Standing up Against Wealth-Shaming,The US Chamber

Standing Up Against Wealth- Shaming

America, we have a bullying epidemic. No, not the school bullying issues that get constant attention from Hollywood, the White House and the media. No, not the “fat-shaming” and “body-shaming” outbreaks on Facebook. The problem is wealth- shaming. Class-shaming. Success-shaming.

The State of the Job Creator is under siege.

Last week, a prominent self-made tech mogul dared to diagnose the problem publicly. His passionate letter to The Wall Street Journal decried the “progressive war on the American 1 percent.” He called on the left to stop demonizing “the rich,” and he condemned the Occupy movement’s “rising tide of hatred.”

The mini-manifesto was newsworthy because this truth-teller is not a GOP politician or conservative activist or Fox News personality. As he points out, he lives in the “epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco.” No matter. The mob is shooting the messenger anyway. But maybe, just maybe, his critical message in defense of our nation’s achievers will transcend, inspire, embolden and prevail.

The letter-writer is Tom Perkins, a Silicon Valley pioneer with an MIT degree in electrical engineering and computer science and a Harvard MBA. He started out at the bottom at Hewlett-Packard, founded his own separate laser company on the side and then teamed up with fellow entrepreneur Eugene Kleiner to establish one of the nation’s oldest and most important venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.

A hands-on dynamo, Perkins immersed himself in the science and technology of the companies in his portfolio. He even accompanied them on sales calls. He poured his heart and soul into the business of business. Perkins achieved great wealth for himself, his partners and his clients — and the world is a better place for it. Kleiner Perkins’ groundbreaking investment in Genentech planted the seeds of the biotech revolution. An MIT profile notes that in its first three decades, the firm “made more than 475 investments, generating $90 billion in revenue and creating 275,000 jobs” and “funded 167 companies that later went public, including Amazon, AOL, Genentech, Google and Netscape.”

Because he dared to compare the seething resentment of modern progressives to Kristallnacht and Nazi Germany, the grievance industry attacked Perkins and dismissed his message. His former colleagues at the venture capital firm he founded threw him under the bus. Left-wing punk journalists immediately branded him “nuts” and a “rich idiot.”

Please note: Not one of those sanctimonious grievance-mongers had anything to say about the Molotov cocktail-fueled riots and fires set by the Occupy mobs at banks, car dealerships and restaurants in Oakland that provoked Perkins’ comparison in the first place.

While he regrets invoking Kristallnacht specifically, Perkins unequivocally refused to back down from his message defending the “creative 1 percent.” He reiterated his fundamental point in a TV interview on Monday: “Anytime the majority starts to demonize a minority, no matter what it is, it’s wrong. And dangerous. And no good ever comes from it.”

Perkins also chastised those who bemoan “income inequality,” including his erstwhile “friends” Al Gore, Jerry Brown and Barack Obama: “The 1 percent are not causing the inequality. They are the job creators. … I think Kleiner Perkins itself over the years has created pretty close to a million jobs, and we’re still doing it. It’s absurd to demonize the rich for being rich and for doing what the rich do, which is get richer by creating opportunity for others.”

Amen, amen and amen. Perkins barely scratched the surface of the War on Wealth that has spread under the Obama regime. Anti-capitalism saboteurs have organized wealth-shaming protests at corporate CEOs’ private homes in New York and in private neighborhoods in Connecticut. Hypocrite wealth-basher and former paid Enron adviser Paul Krugman at The New York Times whipped up hatred against the “plutocrats” in solidarity with the Occupy mob. New York state lawmakers received threatening mail saying it was “time to kill the wealthy” if they didn’t renew the state’s tax surcharge on millionaires.

“If you don’t, I’m going to pay a visit with my carbine to one of those tech companies you are so proud of and shoot every spoiled Ivy League (expletive) I can find,” the death threat read. In Perkins’ own backyard, Bay Area celebrity rapper Boots Riley infamously penned “5 Million Ways To Kill a CEO” (“Toss a dollar in the river, and when he jump in/If you find he can swim, put lead boots on him and do it again.”) before making cameo appearances at vandal-infested Occupy Oakland marches over the past few years.

But the most dangerous threats to the nation’s job creators don’t come from Oakland rappers or social justice guerillas or San Francisco neighbors griping about tech workers’ private buses and big homes. The deadliest threats come from the men in power in Washington who stoke bottomless hatred against “millionaires and billionaires” through class-bashing rhetoric and entrepreneur-crushing policies — while they pocket the hard-earned money of the achievers trying to buy immunity. It’s high time to shame the wealth-shamers and their cowed enablers. Silence is complicity.

The US Chamber of Commerce Versus America

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a politically entrenched synod of special interests. These fat cats do not represent the best interests of American entrepreneurs, American workers, American parents and students, or Americans of any race, class or age who believe in low taxes and limited government. The chamber’s business is the big business of the Beltway, not the business of mainstream America.

If you are a business owner who believes your country should strictly and consistently enforce its borders and deport illegal immigrants who violate the terms of their visas, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t represent you.

If you are a worker who believes the feds should punish illegal aliens who use fake documents to obtain jobs instead of rewarding them with “legal status,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t champion you.

If you are a parent or educator who opposes top-down federal education schemes such as Common Core that undermine local control, dumb down rigorous curricula and threaten family privacy while enriching big business and lobbying groups, the U.S. Chamber od Commerce doesn’t speak for you.

If you are a taxpayer who has had enough of crony capitalism and publicly funded bailouts of failing corporations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t work for you. Last year, the chamber poured more than $52 million into K Street lobbying efforts on behalf of illegal alien amnesty, Fed Ed Common Core programs and increased federal spending. This year, chamber bigwigs are paving the perilous pathway to GOP capitulation. The left hardly needs to lift a finger against tea party candidates and activists who are bravely challenging the big government status quo. The chamber has already volunteered to spend $50 million subsidizing the Republican incumbency protection racket and attacking anti- establishment conservatives.

Allow me to say, “I told you so.” In 2010, when President Barack Obama hypocritically attacked the chamber for accepting “foreign donations” just before the midterm elections, many on the right rushed to the group’s side. But as I warned then, the purported enemy of my enemy is … sometimes my worst enemy. Barely three months after their Kabuki campaign fight, Obama and the chamber had already kissed and made up.

The chamber joined hands with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations on a joint campaign to support Obama’s increased government infrastructure and spending proposals, stuffed with Big Labor payoffs.

The chamber is one of the staunchest promoters of mass illegal immigration, and joined with the AFL-CIO and American Civil Liberties Union to oppose immigration enforcement measures.

The chamber opposed E-verify and sued Arizona over its employer sanctions law.

The chamber supported a pro-Obamacare, pro-TARP, pro-stimulus, pro-amnesty Democrat in Arizona over his free-market GOP challenger.

The chamber supported the George W. Bush/Obama TARP, the Bush/Obama auto bailout and the billion-dollar, pork-stuffed stimulus. This isn’t about letting the best ideas and businesses thrive. It’s about picking winners and losers. It’s about “managing” competition and engineering political outcomes under the guise of stimulating the economy and supporting “commerce.” What’s in it for the statist businesses that go along for the ride with Obama and his team of corruptocrats? Like they say in the Windy City: It’s all about the boodle — publicly subsidized payoffs meted out to the corruptocrats’ friends and special interests.

In the case of Common Core, the chamber has made common cause with the left-wing, corporate-bashing Center for American Progress in a new Baptists and Bootleggers coalition. They are seemingly strange bedfellows who both profit from increased federal government intervention. For giant corporate publishers, such as Pearson and other big-business ventures backed by the chamber, it’s all about cashing in on the public schools’ Common Core captive guinea pigs in testing, teaching, data collection and data analysis.

For big government advocacy groups, such as CAP, it’s all about diminishing state, local and parental control over local education and curricular decisions; expanding Washington’s regulatory reach into the classroom; and ensuring the perpetuation of the Fed Ed bureaucracy.

When businesses get in the government handout line, it’s not a “public-private partnership.” It’s corporate welfare. Venture socialism. Whatever you call it, it stinks as much under Democrat administrations as it does under Republican ones.

Always beware of Washington business-boosters wearing false free-market facades.

Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is [email protected].

Not so fast, Andrew Cuomo. We see what you did there. After publicly bashing conservative New Yorkers as “extreme” people who have no place in his state, the intolerant Democratic governor wants to blame the media for his unmistakable contempt for those who oppose abortion, support gun rights and defend traditional marriage.

Newsflash: Crapweasel politicians can backtrack and scapegoat, but they can’t hide.

When he railed against socially conservative Republican candidates in a radio interview last week, Cuomo hyperbolically singled out those he called “right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay” citizens. Sounding unapologetically purge-tastic, the governor said these political opponents “have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” His bigoted comments provoked a fierce social-media-driven backlash led by devout Catholics and Second Amendment activists in the Empire State. And now, he’s got job-creating, tax-paying conservative business people threatening to leave. Heckuva job, Andy!

In a desperate damage control attempt, Cuomo issued a statement claiming that the New York Post “distorted” his words. It’s always the messenger’s fault. The Shove Guv also accused his critics of being “entirely reckless with facts and the truth.” Really? There was no equivocation in Cuomo’s political eviction wish. Whether he was talking about conservative candidates and/or the voters and donors who support them, you can’t get any clearer than “have no place in the state of New York.”

Translation: You don’t belong. Pack your bags. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out. Scram.

All of his lefty friends on MSNBC and at Soros Central may be cheering Cuomo on, but this marginalization strategy is bound to backfire. Here in Colorado, supposedly moderate Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper threw in with the radical gun-control crowd and is now paying the price. Major businesses have left the state. Two leading state Democratic legislators were recalled last fall by grassroots campaigns outspent 8-to-1 by gun-control forces underwritten by New York Nanny Stater Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates.

Reminder: It wasn’t just “extreme conservatives” who revolted. Pueblo Democrat Angela Giron lost in her Obama-loving Democratic Senate District 3 by a whopping 12 points.

Another state Democrat and staunch gun-control extremist, Evie Hudak, resigned in disgrace last November rather than face the wrath of the independent recallers. Once a hot 2016 Democratic presidential prospect, Hickenlooper’s approval ratings have plunged.

Cuomo also has set himself up for an unforgettable schooling by hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers who are gathering in Washington, D.C., this week for the 41st annual March for Life. “I am guessing that Andrew Cuomo’s remarks are going to be repeated by every speaker on the platform,” Stasia Zoladz Vogel, president of the Buffalo Regional Right to Life Committee, predicted in the Buffalo News before the Wednesday march.

As for Cuomo’s reckless dismissal of what he considers an “extreme” minority, a recent poll of New Yorkers showed that the vast majority “support sensible restrictions on abortions, with 80 percent opposing unlimited abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy and 75 percent opposing changes in current law so that someone other than a doctor can perform an abortion.” Contrary to Cuomo’s distorted view, the 21st- century pro-life movement is a diverse convergence of increasingly young and minority activists, feminist pro- lifers, independents and social conservatives. And contrary to Cuomo’s reckless telling of history, pro-life activism is ingrained in New York history.

The suffragists who famously met at Seneca Falls, N.Y., were ardent advocates for life. They didn’t mince words. Elizabeth Cady Stanton condemned the “murder of children, either before or after birth.” Alice Paul, who crusaded for the Equal Rights Amendment, called abortion “the ultimate exploitation of women.” Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, as Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser pointed out in her review of pro-life feminism, was horrified by the abortion industry and the women who enabled it:

“The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term ‘female physician’ should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.”

Now we know where Andrew Cuomo would have stood had he been around when pro-life suffragists came knocking on New York’s doors: blocking their way.

Cuomo insists he “respects” all of the people he dumped on last week. Yet, he continues to willfully mischaracterize their positions and smear them as dangerous haters. It’s telling that he employs the partisan pejorative labels “anti- gay” and “pro-assault weapon” alongside “right to life.” As if endorsing the “right to life” is in itself an act of bigotry or a horrific, unspeakable crime. There are no do-overs: Cuomo rolled out the unwelcome mat and announced a new state of intolerance. His undemocratic extremism is as extreme as it gets. Out: “I Love New York.” In: “New York Hates You.” Let the homebuyer, business owner, taxpayer, voter and visitor beware.

Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is [email protected].

John Kerry, Jihad Coddler

The myth of the poor, oppressed jihadist never dies. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is the latest Obama administration official to peddle this odious narrative. Cue John Lennon’s cloying "Imagine," don your plaid pajamas, and curl up with a warm cup of deadly naivete.

While meeting with Catholic Church officials at the Vatican in Rome on Monday, Kerry expounded on their "huge common interest in dealing with this issue of poverty, which in many cases is the root cause of terrorism or even the root cause of the disenfranchisement of millions of people on this planet." In other words: If only every al-Qaida and Taliban recruit had a fraction of Kerry’s $200 million fortune, they’d all be frolicking peacefully with infidels on jet skis sporting "Coexist" bumper stickers.

This wasn’t a one-off. Kerry delivered a similar Kumbaya-style discourse at the Global Counterterrorism Forum last fall: "Getting this right isn’t just about taking terrorists off the street. It’s about providing more economic opportunities for marginalized youth at risk of recruitment." Naturally, the Foggy Bottom apple doesn’t fall far from the Pennsylvania Avenue terror-excusing tree. President Obama subscribes to the very same "midnight basketball" theory of counterterrorism. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Obama asserted that jihad "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

The chronic cluelessness of the root-cause apologists of jihad never ceases to amaze. Britain’s MI5 reported in 2011 that two-thirds of the U.K’s jihad suspects were from middle-class backgrounds, "showing there is no simplistic relationship between poverty and involvement in Islamist extremism." Thorough reviews of the empirical evidence shows, as the RAND Corporation reported, that "(t)errorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds."

Here’s a refresher cheat sheet:

—9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta went to Hamburg University to study urban planning.

—Convicted al-Qaida scientist Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.

—Osama bin Laden did a summer school stint at Oxford.

—Christmas Day underwear bomb operative Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab was an elite Nigerian engineering student who studied at one of Britain’s leading universities and "lived a gilded life."

—Jihadist Samantha Lewthwaite, the notorious "White Widow" British Muslim convert linked to last year’s Westgate mall massacre in Nairobi, was the daughter of a soldier and a former University of London student.

—British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a London School of Economics student, was convicted of abducting and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl.

—Seven upper-middle-class jihadi doctors were implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings.

—Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri didn’t need more education or wealth to steer him away from Islamic imperialism. He had a medical degree. So did former Hamas biggie Abdel al-Rantissi.

—Al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed attended Chowan College in Murfreesboro, N.C., and then transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned his degree in mechanical engineering along with 30 other Muslims. Mohammed applied his Western learning to oversee the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot (six Americans dead), the U.S.S. Cole attack (17 American soldiers dead) and the September 11 attacks (3,000 dead). He also has been linked to the 1998 African embassy bombings (212 dead, including 12 Americans), the plot to kill the pope, the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and the Bali nightclub bomb blast that killed nearly 200 tourists, including two more Americans.

Osama bin Laden, of course, was dedicated to spending every last penny of his inherited Saudi fortune — estimated at between $50 million and $300 million — to wage war on the West. Al-Shabaab jihadists have amassed their own terror campaign chest through the illegal ivory trade.

Privileged jihad funders from Qatar and other Gulf states heap their petro-dollars on al-Qaida. The Taliban raised $400 million in one year, according to a 2012 U.N. report, not just from opium, but largely from "donations, taxing local economies and extorting money from such targets as drug dealers, cellphone operators and aid projects." Indeed, since 2006, "the Taliban have managed to finance an ever-increasing number of attacks, reflecting a year-on-year increase in income," the U.N. report said.

Memo to stupidly rich elitist John Kerry, richly stupid progressive Barack Obama and the administration’s bleeding- heart bureaucrats in a bubble: Financial bankruptcy is not, and has never been, the "root cause" of Koran-inspired hatred and violence against nonbelievers. Lack of intellectual stimulation is not, and has never been, the "root cause" of radical Islam’s centuries-old and never-ceasing imperative to establish a worldwide caliphate and conquer the West. The root cause of civilizational jihad is unmitigated evil and arrogance, not lack of compassion, understanding or social justice.

Islamic terrorism never had such dutiful tools as the American fools who rationalize it.

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is [email protected].

Tamera Mowry Is Not Alone

This made my heart ache and my blood pressure spike: Actress Tamera Mowry, who is black, wept in an interview with Oprah Winfrey over the vile bigotry she has encountered because of her marriage to Fox News reporter Adam Housley, who is white. Misogynist haters called Mowry a sellout and a "white man’s whore." International news outlets labeled the Internet epithets she endured "horrific" and "shocking." Horrific? Yes. Shocking? Not at all. What Mowry experienced is just a small taste of what the intolerance mob dishes out against people "of color" who love, think and live the "wrong" way. I’ve grown so used to it that I often forget how hurtful it can be. Mowry’s candor was moving and admirable. It’s also a valuable teachable moment about how dehumanizing it can be to work in the public eye. Have we really sunk to this?

Young actresses in the 21st century forced to defend their love lives because their marital choices are politically incorrect? We’re leaning backward in the regressive Age of Hope and Change.

Let’s face it: Mowry’s sin, in the view of her feckless detractors, is not merely that she married outside her race. It’s also that she is so open about her love for a white man who — gasp! — works for reviled Fox News. Neither of them is political, but the mere association with Bad Things (Fox, conservatives, capitalism, the tea party, Christian activism, traditional values) is an invitation for unabashed hate.

The dirty open secret is that a certain category of public figures has been routinely mocked, savaged and reviled for being partners in interracial marriages or part of loving interracial families (for a refresher, see the video clip of MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry and friends cackling at the holiday photo of Mitt Romney holding his black adopted grandson in his lap).

And the dirty double standard is that selectively compassionate journalists and pundits have routinely looked the other way — or participate directly in heaping on the hate.

Have you forgotten? Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was excoriated by black liberals for being married to wife Virginia, who happens to be white. The critics weren’t anonymous trolls on the Internet. They worked for major media outlets and institutions of higher learning. USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds slammed Thomas and his wife for their colorblind union: "It may sound bigoted; well, this is a bigoted world and why can’t black people be allowed a little Archie Bunker mentality? … Here’s a man who’s going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can’t paint himself white he’ll think white and marry a white woman."

Howard University’s Afro-American Studies Chair Russell Adams accused Thomas of racism against all blacks for falling in love with someone outside his race. "His marrying a white woman is a sign of his rejection of the black community," Adams told The Washington Post. "Great justices have had community roots that served as a basis for understanding the Constitution. Clarence’s lack of a sense of community makes his nomination troubling."

California state Senate Democrat Diane Watson taunted former University of California regent Ward Connerly after a public hearing, spitting: "He’s married a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn’t want to be black."

Mowry is not alone. The Thomases and the Connerlys are not alone. Poisonous attempts to shame are an old, endless schoolyard game played by bullies who never grow up and can’t stand other people’s happiness or success.

Time doesn’t lessen the vitriol or hostility. Take it from someone who knows. "Oriental Auntie-Tom," "yellow woman doing the white man’s job," "white man’s puppet," "Manila whore" and "Subic Bay bar girl" are just a few of the printable slurs I’ve amassed over the past quarter-century. You wouldn’t believe how many Neanderthals still think they can break you by sneering "me love you long time" or "holla for a dolla." My IQ, free will, skin color, eye shape, productivity, sincerity, maiden name and integrity have all been ridiculed or questioned because I happen to be a minority conservative woman happily married to a white man and the mother of two interracial children who see Mom and Dad — not Brown Mom and White Dad.

Mowry’s got the right attitude. She wiped away her tears and told Oprah that haters wouldn’t drag her down. Brava. Live, laugh, think and love without regrets. It’s the best revenge and the most effective antidote to crab-in-the-bucket syndrome.

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is [email protected].