Friday, February 6, 2009

Kids in the Candy Store

Very Stimulating . . .

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts

$380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program

$300 million for grants to combat violence against women

$2 billion for federal child-care block grants

$6 billion for university building projects

$15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships

$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24

$1 billion for community-development block grants

$4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”

$650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”

$15 billion for business-loss carry-backs

$145 billion for “Making Work Pay” tax credits

$83 billion for the earned income credit

$150 million for the Smithsonian

$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters

$500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities

$44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters

$350 million for Agriculture Department computers

$88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building

$448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters

$600 million to convert the federal auto fleet to hybrids

$450 million for NASA (carve-out for “climate-research missions”)

$600 million for NOAA (carve-out for “climate modeling”)

$1 billion for the Census Bureau

$89 billion for Medicaid

$30 billion for COBRA insurance extension

$36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits

$20 billion for food stamps

$4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

$850 million for Amtrak

$87 million for a polar icebreaking ship

$1.7 billion for the National Park System

$55 million for Historic Preservation Fund

$7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”

$150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases

$150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”

$2 billion for renewable-energy research ($400 million for global-warming research)

$2 billion for a “clean coal” power plant in Illinois

$6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program

$3.5 billion for energy-efficiency and conservation block grants

$3.4 billion for the State Energy Program

$200 million for state and local electric-transport projects

$300 million for energy-efficient-appliance rebate programs

$400 million for hybrid cars for state and local governments

$1 billion for the manufacturing of advanced batteries

$1.5 billion for green-technology loan guarantees

$8 billion for innovative-technology loan-guarantee program

$2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects

$4.5 billion for electricity grid

$79 billion for State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?

[Commentary]Reuters/Corbis

Jimmy Carter.

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas -- the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains -- to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph -- another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.