2012
100th NYYRC Annual Alumni Dinner Gala
100th NYYRC Annual Alumni Dinner Gala
JOIN US AS WE CELEBRATE OUR 100TH ANNUAL DINNER! The Annual Dinner is our Club’s signature event and is attended by members, politicians, and donors from in and around the New York metropolitan area.
Wednesday, June 27th, 2012 6:30PM – 10:00PM Manhattan Penthouse – 80 5th Avenue (at 14th Street)Includes passed hors d’oeuvres, a three course dinner, a 3 hour open bar, and a silent auction surrounded by amazing views of Manhattan!
After party at the Ainsworth (26th & 6th) Drink Specials are $4 Paige Amber Ales, $6 CosmosLight Appetizers – on the house
The event will feature actor and talk show host Stephen Baldwin as emcee, and Congressman Louie Gohmert, former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and NY 12th Congressional District Candidate Chris Wight as guest speakers. Also featuring music by Nick Palumbo and the Flipped Fedoras.
2012
Chris Wight “Summer Mixer” at Met Club – Wednesday, May 23
From the Chris Wight campaign:
You’re invited to join other Young Professionals at a Summer Mixer on May 23rd to support Chris Wight in his campaign for Congress.
Details:
Where? Met Club, 122 E. 83rd St (between Lexington and Park)
When? Wednesday May 23, 6:30 PM
Contribution? $50
You can buy your tickets in advance here.
Chris’ Bio:
Chris has spent the last 14 years helping the world’s largest investment banks cut costs, manage operations, build client relationships, and increase profitability.
Most recently, his efforts to build strong internal governance with his employer’s top-tier clients has helped to strengthen the firm’s business and brand. He is highly results-oriented and focuses on specific action plans with measurable and impactful change.
Prior to his current position, Chris spent five years working for Deutsche Bank where he managed an operations team. He completed large cost-cutting initiatives, tightened internal controls, and performed audits.
Before Deutsche, he spent four years as an analyst with Goldman Sachs where he studied equity markets on a buy-side trading desk and supported fixed-income trading and operations.
Chris grew up in Toledo, Ohio attending public schools where his mother was a fourth-grade teacher. His father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force and served during the Korean War.
After receiving a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from The Ohio State University in 1997, Chris moved to New York City.
He lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and has been a resident of the 14th congressional district for ten years.
2012
An Open Letter to Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal
This is in response to Bret Stephens’ May 7th editorial in the Wall Street Journal, entitled To the Class of 2012. Attention Graduates: Tone down your egos, shape up your minds
Mr. Stephens:
As a relatively recent college graduate (2007), I was disappointed to read your blanket attack on the Class of 2012. While your anecdotes may serve as evidence to confirm the suspicions of those who feel a palpable decline in educational standards, the tone and presumptuous condescension of your missive were hardly constructive.
It’s true that many of my peers are woefully unfamiliar with history. In fact, this April a mixture of dismay and horror spread across Twitter as several young people admitted ignorance of the historical Titanic. Comical and despairing, the event was emblematic of a disturbing trend among educational institutions; namely, they seem to have lost their staid insistence on academic rigor. Furthermore, I agree: it is imperative for the public good that journalists are intimately familiar with the topics about which they presume to opine. Memorization of historical facts, dates, and actors is undoubtedly a prerequisite for informed and judicious journalism. No further proof of this assertion is needed than to pick up a typical periodical on the newsstand and notice the glaring holes in the author’s analysis. Whether the topic is Middle Eastern politics, economic policy and history, or warfare, the paucity of erudition in journalistic circles is all too apparent to a reader who is even casually familiar with the topic at hand.
Rather than blame today’s students for their ignorance, however, you may have asked what generation of professors developed their curricula. A person born in 1990 can hardly be held responsible for the decisions made by Democrat Presidents and Congresses of the 1930s and 1960s to create financially impossible entitlement programs. It was Richard Nixon in the 1970s who cobbled together the EPA from disparate regulatory boards, creating the precedent for so many of Obama’s attacks on private property today. Going back further, it was John Dewey and legions of subsequent progressives who successfully supplanted the tenets of a classical education with what could be aptly described as today’s “therapeutic” educational system.
Recognizing as you do the misleading character of an Ivy League credentials, prudence and genuine concern for prosperity dictates not public scorn, but tutelage. I have been critical of my generation’s overwhelmingly blind support of Obama and their lack of sound political thinking. But my intentions when engaging them in conversation are to spark their curiosity, encourage them to read more, and discover a world of learning that will provide them a lifetime of genuine insight and vocational aptitude. A funny thing happens when you stop the putdowns and provide incentive to learn: people do.
Yet your article goes beyond mere unproductivity. It borders on vindictive, even anti-American. Americans are, on the whole, better educated than Ireland, France, Spain, and India. We are more economically productive. As you (wittingly or unwittingly) insinuate, our young people fight bravely on foreign battlefields in greater numbers than any other country’s youth. There have been no massively destructive riots in the United States as a result of the Great Recession, OWS included. The same cannot be said for the U.K., France, Greece – or, for that matter, the United States in the 1960s. Generation X-er politicians meanwhile (that’s your generation, Mr. Stephens), have been complicit with Baby Boomers in expanding the size and scope of the Federal government. Still today they have not thought it imperative to stop the spending. As a 39 year-old father of three, I find it a perplexing priority to lambaste a particular crop of students who are, as you say, living with their parents. Surely the Journal’s august pages could be more effectively utilized to help thwart a global financial collapse. Or was the article merely Mr. Stephens’ own puffery? “Advertisements for Bret?” I noticed it achieved #1 most read on wsj.com. Precious little “emotional restraint” from you, but plenty of attention.
The root of the English word educate comes from the Latin educatus, which means to “bring up.” Socrates did not ask questions to humiliate and belittle his interlocutors, but to raise their awareness. It is the duty of those who are better informed, who have spent time cultivating their own minds, to encumber with facts those in society who have been derelict in this task. Snotty remarks aimed at millions of young people do nothing to but breed resentment and promote further political disaffection. And no, hiding behind admiration for a girl who is braver than you does not make this OK.
Sincerely,
William Palumbo
New York, NY
Republican Common Sense vs. Democrat Ideology
There’s a really interesting lesson in messaging when observing President Obama’s claim for a second term, which not only conveniently reinforces his incompetence as U.S. President, but provides further insight into left-wing philosophy. His entire campaign and track record of the past four years is based on hypotheticals and subjectivity. There is very little that reminds voters of his capabilities (with the exception of the one decision he may have actually have gotten right, and by blowing it way out of proportion reminds us that the number of correct decision is in fact only one, but more on this later); rather there is much more about what could have happened, what would have happened, and what might happen next time… with different circumstances of course.
What WOULD Mitt Romney have done with the Osama Bin Laden raid? This of course isn’t helped by Mitt’s own varied nuances on the subject, but Obama’s strongest claim thus far is rooted in the possibility that his Republican opponent may have, could have acted differently. This mentality allows him to seamlessly take credit for many other things as well. There might have been unthinkable death, destruction and atrocity in Libya’s near future through by averting Congressional approval for military action, he prevented it. The lower infant mortality rates and higher life expectancies in the U.S., must be because of Obamacare. They must be because we have no proof of what would have happened differently had we not adopted the president’s plan.
By inflating and creating problems that may have existed without the course of action taken by the president, he has, by his own account, prevented countless disasters and a vast number problems that don’t actually exist. This allows him to hide the negative results of the actions he took, and run on the hypotheticals of false choices. This is, of course, not an entirely new course of action for presidents who by all objective observation have failed their country; but the extent to which this president demonizes his opposition for actions that were taken on under his own administration is truly unprecedented.
So let’s get back to the messaging part. Focusing your message only on what could have happened differently under a different course of action can arguably be done in any situation to make the alternative seem worse. But, the hypothetical scenario can’t be proven because it didn’t really happen (that’s why it’s an alternative). Is a trillion dollar stimulus really that bad when the alternative could have been unimaginable economic catastrophe that sent the nation into unforeseen economic depression? Who’s to say but, of course, Obama.
This mentality attempts to avert objective comparison and use a hypothetical distortion of causal relationships to prove a point that is essentially not provable. Our current president champions this thinking, but it is particularly noticeable among all socialists/democrats/communists. (Don’t kid yourself: they want the same things just at different speeds).
Republicanism is grounded in common sense; Democratic philosophy is grounded in ideology. It’s about what is vs. what should be… or what could be… or what might be different if this happened… That is the choice that we have in 2012.
2012
Obama did not Order bin Laden Killing
Not according to Navy SEAL Chris Kyle:
In years to come there is going to be information that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He can say he did and the people who really know what happened are inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is safe.
If I may confess a little ignorance here… I was under the impression that Obama had actually killed Osama bin Laden himself. With all the fanfare promoted by the White House, I’m sure you understand.
Team Romney take note: your opponent is delusional, desperate, and will say anything.
h/t Ulsterman:
http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/05/01/blockbuster-navy-seal-says-obama-did-not-make-the-bin-laden-call/