The recent controversy surrounding ACORN has focused mainly on its incompetence or dishonesty. But the idea of a government funded nongovernment organizations has received little scrutiny in the United States, unlike Britain where their existence is a major political issue. ACORN is not strictly a government funded organization; at least not yet. It receives most of its money from the unions. According to NPR, “the giant web of ACORN organizations, primarily based in Louisiana, has been funded by a mix of labor union money, government grants (which really drive conservatives crazy) and charitable contributions from large foundations.”
The term “government funded nongovernment organization” — isn’t that an oxymoron? On the contrary, according to Wikipedia, two types of nongovernment organizations are exactly that: creatures of the state. You have GONGOs in the Third World — “government-operated NGOs, which may have been set up by governments to look like NGOs in order to qualify for outside aid or promote the interests of the government in question”. And you have QUANGOS in the First World. “QUANGOs are quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations” that receive large amounts of government funding and do quasi-public duties. GONGOs are relatively pathetic institutions. It is the QUANGOs that are immensely powerful. For example, QUANGOs in the UK spend and receive five times more than the British Ministry of Defense. There are nearly a thousand of them, ranging from the “Union Learning Fund” to “Passenger Focus”, which is supposed to give train passengers “a voice”.
Many of the ‘quangocrats’ running the organisations are Labour cronies who can earn six-figure sums. The spiralling budgets of the quangos – state agencies, commissions, advisory and monitoring bodies, as well as NHS trusts – will infuriate Britons struggling in the recession. The number of staff employed by quangos has also rocketed from around one million to 1.5million. Research by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, to be published within weeks, will show the cost of the 994 quangos including the British Potato Council, Welsh Language Board and Farm Animal Welfare Council is on course to exceed £170billion.
And they are not shy about exercising their power. They exercise a vast array of semi-regulatory, quasi-legislative functions. which deliver social services, act as “human rights” organizations, or promote the arts. They are so powerful they actually forget themselves. The Times Online, for example, devoted an article to their efforts to cleanse the English language of racist, sexist, ageist and theist phrases. In an effort that recalls Orwell’s description of Newspeak, the QUANGOS are determined to leave no phrase unturned left.
Dozens of quangos and taxpayer-funded organisations have ordered a purge of common words and phrases so as not to cause offence. Among the everyday sayings that have been quietly dropped in a bid to stamp out racism and sexism are “whiter than white”, “gentleman’s agreement”, “black mark” and “right-hand man”. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has advised staff to replace the phrase “black day” with “miserable day”, according to documents released under freedom of information rules.
The National Gallery in London believes that the phrase “gentleman’s agreement” is potentially offensive to women and suggests that staff should replace it with “unwritten agreement” or “an agreement based on trust” instead. The term “right-hand man” is also considered taboo by the gallery, with “second in command” being deemed more suitable. Many institutions have urged their workforce to be mindful of “gender bias” in language. The Learning and Skills Council wants staff to “perfect” their brief rather than “master” it, while the Newcastle University has singled out the phrase “master bedroom” as being problematic.
Newspeak was a fictional language invented by George Orwell for his novel 1984. In the book, it is described as being “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year … this suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking — “thoughtcrime”, or “crimethink” in the newest edition of Newspeak — impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on.”
Some American opinion writers have recently discovered the existence of the QUANGO ( though they are probably ignorant of the existence of the GONGO, ENGO, DONGO, and INGO — all variations of the NGO, look them up) and they are worried the phenomenon may come to America. Go Tea Party writes:
in honor of the new rising star in politics—Daniel Hannan—I think that we should all learn a new word. It is a word that rolls so drolly from his lips and one that is particularly appropriate in these times: quango. It is a very British word. Like Pukka or quinine. Even when I lived in England for a few years, I found it to be exotic. To me it conjured up the image of a multicolored ostrich.
So what is a quango? Originally it was meant to be a fun acronym for a quasi-non-governmental organization that received funding from the government. Over the years it has come to symbolize bureaucratic waste and excess. Apparently there are hundreds of quangos with thousand of appointed ‘workers’ in Great Britain at a cost of many billions of Pounds Sterling.
In honor of Daniel Hannan, I think we should use the word quango in referring to some of the more outrageous government organizations that have sprung up as a result of our lawmakers inability to tell the truth about how they are spending our money. My first nomination for Quango Status is ACORN. They certainly qualify as a quasi-bureaucratic mess that wastes money. Why are they getting our tax dollars? Does it make any sense that we are paying for them to fight against ourselves? Or worse—forcing private banks to give loans to people who should never get them! Who are they? Who is the CEO of this group? How much does she or he receive in salary per year? Does this person receive bonuses? Where or where is an real investigative journalist?
My next nomination for Quango Status is AmeriCorps. Are you aware that an AmeriCorps volunteer receives around $5,000 over the term of the ‘volunteer’ work. Okay, you say. That’s not bad. Take a deep breath after you say it. Then consider that it costs us—the taxpayer—over $20,000 to give away this $5,000? That extra money goes for administrative costs. Or, if since we are talking quangos, just call it what it is: waste and excess.
But in all candor, things haven’t quite gone that far. Compared to the British QUANGOs, the local versions are strictly from hunger. ACORN is bush league compared to its European cousins. They have not yet grown to the point where they collectively dispose of five times the resources of the Department of Defense. But during his campaign, there were signs that Barack Obama was planning to take a leaf out of the British playbook. The American Thinker grew alarmed at the enormous range of NGO efforts that Barack Obama seemed prepared to support in July 2008:
The range of his community service initiatives was outlined in an earlier American Thinker article. In his campaign document entitled “The Blueprint for Change: Barack Obama’s Plan For America,” Obama’s “Service” section runs a close second to “Education” in complexity. But, with his Colorado Springs’ statement, it grabbed first place in its projected costs to taxpayers. Obama did the cost projection himself.
He plans to double the Peace Corps’ budget by 2011, and expand AmeriCorps, USA Freedom Corps, VISTA, YouthBuild Program, and the Senior Corps. Plus, he proposes to form a Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps, Homeland Security Corps, Global Energy Corps, and a Green Jobs Corps. Here a corps – there a corps – everywhere a corps corps.
So it made sense in Colorado Springs when he said his call to community service “will be a central cause of my presidency.” He couldn’t be clearer in signaling his intentions, including a Social Investment Fund Network to link local non-profits with the federal government.
Despite the apparent contradiction in terms the reader may have discovered it perfectly possible to have a government funded nongovernment organization. Impossible things don’t have to not exist; at least not in government. Perhaps it is legitimate to worry that a QUANGO may be coming to a community near you for once established they are extremely difficult to uproot. Once the gravy train starts, it has the unstoppable momentum of a 500 car freight express. In 2005 the BBC covered efforts by the Welsh to put an end to the “QUANGO state”. As the recent growth of QUANGOs in Britain demonstrates, they failed.
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Pop music has already teed off on quangos, in case anyone might find it amusing (in part because it imagines it’s quango man as the “self-confessed saviour of the dim right wing”–yep that’s where you’ll find those with messianic dreams), a charmingly silly little piece of middle-class rock from Blur:
Mr Robinson’s Quango
Oh, Mr Robinson
And his quango
Dirty dealer
Expensive car
Runs the buses and the Evening Star
He got a hairpiece
Ooh, he got herpes
His private life is very discreet
A nicer man, no, you’re never gonna meet
He’s the self-confessed saviour of the dim right wing
He got respiratory problems and a mason’s ring
Oh, Mr Robinson
And his quango
Drinks with generals and county wives
The family business is doing alright
They’re doing tangos
Down in the quangos
He makes them tick
Ooh, he makes them tock
And if you don’t fit
He put you in the dock
He just sits in his leather chair and twiddles his thumb
Gets his secretary in and pinches her bum
He ran into the toilets in the town hall
He got his biro out and wrote on the wall
“I’m wearing black French knickers under my suit
I’ve got stocking and suspenders on
I’m feeling rather loose”
Ooh, I’m a naughty boy
Ooh, I’m a naughty, naughty boy
QANGOs in the UK spend and receive five times more than the British Ministry of Defense.
There’s your problem, right there! Nearly a thousand of them. Clearly a jobs (for the comrades) creation scheme – and part of the “long march” strategy.
Quangos have the eerie power to reproduce asexually. Even the Guardian cannot but stand open mouthed in wonder.
Quangos and Gongos have achieved the nearest thing known to immortality this side of paradise. They never die. They simply rename themselves under threat or split up, like amoeba, and fill in all niches of the ecosystem. You can’t kill ACORN any more than you can kill a zombie with a BB gun. They will invent a need for their services and re-emerge as SEED or PLANT. How many words in the dictionary are there? That’s how many things they can come to life as.
The world will always be on the brink of ending without them. And the few that accomplish something serve the purpose of being cited by the many who achieve nothing. The saddest thing about them is that they are the counterfeits of what they pretend to be: popular consultative organizations; parodies of the real thing. Most of them are top heavy with perfumed princes, gadding from one international “consultation” to another, standing on the shoulders of a vast army of poorly paid, badly led and sometimes barely literate field staff who are often extraordinarily hard working and utterly disposable.
I think some organizations of this type (not necessarily government funded) of them are frenetically politically correct to overcompensate for the fact that they are bloated rip-offs that promise the moon and the stars and give you a Crackerjack gewgaw. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge on whose board Barack Obama served, for example, ran through $110 million to improve public education in Chicago.
It did however “learn lessons” from the whole affair. “Lesson 1: Every child benefits from high expectations and standards. … Lesson 2: Even large gifts like ours are no substitute for adequate, equitable and reliable funding.” A glance at the mouses these elephants bring forth tempts one to twist Churchill and say that “never in the history of the world have so many contributed so little with so much”.
It’s a virtuous circle for 0bama:
1. 0bama gives ACORN the Taxpayer’s money.
2. ACORN gives 0bama the money – after it has been laundered – for his 2012 campaign.
What a brilliant way of funding a Presidential Campaign!
The union connection behind a lot of these shenanigans is an interesting and not fully explored phenomenon. Unions are not a one dimensional force and it would be interesting to see if this pressure on ACORN fractures the perceived united front. From what I can tell- there are public service unions (like SEIU) which are the main culprits and drivers behind people like Obama, then there are more construction based unions whose members are much more conservative (I’ll bet there are lots of union carpenters at tea parties) who have 2nd amendment stickers on their pickup truck and fly a flag on the 4th. It would be interesting to know the power struggles behind the ALF-CIO.
By the way- I’ve been away in Germany for the past month and haven’t been able to comment. How was the Belmont club gathering in Houston?
A RICO suited needed to separate SEIU for ACORN because of their close relationship.
“The Caily Kos Asylum, one commenter actually listed the ACORN front operations at just one location – here’s the list, verbatim:”
“ACORN subsidiaries all located in 1024 Elysian Fields Ave, New Orleans 385 Palmetto Street Housing Fund Corp.
4415 San Jacinto Street Corp.
ACORN
Acorn 2004 Housing Development Fund Corp.
Acorn 2005 Housing Development Fund Corp.
ACORN Associates
ACORN Benefi cial Association
ACORN Beverly LLC
ACORN Campaign Services
ACORN Campaign To Raise The Minimum Wage
ACORN Center for Housing, Inc.
ACORN Children’s Benefi cial Association
ACORN Community Land Association
ACORN Community Land Association of IL.
ACORN Community Land Association of LA
ACORN Community Land Association of PA
ACORN Community Labor Organizing Center
ACORN Cultural Trust
ACORNDumont-SnedikerHousingDevelopment
Fund Corp.
ACORN Fair Housing
ACORN Fund
ACORN Housing Corp.
ACORN Housing Corp. of IL
ACORN Housing Corp. of MO
ACORN Housing Corp. of PA
ACORN Institute
ACORN Law For Education, Representation,
And Training
ACORN Management Corp.
ACORN National Broadcasting Network
ACORN Services
ACORN Television In Action For Communities
ACORN Tenant Union Training And Organizing
Project
ACORN Tenants Union
Affiliated Media Foundation Movement
Agape Broadcasting Foundation Inc
Among ACORN’s many affiliates and subsidiaries are:
American Environmental Justice Project Inc
American Home Childcare Providers Association
American Institute for Social Justice
Arizona ACORN Housing Corp.
Arkansas Broadcasting Foundation
Association for the Rights of Citizens Inc.
Associated Regional Maintenance Systems
Austin Organizing and Support Center
Baltimore Organizing and Support Center
Boston Organizing and Support Center
Broad Street Corp.
California Community Network
Chicago Organizing and Support Center
Chief Organizer Fund
Child Care Providers for Action Franklin
Citizens Action Research Project
Citizens Campaign for Work, Living Wage &
Labor Peace
Citizens Consulting, Inc.
Citizens Campaign for Finance Reform
Citizens for Future Progress
Colorado ACORN Housing Corp.
Crescent City Broadcasting Corp.
Desert Rose Homes LLC
Dumont Avenue Housing Development Fund
Elysian Fields Corp., Inc
Elysian Fields Partnership
Fifteenth Street Corp.
Floridians For All PAC
Franklin ACORN Housing
Greenville Community Charter School Inc.
Greenwell Springs Corp.
Hospitality Hotel and Restaurant Organizing
Council (HOTROC)
Houston Organizing And Support Center
KABF Radio
KNON Radio
Labor Neighbor Research and Training Center Inc.
Living Wage Resource Center
Louisiana ACORN Fair Housing
Massachusetts ACORN Housing Corp.
Metro Technical Institute
Missouri Tax Justice Research Project
Montana Radio Network
Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp.
Mutual Housing Association of New York Inc.
National Center for Jobs & Justice
New Mexico Organizing and Support Center
New Orleans Community Housing Organization
New York ACORN Housing Company Inc.
New York Agency for Community Affairs Inc.
New York Organizing and Support Center
Organizers Forum
Pennsylvania Institute for Community Affairs
People’s Equipment Resource Corp.
Phoenix Organizing And Support Center
Project Vote
SEIU Local 100
SEIU Local 880
Service Workers Action Team
Shreveport Community Television
Site Fighters
Sixth Avenue Corp.
Social Policy
Southern Training Center
St. Louis Organizing And Support Center
St. Louis Tax Reform Group
Student Minimum Wage Action Campaign
Texas ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
Wal-Mart Workers Association
Wal-Mart Association for Reform Now
Working Families Association”
See Post: On September 16th, 2009 at 7:18 am, purplepeep…
http://tinyurl.com/mwqcf4
OT – Drudge is reporting that today an official announcement will be made concerning the cancellation of the anti-missle defense system that was to be deployed in Poland and Czech Republic.
I know this topic has been thoroughly discussed here at the Belmont Club, and that this event was entirely foreseeable. However, when reading an article posted on Drudge covering this matter, I came across a little tidbit that left me a bit disheartened:
“Reports said an announcement would be made Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland.
“This is very saddening that it happens on September 17. I hope this is just a coincidence,” said Witold Waszczykowski, deputy head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, which advises to the president, told Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE58G0RT20090917?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
What do you think – coincidence or not?
I’m leaning towards the latter.
Like always, Wretchard, you’re one step ahead of me. I’ll move over to the new discussion thread.
Thank you for covering the topic. It’s always a pleasure to read your thoughtful commentary. Long live the Belmont Club!
“Impossible things don’t have to exist; at least not in government”. Are we watching the Truman Show? Truman a poor sole totally void of history oblivious of his circumstance is manipulated for TV ratings and profit. Are we watching the governmental version? A candidate void of relative history, laking in basic logic and intelligence (but can read and project like the wind) is manipulated and maneuvered into the most powerful office in the world. He can only rely on the script for guidance and slowly but surely realizes his shortcomings. Stay tuned as life and history crumble around him.
Wretchard said: “Some American opinion writers have recently discovered the existence of the QUANGO (though they are probably ignorant of the existence of the GONGO, ENGO, DONGO, and INGO — all variations of the NGO, look them up)”
No GRINGO and BINGO? No CONGO or BONGO? In a world where quasi-monopolies deliver services of dubious value to populations who may not even want them, a catchy or pithy acronym can make all the difference between also-ran and world-beater (pun intended).
At risk of semi-Godwining my own post by using an Italian rather than a German fascist analogy: Isn’t the concept of a government funded nongovernmental organization treading dangerously close to the Giovanni Gentile concept of state corporatismo? I mean, yes, I know it’s not at that stage yet. But still… doesn’t the whole concept of QUANGOS just feel like it’s sliding towards that?
I can’t be the only person to feel this way.
Those acronyms are weird. I think the harshest critics of some NGOs are people from the industry itself. There have been a few good books which blow the lid off it, written by guys who are disgusted with the scene. It’s pretty easy to be cynical, especially if you really are sincere and really started out with the right intentions only to find the thing overrun with fakes and careerists. Now I’ve got nothing against careers, but I do object to the sanctimony.
My own experience with NGOs is that many of them are remarkably bifurcated: they have one or two charismatic “stars” — the guys who can pull in the bucks and a kind of plodding army of simple and kind people at the lower end (there really are sincere people in them). But the worst of them are run by crooks who staff them with more crooks, only of the smaller kind; they are like roach dens with big ones and baby ones, but roaches all the same. That’s when things really get ugly, because the idealism is worn like a kind of cheap perfume, which not even the wearer can take seriously.
W @ 3
For once the mathematician gives vent to passion.
Great to see,
ADE
Once again the geniuses behind Yes Minister were way ahead of us. First of 3 parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NR_QSD0bAY
Many thanks to Wrichard for this important essay.
ACORN must be destroyed, along with its many shadow organizations and allied roach dens.
Voluntary organizations are a good thing. De Tocqueville praised the American tendency to form self-help organizations. Non-profit organizations provide energy and service at every level of American life. The government provides support for these organizations via (501(c)3) legislation that allows people to take a tax deduction (in itemized returns) for contributions to the organizations. The system works pretty well. The requirement is that the organizations stay out of politics and don’t try to use your organization to influence voting. Of course our lives are not compartmentalized. Abortion is a moral as well as political issue, for example. Poverty is a political issue. The symphony orchestra, not so much an issue if at all.
Government granting agencies such as NSF and NIH are generally a good thing, meeting a national need for innovation and advancement of science. The peer-review process is largely above reproach, with a wink and nudge regarding some geographical distribution of funding.
But if voluntary organizations are good things and grants are good things, then, hey, . . . QUANGO! Need grant funding for developing a funny walk? There’s a ministry office just for you. And soon there will be neighborhood funny walks office. And a Planned Parenthood office. And an ACORN office. None of these are political, of course, just performing “quasi-public duties.”
Under President Bush the funding flowed, not to NSF and entities I think do a good job but to earmarks and QUANGOs. The parent needed funding to run a war. The way he got funding was to let the children raid the bank account. Once the 2006 election gave the gavel to Ms. Nancy, the great bank raid was on via earmarks and grants to organizations aligned with the Democrat turn-out-the-vote machine, including housing. Getting an “earmarks” was somewhat a dirty deed for a few years; now it’s equivalent to taking a tax deduction. I admire legislators who won’t engage in earmarking. Their colleagues thank them for leaving more money on the table.
Maybe there’s change in the air. At the local college, students voted down the PIRG levy, a “voluntary” fee each student was assessed to support the state PIRG. This fee had been in place for decades.
Democrats say Republicans are the party of “No!” Right now, that sounds like a compliment more than a criticism. No ACORN. No earmarks. No QUANGOs.
Next ACORN video, please.
It pains me to have to say this, and it no doubt will be regarded as “racist” by some (what is not, nowadays?) but I have observed that minorities make the “best” bureaucrats for both governments and QUANGOs. And I mean that in the most negative sense of the term bureaucrat.
Some minority people tend to view not having to work as a right while others have modified this view and see being provided with a job as a right. They naturally gravitate toward governmental agencies and QUANGOs designed to aid minorities. And once in place they make sure that more people like themselves are hired. And in the Federal Government once you have placed, say, a black woman, in some position of authority it is very difficult to fire her or if she leaves on her own to replace her with anyone other than another black woman.
They afraid of the big, bad, racist world and wrap a comforting blanket of rules and regulations around them that ensure that they don’t really have to do anything but collect their paycheck. And by the way, bureaucrats simply love “economic hard times” and cutbacks because it provides them with their ultimate bulletproof reason for not performing their jobs.
It would be interesting to find out what exactly is the racial/ethnic makeup of government agencies associated with “human services” and of the QUANGOs. But I think I know what we would find.
Welfare by other means is still welfare
ACORN is becoming infested with immoral people. This is a criminal enterprise, indeed. I wonder if Radke can really sleep at night after creating this kind of monster.
@myna (19): “ACORN is becoming infested with immoral people. This is a criminal enterprise, indeed. I wonder if Radke can really sleep at night after creating this kind of monster.”
Wade Radke is, after all, the founder of both ACORN and the SEIU. He sleeps the sleep of angles.
He’s also a resident of notoriously corrupt New Orleans. It would be a brilliant and fitting coup de grace if O’Keefe and Giles have videos of ACORN big pimpin’ in the Big Easy. In this matter, New Orleans is the head of the snake.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php/index.php?pageId=98145
wretchard,
You mean like this one?
Books like The Road to Hell by Michael Maren? He documents not just corruption in NGOs but fundamental design problems that often make them worse than useless.
In the original contest, some of you might find interesting http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/17/louisiana-acorn-subpoenas/
Funny that Mark semi-proposed a Funny Walks Corps to add to the Obamalist of QUANGOs. Though I am certain both a Funny Walks Corps and a Spam Corps would provide endless hours of entertainment, I have no doubt that someone would find them useful enough to equip with a huge staff of gold-brickers working on accumulating their second pension.
As a denizen of New Orleans (tho I am on the West Coast presently as I write this) I strongly second wretchards comment@12 about the bifurcation he mentions in his 2nd para. But it is really more like a tri-partite division of that part of societies’ socioeconomic petri-dish. The “stars” at the head of the org. arise from the same circumstances as the worker bees with the same sense of “victim-hood” and entitlement as the “simple people they so cynically manipulate; so they certainly share THAT in common. But while the earnest, “simple people” honestly believe they are doing Gods’ work in wresting, by all honest means, their just desserts from what they view as a legitimate, but corrupted racist system skewed to the advantage of the rich and powerful; their leaders have far different objectives. Rather the charismatic “founding fathers” seek to kill two birds with one stone by trying OTOH to bring the system to its’ knees and replace it with one where THEY are in charge while OTOH simultaneously assuring themselves that even if these efforts come to naught, they will have “gotten theirs” via cynically screwing the very worker bees in their own organization by embezzling the maximum amount of funds possible from their very own operation.
And then we have the third set; the middle managers who are “true believers.” These people are, in the main, OTOH cynical enough to want to knowingly manipulate the system illegally
to help “their” people get ahead (unlike the “simpler” types most of whom think everything they are doing is above board) but OTOH do not share in (indeed are unaware of) the goals of the founding fathers to ultimately destroy the Republic and re-make it into their own dystopian Nirvana. As such they serve as all the more effective busy beavers in their willingness to use illegal methods while also unwittingly furthering the founding fathers true revolutionary objectives.
Starling:
Great.
How does the ACLU fit in here? They are funded by a legal provision that if they sue the govt, they get paid if they win. They hit on local gov’ts run by people who may not be so exquisitely sensitive to the feelings of atheists or islams or some other set of crackheads, so get a settlement of money for the ACLU and an agreement from the gov’t. And another nail gets driven into the Coffin of American Culture.
While I detest the reality of the thing, I have to say I find the term “QUANGO” rather endearing, like something Edward Lear might have dreamed up:
THE QUANGO WHO HAD NO NOSE
They go to work in a snit, they do,
In a snit they start their day;
With sanctimonious purrings at
The populace who pay.
And as the world turns round and round
They shout at the top of their lungs:
“You’ll drown!
If you don’t support the work we claim to do!”
And the pols chime in with fulsome praise
Of the Quangos’ “achievements”
(Which none can name)
And their “work” moves into a “major phase”
As everything stays the same.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Quangos live,
Their money’s green, and their mores blue,
And their favorite word is GIVE.
(With apologies to the great Edward Lear.)
Jamie Irons
Re: The Newspeak
I will concede maybe initially PC was pushed by feminists and self-loathing intellectuals. But by now the ‘movement’ had gathered so much momentum and steam, the National Gallery’s own mutilation of the English words are the result to justify their own existence. How do you kill paper-pushers? All they know is to push papaers around.
18. RWE
Your observation should clearly not include minorities that have a true profession (science, engineering, doctor, etc.).
Otherwise, hanger-ons are hanger-ons no matter the race.
I work for a privately funded government entity. No, really. I’ve posted before that the government is unable to fulfill all the mandates it has been legislated to do, so one way is to get corporations to fund government initiatives. Just more proof — if one is commonsensical — that the government is way too big.
“”"”" But the worst of them are run by crooks who staff them with more crooks, only of the smaller kind; they are like roach dens with big ones and baby ones, but roaches all the same. That’s when things really get ugly, because the idealism is worn like a kind of cheap perfume, which not even the wearer can take seriously. “”"”"”
Wretchard: that describes ACORN to a “T.”
Because of the video stings — so outrageous, by the way, that I was thinking at one point they were hoaxes — ACORN is promising to clean up its act, and appears to be attributing the misbehavior of their now ex-employees to mismanagement and poor oversight. Baloney. Those ACORN field office employees were acting very much in a manner that ACORN overall has allowed for years. You could call ACORN management style as deliberate “malign neglect.”
Obama is doing too much, too far, too fast, and not doing anything to deliver any tangible benefits to most people. Thus he is being fought by Glenn Reynolds “Army of Davids” ala the Tea Parties and Townhalls. Who are going after the ACORNS.
Obama promises to “switch” most people from a private-sector employment to a public one, driven by NGOs, on a mostly racial apportionment basis. With the 65-70% of the White population LOSING. Being told to get to the back of the Bus, or get beaten (as in St. Louis).
This is the gun to a brutal political spoils fight. It will take many casualties. Among them, ACORN, which is politically mortally wounded and may well be dead. Expect Rangel, Pelosi, and Reed to be the subject of more Army of David attacks, by people who feel threatened, have time and energy, and are empowered by cheap video cameras and the internet.
28. Always Right:
Yes, … and no. Technical people are not immune to the desire to bury themselves in the bureaucracy and feather their own nest.
My Mom sometimes talks about a Indian immigrant engineer she worked with in State government. When assigned some task he would often reply “Let one of the lesser people do it.” In his mind he was a degreed engineer and thus of a caste that did not have to be bothered with work he considered to be minor.
But for the most part the organizations I am talking about do not have scientists and engineers in them because they do no technical work, or for that matter any useful work at all.
I am more than a little saddened by the growing racial subplot within the main narrative of political news. There have always been these subthemes: gender, class, even region within the main conflict theme; and race has always been one of these. My own analysis has always been that the main division is ideological (though Whiskey may disagree with me). I think that given enough time people learn to live with each other, or at least come to a modus vivendi, even as they did in the Ottoman empire, to use an extreme example.
But when the main civic culture is torn apart — or is consciously replaced with identity, sexual, religious ageist — by sectarian politics, the differences tend to emerge with a vengeance. Then people no longer define themselves by subgroup. Again, this was what the Left wanted. The problem is that they got it. And now we’ll have all the trimmings with the turkey. One of the biggest casualties of all, I think, will be race relations; because if Obama turns out to be a disaster then you’ll provide ammunition for all kinds of people to say, “see what you get”?
Now Obama I think, represents no one but himself, but he sells himself as a representative of a group of people. Back in the day, Ferdinand Marcos represented himself as “representative” of the culture I was born into. I suppose Saddam did the same for Iraq. But in reality, those men represented a self-serving faction. No matter, they’ll muddy the waters for years to come. It’s the tendency of human beings to remember the time when the lights went out, not when they stayed on. Germany has many glorious achievements, but will be remembered for many decades to come for Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz, that is when it isn’t represented Reinhardt Heydrich. Sieg heil, mein herr.
My hope is that the grassroots movement now building will introduce people to each other as individuals. We all look like types, but in the end each of us has names. And from that shared experience perhaps we’ll come to conclusion — at I least I hope they will — that each moment in history is about people making individual choices. It’s in the Constitution. We are doomed to be born alone; to die alone; to decide alone. If that becomes the universal realization, then the subplots will fade when the main plot resolves itself.
I believe Acorn is a BONGO – Barack Obama Non Government Organization
QUANGOS = Quagmires
They function as social scabs whom may not suffer the wounds to heal for loss of weal.
Wretchard,
I am also very concerned about the race-pushing of late. But I am not surprised.
Our modern Democratic Party is a creature of the college campus, and the tribalization of campus politics was well along when I entered university in Seattle in the nineties. The explosion of campus students’ unions along ethnic lines is, I think, the genesis of today’s perverse divisiveness, and Nancy Pelosi’s “violence” speech, delivered through crocodile tears today, is the predictable manifestation of thirty years of this factionalized nonsense.
When I was a child, I had one recurring nightmare. The dream starts out magically enough, usually with me enjoying my favorite hobby, fishing for catfish in the pond behind the heliport in Duri, Sumatra. The fish bite fast and often, and this half of the dream is pure joy. And then…the smooth, undetectable segue from joy to terror: I’d gather my fish, a palm stem threaded through their gills, and stepping weightlessly over the buttressed boles of ancient figs, I’d make my way out of the jungle towards home. But, when I get home, the village is empty – not a soul can be found, not even a barking dog, and then a hollow, black fear clenches my stomach. I drop my catch, and begin to run door to door, first stopping at my best friend’s house, to look for someone, anyone. But no one is there! All the people in the village are gone!
Why?
Looking up past the wall of jungle – the camp was in a field carved out of stands of 200 foot tall fig, mahogany and palm trees, I can see the answer. A giant robotic monster, standing miles taller than the jungle canopy, is descending on the camp. As I watch in horror, it growls and clanks and stomps, with things – people!, falling like confetti from its fingers. The horror!
And I’d start from sleep like a drowning man finally gaining the surface of a dark, deep lake. Gasp! I remember it as if it was yesterday.
Well, I’m getting that same feeling again lately – the feeling that our village, our predictable, Andy Griffith-y, loving village is under attack by a grinding, mechanical, inhuman monster. The old social landmarks that remind the weary traveler that he is nearing home are almost all gone. The handshakes are different, the smiles couched, and the words don’t mean the same things anymore. Tea Partiers are now Nazis, tax-paying citizens are now dupes, even the water we drink and the air we breath seems suspect now. Someone, please, please wake me up.
There is hope, though, that some alarm clock will ring, or that a firm hand will shake us, thankfully, awake. And it’s going to come from the South. It’ll be an American black person from Texas, or Mississippi, or Florida, who was raised in the semi-rural, post-racial South, and who is not tainted by the blighted bickering of the Northern cities, who will end the nightmare.
“Racism” is the urban elite’s facsimile for a libel charge. It is Pelosi’s, Obama’s et al’s reflexive response to criticism from those they deem under them. It is supposed to shut down the critics’ voices and intimidate them into hiding; it is the deacon-Left’s Hawthornian scarlet letter. But the charge simply doesn’t stick when their critic is black.
–One of the biggest casualties of all, I think, will be race relations; because if Obama turns out to be a disaster then you’ll provide ammunition for all kinds of people to say, “see what you get”?
I agree with you, Wretchard, that race relations are being set back. But I think that is happening for a reason other than the one you list here. the one above makes it sound like it’s a “see what you get if a black man…” But the crux of the race issue is the divergence of the populations, not any given individual, just as the crux of the race issue in Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder wasn’t that OJ was black or she white, but that overwhelmingly, the African-American community excused his crime or deluded themselves into believing he hadn’t committed it, while the rest of the melting pot acknowledged the truth.
As the Left is being exposed as crooks, thieves, and agitators, the urban african American community is being shown as accessories to these crimes or approvers of it. The more that blacks overwhelmingly support Obama regardless of his political failures, policy failures, or ties to criminal syndicates, the more the rest of America will view the whole community as wanting to be on the government teat, willing to rip off The Man for their own benefit regardless of consequences. The anger and distrust from two so opposed worldviews can’t be reconciled.
“I am more than a little saddened by the growing racial subplot within the main narrative of political news.”
And I, on the other hand, take umbrage at the fact that comments that take notice of current race relations in the United States are edited out of the comment-flow at Belmont Club, while on-going rants about “what women want” which blame all of society’s current ills on female behavior are perfectly acceptable and are allowed to stand.
Why is it OK at Belmont Club to muse that 50% of humanity are deranged, stupid, and dangerous, while it’s not alright to point out that certain citizens who are melanin-enhanced and who are much more of a minority than 50% are consistently misbehaving?
@Nahncee (38): “And I, on the other hand, take umbrage at the fact that comments that take notice of current race relations in the United States are edited out of the comment-flow at Belmont Club”…
I wasn’t aware that this was happening. When you say “edited out”, do you mean that your comments are being screened on content, that someone is editing them before the rest of us see them, that they are being ignored or not remarked upon, or something else?
Nahncee: while on-going rants about “what women want” which blame all of society’s current ills on female behavior are perfectly acceptable and are allowed to stand.
I frequently do take issue with some of these posts–sometimes on content and sometimes on methodology. At the same time i readily acknowledge that gender relations can provide a very valuable perspective on social, political, and economic behavior. There is, after all, an enormous literature in the sciences on the gender differences. There’s a terrific book available via Amazon entitled “Sex Differences: Summarizing More Than a Century of Scientific Research.” Here’s part of the product description: “This volume is the first to aim at summarizing all of the scientific literature published so far regarding male-female differences and similarities, not only in behavior, but also in basic biology, physiology, health, perceptions, emotions, and attitudes. Results from over 18,000 studies have been condensed into more than 1,900 tables, with each table pertaining to a specific possible sex difference. Even research pertaining to how men and women are perceived (stereotyped) as being different is covered. Throughout this book’s eleven years in preparation, no exclusions were made in terms of subject areas, cultures, time periods, or even species.”
Clearly nothing from this blog is going to end up in that book, but from what I have seen of both, they are not always so far apart as some might suspect.
Nahncee: Why is it OK at Belmont Club to muse that 50% of humanity are deranged, stupid, and dangerous,…
I read selected comments of probably 75% of the posts here throughout the course of a year. I don’t think the consensus opinion on BC is that women are “deranged, stupid, and dangerous.” We’re this the consensus, I’d be out of here faster than you.
Nahncee: …while it’s not alright to point out that certain citizens who are melanin-enhanced and who are much more of a minority than 50% are consistently misbehaving?
Speaking as one of the melanin-enhanced, I have no problem with the idea that race is an important factor to consider when examining social, economic, and political behavior. But I try not to give it too much importance. Though Jesse and Al will disagree, race is never the only and rarely the strongest predictor or explanatory variable. Even when it is strongly implicated, it’s often serving as a proxy for other factors that might better explain and predict.
I, for one, never take offense at facts–now matter how bad they might make me or other “people of color” look. The only objection I take is with over-generalization. This happens when people lean too heavily on anecdotes rather than data. But this is not evidence of ill will, let alone racial animus, and I never treat it as such.
One thing about your remarks confuse me though…I don’t understand how you can have a minority of more than 50%.
Finally, fwiw, I rather appreciate your continued presence on this blog, Nahncee. Though I have no control over it, I hope you stick around. Heaven forbid I ever find myself in an environment where everyone agrees with me and I with them. As long as you are here, that won’t happen
Well, it’s not just Whiskey, if you’ll recall the dustup we had here the other day. But (no surprise) you put it better than I managed to.
Starling – I mean that they are being pulled and put to one side with a notation “awaiting moderation”. When Habu complained about censorship, I poo-poo’ed him as being overly paranoid. Now I wonder.
The “minority more than 50%” is awkward, agreed, but then math has never been my forte, you know … because I’m just a woman.