My Beauty Best Teacher

Mired in grinding poverty and social destitution, Africa cries for help. A cacophonous galaxy of rock stars, anti-poverty activists, and heads of state are calling on the G-8 countries to cancel Africa’s $350 billion crippling foreign debt and double aid to the continent. British Prime Minister Tony Blair will make aid to Africa the centerpiece in Britain's presidency of the G-8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland in July. Live 8 is planned for July 2. After meeting with President Bush on June 10, modalities are being worked out to cancel at least $34 billion in debt of 27 of the world’s poorest nations, mostly African. Will this African Marshall Aid Plan work?

Africa’s plight follows a ten-year attention deficit cycle. Every decade or so, mega-plans are drawn up and rock concerts held to whip up international rescue mission for Africa. Acrimonious wrangling over financing modalities ensues. Years slip by, then a decade later, another grand Africa initiative is unveiled. Back in 1985, there was Live Aid and a “Special Session on Africa” held by the United Nations to boost aid to Africa. Then in March 1996, the U.N. launched a $25 billion Special Initiative for Africa. In September 2005, the plight of Africa will again take center-stage at a U.N. conference with clockwork precision. Expect another major initiative for Africa in 2015.

Helping Africa of course is noble but has now become a theater of the absurd – the blind leading the clueless. A recent IMF study estimated that Africans in the diaspora remit $32 billion annually back to Africa, with the main destinations being Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. About $7 billion is sent to southern Africa (Ghana News Agency, Accra, May 31, 2005). The amount Africans abroad remit back exceeds the $25 billion Tony Blair seeks to raise.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo says corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion (£95 billion) from their people since independence. The World Bank estimates that 40 per cent of wealth created in Africa is invested outside the continent. Even the African Union, in a stunning report last August, claimed that Africa loses an estimated $148 billion annually to corruption – or 25 percent of the continent's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Rather than plug the huge hemorrhage, African leaders prefer to badger the West for more money. And the West, blinded by its own racial over-sensitivity and guilt over the iniquities of the slave trade and colonialism, obliges. This is the real tragedy of Africa.

Between 1960 and 1997, the West pumped more than $450 billion in foreign aid – the equivalent of four Marshall Aid Plans – into Africa with nothing to show for it. Contrary to popular misconception, foreign aid is not free but a soft loan. Outright debt relief and massive inflow of aid without any conditionalities, safeguards or monitoring mechanisms is absurd. It is akin to writing off the credit card debt of a drunken sailor and allowing him to keep the same credit cards. No African government has been called upon to give a full public accounting of who took what loan and for what purpose since many of Africa’s foreign loans taken in the past were misused and squandered. No government official has been held accountable; instead, irresponsible past borrowing behavior is being rewarded.

More distressing, much of the new aid money will flow directly into an African government budget – a huge black maze of vanishing tax receipts, extra-budgetary expenditure items, perks and off-budget “presidential privy accounts,” redolent with graft, patronage and waste. Over the past few decades, African budgets have careened out of control. State bureaucracies have swollen, packed with political supporters. Back in 1996, 20 percent of Ghana's public sector workforce was declared redundant by the Secretary of Finance and Guinea’s 50,000 civil servants were consuming 51 percent of the nation's wealth. In Kenya, civil service salaries take up half the budget; in Uganda, it is 40 percent. Zimbabwe has 54 ministers; Uganda with a population of 35 million has 70, while Ghana, with a population of 22 million, has 88 ministers and deputy ministers. With bloated bureaucracies, soaring expenditures and narrow tax bases, budget deficits have soared.

They are covered with World Bank loans and foreign aid (Ghana’s budget is 50 percent aid-financed and Uganda’s is 60 percent). If the aid is insufficient, the rest of the budget shortfall is financed by printing money. Even when is aid available for “budgetary support”, there is no guarantee that it will be used productively to generate a return to repay the soft loan. It could well be “consumed” when it pays for the salaries of civil servants. Writing off Uganda’s debt does not eliminate the aid dependency. In fact, when the World Bank canceled $650 million of Uganda’s debt in 1999, the first item President Yoweri Museveni purchased was a new presidential jet!


British Prime Minister thinks he can cajole or browbeat African leaders into curbing corruption and ensuring that resources released by debt relief are put to some good use – such as increased spending on education and health care. But the push for good governance and reform must come from within – from African civil society groups, organizations and the people. However, in country after country, chastened by diabolical restrictions, these groups have no freedom or political space to operate.

Carlos Cardoso, an investigative journalist, was murdered in November 2000 for uncovering a bank scandal in which about $14 million was looted from Mozambique's largest bank, BCM, on the eve of its privatization. The official in charge of banking supervision, Antonio Siba Siba, was also murdered while investigating the banking scandals. Such was also the fate of Norbert Zongo, a popular journalist in Burkina Faso, who was gunned down on Dec 13, 1998, while investigating official corruption. In September 2001, President Isaias Afwerki closed down all the independent media and arrested its staff, quashing calls for democratic reforms. In all, the government shut down eight private newspapers and arrested its journalists, picking them up in their newsrooms and homes and from the streets. They were held in a central jail until April, 2002, when they threatened to begin a hunger strike to protest their detention. They were then transferred to an undisclosed location.

In neighboring Ethiopia, President Meles Zenawi, a member of Tony Blair’s Africa Commission, just held fraudulent elections. Anticipating public outrage, he banned street demonstrations for one month and assumed full control of the country’s security forces. When the opposition rallied to protest the results dribbling in, the police opened fire, killing 26; opposition leaders have been placed under house arrest. Witness the election machinations in Egypt.

The paucity of good leadership has left a garish stain on the continent. Worse, the caliber of leadership has distressingly deteriorated over the decades to execrable depths. The likes of Charles Taylor of Liberia and Sani Abacha of Nigeria even make Mobutu Sese Seko of formerly Zaire look like a saint. In an unusual editorial, The Independent newspaper in Ghana wrote: "Most of the leaders in Africa are power-loving politicians, who in uniform or out of uniform, represent no good for the welfare of our people. These are harsh words to use on men and women who may mean well but lack the necessary vision and direction to uplift the status of their people (The Independent, Ghana, July 20, 2000; p.2).

The crisis in leadership remains a major obstacle to poverty reduction and has many manifestations. It is characterized, among others, by the following dispositions and failings: The "Big Man" syndrome, subordination of national interests to personal aggrandizement, super-inflated egos, misplaced priorities, poor judgment, reluctance to take responsibility for personal failures, and total lack of vision and understanding of even such basic and elementary concepts as "democracy," "fairness," "rule of law," "accountability," and "freedom" -- among other deficiencies. In some instances, the leadership is given to vituperative utterances, outright buffoonery, stubborn refusal to learn from past mistakes, and complete absence of cognitive pragmatism.

Believing that their countries belong to them and only them only, they cling to power at all costs. Their promises are worth less than Al Cappone’s. They stipulate constitutional term limits and then break them: Angola, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, and Uganda. African leaders themselves drew up a New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in 2001, in which they inserted a Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), by which they were to evaluate the performance of fellow African leaders in terms of democratic governance. What happened? To be fair, they acted in reversing the “military coup” in Togo in February but went on vacation when elections were stolen in Zimbabwe and Togo.

Ask them to cut bloated state bureaucracies or government spending and they will set up a “Ministry of Less Government Spending.” Then there is the “Ministry of Good Governance” (Tanzania). They set up “Anti-Corruption Commissions” with no teeth and then sack the Commissioner if he gets too close to the fat cats (Kenya) or issue a Government White Paper to exonerate corrupt ministers (Ghana in 1996). To be sure, multi-party elections have been held in recent years in many African countries but the electoral process was so contumaciously manipulated to return incumbents to power. Four such “coconut elections” have so far been held this year: Zimbabwe, Togo, Congo (Brazzaville), and Ethiopia.

Ask them to place more reliance on the private sector and they will create a Ministry of Private Enterprise (Ghana). Ask them to privatize inefficient state-owned enterprises and they will sell them off at fire-sale prices to their cronies (Uganda). Or ask them to move a foot and they will demand foreign aid in order to do so. In 2003, some 30,000 ghost names were discovered on the payroll of the Ministry of Education, costing the government $1.2 million a month in salaries heisted by living workers. When Ghana demanded foreign aid to purge the payroll of these ghost names, Japan coughed up $5 million.

The reform process has stalled through vexatious chicanery, willful deception, and vaunted acrobatics. Only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic, fewer than 8 are “economic success stories,” only 8 have a free and independent media.

No amount of debt relief and increased aid will help Africa until Africa cleans up its own house. But the leadership is not interested in reform. Thus, without new leadership and genuine reform, debt relief and increased aid would compound Africa’s problems and more African countries will implode. The continent is stuck in a veritable conundrum. What can Western donors do?

Smart aid would do one of two things. One, bypass the vampire state and target the people, who produce Africa’s real wealth. An African economy consists of three sectors: the traditional, informal, and the modern sector. The people who produce Africa’s real wealth – cash crops, diamonds, gold and other minerals – live in the traditional and informal sectors. Meaningful development and poverty reduction cannot occur by ignoring these two sectors. But in the 1960s and 1970s, much Western development aid was channeled into the modern sector or the urban area, the abode of the parasitic elite minority. Industrialization was the rage and the two other sectors – especially agriculture – were neglected. Huge foreign loans were contracted to set up a dizzying array of state enterprises, which became towering edifices of gross inefficiency, waste and graft. Economic crises emerged in the 1980s and billions in foreign aid money were spent in an attempt to reform the dysfunctional modern sector. Between 1981 and 1994, for example, the World Bank spent more than $25 billion in Structural Adjustment loans to reform Africa’s dilapidated statist economic system. Only 6 out of the 29 “adjusting” African countries were adjudged to be “economic success stories” in 1994. Even then, the success list was phantasmagoric. Ghana, declared a “success story” in 1994, is now on HIPC life-support system.

At some point, even the most recklessly optimistic donor must come to terms with the law of diminishing returns: That pouring in more money to reform the modern sector is futile. Greater returns can be achieved elsewhere – by focusing on the traditional and informal sectors.

Second, smart aid would empower the African people (African civil society groups) to monitor how the aid money is being spent and to instigate reform from within. Empowerment requires arming the African people with information, the freedom and the institutional means to unchain themselves from the vicious grip of poverty and oppression.

Africa already has its own Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights (the 1981 Banjul Charter), which recognizes the right to liberty and to the security of his person (Article 6); to receive information, to express and disseminate his opinions (Article 9); to free association (Article 10); to assemble freely with others (Article 11); and to participate freely in the government of his country, either directly or through freely chosen representatives in accordance with the provisions of the law (Article 13). Though the Charter enjoins African states to recognize these rights, few do so. When President Thabo Mbeki called on June 3, President Bush should have handed him a signed copy of this Charter to be delivered to President Robert Mugabe of ‘Zimbabwe.

The institutional tools Africans need are an independent central bank (to assure monetary stability and stanch capital flight), an independent judiciary (for the rule of law), a free and independent media (to ensure free flow of information), an independent Electoral Commission, an efficient and professional civil service, and a neutral and professional armed and security forces.

Recent events in Ukraine (November), Ghana (December), Zimbabwe (March), Lebanon (April), and Togo (April) unerringly underscore the critical importance of these institutions. Without them, President Bush’s plan to spread democracy may stall. Democracies are not built in a vacuum but in a “political space” in which the people can air their opinion, petition their government without being fired on by security forces and can choose who should rule them in elections that are rigged by electoral commissions packed with government goons.

On May 13, thousands of Egyptian judges, frustrated by government control over the judiciary, agitated for full independence from the executive in their oversight of the electoral process. “The institutions are presenting Mr. Mubarak with an unexpected challenge from within, one that will be difficult to dismiss. The fact is, major changes in this country are going to come out of those institutions, not from the streets," said Abdel Monem Said, director of the Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo.

In the past 24 years, Egypt has received more than $55 billion in U.S. aid in direct government-to-government transfers. Smart aid would assist civil society in instigating institutional reform. Since this approach carries some risks, the same objective can be achieved by funneling aid through diaspora Africans and their organizations, as was the case with Soviet dissidents during the Cold War.

Africa’s long term growth prospects do not lie in rock concerts and increased dependency on Western aid but on the ability of the African people or civil society groups to instigate reform from within. Assistance to such groups – both at home and abroad – constitutes much smarter aid to Africa than all the LIVE AID concerts Bob Geldof can organize.
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The writer, a native of Ghana, is a Distinguished Economist at American University and President of the Free Africa Foundation. His new book is Africa Unchained (Palgrave/MacMillan). This article is culled from his May 10 testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate of Canada.

Mutumwa D. Mawere asks:

Could it be that Kofi Annan, like many of us, was so scared of what he would do after his tenure at the UN that he forgot to use his powerful position to empower his fellow Africans? Could he not have found sanctuary in uniquely African-conceived, structured and financed ideas instead of becoming a spokesman for ideas that may well be his, but are financed by Gates and Rockefeller money?

Here are my notes and thoughts as I watched President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address:

• All of the conversation on the channels prior to the address centered on how this address is going to be used as a way to launch the President's re-election bid and as a taxpayer financed campaign speech. I've been watching these things for years and although past incumbents running for re-election have used this speech to speak about all their accomplishments, President Obama appears to be the most brazenly partisan in using this speech as a campaign speech.
• I found a list of past 'special guests' who have been invited by the President- Lenny Skutnik in 1982 (saved passanger from drowning plane), Sammy Sosa in 1999 (relief efforts in Dominican Republic and home run chase), Hamid Karzai in 2002 (Afghanistan President), Julie Aigner-Clark in 2007 (founder of Baby Einstein)... and now Warren Buffet's secretary in 2012 (prop to use to try to bring up point of taxing the rich more). Whereas once President's (both Republican and Democrats) celebrated people who had done things, President Obama celebrates someone who has called on other people to do more things (pay more money) and yet has no real accomplishments of her own (no offense- I'm sure she is a fine person).
• It was amazing and wonderful to see Congresswomen Giffords there- she has made such a great recovery and I wish her the best on her future.
• President Obama begins with his foreign policy accomplishments, which he can take credit for, although he should share this credit with George W. Bush, who put in place the foundations and background for many of these accomplishments (the pull-out in Iraq, the groundwork for catching Osama, drones and catching terrorists in the War on Terror, etc).
• Obama next suggests that private citizens should be more like the military and act as soldiers for the state. Citizens should stop fighting one another, stop disagreeing about the direction of the nation, stop pushing for their individual rights and liberties, stop trying to keep their property and the fruits of their labor, and instead citizens should serve the state, citizens should put aside their differences and just follow orders, and people should give up their wealth and property to the state so that it can redistribute it to those people who it favors. This all sounds vaguely familiar and has strong echo's of fascism in it, although I could sugar-coat it if you'd like.
• In 2008, the 'house of cards collapsed'- banks made loans they shouldn't have (which he pushed for a community activist), regulators didn't do their jobs (which they were not held accountable for), bonuses were paid to these banks and government agencies (to which they were never held accountable for)... he is on the wrong side of the ledger here- he was pushing for the collapse and after the collapse did not hold those people accountable.
• "State of the Union is getting stronger"- as if the mounting US debt is to be ignored and we're all just to pretend that trillions of dollars in my children's spending is not damaging the foundations of our nation and creating a time-bomb that will destroy America.
• President Obama says that he can't get anything done without control of every single aspect of our political system- he decries the 'obstructionism' of the GOP controlling one single house of Congress. No one- no one- should ever be elected President who says that he can't get anything done unless he has total power- that is bad for America and bad for democracy.
• "What is happening in Detroit can happen in other industries"- what happened in Detroit was that the auto companies were bailed out, costing taxpayers $80 billion in loans, debts forgiven, pensions guaranteed, and other loans. GM made $6 billion last year in profits- taxpayers should get that back, plus the next $74 billion in profits, and then we'll claim success in saving a company at no cost. Imagine if he were to bail every unprofitable business out at massive losses to taxpayers- what would that sort of economy look like?
• Proposes new tax on multi-national companies, to be redistributed to companies that 'hire here in America'- some sort of new loan to be administered by Obama officials based on conditions that he'd set. The increased taxes on MNC's will be sure to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on goods and services, causing inflation and hitting the poor especially hard. Why does Obama hate poor people so much?
• "We brought trade cases against China at over twice the rate as the previous administration"- but the Chinese just laughed at us because Obama bowed to the Chinese President and begged to borrow trillions more of their money so that he could blow it on his wasteful spending. It's nice that he's suing China though- I'm sure that's employing lots of lawyers.
• President Obama is mystified on why employers don't hire workers- perhaps if he would have had some sort of a job at some point in business or in the private sector or in some sort of productive economic enterprise he'd know that increasing regulations, fees, requirements, red tape, and the such encourage employers not to hire.
• Obama proposes starting a temp agency company... with taxpayer money. This government financed and supported company will compete with all of these Michigan companies.
• Obama is right- good teachers like me matter, and also he's right that teachers like me are attacked all the time- I'm bashed by liberals and progressives who call me all sorts of names. The President's other education policies are pretty- they are nice words that mean nothing since the federal government isn't supposed to be involved in education in any way other than making sure that there is equality in education for different races and sexes (Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965).
• It is almost as if the right answer to everything that Obama says is the opposite of what he says. He says that it is wrong for taxpayers to be giving illegal immigrants a paid education and then sending them home at the end- he suggests we should make these people here illegally citizens after investing all that money into them, while I kind of think that taxpayers shouldn't be investing money into people here illegally. Get a work or education visa or something to stay here or pay your own way.
• President Obama attacks inequality in pay between mean and women in work- that's right Obama, tear this straw man up! That straw man can't fight back- I suggest he go after those who want children to work in coal mines next!
• I followed this line... "need more bullet proof vests... computers chips... innovations... industries... energy..." what???
• President Obama claims that our nation needs an "all out all of the above strategy"- it's double-speak though, because in his next line he clarifies that this strategy means less oil, less natural gas, less coal, and less drilling. His 'all of the above' strategy is going to include additional fees, regulations, and rules on companies that he doesn't like. So, in summary, he is pitching a "some of the below strategy".
• On to exploding batteries discussion... Bryan (the guy Obama referenced) used to build luxury yachts, but when government policies that Obama supported (he wanted a higher tax on yachts) destroyed Bryan's company and industry, Obama was there to throw taxpayer dollars at him to get him restarted building taxpayer subsidized wind turbines, and now Obama is some sort of 'good guy.' He's the bad guy in the story, kiddies. Holland-based Energetx Composites LLC, you just got mentioned by Obama in his State of the Union address- that's the kiss of death.
• Proposed more small fees and regulations and burdens on businesses... I missed what sort of scheme it was supposed to pay for in order to be 'budget neutral'.
• I'm caught up now... "we need smart regulations"... "we need rules"... these rules and regulations "make the free market more free"- LOL. Did he just say "I've ordered thousands of federal agents to spend thousands of man-hours to search for useless regulations that waste taxpayer money"- I must have heard this wrong. He's moving on though to proposing new rules and regulations- I guess he was done with the part about getting rid of regulations and rules after he threw the joke out there. Listening to him talk, I feel like he's a joke of a President.
• Someone add up how much all these regulations, agencies, bureau's, rules, and investments are going to cost America... I'll have to look at the transcript, but I'm pretty sure all he does is to propose these things without any sense of cost. A man (or woman) could spend a hundred years undoing all the damage that this guy is doing to our Republic.
• "The recovery is still fragile"- but earlier he said the "State of the Union is getting stronger"- let's square this round issue, folks.
• Did you know that President Obama has cut the deficit $2 trillion? And not raised it $5 trillion like what really happened? BIZARRO WORLD!
• Let's not forget this people- President Obama hates people earning millions and wants to go after them and confiscate their income redistribute it to people making less. Those who are already wealthy can keep it, those who are on the bottom might like it, but there will be no more moving between classes in Obama's America. This guy wants to slap class systems on us and turn our nation into the rich- those who already made their wealth and who have connections with government- and the rest of us poor. "You can call this class warfare all you want" he says- it's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare...
• The partisan divide is getting worse every year he says... especially over the past 3 years. It must be George Bush's fault or something, right? Or maybe it's because you President Obama are the most bitterly partisan figure in the history of our nation and is tearing our nation into serfs and masters. President Obama attacks running a 'perpetual campaign'- but yet he is the worst offender in this, running continually for office in a way that no President in history has ever done, running campaign commercials a year in advance of the general election, and even trotting out his wife to make frequent partisan attacks.
• He just said-"With or without this Congress I will keep implementing laws and putting in place policies that I want, but if Congress went along with what I was already doing it would give me cover and get us all involved." This guy is a bully and a dictator. Maybe I heard him wrong though; I'll go back and re-read the transcript, maybe I got it wrong.
• The speech must be coming to an end- after spending a couple minutes in the beginning to address our military and veterans, we're now going to end with a couple minutes at the end about the military and veterans- I though think that the military shouldn't just be props in Obama's game of 'we're all in this together' meme; maybe he should talk about military programs in the body of his speech that he wants to cut or increase, about what he's been doing as commander-in-chief, etc. The military is not simply there to make Obama look good. "No one thought about politics on that day" Obama says- but yet the photo of Obama in the war room was staged. Nice words Obama, but in your mouth, they are just words, merely words.
• President Obama says that as long as we are all commoners, living like peasants on the land, serving our masters like serfs, than our nation will be strong. He said 'common' several times at the end- but private property, liberty, and protection of life wasn't mentioned.

The rise of self-financed development.
Corruption and publicly owned telecom companies.
Africa the newest biofuel battleground.-Der Spiegel
"The energy market should be privatised"-IOl
The rise of consumerism-African Path
Mining privitisation in the Congo.-FT
Successful targeted microfinance-African Loft

As a teacher, eventually I get to a unit on the President (next week my civics students will be on this unit). One of the ways that I teach this unit is by going through all the roles that the President can be said to play in our political system (or the different hats that he wears, if that helps you). Let's take a look at one of these roles today, the role of Commander in Chief. Let's talk about this role, and then evaluate Bush and Obama in their ability to do this role.

Even though the President of the United States is not a member of our armed services, in our country, the President is commander in chief of the military. He controls (primarily through the executive cabinet-level Department of Defense) a military that is very powerful- one of the biggest in numbers, one of the best in training, and certainly the most well-financed (the US accounts for over 50% of all military spending in world). This means that the President is in position to control a very powerful military.

Prior to becoming President, Bush was a member of the military. You can debate the quality of his service, but he did serve, so he was in that environment, and learned the principles of warfare and the honor of sacrifice. He handled military hardware, and was comfortable around their use. His ability to fulfil this part of the Commander in Chief role was not the best, and certainly not as good as McCain's, but it is considerably more so than Obama, who has no military experience, knowledge, or interest in the military to speak of. Again, Obama has little to no experience or known abilities in this part of the role.

Although most President's are rather hands off with the actual strategy, that doesn't mean they have to be- LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln all directed battlefield strategy. The President has the authority to send troops in to other countries for limited amounts of time (limited by War Powers Act, he needs congressional authorization for more than 60 days). The President is in charge of the purchasing of weapons, such as Reagan focusing on SDI, and the President is in charge of the selling of weapons, letting some states purchase surplus/used military hardware while other states can not.

Prior to becoming President, Bush was an officer in the military, so did learn how to order troops into battle, and must have studied or learned about some aspects of this. Again, his ability to fulfil this part of the Commander in Chief role was not the best, and certainly not as good as McCain's, but it is considerably more so than Obama, who has no military experience, knowledge, or interest in the military to speak of. Again, Obama has little to no experience or known abilities in this part of the role.

Lastly, as Commander-in-Chief, our President can be expected in times of great crisis or war to assume emergency powers, such as issuing orders to regulate industry, set price controls, ration food, or take other actions. This is a tough thing to do, but you want a President who is willing to break an egg every now and then to make an omelet- during WWII or the Civil War, civil liberties were broken, but for the good of our nation. Can the President make these tough calls? Can he resist the call of too much power, and not become a dictator, and battle with himself about how much power the President should have?

Bush has continually struggled with this- in that he has tried to fight the War on Terror while keeping us as free as possible. You might contend that he sacrificed too much- but he was willing and able to make the tough calls he thought were necessary for keeping our country great during times of crisis. Obama has denied that we are at war, and has failed to answer the call for every crisis that our country has recently faced, displaying an inability to make tough decisions. One wonder what happens if we do go to war- would he be weak and indecisive, or overcompensate by wielding too much power?

Just some thoughts to think about today.

Earth Hour is a global event organized by World Wide Fund for Nature, and asks households and businesses to turn off their lights and appliances one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Covered in the media and supported by the UN, it was said that turning off your lights during this hour would be a 'vote' in favor of the agenda laid out by the UN's Climate Change Conference.

Personally, I voted in favor of advancement of human prosperity by using energy to cook my food, celebrating technological progress of our society by watching TV while playing a video game on my computer, and was proud to have all my lights on, shining away in the darkness of the world. Thank you Competitive Enterprise Institute for suggesting this Human Achievement Hour. I wasn't the only one that celebrated Earth Hour this way- apparently the great prophet of global warming himself, Al Gore, didn't turn off his lights- see this post for yet another example of the hypocrisy of the left.

But this post isn't really about Earth Hour- it's more about personally how Earth Hour affected me. I'm going to share with you a personal story of my life the past week, when I made the choice to stand up to the Green Thugs who worship the Green God here at my school- please pass this story on, because it is a good example of what is to come in our nation.

It all started last week with an innocent email that was sent out by an administrator, telling our entire staff all about Earth Hour and encouraging people to "support the fight against global warming by turning off your lights for one hour tomorrow night- together , we can create change in our world and bring peace to all."

Don't be surprised- staff get emails like this all time- even here, in a rural community that votes strongly Republican, a public school financed by taxpayer dollars uses its technology to send frequent emails from superiors encouraging staff to support the fight against man-made evil global warming. As I was working on preparing my lessons for the next day, I received this 'important' email from my boss, and honestly, a look of annoyance flashed across my face.

In a fit of frustration, I replied to this email- pecking out a reply between hours- and sent it to the whole staff. I felt that if it was okay to get emails about Earth Hour, it was okay to respond to these emails- and I did. I sent the following message "As you can see from the attached graphs, there is no correlation between keeping your lights on and the Earth warming. But, because you asked, I'll turn off some lights to lower my energy bill."

One graph showed a correlation between the heat coming off the sun and the rise in temperatures, and the other showed the cyclical rise and fall of global temperatures. I don't think it was unfair or wrong of me to send out that email- I have data supporting my point, and the tone of the email was light and friendly. After sending the email, I was a bit apprehensive, but I honestly expected some light-hearted replies to it- but what I got in reply stunned me.

Our staff isn't a far-left staff- our teachers are not outright communists- and most people would call our staff 'balanced' or 'moderate.' But question the religion of global warming, question the beliefs of liberals, and be prepared for a firestorm- now I know. My inbox was instantly filled with emails blasting me, stunning me with their viciousness and vileness.

Other teachers and administrators sent me emails that said that my arguments were "sad defeatist" arguments, that I was giving up on the world and was unwilling to fight to make the world a better place. I was called "unintelligent," "uneducated," "immature," "backward," and "crazy." Like most liberals do, rather than debate my ideas and thoughts and data, they went straight for name-calling.

Even worse, many began to question my teaching ability. For the record, my students have the highest scores in the district on our common assessments and high-stakes tests, and I have frequently been recognized by students, other teachers, and administrators for being an outstanding teacher. But question the global warming religion once, and I get emails saying such things as "I am concerned that you could be convincing our students of the same fallacies" and "I seriously question what you are teaching our students."

Even today, days later, I am still getting emails ripping into me. Perhaps it is because I have been replying to these attacks on my character and teaching ability- other teachers in the building have encouraged me to roll over and just take the blows- they suggest I just hide in my classroom like they do. They also criticize me- they said I brought it on myself when when U opened my mouth in the first place and that in the future I should just just say "Heil" along with the rest of the staff. But I refuse to- because that's not what our founding fathers did- they fought when threatened- fought with their ideas- and I aim to do the same. I aim to be bad- I am to misbehave.

The most frequent argument that has been advanced to me by those who follow the Green Religion (the earth is warming, the warming is bad, the warming is caused by man, that government must control man, and that man must sacrifice to government) is that there is a consensus on the issue- that "most of today's highly educated scientists agree with global warming," and that my ideas "are like saying that the Earth is flat."

My reply to this was to question the proposition that most scientists feel this way- there are plenty who don't buy into some or all of the global warming litany. Further, I pointed out that the system now financially encourages scientists to espouse at least some of the global warming agenda- that there is now money subsidizing scientists who promote this, and no money for those who oppose it, so to rely on 'numbers' alone is not a good measure of the quality of the argument.

The reply for those on the left, those green worshippers, has been to mock me and call me more names. My arguments to them are childish. One email claims that "I suppose next you are going to tell me that the government was responsible for hurricane Katrina and 911?"- as if me not believing that turning my lights off will save the globe is the same thing as other crackpot theories.

Look- I don't put up with disrespect- I don't in my classroom, I don't from fellow teachers. So I told them to quit calling me names and quit disrespecting my views- liberals claim to be open-minded, they claim to be accepting, they claim to be morally superior. The reply- "I'm not calling you sad, stupid, ignorant, or unintelligent- I'm calling your views that." I am what I believe- are liberals not the same? Or are liberals something other than their views? I pondered these questions, sitting at my desk, typing out emails defending myself and my position, for some time.

Eventually, I just begin to hit delete. Logic, reasoning, and calm calculations, supported by data and clear thinking, had run up against religion. Global Warming (or climate change) is a religion, not a policy position. It's too bad that this religion is allowed to flourish in schools, that education can have study classes on the tenets of global warming, that we erect alters to worship global warming (a 'green garden' was built at our school last year), and that there are places to sacrifice to the green gods all over schools (the recycling symbol is omnipresent, as our recycling boxes and bins). It's too bad that schools are against religions such as Christianity and Judaism, as public schools continue their war on "he who can not be named in schools" (God).

Perhaps what was most upsetting to me about this incident was the reaction I got from my wife when I told her all this stuff. Excited about fighting the good battle, energized from my attempts to reason, I told my wife what I had done. Her face got pale, and she became fearful and scared- she was frightened that in this world, this new country of change, that I would be fired for believing the wrong things, for having the wrong views on global warming. My wife was scared that schools have become so much like a 3rd world dictatorship that saying the wrong view could mean the loss of my job. And the scary thing, she is right.

By taking this stand, by sending out one little email questioning global warming, by defending myself from insults and questions as to my ability, I have put myself personally in danger of being fired. I may now be let go from my job for questioning global warming. That is scary. Things are changing in this world, hope is dimming, and life is not fair anymore- and my small attempt to fight back at this, to push the darkness back by lighting the light of logic and reasoning on Earth Hour, may very well be the end of me as a teacher.

Now that the healthcare bill has been passed, I see that the news is getting a little more honest about reporting just exactly what the healthcare bill is. For example, the Detroit News says:

The landmark legislation that Obama signed Tuesday would provide health care to 32 million uninsured people. The $938 billion, 10-year price tag would be financed largely by culling savings from Medicare and imposing new taxes on higher income people and the insurance, pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

Vladimir Putin is going to take back power in Russia, the Middle East continues to collapse, Europe is facing maybe perhaps its worst financial crisis in decades, China continues to build up its armed forces... and President Obama and his administration is putting the pressure on Ford Motor Company to stop running a commercial which is critical of GM and Chrysler for taking taxpayer money and breaking long-established bankruptcy laws in order to stay in business.

Via the Detroit News:

For the only Detroit automaker that "didn't take the money" of the federal auto bailouts, Ford Motor Co. keeps paying a price for its comparative success and self-reliant turnaround.

There's no help from American taxpayers to help lighten its debt load, giving crosstown rivals comparatively better credit ratings and a financial edge Ford is working diligently to erase all on its own. There's no clause barring a strike by hourly workers amid this fall's national contract talks with the United Auto Workers — a by-product of the taxpayer-financed bailout that General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC retain until 2015. And there's no assurance the Dearborn automaker can use the commercially advantageous fact that it didn't "take the money" proffered by the Obama Treasury Department and use it in TV ads angling to sell cars and trucks. Not if the campaign takes a whack at its Detroit rivals and suggests that Ford no longer supports the Obama administration bailouts it backed in public statements and sworn congressional testimony.

As part of a campaign featuring "real people" explaining their decision to buy the Blue Oval, a guy named "Chris" says he "wasn't going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government," according the text of the ad, launched in early September.

"I was going to buy from a manufacturer that's standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That's what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta' pick yourself up and go back to work."

That's what some of America is about, evidently. Because Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy CEO Alan Mulally repeatedly supported in the dark days of late 2008, in early '09 and again when the ad flap arose. And more.

With President Barack Obama tuning his re-election campaign amid dismal economic conditions and simmering antipathy toward his stimulus spending and associated bailouts, the Ford ad carried the makings of a political liability when Team Obama can least afford yet another one. Can't have that.

The ad (was) pulled in response to White House questions...

Ashoka Fellow "...Moussa Kane has begun to organize Mali's informal economy into a formal association that compiles data on the informal sector and provides basic services to impoverished entrepreneurs. The association provides startup equipment and in-kind loans to entrepreneurs and offers business and financial training to help small ventures succeed. His organization is the first company of its kind in Mali to be owned by its due-paying members, and it is financed and run entirely by members of the informal sector. Its services will be accessible to the approximately 40 percent of Mali's population involved in the informal sector...Although it provides basic sustenance to many, the informal sector is disorganized and risky. Members of the informal economy, like the street vendors that crowd Bamako's avenues, do not have access to loans, are harassed by the government for their occupation of unregistered public space, and are vulnerable to complete collapse in the event of an illness or accident. Furthermore, most "informal entrepreneurs" do not understand the essentials of bookkeeping, business management, and resource allocation, and are therefore unable to turn a consistent profit..."

Jerome Booth writes in Yahoo finance:

Africa's lack of globalization is evident in its unbalanced financing structure. State-controlled aid money dominates public finance in Africa in spite of improvements in macroeconomic policies, spreading democracy, and supportive commodity prices. Recent growth in local currency debt issuance is welcome, but foreign demand is rapidly exhausting local capacity to absorb selling, with potential destabilizing macro­economic implications if issuance continues unabated. Meanwhile, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the last great region of the world not to issue external sovereign bonds at all...Potential corporate bond issuance in Africa is maybe 10 times the sovereign (government) financing needs, but – and here is the rub – without a sovereign bond curve, the potential corporate issuers cannot issue as they cannot price sovereign risk. The bond market has far more capacity to finance Africa's development needs than aid, but bond markets need to lend to governments first. A balanced financing structure would replace aid-financed central government budget support with global bonds to sit alongside moderate local currency issuance and conventional aid flows.

Donklephant wrote recently that "Obama’s Nuclear Energy Ambitions Are Spot On". Donklephant is buying into the hopeandchange rhetoric that has come to characterize the Obama Presidency.

The news that prompts this comment is the news that President Barack Obama next week will announce a loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades. Let's repeat that- the President of the United States, who has no personal experience in loans, investments, or running energy companies, is going to be using your taxpayer money to give to a politically connected company in Georgia in order to build two new nuclear reactors. This loan guarantee is fully intended to be a bribe in order to get Republicans to sign on to a larger cap-and-tax plan that will destroy America. The government will afterwards continue to play a large role in this nuclear reactor, as it will have been paid for by state money.

Building nuclear reactors is fine, and needed, and welcome. But Obama's ambitions are not 'spot on'- we don't need more government-financed business interests, given away to politically connected people, run by the government, for the purposes of scoring political points. This isn't freaking Russia, this is America, and Obama's ambitions fit better there then they do here.

In America, the way the government supports nuclear energy is by getting out of the freaking way. It repeals all of its stifling regulations. It gets rid of its stinking taxes and fees. It puts in place proper private property rights and then protects them. In America, the way the government supports nuclear energy is by getting out of the way and letting the American people unleash their full intelligence, insight, creativity, and hard work on this issue.

I've already talked about Obama's policies with regards to nuclear energy in my post "Yucca Mountain":

The shutting down of the Yucca Mountain project (by Obama, in defiance of what Congress ordered) will cost jobs (already thousands are being laid off in Nevada because of this policy decision), will cost energy companies money (they paid billions of their own money for this project and now will have to pay billions more for unsafe temporary storage of spent nuclear waste), and will lead to lower investment in clean and safe nuclear energy (because there is no place to store the waste).

Open data comes to the development business:

AidData 1.0, …assembles more aid projects from more donors totaling more dollars than have ever been available from a single source before. AidData catalogues nearly one million projects that were financed between 1945 and 2009, adding or augmenting data on $1.9 trillion of development finance records. We currently have data from 87 different donors, and data from even more donors will come online every few months.

Good evening.

This is a special night for me. Three years ago, in 2008, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you.

During the past 3 years I've spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the Government, our Nation's economy, and issues of war and especially peace.

Ten days ago I had planned to speak to you again about a very important subject -- hopechangetogetherness. For the uncountable time I would have lectured you on the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper -- deeper than high gasoline prices, deeper than the madness of the NCAA tournament, deeper even than expected inflation or the continuing recession. And I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society, including labor union leaders, government union leaders, teachers, bureaucrats, university professors, donors to my campaign, Democrat Governors, the Mayor of Chicago, and foreign officials. It has been an extraordinary 10 days, and I want to share with you what I've heard.

These 10 days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the American people, but it also bore out some of my longstanding concerns about our Nation's underlying problems.

I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to pass legislation and conduct myself in a manner completely different from what I promised in my campaign -- and I have to admit, these have been met with little success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

America, you are what is wrong with America, and we need to change you to make you better.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is simply some romantic dream from a slavery past or was a proverb in a dusty book that we once read. The real confidence of America and the reason it was founded is to elect me so that I can progress our Nation. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions, our own unions, and the very Government of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own, in spite of the massive debt and underfunded institutions we are pushing to them.

This loss of confidence did not happen overnight. They've come upon us because of Republicans and the resulting years of shocks and tragedy.

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our Nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in the ability of Democrats to govern you, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

We know the strength of America. We will be strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who forged a New Deal, a Fair Deal, a Square Deal, and who built a Great Society. Although my grandmother was a racist, my Muslim father from Kenya and my mother were strong, and believed that in me they had created someone who would carve out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves and the same Americans just three years ago elected me, a man who represents hope and change We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the kinetic military actions against non-state actors and we are the generation that will cool the globe and stop the rise of the oceans and in doing so build a new confidence in America.

We are a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest, the path that Republicans want us to take. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others, the right to keep and own private property, and the right to choose life. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our present, all the lessons of the failures of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to True Freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our confidence problem.

I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our Nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. We know the Republicans, Tea Party activists, and conservatives will attempt to block us and prevent us from progressing as a society to True Freedom. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure openness and togetherness and hope. And above all, I will vote present on this issue and be the one we were waiting for.

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.

I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people, which I will spend and then some. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for a confident nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, and I will do it alone if need be. If you support me, then let your voice be heard- whenever you have a chance, say something good about me and my plan. With my help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit, this one based on my vision of hope and change and togetherness and progress. Working together with this common faith we cannot fail. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Thank you and good night.

UPDATE: This is a fake speech that I expect Obama to give soon. It is based on Jimmy Carter's "Malaise Speech" in 1979. What is surprising is how little I actually have changed from that speech- I'm honest, I only changed an occasional word or edited out an occasional section, and yet this speech sounds like something Obama would say. Does it sound like a speech Romney, or Palin, or Bush, or Reagan, or Lincoln, or Jefferson, or Washington would say? No, but it does sound like a speech for Obama, Carter, Hoover, or Buchanan. That says something.

No offense to those candidates who had previously announced that they were running for the United States Senate seat that is up in 2012, but since none of those candidates really got me too excited or had a big enough name, I was playing around in my mind with running myself for that Senate seat. The 2012 election is going to be more about the President than it is who will be Senator, and although Debbie Stabenow (who currently ineptly fills the office) is a good fundraiser she is good at little else and is able to be beaten if someone lays some solid body blows on her record and character- and I could do those things. I don't have very much money and have few connections to people who do, but once you're a candidate, those things appear, and then it's just about hammering away at the weak candidate that Stabenow is. Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner John McCulloch, activist Peter Konetchy, and former judge Randy Hekman are the only candidates currently running against her, and I've got as good as a shot as any of them, so I was playing around with it in my mind. Now, thankfully, I don't have to.

Former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra is expected to jump back into the race against Stabenow as early as today, and he represents exactly the kind of big-name, high-experience, solid candidate that I have been looking and waiting for to get into it against Stabenow. Hoekstra retired this year after serving nine terms in the federal House of Representatives, after his run for Governor was unsuccessful. While in the House, he rose to Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, where he left his mark on key anti-terrorism legislation. Before entering politics, he served as a vice president of marketing at Herman Miller, the office furniture maker headquartered near Grand Rapids. Since leaving Capitol Hill, Hoekstra's worked for Dickstein Shapiro, a top law firm based in Washington, where he has continued to keep in touch with all the issues facing our nation.

Hoekstra is the kind of candidate that we need in the Senate. As I pointed out in my post Graph: Public Debt Over Time, Color-Coded by Party in Power, although the President is important in our nation, having a solid and conservative Congress will go farther to restoring the sanity to our nations finances, so it is good to finally have a solid candidate running for the US Senate against the weak and corrupt Stabenow, who has grown fat on taxpayers for too many years. My post Graph: U.S. Foreclosure Rates, Colored-Coded by Party in Power also indicated that the worse thing for our nation as far as foreclosures go was having a Democratic Congress, and knocking out Stabenow, who represents the farthest extremes of progressives as a Democrat in Congress, and replacing her with Hoekstra, who represents a solid Republican vote, will work to stop the foreclosure crisis that is hammering our nation.

Congressman Pete Hoekstra was honestly my choice for Governor of Michigan last time around- in my post Recommendations for Michigan's Primary Election in 2010 you can read about my struggles with deciding on a candidate, and after much research and analysis I decided that Hoekstra was the best- even better than Rick Snyder, who went on to become Governor. I decided that Hoekstra was a solid candidate, someone who people spoke well of, he had good family values, a solid background in business and government, and he is a good conservative who is friendly to the Tea Party movement (see post Tea Party Express Stop Southeast Michigan: My Report, with Pictures and Video).

And Senator Stabenow is not a good Senator for the people of Michigan. As I wrote in my post 10 Good Reasons Why Senator Stabenow Should Be Re-Elected, the joke was that there was no good reason for her to be re-elected-

She does a poor job advocating for Michigan, she is consistently ranked as one of the weakest politicians in Congress, and according to the National Journal Group she is the most liberal member of the Senate and thus more liberal than any of her constituents in this fine moderate state of Michigan. If she were a run-of-the-mill liberal who did a good job helping constituents and was chair of a powerful committee than I could see her winning re-election, but that describes Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), not her.

Don’t get me wrong- she is going to be a formidable candidate this election, because her campaign is going to be awash in kickbacks from companies who have benefited from her abilities to distribute favors to politically connected companies, and because unlike the last time she ran, this time she has experience and knowledge on the issues and has passed some legislation.

Whoever the Republicans choose to run against her- whether it is indeed Terri Lynn Land or whether it is Pete Hoekstra- I really hope that they realize that to campaign against Stabenow will require a lot of hard work and determination. She is going to be heavily funded by groups that owe her for all of her hard work redirecting taxpayer money to big businesses that she likes, and she is going to have a strong record to run on of passing policies that look good. It is going to require a lot of educating of voters and connecting with voters to get them to see that her policies are bad for America and bad for Michigan and that she should not be elected to office again.