Successful Strategies in Debt Reduction

If you are interesting in determining what policies hold the greatest potential for reducing America's dangerous federal debt, I highly reading this article from Reason.com. Two Harvard Economists, Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, studied 107 efforts to lower debt in 21 nations and arrived at a series of fascinating conclusions. They found that “Countries that addressed their budget shortfalls through reduced spending were far more likely to reduce their debt than countries whose budget-balancing strategies depended upon higher taxes" and in most cases the optimal ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases was 85 to 15. We can argue about the exact ratio, but the evidence is clear: nations which based their debt reduction strategies on tax hikes were largely unsuccessful in their efforts . Furthermore, they found that successful debt reduction strategies tended to focus on spending cuts in two areas: social transfers (entitlements) and government wage-bill, or put simply, the size of and compensation received by the public sector work force. Unfortunately I suspect that the majority of voters will continue to be swayed by generic rhetoric such as "the rich are not paying their fair share," rather than look at the hard numbers and experiences of other nations that faced similar challenges. 

Upgrading the U.S.A.

How to fix the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio

Veronique de Rugy from the November 2011 issue

This summer, for the first time in history, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States from AAA to AA+. Whether or not we think the country deserved it, whether or not S&P holds any credibility, whether or not the move will have long-term consequences, the rating agency’s rationale for the reduction boils down to a legitimate fear: that America will fail to get its financial act together in time.

But how do we put our house in order? Even if lawmakers allow the Bush tax rates to expire at the end of 2012, the debt-to-GDP ratio is still projected to increase dramatically over the next decade. And then the real problems kick in with the explosion of spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. You could make the deficit situation look better by refusing to soften the blow of the alternative minimum tax through the types of “patches” that are passed each year, but that is both unlikely and unwise. And it would be very helpful if we got all the savings promised by boosters of the recent health care overhaul, but that too is highly doubtful.

The bottom line is that the debt problem in the United States will not go away as long as we don’t reform Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The coming explosion in entitlement spending will blow apart any possibility  of an equilibrium between revenue (no matter how high marginal tax rates get) and expenditures.

Unfortunately, the debt-limit deal passed this summer failed even to fake a solution. And things can get much worse. S&P has served notice that a further downgrade is likely if more progress is not made at upcoming deficit-reduction meetings to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio within the next few months. Prior to the debt-limit deal, you may recall, S&P had talked about wanting a long-term plan in place by October. And that means doing precisely what our representatives refused to do over the past seven months: moving decisively off this unsustainable path.  

Thankfully, we are not the first nation to struggle with a dangerous debt-to-GDP ratio, and thankfully, the academic world has already produced great insights into what can be done to help the problem without hurting the economy.

Take Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, two Harvard economists. In an October 2009 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the duo look at 107 efforts to reduce debt in 21 OECD nations between 1970 and 2007. Several countries were successful, among them Austria in 2005, Finland in 2005, and Sweden from 1997 to 2004. Spending cuts, the scholars found, are more effective than tax increases in reducing the ratio of debt to GDP. With successful fiscal adjustments, spending as a share of GDP fell by an average of 2 percent while revenue also fell by half a percentage point. Unsuccessful fiscal-adjustment packages involved smaller spending reductions (only about eight-tenths of a percentage point, on average) and large revenue increases.

Following and building on the work of Alesina and Ardagna, American Enterprise Institute economists Andrew Biggs, Kevin Hassett, and Matthew Jensen published a working paper in December 2010 covering more than 100 instances in which countries took steps to address their budget gaps. They identify successful consolidations as those in which the ratio of debt to potential GDP three years following the first year of the consolidation has declined by at least 4.5 percentage points.

Their conclusion: “Countries that addressed their budget shortfalls through reduced spending were far more likely to reduce their debt than countries whose budget-balancing strategies depended upon higher taxes.” What’s more, “the typical unsuccessful fiscal consolidation consisted of 53 percent tax increases and 47 percent spending cuts. By contrast, the typical successful fiscal consolidation consisted of 85 percent spending cuts.”

Alas: Even (or especially) in a time of crisis, lawmakers are driven more by politics than by good public policy. Countries in fiscal trouble generally got there through years of catering to pro-spending constituencies, be they senior citizens or the military-industrial complex, and their fiscal adjustments tend to make too many of these same mistakes. As a result, failed fiscal consolidations are more the rule than the exception. Eighty percent of the adjustments that Biggs, Hassett, and Jensen studied were failures.

The United States cannot afford to follow this pattern. Those who are not ideologically inclined toward austerity measures should remember that all this research is consistent with the work of the Berkeley economists David and Christina Romer—the same Christina Romer who used to chair Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. In a paper published in the June 2010 American Economic Review, the Romers show that increasing taxes by 1 percent of GDP for deficit-reduction purposes leads to a 3 percent reduction in GDP. Alesina and Ardagna discuss Romer and Romer’s paper, noting that while their methodology is different enough to make it hard to compare the two results formally, the studies are consistent in their conclusions. 

Finally, Biggs, Hassett, and Jensen look at how successful different kinds of spending cuts are at reducing the debt ratio. Consistent with other studies, they find that winning fiscal consolidations tend to focus spending cuts in two areas: social transfers, which largely means entitlements in the American context, and the government-wage bill, which means the size and pay of the public-sector workforce.

I can’t stress enough the importance of these findings. At a time when many politicians and pundits are calling for a “balanced” solution that features an equal mix of revenue increases and spending cuts to address our debt crisis, we must remember that this path has systematically failed in the past.

It may not be “balanced,” but what works is a package that mostly cuts spending. In the short term, that could mean means-testing Social Security and Medicare, increasing the programs’ eligibility age, and/or block-granting Medicaid. In the longer term, we must rethink the system on a fundamental level. A system that assumes an entitlement due to the simple fact of being American and over 65 cannot be sustained.  

Contributing Editor Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto!

An argument that is often used by opponents of immigration enforcement is that it will lead to labor shortages that  will harm businesses and burden consumers with apocalyptic $10 tomatoes. Those who put forth this argument fail to realize the ability of firms to adjust to changes in labor and commodity markets. When labor or any commodity is cheap and plentiful, they are generally used in an efficient manner. But, when their cost rises and their supply decreases, consumers and firms become more efficient in how they utilize them and seek alternative commodities, in other words they innovate. As the availability of cheap labor diminishes in any given sector of the economy, wages increase and production increasingly relies on the use of capital and mechanization. This may be painful in the short run, but over time it results in economic development and a net increase in living standards. This was seen when a growing number of viticulturalists in California responded to relative labor shortages, brought on by tighter border control, by shifting towards mechanized grape picking. So, opponents of immigration reform would be advised to rely on humanitarian arguments, rather than on facile economic arguments, because a shortage of low skilled labor is one problem that the United States does not face. And to those who decry the lost of low paying agriculture jobs, I respond "Domo Arigato Mr Robot"; mechanization lowers cost, while creating good paying jobs via the individuals needed to: design, build, operate and repair the new machines. And I would encourage those who still believe in the virtue of a limitless supply of cheap labor to visit the workers paradises of China and India

Machines replacing men in the vineyard

Workers with Walsh Vineyards Management harvest chardonnay grapes by machine at a vineyard in the Carneros region early Friday.

CRISTA JEREMIASON/Press Democrat

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Published: Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 4:15 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, September 30, 2011 at 7:08 p.m.

In the dark of night, the Pellenc machine rolled like a giant Transformer-like insect through the vineyard, seemingly swallowing up vines as it gently shook the chardonnay grapes free.

The canopies trembled almost imperceptibly as the mechanical harvester approached at a little more than 2 miles per hour, its lights gleaming like beady eyes staring down the vineyard rows.

As it passed, the valuable fruit fell softly from the vine and was ferried to a mechanical sorter, leaving behind only the empty stems and gently brushed leaves that quivered in the midnight air.

It's a scene that's becoming increasingly common in Sonoma County, as wineries and vineyard managers look for more cost-effective ways to harvest their grapes, and the number of available seasonal farm workers decreases.

In Sonoma and Napa counties, the percentage of vineyards harvested by machine has been growing by 3 to 4 percent every year, said Pete Opatz, vice president and senior viticulturist of Silverado Premium Properties. His company, which farms 3,500 acres in the two counties, harvests about 45 percent of its crop with machines.

“The trend towards mechanization has been a long-standing trend that continues to grow really over the last 10 years,” Opatz said. “Will the labor shortfall push the line more vertical? Of course it will.”

Meanwhile, grape growers are saying there's a shortage of seasonal workers available to help with the harvest this year, a trend caused in part by the faltering U.S. economy and tighter restrictions on the border with Mexico.

“As that labor pool becomes more and more difficult to tap into for agriculture, or any work...I see more and more mechanization of our industry as time goes on,” said Don Wallace, president of Dry Creek Vineyard outside Healdsburg.

The Australian wine industry has long had a smaller labor pool than it needed during harvest, and as a result, mechanical harvesting is far more common there, Wallace said.

In California, many farm workers hail from Mexico and return there after harvest, but stricter immigration policies are making that journey more difficult, said Casimiro Alvarez, regional director with the United Farm Workers.

“It is hard for people to come back to continue working in the fields,” Alvarez said.

Many vineyard managers need about twice as many workers during harvest as they do throughout the rest of the year, meaning harvesters must find other sources of income throughout the year.

“So, what are those workers going to be doing in the non-harvest period?” asked Chris Paige, CEO of California Human Development, which provides training and services to farm workers. “Typically they would be in some kind of non-agriculture job, possibly hospitality or construction. So to the extent that those are down, those workers wouldn't be available during the harvest.”

The Healdsburg Day Labor Center, part of California Human Development, was receiving calls from vineyard managers requesting help with harvest this weekend, Paige said.

At the Graton Day Labor Center, coordinators used to call vineyard managers to say they had people available to work. But now they don't have to, because the vineyard managers call them, said coordinator Carlos Lopez. “It's a different game now,” Lopez said.

Some seasonal laborers have left because of anti-immigration sentiment, and because wineries are becoming more careful about checking identification of pickers, Lopez said.

The lean crop also is making vineyard work less attractive this year for pickers who are paid by the ton, said Jim Murphy, owner of Murphy Vineyards in the Alexander Valley.

“It's difficult to get a hand crew to get motivated to go out there and pick where they're not going to make a whole lot,” Murphy said.

During a plush harvest, pickers could make a couple hundred dollars for a long night of work. But when the crop is thin, the pickers could earn as little as $50 for grueling efforts, he said.

In Lake County, grower Greg Hanson of Hanson Ranch Vineyards was expecting two-dozen pickers for a recent harvest, but at the scheduled time only eight workers showed up. As a result, the crew's harvest fell short of the truckload they had promised to deliver to Geyser Peak Winery that day.

“There's no doubt in my mind the available labor force is just smaller,” said Glenn Alexander, owner of Bacchus Vineyard Management, which manages 600 acres of vineyards mostly in Sonoma County.

Alexander said he felt the crunch during the late spring and early summer, when unseasonable rains meant there was more work to do arranging and managing the canopies. “We had 108 people working in June and July, and it wasn't enough, and we couldn't find anybody.”

Even so, Alexander is sticking to hand picking.

“I'm still one of those people that believes in putting your hands on the grapes,” he said.

For cost efficiency, the numbers are on the side of mechanization. Opatz calculated that it costs about $300 per ton to hand-pick a 5 ton chardonnay crop, when considering the costs of payroll, workers' compensation and social security. Picking the same amount mechanically costs about $150 per ton, even taking into account the cost of the machinery, which can run around $400,000 for a top-quality machine.

Walsh Vineyards Management has been machine harvesting for a decade, and recently invested in more machine harvesters made by Pellenc because the quality of the finished product improved significantly, said Towle Merritt, viticulturist with the Napa company.

“In a situation like this, where we're facing a pretty significant weather event in the middle of next week...you can harvest more grapes in a shorter period of time,” Merritt said. “Sometimes harvesting them at the right time is more important than harvesting them by hand.”

Walsh used a Pellenc harvester to pick chardonnay grapes in the Carneros region early Friday. Sales of the French machines have been steadily increasing over the past few years, said Lance Vande Hoef, sales representative. He attributes that growth to the company's new technology, which separates berries from stems in the vineyard right after it's picked.

Vineyards must be designed for machine harvesting, generally with rows spaced six or more feet apart. Some machines don't work well on hillsides, but do work on flat lands, said Ondine Chattan, director of winemaking at Geyser Peak Winery. The Geyserville winery started replanting vines to be machine-friendly about 20 years ago, under the direction of an Australian winemaker.

“The machines that are used these days are so incredibly gentle it's amazing. They don't break or macerate the berries,” Chattan said. “Australia has always had a labor shortage, so they've always been into mechanization.”

As the appetite for mechanical harvesting in California continues, the end result may be even fewer seasonal workers.

“Some of the wineries, they don't hire them anymore, because they have machines,” Lopez said. “So they need to find another job, or move out of the state.”

California Places Politics About The Rule Of Law And Sound Economics

Governor Brown of California signed into law AB 1236 which bans municipalities from requiring that businesses within their jurisdiction use E-Verify to check the legal status of their employees. This is an example of politics trumping the rule of law and good economic sense. And with an unemployment rate of 12%, massive debt and strained social services, the State of California should encourage its municipalities to take measures to shrink, not increase its supply of low skilled labor. And if the Department of Justice were not equally beholden to politics, it would be equally indignant that California, like Arizona and Alabama is "usurping the federal government's role as the creator of immigration policies."

California Limits E-Verify, Supports Illegal Hiring Practices

By Jon Feere, October 14, 2011

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20 Municipalities Forced to Drop E-Verify Laws

To the applause of illegal immigration advocates and unscrupulous business owners, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB 1236, an act that prohibits California municipalities from requiring businesses within their jurisdiction to use E-Verify. Titled, the "Employment Acceleration Act of 2011," the bill is sure to accelerate illegal hiring practices and make it more difficult for legal residents to acquire jobs. Before the bill was signed, at least 20 municipalities in California required use of E-Verify for either city contractors or all businesses within city limits: Mission Viejo, Palmdale, San Clemente, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, Lancaster, Temecula, Escondido, Menifee, Hemet, Wildomar, San Juan Capistrano, Hesperia, Norco, San Bernardino County, Rancho Santa Margarita, Yorba Linda, Placentia, Orange, and Simi Valley. Many more California cities use E-Verify for government employees; such use is not prohibited by the new state bill.

As written, AB 1236 prohibits:

the state, or a city, county, city and county, or special district, from requiring an employer other than one of those government entities to use an electronic employment verification system except when required by federal law or as a condition of receiving federal funds.

The justifications written into the bill are a smorgasbord of rehashed nonsense spread by open-border groups – e.g. overinflated costs, overstated inaccuracy rates. The bill also cites California's unemployment rate (currently over 12 percent) and explains that the state "must pursue all avenues in facilitating and incubating job development and economic growth." How desperate is California if the legislature thinks the only way to reduce unemployment in the Golden State is to promote violations of federal law, perpetuate ID theft, and strain both natural and taxpayer-subsidized resources via increased illegal immigration? If California wanted to reduce unemployment and income inequality it would mandate E-Verify and eliminate other magnets for illegal immigration, thereby driving out the illegal population and forcing businesses to offer a better wage in order to attract millions of unemployed Californians. But putting legal residents to work, improving their wages, and reducing demand for social services apparently makes too much sense.

The bill also suggests that the state legislature did not read the recent Supreme Court holding on E-Verify,Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting. The bill states: "it is the intent of the Legislature that the state maintain the intent of federal law by ensuring that private employers retain the ability to choose whether to participate in the electronic verification program." The legislature seems to think that Justice Sotomayor's confused dissent was the majority opinion. In actuality, the majority held that a state requirement that all businesses use E-Verify "is entirely consistent with the federal law." Similarly, the municipalities in California that required use of E-Verify were likely acting in accordance with federal law. While a state has the authority to direct its counties and cities, a state legislature should not mischaracterize federal law in advancing its ends.

It remains unclear whether the Obama administration will file a lawsuit against California for moving against the intent of federal law. If the administration does not file a lawsuit, it will be painfully clear that the White House has no interest in the enforcement of immigration law. It will become clear that the Obama administration's main agenda in suing states over their immigration laws is to perpetuate illegal immigration and undermine U.S. sovereignty.

The media has hardly covered the issue, of course. Open-border journalists seem to prefer keeping anti-enforcement bills that might raise the ire of most taxpayers in the dark; only when a bill supports the rule of law do the activist journalists devote gallons of ink to the matter, nearly all of it in an attempt to discredit the effort.

California cities are just beginning to hear of the change and some officials are troubled by the governor's decision. Simi Valley Mayor Bob Huber wrote the following in a letter urging the governor to veto the bill:

We have no evidence of any decline in the number of contractors willing to bid on city projects. All in all, there has been no indication that [Simi Valley's] E-Verify requirement has proved to be a limiting factor in either the public employment or public contracting arena.

This week, the mayor expressed his disappointment with the governor's decision to sign the bill: "It's real disheartening for people out of a job not to be supported by their own government."

Currently 18 states mandate use of E-Verify in at least some circumstances, while two additional states encourage use of the program. California now joins Illinois as one of only two states with legislation banning at least some uses of E-Verify. In contrast, Congress is currently debating a bill that would overcome state-level anti-E-Verify laws by making E-Verify a standard business practice for all hiring in the United States (HR 2164, the "Legal Workforce Act").

The Obama Administration's War Against Self Governance and Freedom of Assocation

To protect the fundamental right of families and individuals to live in any home and community that they desire and can afford is an affirmation of the American Way. One of the few instances in which federal authority should trump the rights of local self governance, is when communities actively bar individuals from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed liberties. But, when the federal government mandates that local communities take actions to ensure equal demographic outcomes, rather than equal housing opportunities, it violates the rights of self government to pursue self government and individuals to exercise their freedom of association.

More than any other American government, the Obama Administration has demonstrated a troubling penchant for disregarding the letter and spirit of carefully conceived limits on federal power, regarding the aforementioned rights. This was seen was the Administration demanded that Westchester County, under threat of a long and costly lawsuit to "spend more than $50 million of its own money, in addition to other funds, to build or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be provided in towns and villages where black residents constitute 3 percent or less of the population and Hispanic residents make up less than 7 percent. The 120 other spaces must meet different criteria for cost and ethnic concentration." To achieve this, the county will have to force local towns to rewrite their zoning laws, none of which have been deemed illegal. According to Ron Sims, the Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, “This is consistent with the president’s desire to see a fully integrated society." 

While I share the president's belief that integration is a social good and I would not want to live in a homogeneous community, I respect the rights of others to do so, as long as they are not depriving others of the opportunity to move to their community. There is no evidence that neither county, nor city governments, not any individuals have taken discriminatory measures. The only real barrier is the high cost of housing in the more homogeneous towns of Westchester and for the time being there does not exist a constitutional right to rent or purchase a home that exceeds your means. So, in effect, the federal government is pursuing social engineering to ensure equal outcomes, against the will of the local communities. And in effect this also intrudes on the freedom of individuals to enjoy the fruits of their labor, for most individuals have worked hard to be able to afford to live in desirable communities. Interestingly, upwardly mobile African-Americans are often the most critical of forced economic integration, because they worked the hardest to move into or build communities not beset by the problems that public housing often brings. 

An important aspect of this story is the flawed, underlying beliefs that drives the Obama Administration's efforts at social engineering, the first being that most African-Americans and Latinos want to live in majority white communities. Even in liberal, integrated high schools and universities, with no history of racial animosity, the majority of students self self segregate at lunch time and in their social activities. And when friendships form across racial lines, the individuals are almost always of a similar class and cultural background, so the chance of real social integration occurring through the government's efforts to import low income residents, is slim to none. 


More troubling, the actions of the Obama Administration implies that in order to thrive, African-Americans, unlike any other group, need to reside among other groups. A reader posted a response to this article that addresses this very point: "As a black American, I find this insulting...it sends a message that African-Americans need to be surrounded by rich white families to be happy and successful. Young black student's don't need to sit next to a white student to do good in school - we can do it on our own." You are correct; neither through "osmosis," nor through the mandates of the state can we as individuals and communities achieve happiness and good fortune. And real, enduring integration will never emerge through coercive social engineering, but through an affirmation of the principles of individual liberty (not group rights) and freedom of association.


On a side note, this affair begs the questions: Why should we view homogeneous white communities as being any more offensive than (let's say) equally exclusive Jewish, Chinese or Mexican-American neighborhoods? Why doesn't the federal government seek to diversify the said communities? Is there any real moral or legal difference between Americans of European descent seeking to congregate with their cultural compatriots, than (let's say) Arab Americans doing the same? Perhaps when European-Americans constituted the overwhelming majority of the nation, such behaviors could have been viewed as objectionable, but given that they now constitute a minority in a growing number of cities and states, there is no rational reason to single out their expressions of communal self interest. We cannot simultaneously encourage every group to promote their narrow ethno-political interests, while reprimanding the few European-Americans who do the same. Personally, I would like to see us travel in exactly the opposite direction and have all Americans promote the broad interests of their country and communities, rather than continue down the tried and failed path of balkanization.

On The Clash of Cultures (Part II)

As discussed in our previous post, when culturally distinct groups reach sufficient demographic density they
seek to recreate the social life of their nations of origin. In this case a Dutch Muslim Party includes the
"criminalization of blasphemy" in its platform, which contradicts the well established Dutch tradition of freedom of expression. It is quite ironic that some people seek to undermine the very culture and policies that made the Netherlands such an attractive place to live and work.


New Muslim Political Party Formed in the Netherlands

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Posted GMT 2-10-2012 18:46:1

      

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Recently the Partij voor Moslim Nederland
(Party for Muslim Netherlands),  which already
enjoys a significant presence in various
municipal governments in that country,
announced that it intended to run candidates
for the Dutch Parliament. An article in Forbes
listed the party's major principles,  which included
limits on "offensive" speech about religion;
the criminalization of blasphemy and of the
destruction of religious texts; immediate admission
of Turkey to the EU; an end to support for Israel;
and the free and unimpeded importation of Muslim
brides from abroad.

Whether to work within existing parties, or to
concentrate onforming and building up separate
Muslim parties, has always been a key strategic
question for the soft jihadists of Europe.
Though there are Muslimsin Norway who are
prominent members of several large traditional
parties, the country now has a Muslim party too.
 Founded in 2009  as the Independent Labour Party,
it was obliged later that year to  change its name
to the Samtidspartiet (Contemporary Party)
because of official concerns that it might be
confused with the Norwegian Labor Party.
When outlining the party's goals, its founder,
Norwegian-Pakistani Ghuffor Butt, focused on a
desire for lower taxes, gas prices, and the like
-- making it sound like rather a libertarian party
for Muslims.Formerly a cinema director, producer,
and political journalist in Pakistan, as well as an
actor in some twenty Pakistani movies,  Butt ran
-- and, as far as I know, still runs -- a successful
store in Grønland, a largely Muslim district in Oslo, 
that sells Bollywood films.

Yet lest these credentials suggest he was a
"liberal" and "modern" Muslim, Butt made it
clear, in answer to a Dagbladet journalist's
questions, that his party's other objectives
included lifting the ban on hijab in the police
force, establishing exclusively Muslim
schools and hospitals, instructing
immigrant-group children in
their parents' native tongue rather
than in Norwegian, easing residence-visa
rules using taxpayer money to fund the
building of mosques and pay the salaries
of imams, punishing those who had
reprinted the Danish Muhammed cartoons,
withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, 
and prohibiting homosexuality.
(Later, presumably loath to offend some
of his allies on the left, Butt made
a phone call to Dagblade to  walk
back the bit about gays: while homosexual 
conduct is forbidden by Islam, he said, the
party did not intend to change Norwegian law
on the subject. (Yeah, right.)

"If Norwegians didn't drink alcohol, have
premarital sex, and eat pork,"  Butt told
Dagbladet,"they'd be the world's best Muslims."
He also suggested that Mossad was responsible
for 9/11 and echoed the popular myth that Jews
hadn't shown up for work at the World Trade Center
that day.

It is interesting to note that the official launch
of this putatively Norwegian political party took
place in Pakistan -- yet another apparent indication
of the way in which many Norwegian-Pakistanis
view their  relationships to their old and new
homelands.As Butt explained, it  was easier to
reach Norwegian Pakistani voters in Norway this
way because they didn't watch Norwegian TV: 
thanks to satellite dishes,  their sets are tuned
to the Pkistani channels on which he was planning
to do interviews. "In three years, Oslo's mayor will be
a Norwegian-Pakistani," he predicted (wrong so far),
and expressed the hope that within fifteen years a
"second-generation immigrant" would be Norway's
prime minister.

Then there's the U.K., where Muslims established
the Islamic Party of Britain in 1989 only to dissolve
it in 2006 after limited success in local elections.
The party received widespread attention when
one of its functionaries,  in answer to a reader's
question on its website,  said that gays should
be put to death for "public…lewdness." 

The party is no more, but it lingers on, after a
fashion,in the form of the socialist Respect Party,
to which it had intimate ties.  Based in the
immigrant-heavy city of Manchester,
run by two peoplenamed Salma Yaqoob and
Abjol Miah, and founded in 2004 in opposition
to the war in Iraq, the partyn-- which has what
one might call a"special relationship"
with the Muslim Association of Britain,
the Muslim Council of Britain, and the

Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain
(Marxist-Leninist)-- calls for a higher
minimum wage, higher taxes on the
rich to fund welfare programs, 
stauncher  support for Pakistani,
and a tough stance toward Israel;
though it presents itself as a part of the

left,it has soft-pedaled women's rights and
gay rights to garner Muslim votes. Its most
famous member us the Hamas-loving
international gadfly George Galloway,
who represented the party in
Parliament after his expulsion
from Labour.

And let's not forget Spain, where in
2009 Muslims formed the Partido Renacimiento
y Unión de España (PRUNE),  which -- though
it calls explicitly for a "moral and ethical regeneration"

of Spanish society,with Islam as the
motive force-- denies that it's a Muslim party. 
A similar situation obtains in Germany, 
where a party called the Alliance
for Innovation and Justice, founded 
in 2010, also claims  It's not a Muslim
institution,  despite its overwhelmingly
Muslim membership, its clearly Islamic
ideological orientation, and its intimate ties
with the ruling party in Turkey.

So it goes. In those places in Europe where
Muslims, have reached a certain percentage
of the population, it's not surprising to see 
Muslim parties cropping up, fielding candidates, 
and, eventually, winning elections -- first for local
offices, then for seats in Parliament.

One challenge facing all such parties,
however, is that of convincing Muslims that
a separate party is the best way for them to
gain power. Indeed, while it's important to
keep an eye on these still relatively small 
parties, at present the far more significant
problem is the readiness of the large,
established parties that,  in order to win
Muslim votes, are quick to betray

their founding principles -- and to sell out the
interests, rights, and security of members of
constituencies (such as gays and Jews)
that are increasingly being dwarfed by
ever-ballooning Muslim populations. 
The possibility of those Muslim votes 
being siphoned off by newer, smaller
parties with aggressively Islamic platforms
can only encourage the major parties 
to shift their own agendas in even more
Muslim-friendly directions.

It's all part, needless to say, of the complex,
subtle -- and ominous -- workings of soft jihad. 
Which is why he decision of the Party for
Muslim Netherlands to dive into the 
parliamentary fray is a development
worth taking note of. For it's no isolated
incident, but part of a much larger 
and constantly shifting picture
-- that of the steady, and seemingly
inexorable, political Islamization of Europe.

By Bruce Bawer

Frontpage Magazine

On the Clash of Cultures (Part I)

Far too often debates on immigration and cultural diversity are framed in terms of the relative worth of different cultures and different groups. Are the values and norms of group A better than group B? Should group A assimilate or should group B accommodate? Rather than get distracted on contentious and largely subjective debates, we should focus on the indisputable fact of cultural clash. More specifically, wise policy must take into account the reality that when a sufficient number of sufficiently distinct cultural groups reside in the same space, tension arises. Imagine if 10,000 deeply traditional and conservative baptists from rural Mississippi and Alabama moved to the culturally and politically liberal San Francisco Bay area each year. We can be certain that in a short time tension between the native San Franciscans and southern migrants would emerge as the latter failed to assimilate to the norms of the former. As their presence grew, so would their political assertiveness and they would work to shape the laws (on gay marriage, abortion, religious expression, business regulation, taxation, etc.) of their new city to resemble those of the south. At that point even the most tolerant San Franciscan would grow resentful of the growing number of "red neck interlopers."

Why should it be any different with the millions of deeply conservative Muslim migrants in France? Rather than debate if the North Africans migrants should adopt the values and norms of their new homes or if Western Europeans should be more tolerant of burqas, polygamy and other alien practices, we should view this as an example of mutually alienation. We should question the wisdom of the politicians and bureaucrats who promoted the immigration and cultural policies that planted the seeds for this clash of cultures. A more sound policy would have been to welcome in the more educated, secular, western segments of Muslim societies, those who held the greatest potential to quickly assimilate to social and economic life in France. For this very reason, the assimilation of Muslims into American Society has by and large been successful. But, in the parlance of multiculturalism, assimilation is a dirty word. A growing number of critical thinkers are placing unconditional multiculturalism in the same category as communism, a belief system that's good in theory but disastrous in practice.

Occupy Wall Street: Half Right

It would be unfair the speak of an Occupy Wall Street platform, because it is a diverse, decentralized movement, with more opinions than members. But, there are some commonly held beliefs of the protesters, which can roughly be divided into two categories: freedom from undue corporate influence in political life and an expansion of entitlements. I share the former set of grievances; tax payer funded government bailouts of politically connected corporations forced us to reckon with the extent to which powerful financial interests and their lobbyists control national policy. But, the protesters who believe that this an example of a "free market gone amok" are painfully mistaken, the socialization of private, corporate loss is a toxic examples of excessive government intervention in the economy. But, rather than simply protest the bailout of reckless Wall Street firms, a notable segment of protesters declare that bailouts and entitlements should be vastly expanded. They call for "free" education, including the forgiveness of all billions in student debt, "free" health care, "free" transportation and the creation of 25 million jobs via a New Deal Style program. They fail to see the inherent moral and economic hazards in a system that usurps wealth from one sector to subsidize another. And the more obvious question that eludes them is: "What part of broke don't you understand?" A nation already buried in debt cannot expand the largess of the state, it must embark on the path of austerity.