the fact that they’re getting ripped off by corporations. No, college students accepting and even clamoring for unpaid internships affect everyone by devaluing labor and making it impossible for students in some areas to trade their skills and time for compensation.

           

For instance, a political science major would be hard-pressed to find a paid internship in a political office and it is almost impossible to find one on Capitol Hill. Instead, there’s intense competition for unpaid internships in politics making it almost impossible for a student to find a paid position.

           

These unpaid internships may teach students the ins and outs of the political system, but they make a political education almost impossible for students who have to pay their own way through college. Without income through the internship, students have to take on second jobs, rely on family or go further into debt in order to gain a firsthand political education in the nation’s capital.

           

This trend is repeated throughout many disciplines as students who have to pay their own way are priced-out of internships. This turns a job market based on merit and ability into one based on wealth and connections.

           

Of course, in some instances, unpaid internships may be necessary for a particular field of study such as law but as an overall trend in education, unpaid internships should be discouraged.            

The difficulty is that many colleges and universities have incorporated unpaid internships as part of their curriculum, encouraging students to basically perform volunteer work for credit. But while a student’s labor can teach them many things through work experience, employment should be considered primarily an economic question and only secondarily as an aspect of education.

           

Treating work as an economic issue rather than an educational one will prepare students for the reality of their time after college, when securing a job is based on your skills rather than your willingness to work for free.

           

On the whole, unpaid internships distort the job market, price many students out of positions in competitive fields such as politics, and reinforce an unrealistic understanding of post-college work. Universities should encourage students to secure the greatest monetary gain possible for the skills they possess, rather than support the exchange of hundreds of hours of labor for little or no material gain.

Local Media Scrutinizes Students for Justice in Palestine

WTAE aired a piece today on Students for Justice in Palestine and their involvement with the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project. Local and national media has picked up the story since my first column was published in The Pitt News. The University must realize that no student's activities fee should go to fund this organization.

Pittsburgh: Proof that Capitalism Works

This column was just published by The Pitt News. Read it below and comment.

G-20 protesters have descended on Pittsburgh not to protest any single policy of the G-20 but to rail against capitalism as an oppressive and unjust system foisted upon billions of people by a cabal of world leaders. These protesters promise to make our city their ideological playground filled with tent cities, anti-capitalist marches and – if the bluster of online anarchists is to be believed – violence directed against local businesses.

            

But Pittsburgh is a vibrant counterpoint to the incipient whining of socialists, Marxists and anarchists who seek to blame an economic system for all the world’s troubles. Our libraries, museums and universities are the product of industry.

            

Every building or public space with the name Mellon, Frick, Carnegie, Heinz or Schenley is a product of capitalism and the wealth generated by innovation and competition.

            

Of course, our city’s relationship with capitalism and industry has had its ups and downs. From the great railroad strike of 1877 to the Battle of Homestead to the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, Pittsburgh bore witness to violence perpetrated by both labor and capital.

            

But in spite of the occasional conflict between labor and business, Pittsburgh’s economic history is one of growth driven by industry.

            

Although we look back on the practices of 19^th century industry with distaste and today view coal, the material that powered this nation, as a disastrous pollutant, Pittsburgh would not exist today as a center of education and medical research had it not been for our past industrial success.

            

Our story of success is one of hard work, competition and innovation and it is a story that goes hand in hand with the history of capitalism in this nation. The simple truth is that no other economic system would have enabled such a history and we need look no farther than the gulags of Soviet Russia, the murderous Great Leap Forward of Communist China or the authoritarian nightmare of Fidel Castro’s Cuba to understand the capitalist imperative.

            

The history or state-directed economies is the greatest vindication of capitalism as the economic system that allows people the greatest liberty and chance for success without undue impositions or interference.

            

Of course, with this chance for success comes the chance for failure and no capitalist economy is without those who have failed. This appears to be a major source of contention for protest organizations like Bail Out the People who kicked off this week’s G-20 protests with their March For Jobs on Sunday.

            

On their website, Bail Out the People called for “a moratorium on layoffs, foreclosures and evictions” and proclaimed “the right of everyone to a job or a guaranteed income.” The suggestion that everyone deserves an income regardless of his or her ability or work is ridiculous.

            

Bail Out the People is demanding that need be elevated above ability and that competition be abandoned in favor of an individual’s “right” to employment regardless of their ability to perform a job or the job’s necessity to the economy.

            

Bail Out the People is just one of the organizations protesting the G-20 but it is important to recognize their ethic of need for what it is and remember that neither this nation nor this city were built by giving jobs to the unqualified or by paying people to do nothing.

            

Over the next week, we will all be subjected to the protesters’ slogans, placards and proclamations. As they criticize and demonize capitalism as an economic system of oppression, we must remember that all we hold dear in this city would be impossible without it.

            

We must remember that capitalism’s critics have had their chance in other nations to establish socialist, communist and statist alternatives but have only succeeded in creating greater pain and suffering.

            

We must remember that for all of capitalism’s flaws, it has still proven to be the economic system most conducive to individual liberty and social mobility.

            

Let the protesters attack capitalism, let them march in our streets and protest outside our businesses because when they’ve exhausted their rage and the circus has ended, our city will still be standing as a testament to the achievements of free men and women engaged in a free capitalist economy.

Student Radicals Mistaken in Assault on Capitalism

Students and young people from Pitt and around the country have been planning protests against the G-20 Summit and, later this week, they’ll have a chance to prove their radical credentials and rail against capitalism in a public space.

            

At permitted and unpermitted protests throughout the city, radical students will, as one proclamation endorsed by Pitt’s Students for Justice in Palestine put it, “take to the streets of Pittsburgh to disrupt the summit and the institutions of capital that profit from its domination.”

            

At a meeting in David Lawrence, Students for Radical Change and Liberation even brought a speaker from Pittsburgh’s own anarchist group, the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, to teach them about participating in mass actions and managing their “arrest-risk” during the G-20 protests, PittBriefly reported.

            

Whether online or on campus, radical student groups at Pitt have assaulted capitalism as our great oppressor and planned to bring it to its knees during the G-20 Summit. But while students and other protesters will undoubtedly get lots of media and police attention during the G-20, the only thing they’re likely to disrupt is the lives of Pittsburghers.

            

The real assault on capitalism is being perpetrated by the heads of the G-20 themselves whose nations are less free market giants than bloated, planned economies. Remember, the list of G-20 states includes Communist China, the Oil State of Saudi Arabia and social-democratic Brazil whose current president, Lula da Silva, is the leader of something called the Workers’ Party.

            

If anything, the G-20 is an organization of major planned economies seeking to turn the world market into a safer, planned market devoid of the sort of risks and rewards inherent in capitalist economies.

            

In fact, the most capitalist nation on that list may well be the United States but President Obama, by proposing caps on wages at financial institutions and an expansion of federally funded health care benefits, is steadily moving our country toward a more statist economy.

            

But protesters would rather identify lack of health care, lack of jobs and global warfare as products of a global capitalist cabal than the result of their own inability to pay for health care, get a job or elect anti-war candidates to office.

            

Of course, the problem with scapegoating is that it’s an easily debunked charade perpetrated by those unable (or unwilling) to engage in serious debate about the facts.

            

The fact is that capitalism lifted this world out of the feudalism and perpetual warfare of the Middle Ages.

            

Capitalism popularized and funded the inventions that improved every American’s life from the steam engine to the telephone.

            

Capitalism made it possible for people to devote four years of their lives to studying Marx at a university.

            

Whether protesters like it or not, capitalism has done more to lift humanity out of bondage and poverty than any tent city in the history of man. Protest China’s human rights policies, Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women or the United States’ continued discrimination against the LGBT community but don’t build up a false enemy in capitalism as an excuse to disrupt businesses and communities in Pittsburgh.

Senate Votes to Allow Guns on Amtrak

The senate voted 68 to 30 on Wednesday to require Amtrak allow passengers to transport unloaded, locked guns in their checked baggage or lose its $1.6 billion subsidy, The New York Times reported. This requirement is similar to how the airline industry handles the transportation of guns but Amtrak protested that it did not possess the same screening capabilities as major airlines and would be unable to handle the new gun regulation safely.

            

While I fully support Second Amendment rights, I’m mainly interested in this story for what it says about Amtrak and government involvement in industry. Amtrak’s Chairman said that this new congressional mandate would require a significant amount of time and money to implicate – far more time than the six months the Senate is giving Amtrak to adopt the new regulation.

            

But Amtrak really has no right to complain because they got themselves into this mess in the first place by becoming a federally subsidized corporation unable to turn a profit or even stay afloat without Federal aid.

            

Personally, I’d like nothing more than to see Amtrak fail to implement this regulation in time, lose its federal funding and go bankrupt the way it should have years ago. With Amtrak out of the way, perhaps this country would finally see the rise of for-profit passenger rail service operated by leadership not beholden to Washington.

            

As far as other businesses are concerned, this Senate amendment should be a cautionary tale: take federal money and abandon the free market and some day you too will be told to implement costly new practices at the ideological whim of some senator.

Camping Protesters Violate City Law, Residents' Rights

This column appeared in The Pitt News today.

A group of six local and national protest organizations filed a federal lawsuit on Friday against the city, the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Secret Service, The Post-Gazette reported. The suit alleges that the three defendants have conspired to deny protesters their First Amendment rights by failing to approve a number of permits for G-20 related protests.

            
Represented by American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania attorney Witold Walczak, the six plaintiffs are Code Pink, The Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh Outdoor Artists, Bail Out the People, G6 Billion and the Three Rivers Climate Convergence.

            
They are petitioning U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster to decide exactly how close to the convention center protesters will be allowed to go and to order the issuance of permits by the city.

            
The permits sought involve a variety of protests including a march from Oakland to downtown sponsored by the Merton Center and the erection of tent cities by Code Pink and the Three Rivers Climate Convergence in Point State Park. Similarly, Bail Out the People and Pittsburgh Outdoor Artists want to camp in East Park and South Side Riverfront Park, respectively.

            
This question of camping in parks and erecting tent cities is really the most baffling to me as a Pittsburgher because, rather than view this as a free speech issue, I see this as a question of the law and the rights of Pittsburgh tax payers.

            
City code states “No person in a park shall camp except with permission of the Director and only for groups of persons under adequate supervision. No person shall set up tents, shacks or any other temporary shelter for the purpose of overnight camping…”

            
Importantly, the parks director has not given these groups permission to camp in the parks, it would be almost impossible to adequately supervise these groups while they camp and it would be a violation of city code for these organizations to set up tents overnight.

            
These regulations govern the activity of every resident of this city throughout the year and I see no reason why thousands of protesters from out of town should be able to violate these regulations based on a flimsy claim that the First Amendment protects camping.

            
A statement on g20media.org, self-described as an “information clearinghouse and media support for dissent at the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit,”            called on activists to “claim Pittsburgh parks for the people” and “affirm the people’s right to use the people’s commons for our activities.”

            
But these activists don’t represent the will of the residents of this city and their assertion of a right to our public parks to use for their activities is ridiculous. The citizens of this city whose taxes pay for the maintenance of these parks will be excluded from them if these activists have their way and are allowed to use our parks as free housing for the duration of the G-20 Summit.

            
For all of their criticism of the G-20 leaders who activists claim represent an “undemocratic” imposition on the world and on our city, at least the G-20 leaders, diplomats and attending press corps will be paying for their lodging while they’re here. But instead of paying for their housing, activists are asking a federal judge to allow them to violate city regulations and set up tent cities in our parks.

            
There is nothing more undemocratic than thousands of protesters from out of town asking a federal judge to overturn the judgement of the elected leaders of the city of Pittsburgh.

            
The G-20 Summit itself represents an inconvenience to many Pittsburghers with traffic jams, security cordons and closed businesses that many of us would not have chosen to bring to our city. That being said, it isn’t right for us to also have to confront the kind of violence and vandalism that G-20 protesters have brought to cities such as London, Seattle and Genoa when they’ve hosted international summits.

            
The protesters planning to camp in public parks, hold unpermitted protests against scores of local businesses and hold unpermitted marches in Pittsburgh neighborhoods are taking our city from us over the span of two days and then have the gall to speak on our behalf.

            
Let me put it simply, the G-20 protesters do not represent the interests or opinions of an overwhelming majority of Pittsburghers who would prefer to have the use of their parks, streets and businesses the week of the G-20 Summit. It is inappropriate for protesters to assume the mantle of “the people” while they try to take from us our parks and our city. 

For Your Awareness...

Politics on a college campus are a lot like an encyclopedia printed by the Kremlin in 1960: they’re 50 years out of date, founded on a general hatred of capitalism and totally out of touch with reality.

Channeling the public theater of Soviet show trials, much of campus politics are based on appearances rather than effect. One of my favorite public displays of useless self-righteousness was when Students Taking Action Now for Darfur (STAND) painted a tent on the lawn of the William Pitt Union to raise awareness about genocide.

Take note incoming freshmen, “awareness” is a word that dominates campus politics.

Why? Because raising awareness is a goal without tangible results. STAND couldn’t claim to stop genocide by painting a tent but they could claim to be informing people through a public spectacle that had no effect on the University of Pittsburgh let alone the nation of Sudan.

Such stunts are necessary because most campus political organizations are focused on major global issues that are impossible for them to affect.

Case in point: ONE at Pitt, a student group that says its purpose is “to help in the fight to end global poverty and fight global disease.” How will ONE at Pitt achieve such lofty goals?

They won’t. But they justify their existence by claiming to “help spread the word, make the population aware, distribute information, and have meetings.”

Similarly, the International Socialist Organization, International Students for Healthcare Reform and Immigrant Care, Campus Anti-War Network and the Students for Justice in Palestine all include language about raising awareness or educating the public as part of either their statement of purpose or list of activities.

Such organizations champion the causes of the hard-left using Student Government Board funds and tactics that could be called street theater at best. Painting tents, holding demonstrations on street corners and championing the cause of failed ideologies such as socialism makes these groups appear nothing more than a costly distraction.

But as ridiculous as the ideologies and tactics of many student groups are, it’s important to realize, as an incoming freshman or a graduating senior, that the image of the world they present is a distorted one.

In real life, governmental bodies don’t hand out money to people to host candle light vigils for Palestine.

In real life, genocides aren’t stopped with painted tents but with guns.

In real life, it’s what you do that matters far more than what you say and what awareness you raise.

Student organizations on the right and left at the University of Pittsburgh have created a fantasyland where moderates are marginalized and extremists are the norm. Not only does such a political atmosphere fail to prepare people for the actualities of American life, it creates a false environment where intention matters more than action.

In fact, the only aspect of the campus political atmosphere that is representative of the nation in general is party politics. Like their national counterpart, the College Republicans play a negligible role on Pitt’s campus.

After all, very few college students have any stake in the repeal of the estate tax.

Just as the College Republicans are in decline, the College Democrats are in ascent. 

During the election, Pitt was one sprawling campaign office for Barack Obama with his face and name plastered everywhere. Not much has changed on campus with his victory except that there’s a bit more self-righteousness in the air.

Importantly, the College Democrats are fairly well funded as student organizations go thanks to generous SGB allocations.

This brings up an important point: These groups are spending your (or your parents’) money. Every foolish publicity stunt, every speaker who comes to talk about the plight of a new brutalized minority in Africa and every fringe publication is paid for by an SGB allocation.

So remember, the political similarities between a college campus and the world at large are limited. Don’t take any group too seriously and keep in mind the fact that you’re funding their stunts. It’s not wasted money as long as you get a good laugh every time they do something ridiculous on the Union lawn. 

The Rhetoric of the War on Terror

As a rhetorical concept, “The War on Terror” has always been a mixed bag. It’s a semantically flawed expression of the U.S. war effort (a war cannot be waged against a tactic) that also manages to sum up the purpose of the U.S. war effort: to eliminate the practitioners of terrorism and their threat to our open society.

Its goals are laudable even if its execution has been flawed but as a term it has engendered partisan bickering and ideological conflict in a way that no martial phrase has in recent American memory. Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration have attempted to phase out “The War on Terror” as a descriptor of American foreign policy in an attempt to dump the ideological baggage that comes with it and start over.

But the American people will always think of the current world conflict as “The War on Terror,” a phrase that came about logically in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The public consciousness on this issue will not be changed nor should it.

Hitchens Rebuts Afghan War Critics

Christopher Hitchens published a well-argued rebuttal to critics of the Afghan War who have begun to lay the foundation for American withdrawal from Afghanistan. I won’t attempt to summarize Hitchens’ point because I highly recommend you read it for yourself but he brought up two important points.

First, we’ve given the Afghans our word that we wouldn’t abandon them to the Taliban and their particular version of Islamic Medievalism. Too many good Afghans have stood alongside NATO forces and taken their country back from these Islamist thugs for us to leave them before they are capable of defending themselves and burying the Taliban for good.

Second, the campaign in Afghanistan is part of larger war against Islamic Terrorism that will most likely lead to conflict with the Iranian dictatorship. For this reason, Afghanistan is an important training and staging ground.

Anyway, I recommend that everyone read Hitchens this week and compare his reasoned argument with Thomas Friedman’s adoption metaphor and decide which one is most compelling. My money is on Hitchens.

Religious Rhetoric Has No Place in Health Care

This column was just published by The Pitt News. Read it and comment.

President George W. Bush and his Republican Party consistently used religious faith to justify their policy initiatives during the Bush administration’s eight years in office. Stridently opposed by the Left, Bush injected religion into every issue — from the war in Iraq to stem cell research — and used faith as a crutch to support weakly reasoned policies.

But the American Left that assailed Bush’s religious initiatives as a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause has been remarkably silent now that President Obama is enlisting religious leaders in his health care reform assault. A clear sign of desperation, Obama and his Democratic allies have attempted to use faith to sell health care reform since June, when Democrats organized an Interfaith Week of Prayer on Health Care .

Of course, Obama’s use of religion in support of public policy has grown more brazen as the debate has grown more difficult. In an Aug. 19 speech before a group of religious leaders, Obama called his health care reform plan a “core moral and ethical obligation” and identified his opponents in the health care debate as “bearing false witness.”

Obama’s language is that of the most dangerous thief who would take money from the American worker and redistribute it to the unproductive in the name of morality. He has revealed his core ethical obligation to be a massive expansion of entitlement spending, contributing trillions of dollars to this nation’s deficit, and he justified the entire program through the language of religion rather than reason.

What’s worse is that Obama has enlisted religious leaders to sell this thinly veiled theft in a blatant violation of the intent of our Constitution. The Founders understood that collusion between religious institutions and the state was not in the interest of the citizenry’s liberty.

For this reason, the Founders included the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment, and presidents and politicians have respected this division between church and state for centuries. Indeed, the 13th president, Millard Fillmore, said, “I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled.”

But Obama has ignored this strong secular sentiment evident in our nation’s history and done exactly what Fillmore and the Founders warned future leaders not to do: mingle faith and politics.


Now Obama is spreading his bastardized brand of politics and religion across the country in a desperate attempt to recapture public support for health care reform. Just last Wednesday, Organizing for America sponsored a health care rally on Flagstaff Hill where both a priest and a congressman enjoined the crowd to
support Obama’s health care goals.

Just as the public use of religion to justify national policy demonstrated the intellectual poverty of the Republican Party during the last decade, Obama’s attempt to sell Americans on health care reform through faith rather than reason should be understood as a sign of weakness.

Indeed, it is a weak politician who cannot support his policy positions with facts and reasoned arguments but instead resorts to statements of belief and morality. This is just what the Democratic Left is doing today by relying on the language of religion and morality in the health care debate.

Toward this end, the Democratic Left has introduced the notion that health care is an inalienable human right that the government has a moral duty to provide to all Americans. This is a great lie designed to separate hard-working Americans from the fruits of their production and redistribute it to the unproductive.


It is a dangerous argument that suggests that the American people have a right to the services of doctors and hospital administrators that trumps the right of these medical professionals to work for their own profit. It is, plain and simple, an assault on individual liberty.

And it is in this assault on individual liberty that the Obama administration has found allies in the nation’s religious leaders. Religion tells man to love his neighbor as himself and to subordinate his interests to an almighty god, just as Obama’s statist ideology demands that citizens assume their neighbor’s burden as their own and submit their liberty to the almighty state.

Both ideologies are incompatible with the republican foundation of this country that’s Founders recognized religion and government as defining threats to individual liberty. When government and religion unite, they are certain to have only one goal: the subjugation of the individual American citizen.