Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has one less thing to worry about. News Corp announced in February 2015 that the U.S. Department of Justice had finished its investigation related to the phone-hacking charges at Murdoch’ newspapers in London and would not prosecute News Corp or 21st Century Fox. On the management front, in March 2014 he got his sons Lachlan and James appointed to top positions at News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, ensuring that his legacy will live on. He also tried, and failed, to acquire Time Warner in what would have been an $80 billion mega-deal. Meanwhile Murdoch, who gave ex-wife Wendi Deng their Fifth Avenue apartment along with a residence in Beijing, bought himself a $57 million bachelor pad in Manhattan in 2014. He then sold his Beverly Hills estate for $30 million, reportedly to his son, James. Australian born, Murdoch inherited two Adelaide newspapers at age 22 after his father’s sudden death. The Murdoch empire includes 120 newspapers in at least five countries (including The Wall Street Journal), a massive cable network comprised of the Fox channels in the U.S. and across Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, one of the largest movie studios with 21st Century Fox, book publishing powerhouse HarperCollins, and a broadcasting and satellite TV arm.
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch is the founder and head of News Corporation, a global media conglomerate. He created FOX Broadcasting Company in 1986.
Synopsis
Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, in Melbourne, Australia. His father was a famous war correspondent and newspaper publisher. Murdoch inherited his father’s papers, the Sunday Mail and the News, and continued to purchase other media outlets over the years. In the 1970s, he started buying American newspapers. Murdoch branched out into entertainment with the purchase of 20th Century Fox Film Corp. in 1985. He later launched his own cable news channel, FOX News.
Early Life and Career
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, on a small farm about 30 miles south of Melbourne, Australia. Since birth, Murdoch has gone by his middle name, Rupert, the name of his maternal grandfather. His father, Keith Murdoch, was a well-known Australian journalist who owned a number of local and regional newspapers: the Herald in Melbourne, the Courier-Mail in Brisbane, and the News and Sunday Mail.
The family farm was named Cruden Farm, after the Scottish village from which both of Murdoch’s parents had emigrated. The house at Cruden Farm was a stone building with colonial pillars, adorned with original paintings, a grand piano and a library of books, situated amongst green expanses of farmland and bordered by Ghost Gum trees. Murdoch’s favorite childhood pastime was horseback riding. His mother later described her son’s childhood: “I think it was a very normal childhood, not in any way elaborate or an overindulged one. I suppose he was lucky to be brought up in attractive—you could say aesthetic—surroundings.”
The son of a well-respected journalist, Murdoch was groomed to enter the world of publishing from a very young age. He remembers, “I was brought up in a publishing home, a newspaper man’s home, and was excited by that, I suppose. I saw that life at close range, and after the age of ten or twelve never really considered any other.” Murdoch graduated from Geelong Grammar, a prestigious Australian boarding school, in 1949 before crossing the ocean to attend Worcester College at Oxford University in England. According to one of his early biographers, Murdoch was a “a normal, red-blooded college student who had many friends, chased girls, went on the usual drinking binges, engaged in slapdash horseplay, tried at sports and never had enough money, no doubt due to his gambling.” Murdoch’s fun-loving youthful ways came to an abrupt end when his father suddenly passed away in 1952, leaving his son the owner of his Adelaide newspapers, theNews and the Sunday Mail. After preparing himself with a brief apprenticeship under Lord Beaverbrook at the Daily Express in London, in 1953, a 22-year-old Murdoch returned to Australia to take up the reins of his father’s papers.
Media Mogul
Immediately upon assuming control of the Sunday Mail and the News, Murdoch immersed himself in all aspects of the papers’ daily operations. He wrote headlines, redesigned page layouts and labored in the typesetting and printing rooms. He quickly converted the News into a chronicle of crime, sex and scandal, and while these changes were controversial, the paper’s circulation soared. Only three years later, in 1956, Murdoch expanded his operations by purchasing the Perth-based Sunday Times, and revamped it in the sensationalist style of the News. Then, in 1960, Murdoch broke into the lucrative Sydney market by purchasing the struggling afternoon daily, theMirror, and slowly transforming it into Sydney’s best-selling afternoon paper. Encouraged by his success and harboring ambitions of political influence, in 1965 Murdoch founded Australia’s first national daily paper, the Australian, which helped to rebuild Murdoch’s image as a respectable news publisher.
In the fall of 1968, 37 years old and owner of an Australian news empire valued at $50 million, Murdoch moved to London and purchased the enormously popular Sunday tabloid, The News of the World. One year later, he purchased a struggling daily tabloid, the Sun, once again transformed the paper into a wild success with his formula of reporting heavily on sex, sports and crime. The Sun also attracted readers by including pictures of topless women in its infamous “Page 3” feature.
Murdoch next expanded his news empire to the United States, with the 1973 acquisition of a Texas-based tabloid, the San Antonio News. As he had done in Australia and England, Murdoch quickly set out to expand across the country, founding a national tabloid, the Star, in 1974 and purchasing theNew York Post in 1976. In 1979, Murdoch founded News Corporation, commonly referred to as News Corp., as a holding company for his various media properties.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Murdoch acquired news outlets around the globe at a dizzying pace. In the United States, he bought up the Chicago Sun-Times, the Village Voice and New York magazine. In England, he acquired the eminently respectable Times and Sunday Times of London.
It was also during these years that Murdoch began expanding his media empire into television and entertainment. In 1985, he purchased 20th Century FOX Film Corporation as well as several independent television stations and consolidated these companies into FOX, Inc.—which has since become a major American television network. In 1990, he founded STAR TV, a Hong Kong-based television broadcasting company that broadcasts to over 320 million viewers across Asia. Throughout the late 1980s, he purchased several prestigious American and British academic and literary publishing companies and consolidated them into HarperCollins in 1990. Murdoch has also invested in sports; he is a part owner of the Los Angeles Kings NHL franchise, the Los Angeles Lakers NBA franchise and the Staples Center, as well as FOX Sports Radio and FOXSports.com.
Later Career
With the dawn of the new century, Murdoch continued to expand News Corp’s holdings to control more and more of the media people view on a daily basis. In 2005, he purchased Intermix Media, the owner of the popular social networking site MySpace.com. Two years later, in 2007, the longtime newspaper mogul made headlines himself with the purchase of Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch has drawn wide criticism for monopolizing control over international media outlets as well as for his conservative political views, which are often reflected in the reporting of Murdoch-controlled outlets such as FOX News Channel. In the 2010 American midterm elections, News Corp donated $1 million each to the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group supporting Republican candidates. Critics argued that the owner of major news sources covering the election should not contribute directly to the political campaigns involved.
His empire, however, was dealt a significant blow in 2011. His London tabloid, The News of the World, was caught up in a phone hacking scandal. Several editors and journalists were brought up on charges for illegally accessing the voicemails of some of Britain’s leading figures. Rupert himself was called to testify that same year, and he shut down The News of the World. News Corp later paid damages to some of individuals who were hacked.
Despite this scandal, News Corp retains a significant share of virtually all forms of media across the globe. Murdoch owns many of the books and newspapers people read, the television shows and films they watch, the radio stations they listen to, the websites they visit, and the blogs and social networks they create. In 2013, he announced a significant restructuring of his empire. Murdoch decided to divide his business into two companies—21st Century Fox Inc. and News Corp. This move separated his entertainment holdings from his publishing interests. According to the Los Angeles Times, Murdoch explained that “Both companies will be uniquely positioned to execute on their respective strategic objectives and to lead their industries forward.”
Although he could never have imagined the power he would one day yield, this kind of influence was exactly what Murdoch sought as a young publisher building his empire. “I sensed the excitement and the power,” he recalls. “Not raw power, but the ability to influence at least the agenda of what was going on.” And after six decades working in the media, Murdoch has said that he could not imagine his life any other way. “If you’re in the media, particularly newspapers, you are in the thick of all the interesting things that are going on in a community, and I can’t imagine any other life that one would want to dedicate oneself to,” he said.
In June 2015, news broke that Murdoch would be handing over the leadership of 21st Century Fox to his son James. James would become the company’s chief executive while Murdoch would stay on in the organization as the executive co-chairman. Murdoch would share this position with his oldest son Lachlan. The company’s board must approve this plan before it can be implemented.
Personal Life
Rupert Murdoch married Patricia Booker in 1956. They had a daughter, Prudence, before divorcing in 1965. He married Anna Torv in 1967, and they had four children before eventually divorcing in 1999. Only 17 days after his second divorce, Murdoch married his third wife, Wendi Deng. They have two children.
Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in June 2013, citing that the “relationship between husband and wife had broken down irretrievably” in court papers. The news of the split came as a surprise to some, but there had some rumors of trouble in the marriage in recent years. The couple has a prenuptial agreement, but many have speculated that there may still be a battle for his billions.
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Rupert Murdoch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rupert Murdoch
Murdoch at Les Misérables premiere in Sydney, on 21 December 2012
In the 1950s and ’60s, he acquired various newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World followed closely by The Sun. He moved to New York City in 1974 to expand into the US market, but retained interests in Australia and Britain. In 1981, he boughtThe Times, his first British broadsheet, and became a naturalised US citizen in 1985 to satisfy the legal requirement for US television ownership.[9]
In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989)[14] and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990, and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.
In July 2011, Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty and public citizens. He faces police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US.[15][16] On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.[17][18] On July 1, 2015, Murdoch left his post as CEO of 21st Century Fox.[19]
Early life
Murdoch was born Keith Rupert Murdoch on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, Australia to Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Elisabeth Joy Greene (1909–2012), daughter of Rupert Greene. Rupert is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. His parents were also born in Melbourne. Keith Murdoch was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate owning two newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia, and a radio station in a faraway mining town.[9] Later in life, Keith Rupert chose to use Rupert, the first name of his maternal grandfather.
Keith Murdoch the elder asked for a rendezvous with his future wife after seeing her debutante photograph in one of his own newspapers and they married in 1928, when she was aged 19 and he 23 years her senior.[20] In addition to Rupert, the couple had three daughters: Janet Calvert-Jones, Anne Kantor and Helen Handbury (1929–2004). Murdoch attended Geelong Grammar School,[21] where he had his first experience of editing a publication, being co-editor of the school’s official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived.[22][23] He also took his school’s cricket team to the National Junior Finals. He worked part-time at the Melbourne Heraldand was groomed by his father from an early age to take over the family business.[6][9] Murdoch read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford in England, where he supported the Labour Party[6] and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell.[24] After her husband’s death from cancer in 1952, Elisabeth Murdoch went on to invest herself in charity work, as life governor of the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne and establishing the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. At 102 (in 2011), she had 74 descendants.[20] Murdoch completed an MA before working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.[9]
Activities in Australia and New Zealand
Journalist Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952), Rupert Murdoch’s father
Following his father’s death, when he was 21, Murdoch returned from Oxford to take charge of the family business News Limited, which had been established in 1923. Rupert Murdoch turned its newspaper, Adelaide News, its main asset, into a major success.[6] He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion, buying the troubled Sunday Times in Perth, Western Australia (1956) and over the next few years acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory, including the Sydney afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror (1960). The Economist describes Murdoch as “inventing the modern tabloid”,[25] as he developed a pattern for his newspapers, increasing sports and scandal coverage and adopting eye-catching headlines.[9]
Murdoch’s first foray outside Australia involved the purchase of a controlling interest in the New Zealand daily The Dominion. In January 1964, while touring New Zealand with friends in a rented Morris Minor after sailing across the Tasman, Murdoch read of a takeover bid for the Wellington paper by the British-based Canadian newspaper magnate, Lord Thomson of Fleet. On the spur of the moment, he launched a counter-bid. A four-way battle for control ensued in which the 32-year-old Murdoch was ultimately successful.[26] Later in 1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia’s first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney.[27] In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, who later regretted selling it to him.[28] In 1984, Murdoch was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for services to publishing.[29]
In 1999, Murdoch significantly expanded his music holdings in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in a leading Australian independent label, Michael Gudinski‘s Mushroom Records; he merged that with Festival Records, and the result was Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed by Murdoch’s son James Murdoch for several years.[30]
Political activities in Australia
Murdoch found a political ally in John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party (now known as the National Party of Australia), who was governing in coalition with the larger Menzies-Holt Liberal Party. From the very first issue of The Australian Murdoch began taking McEwen’s side in every issue that divided the long-serving coalition partners. (The Australian, 15 July 1964, first edition, front page: “Strain in Cabinet, Liberal-CP row flares.”) It was an issue that threatened to split the coalition government and open the way for the stronger Australian Labor Party to dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.[31]
After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it elected[32] on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People’s Republic of China, and public ownership of Australia’s oil, gas and mineral resources. Rupert Murdoch’s backing of Whitlam turned out to be brief. Murdoch had already started his short-lived National Star[31] newspaper in America, and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.[33]
Asked about the Australian federal election, 2007 at News Corporation’s annual general meeting in New York on 19 October 2007, its chairman Rupert Murdoch said, “I am not commenting on anything to do withAustralian politics. I’m sorry. I always get into trouble when I do that.” Pressed as to whether he believed Prime Minister John Howard should continue as prime minister, he said: “I have nothing further to say. I’m sorry. Read our editorials in the papers. It’ll be the journalists who decide that – the editors.”[34] In 2009, in response to accusations by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that News Limited was running vendettas against him and his government, Murdoch opined that Rudd was “oversensitive”.[35] Murdoch described Howard’s successor, Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as “…more ambitious to lead the world [in tackling climate change] than to lead Australia…” and criticised Rudd’s expansionary fiscal policies in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 as unnecessary.[36] Although News Limited’s interests are extensive, also including the Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser, it was suggested by the commentator Mungo MacCallum in The Monthly that “the anti-Rudd push, if coordinated at all, was almost certainly locally driven” as opposed to being directed by Murdoch, who also took a different position from local editors on such matters as climate change and stimulus packages to combat the financial crisis.[37]
In 1968 Murdoch entered the British newspaper market with his acquisition of the populist News of the World, followed in 1969 with the purchase of the struggling daily broadsheet The Sun from IPC.[38] Murdoch turned The Sun into a tabloid format and reduced costs by using the same printing press for both newspapers. On acquiring it, he appointed Albert ‘Larry’ Lamb as editor and – Lamb recalled later – told him: “I want a tearaway paper with lots of tits in it”. In 1997 The Sun attracted 10 million daily readers.[9] In 1981, Murdoch acquired the struggling Times and Sunday Times from Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Thomson of Fleet.[38] Ownership of The Times came to him through his relationship with Lord Thomson, who had grown tired of losing money on it as a result of much industrial action that stopped publication.[39] In the light of success and expansion at The Sun the owners believed that Murdoch could turn the papers around. Harold Evans, Editor of the Sunday Times from 1967, was made head of the daily Times, though he stayed only a year amid editorial conflict with Murdoch.[40][41]
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Murdoch’s publications were generally supportive of Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[42] At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party and its leader, Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain.[43] This later changed, with The Sun, in its English editions, publicly renouncing the ruling Labour government and lending its support to David Cameron‘sConservative Party, which soon afterwards formed a coalition government. In Scotland, where the Tories had yet to recover from their complete annihilation in 1997, the paper began to endorse the Scottish National Party (though not yet its flagship policy of independence), which soon after came to form the first ever outright majority in the proportionally elected Scottish Parliament. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s official spokesman said in November 2009 that Brown and Murdoch “were in regular communication” and that “there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch”.[44]
In 1986, Murdoch introduced electronic production processes to his newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States. The greater degree of automation led to significant reductions in the number of employees involved in the printing process. In England, the move roused the anger of the print unions, resulting in a long and often violent dispute that played out in Wapping, one of London’s docklands areas, where Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper purpose-built publishing facility in an old warehouse.[45] The bitter dispute at Wapping started with the dismissal of 6,000 employees who had gone on strike and resulted in street battles and demonstrations. Many on the political left in Britain alleged the collusion of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government with Murdoch in the Wapping affair, as a way of damaging the British trade union movement.[46][47][48] In 1987, the dismissed workers accepted a settlement of £60 million.[9]
Murdoch’s British-based satellite network, Sky Television, incurred massive losses in its early years of operation. As with many of his other business interests, Sky was heavily subsidised by the profits generated by his other holdings, but convinced rival satellite operator British Satellite Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990.[9] They were quick to see the advantages of direct to home (DTH) satellite broadcasting that did not require costly cable networks and the merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since.[49] By 1996, BSkyB had more than 3.6 million subscribers, triple the number of cable customers in the UK.[9] British financier Lord Jacob Rothschild, a close Murdoch friend since the 1960s, served as deputy chairman of Murdoch’s BSkyB corporation from 2003–2007, and Murdoch jointly invested with Rothschild in a 5.5 percent stake in Genie Oil and Gas, which conducted shale gas and oil exploration in Israel.[50]
In response to print media’s decline and the increasing influence of online journalism during the 2000s, Murdoch proclaimed his support of the micropayments model for obtaining revenue from on-line news,[51]although this has been criticised by some.[52]
The Labour Party, from when Tony Blair became leader in 1994, had moved from the Left to a more central position on many economic issues prior to 1997. Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian, saying “What does libertarian mean? As much individual responsibility as possible, as little government as possible, as few rules as possible. But I’m not saying it should be taken to the absolute limit.”[55]
In a 2005 speech delivered in New York, Murdoch said that Blair described the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster as being full of hatred of America.[56]
In 1998, Rupert Murdoch made an attempt to buy the football club Manchester United F.C.,[57] with an offer of £625 million, but this failed. It was the largest amount ever offered for a sports club. It was blocked by the United Kingdom’s Competition Commission, which stated that the acquisition would have “hurt competition in the broadcast industry and the quality of British football”.
On 28 June 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation were considering backing new Conservative leaderDavid Cameron at the next General Election – still up to four years away.[58] In a later interview in July 2006, when he was asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied “Not much”.[59] In a 2009 blog, it was suggested that in the aftermath of the News of the World phone hacking scandal which is still ongoing in 2012 and might yet have Transatlantic implications[60] Murdoch and News Corporation might have decided to back Cameron.[61] Despite this, there had already been a convergence of interests between the two men over the muting of Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom.[62]
In 2006, Britain’s Independent newspaper reported that Murdoch would offer Tony Blair a senior role in his global media company News Corporation when the prime minister stood down from office.[63]
He is accused by former Solidarity MSPTommy Sheridan of having a personal vendetta against him and of conspiring with MI5 to produce a video of him confessing to having affairs – allegations over which Sheridan had previously sued News International and won.[64] On being arrested for perjury following the case, Sheridan claimed that the charges were “orchestrated and influenced by the powerful reach of the Murdoch empire”.[65]
In August 2008, British Conservative leader and future Prime Minister David Cameron accepted free flights to hold private talks and attend private parties with Murdoch on his yacht, the Rosehearty.[66] Cameron has declared in the Commons register of interests he accepted a private plane provided by Murdoch’s son-in-law, public relations guru Matthew Freud; Cameron has not revealed his talks with Murdoch. The gift of travel in Freud’s Gulfstream IV private jet was valued at around £30,000. Other guests attending the “social events” included the then EU trade commissioner Lord Mandelson, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and co-chairman of NBC UniversalBen Silverman. The Conservatives have not disclosed what was discussed.[67]
In July 2011, it emerged that Cameron met key executives of Murdoch’s News Corporation 26 times during the 14 months that Cameron had served as Prime Minister.[68] It was also reported that Murdoch had given Cameron a personal guarantee that there would be no risk attached to hiring Andy Coulson, the former editor of News of the World, as the Conservative Party’s communication director in 2007.[69] This was in spite of Coulson having resigned as editor over phone hacking by a reporter. Cameron chose to take Murdoch’s advice, despite warnings from Nick Clegg, Lord Ashdown and The Guardian.[70] Coulson resigned his post in 2011 and was later arrested and questioned on allegations of further criminal activity at The News of the World, specifically the News International phone hacking scandal. As a result of the subsequent trial, Coulson was sentenced to 18 months in jail.[71]
In July 2011 Rupert Murdoch, along with his son James, provided testimony before a British parliamentary committee regarding phone hacking. In the U.K., his media empire remains under fire as investigators continue to probe reports of other phone hacking.[72]
On 14 July, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons served a summons on Murdoch, his son James, and his former CEO Rebekah Brooks to testify before a committee on 19 July.[73] After an initial refusal, the Murdochs confirmed they would attend after the committee issued them a summons to Parliament.[74] The day before the committee, the website of the News Corporation publication The Sunwas hacked, and a false story was posted on the front page claiming that Murdoch had died.[75] Murdoch described the day of the committee “the most humble day of my life”. He argued that since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that the News of the World was “just 1%” of this, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid. He added that he had not considered resigning,[76] and that he and the other top executives had been completely unaware of the hacking.[77][78]
On 15 July, Murdoch attended a private meeting in London with the family of Milly Dowler, where he personally apologized for the hacking of their murdered daughter’s voicemail by a company he owns.[79][80] On 16 and 17 July, News International published two full-page apologies in many of Britain’s national newspapers. The first apology took the form of a letter, signed by Rupert Murdoch, in which he said sorry for the “serious wrongdoing” that occurred. The second was titled “Putting right what’s gone wrong”, and gave more detail about the steps News International was taking to address the public’s concerns.[80] In the wake of the allegations Murdoch accepted the resignations of Rebekah Brooks, head of Murdoch’s British operations, and Les Hinton, head of Dow Jones who was chairman of Murdoch’s British newspaper division when some of the abuses happened. They both deny any knowledge of any wrongdoing under their command.[81]
On 27 February 2012, the following day after Murdoch’s controversial release of the Sun on Sunday, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers informed the Leveson Inquiry that police are investigating a “network of corrupt officials” as part of their inquiries into phone hacking and police corruption. She said that evidence suggested a “culture of illegal payments” at the Sun newspaper and that these payments allegedly made by the Sun were authorised at a senior level.[82]
In testimony on 25 April 2012, Murdoch did not deny the quote attributed to him by his former editor of The Sunday Times, Harold Evans: “I give instructions to my editors all round the world, why shouldn’t I in London?”[83][84] On 1 May 2012, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee issued a report stating that Murdoch was “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”.[85][86]
On 3 July 2013 Exaro and Channel 4 news broke the story of a secretly recorded tape. The tape was recorded by Sun journalists and in it Murdoch can be heard telling them that the whole investigation was one big fuss over nothing, and that he, or his successors, would take care of any journalists who went to prison.[87] He said: “Why are the police behaving in this way? It’s the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing.”[88]
Activities in the United States
Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post.[9] On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations. This resulted in Murdoch losing his Australian citizenship.[89][90]
Marvin Davis sold Marc Rich‘s interest in 20th Century Fox to Murdoch for $250 million in March 1984. Davis later backed out of a deal with Murdoch to purchase John Kluge‘s Metromedia television stations.[91]Murdoch went alone and bought the stations, and later bought out Davis’ remaining stake in Fox for $325 million.[91] The six television stations owned by Metromedia would form the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Company, founded on 9 October 1986, which would go on to have great success with programmes such as The Simpsons and The X-Files.[9]
In 1987 in Australia, he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, the company that his father had once managed. By 1990 News Corporation had built up debts of $7 billion (much from Sky TV in the UK).[9] forcing Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s. In 1993, it took exclusive coverage of the National Football League (NFL) from CBS and increased programming to seven days a week.[92] In 1995, Murdoch’s Fox Network became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), when it was alleged that News Ltd.’s Australian base made Murdoch’s ownership of Fox illegal. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch’s favour, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. That same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communicationsto develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. Also that year, News Corporation launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra. In 1996, Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hourcable news station. Ratings studies released in 2009 showed that the network was responsible for nine of the top ten programs in the “Cable News” category at that time.[93] Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner (founder and former owner of CNN) are long-standing rivals.[94] In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 percent stake in Hughes Electronics, the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors for $6 billion (USD).[29] His Fox movie studio would go on to have global hits with Titanic and Avatar.[95]
In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corporation headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. Choosing a US domicile was designed to ensure that American fund managers could purchase shares in the company, since many were deciding not to buy shares in non-US companies.[citation needed]
News Corporation logo
On 20 July 2005, News Corporation bought Intermix Media Inc., which held Myspace, Imagine Games Network and other social networking-themed websites, for $580 million USD, making Murdoch a major player in online media concerns.[96] In June 2011, it sold off Myspace for US$35 million.[97] On 11 September 2005, News Corporation announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD).[98]
In May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones. At the time, the Bancroft family, who had owned the Dow Jones for 105 years and controlled 64% of the shares at the time, declined the offer. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed a willingness to consider a sale. Besides Murdoch, the Associated Press reported that supermarket magnate Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among the other interested parties.[99] In 2007, Murdoch acquired Dow Jones,[100][101] which gave him such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s Magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review (based in Hong Kong) and SmartMoney.[102]
In June 2014, Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox made a bid for Time Warner at $85 per share in stock and cash ($80 billion total) which Time Warner’s board of directors turned down in July. Warner’s CNN unit would have been sold to ease antitrust issues of the purchase.[103] On 5 August 2014 the company announced it had withdrawn its offer for Time Warner, and said it would spend $6 billion buying back its own shares over the following 12 months.[104]
Political activities in the United States
McNight (2010) identifies four characteristics of his media operations: free market ideology; unified positions on matters of public policy; global editorial meetings; and opposition to a liberal bias in other public media.[105]
On 8 May 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton‘s (D-New York) Senate re-election campaign.[106] In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had “anything to do with the New York Post‘s endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries.” Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, “Yeah. He is a rock star. It’s fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don’t think he will win Florida… but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk.”[107][108] Murdoch is a strong supporter of Israel and its domestic policies.[109]
Murdoch is a supporter of more open immigration policies in western nations generally.[116] In the United States, Murdoch and chief executives from several major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing andDisney joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to form the Partnership for a New American Economy to advocate “for immigration reform – including a path to legal status for all illegal aliens now in the United States.”[117] The coalition, reflecting Murdoch and Bloomberg’s own views, also advocates significant increases in legal immigration to the United States as a means of boosting America’s sluggish economy and lowering unemployment. The Partnership’s immigration policy prescriptions are notably similar to those of the Cato Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—both of which Murdoch has supported in the past.[118]
The Wall Street Journal editorial page has similarly advocated for increased legal immigration, in contrast to the staunch anti-immigration stance of Murdoch’s British newspaper, The Sun.[119] On 5 September 2010, Murdoch testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Membership on the “Role of Immigration in Strengthening America’s Economy.” In his testimony, Murdoch called for ending mass deportations and endorsed a “comprehensive immigration reform” plan that would include a pathway to citizenship for all illegal immigrants.[117]
In the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, Murdoch was critical of the competence of Mitt Romney‘s team but was nonetheless strongly supportive of a Republican victory, tweeting: “Of course I want him [Romney] to win, save us from socialism, etc.”[120]
Murdoch owns controlling interest in Sky Italia, a satellite television provider in Italy.[123] Murdoch’s business interests in Italy have been a source of contention since they began.[123] In 2010 Murdoch won a media dispute with then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A judge ruled the then Prime Minister’s media arm Mediaset prevented News Corporation’s Italian unit, Sky Italia, from buying advertisements on its television networks.[124]
Activities in Asia
In 1993, Murdoch acquired Star TV, a Hong Kong company founded by Richard Li[125] for $1 billion (Souchou, 2000:28), and subsequently set up offices for it throughout Asia. The deal enables News International to broadcast from Hong Kong to India, China, Japan and over thirty other countries in Asia, becoming one of the biggest satellite TV networks in the east.[9] However, the deal did not work out as Murdoch had planned, because the Chinese government placed restrictions on it that prevented it from reaching most of China.
In 1956 Murdoch married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and flight attendant from Melbourne and they had their only child, Prudence, in 1958.[126][127] Rupert and Patricia Murdoch divorced in 1967.[5]
On 25 June 1999, 17 days after divorcing his second wife, Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Wendi Deng.[131] She was 30, a recent Yale School of Managementgraduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of his STAR TV. Murdoch has two daughters with her; Grace (born 2001) and Chloe (born 2003). Rupert Murdoch has six children in all, and is grandfather to thirteen grandchildren.[132] On 13 June 2013, a News Corporation spokesperson confirmed that Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in New York City, U.S.[133] According to the spokesman, the marriage had been irretrievably broken for more than six months.[134] Murdoch also ended his long-standing relationship with Tony Blair after suspecting him of having an affair with Deng while they were still married.[135]
Children
Murdoch has six children.[136] His eldest child, Prudence MacLeod, was appointed on 28 January 2011 to the board of Times Newspapers Ltd, part of News International, which publishes The Times and The Sunday Times.[137] Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan, formerly the deputy chief operating officer at the News Corporation and the publisher of the New York Post, was Murdoch’s heir apparent before resigning from his executive posts at the global media company at the end of July 2005.[136] Lachlan’s departure left James Murdoch chief executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003, as the only Murdoch son still directly involved with the company’s operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation’s board.[138]
After graduating from Vassar College[139] and marrying classmate Elkin Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993,[139] Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, along with her husband, purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations in California, KSBW and KSBY, with a $35 million loan provided by her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling them at a $12 million profit in 1995, Elisabeth emerged as an unexpected rival to her brothers for the eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty’s empire. But after divorcing her first husband in 1998 and quarrelling publicly with her assigned mentorSam Chisholm at BSkyB, she struck out on her own as a television and film producer in London. She has since enjoyed independent success, in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychoanalysis) whom she met in 1997 and married in 2001.[139]
It is not known how long Murdoch will remain as News Corporation’s CEO. For a while the American cable television entrepreneur John Malone was the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself, potentially undermining the family’s control. In 2007, the company announced that it would sell certain assets and give cash to Malone’s company in exchange for its stock. In 2007, the company issued Murdoch’s older children voting stock.[citation needed]
Murdoch has two children with Wendi Deng: Grace (b. New York, 19 November 2001)[6] and Chloe (b. New York, 17 July 2003).[5][127] It was revealed in September 2011 that Tony Blair is Grace’s godfather.[140]There is reported to be tension between Murdoch and his oldest children over the terms of a trust holding the family’s 28.5 percent stake in News Corporation, estimated in 2005 to be worth about $6.1 billion. Under the trust, his children by Wendi Deng share in the proceeds of the stock but have no voting privileges or control of the stock. Voting rights in the stock are divided 50/50 between Murdoch on the one side and his children of his first two marriages. Murdoch’s voting privileges are not transferable but will expire upon his death and the stock will then be controlled solely by his children from the prior marriages, although their half-siblings will continue to derive their share of income from it. It is Murdoch’s stated desire to have his children by Deng given a measure of control over the stock proportional to their financial interest in it (which would mean, if Murdoch dies while at least one of the children is a minor, that Deng would exercise that control). It does not appear that he has any strong legal grounds to contest the present arrangement, and both ex-wife Anna and their three children are said to be strongly resistant to any such change.[141]
Portrayal on television, in film, books and music
Murdoch and rival newspaper and publishing magnate Robert Maxwell are thinly fictionalised as “Keith Townsend” and “Richard Armstrong” in The Fourth Estate by British novelist and former MP Jeffrey Archer.[142]
by Kevin Phelan in SQUINT theatre company’s “Long Story Short” (The Pleasance, Islington, 2014)
It has been speculated that the character of Elliot Carver, the global media magnate and main villain in the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, is based on Murdoch. The writer of the film, Bruce Feirstein, has stated that Carver was actually inspired by British press magnate Robert Maxwell, who was one of Murdoch’s rivals.[145]
In the 1997 film Fierce Creatures, the head of Octopus Inc. Rod McCain (initials R.M.) character is likely modelled after Murdoch.[146]
In 1999, the Ted Turner owned TBS aired an original sitcom, The Chimp Channel. This featured an all-simian cast and the role of an Australian TV veteran named Harry Waller. The character is described as “a self-made gazillionaire with business interests in all sorts of fields. He owns newspapers, hotel chains, sports franchises and genetic technologies, as well as everyone’s favourite cable TV channel, The Chimp Channel.” Waller is thought to be a parody of Murdoch, a long-time rival of Turner’s.[147]
In 2004, the movie Outfoxed included many interviews accusing Fox News of pressuring reporters to report only one side of news stories, in order to influence viewers’ political opinions.[148]
In 2012, the satirical show Hacks, broadcast on UK-based Channel 4, made obvious comparisons with Rupert Murdoch using the fictional character ‘Stanhope Feast’, as well as other central figures in the phone hacking scandal.[149]
Influence, wealth and reputation
This section may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. Please help to create a more balanced presentation. Discuss andresolve this issue before removing this message.(May 2014)
According to Forbes‘ 2013 list of richest Americans, Murdoch is the 33rd richest person in the US and the 91st richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$13.4 billion.[1] In 2014, Forbes ranked “Rupert Murdoch & Family” as the 33rd most-powerful person in the world.[150]
In 2003 Murdoch bought a ‘Rosehearty’, 11 bedroom home on a 5-acre waterfront estate in Centre Island, New York.[151]
In August 2013, Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, wrote an article for the Conversation publication in which he verified a claim by former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd that Murdoch owned 70% of Australian newspapers in 2011. Flew’s article showed that News Corp Australia owned 23% of the nation’s newspapers in 2011, according to the Finkelstein Review of Media and Media Regulation, but, at the time of the article, the corporation’s titles accounted for 59% of the sales of all daily newspapers, with weekly sales of 17.3 million copies.[152]
In connection with Murdoch’s testimony to the Leveson Inquiry “into the ethics of the British press”, editor of Newsweek International, Tunku Varadarajan, referred to him as “the man whose name is synonymous with unethical newspapers”.[153]
News Corp papers were accused of supporting the campaign of the Australian Liberal government and influencing public opinion during the 2013 federal election. Following the announcement of the Liberal Party victory at the polls, Murdoch tweeted “Aust. election public sick of public sector workers and phony welfare scroungers sucking life out of economy. Other nations to follow in time”.[154]
Fox News boss Roger Ailes renews contract to remain CEO and chairman
Powerhouse executive signs multi-year contract a month after Rupert Murdoch passed reins of company to sons, which had put Ailes’s future at Fox in doubt
Roger Ailes – the powerhouse executive behind Fox News – has signed a new multi-year contract with 21st Century Fox that will see him continuing in his role as chairman and CEO of the channels. The move comes after it appeared Ailes was losing his grip on Fox.
Earlier this month media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced he would pass the reins of his TV, film and news empire to his sons James and Lachlan. Fox announced that Ailes, who has clashed with both sons, would now be reporting to Murdoch’s heirs.
Days earlier Fox Business had reported that Ailes would continue to report directly to Rupert Murdoch.
The company did not specify how long Ailes’s new contract would run but Murdoch and his sons gave the Fox boss a ringing endorsement. “Roger and I have always had, and will continue to have, a special relationship. Lachlan, James and I are delighted that Roger will be leading key businesses for us and our shareholders for years to come, and he has our unwavering support,” Rupert Murdoch said in a statement.
“Roger is an incredibly talented executive and we’re pleased he has accepted our offer to continue his extraordinary record of success at 21st Century Fox,” Lachlan and James Murdoch said in a joint statement. “We look forward to witnessing his energy and entrepreneurial drive in leading the next wave of growth for Fox News, Fox Business Network and Fox Television Stations, as well as many years of continued success together.”
The news is a major victory for Ailes whose relations with both sons has been strained at best. According to Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman the Fox boss and James Murdoch have clashed over their views on the environment. Ailes is a hardcore rightwing climate change denier, James Murdoch has supported green causes and his wife once worked for the Clinton Foundation.
Lachlan Murdoch returned to Australia after a series of clashes with Ailes. According to Sherman’s biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room, Ailes bragged about moving into Lachlan’s vacant office. “Do you know whose chair I’m sitting in? I’m sitting in Lachlan Murdoch’s chair,” Ailes boasted to a colleague. “Do you know who’s sitting on the other side of that wall? Rupert Murdoch.”
Ailes’s contract was set to expire in 2016, the new deal will keep him at Fox through the presidential election and beyond. Under Ailes’s leadership Fox has been the highest-rated news channel in the US for 13 consecutive years.
The contract deal comes amid a series of top level changes in Murdoch’s empire. The billionaire businessman also announced on Thursday that Natalie Ravitz, Murdoch’s chief of staff and vice president of strategy, would be stepping down from her role and seeking “a leadership operating position.”
It is not yet clear whether Ravitz will stay with the company. Ravitz, previously a communications director with the New York City department of education, has looked after Murdoch’s personal affairs as well as business interests.
“I cannot say enough about the exceptional job Natalie has done for me, giving valued support across many functions. She is immensely talented and able, and has greatly benefited me and our companies. I am confident wherever Natalie chooses to go she will be an incredible asset and wish her all the best,” Murdoch wrote in a memo to staff.
There is rarely a good time to do hard things, and America won’t advance if legislators act like seat-warmers.
By
RUPERT MURDOCH
When I learned that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had lost his Republican primary, my heart sank. Not simply because I think he is an intelligent and talented member of Congress, or because I worry about the future of the Republican Party.
Like others who want comprehensive immigration reform, I worried that Mr. Cantor’s loss would be misconstrued and make Congress reluctant to tackle this urgent need. That would be the wrong lesson and an undesirable national consequence of this single, local election result.
People are looking for leadership—those who stand for something and offer a vision for how to take America forward and keep our nation economically competitive. One of the most immediate ways to revitalize our economy is by passing immigration reform.
I chose to come to America and become a citizen because America was—and remains—the most free and entrepreneurial nation in the world. Our history is defined by people whose character and culture have been shaped by ambition, imagination and hard work, bound together by a dream of a better life.
Is the idea of immigration reform complicated by the fact that some immigrants went outside the legal system to be here? Yes. It is complicated even more by the fear some Americans have, quite naturally, of how changing populations might also change our culture, communities and economic circumstances.
Well, of course immigration means change. Immigrants enrich our culture and add to our economic prosperity.
You don’t have to take one immigrant’s word for it. The Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan group of political and business leaders, reports that people who moved here from abroad or their children founded more than 40% of America’s Fortune500 companies—businesses that collectively employ millions of people.
Do Americans really wish Google,eBay,Pfizer or Home Depot were headquartered in Eastern Europe or China instead of America? Whether it’s a high-profile tech company or a small business employing just 10 people, 28% of all new American businesses started in 2011 were founded by immigrants. Those are entrepreneurial people we want to continue to attract to our economy.
I don’t believe that people come to America to sit on their hands. The vast majority of America’s immigrants are hardworking, family-minded individuals with strong values. They are drawn here from many different places by a common belief that this is still the land of opportunity for those willing to work hard.
We need to give those individuals who are already here—after they have passed checks to ensure they are not dangerous criminals—a path to citizenship so they can pay their full taxes, be counted, and become more productive members of our community.
Next, we need to do away with the cap on H-1B visas, which is arbitrary and results in U.S. companies struggling to find the high-skill workers they need to continue growing. We already know that most of the applications for these visas are for computer programmers and engineers, where there is a shortage of qualified American candidates. But we are held back by the objections of the richly funded labor unions that mistakenly believe that if we keep innovation out of America, somehow nothing will change. They are wrong, and frankly as much to blame for our stalemate on this issue as nativists who scream about amnesty.
If we are serious about advancing our economic future and about creating job growth here in America, then we must realize that it is suicidal to suggest closing our doors to the world’s entrepreneurs, or worse, to continue with large-scale deportations.
That is not to suggest we don’t need to do a far better job securing our border. Border security should be an integral part of a comprehensive solution, and we should not dismiss the concerns of states that are struggling to deal with the consequences of ongoing illegal immigration.
Some politicians and pundits will argue that this is not the time to bring immigration reform to the congressional floor—that it will frighten an already anxious workforce and encourage more extreme candidates, especially on the right. They may be right about the short-term politics, but they are dead wrong about the long-term interests of our country.
Maybe, as someone who came here as an immigrant, I have more faith in the compassion and fortitude of the American people, and in their ability to reject extreme views on either side of the political spectrum. Or maybe, as a businessman, I have learned that there is rarely a good time to do the hard things.
That is why I was pleased to see Sen. Rand Paul and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, step up their efforts to lobby for immigration reform.
President Obama has shown wise restraint despite pressure from the left to act, recognizing that a bipartisan approach on such an immense issue would be best. Remember ObamaCare?
However, if Congress fails to even try to have this important debate, the president might feel tempted to act via executive order. I hope it doesn’t get to that point, given the furious political firestorm that would result.
All the more reason, then, to recognize that the facts are on the side of reform, and democratic societies don’t advance when our elected officials act like seat-warmers.
Mr. Murdoch is executive chairman of News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal.
You can add Rupert Murdoch’s name to the list of billionaires who not only profit from massive legal and illegal immigration, but who advocate for it. In an editorial for the Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp, of which Murdoch is the Executive Chairman, Murdoch confesses his “heart sank” at the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor because he thought immigration reform would be thwarted.1
I suggest we get the definitions straight before we go any further. Because, we in the immigration reform movement have been using the term “immigration reform” for over two decades, referring to the porous border and chain migration and hoping that “immigration reform” would mean that we actually, you know, enforce the law.
When people like Murdoch, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Luis Guitierez use the term, they mean amnesty. Murdoch makes a number of mistakes in his Op-Ed. First one is to refer to his “worry about the future of the Republican Party.” It makes one wonder if he is ignorant of the political history of immigration politics, or a corrupt liar.
Rupert Murdoch is in favor of the amnesty for political reasons? If so, he is terribly confused. Because, it won’t result in votes for Republicans. How can I be so sure? Because, it never has.
This issue has been discussed and analyzed by many people, including this writer.
Many in the media get it wrong.
The following statement gets it right.
Passing an amnesty for illegal aliens, most of whom are from Mexico, will do nothing to earn Republicans the Hispanic vote… period. Nothing! Zip, zero, nada!
Polling data of Hispanic voters do not support Murdoch’s claim, which is, if you think about it, not only wrong, but an insult to Hispanic Americans. The head of FOX News is suggesting that the Hispanic vote can be bought by Republicans if they ignore, excuse, and reward lawbreakers who happen to be Hispanic with amnesty.
A quick review:
Let’s look at who won the Hispanic vote in the past nine presidential races and their position on enforcement and amnesty.
• In 1980 and in 1984 Ronald Reagan received 35 percent and 37 percent of the Hispanic vote, respectively.
• In 1986 Reagan signed the IRCA Amnesty,2 which began in 1987 and legalized over 3 million illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico, with 12–15 million additional beneficiaries from chain migration.
Hispanics were overwhelmingly beneficiaries of the amnesty.
But…
• In 1988, less than two years after the amnesty went into effect, George H.W. Bush, who supported the IRCA as Vice President, got only 30 percent of the Hispanic vote, 7 points fewer than Reagan.
• In 1992 Bush Senior saw his Hispanic vote total decline to 25 percent, a 12-point drop from Reagan’s second election, and he lost the presidency to Bill Clinton.
• In 1996, five weeks before the November election, Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA),3 the toughest immigration enforcement legislation since Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback4 in the 1950s. The result? Hispanics rewarded Clinton with a staggering 71 percent of the vote for his re-election.
• In 2000, George W. Bush received 35 percent of the Hispanic vote. Al Gore, the Vice President at the time of the 1996 IIRIRA, got 62 percent.
• In 2004 George Bush, after making anti-amnesty comments, increased his Hispanic support to 40 percent.
During the 2008 presidential race, Barack Obama said, “I will make sure that the federal government does what it’s supposed to do…a better job of closing our borders and preventing hundreds of thousands of people to pour in.”
• Obama also voted for the secure border fence bill in 2008 and still got 67 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Now, pay attention
• Obama’s opponent in 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), was the first presidential candidate who actually advocated for and wrote an amnesty bill for illegal aliens. Senator McAmnesty got 31 percent of the Hispanic vote to Obama’s 67 percent. McCain didn’t even win a majority of Hispanic votes in Arizona, where everybody knows he supports amnesty.
And, in November 2012;
• Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who endorsed an amnesty on Meet the Press in 2005, won only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.
• President Obama, whose Department of Homeland Security lied all year long that they deported more illegal aliens than George Bush did, won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Now, in light of these FACTS: as follows does Mr. Murdoch actually believe his own words? Don’t believe for a minute that an amnesty will get the Republicans votes. It will actually cost them votes, as McCain learned.
Pat Buchanan put it succinctly in, The Bell Tolls for the “New Majority,”5 “So what are the Republicans doing? Going back on their word, dishonoring their platform, and enraging their loyal supporters, who gave Mitt 90 percent of his votes, to pander to a segment of the electorate that gave Mitt less than 5 percent of his total votes.Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
It has been proven over and over and over again that amnesty, or talk of an amnesty, doesn’t translate into votes for Republicans.
Murdoch also refers to revitalizing the American economy.
The U.S. Census Bureau predicted a decade ago that we were importing two generations of poverty. As each year passes, the generations of the future are repopulated with poverty.
I would suggest that one of the most immediate ways to revitalize our economy would be to pass a tax cut, offer Americans a tax rebate, and adopt the Mack Penny Plan6 for future federal government budgets. That would do nicely, for a start.
But I get what Mr. Murdoch is referring to, because I’ve been saying it for years. He is referring to new customers. Mass legal and illegal immigration brings new customers to America. That’s what this is all about. Yes, it’s about jobs too, but it is what they do with their paychecks, which is the goal of those who want to throw down the borders and let anyone in who can get here.
Certainly business wants as cheap a labor force as they can get. But, cheap labor is a smaller part of the equation.
And, certainly, Democrat strategists want new voters, which illegal aliens could become if they are given amnesty with a pathway to citizenship. No, not because of the amnesty, that is the myth that was demolished above. But, because illegal aliens will be low income wage earners, so will their kids, so that’s two generations in poverty, and low income people, be they Hispanic, black, white, whatever, when they do vote, do not vote for Republicans.
The big one is new customers. As the baby boomers age out of the consuming cycle they need to be replaced, and that is what the desire to let millions of mostly young people into the country, call it amnesty or call it “comprehensive immigration reform,” is all about.
Illegal aliens are perfect new consumers. Be they from Mexico or Central America, they have grown up watching American movies and American TV shows. They know exactly how we live here and they want to come and live like us. And, who can blame them, really? Their own countries are hellholes, dominated by thugs and drug cartels; who wouldn’t want to escape?
When an illegal alien arrives here they have nothing but the clothes on their back, and a water jug. They pitch the water jug and hop into the load car and are off to their new lives in the land of opportunity. And for them, as well as us, it is indeed the land of opportunity.
That is what Rupert Murdoch is referring to, new customers. Is he hoping that he will attract new viewers to FOX News Latino? You be the judge.
Just heard on the internet that the writer Michael Crichton died.
Always enjoyed his books and movies and his intellectual honesty and courage.
He will be missed by millions of his readers.
Michael Crichton, 1942-2008
‘Jurassic Park’ Author Michael Crichton Dies
Best-Selling Author Michael Crichton Dies
“CBS) Best-selling author and filmaker Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, after a courageous and private battle against cancer, according to a statement released by his family. He was 66.
Crichton is best known as the author of “Jurassic Park” and the creator of “ER.” His most recent novel, “Next,” about genetics and law, was published in December 2006.
“While the world knew him as a great story teller that challenged our preconceived notions about the world around us — and entertained us all while doing so — his wife Sherri, daughter Taylor, family and friends knew Michael Crichton as a devoted husband, loving father and generous friend who inspired each of us to strive to see the wonders of our world through new eyes,” the statement said. “He did this with a wry sense of humor that those who were privileged to know him personally will never forget.”
Through his books, Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way all could understand.
“He will be profoundly missed by those whose lives he touched, but he leaves behind the greatest gifts of a thirst for knowledge, the desire to understand, and the wisdom to use our minds to better our world,” the statement added. …”
‘Jurassic Park’ author, ‘ER’ creator Crichton dies
“…He published “The Andromeda Strain” while he was still a medical student at Harvard Medical School. He wrote a story about a 19th-century train robbery, called “The Great Train Robbery,” and then directed the 1979 film version.
He also directed several other films, including “Westworld” (1973), “Coma” (1978), “Looker” (1981) and “Runaway” (1984).
In 1993, while working on the film version of “Jurassic Park” with Steven Spielberg, he teamed with the director to create “ER.” The NBC series set in a Chicago emergency room debuted in 1994 and became a huge hit, making a star of George Clooney. Crichton originally wrote the script for the pilot in 1974.
“Michael’s talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs of ‘Jurassic Park,’ ” said Spielberg, a friend of Crichton’s for 40 years, according to The Associated Press. “He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the Earth. … Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place.”
Crichton was “an extraordinary man. Brilliant, funny, erudite, gracious, exceptionally inquisitive and always thoughtful,” “ER” executive producer John Wells told the AP. “No lunch with Michael lasted less than three hours and no subject was too prosaic or obscure to attract his interest. Sexual politics, medical and scientific ethics, anthropology, archaeology, economics, astronomy, astrology, quantum physics, and molecular biology were all regular topics of conversation.” …”
“John Michael Crichton, M.D. pronounced /ˈkraɪtən/[1], (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008[2][3]) was an American author, film producer, film director, medical doctor, and television producer best known for his science fiction and techno-thriller novels, films, and television programs. His books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide. His works were usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology.
Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background. He was the author of The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Disclosure, Timeline, State of Fear, Prey, and Next. He was also the creator of ER, but most famous for being the author of Jurassic Park, and its sequel The Lost World, both adapted into high grossing films and leading to the very successful franchise. …”
Apart from fiction, Crichton has written several other books based on scientific themes, amongst which is Travels, which also contains autobiographical episodes.
As a personal friend to the artist Jasper Johns, Crichton compiled many of his works in a coffee table book also named Jasper Johns. That book has been updated once.
Crichton is also the author of Electronic Life, a book that introduces BASIC programming to its readers. In his words, being able to program a computer is liberation:
In my experience, you assert control over a computer—show it who’s the boss—by making it do something unique. That means programming it….[I]f you devote a couple of hours to programming a new machine, you’ll feel better about it ever afterward.[10]
To prove his point, Crichton included many self-written demonstrative Applesoft (for Apple II) and BASICA (for IBM PC compatibles) programs in that book. Crichton once considered updating it, but the project seems to be canceled.
Michael Crichton on People Who Don’t Mind Their Own Business
Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion
States of Fear: Science or Politics? with Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton Speech #2
Michael Crichton Speech #3
Michael Crichton Speech #4
Michael Crichton Speech #6
The Andromeda Strain (1971) TRAILER
The Andromeda Strain (1971) Part 1
Michael Crichton Movies
Charlie Rose – An hour with Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton on Global Warming, Part 1 of 3
Michael Crichton on Global Warming, Part 2 of 3
Michael Crichton on Global Warming, Part 3 of 3
Charlie Rose – CRICHTON (FROM 11/26/02) / RIPERT
Charlie Rose: November 16, 1999
First, a dialogue with best-selling author Michael Crichton about his love of storytelling, huge success with the “Jurassic Park” series, and work on the television show “E.R.” He also introduces his book “Timeline”, in which characters employ quantum teleportation to journey to the time of the Hundred Years’ War.
Charlie Rose: December 26, 1996
An interview with author and screenwriter Michael Crichton about his book about an airline accident, “Airframe”. He also talks about the role of the media during wartime and during accidents such as the one portrayed in his book.
Charlie Rose: January 14, 1994
Interview with Michael Crichton
In the meeting with President Bush and Secretary Paulson, the Congressional Democrats deferred to Senator Barack Obama to be their spokesman and to lead his party in the bailout meeting with President Bush and Senate and House Republican Party leaders.
Apparently someone highup in the Treasury Department leaked the Congressional Republican Party proposal to higher ups in Goldman Sachs who in turn leaked the proposal to the Obama campaign. Treasury Secretary Paulson was former Chairman of Goldman Sachs and is a Republican.
Obama led off by criticizing the Republican Party proposal and asking for Treasury Secretary Paulson for his comments.
The result was the meeting blew up as Republicans felt betrayed and responded accordingly.
The purpose of the meeting was to negotiate a proposal acceptable to both political parties.
Congressional offices of both parties have been flooded with phone calls and e-mails against the Treasury bailout/rescue plan by about 95 opposed for every 100 calls/e-mails.
The House Republicans are by a wide margin opposed the Paulson Treasury bailout proposal.
The Congressional Republicans want in part repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, especially the mark-to-market requirements, the elimination of the capital gains tax, and the reduction of corporate tax rate to 20% to provide a stimulus to investment in the economy and to compensate investors for the losses resulting from incompetent oversight and regulation of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and investment bankers highly leverage positions in derivative mortage backed securites.
Senator Obama’s performance was neither professional nor inspiring–just incompetent.
Once again Senator Obama without a teleprompter and his legends of advisors proves to be just a reader and not a leader.
Both Democrats and Republicans left the meeting unimpressed by Senator Obama’s ability to lead a negotiating meeting.
The Democrats are trying to blame Senator McCain for throwing the Obama bomb and injecting politics into the meeting.
Senator McCain observed the explosive meeting and played no part in the carnage despite attempts and lies by Senators Reid, Dodd and Schumer to blame everything on Senator McCain in press conferences.
Any Republican that votes for the Treasury Secretary Paulson’s currently proposed bailout bill will be defeated in November. Take it to your bank.
If the Democratic Party expects to obtain significant Republican support on a bailout bill–dream on.
Republicans should demand that President Bush ask for Treasury Paulson’s resignation for proposing a bill that the overwhelming majority of Republicans and conservatives oppose as well as failing to explore other alternative courses of action and scenarios. Request the FBI investigate who leaked to Goldman Sachs the House Republican position on the bailout proposal to determine if any laws were broken.
The Beatles-Money
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them. …”
~Thomas Sowell
Is Reality Optional?, 1993
Background Articles and Videos
Michael Bloomberg – Origins of the Economic Crisis
Who’s responsible for the Freddie/Fannie mess?
Timeline shows Bush, McCain warning Dems of financial mess
Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?
Did Someone Say Amnesty?
By W. James Antle III
“…Once again, House Republicans may be the key. Rumors circulated Thursday that only 45 to 50 of them are committed to voting for the bailout in its current form. The Democratic leadership is said to want 100 or so GOP votes in the lower chamber for cover if they are going to support the deal without pushing it further to the left. The conservative Republican Study Committee released a letter publicly opposing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s plan. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, an RSC alumni, has been muddying the waters in the Senate.
This debate does have a Tom Tancredo, however — a damn-the-torpedoes high-profile hardliner. Ron Paul has been all over television and had a commentary up at CNN’s website opposing even the concept of a bailout with the zeal of Tancredo’s opposition to amnesty. A devotee of Austrian economics, Dr. No prescribes tough medicine for what ails the economy: the liquidation of all bad investments in the name of risking recession now to prevent a credit-fueled calamity later. Paul would let the market get rid of the “misallocation of resources into sectors in which there is insufficient demand.”
Such a radical fix wasn’t always so outside of the conservative mainstream. Ronald Reagan accommodated Paul Volcker’s tight monetary policy even at the expense of the 1982 recession. Unemployment zoomed to 10.8 percent but prosperity returned after the Reagan-Volcker policy mix licked stagflation. But Republicans who haven’t forgotten this also remember how many members of their party were thrown out of office in the November 1982 elections.
Which brings us to the final advantage bailout proponents have over those seeking an immigration compromise: there is a much greater sense of urgency surrounding the economy as well as a popular expectation that the government must Do Something about it. Politicians are reluctant to stand pat while retirement portfolios vanish and mortgage foreclosures rise. Even if the long-term consequences of their actions are uncertain, they are fairly confident the short-term electoral consequences of inaction will be bad.
Opponents can still try to rally a skeptical public against the impending bailout as a costly giveaway that won’t actually solve the underlying problem, an amnesty for the financially reckless. It’s worked before.
Confident but not yet celebrating, congressional leaders agreed Thursday on a multibillion-dollar bailout plan for Wall Street aimed at staving off a national economic catastrophe. President Bush brought the two men fighting to succeed him to a historic White House huddle on how to sell a deal to lawmakers who were still resisting.
Private talks on Capitol Hill ended at midday with the announcement that an agreement in principle had been reached on a $700 billion financial rescue package that the Bush administration wants. Few details were immediately available.
There were signs that the conservative-leaning House Republican Caucus was not on board. Both of Congress’ Republican leaders, Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, issued statements saying there was not yet an agreement. …”
Gender: Male Religion:Christian Science Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Business, Government Party Affiliation: Republican
Nationality: United States Executive summary: US Secretary of the Treasury
“Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson Jr. (born March 28, 1946) is the United States Treasury Secretary and member of the International Monetary Fund Board of Governors. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. …”
“…Leader of U.S. government economic bailout efforts of 2008
Paulson was the designated leader of the Bush administration’s efforts in 2008 to federalize the cost of bad loans made by financial institutions.
Through unprecedented intervention by the U.S. Treasury, Paulson led government efforts to avoid a severe economic slowdown. He pushed through the conservatorship of government agency mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Working with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, he influenced the decision to create a credit facility (bridge loan & warrants) of US$85 billion to American International Group so it would avoid filing bankruptcy.
In late September of 2008, Paulson, along with Ben Bernanke and Christopher Cox, led the effort to help financial firms by agreeing to use US$700 billion dollars to purchase bad debt they had incurred.[27] Discussing his decision to take action, Paulson said: “It just happened dramatically. There was only one way that we could reassure the markets and deal with a very significant and broad-based freezing of the credit market. There was no political calculus. It was overwhelmingly obvious.”[28]
On September 19, 2008, Paulson called for the U.S. government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more to rescue financial firms from nonperforming mortgages that threaten the stability of those firms.[29] Due to his leadership and public appearances on this issue, the press labeled these measures the “Paulson financial rescue plan” or simply the Paulson Plan.[30]
Conflict of interest
There has been some criticism of Paulson, with suggestions that Paulson’s plan may potentially have some conflicts of interest. This since Paulson is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, a firm that may benefit from the plan. [31][32] Unlike the previous bailouts and managed liquidations of Goldman competitors Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Bros. and those of AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, in which shareholder value was largely wiped out, Goldman’s stock would likely rise under the Paulson plan, benefiting his former partners, because it would take distressed assets off of their balance sheet. [33]
The proposed bill would give him unprecedented powers over the economic and financial life of the U.S.. Section 8 of Paulson’s plan states: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”[34]
“The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Pub.L. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745, enacted 2002-07-30), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called SOX or Sarbox; is a United States federal law enacted on July 30, 2002 in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. These scandals, which cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of the affected companies collapsed, shook public confidence in the nation’s securities markets. Named after sponsors Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH), the Act was approved by the House by a vote of 334-90 and by the Senate 99-0. President George W. Bush signed it into law, stating it included “the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt.”[1]
The legislation establishes new or enhanced standards for all U.S. public company boards, management, and public accounting firms. It does not apply to privately held companies. The Act contains 11 titles, or sections, ranging from additional Corporate Board responsibilities to criminal penalties, and requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to implement rulings on requirements to comply with the new law. Debate continues over the perceived benefits and costs of SOX. Supporters contend that the legislation was necessary and has played a useful role in restoring public confidence in the nation’s capital markets by, among other things, strengthening corporate accounting controls. Opponents of the bill claim that it has reduced America’s international competitive edge against foreign financial service providers, claiming that SOX has introduced an overly complex and regulatory environment into U.S. financial markets.[2]
The Act establishes a new quasi-public agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, which is charged with overseeing, regulating, inspecting, and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. The Act also covers issues such as auditor independence, corporate governance, internal control assessment, and enhanced financial disclosure. …””
” accounting and finance, mark to market is the act of assigning a value to a position held in a financial instrument based on the current market price for that instrument or similar instruments. For example, the final value of a futures contract that expires in 9 months will not be known until it expires. If it is marked to market, for accounting purposes it is assigned the value that it would fetch in the open market currently. …”
“…SO CONTROVERSIAL has accounting become that even John McCain, a man not known for his interest in balance sheets, has an opinion. The Republican candidate for the American presidency thinks that “fair value” rules may be “exacerbating the credit crunch”. His voice is part of a chorus of criticism against mark-to-market accounting, which forces banks to value assets at the estimated price they would fetch if sold now, rather than at historic cost. Some fear that accounting dogma has caused a cycle of falling asset prices and forced sales that endangers financial stability. The fate of Lehman Brothers and American International Group will have strengthened their conviction.
In response America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the London-based International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have not budged an inch. So, for example, banks will have to mark their securities to the prices Lehman receives as it is liquidated. The two accounting bodies already act cheek by jowl, and America will probably soon adopt international rules. Are they guilty of obstinately pursuing an abstract goal that is causing mayhem in financial markets? …”
“…Yet not all criticism of fair value can be so easily dismissed. The credit crunch has raised three genuinely awkward questions. The first of these concerns “procyclicality”. Bankers say that in a downturn fair-value accounting forces them all to recognise losses at the same time, impairing their capital and triggering firesales of assets, which in turn drives prices and valuations down even more. Under traditional accounting, losses hit the books far more slowly. Some admire Spain’s system, which requires banks to make extra provision for losses in good times, so that when loans turn sour their profits and thus capital fall by less. …”
George Soros is one of Barack Obama’s primary financial backers and agenda puppeter.
Senator Obama and George Soros
Much of Barack Obama’s socialist agenda and ideas for the United States comes directly from Soros and in turn through his network of leftist funded organizations. This includes the funding of organizations that advocate abortion, open borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, a cap and trade tax, to prevent man-made global warming, huge cuts in defense spending, increasing the minimum wage and the world poverty tax just to name a few.
Soros likes to be considered a “stateless stateman”.
In fact he is more accurately described as the Godfather of World Socialism.
Too bad Soros has not apparently read or understood the works of Friedrick Hayek, Karl Popper’s good friend and author of the Open Society and Its Enemies for which Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) is named.
I find Soros ideas interesting but his dismissal of capitalism as market fundamentalism both revealing and mistaken.
Milton Friedman was right, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Rumors on talk radio are that Soros and his financial currency trader group are planning an October surprise such as either a run on the U.S dollar or bidding up of oil future contract prices.
If this happens and they are successful, U.S. gasoline prices would significantly increase above $4 a gallon as the US dollar declines in value and the cost of oil increases.
This is turn would throw the economy into a recession or at less increased fear of a recession in 2009.
The theory is this would help Obama.
I think not.
Such a move would backfire for the simple reason, it is the Democratic Party that is stopping oil and gas exploration off the U.S. coasts and in ANWR.
Furthermore, the Democratic Party is largely responsible through Federal government intervention in the mortage markets insisting on home loans for people that would not normally qualify.
This resulted in the financial collapse of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the need for its bailout and the collapse or buyout of a number of mortage bankers, investment banks, and broker dealers.
One of Senator’s Obama’s financial and housing advisor just so happens to be Franklin Raines, the man who collected over $90 million in compensation for mismanaging Fannie Mae (see videos below on Fannie Mae, Raines, and the bailout).
I think there will be two October surprises that will appear in the last week of the campaign.
Just in case a Soros instigated surprise materializes, you better fill up your gas tank in the last week on October.
Make sure you have enough gas in your vehicle’s gas tank to get to the place you vote.
If you want a recession and socialism vote Obama.
If you want a job and capitalism vote McCain.
Only you can prevent socialism in America.
UPDATED June 22, 2010
The Obama payoff for the George Soros contributations and support exposed by Glenn Beck and Fox News!
Davos Annual Meeting 2008 – CNBC Debate: Who is in charge?
Davos Annual Meeting 2009 – World Economic Brainstorming
George Soros and Acorn in the 2008 Elections
Background Articles and Videos
Leadership Speaker Series: George Soros (Part 1 of 2)
“…CPL director David Gergen interviews George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute. …”
Leadership Speaker Series: George Soros (Part 2 of 2)
“..CPL director David Gergen interviews George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute. …”
Neil Cavuto’s interview of George Soros Part 1
Neil Cavuto’s interview of George Soros Part 2
Charlie Rose – George Soros / Arianna Huffington
“…Segment 1: Billionaire philanthropist George Soros talks about his new book, The Age of Fallibility.
Segment 2: We conclude with Arianna Huffington, editor of the blog The Huffington Post. Her new… ”
George Soros
“George Soros (pronounced /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/,[2] Hungarian IPA: [ˈʃoroʃ]) (born August 12, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary, as György Schwartz) is a Hungarian-born American financial speculator, stock investor, philanthropist, and political activist.[3]
Currently, he is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. …”
George Soros says more banks will go under; speaks of a “meltdown” and the 1930s
By Newsnight interviews George Soros
Sep 17, 2008, 08:33
“…Soros: “Well I’m afraid we are not through it at all. In some ways we are heading into the storm rather than coming out of it. And right at this minute we are at the very precarious moment because the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers has thrown the financial markets into turmoil.”
Newsnight: What do you think will happen? More banks go under?
Soros: Well, certainly more banks but maybe not the size of Lehman. But right now an even larger company, American International which is an insurance company is under pressure and a rescue is being prepared and the question is whether it will be successfully put together.
Newsnight: So was it right then to step in? Do you think AIG should be rescued? Do you think Lehman should have been rescued?
Soros: Whether Lehman should have been rescued depends on whether the financial system survives it or not. If the financial system survives it, then it was the right thing to do to let them go bust. If there is a meltdown, then it wasn’t because one thing is clear that you musn’t allow the financial system to collapse as it did in the 1930s. They’ve been reluctant to put taxpayers money at risk but if necessary, I’m sure they will do it.
“George Soros is one of the most powerful men on earth. A New York hedge fund manager, he has amassed a personal fortune estimated at about $7.2 billion. His management company controls billions more in investor assets. Since 1979, his foundation network — whose flagship is the Open Society Institute (OSI) — has dispensed an estimated $5 billion to a multitude of organizations whose objectives are consistent with those of Soros. (The President of OSI and the Soros Foundation Network is Aryeh Neier, who, as Director of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy, personally created the radical group Students for a Democratic Society in 1959.) With assets of $859 million as of 2005, OSI alone donates scores of millions of dollars annually to these various groups, whose major agendas can be summarized as follows:
promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws
promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes
promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens
defending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters
financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending
opposing the death penalty in all circumstances
promoting socialized medicine in the United States
promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is “not clean air and clean water, [but] rather … the demolition of technological/industrial civilization”
bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations
promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike …”
Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute
“…Organizations that, in recent years, have received direct funding and assistance from George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI) include the following. (Comprehensive profiles of each are available in the “Groups” section of DiscoverTheNetworks.org): …”
“…George Soros is known for funding groups such as http://MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire’s backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute, which gave him “legal and media advice”?
That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly “censored” spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.
Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen’s OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.
That’s not the only case. Didn’t the mainstream media report that 2006’s vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?
Turns out that wasn’t what happened, either. Soros’ OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.
So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI’s glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI’s 2006 annual report.
Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too.
Do people know last year’s Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld — for the terrorists.
OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called “Secure Flight,” which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.
They trumpeted this as a victory for civil liberties. Feel safer? …”
Democracy: George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire’s backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.
The Left: The smear ad published against Gen. Petraeus has drawn attention to its sponsor, MoveOn.org. But the fingerprints of the group’s chief financial backer, George Soros, were all over it. Who is this man and what is he up to?
Election 2008: MoveOn.org once crowed that it had bought and owned the Democratic Party. With the Senate now blasting its tactics, that’s an open question. But not, apparently, for Democrats running for president.
The Evolving Agenda of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance
“…The Democracy Alliance, as we observed in the January 2008 issue of Foundation Watch (”Billionaires for Big Government: What’s Next for George Soros’s Democracy Alliance?”), is slowly maturing and becoming more focused in its objectives.
Could it be that the Democracy Alliance has finally adopted a firm business plan?
Since its founding in 2005, the DA, a liberal donors’ collaborative that aims to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups–a kind of “vast left-wing conspiracy” to compete with the conservative movement, has focused on fairly well-established pressure groups, watchdogs and think tanks, get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations, and political action committees (PACs). These bread-and-butter liberal groups have included:
Media Matters for America
Center for American Progress
People for the American Way
New Democratic Network
Progressive Majority
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
Center for Progressive Leadership
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
EMILY’s List
America Votes
Sierra Club
Center on Budget and Policy …”
“…The Democracy Alliance’s “Letter of Interest” invited applications for the 2009/2010 giving cycle from all nonprofit groups on the left, but expressed special interest in organizations that do the following types of work:
* Building power and capacity in key constituencies: engagement and issue advocacy work with key constituencies, primarily Latinos and young people, as well as African Americans and unmarried women.
* New media and technology: content generators, aggregators and distributors that disseminate and amplify progressive messages.
* Law and legal systems: working to advance and protect progressive values and policies at all levels of the legal system.
* Early stage idea generators: focusing on progressive idea generation and development at the early and middle stages of the idea cycle including journals, academic networks, books, and non-traditional think tanks..
* Content generation: focusing on traditional and new media vehicles that are capable of developing and effectively promoting progressive ideas.
* Civic engagement coordination: achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness in mobilization and participation work through collaboration and coordination and creating economies of scale.
* Civic engagement tools: increasing capacity and availability of data services, including online organizing services for civic engagement groups.
* Election reform: focusing on structural reforms of our democratic process that will increase voter participation among progressive constituencies.
* Youth leadership development: building on the youth development part of the leadership pipeline that includes looking for organizations targeting young people that work at scale.
* Mid-career nonprofit leadership development: building on the mid-career development part of the leadership pipeline that includes looking for organizations working at scale. …”
Drug Legalization, Euthanasia, Immigrant Entitlements and Feminism
“Summary: The February issue of Foundation Watch examined the philanthropy of the billionaire financier George Soros. It found that Soros-funded groups supported increased government spending and tax increases, and opposed the death penalty and President Bush’s judicial nominees. In this article author Neil Hrab looks at Soros grants in four other policy areas: drug legalization, euthanasia, immigrant entitlements, and feminist organizing. …”
Is Global Warming Alarmist James Hansen a Shill for George Soros?
By Jake Gontesky
“…The claims against anthropogenic global warming skeptics are often the same: they’re all shills for big oil or other industry wishing to poke holes in the ‘consensus theory’ of global warming (which isn’t a consensus at all). Under the so-called “politicization of science” program, George Soros’ (the favorite fundraiser of many democrats) has reportedly given as much as $720,000 to Hansen to help package his alarmist claims and get them pushed by the mainstream media (The Soros Threat to Democracy):
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute , which gave him “legal and media advice”?
That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.
So he got some big paychecks from Soros – but was there a quid pro quo? The evidence certainly indicates as much:
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly “censored” spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.
Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen’s OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.
Did Soros’ funding pay off? You be the judge. Do a quick google search on James Hansen to read any of the thousands of mainstream media stories touting Hansen’s claims of censorship by the Bush administration. This wouldn’t be the first time credibility questions have been raised regarding Hansen and his alarmist claims [see “When does 1,400 Media Interviews = Muzzled” (03/20/07)].
“Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (May 8, 1899 – March 23, 1992) was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought in the mid-20th century. He is considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century.[1] One of the most influential members of the Austrian School of economics, he also made significant contributions in the fields of jurisprudence and cognitive science. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.”[2] He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.[3] He is considered to be one of the major forces of change from the dominant interventionist and Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century back to towards classical liberalism after the 1980s. …”
“Sir Karl Raimund Popper (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994) was an Austrian and British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. Popper is known for repudiating the classical observationalist/inductivist account of scientific method by advancing empirical falsification instead; for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge which he replaced with critical rationalism, “the first non justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy”[2] and for his vigorous defense of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism which he took to make the flourishing of the “open society” possible. …”
Capitalism Doesn’t Work, Mr. Gates? I just have to smile when billionaires turn cold shoulders to the blessings capitalism bestows.
By Larry Kudlow
“…
The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal 2008 Index of Economic Freedom reveals how free-market economics is spreading like wildfire while state-run socialism is on the decline. And it’s no wonder why. The free-market countries are prospering mightily while the least-free economies are mired in poverty. We’re talking North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Iran. Also noteworthy is Venezuela. As the neo-socialist Hugo Chavez attempts to adopt Fidel Castro’s failed economic model, he’s sinking his nation toward Cuba-type poverty.
Economist Mark Perry, on his Carpe Diem blog site, reports that both the U.S. share of world GDP and its global stock market capitalization are shrinking. But this isn’t a bad thing at all. It doesn’t mean that America is heading downwards. On the contrary, it means that newly freed economies are heading up.
The reality here is that the rising tide of global capitalism is lifting all boats that employ it. Capitalism works. It’s a good thing. It’s the key to unlocking a nation’s prosperity. In fact, free-market capitalism is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised by man.
Another billionaire, George Soros, the Davos partygoer who finances near every left-wing political-action group on both sides of the Atlantic pond, recently wrote in the Financial Times that the era of capitalism is coming to an end. Soros, of course, has been predicting this for at least twenty years — through the greatest world boom in history. And how was it that Soros made his money? Trading currencies in the technologically advanced world financial markets, the very same markets that were spawned by 20th century free-market capitalism.
So I just have to smile when billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros turn cold shoulders to the blessings capitalism bestows. Or when their buddy, Warren Buffett, broadcasts the importance of hiking tax rates on successful earners and investors.
Look fellas, the command-and-control, state-run economics experiment was tried. It was called the Soviet Union. If you hadn’t noticed, it was a miserable failure. …”
McCain and Leadership in a Time of Financial Crisis
By Ed Lasky
“…Since Barack Obama seems to have hung up the hope and change mantra for now to adopt the populist demagoguery that has sunk Democratic presidential hopefuls in the past, McCain should practice some jujitsu and turn Obama’s argument against him.
Barack Obama is the hedge-fund candidate in terms of findraising according to the New York Times. He and his fellow Democrats — including New York Senators Schumer and Clinton — are the darlings of Wall Street. Obama has enjoyed outsized donations from hedge fund managers and Wall Streeters.The granddaddy of all hedge fund monsters is George Soros, who was also Barack Obama’s early presidential race sugardaddy. Soros has also been talking down the economywhile profiting from the mortgage meltdown. Soros is the chief donor to a wide variety of 527 groups (including MoveOn.Org) that have been working to assure Obama’s election.
Obama raised almost $400,000 dollars from the employees of the now kaput Lehman Brothers-topping all other candidates, though Senators Clinton, Schumer and Dodd did quite nicely .
Two other leading donors to the left are Herbert and Marion Sandler, who have worked with Soros to promote left-wing causes. This husband and wife founded Golden West Financial, a savings and loan that was a huge player in the mortgage market. Did they see the writing on the wall when they sold their company to Wachovia for billions of dollars before the mortgage meltdown?
Why do you think Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other leading lights of the Democratic Party castigate oil companies and not hedge fund managers? The paydays of Wall Street players dwarf those of oil companies. Their profit ratios can be astronomical compared to those of oil companies. They can wreck the financial markets that are the lubrication for the rest of the economy.
“…I noted this morning that the Obama campaign’s Chicago-style thug effort to shut down the independent ad on Bill Ayers is part of the larger effort to intimidate conservative donors and curtail the free speech of The One’s critics.
It’s getting uglier, people.
Obama’s lawyer has sent a second letter to the Justice Department calling for the head of Dallas billionare Harold Simmons, who funded the Ayers ad that the Obama campaign doesn’t want the public to see.
Obama general counsel Bob Bauer today sent a second, sharper letter to the Justice Department, directly attacking the Dallas billionaire funding a harsh attack ad, Harold Simmons.
“We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its commitment to take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute the American issues Project, and we further request that the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute Howard (sic) Simmons for a knowing and willful violation of the individual aggregate contribution limits,” he wrote.
He called the group’s activities “patently illegal.”
Bauer made the case that Simmons’ group [is not] fulfilling its […] nonprofit charter because it hasn’t spent any money on anything other than attacking Obama. Simmons’ spokesman, Christian Pinkston, told me yesterday that plans to, and dismissed the complaints as an effort to lawyer away charges the campaign can’t rebut.
I posted AIP’s rebuttal here yesterday. And as I’ve noted today and will note again: Obama has some nerve whining about campaign finance integrity after getting caught hiding $800,000 in ACORN payments.
What’s going on? Simple: The Left has its George Soros sugar daddy and can’t stand that conservatives have their own committed benefactors. They’ve got a massive non-profit infrastructure funded with taxpayers and operating flagrantly in an illegal, partisan manner (hello, ACORN Watch!). They want the playing field all to themselves. And they are fighting for that turf by any means necessary.
“…A conversation with George Soros, the international philanthropist and chairman of Soros Fund Management, about his new book, “Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism”. Soros discusses… ”
Charlie Rose: August 2, 1994
“…First, philanthropist George Soros, founder of the world’s most successful hedge fund, shares some of his ideas for revitalizing America’s inner cities. Then, Hugh Price talks about what he hopes …
Authors@Google: George Soros
“…George Soros appears in conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussing his new book “The Age of Fallibility: Consequence of the War on Terror” as part of the Authors@Google series. … ”
“…George Soros Part 1 Interview on April 8, 2008…”
George Soros Part 2
“…George Soros Part 2 Interview on April 8, 2008…”
George Soros Part 3
“…George Soros Part 3 Interview on April 8, 2008…”
George Soros on Housing Prices June 2006
O’Reilly: George Soros is funding Media Matters,John Edwards
O’Reilly calls Democratic support group dangerous, evil
“…George Soros, Paul Begala, and David Brock are O’Reilly’s “American Axis of Evil” for planning to spend money against Republican John McCain. Does anyone recall him in this high dudgeon over the Swift Boat ads?…”
Liberals & big business falsified Iraq war casualty figures
Ron Paul on Mortgage Bailout & Financial Armageddon
Jerry Bowyer on Kudlow & Company – March 17th – Segment 1
Jeremy Siegel on Bear Stearns, the Rate Cuts and Inflation
Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis
Susan Wachter on Securitizations and Deregulation
Wall Street’s Day of Reckoning: The Fannie & Freddie Bailout
Part 1 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins
New York Investing meetup organizer Daryl Montgomery discusses the origins of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the first episode of a multi-part series. The New York Investing meetup is an organization of 1800 independent traders and investors that provides unbiased stock market education and analysis. We also have a blog,”The Helicopter Economics Investing Guide” which can be found at: http://nyinvestingmeetup.blogspot.com
Part 2 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins
Part 3 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins
Part 4 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins
Part 5 – Exposing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Origins
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Many movement conservatives deeply resent being called neoconservatives or neocons.
I consider myself to be a movement conservative that is comfortable in both the traditionalist and libertarian wings of the conservative movement represented by the works of the late Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friederick Hayek.
While I agree with neoconservatives on many occasions and issues, I part company when they advocate preemptive attacks on nations that have not attacked the United States, democracy nation-building, open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, where I agree with Pat Buchanan. I part company with Mr. Buchanan’s views on free trade. I am a free trader.
Neoconservatives are first and foremost big government conservatives, which I regard as the problem, not the solution. I agree with the late President Ronald Reagan:
A Reminder from Ronald Reagan
Should Senator McCain be elected President, which I think he will, and should Senator McCain propose neoconservative policies and programs, I for one will advocate and support the formation of another political party.
I will follow the sage advice of Dick Armey and leave.
Dick Armey discusses big government conservatism
I am tired of being betrayed by Republicans who say one thing to get elected and turn around and do the exact opposite–Presidents George H. Bush and George W. Bush to name two, who I voted for with great expectations and now have very deep regrets for doing so.
Both Presidents increased taxes– the first directly and the second indirectly by massive deficit spending and open borders resulting in dramatic increases in local and state taxes to provide for education, services, medical care, welfare, jails, and prisons for illegal aliens. Not a single Federal department was eliminated such as Education, Agriculture, Energy, Labor, and Commerce for starters. Few spending bills were vetoed, a sheer mockery of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets.
Bush Has Doubled National Debt with Deficits
You can say I am a conservative, libertarian, or classical liberal, but please not a neoconservative, and if things are not changed or reformed in Washington, I will not be voting Republican much longer.
Background Articles and Videos
Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon’s new map for war and peace
“Neoconservatism is a right-wing political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of the social liberalism, moral relativism, and New Left counterculture of the 1960s. It influenced the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, representing a realignment in American politics, and the transition of some liberals to the right of the political spectrum; hence the term, which refers to being ‘new’ conservatives.[1][2]
The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had “moved to the right”.[3][4] Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the usage of neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy.[5] According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by “the notion that liberalism” had failed and “no longer knew what it was talking about.”[1]
The first major neoconservative to embrace the term and considered its founder is Irving Kristol, an American Jew from an orthodox Jewish family[6], and father of William Kristol who became the founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century. Irving Kristol had been an active supporter of Trotskyism, but wrote of his neoconservative views in the 1979 article “Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed ‘Neoconservative.'”[3] Kristol’s ideas had been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine.[7]. Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled “The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan’s Foreign Policy”.[8][9] The Reagan Doctrine was considered anti-Communist and in opposition to Soviet Union global influence and considered central to American foreign policy until the end of the Cold War, shortly before Bill Clinton became president of the United States. Neoconservative influence on American foreign policy later became central with the Bush Doctrine.
Prominent neoconservative periodicals are Commentary and The Weekly Standard. Neoconservatives are associated with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), The Heritage Foundation, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
“Most Americans disapprove of the Iraq war and of exporting democracy by force, yet neoconservative proponents of those policies advise the leading Republican presidential hopefuls.
“There is an overwhelming presence of neoconservatives and absence of traditional conservatives that I don’t know what to make of,” said Richard V. Allen, former Reagan White House national security adviser.
Advisers to Sen. John McCain of Arizona include Robert Kagan, co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), while former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s policy team includes Norman Podhoretz, a founder of the neoconservative movement, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gets advice from Dan Senor, who counseled L. Paul Bremer III, the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in Iraq.
Critics say neoconservatism casts American foreign policy as a new and benevolent form of imperialism, and conflicts with the traditional conservative, who prefers U.S. military power be reserved for defending against direct threats to America‘s vital interests. …”
“…In fairness to Palin, on issues like NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, her answers reflect the views of the man who chose her. She has no option at present but to follow the line laid down by Scheunemann.
But make no mistake. Sarah Palin is no neocon. She did not come by her beliefs by studying Leo Strauss. She is a traditionalist whose values are those of family, faith, community and country, not some utopian ideology.
Wasilla, Alaska, is not a natural habitat of neoconservatives.
And her unrehearsed answers to Gibson’s questions reveal her natural conservatism. Asked if she agrees with the Bush Doctrine, Palin asked for clarification. “In what respect, Charlie?”
Gibson: “Do we have the right of an anticipatory self-defense?”
Yes, said Palin, “if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against (the) American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.”
Exactly. The intelligence must be legit and the threat “imminent.” …”
“The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943. According to the institute its mission is “to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate.”[1] AEI is an independent, non-profit organization. It is supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is located in Washington, D.C.
AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration’s public policy.[2] More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government’s many panels and commissions.[3] Former United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar, and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a senior fellow.[4]
AEI is often cited as a right-leaning counterpart to the left-leaning Brookings Institution.[5][6] In 1998, AEI and Brookings established the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.[7] In 2006, the two organizations jointly launched the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.[8]
AEI has connections with the neoconservative movement in American politics.[9] Irving Kristol, widely regarded as the movement’s founder, is a Senior Fellow at AEI. …”
“The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an Americanneoconservativethink tank based in Washington, D.C., co-founded in early 1997 as “a non-profit educational organization” by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC’s stated goal is “to promote American global leadership.”[1] Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that “American leadership is both good for America and good for the world” and support for “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.”[2] It has exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S PresidentGeorge W. Bush and strongly affected the George Bush administration’s development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.[3][4] ….”
Flight of the Neocons
From liberal hawks to “National Greatness” conservatives
Michael C. Moynihan | May 2008 Print Edition
“…To Heilbrunn, the legacy of neoconservatism is one of long-term disaster for the Republican Party, an ideological digression that “quite possibly not only destroyed conservatism as a political force for years to come but also created an Iraq syndrome that tarnishes the idea of intervention for several decades.” This sounds right. The surge has undeniably mitigated the violence in Iraq, but it seems likely that—barring a continued military presence in Iraq for “100 years,” as John McCain posited—the neocons’ nation-building project will be a millstone around the movement’s neck. The Iraq fiasco will also obscure the fact that many of their Cold War–era arguments with the left were prescient. They were right about the ineffectiveness of Great Society welfare programs and about the colossal evil of the communist bloc.
But the failures of the neoconservative approach to both foreign and domestic policy are recognized even by consummate neocon David Frum, partial author of the infamous “axis of evil” State of the Union speech. In his recently released book Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, Frum concedes Heilbrunn’s point that a conservative regeneration is needed after the Bush administration’s big spending and disastrous foreign policy. While Frum is upbeat about conservatism’s prospects, Heilbrunn ends They Knew They Were Right on an ominous note: “These reckless minds…aren’t going away. Quite the contrary.”
Perhaps. But unless Iraq becomes an Arab version of Switzerland in the next decade, I wouldn’t bet on it. …”
“…The neoconservatives, who believe, or pretend to believe, that supposed foes abroad always represent new Hitlers and that wimpy liberals are about to recapitulate the appeasement that English liberals espoused in the 1930s, are constantly searching for a new Churchill. They see Churchill as the last great representative of the Victorian era in contrast to the weaklings that surrounded him. (George W. Bush himself keeps a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office.) For the neocons, McCain, a military hero who has written a number of books and become a politician, eerily resembles Churchill himself. McCain himself has made his admiration for Churchill abundantly apparent in his most recent book, Hard Call, in which he hails the great man’s prescience in warning of Germany’s aggressive intentions in the run-up to both World War I and World War II. But more to the point, McCain represents for the neocons the ultimate synthesis of war hero and politician. And McCain, in turn, has been increasingly drawn to the neocons’ militaristic vision of the U.S. as an empire that can set wrong aright around the globe.The neocons became close to McCain in the 1990s, when they supported American intervention in the Balkans. According to the New Republic’s John Judis, the first sign of neocon influence on McCain came in 1999. McCain delivered a speech at Kansas State University in which he touted “national greatness conservatism,” arguing: “The United States is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history.” He went on to state that the U.S. should have “every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”
The Open-Borders Conspiracy By Robert Locke
FrontPageMagazine.com
“If I could choose to have my readers learn one and only one thing from what I write, it would be that America’s problems are not the result of blind, much less inevitable, forces, but are the consequences of deliberate political action by motivated individuals and groups. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of our ongoing immigration crisis. Let’s trace the lines of influence in the open-borders conspiracy, a word I use despite its connotations of grassy knollology because in this case it is factually appropriate. Given who has been pushing mass immigration in America and how open they have been about why they are doing it, it boggles my mind that anyone who considers himself conservative can still support this policy. …”
Shamnesty John McCain is back in full force: No, he never “got the message”
By Michelle Malkin
“…And, now, straight from the campaign trail with Arnold “Move Left” Schwarzenegger, McCain has shed every last pretense that he “got the message” from grass-roots immigration enforcement proponents and is back to his full, open-borders shamnesty push. No surprise to any of you. But his complete regression back to the “comprehensive immigration reform” euphemism is a notable milestone.
The other half of the La Raza twins is set to speak today at 12:45 Pacific time. While John McCain’s lips move this afternoon during his speech to the Race’s open-borders lovefest, let me serve as your interpreter:
MCCAIN: My friends, you are right. Those people who killed my shamnesty bill have ill intentions. They are bigots, just like my friend Lindsay Graham told you they were when he spoke before you two years ago. …”
My friends, I don’t want to talk about securing the border any more than you do. But trust me, when the “border” is “secure” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), then we’ll do what we all want to do: Formalize our Sanctuary Nation. Rejoice that illegal aliens are serving in the military. And sanctimoniously demonize and marginalize all those pesky bigots who keep obsessing about immigration enforcement and national security. I’m as committed to peddling sob-story platitudes and whitewashing your ethnic nationalism as you are! (What was that about the 15 things about The Race you should know? Shhhhhhhhhhh!)
Just work with me here, ok? Brother Obama may have marched with you at the Chicago May Day illegal alien parade. But I have a lifetime commitment to Hispandering! And you have showered with me with honors for my open-borders work.
“The international border between Mexico and the United States runs from San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east. It traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from major urban areas to inhospitable deserts. From the Gulf of Mexico it follows the course of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) to the border crossing at El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; westward from that binational conurbation it crosses vast tracts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert, the Colorado River Delta, westward to the binational conurbation of San Diego and Tijuana before reaching the Pacific Ocean.
The border’s total length is 3,169 km (1,969 miles), according to figures given by the International Boundary and Water Commission.[1] It is the most frequently crossed international border in the world, with about 250 million legal crossings every year.[2]
The nearly 2000 mile (3,138 km or 1,950 miles) international border follows the middle of the Rio Grande — according to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo between the two nations, “along the deepest channel” — from its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico a distance of 2,019 km (1,254 miles) to a point just upstream of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. It then follows an alignment westward overland and marked by monuments a distance of 858 km (533 miles) to the Colorado River, during which it reaches its highest elevation at the intersection with the Continental Divide. Thence it follows the middle of that river northward a distance of 38 km (24 miles), and then it again follows an alignment westward overland and marked by monuments a distance of 226 km (141 miles) to the Pacific Ocean.
The region along the boundary is characterised by deserts, rugged mountains, abundant sunshine and by two major rivers — the Colorado and the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) — which provide life-giving waters to the largely arid but fertile lands along the rivers in both countries.
The U.S. states along the border, from west to east, are:
California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
The Mexican states are:
Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.
In the United States, Texas has the longest stretch of the border of any State, while California has the shortest. In Mexico, Chihuahua has the longest border, while Nuevo León has the shortest. …”
Re: John McCain Defends Amnesty & Open Borders Juan Hernandez
Who Is Juan Hernandez?
John McCain Defends Amnesty & Open Borders Juan Hernandez
Lou Dobbs – These Candidates Would Say ANYTHING
The Dangers of the “North American Union” by Jerome Corsi
Why Bill Kristol thinks Ron Paul is a “Crackpot”
Charlie Rose – WOLFOWITZ / HOLMES
Paul Wolfowitz speaks at Hudson Institute
Countdown – No Iranian Nukes and Wolfowitz is Back
Paul Wolfowitz speech June 6 2001
Iraq War Mastermind Speaks Out
Charlie Rose – Sen. Dick Durbin / Douglas Feith / Sen. Ron Wyden
Book TV: Douglas Feith, author of “War and Decision”
Riz Khan – Richard Perle – 18 Mar 08
Charlie Rose – PERL & FRUM
Who is Randy Scheunemann?
Bill Kristol Anthology
Neo-cons War Lobbying To Bomb Iran
NeoConservative Charles Krauthammer discusses U.S. options against Russia
Dr. Charles Krauthammer part 1
Dr. Charles Krauthammer part 2
Krauthammer: What will Obama give to Iran?
Next President 1
Next President 2
Why I love Charles Krauthammer
Bolton and Krauthammer on Russian Expansion past Georgia
Fred Kagan on Jim Lehrer
Fred Kagan Debates Nir Rosen on Iraq Surge (Part 1)
Iraq, the Neocons and the Israel Lobby – John Mearsheimer
Conversations With History: John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt
the Washington Report, Ep.1 with Michael Ledeen (Part 2)
the Washington Report, Ep.1 with Michael Ledeen (Part 2)
John Bolton – Does Iran Need a “Regime Change?”
Neocon John Bolton Pushes War Against Iran
Norman Podhoretz on Iran
Norman Podhoretz on His New Book
Riz Khan- The Neocons and Iran- 10 Dec 07
Beyond Iraq: The Challenges Confronting US (1 of 2), 2008
Beyond Iraq: The Challenges Confronting US (2 of 2), 2008
Charlie Rose: March 4, 2003 with Ron Brownstein and Robert Kagan
Why CIA Veterans Are Scared of McCain
“…These critics point especially to the McCain campaign’s top national security adviser Randy Scheunemann—who ran a front group promoting war with Iraq and the fabrications of controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and who has lobbied for aggressive NATO expansion. Scheunemann’s record, they argue, encapsulates everything wrong with the past eight years of Bush leadership on intelligence issues, from a penchant for foreign policy freelancing and secret contacts with unreliable fabricators, to neoconservatives’ disdain for the perceived bureaucratic timidity of the CIA and State Department, to their avowed hostility for diplomacy with adversaries. If McCain wins, “the military has won,” says one former senior CIA officer. “We will no longer have a civilian intelligence arm. Yes, we will have analysts. But we won’t have any real civilian intelligence capability.”
“McCain would be an absolute disaster,” says a second recently retired senior US intelligence operations officer. “He is prejudiced against the CIA. The day after the 2004 election when Bush won, McCain came on TV and gave an interview in which he said something to the effect of, ‘The CIA tried to sabotage this election. They’ve made their bed and now they have to lay in it.’ I used to like McCain, but he is inconsistent.” Columnist Robert Novak quoted McCain in November 2004 as saying, “With CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization.”
McCain is influenced by a circle of hardline Republican legislators and congressional staff as well as disgruntled former Agency officials “who all had these long-standing grudges against people in the Agency,” the former senior intelligence officer said. “They think the CIA is a hotbed of liberals. Right-wing, nutty paranoia stuff. They all love the military and hate the CIA. Because the CIA tells them stuff they don’t want to hear.” …”
“…What this means is that McCain’s ACU ratings since 1998 put him on the liberal side among Republicans. The few Republicans consistently more liberal than McCain would be Chafee (formerly R-RI), Collins (R-ME), Snowe (R-ME) and Specter (R-PA). One could expect senators from northeastern states to be more liberal since their constituencies demand it, but McCain represents the fairly conservative state of Arizona. (Arizona’s other senator, Kyl, has a lifetime rating of 96.9, and half the representatives from there have ratings of 94.7 or higher.)
How much more liberal would McCain vote if his constituency put even the slightest pressure on him in that direction?
On the other hand, Senator Clinton (D-NY) has a lifetime ACU rating of 9 (83rd place) and Senator Obama (D-IL) has a rating of 8 (86th place).
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Buchanan accuses ‘McCain’s neocon warmonger’ of treason Stephen C. Webster
“…According to conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, Sen. John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is a ‘dual loyalist,’ ‘neocon warmonger’ involved in activities that ‘none dare call treason.’
Scheunemann’s former employer, Orion Strategies, is a lobbying firm with strong ties to Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration in Georgia.
Since Georgia attempted to retake South Ossetia by force, triggering a sharp, violent rebuke by Russian forces, Sen. McCain has been by far the most strident advocate of US support for the former Soviet state. And his top adviser, says Buchanan, may well be the next Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski.
“He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man,” he wrote. …”
“…Two new issues broke apart the 1980s Reaganite conservative consensus. The first was immigration. By the late 1980s, the impact of the 1965 immigration law had begun greatly to accelerate the pace of immigration. Younger readers may not recall the vital role National Review began to play in analyzing that law and the social, environmental, and political consequences it brought about. The battle was joined when John O’Sullivan (NR’s editor since 1988) published in 1992 Peter Brimelow’s explosive “Time to Rethink Immigration,” which quickly became the most debated conservative magazine article of the year. The piece forced the immigration debate into the open within the conservative movement, where it fused with the populist revolt breaking out in California over Proposition 187, an anti-illegal-alien measure. For the next five years, the magazine put what it called “The National Question” in the spotlight, publishing cover stories by Brimelow, Fred Iklé, O’Sullivan, and eventually (as I was won over to the magazine’s position) one by me.
The neoconservatives, to my complete surprise, were not pleased.
In the summer of 1995, Neal Kozodoy gave me a copy of a letter. Written by Irwin Steltzer to the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, it was making its way around the upper echelons of the neocon magazines and think tanks. Steltzer is a Bronx-born economist and Weekly Standard editor who lives part-time in London. While a gifted economic essayist, his most important function is surely as the ideological gendarme for Rupert Murdoch’s American media properties.
Steltzer wrote to Kristol (and the wider world) that he was canceling his subscription to National Review because of its “increasingly offensive positions on such topics as immigration.” He went on then to complain about a piece by Richard Neuhaus on anti-Semitism, which, Steltzer charged, was itself anti-Semitic. He added, apropos of a quote of Kristol’s that appeared in Neuhaus’s article, that he was “always suspicious” of Father Neuhaus’s excerpting, “particularly in an article which contains cunningly placed little adjectives and descriptions.” He concluded with a more general comment about John O’Sullivan’s National Review: “Add to this NR’s applause for the immigration statutes of the 1920’s, designed to keep eastern European Jews out, and you have a not-very-subtle form of anti-Semitism, dressed up as an attack on liberalism.”
Bill Buckley stood by his editor initially, but not for long. Within two years, O’Sullivan was eased out, replaced by the youthful Rich Lowry, who immediately upon assuming his new post fired Peter Brimelow.
In the very early years of the neocon-paleocon skirmish, Russell Kirk, the somewhat fogeyish father of postwar American intellectual conservatism, gave a speech about the neocons at the Heritage Foundation. He generally praised them but added some words of caution. Quoting from a friend’s letter, Kirk said, “It is significant that when the Neo-Cons wish to damn any conservative who has appealed for a grant from a conservative foundation, they tell the officers of the foundation the conservative is a fascist.” I, of course, had heard of neocon campaigns against other conservatives, but the targets were not men I knew or agreed with. But I did know O’Sullivan and Neuhaus, and the Russell Kirk remark that had once seemed overheated became a good deal less so. …”
Idealism and Its Discontents Thinking on the neoconservative slur.
Victor Davis Hanson
“…Third, Iraq is not the sole touchstone of neoconservative thought. Many traditional conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, who favor balanced budgets, an end to illegal immigration, and more sober judgment on entitlements, came to the conclusion after September 11 that the many lives of Saddam Hussein had run out. Indeed, one of the ironies of this war is the spectacle of many who called for the removal of Saddam Hussein in the late 1990s now turning on the war, while many who would have never supported such preemption before 9/11 insist on giving the administration full support in the midst of the present fighting.
Fourth, traditional conservatives especially distrust neoconservatives because, well, they are not entirely conservative and confuse the public about the virtues of the hallowed native reluctance to spend blood and treasure abroad for dubiously idealistic purposes. In contrast, progressives dislike them because their promotion of democracy can complicate liberalism, as if it were a fine and noble thing to insist on elections in the former Third World, even if need be through force. And every ideology saves its greatest venom for the perceived apostate: Thus Zell Miller infuriates liberals in the way John McCain or Chuck Hagel does conservatives.
Fifth, the battlefield adjudicates perceptions. Before the Iraqi invasion, neoconservatives took a beating in the acrimonious lead-up to the war about which scenarios were proffered about millions of refugees and thousands of American dead. Yet after the three-week victory, even television hosts were boasting, “We are all neoconservatives now.” Then the messy post-bellum Iraqi reconstruction brought back disdain, while successful elections and a consensual government could well win admiration. For most, ideology or belief matters not nearly as much as impressions of being judged as smart, successful, and “cutting-edge” — a constantly changing and amorphous image that in Washington is predicated on the 24-hour news cycle.
Finally, radical foreign-policy changes always upset the status quo and beg for conspiratorial exegesis. After 1948, the Cold Warriors were felt to have appropriated the Democratic party from the Henry Wallace wing, and they suffered abuse both from the naïve Left who saw them as veritable McCarthyites, and from the isolationist Right who did not want to continue the sacrifices of internationalism endlessly on into the postwar peace. …”
“…Who makes up this potent faction? Within the administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is usually identified as the key actor, together with Richard Perle, a member and until recently the chairman of the Defense Advisory Board. A handful of other high-level Bush appointees are often named as adherents of the neocon faith, including Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, National Security Council staff member Elliott Abrams, and Vice Presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI, where I work), the Weekly Standard magazine, and William Kristol’s Project for a New American Century–all three rent offices in the same building–are often described as constituting the movement’s Washington command center. And then, of course, there is this magazine, crucible of so much neoconservative thought.
The history of neoconservatism is less sensational than its current usage implies. The term came into currency in the mid-1970’s as an anathema–pronounced, by upholders of leftist orthodoxy, against a group of intellectuals, centered mostly in Commentary and the quarterly Public Interest, who then still thought of themselves as liberals but were at odds with the dominant thinking of the Left. One part of this group consisted of writers about domestic policy–Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James Q. Wilson, Nathan Glazer–who had developed misgivings about the programs of the New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The other main contingent focused on foreign policy, and especially on the decline of America’s position vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in the wake of the Vietnam war. The names here included, among others, Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Eugene V. Rostow. Although, at first, most of these people resisted the label neoconservative, eventually almost all of them acquiesced in it. …”
“…On September 11, we learned in the most dreadful way that terrorists would not be appeased by our diffidence; quite the contrary. We saw–they themselves told us–that they intended to go on murdering us in ever larger numbers as long as they could. A sharp change of course was required, and the neoconservatives, who had been warning for years that terror must not be appeased, stood vindicated–much as, more grandly, Churchill was vindicated by Hitler’s depredations after Munich.
Not only did the neocons have an analysis of what had gone wrong in American policy, they also stood ready with proposals for what to do now: to wage war on the terror groups and to seek to end or transform governments that supported them, especially those possessing the means to furnish terrorists with the wherewithal to kill even more Americans than on September 11. Neocons also offered a long-term strategy for making the Middle East less of a hotbed of terrorism: implanting democracy in the region and thereby helping to foment a less violent approach to politics.
No neoconservative was elevated in office after September 11, as Churchill had been to prime minister after the collapse of the Munich agreement, but policies espoused by neoconservatives were embraced by the Bush administration. Was this because Bush learned them from the likes of Wolfowitz and Perle? Or did he and his top advisers–none of them known as a neocon–reach similar conclusions on their own? We may have to await the President’s memoirs to learn the answer to that narrow question, but every American has reason to be grateful for the result.
If these policies should fail, for whatever reason–including a recurrence of national faint-heartedness–then neoconservative ideas will no doubt be discredited. But this matters hardly at all compared with what we will have lost. For, if they fail, either we will then be at the mercy of ever more murderous terrorism or we will have to seek alternative methods of coping with it–methods that are likely to involve a much more painful and frightening course of action than the admittedly daunting one that still lies before us.
If, however, the policies succeed, then the world will have been delivered from an awful scourge, and there will be credit enough to go around–some of it, one trusts, even for the lately much demonized neoconservatives. …”
“…There’s a very important catch in the Weekly Standard by spy-dude Elbridge Colby, who notes a crucial change in our plans to respond to terrorist use of WMD’s. We’ve long held that states which assist in WMD terror would be held accountable. But February 8, we expanded our potential retribution schedule:
Instead of merely threatening that states that support terror attacks will be held responsible–already a staple of U.S. policy–Hadley goes further, threatening non-state actors who “enabl[e]” terrorists to strike with WMD. This careful choice of words would seem to expand our retaliatory standard to encompass complicity and perhaps even negligence. Not only states, but groups and individuals as well, should now be on notice that they will be held accountable for participation in, support for, complicity in, or even negligence in the face of WMD strikes against the United States or its allies. This strategy makes a great deal of sense; catastrophic terrorism is a threat that both justifies and requires a more exacting standard of behavior.
The nature of nations, like people, never changes. Today’s political realists say economics rather than military might has become the guiding principle of countries, but the conflict in Georgia shows otherwise, argues Robert Kagan.
By ROBERT KAGAN
“…Where are the realists? When Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it ought to have been their moment. Here was Vladimir Putin, a cold-eyed realist if ever there was one, taking advantage of a favorable opportunity to shift the European balance of power in his favor — a 21st century Frederick the Great or Bismarck, launching a small but decisive war on a weaker neighbor while a surprised and dumbfounded world looked on helplessly. Here was a man and a nation pursuing “interest defined as power,” to use the famous phrase of Hans Morgenthau, acting in obedience to what Mr. Morgenthau called the “objective law” of international power politics. Yet where are Mr. Morgenthau’s disciples to remind us that Russia’s latest military action is neither extraordinary nor unexpected nor aberrant but entirely normal and natural, that it is but a harbinger of what is yet to come because the behavior of nations, like human nature, is unchanging?
Today’s “realists,” who we’re told are locked in some titanic struggle with “neoconservatives” on issues ranging from Iraq, Iran and the Middle East to China and North Korea, would be almost unrecognizable to their forebears. Rather than talk about power, they talk about the United Nations, world opinion and international law. They propose vast new international conferences, a la Woodrow Wilson, to solve intractable, decades-old problems. They argue that the United States should negotiate with adversaries not because America is strong but because it is weak. Power is no answer to the vast majority of the challenges we face, they insist, and, indeed, is counterproductive because it undermines the possibility of international consensus. …”
“…Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the “American grain.” It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican presidencies One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the “have-nots” and the “haves” engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability. The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives. Neocons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy–because it seems to be in the nature of human nature–that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning.
This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on “the road to serfdom.” Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his “The Man Versus the State,” was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today’s America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.
But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America. The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives–though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government’s attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.
AND THEN, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War.) These attitudes can be summarized in the following “theses” (as a Marxist would say): First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing. …”
“…Selfish and Uninstructed. I offer you two specimens of the rejection of the Neoconservatives that I encounter nowadays in many quarters. My first extract is from a letter recently received from a very distinguished historian in Pennsylvania. “I have burned my bridges with most (not all) of the Konservatives, and especially with the neo- conservatives, who are selfish and uninstructed radicals and progressives, wishing to pour cement all over the country and make the world safe for democracy, well beyond the dreams of Wilson,” he writes to me. “A feeling for the land, for its conservation, and for the strong modesty of a traditional patriotism (as distinct from nationalism) none of them has.”
My second instance of the spreading distaste for Neoconservatives comes from a well-known literary scholar. “I would not be at all surprised to see the Neo-Cons jump ship if Dukakis is elected; they would be perfectly capable of making an accommodation with the socialist wing of the Democratic Party,” he tells me …… It is significant that when the Neo-Cons wish to damn any conservative who has appealed for a grant to a conservative foundation, they tell the officers of the foundation that the conservative is a fascist…. I believe that the chief enemy of American conservatism has not been the Marxists, nor even the socialist liberals in the Democratic Party, but the Neo-Conservatives, who have sabotaged the movement from within and exploited it for their own selfish purposes.”
Simple Old Label. Now the strictures of the gentlemen I have quoted cannot well apply to some of the better known people called Neoconservatives; for there are among that group high-minded men and women of principle. Our difficulty here is very like that I encountered when I lectured, a few months ago, on the Libertarians: the appellation Neoconservative, like the appellation Libertarian, is so widely employed, and so variously, as to seem to include people of radically opposed views. What is a Neoconservative, really? Is he, as Harrington and Steinfels saw him, a liberal who opportunistically has turned his coat? Is he primarily a seeker after power and the main chance? Or is he a man who has new ideas about the defense of the Permanent Things? For my part, I wish that certain so-called Neoconservatives whose views and lives I approve, like certain libertarians for whom I have a fellow feeling, would content themselves, as do I, with the simple old label Conservative.
How the neoconservative right adopted the worst errors of the left
Julian Sanchez
“…A final symptom of the unconstrained vision—and the focus of Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed—is the tendency (in Sowell’s account invariably the tendency of liberals) to focus on the intentions of policies rather than their effects, so that a “poverty relief program” is so called whether or not it actually manages to relieve poverty, and a “Terrorist Surveillance Program” can retain the title even if the vast majority of the people whose conversations are swept up by it have nothing to do with terrorism. “Compassionate conservatism”—in addition to suggesting by implication that conservatism simpliciter lacked compassion—makes a sentiment or an attitude, rather than the specific policy mechanisms it seeks to employ, definitive of the philosophy. As a corollary to this focus on intention, opposition to the particular means employed by elites is viewed as opposition to their ends: Where once progressives tarred Great Society skeptics as callous brutes unconcerned with the plight of the poor, conservative pundits now routinely cast opposition to the Iraq war and other components of the War on Terror as prosecuted by the president as a sign of sympathy for tyrants or terrorists.
None of this is to say that all good flows from the politics of the constrained vision and all ills from the unconstrained view. For my taste—and that of most libertarians, I suspect—Sowell’s constrained vision in its purer forms is probably a shade too constrained, too ready to assume that old customs continue to serve their traditional functions under changed circumstances. But it is the worst features of the unconstrained vision—its hubris, its pretense to omnicompetence—that have taken hold of the right. And if there is wisdom in each of the two perspectives, it should be worrying that, for all the other differences between the major parties, between progressives and conservatives, in this one fundamental way the political landscape increasingly offers only half the picture—different refractions of the same unconstrained vision. With the waning of the constrained perspective’s tempering influence, we’re left with a political vision that’s dangerously double.”
Pat Buchanan:”McCain will make Cheney look like Gandhi”
Anne Norton Defines Neocons
Israel, Iran and the New Neocons
Newshour: “Neo-Cons Pushing for War with Iran” – Pt 1 of 2
Newshour: “Neo-Cons Pushing for War with Iran” – Pt 2 of 2
1. The Neocons – Ideology and Fantasy (Part 1 of 14)
2. The Neocons – Rumsfeld’s Imaginary War (2/14)
3. The Neocons – Birth of Islamic Extremists
4. The Neocons – Recruiting Christians / Concept of Terror
5. The Neocons – CIA’s $1Billion Backs Future Terrorists
6. The Neocons – Ignored Warning of Terrorists
7. Then Neocons – Destruction of the Republican Party
8. The Neocons – Clinton’s Blowjob / Extremist Rampage
9. The Neocons – “There’s No Al-Qaeda Organization”
10. The Neocons – “We’re Gonna Find Those Evil Doers”
11. The Neocons – Hunt for Osama / The Disney Terrorists
12. The Neocons – Godzilla was a Terrorist Mentor
13. The Neocons – Dirty Bomb / Precautionary Principle
14. The Neocons – Fear is the Only Agenda
Leo Strauss
“Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-born Jewish-American political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. He spent most of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books. Since his death, he has come to be regarded as one of the intellectual fathers of neoconservatism in the United States. …”
“Irving Kristol (born January 22, 1920, Brooklyn, New York City, New York) is considered the founder of American neoconservatism. He is married to conservative author and emerita professor Gertrude Himmelfarb and is the father of William Kristol.
Kristol was born into an orthodox Jewish family. However, he maintains that belief had nothing to do with his family’s observance.[1] He earned his B.A. in History from the City College of New York in 1940, where he was an active Trotskyist. Before graduating, he met Gertrude Himmelfarb at a Trotskyist meeting, and they married on January 18, 1942.[2] He wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940.[3] From 1941 to 1944, he served as staff sergeant in the armored infantry in Europe in World War II. After the war, he was stationed in Marseilles for a year.[4]
He was the managing editor of Commentary magazine from 1947 to 1952, co-founder of the British-based Encounter and its editor from 1953 to 1958 when he handed over the reins to his friend and City College classmate Melvin J. Lasky[5], editor of the Reporter from 1959 to 1960, executive vice-president of Basic Books from 1961 to 1969, and professor of social thought at the New York University Graduate School of Business from 1969 to 1988. Since 1988, he has been John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has used these positions and publications to animate the neo-conservative movement, arguing for low taxes, a well-funded and internationally active military, conservative social policy, and a minimalist interpretation of First Amendment rights. For example, he once stated that “I don’t think the advocacy of homosexuality really falls under the First Amendment any more than the advocacy or publication of pornography does.”[6]
Kristol is the founder of the politics and culture journal The Public Interest and the foreign affairs journal The National Interest. He was co-editor of The Public Interest (first with Daniel Bell, then with Nathan Glazer) from its founding in 1965 until 2002 and publisher of The National Interest from its founding in 1985 until 2001.
He is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 1988, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1972, a member of the Wall Street Journal Board of Contributors since 1972, and president of National Affairs, Inc.
Kristol suggests of himself, “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a neo-something: a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, a neo-conservative; in religion a neo-orthodox even while I was a neo-Trotskyist and a neo-Marxist. I’m going to end up a neo-that’s all, neo dash nothing.”[7]
In July 2002, President George W. Bush awarded Kristol the Presidential Medal of Freedom. …”
“Russell Kirk (19 October 1918 – 29 April 1994) was an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. …”
“…The Conservative Mind
The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana[3], the published version of Kirk’s doctoral dissertation, contributed materially to the 20th century Burke revival. It also drew attention to:
Conservative statesmen such as John Adams, George Canning, John C. Calhoun, Joseph de Maistre, Benjamin Disraeli, and Arthur Balfour;
The conservative implications of writings by well-known authors such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, George Gissing, George Santayana, and T. S. Eliot;
British and American authors such as Fisher Ames, John Randolph of Roanoke, Orestes Brownson, John Henry Newman, Walter Bagehot, Henry James Sumner Maine, William Edward Hartpole Lecky, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, William Hurrell Mallock, Leslie Stephen, Albert Venn Dicey, Paul Elmer More, and Irving Babbitt.
The Portable Conservative Reader (1982), which Kirk edited, contains sample writings by most of the above.
Not everyone agreed with Kirk’s reading of the conservative heritage and tradition. For example, Harry Jaffa (a student of Leo Strauss) wrote: “Kirk was a poor Burke scholar. Burke’s attack on metaphysical reasoning related only to modern philosophy’s attempt to eliminate skeptical doubt from its premises and hence from its conclusions.”[4]
Russello (2004) argues that Kirk adapted what 19th century American Catholic thinker Orestes Brownson called “territorial democracy” to articulate a version of federalism that was based on premises that differ in part from those of the Founders and other conservatives. Kirk further believed that territorial democracy could reconcile the tension between treating the states as mere provinces of the central government, and as autonomous political units independent of Washington. Finally, territorial democracy allowed Kirk to set out a theory of individual rights grounded in the particular historical circumstances of the United States, while rejecting a universal conception of such rights.
Principles
Kirk developed six “canons” of conservatism, which Russello (2004) described as follows:
A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
An affection for the “variety and mystery” of human existence;
A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize “natural” distinctions;
A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.
Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are “unimaginable apart from one another.” [5] and that “all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief.” [6] …”
“…Milton Friedman (born July 31, 1912 – died November 16, 2006) was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. He is best known among scholars for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.[1] A global public followed his restatement of a libertarian political philosophy that insisted on minimizing the role of government in favor of the private sector. As a leader of the Chicago School of economics, based at the University of Chicago, he had a widespread influence in shaping the research agenda of the entire profession. Friedman’s many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos and lectures cover a broad range of topics in microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. The Economist hailed him as “the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it”.[2]
Originally a Keynesian supporter of the New Deal and advocate of high taxes, in the 1950s his reinterpretation of the Keynesian consumption function challenged the basic keynesian model. In the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy called monetarism. He theorized there existed a “natural rate of unemployment” and he argued the central government could not micromanage the economy because people would realize what the government was doing and shift their behavior to neutralize the impact of policies. He rejected the Phillips Curve and predicted that Keynesian policies would cause “stagflation” (high unemployment and low growth). He argued that a steady expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy, and warned against efforts by the treasury or central bank to do otherwise.
Influenced by his close friend George Stigler, Friedman opposed government regulation of all sorts, as well as public schooling. Friedman’s political philosophy, which he considered classically liberal and libertarian, stressed the advantages of the marketplace and the disadvantages of government intervention and regulation, strongly influencing the outlook of American conservatives and libertarians. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom. His books and essays were widely read and even circulated underground behind the Iron Curtain.[3][4]
Friedman’s methodological innovations were widely accepted by economists, but his policy prescriptions were highly controversial. Most economists in the 1960s rejected them, but since then they had a growing international influence (especially in the U.S. and Britain), and in the 21st century have gained wide acceptance among many economists. He thus lived to see some of his laissez-faire ideas embraced by the mainstream,[5] especially during the 1980s. His views of monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation informed the policy of governments around the globe, especially the administrations of Ronald Reagan in the U.S., Brian Mulroney in Canada, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and (after 1989) in Eastern Europe. …”
“Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (pronounced [ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs]) (September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian Economist, philosopher, and a major influence on the modern libertarian movement.
Because of his Jewish origin and his opinions, he had to emigrate to Switzerland and then settled in the USA.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is named after him.
“Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (May 8, 1899 – March 23, 1992) was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought in the mid-20th century. He is considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century.[1] One of the most influential members of the Austrian School of economics, he also made significant contributions in the fields of jurisprudence and cognitive science. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.”[2] He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.[3] He is considered to be one of the major forces of change from the dominant interventionist and Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century back to towards classical liberalism after the 1980s. …”