Last month, German bank WestLB rolled out a new “Islam-compliant” investment product named the Islamic Strategy Index Certificate. The value of the certificate is based on the value of the WestLB Islamic Deutschland Index, consisting of shares of ten German firms “whose business activities are consistent with the ethical rules of Islam.” The WestLB product prospectus explains that the Islamic Strategy Index Certificates “are certified by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany as Islam-compliant [Islam konformes] investment.” The Central Council of Muslims in Germany is an umbrella group of twenty-two Muslim organizations.
The prospectus goes on to explain that “for the selection [of stocks] it is in principle not permitted that the business activity of the chosen firms involve interest-bearing financial services or derivatives, insurance, alcohol, tobacco, pork, armaments, gambling, gold and silver hedging transactions, or the entertainment industry.” The firms making up the Islamic Deutschland Index are some of the biggest names in German industry, including the sporting goods manufacturer Adidas, the engineering group Siemens, the software maker SAP, the chemical giant BASF, the pharmaceutical company Bayer, and the energy companies E.ON and RWE. Deutsche Post, of which the German state remains the principal shareholder, also forms part of the index. In addition to providing postal services in Germany, Deutsche Post is the parent company of the international package sender DHL.
According to Frank Haak, WestLB’s managing director for equity markets, three scholars undertook the certification of the product on behalf of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. Germany’s Islamische Zeitung – “The Islamic Paper” – names the three scholars as Mufti Abdul Kadir Barkatullah, Imam of the Finchley Mosque in London, Sheik Haytham Tamim of the Utrujj Foundation in London, and Michael Saleh Gassner, an Islamic Finance expert from Zürich. Regarding one of the firms in the index, the Islamische Zeitung ironically remarks, “it must have escaped the attention of the financial scholars that ThyssenKrupp, by virtue of its participation in…ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, counts as one of the most up-to-date producers of maritime military technology.”
The investment also involves a charitable component: whereas 95 percent of yearly dividends are to be reinvested, five percent are to be donated by WestLB to a charitable organization. According to the Islamische Zeitung, citing WestLB’s Haak, the beneficiary is to be chosen by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.
Former Democratic congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, a Catholic from Erie, Pennsylvania, cast a crucial vote in favor of Obamacare in 2010. She lost her seat that November in part because of her controversial support of Obamacare. But Dahlkemper said recently that she would have never voted for the health care bill had she known that the Department of Health and Human Services would require all private insurers, including Catholic charities and hospitals, to provide free coverage of contraception, sterilization procedures, and the "week-after" pill "ella" that can induce early abortions.
"I would have never voted for the final version of the bill if I expected the Obama Administration to force Catholic hospitals and Catholic Colleges and Universities to pay for contraception,” Dahlkemper said in a press release sent out by Democrats for Life in November. "We worked hard to prevent abortion funding in health care and to include clear conscience protections for those with moral objections to abortion and contraceptive devices that cause abortion. I trust that the President will honor the commitment he made to those of us who supported final passage."
Of course, most abortion opponents disagree with Dahlkemper that the HHS regulation is Obamacare's only moral problem. Under Obamacare, each state's federally subsidized health care exchange is required to offer a health insurance plan that covers elective abortions unless the state passes a law opting out of the requirement.
As former Democratic congressman Bart Stupak said when the Senate passed Obamacare in December of 2009, "A review of the Senate language indicates a dramatic shift in federal policy that would allow the federal government to subsidize insurance policies with abortion coverage. Further, the segregation of funds to pay for abortion is another departure from current policy prohibiting federal subsidy of abortion coverage."
Stupak, Dahlkemper, and a handful of other Democrats who held back on voting for final passage of Obamacare eventually voted for the exact same language in the Senate bill because the president signed an executive order saying the law wouldn't fund abortions.
Today's primary contests include Missouri's "beauty contest" primary, the Minnesota caucuses, and the Colorado primary. Polling firm PPP says all three contests look good for Rick Santorum.
PPP says the former senator from Pennsylvania will "probable win" the Missouri primary. Santorum polls 45 percent in the Show Me State, compared with 32 percent for Mitt Romney and 19 percent for Ron Paul. (Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot there.) In Minnesota, Santorum has a smaller but significant lead, pulling 33 percent support among potential caucus attendees to Romney's 24 percent and Gingrich's 22 percent. PPP also sees a strong second place finish for Santorum in Colorado, behind Romney. Thirty-seven percent of Colorado Republican voters support Romney, with 27 percent supporting Santorum. (Read the full results of the polls here.)
The Romney campaign is already lowering expectations for today. Press secretary Andrea Saul emailed reporters a memo from political director Rich Beeson titled "The Road Ahead -- A Reality Check." The memo points out that no delegates will be won from today's contests and that the upcoming schedule does not bode well for Romney's challengers. "The remaining February states may not be kind to them, and their hopes for a comeback in March may be very difficult and based on an incomplete understanding of the delegate selection rules," the memo states. "Even 'success' in a few states will not mean collecting enough delegates to win the nomination."
Despite the Romney campaign's assurances, the New York Times's Michael Shear notes there may be good reason to believe Santorum will continue to be a threat to Romney after today's contests:
Mr. Santorum’s razor-thin victory in Iowa’s caucuses in early January was the first and last time his campaign has posed a serious challenge to Mr. Romney.
But that could change as the campaign moves to the Midwest and the Rust Belt, where Mr. Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, might find more strength and where polls suggest that Mr. Romney might have trouble connecting with voters.
Campaigning in Minnesota on Monday, Mr. Santorum once again attacked the health care program that Mr. Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, helped push through the Legislature.
“Governor Romney is absolutely incapable of making the case against Obamacare successfully, and therefore greatly damages our ability to win this election, this very critical election, in 2012,” Mr. Santorum said, according to a report at Talking Points Memo.
So now they have gone and politicized the Super Bowl ads. Have they no shame?
Everyone is familiar with the Chrysler spot that has Clint Eastwood walking ominously dark streets, talking about how America is down and hurting, but we’ve been here before and this is just halftime. We will be coming back. Included in that “we” is “the Motor City,” because this is a commercial about Chrysler cars, which are built in Detroit (by a company that is mostly Italian-owned but never mind).
The ad is tremendously evocative and not so-subtly political. The subtext being an endorsement of the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler … but not Ford. Obamanomics is working. We’re making and selling cars. We’re tough and we’re coming back and Detroit can be a role model for America. And if Dirty Harry says so, who is going to argue with him?
In the hours since the commercial first ran, Eastwood and Chrysler’s CEO have both denied that it was in any way political. But the White House communications director posted a line on Twitter about, “Saving the America Auto Industry: Something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on.”
One wonders, why not? Well, possibly because the town is too dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, and so badly policed that the citizens who remain there (multitudes have fled) have armed themselves and announced to the predators that they aren’t going to be dialing 911 and waiting for the slowest police response in the land. They are shooting first and calling later. The rate of justifiable homicide in Detroit is 2200 percent above the nation’s average.
Which leads one to think that instead of Eastwood – whose Dirty Harry character was, at least, a member of the police force – the ad should have used Charles Bronson, whose Death Wish films featured a sure-enough civilian vigilante. Bronson is dead but one feels certain that an ad as lavishly produced as this one ($14 million) could have gotten around that nuisance detail with computer animation and clever editing of existing clips.
And if that wasn’t feasible, the agency that did the ad could have used Jodie Foster who did a so-so vigilante film called TheBraveOne.
Eastwood, of course, got the call because – now that John Wayne is no longer around – he is the iconic movie face of the old, tough American virtues. For obvious reasons, Brad Pitt just wouldn’t do.
And there is no denying the appeal to Americans of the “get up off the mat and get back in the fight” theme. Think Pearl Harbor. Or, indeed, 9/11. So why not the implosion and resurrection of the automobile industry?
President Barack Obama — in an act of hypocrisy or necessity, depending on the beholder — has reversed course and is now blessing the efforts of a sputtering super PAC, Priorities USA Action, organized to fight GOP dark-money attacks. On Monday morning, Obama reviled the “negative” tone of the super PACs, a dominant fundraising source in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. But by the evening, word leaked to POLITICO that Obama had offered his support for Priorities USA Action, which thus far has raised a fraction of what GOP-backed groups have raked in.
Obama’s top campaign staff and even some Cabinet members will appear at super PAC events. The president himself will not address super PAC donors, although there’s nothing to legally prohibit the president, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden from expressing their support for the group — as GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has done for his own pet super PAC. “We decided to do this because we can’t afford for the work you’re doing in your communities, and the grass-roots donations you give to support it, to be destroyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads,” campaign manager Jim Messina told supporters in an email Monday night.
As ABC reports, "Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC [is] run by two former White House staffers, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney." That same piece points to this quotation, from Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt: "Neither the President nor his campaign staff or aides will fundraise for super PACs."
The Washington Free Beacon is now up and running. What is this new outfit? Matthew Continetti, editor in chief of the Free Beacon, explains:
What would happen, though, if a website covered the left in the same way that the left covers the right? What picture of the world would one have in mind if the morning paper read like the New York Times—but with the subjects of the stories and the assumptions built into the text changed to reflect a conservative, not liberal, worldview? What would happen if the media wolf pack suddenly had to worry about an aerial hunting operation?
You are about to find out. The Washington Free Beacon is here to enter the arena of combat journalism. Our talented staff will add to the chorus of enterprising conservative reporters, publishing original stories, seeking out scoops, and focusing on the myriad connections between money and power in the progressive movement and Obama’s Washington. Our research and war room divisions will supplement that reporting with context, additional materials, and breaking video. At the Beacon, you will find the other half of the story, the half that the elite media have taken such pains to ignore: the inside deals, cronyism cloaked in the public interest, and far-out nostrums of contemporary progressivism and the Democratic Party. At the Beacon, all friends of freedom will find an alternative to the hackneyed spin, routine misstatements, paranoid hyperbole, and insipid folderol of Democratic officials and the liberal gasbags on MSNBC and talk radio. At the Beacon, we follow only one commandment: Do unto them.
Highlighting how crucial it is that the eventual Republican presidential nominee be able and willing to put Obamacare front and center in the general election campaign, the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that independents overwhelmingly support the repeal of President Obama’s signature legislation. By a margin of 19 percentage points (57 to 38 percent), independents favor Obamacare’s repeal. Among independents who really care (either way), the margin is even more overwhelming — with 42 percent of independents “strongly” supporting repeal and only 16 percent “strongly” opposing it.
Especially in light of the high-profile controversy pitting Obamacare versus Catholic organizations (and other businesses and civil associations that don’t share the Obama administration’s worldview), it would be hard to imagine a more winning or essential issue for Republicans to advance. The Obama administration has recently decreed that, under Obamacare, all new private health plans, even those offered by religiously affiliated organizations (hospitals, schools, charities, and the like), will be required to provide free birth control and morning-after pills to their employees, including free coverage of the abortion pill ella. Such overt politicizing of medicine is wrong on at least seven levels.
If this aspect of Obamacare weren’t bad enough, Rasmussen shows that, by huge margins, Americans across the political spectrum think Obamacare would make the quality of American health care worse, rather than better (41 to 22 percent); would raise, rather than lower, health costs (50 to 19 percent); and would increase, rather than reduce, the deficit (51 to 14 percent).
Campaigns are populated by hacks and trade in cheap shots. But the hacks are usually paid staffers, and the cheap shots are part of their job description. It's sad to see a respected former governor reduced to low-level staff hackery, acting as an attack dog on behalf of a man he once criticized ("Obamneycare") and now supports.
Here's Tim Pawlenty today, as a Mitt Romney campaign surrogate, on a conference call criticizing former senator Rick Santorum for . . . having voted to raise the debt ceiling: "He voted numerous times to raise the debt ceiling and here we as a nation facing fiscal crisis, I mean literally on the edge of the fiscal abyss. We need a next president who’s been strong and proven in fiscal and spending matters, and we had Rick Santorum voting numerous times to raise the debt ceiling." (The quotation is from the Romney press shop’s transcript.)
Here's a question: Did either Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney speak out at the time against any of the debt ceiling hikes Rick Santorum voted for as a member of Congress?
And here's a thought: Perhaps the Romney campaign could stop abusing poor Tim Pawlenty?
One of the most popular Super Bowl advertisements last night was the Chrysler ad featuring Clint Eastwood, titled “Halftime in America.”
The spot is supposed to be encouraging, as it focuses on the resilience of Detroit. “It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half,” Eastwood says in the spot. “It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.”
But contrary to what the might ad suggest, the spot was actually filmed in New Orleans and Los Angeles. “Yes, part of it was filmed in New Orleans . . . and some was filmed in various parts—such as Los Angeles,” Dianna Gutierrez said. She specifically points to the tunnel scenes as being taken at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, while the stadium shots were in New Orleans.
Asked whether any part of the ad was filmed in Detroit, Gutierrez said that previously taken footage from various parts of the Motor City was used. No image of Detroit was shot for the specific use in this ad.
“Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us,” Eastwood says in the ad. “This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, it’s halftime America. And, our second half is about to begin.”
Yet, while Detroit’s comeback might be the message of Eastwood’s ad, its physical imagery comes from New Orleans and Los Angeles.
Nearly 100,000 public charter school teachers are in danger of losing already earned pension benefits if a proposed IRS rule goes into effect this June. The public comment period on the regulation ends today, with no word from the agency regarding its decision.
The IRS selected a basket of public employee categories (including zoo keepers) to stop designating as government groups, meaning they would lose eligibility for state pensions. This regulation would force states to yank charter school teachers from state retirement plans and retroactively pull matching funds the state has already contributed to their accounts. Every single state that authorizes charter schools currently either requires or permits charter schools to participate in the state’s retirement system.
“We're hoping this is just an oversight,” said Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Charter school teachers are largely non-unionized, and happy to stay that way. Teacher unions are the largest special-interest contributors to elections—and huge contributors to President Obama in 2008. They constantly oppose charter schools. Charters are fully public schools (they receive public per-pupil funds, must take all comers, and pick students by lottery if oversubscribed) that receive flexibility on government mandates in exchange for an actual possibility of quick shutdown if they can’t prove they’re educating kids.
Charters consistently show up traditional public schools academically. Four hundred thousand students are on charter school waiting lists, and the main reason they can’t get in is that teacher unions in every state and district have sponsored limits to their growth.
It’s odd for a government agency to try to strip, rather than enlarge, public-sector benefits. So is this just an oversight, or a sneaky backdoor attempt to please unions piqued at Obama’s pro-charter education policy so far?
On a conference call Monday afternoon, a Mitt Romney campaign surrogate—Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor—criticized Rick Santorum for being part of the “big-spending establishment in Congress and in the influence-peddling industry that surrounds Congress,” and for previously supporting earmarked spending.
Pawlenty endorsed Romney soon after dropping out of the Republican presidential primary last year. Today’s call was organized by Romney’s presidential campaign.
Voters heading to Minnesota’s caucuses on Tuesday, Pawlenty said, ought to know this about Santorum’s record. “Rick Santorum is clearly not as conservative on these matters as conservative caucus attendees or Republican or conservative activists and people who are part of the conservative movement more broadly,” he said.
One reporter asked Pawlenty if Romney and himself are as conservative as Minnesota’s caucus attendees. “I consider myself a conservative, and Mitt Romney, by the way, has got a conservative record,” Pawlenty said. “His record, of course, isn’t perfect. None of the records of these candidates are perfect. But Mitt Romney’s record is a conservative record. Again, not perfect but conservative.”
Santorum has repeatedlydefended the earmarks he sought as a member of Congress, and he claims, now that their abuse became evident, he supports banning them. “People change position from time to time for various reasons,” Pawlenty said about Santorum’s transformation. “And the fact that [Santorum] has now tried to move away from the fact that he was a champion of earmarks is noteworthy…. He’s held himself out as the perfect or near-perfect conservative when in fact that’s not his record.”
But the campaign surrogate did not say how Romney’s own policy reversal on, say, abortion is any different than Santorum’s.
In fact, Romney’s own record shows he sought federal spending when he was governor of Massachusetts. In 2003, Cindy Gillespie, Romney’s chief of legislative and intergovernmental affairs, sent a memo to cabinet officers outlining the governor’s plans to increase federal funding to Massachusetts.
“A major priority of our Administration is ensure that Massachusetts receives the maximum amount of dollars available from the federal government,” the memo reads. “We can increase Massachusetts’s share of federal dollars by implementing a system of identifying and tracking grants so that we can aggressively advocate and pursue the discretionary funding opportunities and closely track the receipt of the formula and other funds.”
Michigan Republican Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra's came under scrutiny Monday for a controversial Super Bowl ad targeting Democratic opponent Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
Hoekstra's campaign aired an ad on Sunday depicting an Asian woman speaking in broken English, facetiously thanking Stabenow for encouraging federal spending.
"Thank you Michigan Sen. Debbie Spend-it-now. Debbie spends so much American money -- you borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak; ours get very good. We take your jobs," the woman says in the ad. [...]
The ad faced additional criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike.
"Pete Hoekstra had a wardrobe malfunction this Super Bowl weekend and it was not pretty," said Shripal Shah, a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman.
Republican consultant Mike Murphy, meanwhile, wrote on Twitter: "Pete Hoekstra Superbowl TV ad in MI Senate race really, really dumb. I mean really."
