DISSECTING LEFTISM MIRROR ARCHIVE
Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence..

Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts

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April 30, 2013

Flight Delay Rebuke: Congress exposes the FAA's air-traffic furlough gambit

It isn't quite Ronald Reagan breaking the 1981 air-traffic controllers strike by firing 12,345 of them, banning them from government employment for life, and decertifying their union. But it's close enough for cheering. On Thursday night the Senate unanimously reversed the Federal Aviation Administration's sequester furloughs, and the House followed on Friday with a veto-proof majority, 361 to 41.

Remember when the sequester's spending cuts were going to incite mass uprisings for higher taxes? Instead, Senate Democrats and the White House blinked, not least because the FAA's transparent political strategy was to use incompetent government as a bludgeon on behalf of bigger government. The American public waiting in departure lounges figured this out, which is presumably why the political capitulation is so total.

The FAA's all-hands furloughs managed to convert a less than 4% FAA budget cut into a 10% air-traffic control cut that would delay 40% of flights. The 6,700 flights that the FAA threatened to force off schedule every day is twice as many delays as the single worst travel day of 2012.

Passengers with their baggage check in for a flight at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Wednesday.
The Democratic surrender has non-elected liberals in full revolt, claiming Washington somehow bowed to wealthy business travellers-as if the 99% don't save for vacations and two million people aren't in the air every day. Their advice is that the White House should have let the delays mount until Congress also agreed to turn off the entire sequester for low-income housing grants, Meals on Wheels and everything else.

Let us hope for the sake of the poor that other bureaucracies are managing the modest sequester cuts more responsibly than the FAA. But the larger point is that from the beginning the FAA's delays were deliberate and avoidable. The FAA has ample legal discretion to protect core services but chose instead to maximize disruption. It is a sign of the FAA's institutional culture of failure that it can't even sabotage itself successfully.

The Senate bill clarifies that the FAA has the authority to cut waste and nonessential items before it lays off controllers-which the White House falsely claimed the sequester law prohibited it from doing. The six-page bill also specifically identifies $253 million in discretionary unspent airport grants that can be used for air control instead. That's among the $34 billion in so-called "unobligated funds" that the Department of Transportation has on hand this year despite sequestration.

Prior to its bipartisan humiliation, the FAA tried to promote the illusion that it was doing a good job until the sequester came along. While we're glad passengers will now endure fewer pointless delays, the FAA will be dysfunctional no matter how much money it gets and deserves to be punished for its recklessness with a more Reaganesque solution.

To wit, Congress ought to abolish the FAA and privatize the air navigation system the way that Canada and other developed countries have. A nonprofit corporation funded by user fees would make better cost-benefit decisions, tap capital markets, replace old-fashioned technology in a timely way and discipline high labor costs.

In addition to NavCanada, Germany, France, Australia and more than 50 others have made the transition to commercial airspaces. No less than Al Gore tried do this when he was Vice President, only to be routed by the unions. Republicans should try again as a plank of a platform to reform and modernize a government that serves itself before it serves America.

President Obama's latest sequestration gambit backfired for the same reason his previous attempts this year have flopped. The sequester cuts, while often dumb, aren't hollowing out the basic services that voters expect from their government. They are showing instead that government can safely and sensibly be cut if politicians are willing to set priorities and make choices.

SOURCE

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New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

Again, let's review:

-President Bush went to Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.

-John McCain also co-sponsored urgently critical reforms that would have prevented the housing market collapse, but Democrats shut that down as well, along party lines, and even openly ridiculed anyone who suggested reforms were necessary...to protect their taxpayer-funded campaign contributions as the economy raced uncontrollably toward the cliff.

-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn't go along with the left's Affirmative Action lending policies...all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.

-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left's favorite blatantly partisan "fact-checkers," Snopes, admits (while pretending to 'set the record straight').

-Even The New York Times admitted that there is "little evidence" of any connection between the "Republican" deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Bleach-Liley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.

But non-Fox media have spent years deliberately and relentlessly inoculating people against the facts, training them to mindlessly blame Bush for being in charge when Democrat policies destroyed the economy. So here we sit, to this day, still watching Obama excuse and shrug off endless economic failures, illegal government takeovers and utter national bankruptcy with zero accountability.

SOURCE

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Is Media Blacking Out Story of Pro-Life Catholic School Bus Fire-Bombing?

Our team here at LibertyNEWS.com is pretty much aware of everything crossing the wires throughout the day. Yesterday, from our view, the wires failed to include a particularly peculiar story about a school bus being fire-bombed in Illinois. The school bus belonged to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Academy and reports from local sources suggest the incident may have occurred as retaliation for the closing of an abortion facility in Rockford, IL.

Pro-Life Corner has more:

"A large school bus, owned by Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Academy, that is well known throughout Rockford for its beautiful pro-life pictures and words asking people to"pray to end abortion", was fire bombed on Friday night. The damage was extensive to the bus as windows were broken in on both sides and fire bombs were thrown inside to cause maximum damage.It has been speculated that this bombing of a pro-life Christian school bus is in retaliation for the closing of the Rockford abortion mill that is located not far from where the school bus was attacked."

Not only has the media largely ignored this story, the local media was engaged in propaganda against the pro-life agenda the very day the fire-bombing occurred:

"On the day this pro-life school bus was viciously attacked, the Rockford Register Star ran a story about an attack against a building made by a pro-lifer TWELVE YEARS AGO!
They brought up again the story of Fr. John Earl who damaged the Rockford abortion mill in 2000. Fr. Earl paid his debt to society and has been a model citizen ever since for over a decade, but the Register Star brings up that 12 YEAR OLD STORY again, using Father Earl's reassignment to a new parish as an opportunity to rehash what should now be a thing of the past and yet they ignored a current attack- the firebombing of a pro-life school bus."

Where is the media on this? How is it not news that a possible hate crime just took place against a Pro-Life Catholic academy?

SOURCE

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Welfare, lax immigration control and "Celebrating Diversity" created two terrorist monsters

Not only were Tamerlan, the Boston terrorist currently burning in Hell, and Dzhokhar, the Boston terrorist soon to be burning in Hell, on welfare, but their whole family was on the government dole.

This isn't as much a case against welfare as it is a case against immigration reform. In their time in this country this family did nothing but take and added nothing but misery.

The famous plaque at the Statue of Liberty reading, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" is a not the call for every degenerate, miscreant and slacker to come suckle the government teat as liberals would have you believe. In fact, the whole poem is a beacon of hope saying anyone can come here and make of their life what they will.

It's the story of America. It's the hope and opportunity that your life will be as good as you can make it, unlike most of the rest of the world. We have no caste system, the only limits on your life are set by you and your abilities. It is declaring that we are the only nation where someone can do anything, where even the child of worthless, absentee parents who shirk their responsibility can grow up to be president.

Enter the Tsarnaevs.

They came to this country legally.and got on welfare. Why was a family that literally brought nothing to the table allowed to immigrate? I haven't seen an answer yet, but I suspect asking the question will be called "bigoted." As would asking why we should legalize millions of unskilled workers when we have too many of them already.

In the days since the Boston terrorist attack, we've learned the Tsarnaev family - except for Uncle Ruslan - is exactly the type of people a functional immigration system should be designed to keep out. It's not, and despite all the lip-service being paid by advocates, the "reform" making its way through the U.S. Senate won't do anything about it either.

That the Tsarnaev family, a group exhibiting behavior rarely seen outside of meth-infested trailer parks, came to this country and took, then left and left these children behind is a disgrace. That so many on the political left have even entertained the idea, now being pushed by Mama Tsarnaev, that America is somehow to blame for their radicalization is an even bigger one.

It started when The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder asked, "What is it about America that so alienates young men?" in the context of wondering about "the possibility that something about America is radicalizing people of all sorts." Others soon followed suit in suggesting America had a major share of the blame, including the woman from whose loins these creatures sprang.

Well, I'll take the bait.

Aside from what appears to be awful parenting, the Tsarnaev boys were immediately engulfed in a progressive ideology. Generous social services for all-comers is a staple of the left's Utopian philosophy. They lived in a progressive state, attended schools similar to those across the country where self-esteem was given, not earned, and still turned out to be monsters.well, you see where this is going.

The progressive philosophy is designed to make you "feel" good about yourself, but for merely existing, not doing anything. It's designed to "celebrate diversity," not assimilation. This line of thinking not only granted cover to the Tsarnaevs to care about their former homeland more than the one providing for them, but "alienated" them from this country more than anything else.

The United States has a history of self-segregation. Every major city has a "Little Italy," "Chinatown" and the like, but they've shrunk. They didn't shrink because outside forces overtook them, they were overtaken by outside forces because the goal was to assimilate. New immigrants moved there as a transition from their old home to their new one. They lived there while they learned the language, culture and the ability to move out. Progressives have reversed this trend.

This trend has been reversed to the point that the winner of the $338 million lottery winner in New Jersey, who immigrated to this country 26 years ago, needed a translator at his press conference to express his joy.

New immigrants are told they don't have to assimilate, that they shouldn't. Not that they have to give up their culture, but suggesting they might want to embrace the culture and language of their new homeland is now a bridge too far. Perhaps that was a factor in why immigrants who've lived here for nearly all of the impressionable part of their lives would identify more with a land that is nothing more than a distant memory than the one that welcomed them.

So if progressives seek to assign responsibility for why the terrorist now burning in Hell and the other terrorist who should soon join him in those flames felt alienated from society, they need look no further than the nearest reflective surface.

Of course blame for any terrorist attack lies firmly with the perpetrators. But since liberal progressives seek to assign blame elsewhere, have no delusions that if there is any extra to go around it is firmly on their hands.

SOURCE

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 29, 2013

The Alleged Hatred in the Heart of White America

Leftists see hate where there is none -- because hate fills their own hearts. They judge others by themselves

It was cool and rainy Sunday morning when the bomb ripped through the building. At 10:22, a group of children was just heading into the basement to hear a sermon at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. According to a Washington Post account at the time: Dozens of survivors, their faces dripping blood from the glass that flew out of the church's stained glass windows, staggered around the building in a cloud of white dust raised by the explosion.

Four girls were killed. The head of one little girl was found far from her body. Twenty-two others were injured. Wandering through his devastated church, the Rev. John H. Cross found a megaphone and asked the enraged and stunned crowd to disperse. "The Lord is our shepherd," he sobbed, "we shall not want."

This week, Congress marked the 50th anniversary of that terror attack by posthumously awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley.

We Americans are not confused about the morality of what happened in Birmingham that September morning in 1963, nor during the Jim Crow era in America generally. We do not hesitate to condemn utterly the behavior and the beliefs of the Ku Klux Klan (the perpetrators of this bombing and others) and their white supremacist fellow travelers. We do not worry that reviling white supremacists and their grotesque deeds will somehow taint all white people.

But when it comes to other groups and other motives for the same kind of terrorism — we lose our moral focus. Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Kathy Boudin have become honored members of the faculties at leading universities. Ayers is even the friend of the president of the United States. Regarding his own record of setting bombs that kill and dismember innocent people, Ayers told The New York Times on the ironic date of Sept. 11, 2001 that "I feel we didn't do enough ... (there's) a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance." So says a retired "distinguished professor" at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Today, American liberals are obsessed not with terrorism but with the color and ethnicity of terrorists. They can readily enough attribute violent tendencies to groups they dislike — the tea party, for example, which hasn't committed so much as a littering offense. But when it comes to Islamic terrorism, their voices falter.

Attorney General Eric Holder, asked whether three attacks on the United States (the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber and Maj. Nidal Hassan) could be attributed to "Islamic" radicalism, refused to say so. Asked repeatedly whether religious motives played a role, Holder would say only, "there are a variety of reasons why people have taken these actions." Janet Napolitano has been quick to dismiss terror attempts as "one offs." Would Holder and Napolitano say the same about white supremacists? Each one had his own motivations and we can't surmise what those factors were?

There is a tendency among many on the left to temper their disgust and indignation at political violence (i.e. terror) if the terrorist is from the "correct" group. "Muslim ... means not being white" Peter Beinert writes in the Daily Beast.

Beinert and other liberals imagine that the U.S. is a cauldron of teeming racism with the lid barely kept down. At the first acknowledgment that Islamists (some, but by no means, all of whom are dark skinned) present a continuing threat, the lid will fly off and white American vigilantes, given permission, will start shooting black and brown people on the streets, burning their shops, and bombing mosques.

The hatred that Islamism preaches, lauds and inspires is a nuisance, liberals may concede. But the hatred in the heart of "white America" is the greater danger.

SOURCE

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Obama’s Labor Secretary nominee, Thomas Perez, is radical and unethical

by Hans Bader

A Senate committee will soon vote on Obama’s nomination of left-wing radical Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary. Perez, currently the assistant attorney general for civil rights, has been described by Cato Institute lawyer Ilya Shapiro as a man “who personifies … this administration’s flouting of the rule of law.”

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will decide on the Perez nomination. Shapiro provides this “recap of Perez’s nefarious dealings” (drawing on the work of journalist Quin Hillyer, who provides more detail at this link):

* Interference with the Supreme Court case of Magner v. Gallagher, getting the City of St. Paul to dismiss its appeal to prevent what would’ve been a sharp rebuke to the federal government regarding its use of “disparate impact” racial theories in housing policy. [I discussed Perez's misuse of "disparate impact" law here]

* Refusal to comply with subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights [which I earlier discussed here];

* Dismissal of the Justice Department’s already-won prosecution of the Black Panthers for voter intimidation during the 2008 election [which I previously discussed at this link];

* Running a department dedicated to the proposition that voting rights and other civil rights law don’t protect white people [I discussed one such example here, and federal court rulings rejecting this false proposition];

* Willfully misleading and lying to Congress under oath several times [for example, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton concluded that Perez made false claims about the Obama Justice Department's dismissal of the case against Black Panthers for voter intimidation];

* Racial abuse of the New York fire department, to the detriment of public safety and qualified minority applicants;

* Hiring for “career” (non-political appointee) slots only attorneys who have demonstrable left-wing credentials—making Alberto Gonzales’s politicized-hiring foibles look like the model of civil service administration [see examples here];

* Trampling on religious liberties to the point the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his arguments in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC regarding the “ministerial exception” to employment laws;

* Conducting government business from a personal email account as many as 1,200 times (!) and now refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas to release those emails. [Lawyers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) have repeatedly uncovered such abuses, and the use of false-identity alias email addresses, by Obama administration officials, as you can see here and here].

CEI earlier discussed the Magner case and why the Obama Administration’s position in that case could undermine the stability of the financial system and cause future financial meltdowns. (CEI joined in an amicus brief opposing the Obama Administration’s position, in the Supreme Court). It also highlighted the Obama administration’s (and Perez’s) massive, ethically dubious payoff to the City of Saint Paul to drop the case. CEI and legal commentators also chronicled the Obama Administration’s use of meritless discrimination lawsuits to pay off trial lawyers at taxpayers’ expense (culminating in a New York Times story today about massive fraud in the Pigford case).

Earlier, I discussed the Obama Administration’s extreme position in the Supreme Court’s Hosanna-Tabor case and how it would have undermined First Amendment freedoms, religious autonomy and the separation of church and state. I also chronicled the Justice Department’s politicized hiring during the Obama Administration.

SOURCE

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As health care gets more bureaucratic, many doctors will drop out

Jeffrey A. Singer

I am a general surgeon with more than three decades in private clinical practice. And I am fed up. Since the late 1970s, I have witnessed remarkable technological revolutions in medicine, from CT scans to robot-assisted surgery. But I have also watched as medicine slowly evolved into the domain of technicians, bookkeepers, and clerks.

Government interventions over the past four decades have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity. The consequence is clear: Many doctors from my generation are exiting the field. Others are seeing their private practices threatened with bankruptcy, or are giving up their autonomy for the life of a shift-working hospital employee. Governments and hospital administrators hold all the power, while doctors—and worse still, patients—hold none.

The Coding Revolution

At first, the decay was subtle. In the 1980s, Medicare imposed price controls upon physicians who treated anyone over 65. Any provider wishing to get compensated was required to use International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD) and Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes to describe the service when submitting a bill. The designers of these systems believed that standardized classifications would lead to more accurate adjudication of Medicare claims.

What it actually did was force doctors to wedge their patients and their services into predetermined, ill-fitting categories. This approach resembled the command-and-control models used in the Soviet bloc and the People’s Republic of China, models that were already failing spectacularly by the end of the 1980s.

Before long, these codes were attached to a fee schedule based upon the amount of time a medical professional had to devote to each patient, a concept perilously close to another Marxist relic: the labor theory of value. Named the Resource-Based Relative Value System (RBRVS), each procedure code was assigned a specific value, by a panel of experts, based supposedly upon the amount of time and labor it required. It didn’t matter if an operation was being performed by a renowned surgical expert—perhaps the inventor of the procedure—or by a doctor just out of residency doing the operation for the first time. They both got paid the same.

Hospitals’ reimbursements for their Medicare-patient treatments were based on another coding system: the Diagnosis Related Group (DRG). Each diagnostic code is assigned a specific monetary value, and the hospital is paid based on one or a combination of diagnostic codes used to describe the reason for a patient’s hospitalization. If, say, the diagnosis is pneumonia, then the hospital is given a flat amount for that diagnosis, regardless of the amount of equipment, staffing, and days used to treat a particular patient.

As a result, the hospital is incentivized to attach as many adjunct diagnostic codes as possible to try to increase the Medicare payday. It is common for hospital coders to contact the attending physicians and try to coax them into adding a few more diagnoses into the hospital record.

Medicare has used these two price-setting systems (RBRVS for doctors, DRG for hospitals) to maintain its price control system for more than 20 years. Doctors and their advocacy associations cooperated, trading their professional latitude for the lure of maintaining monopoly control of the ICD and CPT codes that determine their payday. The goal of setting their own prices has proved elusive, though—every year the industry’s biggest trade group, the American Medical Association, squabbles with various medical specialty associations and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) over fees.

As goes Medicare, so goes the private insurance industry. Insurers, starting in the late 1980s, began the practice of using the Medicare fee schedule to serve as the basis for negotiation of compensation with the doctors and hospitals on their preferred provider lists. An insurance company might offer a hospital 130 percent of Medicare’s reimbursement for a specific procedure code, for instance.

The coding system was supposed to improve the accuracy of adjudicating claims submitted by doctors and hospitals to Medicare, and later to non-Medicare insurance companies. Instead, it gave doctors and hospitals an incentive to find ways of describing procedures and services with the cluster of codes that would yield the biggest payment. Sometimes this required the assistance of consulting firms. A cottage industry of fee-maximizing advisors and seminars bloomed....

As the third party payment system led health care costs to escalate, the people footing the bill have attempted to rein in costs with yet more command-and-control solutions. In the 1990s, private insurance carriers did this through a form of health plan called a health maintenance organization, or HMO. Strict oversight, rationing, and practice protocols were imposed on both physicians and patients. Both groups protested loudly. Eventually, most of these top-down regulations were set aside, and many HMOs were watered down into little more than expensive prepaid health plans.

Then, as the 1990s gave way to the 21st century, demographic reality caught up with Medicare and Medicaid, the two principal drivers of federal health care spending.

Twenty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, protocols and regimentation were imposed on America’s physicians through a centralized bureaucracy. Using so-called “evidence-based medicine,” algorithms and protocols were based on statistically generalized, rather than individualized, outcomes in large population groups.

While all physicians appreciate the development of general approaches to the work-up and treatment of various illnesses and disorders, we also realize that everyone is an individual—that every protocol or algorithm is based on the average, typical case. We want to be able to use our knowledge, years of experience, and sometimes even our intuition to deal with each patient as a unique person while bearing in mind what the data and research reveal.

On more than one occasion I have seen patients develop dramatic postoperative bruising and bleeding because of protocol-mandated therapies aimed at preventing the development of blood clots in the legs after surgery. Had these therapies been left up to the clinical judgment of the surgeon, many of these patients might not have had the complication.

Operating room and endoscopy suites now must follow protocols developed by the global World Health Organization—an even more remote agency. There are protocols for cardiac catheterization, stenting, and respirator management, just to name a few.

Patients should worry about doctors trying to make symptoms fit into a standardized clinical model and ignoring the vital nuances of their complaints. Even more, they should be alarmed that the protocols being used don’t provide any measurable health benefits. Most were designed and implemented before any objective evidence existed as to their effectiveness.

One of my colleagues, a noted pulmonologist with over 30 years’ experience, fears that teaching young physicians to follow guidelines and practice protocols discourages creative medical thinking and may lead to a decrease in diagnostic and therapeutic excellence. He laments that “‘evidence-based’ means you are not interested in listening to anyone.”

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 28, 2013

George W. Bush is smarter than you

by Keith Hennessey

The new George W. Bush Presidential Center is being dedicated this week. This seems like a good time to bust a longstanding myth about our former President, my former boss.

I teach a class at Stanford Business School titled "Financial Crises in the U.S. and Europe." During one class session while explaining the events of September 2008, I kept referring to the efforts of the threesome of Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner, who were joined at the hip in dealing with firm-specific problems as they arose.

One of my students asked "How involved was President Bush with what was going on?" I smiled and responded, "What you really mean is, `Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,' right?"

The class went dead silent. Everyone knew that this was the true meaning of the question. Kudos to that student for asking the hard question and for framing it so politely. I had stripped away that decorum and exposed the raw nerve.

I looked hard at the 60 MBA students and said "President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you."

More silence. I could tell they were waiting for me to break the tension, laugh, and admit I was joking.

I did not. A few shifted in their seats, then I launched into a longer answer. While it was a while ago, here is an amalgam of that answer and others I have given in similar contexts.

* "I am not kidding. You are quite an intelligent group. Don't take it personally, but President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you. Were he a student here today, he would consistently get "HP" (High Pass) grades without having to work hard, and he'd get an "H" (High, the top grade) in any class where he wanted to put in the effort.

* For more than six years it was my job to help educate President Bush about complex economic policy issues and to get decisions from him on impossibly hard policy choices. In meetings and in the briefing materials we gave him in advance we covered issues in far more depth than I have been discussing with you this quarter because we needed to do so for him to make decisions.

* President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He's highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting.

* I use words like briefing and presentation to describe our policy meetings with him, but those are inaccurate. Every meeting was a dialogue, and you had to be ready at all times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and your recommendation. That was scary.

* We treat Presidential speeches as if they are written by speechwriters, then handed to the President for delivery. If I could show you one experience from my time working for President Bush, it would be an editing session in the Oval with him and his speechwriters. You think that me cold-calling you is nerve-wracking? Try defending a sentence you inserted into a draft speech, with President Bush pouncing on the slightest weakness in your argument or your word choice.

* In addition to his analytical speed, what most impressed me were his memory and his substantive breadth. We would sometimes have to brief him on an issue that we had last discussed with him weeks or even months before. He would remember small facts and arguments from the prior briefing and get impatient with us when we were rehashing things we had told him long ago.

* And while my job involved juggling a lot of balls, I only had to worry about economic issues. In addition to all of those, at any given point in time he was making enormous decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, on hunting al Qaeda and keeping America safe. He was making choices not just on taxes and spending and trade and energy and climate and health care and agriculture and Social Security and Medicare, but also on education and immigration, on crime and justice issues, on environmental policy and social policy and politics. Being able to handle such substantive breadth and depth, on such huge decisions, in parallel, requires not just enormous strength of character but tremendous intellectual power. President Bush has both."

On one particularly thorny policy issue on which his advisors had strong and deep disagreements, over the course of two weeks we (his senior advisors) held a series of three 90-minute meetings with the President. Shortly after the third meeting we asked for his OK to do a fourth. He said, "How about rather than doing another meeting on this, I instead tell you now what each person will say." He then ran through half a dozen of his advisors by name and precisely detailed each one's arguments and pointed out their flaws. (Needless to say there was no fourth meeting.)

Every prominent politician has a public caricature, one drawn initially by late-night comedy joke writers and shaped heavily by the press and one's political opponents. The caricature of President Bush is that of a good ol' boy from Texas who is principled and tough, but just not that bright.

That caricature was reinforced by several factors:

* The press and his opponents highlighted President Bush's occasional stumbles when giving a speech. President Obama's similar verbal miscues are ignored. Ask yourself: if every public statement you made were recorded and all your verbal fumbles were tweeted, how smart would you sound? Do you ever use the wrong word or phrase, or just botch a sentence for no good reason? I know I do.

* President Bush intentionally aimed his public image at average Americans rather than at Cambridge or Upper East Side elites. Mitt Romney's campaign was predicated on "I am smart enough to fix a broken economy," while George W. Bush's campaigns stressed his values, character, and principles rather than boasting about his intellect. He never talked about graduating from Yale and Harvard Business School, and he liked to lower expectations by pretending he was just an average guy. Example: "My National Security Advisor Condi Rice is a Stanford professor, while I'm a C student. And look who's President. "

* There is a bias in much of the mainstream press and commentariat that people from outside of NY-BOS-WAS-CHI-SEA-SF-LA are less intelligent, or at least well educated. Many public commenters harbor an anti-Texas (and anti-Southern, and anti-Midwestern) intellectual bias. They mistakenly treat John Kerry as smarter than George Bush because John Kerry talks like an Ivy League professor while George Bush talks like a Texan.

* President Bush enjoys interacting with the men and women of our armed forces and with elite athletes. He loves to clear brush on his ranch. He loved interacting with the U.S. Olympic Team. He doesn't windsurf off Nantucket, he rides a 100K mountain bike ride outside of Waco with wounded warriors. He is an intense, competitive athlete and a "guy's guy." His hobbies and habits reinforce a caricature of a [dumb] jock, in contrast to cultural sophisticates who enjoy antiquing and opera. This reinforces the other biases against him.

I assume that some who read this will react automatically with disbelief and sarcasm. They think they know that President Bush is unintelligent because, after all, everyone knows that. They will assume that I am wrong, or blinded by loyalty, or lying. They are certain that they are smarter than George Bush.

I ask you simply to consider the possibility that I'm right, that he is smarter than you.

If you can, find someone who has interacted directly with him outside the public spotlight. Ask that person about President Bush's intellect. I am confident you will hear what I heard dozens of times from CEOs after they met with him: "Gosh, I had no idea he was that smart."

At a minimum I hope you will test your own assumptions and thinking about our former President. I offer a few questions to help that process.

* Upon what do you base your view of President Bush's intellect? How much is it shaped by the conventional wisdom about him? How much by verbal miscues highlighted by the press?

* Do you discount your estimate of his intellect because he's from Texas or because of his accent? Because he's an athlete and a ranch owner? Because he never advertises that he went to Yale and Harvard?

* This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree? If so, your logic may be backwards. "I disagree with choice X that President Bush made. No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore President Bush is unintelligent." Might it be possible that an intelligent, thoughtful conservative with different values and priorities than your own might have reached a different conclusion than you? Do you really think your policy views derive only from your intellect?

And finally, if you base your view of President Bush's intellect on a public image and caricature shaped by late night comedians, op-ed writers, TV pundits, and Twitter, is that a smart thing for you to do?

SOURCE

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Report from the old sod

The vast majority of the West lives in comfort unimaginable to people of the recent past. Our poor don’t suffer from starvation, they suffer from obesity. Supposedly impoverished youths rioting in London don’t steal bread, they steal iPods.

Decadence is nothing new to the West, but one country’s recent economic downturn serves as a fascinating look at the phenomenon in a modern context: Ireland. It is the land of my birth and where I have lived most of my life and it serves as a microcosm of greater Western malaise.

The Celtic Tiger boom that occurred in Ireland - beginning roughly in the late nineties and lasting until 2007 - was a period of economic growth unmatched by any other in the country’s history. Ireland was always an outlier in Western Europe, both geographically and figuratively. It was conservative, religious and poor. The boom changed all that and by 2005 The Economist ranked Ireland number one in the world for quality of life.

During all this, something strange happened. Throughout history the Irish had been a people who gazed out upon the world, emigrating in droves. But with the advent of prosperity they ceased to do so. They developed a myopia which seemingly prevented them taking notice of anything beyond Irish shores.

A massive growth in property prices accompanied the boom. Prices for even modest houses skyrocketed. Non-descript suburban homes sold for over half a million euro and a seven-bedroom red-brick in South Dublin sold for €58 million. Nobody asked why a three-bedroom semi-detached house in nowheresville cost more than similar properties in central Frankfurt or Helsinki. Nobody took the slightest notice of the property market collapse in Singapore. Ireland became so wealthy its people could afford to be completely oblivious to economic reality. The rest of the world became a place Irish people went on holiday, not a place to learn lessons from.

This infuriating ignorance hasn’t gone away. It simply manifests itself in different ways.

If one was to measure the success of a nation one would probably start by looking at markers like GDP per capita and the country’s United Nations Human Development Index rank, and so on. By these measurements Ireland comes near the top of the global pecking order. The country has the 11th highest average income in the world (World Bank, 2011) and is 7th in the world on the Human Development Index. Basic social welfare payments are among the among the most generous anywhere. The country is, by all accounts, an extremely wealthy corner of the planet.

You wouldn’t think this by talking to Irish people, though. The phrase ‘the country is on its knees’ is used with such frequency that you could be forgiven for thinking an angel gets its wings every time it’s uttered. Ireland’s sinking from the richest country in the world to a poverty-stricken 11th is apparently an affront to the dignity of the Irish. Some argue the tired line that during the good times the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, skewing the GDP statistic, but that is nonsense. Income inequality was reduced substantially in Ireland during the boom, actually bucking a global trend.

Quoting the abovementioned favourable rankings to the general populace will usually be met with inane cynicism. The essence of Irish political discourse is to negatively criticise politicians until losing sight of reality. Statesmen like WT Cosgrave who oversaw a peaceful handover of power while the nation was in its infancy trail behind the Left’s misguided figureheads in popularity contests.

There is no acknowledgement by the Left of the role neo-liberal free market principles had to play in making the country rich in the first place. In the Leftist’s political worldview, western prosperity and privilege is as natural as gravity or sunrise. In their alternative universe, an Ireland in 2005 under an anarcho-syndicalist government would have been as rich as it was under the centre-right coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats. The only difference is that under this hypothetical Leftist government Ireland would still be a utopia today.

Relatively speaking Ireland is going through a rough patch but the country is still fantastically wealthy. Newspapers report on families barely surviving on six-figure incomes. A university professor has been quoted as saying life was ‘a struggle’ on his salary of close to a quarter million euro per annum. The Irish Times published the story of a family unable to regularly put food on the table, despite the household’s annual income being a very healthy €65,000 a year.

It’s all about priorities. But nobody’s willing to give up recent gains, even if they lived just fine without them before.

When a person gets used to a certain quality of life they naturally become agitated when their level of comfort declines even slightly. It is human nature. The corporate boss on six figures a year would consider his lifestyle severely dented by a ten thousand a year salary cut. Paris Hilton would probably commit suicide were she to wake up one morning an average working woman making thirty thousand a year, her frivolous heiress existence nothing but a memory. Similarly, a ten euro per week cut to one of the highest unemployment benefits in the world is seen by the Left as a devastation of ‘ordinary people’ in the way something truly appalling like war was only a few decades before.

People’s expectations have risen high due to globalisation, capitalism and free markets. Almost every part of the world has improved on a decade-by-decade basis over the last fifty years, especially liberal democracies. Elsewhere, too. Any time you see a rural Indonesian or Bolivian on a cell phone it means they have enough money to eat and communicate with ease. Nobody who’s hungry spends their money on phonecalls.

The Left has seized on the idea that the failure of a few banks is a victory for their politics, but it is in fact a refutation: a genuinely free market government would never have ‘bailed out’ any banks. They would have been allowed to die. It was over-regulation and protectionism that ‘brought Ireland to its knees’ (ie 11th on the global rich list).

The Irish Left deride the general public as lazy because they complain incessantly but never take to the streets in numbers large enough to realise the Left’s juvenile revolutionary fantasies. This is yet more evidence that Ireland is a fine place to be. Despite our complaining there is simply no appetite for - or need for - major change, let alone revolution. It’s not that the people are lazy or that they are especially apathetic. They’re just too comfortable, still, five years into a recession.

Despite the subconscious national contentment that exists in Ireland, the moaning and solipsism continues. Just as it was during the Celtic Tiger, Irish people in recession time cannot see a bigger picture. That Ireland is still richer than almost everywhere else in the world is simply par for the course; the natural order of things. No, the country must be richer, its public servants paid more, unemployment non-existent. In the minds of the majority, our status as a highly developed nation with ever more welfare benefits and dirt-cheap world-class university education exists in perpetuity, despite the realities of a modern world where an industrialised Asia contains billions of people who work more hours for less money.

The only comparison people make is of how we stack up to the Ireland of 2005. Nobody can see past that. It’s simply too distant.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 26, 2013

The motivations of the Boston bombers were both Leftist and Islamic

Ever wondered why the 9/11 bombers and many other Muslim terrorists were Western-educated? It's because the combination of the anti-Americanism they get from Western educators (including Leftist American educators) and the violence preached by Islam make an explosive mix. Read the Koran (start with Surah 9) if you think Islam is a religion of peace. The Koran is full of hatred towards non-Muslims and exhortations to kill or oppress them. So it was the same old same old with the Boston bombers. Kent Clizbe sets out the evidence below

The Boston Marathon massacre was carried out by two Caucasian Muslim brothers, one an American citizen, pot-smoking Obama voter, the other likely a green card holder. In the aftermath, the Politically Correct Progressive (PC-Prog) media and commentators are all flabbergasted. They wondered what could be the terrorists’ motivations. Over and over, the media reported, “Dzhokhor was a normal American kid.” President Obama, our PC-Prog leader, said, "One thing we do know is that whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts will not — cannot — prevail."

The media probably do not even realize how close they are to the truth—Dzhokhor is a normal American kid. Raised on anti-American messages from the media, from their high school, at their university, and from Hollywood, normal American kids are bombarded with a national self-loathing designed to destroy America’s exceptional culture and values.

Although my books, Willing Accomplices and Obliterating Exceptionalism detail the origins of this suicidal hatred of America, the Boston bombers are the clearest example yet of the power of this message to destroy the lives of Americans.

It seems likely that the older brother, Tamerlan, was the driving force behind the two Tsarnaev brothers’ terrorism. It appears that he was a follower of a Lebanese-Australian extremist cleric. This Muslim preacher’s messages of hatred for Western culture were prominent on Tamerlan’s Youtube playlists.

It appears that Tamerlan recently spent six months overseas. In Russia? Or did he travel elsewhere? Did he go to Chechnya? Did he spend time in what appears to be his homeland, Dagestan, where his father lives now? Who did he meet there? What did he do there?

Dagestan and Chechnya are hotbeds of Islamic terrorism. Chechen terrorists are active around the Middle East, Afghanistan, and North Africa. Wherever there is a jihadi war, it is likely you’ll find Chechens fighting there.

We do know that Tamerlan returned “from Russia,” in the summer of 2012. His brother would have been out of high school (more about that later) for about a year. His return was about nine months before the Marathon bombing.

If Tamerlan trained on bombing and attack techniques (a couple months of intensive training is the minimum for a mujahidin terrorist), he could have returned to Boston with the attack plan fully laid out. He would have the skills required to make the bombs. He would have likely already have identified the target. And he would have the techniques required to carry out the attacks. All that would be missing was the materials to make the bombs, and an accomplice.

So, in this scenario, we have a committed, trained Islamic terrorist ready to carry out his attack. What pool will he draw from to recruit his accomplice?

Why, his “average American” brother, Dzhokhor. With his American-accented English, the younger brother graduated from the celebrated (Matt Damon went here!) Boston high school, Cambridge Rindges and Latin School (CRLS), about the same time Tamerlan was probably contemplating terrorist training.

Now we get to the interesting part. A graduate of CRLS has had years of anti-American claptrap crammed down his throat. Instead of, “Why would a normal American kid do this?” a better question is, “Why don’t all CRLS graduates become anti-American terrorists?”

PC-Prog media widely quoted a retired CRLS history teacher, Larry Aaronson’s shocked reminiscences about Dzhokhor. Aaronson told The Boston Globe, “This is a progressive town, the People's Republic, and how could this be in our midst?" Larry Aaronson, a longtime Rindge and Latin teacher who knew Dzhokhor and who lives three doors down from the brothers on Norfolk Street. "I'm at a loss. I'm at a total and complete loss."

Well, Larry, let’s start with your own handiwork. Aaronson is an acolyte of the raving PC-Prog, traditional-America-hating deceased “revisionist historian,” Howard Zinn. Zinn was a PC-Prog darling. Zinn claimed that his eyes were opened to racist, imperialist horror that is America by the KGB covert influence agent, I.F. Stone.

Aaronson (third from left in the photo at left), who retired in 2007, used to brag to anyone who would listenthat he had taught Zinn’s textbook to CLRS students since the beginning of his career in 1981. In 2008, Aaronson started Social Justice Works! The Larry Aaronson Fund, in an evident attempt to cash in on his Zinn-Damon connections.

Aaronson proudly related how his students at CLRS had included Matt Damon and Damon’s brother. He proudly told how the Damon boys were taken with the anti-American history of Zinn. Larry, in an homage to Zinn on his death in 2008, started with this quote, “You wanna read a really good American History book? Read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. It will knock your socks off!” -Will Hunting (Matt Damon), Good Will Hunting

If you don’t know Zinn’s handiwork, here’s a sample of his writing in The Progressive. In detailing the idiocy of America’s belief that we are exceptional, Zinn’s contempt for America and its citizens fairly drips from each word, “The deeply ingrained belief--no, not from birth but from the educational system and from our culture in general that the United States is an especially virtuous nation makes us especially vulnerable to government deception. It starts early, in the first grade, when we are compelled to "pledge allegiance" (before we even know what that means), forced to proclaim that we are a nation with "liberty and justice for all.

“And then come the countless ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere, where we are expected to stand and bow our heads during the singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner," announcing that we are "the land of the free and the home of the brave." There is also the unofficial national anthem "God Bless America," and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would expect God to single out this one nation--just 5 percent of the world's population--for his or her blessing.”

Aaronson boasted that parents called him to say that their kids were talking about, “that “bastard Christopher Columbus… and his genocide, and how we have to question our history books and re-examine the evidence.” The CRLS teacher continued, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

With that back-story illuminated, let’s return to the PC-Prog media’s puzzling over “What could the Tsarnaev boys’ motive possibly be?”

After the Marathon massacre, the media quoted the Zinn-acolyte Aaronson in its stories about the terrorist mass murderer. Aaronson was “utterly shocked by the news.” The media reported that, “Aaronson taught social studies at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, where Dzhokhor was a student.” The media reports continued, “Dzhokhor also lives just about three houses down from Aaronson’s condo, so they would talk from time to time after Dzhokhor's graduation in 2011.

“I will say to you and to anyone who asks me,” Aaronson told WBUR’s David Boeri outside his home in Cambridge on Friday morning, “he had a heart of gold, he was a sweetheart, he was gracious, he was caring, he was compassionate.” [That shows how good is the judgment of Mr. Leftist Aaronson]

ABC, CBS, USA Today, NY Times, CNN all carried versions of Aaronson’s comments about “how normal” Dzhokhor, his neighbor and student was. None of the PC-Prog media provided any other background on Aaronson and his brainwashing of students at CRLS with Zinn’s history.

The Aaronson-Dzhokhor “reporting” by the PC-Prog media brings together the three PC-Prog transmission belts of American culture—education/academia, Hollywood, and the media. All three are dedicated to destroying traditional-American culture. The media reports studiously ignore the connection between Dzhokhor's anti-American lessons taught by a “social justice” weenie (Aaronson) from a book by a follower (Zinn) of a KGB covert influence agent (I.F. Stone) slyly celebrated in a Hollywood product (Matt Damon’s Good Will Hunting).

Islamic terrorism was the force that planted the bombs in Boston. PC-Progressive hatred of American exceptionalism was the motivation behind that force.

We need to let the media and Obama know: We know what hateful agenda drove Dzhokhor. It has infected our media, schools, and Hollywood for nearly 80 years. When it destroyed normal-American culture, the way was cleared for opportunistic infections to take advantage of our weakened national immune system. Islamic extremism is the most violent. But look at others gathering momentum in their destructive power—Militant environmentalists, militant homosexuals, militant anti-capitalists, militant Islamic Extremists, militant anti-war activists, militant race-baiters. All hate normal-America. All call for extreme changes to America.

This is the challenge. We conservatives must realize that PC-Progs are not “for” militant Islamic Extremists—they are simply for anything that is anti-normal-America. When the logical outcome of the PC-Prog’s constant anti-American messages throughout the culture occurs—violent acting out against normal-America, in this case marathon runners—the PC-Progs claim shock and surprise.

It’s time for the chickens to come home to roost. PC-Progs must accept the results of their decades of anti-American messages. We know Dzhokhor's motivations. I agree fully with Obama. This “hateful agenda…will not — cannot — prevail.” Now let’s rebuild our country.

SOURCE

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America doesn’t need a government-run postal service

by John Stossel

Even parts of government that look like a business never get run with the efficiency of a business. Just look at the post office.

They buy commercials and tout their services the way private businesses do. They offer a service that customers want.

But a real business can't get away with losing billions every year. (I guess in the era of bailouts, I should say shouldn't get away with it.) The post office lost $16 billion last year, despite having all sorts of advantages that most private businesses don't have.

They have a near monopoly on first-class mail delivery. You want to deliver something to someone? You better not put it in their mailbox -- that's illegal. The U.S. Postal Service doesn't pay sales tax or property tax. They don't even pay parking tickets.

With advantages like that, how do they lose money?

They are part of the government, under the thumb of Congress, and that invites calcified, inefficient behavior.

"We are expected to operate like a business, but Congress has not allowed us the flexibility to operate like a business," said Postal Service Board of Governors Chairman Mickey D. Barnett on my TV show. It's all "part of being a quasi-governmental entity. That's how the cookie crumbles." Barnett added that the post office has "union contracts that have no layoff provisions."

Reality is at odds with the proud claim on the post office's website that "Since Ben Franklin ... the Postal Service has grown and changed with America." But it's barely changed. You don't tend to see change in "quasi-governmental entities." You see stagnation.

This year the post office tried to limit Saturday delivery to save money. But Congress forbade the change. The politicians' constituents like getting their mail six days a week.

"They don't want a cut in Saturday delivery," Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., told me.

"The USPS does need reform," Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., told the Kansas City Star. "However, reducing core services is not a long-term plan. I worry that reducing services will lead to other reductions like closing rural post offices."

But the post office should do both. The government maintains hundreds of tiny local post offices, each of which brings in less than $700 a month. Running those offices costs much more than that. Some are just one mile away from other post offices.

People like "universal service," which has been taken to mean that every American must get mail service, no matter how deep in the boondocks they live. The post office even hauls mail by mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

"The post office provides something that's extremely valuable and has to be maintained, and that's universal service," Grayson told me. "There are countries a lot poorer than the United States, including the Congo ... that try to provide universal mail service to everybody. ... People don't want post offices closed!"

On the floor of Congress, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., proclaimed that universal service is required, saying, "It's in the Constitution."

But it's not. The Constitution says, "Congress shall have the Power to ... establish Post Offices." But it doesn't have to use that power.

Cato Institute budget analyst Tad DeHaven argues, "People living in rural America aren't living there by force. ... Go back to history. Private carriers picked up the mail from the post office and took it the last mile, or people came to the post office and picked it up."

And private alternatives are much better today. We have e-mail. UPS delivers 300 packages a minute and makes a profit. Federal Express, UPS and others thrive by finding new ways to cut costs. They don't do it because they were born nicer people. They do it because of the pressure of competition. They make money -- while the post office loses $16 billion.

Why not just privatize it? No more special government protections, no limit on competitors offering similar services.

Then mail service would be even better than before. The market delivers.

SOURCE

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Discrimination against consumer-directed health care

Health Savings Accounts are the fastest growing product in the health insurance marketplace. Currently, about 25 million families are managing some of their own healthcare dollars as a result. Virtually every serious study has found that these plans lower costs without jeopardizing the quality of care people receive. In fact, most employers have decided that giving financial incentives to employees is the most reliable way to rein in spending.

Given that one of the main goals of health reform was to lower the rate of growth of healthcare spending, it would be truly ironic if the new law makes the most reliable way of achieving the goal unavailable to millions of people. But it appears that is about to happen.

Here’s the reason. HSA plans achieve their lower premiums by having patients take more control over healthcare dollars. People pay less to the third-party payer because they agree to take responsibility for more of the expenses. Yet under the new rules for the medical loss ratio (MLR), the out-of-pocket spending from an HSA is not counted in the MLR calculation—at least for individually owned insurance.[1] Specifically, if an insurer pays for a healthcare service for their insured, that counts as a medical expense in calculating the medical loss ratio. But if an individual pays for a healthcare service to meet her deductible, that expense does not count as a medical expense for purposes of MLR calculation.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 25, 2013

Genes and Racism

Thomas Sowell

During decades of watching both collegiate and professional football, I have seen hundreds of touchdowns scored by black players -- but not one extra point kicked by a black player.
Is this because blacks are genetically incapable of kicking a football or because racists won't let blacks kick a football?

Most of us would consider either of these explanations ridiculous. Yet genes and discrimination were the predominant explanations of black-white differences offered by intellectuals in the 20th century.

It was genes that were the preferred explanation in the early decades of that century and discrimination in the later decades, as I show in my recent book, "Intellectuals and Race."

The intelligentsia did not simply offer these as possible explanations among others. On the contrary, each was offered as the predominant, if not exclusive, explanation. Anyone who said otherwise risked being dismissed as a "sentimentalist" in the early 20th century or denounced as a "racist" in later years.

Out of such dogmatic insistence on some one-size-fits-all theory came racial quotas and "disparate impact" lawsuits in our times, based on the presumption that racial differences in outcomes show that somebody did somebody else wrong.

In earlier times, the prevailing theory was that differences in outcomes show that some races are inferior to others. This led to such things as eugenics and ultimately to the Holocaust.

In both eras, the prevailing theory flattered the egos of the intellectuals -- first as saviors of their race, and later as rescuers of victims of racism.

Among the alternative explanations of group differences that were ignored were geography, demography and culture.

For example, people with the geographic handicap of living in isolated mountain valleys have seldom, if ever, produced world-class achievements that advanced science, technology or philosophy. On the contrary, people in such places have almost invariably lagged behind the progress in the rest of the world -- including people of the very same race living on the plains below. Mountaineers were long noted for their poverty and backwardness in countries around the world, especially in the millennia before modern transportation and communication eased their isolation.

People geographically isolated on islands far from the nearest mainland or people isolated by deserts or other geographic features have likewise seldom kept up with the progress of others. Again, this was especially so before modern transportation and communication put them more in touch with the rest of the world.

Conversely, urbanized peoples have often been in the vanguard of progress, producing far more of the historic advances of the human race than a similar number of people scattered out in the hinterlands -- even when both were of the same race.

Geography has been a factor in this as well, since not all geographic areas are equally suitable for building big cities. The overwhelming majority of cities have been built on navigable waterways, for example -- and not all regions have navigable waterways available.

Isolation can be man-made, as well as created by nature. Centuries ago, when China was the most advanced nation in the world, its leaders decided to isolate the country from other peoples, all of whom they regarded as barbarians. After a few centuries of isolation, China was shocked to find itself overtaken by others, and to some extent at the mercy of those others.

Demography is yet another reason why some groups have very different outcomes than others. Age differences between groups within a nation, or between whole nations, have often been a decade or even two decades. Peoples with decades of difference in experience are almost guaranteed to have different achievements, whether they belong to the same race or to different races.

There are many differences between races that have nothing to do with either genes or discrimination, but have much to do with their educational, economic or other outcomes. However, it is a much harder job to examine these many factors, and their complex interactions, than to seize upon whatever happens to be the prevailing theory of the day that may be both easier to grasp and more self-flattering.

SOURCE

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SNAP up some recreational food

The federal food stamp program—now called SNAP—is attracting a lot of media coverage. One reason for this is that the program’s costs have exploded—spending more than quadrupled during the Bush-Obama years to $82 billion in 2013 (see here and here p. 16). The Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations all took steps to loosen the purse strings on food stamp eligibility, and those changes have led to the ballooning costs of recent years during the stagnant economy.

Aside from the rising costs, two other aspects of SNAP have garnered interest. One is food stamp fraud. The other is the program’s “Twinkie problem”: taxpayers are paying for billions of dollars of junk food, which seems like a huge waste of money to most people.

These two issues have come together in a high-profile effort by a group of media organizations that is demanding greater transparency in SNAP operations. The organizations—led by the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ)—have sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (whose agency oversees SNAP) asking for full disclosure about where food stamps are being spent and what they are being spent on. The Daily Caller reports on the issue here.

Let’s look at the fraud issue. The government claims that the food stamp trafficking rate is just 1 percent and the general overpayment rate is just 4 percent. I suspect that the real rates are much higher, for three reasons: First, the overall costs of SNAP and the number of beneficiaries have skyrocketed. Second, SNAP is ideally suited for abuse: the USDA has few investigators to police the roughly 200,000 SNAP retailers, any of whom could be scamming the system. Third, overpayment rates on other federal subsidy programs are often around 10 percent. Medicare and Medicaid overpayments are in that range, for example, and overpayments have long been around 20 percent in the EITC program.

The AHCJ-led effort is asking the USDA to release data on food stamp purchases by retail outlet. This would be a very useful resource for investigators across the nation to help the government reduce waste and fraud. Are food stamps being cashed in at liquor stores? Which corner stores have unusually high food stamp usage? Let’s get detailed SNAP data on the Internet and allow journalists and the public to help answer these questions. After all, scandal after scandal illustrate that the federal government is lousy at policing programs itself.

The journalists are also asking the USDA to provide detailed breakdowns of the types of food being purchased with SNAP money. It’s remarkable that in an era of Bloomberg-style efforts to restrict private food choices, the government itself runs a giant $82 billion program that subsidizes junk food. How much junk food? We don’t know, and that’s what many journalists want to find out.

Food stamps can be used to purchase just about any edible item other than alcohol, hot food, restaurant meals, and live animals. The USDA explains the rules here and specifically notes that “soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream” are allowed.

Many health experts would like to ban junk food purchases in the food stamp program because they want Americans to eat more nutritious food. I’m a libertarian, so I don’t want the government telling people what to eat. But I think banning junk food in SNAP would be a good step for a different reason: it would greatly reduce demand for the program and thus cut taxpayer costs. If we told the 48 million users of food stamps that they could only use their electronic subsidy cards to buy items like spinach and broccoli, a lot fewer people would use the program and they would buy less stuff.

Why has the USDA been stonewalling journalists on providing SNAP program data? I’m guessing that federal officials don’t want to be embarrassed about: 1) how much taxpayer money goes toward junk food, and 2) the endless series of stories about SNAP fraud that would likely be generated if journalists could explore the program’s operational details.

Optimally, SNAP should be terminated altogether and food subsidy activities left to the states—or better, to private charities. But until that reform happens, the current effort to pry open the workings of this giant hand-out program would be big step in the right direction.

SOURCE

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EEOC: A Scofflaw That Poisons The Climate For Hiring

One way the current political climate discourages hiring is by turning problem employees into potential lawsuits for the employers who take the risk of hiring them. The legal climate has gotten much worse over the past several years due to the appointment of more left-wing, anti-employer judges by President Obama, and an increasingly out-of-control Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sues employers for terminating bad employees who fall into “protected classes,” and for sensible hiring decisions that most judges would consider perfectly legal, since the plain language of federal civil-rights laws permits them. The EEOC even sues employers for using hiring criteria required by state law, such as health and safety codes.

The EEOC’s abusive, out-of-control behavior is a point of agreement among lawyers who agree on little else, liberal and conservative alike. The liberal lawyer “Loki,” writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, observes:

Without going into too much detail, I recently had the bizarre experience of the EEOC first arguing that the plain language of the statute didn’t matter. Then we dug up their own policy, which contradicted their stated litigation position. They argued that their own policy didn’t matter. The issue hadn’t been litigated much, but we found case law directly on point contradicting them (and for which they had been sanctioned). They argued that the case law didn’t matter. Then we found prior DOJ opinions on the issue- guess what? The EEOC said the DOJ opinions didn’t matter.

The judge? He thought it mattered.

I wish this was a one-off experience, but it’s not. Every single time I have dealt with the EEOC, it’s something similar. It’s gotten to the point where I fully expect them to be pissing on my leg so they can tell me it’s raining. And note that I’m not reflexively anti-government; I’ve dealt with the DOJ and SEC (among others) and have nary a bad word to say with the attorneys I’ve dealt with. . .I honestly don’t know what it is in the water at the EEOC. . . I had to do a lot of research on EEOC cases, and I found so many cases where the trial courts just got fed up with the EEOC it wasn’t funny.

Similarly, as the libertarian/conservative lawyer David M. Nieporent observes, the EEOC routinely disregards straightforward legal mandates imposed on it by law, such as the explicit statutory duty to engage in conciliation efforts before suing: “They have a statutory mandate to try to mediate employment disputes before filing suit, and they keep getting spanked by courts for failing to undertake this simple procedural step.”

The EEOC has pressured employers to hire felons as armed guards. It is going after G4S Secure Solutions for refusing to hire felons. That company provides guards for nuclear power plants, chemical plants, government buildings and other sensitive sites, and it is prohibited by state law from hiring people with felony convictions as security officers. As Jim Bovard notes in The Wall Street Journal, the EEOC brought proceedings “in 2010 against G4S Secure Solutions after the company refused to hire a twice-convicted Pennsylvania thief as a security guard.” As he points out,

The EEOC’s new regime leaves businesses in a Catch-22. As Todd McCracken of the National Small Business Association recently warned: “State and federal courts will allow potentially devastating tort lawsuits against businesses that hire felons who commit crimes at the workplace or in customers’ homes. Yet the EEOC is threatening to launch lawsuits if they do not hire those same felons.” At the same time that the EEOC is practically rewriting the law to add “criminal offender” to the list of protected groups under civil-rights statutes, the agency refuses to disclose whether it uses criminal background checks for its own hiring. When EEOC Assistant Legal Counsel Carol Miaskoff was challenged on this point in a recent federal case in Maryland, the agency insisted that revealing its hiring policies would violate the “governmental deliberative process privilege.” The EEOC is confident that its guidance will boost minority hiring, but studies published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum and the Journal of Law and Economics have found that businesses are much less likely to hire minority applicants when background checks are banned. As the majority of black and Hispanic job applicants have clean legal records, the new EEOC mandate may harm the very groups it purports to help.

Ironically, the EEOC has a much worse record of labor and civil-rights violations than most corporations and agencies with a similar-size workforce.“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, responsible for ensuring that the nation’s workers are treated fairly, has itself willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act on a nationwide basis with its own employees, an arbitrator has ruled.” The EEOC was found guilty of systematic, illegal, reverse discrimination (discrimination against white males) in Jurgens v. Thomas, 29 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 1561, 1982 WL 409 (N.D.Tex.1982), and continued to illegally engage in it later, long after it had been ordered to stop, as federal judges found. See, e.g., Terry v. Gallegos, 926 F.Supp. 679 (W.D. Tenn. 1996). The EEOC also has had a lot of sexual harassment lawsuits against it (and I am talking about real sexual harassment, not weak claims based on a couple of off-color jokes or overheard offensive speech, the sort of trivial thing the EEOC itself might unsuccessfully sue a private employer over). See, e.g., Spain v. Gallegos, 26 F.3d 439 (3rd Cir.1994). In short, as John Berlau once noted, the EEOC is like “the fox guarding the henhouse.”

The EEOC recently sued Pepsi for doing criminal background checks on job applicants, forcing it to pay $3.1 million to settle the lawsuit. The EEOC is also threatening employers who require high-school diplomas with lawsuits under the ADA.

Employers’ ability to hire and fire based on merit has effectively been curtailed by the EEOC, which has ordered employers to discard useful employment tests and accommodate incompetent employees. For example, a hotel chain was recently compelled to pay $132,500 for dismissing an autistic desk clerk who did not do his job properly, in order for it avoid a lawsuit by the EEOC that would have cost it much more than that to defend. The EEOC has sued companies that quite reasonably refuse to employ truck drivers with a history of heavy drinking, even though companies that hire them will be sued under state personal-injury laws when they have an accident. The EEOC used the threat of endless litigation for force a cafe owner to pay thousands of dollars for not selecting a hearing- and speech-impaired employee for a cashier’s position that the employee was unsuited for (even though the the employer was happy to retain the employee in a different position that did not require standard speech and hearing abilities). The EEOC’s aggressive anti-business interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) reflects its left-wing majority under the Obama administration, which has appointed anti-business extremists to the EEOC.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 24, 2013

Duplicative Government Programs Are a Symptom of the Problem

Best of all would be to close down all Federal departments that duplicate State depts. Who needs an EPA, an OSHA, a DEA, a Dept. of Health or a Dept. of Education when all States have regulations and depts in those fields? Americans may need government for many things but no American needs TWO governments for any of those things. The savings from ditching just the depts. mentioned above would be enormous, to say nothing of the savings from eased regulatory burdens

The Government Accountability Office has released its third annual report on fragmented, overlapping, or duplicative federal programs and activities. Proponents of making the government more efficient view the findings as an opportunity to achieve cost savings. While there’s obviously nothing wrong with the government spending less money than it has to, the goal should be to permanently shut the trains down – not just try to get them to run on time.

Some examples:

The GAO says “Enhanced collaboration between the Small Business Administration and two other agencies could help to limit overlapping export-related services for small businesses.” The federal government shouldn’t be subsidizing export promotion for commercial interests, period. (See here and here.)

The GAO says “Federal agencies providing assistance for higher education should better coordinate to improve program administration and help reduce fragmentation.” The federal government should not be subsidizing higher education, period. (See here.)

The GAO says, “To achieve up to $1.2 billion per year in cost savings in the Federal Crop Insurance program, Congress could consider limiting the subsidy for premiums that an individual farmer can receive each year, reducing the subsidy for all or high-income farmers participating in the program, or some combination of limiting and reducing these subsidies.” Federal crop insurance subsidies and all farm subsidies should be abolished, period. (See here and here.)

The GAO says, “Federal support for wind and solar energy, biofuels, and other renewable energy sources, which has been estimated at several billion dollars per year, is fragmented because 23 agencies implemented hundreds of renewable energy initiatives in fiscal year 2010—the latest year for which GAO developed these original data.” The federal government shouldn’t subsidize renewable energy (or traditional sources of energy), period. (See here.)

There have been numerous attempts to “reinvent government,” “streamline the bureaucracy,” etc, over the decades as the government has expanded in size and scope. Perhaps the GAO report will spur another. But while the initiatives change, the result is always the same: we still end up stuck with a bloated Leviathan that continues to have its snotty nose in every facet of our lives.

As I often point out, waste always comes with government the same way a Happy Meal always comes with a toy and drink. There is duplication and waste in the federal government because it has become massive and there are virtually no limits on what politicians can spend money on.

I’m not suggesting that government waste should be ignored. Indeed, examples of waste should be held up as reasons to terminate entire government agencies and programs. But I believe that a myopic fixation on “eliminating duplication and waste” is itself a waste. That’s because duplication and waste are merely symptoms of the real problem of big government.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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Front Porches Now Ground Zero in Property Rights Fight

From Minnesota to New Mexico, overreaching regulators are violating property rights

During five tours as a U.S. adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ethan Dean considered it part of his mission to model and promote basic democratic values in the war-torn nations. Ink-stained purple finger principles like free elections, universal education, and individual rights the rest of us often take for granted.

As did Dean, until he got a “Dear John” letter of sorts during his fourth deployment — not from a wife or girlfriend, but the City of Winona, Minnesota.

Authorities in the southeastern Minnesota city informed Dean that he was breaking a law he’d never heard of: Renting his house without a permit in contravention of an ordinance capping rental properties at 30 percent of homes per block.

“This property is on a block that is over 30 (percent) which would mean that it cannot be certified for rental,” the city’s “Dear John” letter stated. “IT IS A VIOLATION OF WINONA CITY CODE CHAPTER 33A TO ALLOW OCCUPANCY OF A RENTAL DWELLING WITHOUT OBTAINING A HOUSING LICENSE.”

Dean’s property rights became collateral damage when Winona implemented what’s believed to be the nation’s first comprehensive rental cap ordinance . The 2006 law restricts rentals to 30 percent of properties per block to curb “excessive on-street parking, anti-social behavior and deteriorating housing conditions” in the college community. In reality, however, 75 percent of Dean’s neighbors had rental licenses, grandfathered in when the ordinance took effect.

Suddenly, one of the bedrock democratic principles Dean was introducing overseas — property rights — was under fire, not in the war zone but back home in the Midwest.

“If they realize they can get away with taking these rights away, what are they going to do next? How far are they going to go until it’s not the good, old USA anymore?” Dean asked.

Dean’s campaign on the home front, now in the courts, illustrates a widening divide over the purpose and primacy of property rights. As copycat rental caps soon passed in three more Minnesota cities and beyond, homeowners’ front porches have become the front lines in what’s turning into a definitive local property rights dispute.

Dean bought the 1800s Victorian house in 2007 to start a nonprofit recovery home for returning troops, the Welcome Home of Winona. Ultimately, he rented out the residence during deployments to help meet his mortgage payments.

Via email from Al Asad-Anbar Province in Iraq, Dean begged the city to allow him to continue receiving his vital $1,050 monthly rental check.

“If I cannot rent my home, it will be extremely difficult financially to make the monthly mortgage, as well as maintaining the utilities and upkeep,” Dean wrote in a letter presented to the Winona City Council in May 2010.

Under the radar, Dean chafed over city interference in email correspondence with a reporter at the time.

“I am currently on my fourth mission in Iraq,” Dean wrote from his post with the U.S. Army Human Terrain Team 3-7 infantry. “It kills me to defend our freedoms, when my own home is subject to some 1944 Berlin Nazi BS…I don’t care what the city says, THEY do NOT own MY house…why the hell do I need THEIR permission?????”

Wary of a public relations minefield, the Winona City Council granted Dean a waiver, but only until he returned stateside. For his service, Dean was welcomed home in 2011 with an upside-down mortgage and no more breaks from the city. Besides the loss of thousands of dollars in rental income, without a license to attract buyers interested in rental investments the market value of Dean’s house plummeted by an estimated $25,000. He had a house that could neither be rented nor sold.

“It’s gotten to the point now that something really central to the use of our property rights, being able to rent out your home, is being taken away,” said Anthony Sanders, Dean’s attorney with the Institute for Justice. “I think we have a really good shot at fighting back because people understand this is just such a central component to owning property.”

Peter and Frankie Smith fit the part perfectly in a newly contested case in New Mexico. The Army Corps of Engineers accused the retired couple of violating the Clean Water Act in mid-2011, declaring their parched desert property a water of the United States based on aerial photos, maps, and surveillance from a neighbor’s yard. According to the feds, the Smiths owned the proverbial waterfront property, classifying dry land as wet.

“They never phoned me, knocked on the door or anything like that,” said Peter Smith, a 65-year-old retiree. “They just wrote me this letter basically saying ‘you’re guilty’ and that’s all there is to it.”

The Smiths built their retirement home on 20 acres of bone-dry scrub brush and sand south of Santa Fe. In the process of cleaning up the place, Peter cleared out hundreds of dead trees and trash littering a dry ditch the feds dubbed the Gallina Arroyo. Acting on an alleged complaint, the Army Corps shot off a violation notice warning against “conducting any additional work in any stream, arroyo or wetland” without federal permission, stunning and stopping Smith in his tractor tracks.

“Somebody’s got to stop these regulators from taking people’s rights away,” Smith said. “Sitting here looking out my window, I can see probably 15-20 little beds and banks all with dead trees and garbage sitting in them.”

A retired surveyor who made his living sizing up land, Smith says the arroyo is a drainage ditch that’s dry year-around except for the rare storm in which the precipitation evaporates or seeps into the dry sand almost instantaneously. To the Army Corps, however, it’s a tributary that theoretically drains into the Rio Grande River 25 miles away, threatening the silvery minnow, a fish on the endangered species list.

“It sure appears to me they’re just after control of land,” Smith said. “They’re using the excuse it’s a water of the United States. If I went to the real estate salesman and said, ‘OK, the government has now declared I have waterfront property’, they’d laugh at me!”

A year and a half into their ordeal, the Smiths finally turned to the Pacific Legal Foundation, filing a lawsuit against the Army Corps in December 2012. The case accused the Corps of acting as a national zoning board with unlimited control over Americans’ land use, aiming for nothing short of a nationwide precedent to curtail Clean Water Act regulators.

“If the Smith’s dry creek bed really is a water of the United States under the Clean Water Act, then so is the drain in your front yard and so is the ditch in my back yard. If this is under their authority, then so is every square inch of America and legally speaking, that is not what Congress intended,” said Jennifer Fry, the Smiths’ PLF attorney.

The Albuquerque office of Army Corps of Engineers did not respond to requests for comment. Yet soon after the Smiths case went public, the Army Corps claim came and went as abruptly as a desert derecho. In March the agency withdrew its classification of the Smiths’ property.

“This episode should put the federal government on notice,” Fry said. ”If they try this ploy again — if they try, in effect, to seize private property by conjuring up a mirage of water where there isn’t any — PLF is ready to fight them in court, anywhere in the country.”

Increasingly, the case can be made that like politics, all property rights are local, regardless of the level of government jurisdiction involved. No wonder that city, state, and federal authorities across the county are closely tracking a Minnesota court ruling expected soon on the constitutional challenge brought by Dean and two other homeowners in January.

Win or lose, Dean will never get back his foreclosed house or an estimated $50,000 he invested.
“I’ve lost my house, I’ve lost my equity, that can’t be reversed and I understand and realize that,” Dean said. “The lawsuit is to bring justice back to the citizens of Winona.”

SOURCE

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Ugliness from ugly ideas

The philistine statists who disgraced the streets of Britain with vulgar spasms of hate for Margaret Thatcher in the wake of her death on April 8 stunned decent people everywhere. Violence and bloodshed at so-called “death parties” erupted across the country. Walls and buildings were sprayed with the vilest of epithets. It was a sickening, even frightening, paroxysm from people who in their calmer “Kumbaya” moments talk incessantly of how much they care for others and want the government to be a helpful nanny in our lives.

They loathed Margaret Thatcher because she stood up to them, questioned their false compassion, and dared to expose statism as the senseless, dehumanizing cult that it is. She rhetorically ripped the velvet glove from the iron fist and spoke of welfare-state socialism as a wolf in sheep’s clothes. Those are things state worshipers cannot abide. Among the many debts decent people owe Margaret Thatcher is one that stands vastly magnified by her death: She coaxed out of hiding the intolerant, destructive essence of statism.

Americans might be asking themselves, “Ronald Reagan shared many of Maggie’s core beliefs, so when he died in 2004, why didn’t we see here the kind of ugly spectacles that have showed up since April 8 in Britain?” Don’t assume the Brits are a different, nastier lot. They’ve just gone a little further down the path on which we too are traveling. Think of the ugliness you saw this past week or so as a glimpse of what ugly ideas produce. It’s a taste of what’s in store for us if we do not come to our senses. If we keep hiring intellectual barbarians to teach in our schools and universities and if we continue electing their disciples to high office, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

If you want an American example of the statist wolf in sheep’s clothing, look no further than these comments from MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry. She deplores the notion that children belong to their actual parents. She thinks they really belong to every other parent (translation: they belong to those parents who have political power). On the surface, the message sounds “caring” and “thoughtful.” Do you think she means things like parental choice in schooling or diversity in opinion within the schools? Why do I get the feeling when I watch her that I’m listening to one of the academic Khmer Rouge in our midst?

“Violence,” wrote Isaac Asimov, “is the last refuge of the incompetent.” This thought may explain why the plans that statists like Harris-Perry cook up for other people's lives are rarely voluntary. Statism at its core is ugliness writ large. It is violence raised to the level of social philosophy.

How can I make such a sweeping statement? Because statism isn’t voluntary, and if it isn’t voluntary, it’s violent. Either we interact with others in peace and mutual respect, or we boss them around as nanny states always do. We must choose between the power of love or the love of power.

If you’ve ever met a true-blue statist (and these days, who hasn’t?), you know what I’m talking about when I describe him this way: He thinks he has a monopoly on compassion and good intentions. He thinks that non-statists are either evil or stupid. He’s often more eager to shut you up than to engage you in serious discussion. He’s impervious to reason, logic, economics, history, and evidence because his good intentions are more important than such things.

When he talks about the rich and the poor, he reeks of envy. As Thatcher herself so eloquently put it in parliamentary debate, he cares less for the poor than he cares that the rich be punished. He thinks his plans for other people are so superior that he’s not content to persuade you to accept them; he’s ready to call the cops to force you to comply. He’s up to his eyeballs in the tyranny of political correctness and will savage you if you dare question his assumptions.

If he’s an academic, he will profess devotion to “academic freedom” but then use his tenure and political power to intimidate and monopolize. If the university hires its first defender of Western civilization, he’ll see it as a takeover and vigorously protest.

He’s an end-justifies-the-means kind of guy: If he has to buy your vote with other people’s money, look askance when voter fraud steals an election for his side, live one way and preach another, and apply endless double standards that always work in favor of his perspective, he’ll gladly do it and chortle to his friends about it. He’s for government-run this or that whether it works or not because what’s most important to him is that the State is in charge. His definition of good intentions trumps whatever the outcome might be.

When such people take to the streets with ugly actions, they should get credit for one thing: For at least a moment, they’ve ceased the deception and shown themselves to be what they really are. They are what Ayn Rand would call the “destroyers” among us.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 23, 2013

Progressives’ Ultimate Fetish

Progressives can’t help themselves. When a normal person hears of a tragedy, they feel the natural range of emotions – fear, anger, sympathy, etc. But progressives are not normal humans. When they hear news of a tragedy their first thought is “How can this help the cause?” There’s something oddly perverse about this mental defect that somehow overrides decency in tragedy’s aftermath, but it’s as widespread amongst the political left as freckles are on redheads.

Harsh? Perhaps. But sometimes the truth hurts.

In the hours after the Boston Marathon bombing, the usual suspects of progressive grave-dancers succumbed to the music of suffering and started to dance their agenda jig. Michael Moore put down his bacon-wrapped bacon and tweeted, “Tax Day. Patriots Day.” The implication being it had to be a conservative because we oppose high taxes and call ourselves patriots.

Once it became clear the terrorists were not rednecks named Billy Bob, the effects of Moore’s psychological Viagra wore off and he tweeted, “Younger brother Jahar was captain of the wrestling team and a volunteer with "Best Buddies," helping kids with Downs Syndrome.” Not even a beat missed in the shift from accusing his fellow Americans to sympathizing with a terrorist. Who says a fat man can’t dance?

But Moore was not alone in his arousal over the prospect the Boston terrorists somehow could be connected to the political right. There wasn’t a mainstream news organization that didn’t have left-wing fetishists applying virtual nipple clamps on themselves while all but pointing the finger at those who simply wish to have a government that pays a little more deference to the document politicians swear to preserve, protect and defend.

National Public Radio’s Dina Temple-Raston – the network’s “counter-terrorism correspondent” – posited the month of April is big for “right-wing” and “anti-government” people because it’s the month in which Columbine happened and it’s the month of Hitler’s birthday. Yes, you read that right – Hitler’s birthday. I had no idea when Hitler’s birthday was, never heard it mentioned before in my life.

I was ignorant of this because Hitler was a) a monster and who gives a damn when he was born; and b) a leftist socialist and those, like monsters, are not people I choose to waste brain cells trying to remember their birthdays.

Somehow, magically, every leftist on the planet was endowed with the knowledge of date of Hitler’s birth. It was rather sick.

But even NPR spending our tax dollars to stimulate its perverted fetish wasn’t the worst offender in the progressives “guilt by association” orgy. MSNBC would not be outdone. The crown-prince of premature projection-ation is Chris Matthews, who said, “Normally, domestic terrorists people tend to be on the far right. Well, that’s not a good category. Just extremists. Let’s call them that.”

From the far right? Think about that for a second. The political right is about individual liberty and limited government; the political left is about collective action and a strong government. Take the left to the extreme and you find totalitarianism. Along the way you pass socialism, fascism and communism. Take the right to the extreme and you find, essentially, anarchy. Yet when people think of anarchists they think of leftists because what anarchists truly favor is not empowering individuals but for the anarchists themselves to have the power. Anarchists remain at the margins, so it doesn’t matter much. But it’s something to think about the next time you run across a leftist trying to tell you otherwise.

Anytime you talk about progressives the issue of race inevitably comes into play. That’s because dividing and subdividing Americans is what holds their coalition together. That and convincing everyone they’re victims, they shouldn’t bother trying because the system is stacked against them and, more importantly, the only way their lives will improve is through government. Government will protect them from the faceless boogeyman of racism, homophobia, sexism or the big evil corporation that is responsible for their failures. Never can the notion sometimes life happens, sometimes someone is better or more qualified for a job than you, be allowed to seep into the mind. A victim they must forever be.

Because a victim, or someone convinced they are, can be “empowered” by external forces, such as an election. And even when the savior who promises a better life in exchange for a vote does not deliver, the savior is not condemned. He is said to “need more time” because the forces against him are just that powerful. It’s the promise of a glorious future Christmas that never comes. But I digress.

Race came into play in the Boston attack in a way it rarely does – through the front door. Progressives love to play the race card, and many of them, white and black, make their living telling minorities they can’t get ahead so just trust in others. One white guy who does is David Sirota, a pasty Coloradan who specializes in finding new ways to use the term “white privilege” in situations no non-race-obsessed profiteer could fathom, wrote a piece for Salon.com entitled, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” Not, “Let’s hope they’re caught,” but let’s hope their pigment is one I can make money from.

In that piece, Sirota claims society will react differently based on the race of the terrorists. He quotes fellow race profiteer and writer Tim Wise, who wrote, “White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation.” Remember to mention that at your next TSA colonoscopy.

When the terrorists did turn out to be white, but not quite white enough for his desired climax, and Muslims to boot, Sirota was a ball of confusion and disappointment, much like I imagine he and his prom date were in high school…

Progressive’s hatred for America is not limited to race. It’s universal against the culture because the culture still insists on embracing liberty and responsibility. As such, it must be attacked.

Enter Marc Ambinder.

Ambinder, writing in The Week about U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., wondering how people raised in America could be radicalized into terrorism, wanted to point the finger of blame at America, not the terrorists themselves. He suggests we consider “the possibility that something about America is radicalizing people of all sorts.”

Actually, there seems to be only one sort of people being radicalized regularly in America – progressives. Sure, it’s to varying degrees of radical dementia. Some plant bombs. Some become scholars on “privilege.” And a few from both groups, by the end or “refractory period” of their careers, will end up becoming tenured professors or journalists.

Of course, I kid….. a lot more than a few of them will become tenured professors or journalists. And that power to infect the minds of future generations with their perverted ideas through academia and media may well be the ultimate progressive fetish of them all.

SOURCE

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When the U.S. government deliberately massacred innocent men, women and children

No. Not American Indians -- Bible-loving White Protestant Christians. Somewhat to his credit, President Clinton opposed the action but eventually gave his subordinates their head

Fifty-one days earlier, federal Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents had attacked this sprawling home occupied by scores of women, children, and men – members of an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists. Seventy-six ATF agents arrived on cattle trailers, shot the Davidians’ dogs, and then commenced trying to blast and smash their way into the house. The ATF supposedly had an arrest warrant for Davidian leader David Koresh but forgot to bring it along that morning. ATF named its operation Showtime, and made sure that multiple crews from local television stations were nearby to film their triumph.

Things went awry, and the resulting firefight left seven Davidians and four federal agents dead. ATF top brass immediately wailed to the media that their agents had been “ambushed” that morning. That characterization was difficult to reconcile with the facts that the feds launched a surprise assault and were far more heavily armed than the Davidians. Perhaps the feds considered it an “ambush” because the victims shot back.

The ATF targeted Koresh because they suspected he had illegally converted semi-automatic firearms to shoot more than one bullet with each trigger pull. Prior to attacking, the feds had scorned numerous opportunities to easily arrest Koresh. Nine days before the attack, undercover ATF agents (whom Koresh recognized as such) had even gone target shooting with Koresh.

After the ATF raid fiasco, the FBI took over and continually ratcheted up the pressure on the besieged Davidians, bombarding them around the clock with high volume soundtracks of rabbits being slaughtered and Nancy Sinatra singing (choose your poison).

On that April 19th morning, the FBI tank pumped the Davidians’ home full of CS gas, a potentially lethal, flammable compound. Around noon, fires broke out that quickly burnt the compound to the ground; 80 bodies were found in the rubble. FBI spokesmen raced to blame the Davidians for the fire and swore they had proof that the cult members committed mass suicide. (No such evidence was provided.) The spokesmen neglected to mention that the FBI had stopped fire trucks racing to the scene.

FBI operations commander Larry Potts explained the rationale for the final onslaught: “Those people thumbed their nose at law enforcement.” Snap polls just after the Waco fire showed that the American people overwhelmingly supported the FBI’s action. A few days later, the opening of a congressional hearing had to be delayed so senators could pose for pictures with Attorney General Janet Reno, who became a national hero after admitting she authorized the final attack on the Davidians….

SOURCE

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Amtrak and the progressive sleight of hand

Progressives have always assumed that if something is good, it must be provided through coercive force by a central government. This is illustrated in progressive support for continuing large Amtrak subsidies. Various liberal policy outfits including the Brookings Institution and the Center for American Progress have been recently celebrating the mild uptick in the government-subsidized passenger railroad’s ridership levels. The train served a record 32.1 million passengers in 2012, a 55-percent increase since 1997. In earlier times, liberal advocates would have congratulated themselves on the success of a government program’s drive to self-sufficiency and move to let it fend for itself in the private sector, in the same way federally controlled Conrail was privatized and later sold off to CSX and Norfolk Southern. But this doesn’t cut it for today’s progressives, who appear to believe Amtrak’s recent uptick in ridership is reason for increasing federal subsidies. This is because they are well aware that Amtrak’s supposed success is largely a mirage.

The rise in ridership appears impressive, until one realizes that 1997 was a severe low-point for train travel. If measuring Amtrak’s total passenger miles starting in 1991, its increase over the past 22 years is a pathetic 8 percent. Its condition looks even worse when considering that population growth has increased over this period by 25 percent, pushing Amtrak’s share of intercity passenger travel down from 0.45 to 0.36 percent. Passenger rail is alone in the dismal state of its ridership. Despite the airline industry’s financial instability, not to mention the costs incurred due to the September 11 attacks and the TSA, airline ridership increased by 68 percent. Even intercity buses carry three times more passenger miles than Amtrak does, while the vast majority of intercity travel is made by private automobile.

Supporters of Amtrak disregard the railroad’s low ridership rates by emphasizing the pittance the federal government annually pays to it as evidence of its fiscal sustainability. While the Department of Transportation’s 2012 budget appropriated $70 billion for the Highway Trust Fund and $18.7 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration, DOT spent a mere $1.5 billion on Amtrak. Under closer scrutiny, however, Amtrak’s low cost is illusory. Highways and airports absorb greater federal subsidies because their networks are vastly greater than Amtrak’s and carry far more passengers (not to mention highway and air freight service). It would be misleading to compare Amtrak’s absolute direct subsidies of 6.5 billion passenger miles annually with other modes—highways, which account for 4.1 trillion passenger miles, and the airline industry, which accounts for 500 billion passenger miles. A more accurate comparison of federal subsidies would be to break down the value of these subsidies for each passenger mile travelled. Amtrak’s subsidies including state grants average 25 cents per passenger mile. Per passenger mile subsidies for airlines are only 2.8 cents and the highway subsidy is an even smaller 1.1 cents.

Despite these lavish subsidies, the government-funded railroad’s operational inefficiencies require it to raise the fares it has charged passengers again and again. Under decades of sclerotic management, Amtrak average fares have risen from 17 cents to 32 cents per passenger mile. During the same period, efficiency gains have lowered the average fare per passenger mile for bus and air travel to 13 cents.

The deficit in what Amtrak collects in revenue and what it spends every year cannot even be taken at face value. Unlike most firms, Amtrak does not count maintenance as an operating cost and instead considers it a capital cost. This allows it to treat routine maintenance like long-term investments in new rail and carrier capacity, pushing these costs off its balance sheet. In addition to ticket sales, the government railroad also counts state grants and subsidies that total $225 million as revenue. If all these costs are correctly take into account, even Amtrak’s often praised Northeast Corridor runs an annual loss if, as Cato’s Randal O’Toole notes, the true costs were properly apportioned across routes.

Healthy public debate is essential if America is to ultimately tackle its dire and growing transportation challenges. You may not be in favor of privatizing passenger rail service, but pretending that Amtrak is a model of efficiency is simply intellectually dishonest.

SOURCE

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The deadly labyrinth of ObamaCare

The best way to understand the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is to realize that it confers large benefits on some people and imposes large costs on others.

If you are one of the ones who will qualify for expanded Medicaid, you will get something for nothing. Although there are quality issues and access problems, including rationing by waiting, Medicaid will probably spend $8,000 on an average family of four over the course of a year. Enrollment is like an $8,000 gift from the government.

If your income is a tad too high for Medicaid, you will get something even better. In a newly created health insurance exchange you will be able to obtain, say, a $15,000 family plan for no more than about a $600 premium. This is almost something for nothing.

Things will be very different if you have a job, however.

Consider a typical hotel. Almost everyone you see is earning about $15 to $20 an hour — the maids, the waitresses, the waiters, the busboys, the doormen, the porters, the custodians, the groundskeepers, etc. The cost of family coverage is equal to between one-third and one-half of these workers' annual earnings. The goal of ObamaCare is to force them to obtain this insurance with no extra help from government. And this is true even if the maids are already enrolled in Medicaid!

The economic literature on this type of mandate is clear. Although government can offer people something for nothing, the labor market does not. Employee benefits are not gifts from employers.

They are substitutes for money wages and other benefits. The cost of the employer mandate will surely be borne by the employees themselves. Mandated health insurance in Massachusetts, for example, was offset dollar for dollar by lower cash wages.

We can be fairly certain that low-wage workers and their employers will be searching for ways to avoid the mandate. Why? If the employees were willing to spend half their income on health insurance they would have done so already. That they have not indicates they would rather spend the money on something else.

Much more HERE

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 22, 2013

Children Belong to Parents, Not Government

Rick Santorum

My wife, Karen, and I are blessed with seven children, including one little girl with very special needs, Bella. There are many days when we are overwhelmed or dead-tired or frustrated or all of the above. I'm sure all parents can relate. It's just part of being a parent. But like millions of Americans, we also know it's the most important job we ever will have.

In 2005, I wrote a book, called "It Takes a Family," about the importance of a strong family in raising children and imparting virtue. The title was in contrast to a well-known book Hillary Clinton wrote, "It Takes a Village," which offered a very different approach to raising children. She believes, as many on the left do, that the family is secondary to institutions and governments when it comes to looking after the interests of children. Karen and I disagree. We believe in the primacy of families and have worked throughout our careers on creating and promoting policies and ideas that make stronger families. The fact is that without stable families as the bedrock, our country will fracture and collapse.

Since those books were published, we have seen an expansion of at times well-meaning early-childhood programs and laws that subtly replace parental responsibility and discretion with government indoctrination and edict. Well, if MSNBC's latest offering is any indication, it appears the left feels that the need for subtlety has passed. Last week, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor at Tulane University, said in a network promotion spot: "We haven't had a very collective notion of, 'These are our children.' ... We have to break through our ... private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the household's, then we start making better investments."

So we go from telling the small-business man that "you didn't build that" to telling parents that "they don't belong to you!" It harks back to Marxism's trumping of the family in favor of the state. It's only a matter of time before we hear another MSNBC promotion message advocating the construction of collectives for children to be properly indoctrinated.

And though Harris-Perry's comments made some news and upset many, another case has not gotten the attention it deserves and is equally troubling. The Romeike family came to the United States from Germany a few years ago seeking political asylum. You see, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children are Christians, and they believe strongly that the textbooks used in German public schools teach against their values. However, in Germany, families must send their children to government schools. They refused and taught them at home instead. After suffering fines, threats of prison and having the police come and forcibly take their kids to school, the Romeikes left everything behind and came to the U.S., where they were granted asylum.

Subsequently, the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the asylum and ordered them to be deported back to Germany. Later this month, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case. You may be surprised to learn that the Obama administration decided to weigh in on this case by filing a brief in the case advocating the deportation of the Romeikes. The president argued that there is no fundamental human right to educate your own children.

So it's not just MSNBC that thinks that your child's rearing belongs to the state. The president, like so many on the left, believes that the state should form the hearts and minds of our youths so they think the way the government wants them to think.

More than 100,000 signatures have been collected on a petition on the White House website from citizens who support the Romeikes' case. I have no illusions that Attorney General Eric Holder will alter his brief or that President Obama will change his mind on who can best raise children. However, I ask you to sign the petition, titled "Immediate Action Requested for Romeikes -- Grant Permanent Legal Status to Persecuted German Homeschool Family," to at least let the Romeikes -- and millions of others who look to America as the one place where dictators and bureaucrats don't control everything -- know that our president does not speak for you or America.

SOURCE

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Southern Poverty Law Center Gets Rich By Selling Fear

While the media cheer the Obama Administration and Senate Democrats as they exploit the Newtown school massacre to push laws that would hamper law-abiding citizens, they won’t connect some more obvious dots to another shooting.

On August 15, 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II, a volunteer with a homosexual activist group, entered the lobby of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. with a self-confessed aim to commit mass murder and then smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches into his victims’ faces.

He was stopped only because courageous building manager Leo Johnson, who took a bullet that shattered his arm, managed to subdue and disarm Mr. Corkins.

On February 6, Mr. Corkins pleaded guilty to three felonies: committing an act of terrorism while armed, interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition (he bought the gun in Virginia), and assault with intent to kill while armed. At a sentencing hearing on April 29, he faces up to 70 years in prison.

What? You didn’t hear about this? Maybe it’s because a hate-filled activist trying to murder Christians doesn’t fit the media narrative of Christians as bigots and their opponents as Care Bears.

A key aspect of the lightly reported story is the role of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an ultra-rich “civil rights” group. Mr. Corkins told investigators that he got the idea of attacking FRC from the SPLC’s website. He also had the address of the D.C.-based Traditional Values Coalition, another group listed on the SPLC’s “hate map.”

Since the shooting, FRC President Tony Perkins has called on the SPLC to remove legitimate Christian groups from the “hate map” and its list of “hate” organizations. Others listed include the American Family Association and Coral Ridge Ministries (now Truth In Action Ministries).

The common thread is biblically-based opposition to homosexual behavior and the defense of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. To the SPLC, the First Amendment still protects pastors who quote the Bible, but not those in the public square who argue for morality. This would include anyone who questions ideologically-driven “studies” that “prove” gender is merely a social construct.

It’s bad enough that the SPLC won’t edit its “hate map” despite a correlation to actual violence, but it’s scarier that the U.S. Justice Department since the Clinton era has been using SPLC as its authority to determine what constitutes a “hate group.”

In her article “King of Fearmongers” in the April 15 Weekly Standard, writer Charlotte Allen bells the cat, describing the SPLC as:

“… a civil-rights behemoth bursting with donor cash … the SPLC started out fighting legal battles against lingering segregation in the South. More recently—and more lucratively, its critics say—it has transformed itself into an all-purpose antihate crusader, labeling 1,007 different organizations across America at last count as ‘anti-gay,’ ‘white nationalist,’ ‘anti-Muslim,’ ‘anti-immigrant,’ or just plain hateful (one SPLC category is ‘general hate’).

“The SPLC put the FRC on its list of ‘anti-gay’ organizations in 2010, and the SPLC’s ‘Hate Map’ page, whose banner displays men in Nazi-style helmets giving Sieg Heil salutes, lists the FRC among 14 hate groups headquartered in the District of Columbia.”

Like the American Civil Liberties Union, the SPLC threatens people and groups with litigation that they cannot afford to fight. A prime example is the SPLC’s “consumer fraud” lawsuit in New Jersey filed recently against a small group, Jews Offering New Alternatives of Healing, which helps people overcome same-sex temptations. The idea is to criminalize such counseling, as California legislators have done, pending a judge’s injunction. This is the Left’s idea of tolerance and diversity.

Mark Potok, the SPLC’s oft-quoted spokesman and editor of its Intelligence Report and Hatewatch blog, maintains a prolific flow of fear mongering, to apparent great effect. The SPLC’s false characterizations are finding their way into strategic places. On April 5, Fox News’ Todd Starnes reported that, last year, “a U.S. Army training instructor listed Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as examples of religious extremism along with Al Qaeda and Hamas during a briefing with an Army Reserve unit based in Pennsylvania.”

On April 9, Mr. Starnes reported that an officer at Fort Campbell, Kentucky sent an email, drawing from the SPLC site, that slams Focus on the Family and includes the Family Research Council and the American Family Association (AFA) alongside Fred Phelps’ notorious Westboro Baptist Church in a list of “anti-gay hate groups.”

The e-mail, which the Army claims is an isolated incident, included this guilt-by-association characterization:

“The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies.… One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling….”

Talk about defamation. Anyone familiar with these groups (I have worked for two of them) knows this is a flat-out lie.

The good news is that the SPLC’s lucrative run could be grinding to a halt, according to Mrs. Allen:

“There may soon come a day when the SPLC’s donation-generating machine, powered by [founder Morris] Dees’s mastery of the use of ‘hate’ to coax dollars from the highly educated and the highly gullible, finally breaks down. That is why, according to [SPLC President Richard] Cohen, the SPLC has no intention of soon spending down much of that $256 million in stockpiled assets that has earned the center an ‘F’ rating from CharityWatch.

“‘Those 1960s liberals—they’re getting older, and the post office is dying. We’re likely to be out of the fundraising business within 10 years,’” Mr. Cohen told Mrs. Allen.

The Southern Poverty Law Center once did good work, keeping track of the remnants of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, skinheads and other real hate groups.

By refusing to de-list Christian organizations like FRC and AFA, however, the SPLC is engaging in the very activity that it once effectively decried.

Why isn’t Congress investigating federal agencies’ reliance on the SPLC?

SOURCE

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Russell Kirk

The name of “Russell Kirk” is heard seldom, if ever, in conservative circles today. This is tragic, and maybe even a bit scandalous, for as William F. Buckley—a person whose name is well known—once said, it “is inconceivable even to imagine, let alone hope for, a dominant conservative movement in America without [Kirks’] labor.”

Given all of the current talk over the need for a reawakening to conservative “principles,” we are in need of Kirk’s guidance today more than ever.

The author of 32 books and legions of essays, this World War II veteran was a college educator, novelist, intellectual historian, and political theorist. At Buckley’s request, Kirk helped to found National Review, a publication to which he contributed for many years. He also founded his own magazine, Modern Age. Kirk gave over 60 lectures to the Heritage Foundation, where he was a Distinguished Fellow, and was very much involved with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. In 1989, five years before his illustrious life came to a close, Kirk was granted the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Ronald Reagan.

Conservatism, Kirk explained, is neither a doctrine nor a dogma, but “a way of looking at the civil social order.” Still, from looking at the “leading conservative writers and public men” from “the past two centuries,” Kirk gathered ten principles that distinguish conservatism as the intellectual tradition that it is.

First, there is “an enduring moral order” of both “the soul” and “the commonwealth.” It is at our peril, conservatives insist, that we ignore this order.

Second, “custom, convention, and continuity” constitute the glue that keeps us together.

Custom “enables people to live together peaceably,” convention helps us “to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties,” and continuity “is the means of linking generation to generation.”

Third, prescription—“things established by immemorial usage”—is the stuff of which a flourishing civil society is made.

Since we are not likely “to make any brave new discoveries in morals or politics,” since we are “dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than [our] ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time,” we are best served by following the prescriptions of thousands of generations.

Fourth, prudence is a cardinal virtue.

Change is needed if society is to preserve itself, but prudence demands that we attend to it cautiously, and only after considerable reflection. “Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.”

Fifth, variety is both necessary and desirable.

Conservatives “feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life [.]” On the other hand, they abhor “the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems.”

The sixth principle is that of human imperfectability.

Because human beings suffer “irremediably from certain grave faults,” the best “that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk.”

Seventh, freedom and property are indissolubly linked.

“Upon the foundation of private property, great civilizations are built,” Kirk writes. He adds: “Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan [the government] becomes master of all.”

Eighth, “voluntary community” is as essential to the civil order as “involuntary collectivism” is destructive of it.

Duty and virtue are learned within our local communities—our “little platoons,” as “the patron saint” of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, famously called them. But when, “in the name of an abstract Democracy, the functions of community are transferred to distant political direction,” this centralization of authority and power proves “hostile to freedom and human dignity.”

Ninth, there must be “prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.”

Kirk notes that “political power” must be “balanced” so as to prevent both “anarchy” and “tyranny,” both the unbounded will of the individual and that of any group. To this end, “constitutional restrictions, political checks and balances, adequate enforcement of the laws,” and “the old intricate web of restraints upon will and appetite” are indispensable.

The tenth and final principle of the conservative attitude concerns the affirmation and harmonizing of “permanence and change” in “a vigorous society.”

Kirk succinctly summarizes this principle when he writes: “The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism.”

If today’s conservatives are serious about wanting to return to “the roots” of their tradition, then they have no option but to familiarize themselves with Russell Kirk.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 21, 2013

Who Really Fosters Hate?

Jerry Newcombe

Terrorism is in the news again as seen in the tragic bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday. This man-made disaster gives a time to reflect on terrorism---as we continue to pray for the victims of the bombing.

By now we have probably all heard about the infamous slide presented at a US Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief on religious extremism. They had a slide with the title “Religious Extremism.” (The slide is reproduced below).

First on the list was Evangelical Christianity (U.S. Christians). Fifth on the list was Al Qaeda. Later on the list was Catholicism (U.S. Christians). At the end of the list was Islamophobia.

There are millions of evangelical Christians in this country, as well as Catholics. To label them as haters and as dangerous boggles the mind. Many of them pray daily, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Or “…where there is hatred, let me sow love…” Where’s the hate?

Some have said that the Army person putting this slide together traced her information back to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), based in Montgomery, Alabama.

One of the groups who sued former (and current) Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore for having the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) on display at the state judiciary building in Montgomery was the SPLC. Prominent on their own building are words also carved in stone, attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Let justice roll down…” These are words of Amos 5, also in the Bible.

Dr. King’s church, Dexter Avenue Baptist, is just down the street from the judiciary building. It was in that church that the civil rights movement was born---when a group met there in the mid-1950s to deal with the injustice that had just been meted out to Rosa Parks.

The word “hate” is bandied about these days to the point that it may be losing its meaning. People who love are often called haters because they don’t hold to the latest politically correct view on what marriage is or on abortion. Real hate blows up people, total strangers no less.

Meanwhile, SPLC says on their website: “The Southern Poverty Law Center is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.” Sounds great, until you look at their map of “hate.”

Click on any of the states, and you’ll see listed organizations branded as hate groups. I work at one of them, Truth in Action Ministries. We’re right there with “United Klans of America,” an offshoot of the KKK.

SLPC brands us as “Anti-Gay.” We certainly believe what the Bible says---that all sinners (and that’s all of us) can be forgiven when we repent of our sins and come to Christ and ask for forgiveness. Thousands of ex-homosexuals are alive today who have found hope and change through the Gospel of Christ. Yes, we promote that at Truth in Action Ministries; and, of course, we believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. But we don’t hate anyone.

Family Research Council in Washington, DC is also on SPLC’s map of hate. That fact almost led to serious bloodshed.

Lt. Gen. (retired) Jerry Boykin, vice president of the group, tells what happened: “August 15th, 2012 Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the lobby of the Family Research Council with a backpack with a Glock 9 mm and about 70 rounds of ammunition as well as 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. And he shot a very heroic man named Leo Johnson, who tried to stop him. Leo wrestled him to the ground with one good arm, took his pistol away from him and started to shoot him, and then Leo told us later that God told him not to shoot Floyd Lee Corkins.”

Boykin adds, “Now it’s important to understand that he was motivated to come in and try to kill as many people as possible at the Family Research Council because we had been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s incredible that Leo stood over him bleeding after having been shot with nobody to help him and God told him not to shoot this man, and that’s hate? I don’t think so.”

Why the Chick-fil-A sandwiches? Boykin says, “what Corkins said at his hearing when he plead guilty to 3 charges was that his intention was to kill as many people as possible that day, smear a Chick-fil-A sandwich in their face and then go on to two other organizations, both of which he had found on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website listed as hate groups; what he objected to was our stand on traditional marriage.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, says that their group regularly prays for Corkins’ salvation, that he “might come to an understanding of the truth, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I can tell you today in working with our team---there is no animosity, no bitterness, there is compassion, but understanding of the stakes of standing for religious freedom today.”

Dr. King told his followers, “We must meet hate with creative love.” He added, “Let us hope there will be no more violence. But if the streets must flow with blood let it flow with our blood in the spirit of Jesus Christ on the cross” (Birmingham, May 1963).

On a few occasions, I have interviewed Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. King, who is active in pro-life work. She told me, “Well, Dr. Martin Luther King’s daughter, Reverend Bernice King, marched with her Bishop, Bishop Eddie Long in Atlanta late in 2004. And the theme of their march was marriage between a man and a woman and that gay rights and gay marriage was not included in the civil rights movement. Bernice said in her own words, ‘I know deep within my sanctified soul that my father did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.’”

If that were the case, would SPLC label Dr. King a “hater”? Of course not. But as it stands, the SPLC is, by their actions, denying the meaning of Dr. King’s (and Amos’) words. Like the boy who cried wolf, using the term “hate” to describe someone whose politics you disagree with is wrong on every front. Real hate is what struck the finish line in Boston Monday---regardless of who turns out to be at fault.

SOURCE

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American Laws for American Courts Legislation Wins Major Bipartisan Victory in Oklahoma

The American Laws for American Courts legislation to protect the fundamental constitutional rights of all Oklahoma residents against foreign legal doctrines, such as Shariah, was signed into law today by Governor Mary Fallin.

This unequivocal victory for Oklahoma and US law is the latest vindication of a long-term national trend supporting constitutional protections for ALL Americans against foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, such as Shariah, that have found their way into our court systems.

Center for Security Policy President and Chief Executive Officer Frank Gaffney applauded the passage into law of this important legislation:

“Oklahoma has played an important role in protecting America’s justice system from the incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, such as Shariah. American Laws for American Courts is the primary 21st Century civil rights initiative to ensure constitutional liberties for all Americans. It is needed especially to protect women and children, who have been identified by international human rights organizations as the primary victims of discriminatory foreign laws, Shariah in particular.”

The bill won a decisive bipartisan victory in both houses of the Oklahoma legislature. It was approved in the House of Representatives by an 85-7 margin and in the Senate by a 40-3 margin.

The legislation, sponsored by State Representative Sally Rogers Kern in the House and State Senator Gary Stanislawski in the Senate, is based closely on the American Laws for American Courts model promoted by the American Public Policy Alliance (APPA), which had previously won similar bipartisan approvals in Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona and Kansas. Representative Sally Kern stated:

“Today the will of the vast majority of the citizens of Oklahoman was acknowledged when HB1060, American Law for American Courts, was signed by Gov Fallin. Three years ago 71% of the voters approved State Question 755 prohibiting the use of Sharia Law in Oklahoma. That SQ was declared unconstitutional because it named a particular group. I have worked for three years to get ALAC passed so that the citizens of Oklahoma will be protected by the fundamental rights and liberties that our US Constitutional upholds without the fear of any foreign law being used against them.”

A host of community and interfaith organizations came together to support the effort to pass this important legislation in Oklahoma, which culminated in the signing on Thursday.

More HERE

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Israel - The Happy Little Country

Caroline Glick writes below. "Glick" means "good fortune" or "happiness" and she writes in that mood below

As Independence Day celebrations were winding down Tuesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a guest appearance on Channel 2's left-wing satire show Eretz Nehederet. One of the final questions that the show's host Eyal Kitzis asked the premier was how he would like to be remembered after he leaves office.

Netanyahu thought a moment and said, "I'd like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel's security."

On the face of it, Netanyahu's stated aspiration might seem dull. In a year he'll be the longest-serving prime minister in the state's history, and all he wants is to preserve our national security? Why is he aiming so low? And yet, the studio audience reacted to Netanyahu's modest goal with a thunderclap of applause.

After pausing to gather his thoughts, a clearly befuddled Kitzis mumbled something along the lines of, "Well, if you manage to make peace as well, we wouldn't object."

The audience was silent.

The disparity between the audience's exultation and Kitzis's shocked disappointment at Netanyahu's answer exposed - yet again - the yawning gap between the mainstream Israeli view of the world, and that shared by members of our elite class.

The Israeli public gave our elites the opportunity to try out their peace fantasies in the 1990s. We gave their peace a chance and got repaid with massive terror and international isolation.

We are not interested in repeating the experience.

A lot has changed since the 1990s. Twenty years after Yitzhak Rabin shook Yasser Arafat's hand on the White House lawn and so officially ushered in Israel's Age of Terror, most Israelis don't really care what the Europeans or the Arabs think of us.

The Europeans prattle on about Israeli racism, and threaten to put yellow stars or some other nasty mark on Israeli goods. They ban Israeli books from their libraries in Scotland. They boycott Israeli universities, professors and students in England. In Italy they hold rallies for convicted mass murderer Marwan Barghouti at their national Senate. And in France they butcher Jewish children.

And then the likes of Catherine Ashton expect us to care what they think about us. Well, we don't.

But in their endless search for the next silver bullet, the Europeans and the Americans and their Israeli followers miss the fact that the easiest way to build a secure and peaceful world is not by wooing terrorists. The best way to achieve these goals is by accepting the world as it is. This is what the Israeli people has done. True, we needed to have our fantasies blown away in suicide bombings before we reconciled ourselves to this simple truth. But life has been better, happier and more secure since we did.

The "international community's" inability to accept that sober-minded contentment is better than pipe dream fantasies has caused leftist writers in Israel, Europe and the US alike to express mystification at a recent survey carried out by the OECD, which ranks Israelis among the happiest people in the world. The ranking made no sense to commentators.

Israelis work harder than other members of the OECD. We complain more than other members of the OECD. We don't have "peace." And yet, we are among the happiest people in the OECD.

What gives? For decades before we embarked on the phony peace process, Israel was a model socialist state. We had paralyzing tax rates and failed government industries that crowded private entrepreneurship out of the market. Monopolies ran every sector and provided shoddy goods and horrible services at astronomical prices. The Histadrut labor union owned most of the economy along with the government and in every sector, Histadrut commissars ensured that anyone with an ounce of initiative was subject to unending abuse.

Nirvana.

Just around the time we began extricating ourselves from our socialist straitjacket, we were also recognizing that the peace thing wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. And at that point we began to understand that happiness and success aren't about what other people give you - money, treaties, a phone line after a five-year wait. Happiness and success are about what you accomplish.

At that point, sometime between 1996 and 2000, Israelis began creating large families and embracing the free market.

Today, with an average of three children per family, Israelis are the fecund outliers of the industrial world. And as David Goldman at PJ Media has demonstrated, there is a direct correlation between children and human happiness. This is why fruitful Israelis have the lowest suicide rate in the industrial world. When you have children, you have a future.

And when you have a future, you work hard to secure it, and have a generally optimistic outlook.

What could be so bad when your kid just lost his first tooth? Israelis are also happy because we see that we can build the future we want for our families and our country even without another glitzy signing ceremony at the White House every six months. Our country is getting stronger and more livable every day. And we know it.

Those on the international stage that share our view that life is about more than pieces of paper signed with Arab anti-Semites recognize what is happening. For them Israel is not "that shi**y little country." It's "The Little Engine that Could."

Take the Chinese. Last July China signed a deal with Israel to build an inland port in Eilat and a 180- km. freight railway to connect Eilat to Israel's Mediterranean ports in Ashdod and Haifa. The purpose of the project is to build an alternative to the Suez Canal, in Israel. The Chinese look at the region, and they see that Egypt is a failed state that can't even afford its wheat imports. The future of shipping along the Suez Canal is in doubt with riots in Port Said and Suez occurring on a regular basis.

On the other hand, Israel is a stable, prosperous, successful democracy that keeps moving from strength to strength. When the freight line is completed, as far as the global economy is concerned, Israel will become the most strategically important country in the region.

Then there is our newfound energy wealth. Israel became energy independent on March 30, when the Tamar offshore gas field began pumping natural gas to Israel. In two to three years, when the Leviathan gas field comes online, Israel will become one of the most important producers of natural gas in the world. Moreover, in 2017, Israel will likely begin extracting commercial quantities of oil from its massive oil shale deposits in the Shfela Basin near Beit Shemesh.

At 65, Israel is becoming a mature, responsible, prosperous and powerful player in the international arena. The only thing we need to ensure that we enjoy the fruits of our labors is security. And the one thing we can do to squander it all is place our hopes in "peace."

And so we won't, ever again.

More HERE

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Some satire from Israel

It helps if you know a bit about the scene in Israel but is worthwhile for others too



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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 19, 2013

Margaret Thatcher funeral procession: How applause drowned out the jeers

The woman who saved Britain was applauded by her people



It seemed to come out of nowhere. No one knew who’d started it – perhaps it was purely instinctual. But as the hearse came into view, the crowds found themselves breaking into applause – applause that followed the hearse all the way along the route, until it drew up at the church of St Clement Danes. Then, once the coffin had been loaded on to the gun carriage, and the horses moved off, the applause started again – and followed the procession all the way to St Paul’s.

Down the roads it spread and spread, gently rippling, a long impromptu chain of respect and appreciation.

The applause wasn’t rowdy; there were no whoops or whistles. It was steady, warm, dignified. But it was also, somehow, determined. At Ludgate Circus, protesters began to boo and jeer – only to find the rest of the crowd applauding all the more loudly to drown them out.

It has often been said that Baroness Thatcher appealed to the silent majority. They weren’t silent now.

Ever since the news of her death last Monday, we have been told one thing above all else about the former Prime Minister: that she was divisive. Well, maybe she was. But you wouldn’t necessarily have known it yesterday along the route of her funeral procession. From Westminster to St Paul’s, mourners crammed the pavements, in places standing 12 deep.

In the build-up there’d been rumours of violent protests: lumps of coal, symbolising the fury of the miners, would be thrown at her coffin.

In the event, all that was thrown was roses.

Some estimates put the number of people on the streets at 100,000. A low figure, perhaps, if compared with a major Royal occasion; the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is thought to have attracted a million. But this was for a Prime Minister, and on a working day.

On the pavements of the Strand, outside St Clement Danes – the church of the RAF – there was barely room to breathe. Behind the barriers, the crowd had been swelling for over an hour before the hearse was due to arrive. Men climbed railings to see above the massed heads. Children clambered on to the bench of the bus shelter. Office balconies thronged. People shifted restlessly, desperate for a view.

Many people wore suits or dark dress; some were in bowler hats and tweed. One man had brought his pet Chihuahua, Cindy; even she was in black, clad in a tiny coat with “Good night” inscribed across it.

All along the barriers and around the church stood police, hundreds of police. On first glance an intimidating sight, but the effect was somehow softened by the fact that every one of them was wearing spotless white gloves, like magicians’. In front of the church loomed the statue of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, chief of RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War. Glaring sternly, hands folded behind his back, he seemed to be wearing a look that said anyone intent on violence would have him to answer to.

The hearse arrived to applause. Then, as the coffin was carried into the church by the bearer party, there rose a sea of arms, as each mourner struggled to establish a clear view for his or her cameraphone.

While the service was under way inside, the crowds stood silent. A breeze fluttered through their hair. Raindrops dabbed their cheeks.

Then there sounded the dolorous clang of the bell. The coffin was carried out of the church and placed on the gun carriage. And, as the procession began – to the pound, pound, pound of a cloth-muffled drum – there was applause once more.

I glanced at the elderly woman standing alongside me. Her face was a mask of tears.

After the procession had moved on, many people stayed where they were, reflecting on what they’d seen. “It was wonderful,” said Richard Barnes, 69, a retired farmer. “From all the stories this week you’d have thought there’d be twice as many protesters as supporters – but it’s been nothing like it. I saw one [anti-Thatcher] placard across the road, and that’s it.”

He’d have seen more protesters further along the route – but not many. Some turned their backs on the procession. Some brandished placards, attacking the cost of the funeral. Some waved milk bottles, as a reminder of the old taunt, “Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher”. Some shouted, “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, dead, dead, dead.” A few, bizarrely, squabbled with each other (“You’ve ruined this protest!”).

Baroness Thatcher’s enemies, fighting among themselves: it was like the 1980s all over again.

For each and every minute of the journey from St Clement Danes, a gun salute was fired. At last the procession came to a halt at St Paul’s. At 11am sharp, the 2,000 guests inside the cathedral – including the Queen, the Prime Minister, and Lady Thatcher’s children, Sir Mark and Carol Thatcher – rose as one. Lady Thatcher’s grandchildren – Michael, 24, and Amanda, 19 – walked ahead of the coffin.

Following the first hymn, He Who Would Valiant Be, Amanda Thatcher gave a reading, from Ephesians 6 10-18. How young she looked up there, tiny and alone. To begin with, her voice cracked and quavered – but she did not let the occasion, or the emotion, overcome her. “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” she read, voice strengthening with every line. Her words echoed through the huge, booming silence.

The second reading came from David Cameron, John 14 1-6 (“I am the way, the truth and the life”). He read steadily and solemnly. His wife Samantha, wearing a pussy-bow blouse in tribute to Lady Thatcher, watched him from the pews.

The address was given by The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres. It was well judged, well written, well spoken. “After the storm of a life lived in the heat of political controversy,” he said, “there is a great calm. The storm of conflicting opinions centres on the Mrs Thatcher who became a symbolic figure – even an ‘ism’. Today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Thatcher are here at her funeral service. Lying here, she is one of us.”

The television camera cut to George Osborne, the Chancellor. Down his cheeks, tears glistened.

Out in Ludgate Hill, while all this was going on, a small group of the most dedicated admirers gathered round a portable radio. Clutching printed copies of the order of service, they sang along to every hymn.

After the prayers, the choir in St Paul’s sang In Paradisum, from the Requiem Mass by Gabriel Fauré; then the congregation joined them for the patriotic hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, gave the blessing. “Support us, O Lord, all the day long of this troublous life,” he intoned, “until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last.”

Finally, as the Queen looked on, the coffin was carried out of the cathedral by the bearer party.

Then, something remarkable. As the coffin was borne down the steps into the light of the day, the crowds outside gave three cheers. Like the applause that had followed the coffin on its journey to St Paul’s, the cheers were spontaneous.

As much as appreciation, they may have been an expression of relief – relief that a day that had been threatened by protest and violence had instead passed with dignity. A respectful procession followed by a moving service. No hysteria, no hyperbole. Of course there had been pomp and pageantry: the uniforms, the military bands, the towering grandeur of St Paul’s. But in its own way the occasion was understated – or as close to understated as a ceremonial funeral can be.

In late afternoon, when the hearse arrived at Mortlake Crematorium in south-west London, it was met, for one final time, with mourners’ quiet applause.

This was a day, in short, of tributes untarnished. A day when, to a far greater degree than expected, abuse was overcome by respect, violence by decency, and hatred by love.

SOURCE

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A new Iron Lady?



She may be only 20-years-old, but Baroness Thatcher's granddaughter captivated mourners on Wednesday as she delivered a flawless reading at the former prime minister's funeral.

Amanda Thatcher, a US college student, appeared unfazed as she gave a lesson from Ephesians which called on the righteous to "put on the whole armour of God".

Her deeply felt delivery put her firmly on the world stage before a global television audience of millions.

She later told an MP that she had not felt nervous, adding: "It's sort of in the blood."

The other lesson was read by David Cameron, the Prime Minister.

Mourners including Boris Johnson and Sir Malcolm Rifkind were unanimous in their praise of Ms Thatcher afterwards.

"I thought she read absolutely beautifully and she has that attractive mid-Atlantic accent," said Dame Mary Archer, the wife of Lord Archer, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman. "She was splendid."

Ms Thatcher and her brother, Michael, 24, are the children of Sir Mark Thatcher and his first wife, Diane Beckett.

They live with their mother in Dallas, Texas, where, according to her high school reports, Ms Thatcher is a talented sportswoman who excels in athletics and was voted "most likely to change the world" by her peers.

She and her brother are dedicated evangelical Christians, and were Baroness Thatcher's "greatest delight" in later life. They sat in the front row of St Paul's between their father and stepmother.

Before the service, they preceded Lady Thatcher's coffin into the cathedral, carrying cushions bearing the insignias of the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit.

Wearing a black coat and dress, a wide-brimmed hat and pearls, Ms Thatcher then read from Ephesians 6: 10-18. The passage calls on Christians to stand against the "wiles of the devil": "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

A family friend said: "She and her brother are both committed Christians and it gives them an inner confidence. They know they believe."

Lady Thatcher adored her grandchildren, telling an interviewer in the late 1990s: "When my daughter-in-law sends me photographs of the grandchildren, apart from seeing them in the flesh, that is the greatest pleasure I have in the whole year, far exceeding everything else."

Michael, an accomplished American football player at high school, studied at Texas A&M University, and has recently worked for a Republican-aligned political organisation that aims to "educate and empower the Hispanic community with conservative values".

The siblings were born in America but spent much of their childhood in South Africa. They lived in a large house in Cape Town, where Michael played cricket and Amanda had riding lessons.

But after Sir Mark was arrested in 2004 for involvement in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, his wife moved back to Dallas with the children. The couple later divorced and both remarried.

The move, however, cut the children off from their father, who was barred from the US because of a conviction over the coup.

The 12-year-old Amanda reportedly wrote to President George W. Bush asking him to intervene. "You know how you feel about your daughters," she asked. "I want my daddy back in America." She did not receive a reply.

By last night hundreds of people on Twitter, the social media website, had praised her "captivating" and "pitch perfect" reading.

Nigel Evans, the Conservative MP for Ribble Valley, said: "If she had been speaking at just a family funeral people can break down and cry but her composure was perfect."

SOURCE

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Obama Administration SLASHED Budget for Domestic Bombing Prevention

Barack Obama's administration has cut the budget nearly in half for preventing domestic bombings, MailOnline can reveal.

Under President George W. Bush, the Department of Homeland Security had $20 million allocated for preventing the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by terrorists working inside the United States. The current White House has cut that funding down to $11 million.

That assessment comes from Robert Liscouski, a former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15 that killed three Americans and injured at least 173 others.

He told MailOnline that the Obama-era DHS is, on the whole, about as well-positioned as it was during the Bush administration to handle the aftermath of the April 15 bombings in Boston, 'but the Obama administration has continued to cut the budget for offices such as the Office for Bombing Prevention from $20 million started under Bush, to $11 million today.'

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 18, 2013

"No, not Boston"‏

I donate at times to MDA, the Israeli version of the Red Cross -- so I am on their mailing list. I received the following email (under the above heading) from them

Last night, Israelis observed the end of Yom HaZikaron, commemorating the thousands who've died fighting to defend the Jewish State, which is followed at sundown by Yom HaAtzma'ut, the celebration of Israel's independence. Our celebrations for this holiday were tempered, however, when we were confronted with news footage reminiscent of what we saw here in Israel on a nearly weekly basis about a dozen years ago. Only this time the carnage wasn't in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Haifa, but Boston, the very city where America's bid for independence began nearly 240 years ago.

Even for Israelis, who live amid the sectarian violence of the Middle East, the footage was particularly shocking. Once again, an international sporting event bringing people together from around the world in pursuit of peaceful competition has been marred by the politics of hatred, a reminder of our own ordeal during the Munich Olympics 40 years ago. And for this latest bombing to happen in America, which has always been for Israelis a symbol of peaceful coexistence between people, is particularly distressing.

We were heartened, however, to see the exemplary work of Boston's paramedics and emergency services personnel, who risked their own safety to treat the wounded, pushing aside thoughts of when yet another device might explode. And we were touched to see bystanders assisting the wounded, many of them strangers, in the aftermath of the bombings, just as Israelis did when the bombs went off here.

Our thoughts are with the people of Boston, and all Americans, in this time of sadness and uncertainty. And, like you, we find ourselves hoping that this tragedy is "only" the work of a lone lunatic, and not a larger movement of some hate group.

We have a personal connection with the head of Homeland Security for Massachusetts and Magen David Adom has offered to assist the Boston emergency medical response community in any way we can. This includes offering them additional training in responding to mass-casualty trauma events, a skill we lead the world in because of our own vast experience in coping with terrorism.

Our thoughts are with all Americans at this time. And just as the American community has always been there for Israel, we will assist our American colleagues in any way we can.

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We need to accept inequality

To begin: The country desperately needs to embrace an uncompromising elitism, this being simply the belief that the better is preferable to the worse. Somehow America has gotten this simple principle (if I may employ the Latin phrase) bass-ackward. In the things of civilization, we worship the lame, the halt, the dim-witted, and the proven unable. How smart is this?

In correction, I will first raise the voting age to thirty. The present practice of allowing children of eighteen to wield the ballot is transparent madness. The excessively young are callow, uninformed, and lacking experience of the things they affect with the votes. Hormonal turbulence and an eigtht-grade education—about what a high-school diploma is worth these days—do not recommend them as fit to stir the pots of governance. If you are parent to teenagers, you will see the unwisdom of letting our tender sprouts decide anything beyond their choice of godawful music.

When the Teen-Vote Amendment was being pondered, the argument was made that since eighteen years was sufficient to die in Vietnam, it was sufficient for suffrage. This is like saying that because a five-year-old can die in a traffic accident, he should have a driver’s license. Youth is a serviceable substitute for stupidity. We regularly outgrow youth and, occasionally, stupidity. We should give future voters the chance.

By the age of thirty, most people have experience of life as it is actually lived, perhaps of parenthood, of making a living and of the shocks the flesh is heir to. I grant that my laudable policy runs against the cult of brainless youth which is thought the apotheosis of democracy. Good. This opposition constitutes near-perfect proof of its advisability. As a rule, any idea that you cannot utter without losing your job is a good idea.

My second contribution to enlightened government will be to reinstate the literacy test as a requirement for voting. It is not evident why an inability to read qualifies one to influence policy regarding, war, schooling, and the intricacies of national finance. The situation is dire. In Detroit, for example, the rate of functional illiteracy has been measured at some fifty percent. If half of the population cannot read at all, most of the rest don’t read much. In most cases this will mean never having willingly read a book. I don’t want these running a country. Or a car wash.

The objection will be raised that to require literacy will be to disenfranchise various minorities. The solution is for the various minorities to learn to read.

However, in my humble (but infallible) opinion, the bare ability to read is hardly grounds for participation in government. For that matter, neither is the possession of an alleged college education. Survey after survey has shown that, with exceptions to be sure, college graduates do not know in what century the Civil War was fought or what countries engaged in World War One, cannot name the three departments of the federal government, list three cities in Mexico, or find Japan, or for that matter Africa, on an outline map of the world. The universities in America have become a profitable fraud, and should be prosecuted under the RICO act. (I will consider this happy prospect in a future column.)

My solution to this measureless ignorance will be to require potential voters to sit for the Graduate Record Exam and score modestly on it. Why is it thought that people who hardly know what they are voting about will do it wisely? I repeatedly see that about half of the public believes that Iraq was responsible for dropping those buildings in New York. Here we have categorical proof that half the population should not be allowed within rifle shot of a voting booth.

Actually, while spilling forth these my luminous policies, the thought comes that it might be reasonable to limit the franchise of those of IQ 130 or higher: roughly Mensa intelligence, the top two percent. This will outrage those of us who do not meet this standard. But why? If I need brain surgery, I want it done by someone who can do it better than I could do it myself. Why should this principle not apply to government? Do we not hire plumbers because they plumb better than we do?

Registration of voters by IQ strikes me as a good idea if only for its value as amusement. Think what it would do for campaigns. No longer would election be possible by orating endlessly of The American People, and The American Dream, twelve times per teleprompter screen. I love to imagine: “Yes, Mr. Bush. You are against evil, doubtless because it is a very short word. But what consequences do you see of de-Baathification in light of the doctrinal divides of the eighth century?”

Now, the US being a profoundly anti-intellectual society, my admirable plan will be objected to on grounds that Americans don’t want to be ruled by pointy-headed intellectuals at Harvard. Let us think about this. An intellectual is one who deals in ideas. He is not necessarily of high intelligence, nor necessarily right. The majority of the highly intelligent aren’t intellectuals, and they are not clustered in ivory towers. They are doctors, engineers, scientists, soldiers, and businessmen. They are geographically dispersed and politically all over the map. And they would be a hell of a lot harder to herd by the imbecile-ranchers and con men of Washington.

Of course the distaste for intellectuals means distaste only for those intellectuals with whom one disagrees. Conservatives love Rush Limbaugh and detest Rachel Madow, while liberals take exactly the opposite position. Both Limbaugh and Madow are intellectuals.

However, a major current in American political life is resentment of one’s superiors. It isn’t universal, but it’s there. Thus the whole edifice of fiat egalitarianism: the insistence that all children should go to college when most haven’t the brains, putting students in advanced-placement courses on grounds of race and sex instead of ability, the desire to abolish grades, the insistence that intelligence doesn’t exist and that all people and groups have the same amount of it. Me, I’m happy to let those smarter than I am invent things for me. If the world had waited for me to come up with Newtonian mechanics, it would still be waiting.

SOURCE

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How to Lie With Statistics: A Recent Example

A recent post by Chuck Marr on a Huffington Post blog provides a nice demonstration of how to use true facts to support a false claim. It contains a series of charts with information on taxes, mostly federal. One of them is labeled: "Bush Tax Cuts Heavily Tilted to the Top," and shows that the percentage increase in after-tax income as a result of the tax cuts was almost three times as large for taxpayers with incomes of more than a million dollars as for those with incomes of $40,000-$50,000.

What it does not mention, but what one can see from other charts on the page, is that high income taxpayers pay in federal taxes about three times as large a fraction of their income as middle income tax payers. So if the tax cuts reduced everyone's taxes by the same percentage, the result would have been almost exactly what the chart shows. Indeed, the author could have made his claim even more striking by pointing out that taxpayers near the bottom of the income distribution got nothing out of the tax cuts—and neglecting to mention that the reason was that they were not paying any taxes.

Another somewhat misleading chart shows that it is possible for a middle income family with relatively little investment income to pay a higher tax rate than a high income family whose income is mostly from investments. It is clear if you read carefully that the author is not claiming this situation is typical--an earlier chart shows that, on average, high income families pay a much higher rate than middle income families. But the author does not mention that his calculation ignores corporate income tax, which arguably should be attributed to the owners of the corporations—the people receiving investment income.

A final problem, not of dishonest presentation but of the difficulty in adequately analyzing the effect of taxes, is that all of the charts show who pays taxes, not who actually bears the tax burden. It is easy enough to describe situations where the result of taxing the income of group A is partly a reduction of their after tax income, partly an increase in their before tax income, ultimately paid by those who consume the goods or services they produce. To put it in conventional terminology, it is not clear to what extent a tax on A is passed on to B. That problem applies to corporate income taxes as well—the reason for the word "arguably" in the previous paragraph.

One other chart has a different sort of problem. It shows taxes as a fraction of GDP for a range of countries, with the U.S. near the bottom. The author does not mention that the federal government for the past few years has been going largely on borrowed money—at one point almost half of total expenditure—hence that the chart badly misrepresents the more important question, which is what fraction of national income each government spends.

SOURCE

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Fact-Free Crusades

Thomas Sowell

Amid all the heated, emotional advocacy of gun control, have you ever heard even one person present convincing hard evidence that tighter gun control laws have in fact reduced murders?
Think about all the states, communities within states, as well as foreign countries, that have either tight gun control laws or loose or non-existent gun control laws. With so many variations and so many sources of evidence available, surely there would be some compelling evidence somewhere if tighter gun control laws actually reduced the murder rate.

And if tighter gun control laws don't actually reduce the murder rate, then why are we being stampeded toward such laws after every shooting that gets media attention?

Have the media outlets that you follow ever even mentioned that some studies have produced evidence that murder rates tend to be higher in places with tight gun control laws?

The dirty little secret is that gun control laws do not actually control guns. They disarm law-abiding citizens, making them more vulnerable to criminals, who remain armed in disregard of such laws.

In England, armed crimes skyrocketed as legal gun ownership almost vanished under increasingly severe gun control laws in the late 20th century. (See the book "Guns and Violence" by Joyce Lee Malcolm). But gun control has become one of those fact-free crusades, based on assumptions, emotions and rhetoric.

What almost no one talks about is that guns are used to defend lives as well as to take lives. In fact, many of the horrific killings that we see in the media were brought to an end when someone else with a gun showed up and put a stop to the slaughter.

The Cato Institute estimates upwards of 100,000 defensive uses of guns per year. Preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves can cost far more lives than are lost in the shooting episodes that the media publicize. The lives saved by guns are no less precious, just because the media pay no attention to them.

Many people who have never fired a gun in their lives, and never faced life-threatening dangers, nevertheless feel qualified to impose legal restrictions that can be fatal to others. And politicians eager to "do something" that gets them publicity know that the votes of the ignorant and the gullible are still votes.

Virtually nothing that is being proposed in current gun control legislation is likely to reduce murder rates.

Restricting the magazine capacity available to law-abiding citizens will not restrict the magazine capacity of people who are not law-abiding citizens. Such restrictions just mean that the law-abiding citizen is likely to run out of ammunition first.

Someone would have to be an incredible sharpshooter to fend off three home invaders with just seven shots at moving targets. But seven is the magic number of bullets allowed in a magazine under New York State's new gun control laws.

People who support such laws seem to blithely assume that they are limiting the damage that can be done by criminals or the mentally ill -- as if criminals or mad men care about such laws.

Banning so-called "assault weapons" is a farce, as well as a fraud, because there is no concrete definition of an assault weapon. That is why so many guns have to be specified by name in such bans -- and the ones specified to be banned are typically no more dangerous than others that are not specified.

Some people may think that "assault weapons" means automatic weapons. But automatic weapons were banned decades ago. Banning ugly-looking "assault weapons" may have aesthetic benefits, but it does not reduce the dangers to human life in the slightest. You are just as dead when killed by a very plain-looking gun.

One of the dangerous inconsistencies of many, if not most, gun control crusaders is that those who are most zealous to get guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens are often not nearly as concerned about keeping violent criminals behind bars.

Leniency toward criminals has long been part of the pattern of gun control zealots on both sides of the Atlantic. When the insatiable desire to crack down on law-abiding citizens with guns is combined with an attitude of leniency toward criminals, it can hardly be surprising when tighter gun control laws are accompanied by rising rates of crime, including murders.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 17, 2013

The top 65 ways Israel is saving our planet

When 22-year-old Emmannuel Buso was pulled barely-alive from the rubble of a three-story building 10 days after an earthquake devastated the island of Haiti, the first faces he saw were those of the Israeli rescue workers who had flown across the world to save lives.

For Haji Edum, from Zanzibar, his life-saving moment came twice, when he was flown at age 15, and then again at 23, to Israel for open-heart surgery. He is just one of thousands of youngsters to receive emergency heart care from volunteer doctors in Israel.

War veterans suffering post-traumatic stress in the US; farmers in Senegal, India and China; young women in South Sudan; the wheelchair-bound in Africa; cardiac patients in Gaza and Iraq – all have received life-changing help and expertise from Israeli specialists.

Today we all know the story of Israel the startup nation. News of its technological prowess and incredible innovation has spread far and wide. But what many people don’t know is that Israel is exporting far more than just technology. It is also sharing its experience and skills in a whole range of humanitarian and environmental fields to help people everywhere live better, fuller and healthier lives.

Since Israel was founded in 1948, the country has set itself the goal of becoming a light unto the nations. In the early years of the state, despite austerity rationing, the Israeli government founded MASHAV, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Center for International Cooperation, as a vehicle to share Israel’s creative solutions with the rest of the developing world.

Israel remains true to that vision and every year, with little fanfare, and sometimes very little press attention, Israelis work long hours to find solutions and offer relief to some of the most pressing problems of our times.

From environmental breakthroughs that will help reduce greenhouse emissions, to technologies that can increase food production and save vital crops, to humanitarian aid missions in the wake of catastrophic natural disasters, Israelis are providing significant assistance.

To celebrate Israel’s 65th birthday, ISRAEL21c takes a look at some of the many creative and varied ways Israel is helping to enrich and improve our planet.

The list comes in no particular order, and is by no means exhaustive. There are hundreds, if not thousands, more worthy projects going on every day. If you’ve got a project worth hearing about, we’d be delighted if you include it in our comments section at the end.

1. An Israeli company is developing a toilet that needs no water, and generates its own power to turn solid waste (including toilet roll) into sterile and odorless fertilizer in 30 seconds. Liquid waste is sterilized and then used to flush the toilet. Developer Paulee CleanTec has been awarded a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which reports that about 80 percent of human waste goes into rivers and streams untreated, and 1.1 billion people don’t use a toilet.

2. Fifty years ago, Lake Victoria carp was a significant part of the diet of Ugandan villagers. But when Nile perch was introduced to the lake, it decimated the carp population. Villagers had neither the equipment nor the expertise to catch the huge perch, and symptoms of protein deficiency started becoming apparent in their children.

Prof. Berta Sivan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem came to the rescue with a multiyear project to help these African families. Using expertise developed in Israel, her project not only successfully spawned carp on Ugandan fish farms, but also provided training on how to dig and fill ponds and raise the small fish. Now local children have an abundant supply of protein.

3. About 50 percent of every grain and pulse harvest in the developing world is lost to pests and mold, but an Israeli scientist has developed a surprisingly simple and cheap way for African and Asian farmers to keep their grain market-fresh. International food technology consultant Prof. Shlomo Navarro invented huge bags, now marketed by US company GrainPro, which keep both water and air out. The bags are in use all over the developing world, including Africa and the Far East, and even in countries that don’t have diplomatic ties with Israel.

4. In January 2010, Israel won international praise for the speed and expertise with which it responded to a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti that killed 300,000 people, injured hundreds of thousands and laid waste to the poverty-stricken country.

A team of 240 Israeli doctors, nurses, rescue and relief workers arrived in Haiti just days after the quake, bringing medicines, communications and medical equipment. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) volunteers set up the country’s most advanced and well-equipped field hospital in the capital of Port-Au-Prince. Israeli search-and-rescue missions pulled survivors from the rubble, saving many Haitians, including a man trapped for 10 days.

The delegation included volunteers from IsraAID, the IDF, ZAKA, Magen David Adom (MADA), Tevel B’Tzedek, the Negev Institute, and Alyn Hospital. It was the largest Israeli civilian relief mission ever assembled, and was one of the biggest and most skilled on the island.

In the wake of the disaster, Israel continues to send aid and assistance, including educational projects, trauma programs, micro-financing, development and relief work, rebuilding of communities and schools, aid packages, empowerment for women, and medical assistance.

5. The invention of drip irrigation by Israeli Simcha Blass and its development by Netafim, and later Plastro and NaanDan Jain, has completely revolutionized agriculture across the world, enabling farmers to increase their yields with less water. Constantly upgraded Israeli drip-irrigation techniques are regularly shared with other countries through MASHAV, Israel’s Center for International Cooperation.

6. Tal-Ya Water Technologies has developed reusable plastic trays to collect dew from the air, reducing the water needed by crops or trees by up to 50 percent. The square serrated trays, made from non-PET recycled and recyclable plastic with UV filters and a limestone additive, surround each plant or tree. With overnight temperature change, dew forms on both surfaces of the Tal-Ya tray, which funnels the dew and condensation straight to the roots. If it rains, the trays – which are now on sale – heighten the effect of each millimeter of water 27 times over.

7. About 1.6 million children under the age of five die from untreated drinking water in developing nations every year. An Israeli company has developed a water purification system that delivers safe drinking water from almost any source, including contaminated water, seawater and even urine.

WaterSheer’s Sulis personal water purifier is a small 10-gram mouthpiece that attaches to the top of a water bottle. The company has also developed systems to treat large quantities of water.

Sulis has been used in Taiwan, Myanmar and Haiti, and will be part of contingency plans in case of disaster at the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.

8. Israel is building a model agricultural village in South Sudan to teach local farmers about Israeli agricultural methods and technologies to help the fledgling African nation thrive.

9. In plants in China, Italy and the United States, Israeli company Seambiotic is using algae to turn carbon dioxide emitted by power plants into fuel and nutraceuticals. The company’s algae ponds, which are nourished by power plant effluent and sunlight, generate 30 times more feedstock for biofuel than do crop alternatives. The algae are a good source of valuable nutraceuticals, especially popular in China and the East.

Seambiotic is also working with the US National Aviation and Space Administration (NASA) to develop a commercially feasible biofuel variety from algae that has a higher freezing point than biofuels from corn or sugarcane.

10. The lives of thousands of endangered animals in West and Central Africa are being saved thanks to the tireless efforts of Israeli law enforcement activist Ofir Drori, who founded the Last Great Ape Organization (LAGA) in Cameroon, the first wildlife law-enforcement NGO in Africa.

The organization helped propagate a zero-tolerance approach to illegal wildlife trafficking in Cameroon, which has resulted in hundreds of arrests and prosecutions. The model has been replicated throughout West and Central Africa in activities that go beyond nature conservation to the defense of human rights.

Much more HERE

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Healthcare for the Poor: An Alternative to Obamacare

The Affordable Care Act is expected to add up to 16 million more Medicaid enrollees and will significantly expand eligibility for families with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Initially, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of the newly eligible, newly enrolled populations and 95 percent of costs through 2019. However, hidden costs will strain state budgets, and states will still find their share unaffordable.

The Cost of Enrolling the Already Eligible

An estimated 10 million to 13 million uninsured people are already eligible for Medicaid—but not enrolled. When the individual mandate to obtain health coverage takes effect in 2014, many states will find the cost of their Medicaid programs higher as a result.

For example, a decade after the new law’s implementation, Texas Medicaid rolls are predicted by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services to rise by 2.4 million people. Of these, only 1.5 million enrollees will be newly eligible, so a significant share of the cost for the remaining 9 million will have to be borne by the state.[1]

Low Medicaid Provider Payments

On the average, reimbursements for Medicaid providers are only about 59 percent of what a private insurer would pay for the same service, but as shown below, it varies from state-to-state.[2]

* New York pays primary care physicians only about 29 percent of what private insurers pay for primary care.

* The comparable figure in New Jersey is 33 percent.

* California pays primary care providers 38 percent of what private insurers pay.

* Texas reimburses primary care physicians for about 55 percent of what private insurers pay.

Low provider reimbursement rates make it more difficult for Medicaid enrollees to find physicians willing to treat them. Initially, the federal government will bear the cost of raising Medicaid provider fees to Medicare levels—but only for two years, 2014 and 2015. Then the rates will fall back to their previous levels, or the states will bear much of the cost of keeping Medicaid provider fees at a level necessary to ensure enough physicians are willing to participate in the program.

Lower Payment to Safety Net Hospitals

Disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments are used to compensate hospitals that treat a disproportionate share of indigent and uninsured patients. The federal government distributes about $12 billion annually to offset part of the cost.

The ACA reduces DSH payments by about one-quarter, on average, through 2019. Beginning in 2018, annual reductions are about $5 billion per year. The federal government will initially deduct about three-quarters of hospitals’ historic allotment and then give back a portion of the funding reduction using complex formulas. The rationale is that as more patients have coverage, hospitals will have fewer uninsured patients. However, 23 million people will remain uninsured—some of whom may seek uncompensated care. States may have to bear some of the additional costs if their hospitals are to stay solvent.

Crowd Out of Private Insurance

Many of the newly insured under Medicaid will likely be those who previously had private coverage. Research dating back to the 1990s consistently confirms that when Medicaid eligibility is expanded, 50 percent to 75 percent of the newly enrolled are those who have dropped private coverage.[3]

A Better Solution: Give the States Control Over Medicaid

A good argument can be made for abolishing Medicaid. Given the freedom to spend the same money in other ways, state governments should be able to deliver more care and better care. Even if they decide to retain the basic structure of Medicaid, the states can implement a slew of reforms that will lower costs, improve quality and increase access to care.

The most straightforward solution is to give the states their share of Medicaid dollars with no strings attached except the requirement to spend the money on indigent care. The fairest allocation system is to let each state’s block grant reflect the proportion of the nationwide poverty population living in the state.

SOURCE

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The joy of working longer hours in the Industrial Revolution

There's an interesting piece over at Bloomberg talking about those longer working hours that turned up with the Industrial Revolution. You know, the ones where the peasantry had to be whipped off the fields and into the factories so that the filthy capitalists could exploit them:
First, working-class writers put a very different spin on the increase in working hours that accompanied industrialization. The autobiographies make clear that in pre- industrial Britain, there simply wasn’t enough work to go around. As a result, few people were fully employed throughout the year. This gave them leisure time, but it also left most families eking out an uncomfortable living on the margins. The lack of consistent employment also forced workers to stay in positions that were unsuitable or grossly exploitative.

That the people suffering under such exploitation thought it was a good thing does rather change what should be our view of said exploitation. And it's also not clear precisely who had the power here:
Higher levels of employment also helped change the balance of power between master and laborer. So long as jobs remained scarce, workers, by necessity, obeyed their employers. The price of dissent or disobedience was unemployment. With more jobs, such subservience became less and less necessary. In the booming new industrial towns, workers could, and did, walk out on employers over relatively minor matters, confident that finding more work wouldn’t be difficult.

Or, as I might put it, the only thing worse than being exploited by a capitalist factory owner is not being exploited by a capitalist factory owner.

I will admit thought that I'm always very wary of people giving us pre-industrial working hours. There's a terrible tendency to only include paid working hours as working hours. And of course in a rural, largely subsistence, economy paid working hours are indeed few and far between. But that doesn't mean that each day isn't full of unrelenting labour: there's still the potato patch to dig, the firewood to be collected, the pigs to run for acorns, the cow to milk and muck out and so on. Indeed, when we get back to feudal times working hours seem to be measured as only the work that was done for the feudal lord. Which is obviously nonsense: that's the work that was done to pay the rent and pay the rent only. Think it through: one source tells us that villeins had 70 days a year holiday. Seriously? An animal keeping peasant has 70 days off a year? What the heck happens to all the animals?

But back to the effect of the industrial revolution: did it actually improve the lives of those sucked into the factories or not? Was Marx correct on the immiseration or not?

One very useful number that I've seen recently (offline, so no link) is the difference between farmhand wages in the North and the South. In the 1830s, 1840s, Somerset and Dorset were almost untouched by the new industries: farmhand wages were of the order of 8 shillings a week. Up north the entire countryside was littered with cotton mills and whippet flange factories. Farmhand wages were 16 to 18 shillings a week. The farmers had to pay double the wages to stop their labour going off to exploit the capitalists in the factories.

I'm still not entirely sure that the industrial revolution did lead to longer working hours. Longer paid working hours, most certainly yes, but really not sure about the combination of paid and subsistence hours. On the other hand I am absolutely certain that the factories improved the living conditions of those who worked in them. And I don't think us moderns quite understand the misery of a subsistence peasant lifestyle: if we did we'd understand a great deal better why people flocked to those factories and mines as they did.

Of course, if any of our Marxist inclined confreres were minded to actually find out about why people did so all they've got to do is buy a ticket to China and go ask the people in the factories there. "So, why did you live a life of rural idiocy and destitution to earn five times the wages making iPads?" would seem to be a useful start to such an interrogation.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 16, 2013

Scandinavian names

I have always liked the sound of Scandinavian names. They seem somehow impressive and important. There is plenty of Norse ancestry among the English so maybe it is something to do with that. Here are four Scandinavian names you might know. Tell me what you think of them: Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

They are of course the names of the ABBA band members, now rather elderly people. I have always rather wondered why I have never heard criticism of ABBA from feminists. Both "Mamma Mia" and "Waterloo" recount how a woman is captivated by a man that she cannot give up -- surely the reverse of the feminist gospel. And in "Money, Money", the female singer aspires to marry a rich man! And "Dancing Queen" is a simple little ballad about a teenager who loves dancing. Again not quite a feminist priority. So at least the best known ABBA songs seem quite conservative to me.

Something to remind you below. Don't ogle the beautiful blonde Agnetha too much.







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An Air Force of wimps?

Why don't they just fire all the men and make it an all-woman force?

The Air Force more than other military services has jumped enthusiastically on the Obama administration’s campaign to socially engineer the military through politically correct programs and policies.

A case in point comes to Inside the Ring in an email from the U.S. Transportation Command, known as Transcom, an Air Force-dominated command. The email revealed that the command is holding “self-awareness” seminars for troops aimed at boosting their “emotional intelligence quotient,” or EQ.

The effort is not sitting well with some of the more warrior-oriented Air Force members who are concerned that the service is being transformed into a military version of Federal Express or UPS. One officer joked: “This is still the armed forces of the United States, is it not? Lord help us.”

According to the email, EQ seminars are part of Transcom’s strategy “to develop customer-focused professionals.”

“Each and every one of us is vital in transforming the command for the future, supporting those who count on us to deliver whatever they need on time, every time,” it says. “In order to maintain and retain great customer relationships, the EQ workshops help establish the necessary tools to do this and more.”

For those seeking better social skills, one upcoming EQ seminar, No. 401, is set for April 18 on “social awareness,” further described as: “Look outward to learn about and appreciate others. Pay attention to your surroundings.”

“EQ 401 explores body language, timing, greeting people by name and other skills to apply to your daily interactions,” the email says.

On April 25, the command will hold EQ 201 on self-awareness.

“An emotional journey, this seminar helps uncover the true essence of you,” the email says. “Facilitators provide a gateway to the inner truth and future path of your personal road map to your own emotional intelligence.”

Those interested were urged to contact Transcom’s Change Management Team.

Transcom spokesman Maj. Matthew Gregory said the EQ program is about communication and “trying to figure out what our customer needs.”

A former Pentagon official said that if Transcom is taking its people away from mission activities for this type of politically correct training, “the command is over strength and can afford cost-saving personnel cuts at this critical time.”

Other signs of political correctness included the Air Force’s removal in 2011 of a sign at storied Nellis Air Force Base that read “Home of the Fighter Pilot.”

The banner was removed over concerns it wasn’t “inclusive” and may have harmed the feelings of nonfighter pilots.

Also, late last year, the Air Combat Command went on one of the military’s more extensive searches to seize inappropriate materials of a sexual nature. The squadron-by-squadron shakedown came after a female sergeant filed a complaint alleging rampant harassment by superiors.

By mid-January, the command reported finding 17,790 offensive items 6,700 of which were of a personal nature stored on government computers.

“Of the remaining items,” the command said, “the majority of items were potentially offensive pictures, posters, calendars, magazines or graffiti located in common areas, offices and latrines. Identified items were documented and either removed or destroyed.”

SOURCE

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Snob Rule

America’s ruling class appears to believe that its mission is to subjugate and bring to heel those outside the club – which means you and me. This motley crew – who would never be caught dead jamming to something as déclassé as Mötley Crüe – has always held the rest of the country in contempt. But now that contempt is the basis of policy, and this simply cannot continue.

Big trucks. Country music. Any music not on vinyl. These are just some of the rest of America’s failings. The people who built the country, who fought for it, who unashamedly stand when the Flag is carried past …these people, are an embarrassment and their voices must be silenced so as not to interfere in the glorious works of the ruling class.

Understand that the ruling class is not simply composed of liberal Democrats, though the values (or lack of same) of these Socialist Lite movers and shakers predominate. The NYC-DC conservanerd contingent – the fussy David Frums and David Brooks – are equally horrified by the values, beliefs and preferences of Americans outside their area codes. We even see “conservative” politicians enlist too. You stay in Washington or New York or Los Angeles long enough and the pressure grows to allow yourself to be assimilated, to start looking down on other Americans.

These are the kinds of people who think they get a say in the size of my soft drink because they know what’s good for me. They’re somehow more concerned with my health than I am. They’re smarter than me. They’re smarter than you. They’re smarter than everyone who doesn’t think, feel and believe exactly like them. And, well, we’re just too dumb to live our lives without their benevolent dictates.

This notion sprouts in the insular communities of affluent, over-educated urban dwellers. It grows in the big name universities that tell their students they are the elite – and then releases them back into the world with a degree, yet somehow dumber than when they walked in. And it is encouraged by a media that confuses having access to an electronic podium with having mental and moral virtue.

The same people who brought us Solyndra think we should heed their demands for more power to combat non-existent global warning. The same people who brought us $16 trillion in debt think we should fork over more money to them. The same people who brought us 50 million Americans on food stamps think we should defer to their better judgment about how to run society.

These people have no right to lecture anyone on anything. They have an unbroken track record of failure.

Yet they do lecture, and worse, they legislate with the same smarmy condescension. Just about every issue today is best examined through the prism of pompous jerks trying to tell the rest of us how to live. At the center of all of them is the same vindictive drive to dominate regular Americans, to attack and mock our values, to break our spirit and will to resist.

Didn’t we have a revolution about this kind of nonsense a couple of hundred years ago? Thank God the patriots of the Revolution bitterly clung to their guns and their religion or we’d be as far down the sewer pipe as Britain.

They are less interested in effective policy than in effective persecution. These clowns know their gun-banning campaign won’t stop either the rare psycho shooting spree or the tragic, everyday nightmare of the inner cities’ gang-fueled bloodbath. But these policies aren’t intended for criminals; they are intended for us, to show us who is boss, to acclimate us to the concept that our fundamental rights are up for review, and that we better behave or they will be totally withdrawn.

It’s couched in a sort of Bizarro World morality where up is down, right is wrong. They tell us that if you want to keep your guns, you want children to die. This includes those of us who wore the uniform of this country or of a first responder agency and put our lives on the line to protect children while the ruling class posers sipped lattes, giggled at Jon Stewart’s mugging, and experimented with metrosexuality.

Why won’t the liberals talk about mental health, guarding schools or, heaven forbid, the carnage in the inner cities that their cronies have controlled for decades? Because resolving those issues won’t hurt us. Their goal isn’t to stop the violence – if they cared about violence you would be as able to walk down the streets of Detroit or Washington or any other big liberal city as you are the heavily guarded enclaves of the ruling class. Their goal is to beat us down, to break us, to leave us disarmed, docile and disheartened.

It’s more than just contempt. They hate us.

They hate our bourgeois values, like faith, family and patriotism. They hate how we don’t acknowledge their mental and moral superiority. Most of all, they hate our unwillingness to yield to their commands.

That’s why the policies we support are never merely unwise but are always portrayed as evidence of our unrepentant evil. Unhappy about illegal aliens flowing over the border? No, that couldn’t possibly be because of the social chaos illegals cause – not that the establishment would know anything about that. No, their only experience with illegal immigration is cheap labor cleaning their mansions and watching their kids. They aren’t ranchers in Arizona who get murdered by the guys bringing the liberals’ drugs north. They aren’t priced out of the manual labor market by folks who will work for under minimum wage under the table. They aren’t getting rear-ended by some illegal without car insurance.

No, it’s gotta be that we’re horrible racists. That’s the only possible answer.

The new liberal love affair with militant atheism is another manifestation of the same phenomenon. Just a few years ago, it would be considered unbelievably rude to disrespect someone’s religion in public – and it still is, at least to those of us who weren’t figuratively raised by wolves. But now trashing religion, particularly that of devout Christians and Jews, is a cottage industry. Of course, religions that respond to criticism with beheadings are mysteriously exempt.

You see this manifest in policies like the Obamacare mandates where the liberals seem to be going out of their way to ensure that believers are forced to pay homage to the great god Government and violate their consciences. What reasonable, rational motive exists to force people who do not share the liberals’ views of contraception to subsidize policies that they consider evil?

None, of course. Even Sandra Fluke could afford the few bucks a month to get her pills at her local Wal-Mart. Maybe that’s the rub – maybe the idea that a special snowflake like Ms. Fluke might be forced to mingle with the unclean masses is the real problem.

Now Washington state is suing some flower shop whose owner has religious objections to decorating a gay wedding. Apparently, Seattle is so bereft of orchid peddlers that it must force its citizens to violate their most sacred spiritual beliefs by privileging flower arrangements over faith.

Such floral fascism isn’t wise policy. It’s vindictiveness written into the law.

This is wrong and un-American. It’s also leading to divisions within the nation that we have not seen in generations. Liberals used to talk about “tolerance,” but as with “civil rights” their enthusiasm for it faded when their power grew. Tolerance means not messing with others who choose to live their lives differently. But now tolerance has given way to persecution.

The growing stridency of the liberal establishment keeps pushing and pushing, forcing regular Americans back. But eventually, they will force the rest of us back against the wall, and that’s when things will get ugly. They have a choice for our society – do we splinter or do we come together? If they want the latter, the first step is to stop being snobs.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

How much “civilization” does your tax money buy?: "Tax Day, April 15, is traditionally the time of year when liberals trot out that old Oliver Wendell Holmes chestnut: 'Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.' But what kind of 'civilization' are we paying for?" [And how much do we need to pay?]

Who’s afraid of natural rights?: "Among philosophers the idea of natural rights is not very popular. And that is putting it mildly. But the grounds for this resistance are not clear to me. Sometimes people object to natural rights for reasons reminiscent of Bentham and Burke. Rights, they say, must be precise. They must be specified concretely. But we cannot rationally determine what natural rights we have or what they entitle us to. Therefore, there are no natural rights. I find the objection puzzling."

Privatize the TVA: "Perhaps President Obama has been reading about Margaret Thatcher’s policy successes. He is apparently considering selling off the federal government’s Tennessee Valley Authority. This is a great idea. As this story notes, it would allow the struggling electric utility more flexibility in dealing with the many challenges it faces. While Democrats are often more socialistic on economic policy than Republicans ... This time around, Democratic President Obama may run into opposition from socialistic Republicans."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 15, 2013

How Thatcher changed this Soviet man's heart and mind

By Oleg Atbashian

It wasn't just Margaret Thatcher's steadfast economic and foreign policies that helped to defeat the Evil Empire and to bring down the Iron Curtain. She also changed hearts and minds — and this author, who grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, has a personal story to tell.

As many Soviet kids did in the 1970s and 1980s, I occasionally tuned my shortwave radio to Voice of America or the BBC Russian Service, hoping to hear their alternative take on world events and, if I was lucky, get the latest rock-music updates. One of the functions of the Iron Curtain was to keep us, the "builders of communism," blissfully unaware of the outside world. All our news had to be processed by the state-run media filter and approved by the formidable censorship apparatus.

In contrast, foreign Russian-language radio broadcasts, courtesy of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, gave us unfiltered news and commentary. These programs were to the Soviets then what Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are for many Americans today — a gasp of fresh air for some, enemy propaganda for others, and an object of demonization for the official state-run media.

Produced mostly by ex-Soviet exiles, these broadcasts never failed to satisfy my curiosity. The problem was that our government was mercilessly jamming their signal. I learned that this radio jamming was more costly than the actual broadcasting, but no expense was spared to maintain our ideological purity, paid for by our own tax rubles. Oh well, at least we knew the Motherland cared.

At times the broadcast quality was almost undecipherable: imagine trying to watch a movie while your neighbor mows his lawn. The noise occasionally trails off to the other end of the property, but mostly it hovers below your window, and you know that the lines you missed had to be the best.

A few times my friends and I tried to tape these programs simultaneously in our homes, so that later we could combine salvageable parts from two or more reels. That resulted in a much clearer compilation. We mostly did this for rock and roll programs, but political commentary would get into the mix as well — and it was just as fresh and exciting.

If we had ever been caught, we could have been easily expelled from our state-run schools (paid for by our tax rubles) and become marked for life as "politically unreliable." But we were too young and too reckless to think about it.

Whenever tuning to Voice of America or the BBC Russian Service produced nothing but the made-in-the-USSR rattling chatter, I would switch to English broadcasts. These were coming through clearly, mostly because the government couldn't jam every single frequency. They also helped me with my English studies.

Apart from music tapes, radio was my only source of authentic spoken English. The Iron Curtain made sure that even if a real English-speaking person were to visit my Ukrainian city, he or she would be supervised at all times by authorized personnel. Similarly, foreign travel for the "builders of communism" was out of the question: even if we could make it past the border alive, we would have no means to move around, since almost all of our earned income went to the government so it could provide us with our basic needs — such as, ensuring our ideological purity by jamming radio broadcasts for our own good.


This vintage Soviet "Radiola" looks exactly like the one described in my story. It was once owned by my parents and had the most beautiful, organic sound. The wooden frame may well have been made at some old-fashioned piano factory. It made every jazz band sound like Glenn Miller. This is how I also heard Thatcher's voice for the first time, while trying to listen to the so-called "enemy voices."

One night — it had to be late 1982, when Margaret Thatcher was running for her first re-election — my shortwave radio caught a BBC broadcast of the Iron Lady's campaign speech.

To be sure, all my prior knowledge about Margaret Thatcher was limited to her unflattering portrayal in the official Soviet media. She busted the unions, privatized the economy, and was a sworn enemy of the USSR and socialism in general. In fact, the very moniker — the Iron Lady — was given to her by the Soviet Army newspaper Red Star in 1976, before she even became prime minister. Later I also learned that she readily took it on as her own, telling parliamentary constituents a week later that she was proud to wear a "Red Star" evening gown and to serve as "the Iron Lady of the Western world."

Listening to Thatcher speak confirmed everything the Soviet media was reporting about her, and more. In a deep, powerful voice, she accused her socialist opponents of destroying the British economy through nationalization and presented the proof of how privatizing it again was bringing the economy back to life. The free markets worked as expected, making Britain strong again. The diseased socialist welfare state had to go, to be replaced by a healthy competitive society.

To the average consumer of the Soviet state-run media, that didn't make any sense. When exactly had Britain become a socialist welfare state? That part never passed the Soviet media filter. Our media had made it explicitly clear that all Western nations, especially Britain and the United States, were officially governed by the ideology of anti-communism and unfettered capitalism. Their ruling classes had established the ultimate police states in order to protect the sanctity of private property — a criminal misconception which allowed the few rich, cigar-smoking, top-hat-wearing fat cats to brutally exploit the powerless masses.

So if everything had always been in private hands, what exactly did Thatcher privatize? And where did the free, cradle-to-grave government services come from?

Gradually, the news sank in: if Britain was indeed a socialist state, then everything we were told about the outside world was a lie. And not just any lie — it was an inconceivably monstrous, colossal lie, which our Communist Party and the media thoroughly maintained, apparently, to prevent us from asking these logical questions: if the Brits also had free, cradle-to-grave entitlements like we did, then why were we still fighting the Cold War? And what was the purpose of the Iron Curtain? Was it to stop us from collectively surrendering to the Brits, so that their socialist government could establish the same welfare state on our territory — only with more freedom and prosperity minus the Communist Party?

The next logical question would be this: if Great Britain wasn't yet as socialist as the Soviet Union, then didn't it mean that whatever freedom, prosperity, and working economy it had left were directly related to having less socialism? And if less socialism meant a freer, more productive, and more prosperous nation, then wouldn't it be beneficial to have as little socialism as possible? Or perhaps — here's a scary thought — to just get rid of socialism altogether?

And wasn't it exactly what Margaret Thatcher was doing as a prime minister?

What started with me listening out of curiosity ended up with a sudden realization that she was right on all points. I instantly became Thatcher's fan. The experience was inspiring. I remember how on the following day in school I described that speech to my friends, argued the prime minister's points, and even attempted a voice impression, emphasizing the confident manner in which the Iron Lady spoke. Never before had I heard a speaker so full of conviction.

I then began to suspect that all the unorthodox things the Soviet reporters attributed to Ronald Reagan — his radical positions on the economy and fighting the Cold War — might be true as well. The same reporters earlier described Jimmy Carter as an evil imperialist warmonger, so I initially doubted their coverage of Reagan. What government official would ever advocate for a smaller government? It seemed too fantastic to be true. But this time the media got it right — which, by my newly discovered standards, made Reagan a good man and a wise leader. It's those whom the Soviet media praised that were the real trouble.

After I moved to the United States years later, I also discovered Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises. But Thatcher was one of the earliest prominent guideposts in my intellectual journey, for which I am forever grateful.

Unlike the current U.S. president, Thatcher didn't have a well-oiled propagandistic social media organization in the style of OFA. Nor did the "progressive" world media advance and reverberate her message; that free service is reserved for the political left only. For Thatcher, it was quite the opposite.

And yet she exerted great influence over people. She did it merely by being who she was: informed, unwavering in the face of adversity, brave in defending the truth, and confident in her belief that the free markets are a force for good, while socialism is a force for evil. A few Western leaders may have agreed with her in private, but they didn't have the courage to say it openly in the twisted moral climate brought on their countries by the false promise of socialism.

What Thatcher showed to these men is that when one has no fear of speaking the truth and possesses enough moral conviction to push back, miracles happen. Britain's resurrection as an economic powerhouse was one of them.

Her message came through despite all the hostile efforts to jam it around the world, shattering not just the Western establishment's media filters, but the Iron Curtain itself.

It still resonates; if only today's leaders could listen.

SOURCE

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The Great Grab Has Begun

An American Cyprus on the way

President Obama recently released his 2014 budget and, of course, everyone focused on the aspect of spending. In fact, it was almost like the magician who diverts your attention to their right hand while the trick is being set-up with their left hand.

Much to the credit of the mainstream media, they found the little item — capping IRAs — on page-18 of the budget, which is a very good source of revenue with an estimated $9 billion over the next decade.

Yet, unfortunately, the media has once again missed the important point. It’s not just IRAs, but also 401Ks, Roth IRAs, and perhaps even deferred compensation, municipal bonds, insurance policies, and annuities that will all be affected as evidenced by this excerpt from Obama’s budget: “Limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts.” This statement is so broad that it fully opens the door for governmental interpretation.

The mass media also focused on the fact that the cap was $3 million. Yet, once again, this is not exactly the case. The actual budget declares to “limit an individual’s total balance.....to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year.” Given the current artificially low interest rates, the number needed in order to achieve such a cash flow is $3 million.

However, if interest rates rise, as most of the world assumes will happen eventually, then the $3 million instantly becomes a lot less. And if hyperinflation hits, that $3 million could hypothetically be reduced to a mere pittance. (It’s all relative.)

The final unanswered question (and even unasked question) is as follows: If it is determined (sounds like a new official government department is needed — Obama job creation) that your lifetime savings of IRAs, 401Ks, Roth IRAs, municipal bonds, and even annuities, are all collectively over the government’s maximum amount, what happens? Are you required to liquidate and pay taxes? Or, does the government simply say, “Sorry, yours is mine, we need it, have a nice day.”

Didn’t the government say the exact same thing on April 5, 1933, the day FDR seized Americans’ gold? At that time, at least the gold holder received something in return, approximately $20 per ounce.

Yet, only a few weeks later, those same previous gold owners watched as gold was revalued at $35 per ounce — an approximate 50% haircut. Of course, the mass media accepts all of this, from 1933 to the present-day, as simply the government’s comprehensive understanding of the exact needs of the individual citizen. It starts with taxes and ends with seizure. But, of course, according to the mainstream media, it can’t happen here because we’re not that island country known as Cyprus — not yet, anyway.

SOURCE

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The Obama budget

Charles Krauthammer

The cards laid down by the White House are quite unimpressive. The 2014 budget is tax-and-spend as usual. The actual deficit reduction over a decade is a minuscule $0.6 trillion — out of a total spending of $46.5 trillion. And every penny of this tiny reduction comes from tax hikes. Nothing from spending cuts, which all end up getting spent elsewhere.

Moreover, where’s the compromise? The Obama budget calls for not only more spending than the GOP’s, but more than the Democratic Senate’s as well. For just fiscal 2014, it even contains $160 billion more spending, and $128 billion more deficit, than if the budget — that Obama purports to be cutting — were left untouched!

True, President Obama has finally put on the table, in writing, an entitlement reform. This is good. But the spin, mindlessly echoed in the mainstream media, that this is some cosmic breakthrough is comical.

First, the proposal — “chained CPI,” a change in the way inflation is measured — is very small. It reduces Social Security by a quarter of a penny on the dollar — a $2,000 check reduced by a five-dollar bill.

Second, the change is merely technical. The White House itself admits that the result is simply a more accurate measure of inflation. It’s not really cutting anything. It merely eliminates an unintended overpayment.

Finally, the president made it clear that he doesn’t like this reform at all. It’s merely a gift to Republicans. This is odd. Why should a technical correction be a political favor to anyone? Is getting things right not a favor to the nation?

What the budget is crying out for is some entitlement reform that goes beyond the bare-minimum CPI revision that just about every deficit commission of the last 15 years has recommended as an obvious gimme. The other obvious reform is to raise the retirement/eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to match longevity. These programs were meant to protect the elderly from destitution, not to subsidize almost one-third the adult life of every baby boomer.

Given the president’s distaste for even chained CPI, it’s hard to see him ever agreeing to a major reform on the retirement age. Nonetheless, the proposition deserves testing — through a major GOP concession on revenue.

By way of tax reform. The landmark 1986 Reagan-Tip O’Neill tax reform was revenue neutral. It closed tax loopholes and devoted the money to reduce tax rates. As I suggested last month, the GOP should offer Obama a major concession: a 50 percent solution in which only half the loophole money goes to reduce tax rates. The rest goes to the Treasury, to be spent or saved as Congress decides.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 14, 2013

Sidebar

I have added quite a few entries to the sidebar here in recent weeks. Those who have time to browse might find some new thoughts that they like.

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A Tale of ‘Government Investment’

As amateurs, the Wright brothers beat the taxpayer-funded brain trust in the race to flight

It was the early 20th century. America was in a race with the powers of the world to invent the first airplane. Much was at stake. Our leaders feared that the Germans, the British, and, if you can suspend your disbelief, the French might beat us to the punch, giving the winning country a huge advantage militarily and economically.

Who better to win the race for us, thought our leaders, than the best and brightest minds the government could buy? They chose Samuel Langley. You don’t know him, but in his day, Langley was a big deal. He had a big brain and lots of credentials. A renowned scientist and a professor of astronomy, he wrote books about aviation and was the head of the Smithsonian.

It was the kind of decision that well-intentioned bureaucrats would make throughout the century — and still make today. Give taxpayer money to the smartest guys in the room, the ones with lots of degrees. They’ll innovate and do good for us.

Langley did have some success with unmanned flight, using a catapult-like system to propel his machines into the air. On the basis of that limited success, the Department of War gave him $50,000 for two experiments, and he extracted a decent sum from the Smithsonian, too. That was real money back then. Today, bureaucrats wouldn’t stop to pick up $50,000 if it were lying on the street.

What did the citizens of the United States get for that “investment,” the kind we are making today in green energy? It was the Great Aerodrome, and on October 7, 1903, the aircraft developed by Langley’s team of experts was launched from a catapult on a houseboat in the Potomac River.

The crowds lined up, as did the press. As the aircraft accelerated and reached full speed, it was hurtled along a catapult toward a launch. A few scant seconds of sudden acceleration were followed by a sudden and shocking plunge into river. “It fell like a ton of mortar,” a reporter wrote.

The plane that couldn’t fly and the man flying it were somehow salvaged, and preparations were made for another flight. The project needed some tweaks, the experts told the world. On December 8, Langley and his team of brainiacs tried it again. This time, the airplane got caught up in the launching mechanism and dropped into the river.

Langley’s machine should have been called the Not So Great Aerodrome; it never got airborne. The media had a field day. “The Boston Herald suggested that Professor Langley ought to give up airplanes and try submarines,” Burt Folsom notes in a lecture in Hillsdale College’s series of online courses, “American Heritage.” The Brooklyn Eagle led its story with this quote from a now-forgotten congressman: “You tell Langley for me that the only thing he ever made fly was government money.”

The War Department, in its final report on the Langley project, concluded: “We are still far from the ultimate goal, and it would seem as if years of constant work and study by experts, together with the expenditure of thousands of dollars, would still be necessary before we can hope to produce an apparatus of practical utility on these lines.” Isn’t that just the kind of arrogance you’d expect from government bureaucrats? If their best minds can’t do it with our money, no one can.

On December 17, 1903, only nine days after Langley’s second failed experiment, two Ohio men did what the War Department, Langley, the Smithsonian, and all of that government investment could not. With $2,000 of their own money and little fanfare, the Wright brothers launched the first powered heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. From dunes four miles south of Kitty Hawk, N.C., the Wrights’ Flyer flew for 59 seconds, traveled 852 feet, and ushered in the era of modern aviation.

How did the Wright brothers succeed where Langley had failed? Langley and his band of experts were working on the wrong problem and thought more money would solve it. James Tobin in his book To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and The Great Race for Flight (2004) explained that they saw flight as a problem of power; the Wrights, as a problem of balance. That difference in perspective led to the development of two machines along very different paths: Langley’s, straight into the water and oblivion; the Wright brothers’, straight to the sky, and into history.

From the beginning of their work in aeronautics, the Wright brothers focused on developing a reliable method of pilot control. Their breakthrough was their conception of what is now called three-axis control, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and maintain its balance. This method became a standard in the industry and remains standard on fixed-wing aircraft.

How did they see what others couldn’t? By chance or fate, the Wright brothers had mechanical skills perfectly suited to their success in aviation, and insight that came from their years of experience in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. They understood that an unstable vehicle such as a flying machine could be controlled and balanced with practice. These were advantages that the government lacked, as did some of their fiercest competitors in the private sector, including Alexander Graham Bell.

That’s the thing about genius: It springs from the unlikeliest places.

The Wright brothers were also freed from the subsidy-induced waste that hinders many government-funded projects. Indeed, the limits on their financial resources actually helped them. They were compelled to spend wisely what little they had. As Milton Friedman once observed, few people spend other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own.

Since the Wright brothers couldn’t absorb the costs of repeated flight tests, they developed a wind tunnel to test aerodynamic designs. This saved them not only money but time. From those simulations they amassed data that they used to hone their aircraft designs. It proved easier to fix a problem on paper than to do what Langley did: rebuild planes that had no chance of flying.

Another (often overlooked) reason that using their own money gave the Wright brothers a competitive advantage: control. Indeed, they turned down investors, appreciating that when grantors give money, they usually attach conditions. All too often the course of development is altered to cater to the grantor’s expectations, even if they are dead wrong or just plain silly. Who dares bite the hand that feeds him? Many of the experiments the Wright brothers carried out might never have been green-lighted by a corporate or government bureaucracy.

Repeatedly, hobbyists and tinkerers beat big government and big companies when it comes to innovation. Small beats big, and people with less money and scantier resources come up with products and inventions that change industries — and the world. It was a young Bill Gates who challenged IBM’s lucrative mainframe business; the same holds true of the creators of Apple, Google, and Facebook.

As with so many great innovations in our own time, powered flight in America was propelled by amateurs. The Wright brothers found themselves in the flying business, writes Tobin, “in the sheer spirit of play, of hobbyists.”

Yet another advantage that they enjoyed was that they were interested in making a profit. To the inventor of the first manned flight would come riches, while the bicycle business, which had been a good one for them, was undergoing a consolidation. Profit margins were shrinking. The brothers eyed manned flight as a future source of profit.

Langley, on the other hand, was attempting to advance the public good. While men who, like Langley, make their living in academia and from government funding often mock the profit motive, it’s the world’s best-known mechanism for unleashing people’s capabilities for productivity, which lead to innovations and products that contribute to the public good.

Though the Wrights beat Langley and the Smithsonian, the race didn’t end there. Powerful interests vied for the patent to this revolutionary invention and, more important, for the credit for it. With Smithsonian approval, a well-known aviation expert modified Langley’s Aerodrome and in 1914 made some short flights designed to bypass the Wright brothers’ patent application and to vindicate the Smithsonian and its fearless leader, Samuel Langley.

That’s right. The Smithsonian’s brain trust couldn’t beat the bicycle-shop owners fair and square, so they used their power to steal the credit. And then they used their bully pulpit to rewrite history. In 1914, America’s most esteemed historical museum cooked the books and displayed the Smithsonian-funded Langley Aerodrome in its museum as the first manned aircraft heavier than air and capable of flight.

Orville Wright, who outlived his brother Wilbur, accused the Smithsonian of falsifying the historical record. So upset was he that he sent the 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer, the plane that made aviation history, to a science museum in . . . London.

But truth is a stubborn thing. And in 1942, after much embarrassment, the Smithsonian recanted its false claims about the Aerodrome. The British museum returned the Wright brothers’ historic Flyer to America, and the Smithsonian put it on display in their Arts and Industries Building on December 17, 1948, 45 years to the day after the aircraft’s only flights. A grand government deception was at last foiled by facts and fate.

SOURCE

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The totalitarianism of universal background checks

Finally, some sanity, and from a somewhat unexpected source. The ACLU is concerned about the civil liberties implications of the new Harry Reid Senate bill to establish so-called “universal background checks” for firearms purchases. The organization has tended toward silence on gun rights, but at least now it recognizes aspects of the problem with this terrible proposal.

Ever since Sandy Hook, the Obama administration and its progressive choir have demanded a new Assault Weapons Ban (AWB). Now it looks like that plan is toast. California Senator Dianne Feinstein blames gun owners and the NRA, and in a sense we should have expected all along that this proposal would get nowhere. Such a ban would mostly target “semi-automatic” rifles—which, despite all the hysterics, simply refers to any standard rifle that fires one round each time the trigger is pulled—that happen to have esthetic elements like the pistol grip that do not in fact add to the weapons’ lethality. This is the nonsensical standard used to ban some classes of weapons instrumentally identical to the ones banned in 1994.

The first AWB devastated the Democrats politically, and probably contributed as much as anything to the Republicans’ crushing victory in the 1994 congressional elections after forty years in the legislative minority. It also hurt Al Gore in his run against George W. Bush in 2000. The ban generally prohibited ordinary but scary looking rifles, which are used in about two percent of violent crimes committed with firearms. The law did not apply to, say, most of the weapons used at the Columbine school massacre in 1999. But it did interfere with Americans’ basic right to own what we can fairly call the modern version of the musket. Millions of Americans own such weapons like the AR-15, the most popular rifle and one targeted by the Democrats’ proposal for a new, robust AWB. These weapons are used for hunting, sport, and self-defense. They are not, despite all the misinformation to the contrary, repeating, military-style rifles.

In any event, the unpopularity of an AWB always doomed this proposal, especially under a Democratic president as distrusted on the right as Obama. The Republicans have the House and too many Democrats in the Senate are loyal to their gun-owning constituents.

So this whole time, the real threat to our firearms freedom has been these less debated, peripheral proposals—proposals that strip people the state deems “mentally ill” of the right to bear arms, proposals that violate the civil rights of released convicts, proposals to increase penalties for violations of current law, and, as disturbing as anything, proposals to institute “universal background checks.”

The gun restrictionists have pointed to polls showing more than 90% approval of such background checks, including among a vast majority of conservatives, Republicans, and gunowners. Liberty is always attacked on the margins, and most Americans don’t go to gun shows and so don’t see the big deal. Surely the state should know who is armed. Surely we don’t want people buying and selling guns freely.

But, in fact, universal background checks are arguably even more tyrannical than banning whole classes of weapons. Why should the government know who is armed? Why shouldn’t people be allowed to freely buy and sell private property without government permission? Half of Americans see background checks as the first step toward full registration then confiscation. Many fear that the new law would create records of these deals that would not immediately be destroyed, which could form databases or enable government in further nefarious purposes. The progressives have tended to regard any of these worries as paranoia, but it looks like the ACLU is now among the paranoid.

There is no need to discuss pure hypotheticals. There have been gun confiscations in the United States. After the Civil War, officials conducted confiscations to disarm American Indians and blacks became the target in the Jim Crow South. Confiscations followed Hurricane Katrina, along with the rest of the government’s martial law response.

Since many gun controllers openly say they want a total ban of certain kinds of firearms, or all firearms, why wouldn’t gunowners fear that registration will lead to confiscation? The U.S. president promised that he would not take away Americans’ rifles, then went ahead and proceeded to propose to do just that. Add all of this to the database growth, the warrantless wiretapping, the domestic surveillance drones, the frightening executive power grabs concerning detention, interrogation, and executions, and the overall militarization of policing that has unfolded thanks to the wars on drugs and terror

Of course, it should go without saying that when it comes to criminal enterprise, universal background checks are unenforceable. In a country with as many guns as there are people, criminals and the state will always get the weapons they want. Firearms are easier to manufacture than many illegal drugs, and we see how well the state has stamped those out. The rapid developments in 3-D printing makes it even crazier that we’d still be talking about gun control as anything but a threat to the liberty of the law abiding.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Every mass shooting over last 20 years has one thing in common … and it’s not guns: "Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and its not the weapons used. The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes." [Ban psychiatric drugs?]

The coming healthcare cuts for seniors and the disabled: "Senior citizens are major losers in health reform. More than half the cost of the reform will be paid for by $523 billion of cuts in Medicare spending over the next ten years. Although there are some new benefits for seniors (mainly new drug coverage), the costs exceed the benefits by a factor of more than ten to one."

Screwing the troops: "The delay and endless often senseless paperwork involved in getting anything is so great that it is easier for disabled vets just to do without or pay for it themselves one way or another. Remember, we are not talking welfare queens or entitlement parasites. These are guys badly hurt in Washington’s wars, brains scrambled by IEDs, legs still somewhere in Afghanistan. The vet’s only hope is to have smart, tenacious representation, preferably by a lawyer. Few have this. What it comes to is that, in practice, the benefits that are supposed to exist do not. This saves a lot of money. It doesn’t help the vet."

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 12, 2013

Another spurt of Leftist hate

Leftist hate towards conservatives is so common that I doubt that admirers of Lady Thatcher are much surprised or moved by the antics of young British Leftists in recent days. Their antics certainly need no explanation. Hate and abuse is what they do. It is so common it has become meaningless as information about anything in particular -- but a warning about what they would do if they could

Many time-honoured social conventions have been discarded in recent times in our headlong rush to demonstrate how modern and relaxed we have all become, but we still, more or less, stick to the maxim of “not speaking ill of the dead”. At least not in the immediate aftermath of their demise, when their families’ grief is still raw.

Yet news of the passing of the frail 87-year-old Baroness Thatcher, so confused that she had to be reminded almost daily that her husband was dead, was greeted with street parties in Brixton, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow. In south London, the scene of rioting in 1981 during her first term in office, the letters on the billboard outside a cinema were rearranged by masked vandals to read “Margaret Thatchers dead LOL [Laugh Out Loud]”. In Glasgow’s George Square, revellers drank champagne, wore party hats and sang, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead”. In Leeds, they shared a celebration cake. In Liverpool they gathered for a “death party”, and in Bristol joined forces under the banner, “May she never RIP”.

Cold comfort, then, for her children, neither of them saints, but still human beings trying to absorb the loss of their mother. We all have a mother, so we should all have enough empathy to imagine a little of what they are feeling. But apparently not.

Of course, Margaret Thatcher, as a three times prime minister whose economic, political and social legacy remains alive and hotly disputed to this day, wasn’t any old mother. And so some, mainly on the political fringes, appear to regard her as such a hate figure that the normal rules of engagement don’t apply.

The most mainstream voice to be heard in this mob was that of Radio 4 regular Mark Steel, who tweeted: “what a terrible shame – that it wasn’t 87 years earlier.” In the chorus was Socialist Worker – circulation under 8,000 and admittedly probably not on order at Mark or Carol Thatcher’s newsagents – with a front-page mock-up of her tombstone and the word “Rejoice” in capital letters. (The editor was too busy yesterday to take a call asking for an explanation of the image.)

And there too, inevitably, was George Galloway MP, never one to mince words when he might make headlines, with: “May she burn in the hellfires.” It is, as far as I can remember, the first time a recently deceased figure has been pushed so publicly and unceremoniously into the medieval pit since the death in 2002 of the Moors Murderess, Myra Hindley.

So has a line been crossed? There is an argument that says that, in life, Margaret Thatcher relished controversy, so why should we think she would object in death? As countless retired cabinet ministers, one-time opponents and commentators have remarked, she enjoyed a fight, adopted a presidential style that dispensed with distinctions between herself and her policies, wasn’t above flamboyantly rubbishing even close colleagues (notably Geoffrey Howe, albeit with disastrous consequences), and, in the words of her biographer the late Hugo Young, “cared little if people liked her”. Presumably in death she will care even less.

SOURCE

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Snarks from the American Left too

The legendary British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died, and the national media tried to pay their respects, not only for breaking Britain's "glass ceiling" with a "bruising" political style, but for transforming Britain and helping wind down the Cold War.

Still, Thatcher was a conservative and one of Ronald Reagan's staunchest friends in the world, so you can be sure these journalists were Thatcher-bashers when she was in power. Some of them were American anchors and reporters.

Let's start with a few quotes from long after she left 10 Downing Street. On Nov. 19, 1999, NBC reporter Jim Avila brought the liberal contempt in a story on a sex scandal in higher education: "Hillsdale College is supposed to be different: a liberal arts college where liberals are unwanted, where Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are regarded as heroic deep thinkers, prayer is encouraged and morality is taught alongside grammar."

That knock on "heroic deep thinkers" shows that Avila wrote the story before he showed up at Hillsdale. Reagan and Thatcher were great leaders and certainly great combatants in the war on ideas. But Hillsdale teaches Locke and Montesquieu and Alexis de Tocqueville. One wonders if TV reporters have heard of those philosophers before they mock conservative "deep thinkers." Obviously, if a Fox News reporter mocked college students viewing Obama and Bill Clinton as "heroic deep thinkers," they would be dismissed as street rabble who'd never opened a book.

In 2000, Time magazine and CBS News picked the most important people of the 20th century. On CBS on Christmas Eve, Bryant Gumbel and Dan Rather took turns suggesting Thatcher wasn't worthy. Gumbel began: "On the women's front, Eleanor Roosevelt is obviously a given. Do we agree with the Margaret Thatcher pick?" Rather replied: "I don't, to be perfectly honest."

Gumbel agreed: "I don't either." Rather demeaned her: "My guess, Margaret Thatcher is there, as much as any reason, because she is a woman."

I'm not making this up. Eleanor Roosevelt, best known as a First Lady and then as an esteemed lecturer of liberal nonsense, is to Gumbel and Rather "obviously a given" on the world stage, while Margaret Thatcher is a mere footnote, only worth mentioning because she was a woman. Neither took exception with the other American woman on the list of the century's leaders: radical leftist Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

During Thatcher's time in power, as she boldly argued for less socialism at home and less communism across Europe, American reporters often brought the same dismissive rhetoric to their Thatcher stories that they did to their Reagan stories. On May 3, 1989, NBC reporter Arthur Kent asserted, "Thatcher has ruthlessly applied her conservative solutions." NBC didn't report that Obama "ruthlessly applied his liberal solutions" when he forced Obamacare down America's throat in 2010.

On that same night, a foolish ABC reporter named John Laurence made Thatcher sound like a despot: "Mrs. Thatcher has proved to be an Iron Lady at home and abroad. ... And in the process, she converted 10 Downing Street into what's been described as an elective dictatorship."

That's what the Left says when conservatives win repeated landslides.

This tilt may have been established in part because when Mrs. Thatcher sat down for interviews with the American networks, she brought her usual firm approach. In her memoir "Reporting Live," CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl tells of interviewing Thatcher in the depths of Iran-Contra, pushing the prime minister to admit Reagan as a liar, feeling that she was "demolished" by Thatcher "seeming to question my love of country."

"What are you doing your level best to put the worst foot forward? Why? America is a great country," Thatcher insisted. "I beg of you, you should have as much faith in America as I have."

Stahl told of receiving bags full of negative mail. Thatcher was originally livid at Stahl's quite-typical battering, but changed her mind when the letters came in, like one telling Stahl "We applauded when Mrs. Thatcher chopped you into bits."

Our media devoted many more hours of weepy airtime to Princess Diana in 1997 than the spare minutes they'll offer in Thatcher's memory. They have already treated her as faded and forgotten. In 2009, when Michelle Obama came to London, NBC turned to an "expert" named Helen Kirwan-Taylor, who proclaimed Mrs. Obama is "absolutely terrifying for the British, because the British like their women subdued and doe-eyed, modest and soft-spoken, I mean, Princess Di. And here comes this woman who's in your face. Everything about her says 'I'm confident. I know what I want. I can do anything.'"

This quote can only be disseminated by people who know this is Thatcher-ignoring nonsense. Liberals claim to love strong women, but not when those women are conservatives.

SOURCE

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Are Right-wingers nicer than Left-wingers?

I don't mean in a Nazis vs Communists, Hitler vs Stalin, way. I mean in a moderate way: Conservative activists vs Labour activists, you might say.

It's difficult to imagine Conservative activists behaving like the people who celebrated Margaret Thatcher's death in Glasgow and Brixton. That's partly because it's hard to think of any Left-wing leader who had as powerful an effect on the country as she did.

But, still, between them, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan – with quite a lot of help from Edward Heath – led to a disastrous decline in British fortunes in the 1970s, as opposed to the Thatcher economic turnaround. But their deaths barely raised a whimper, let alone a distasteful celebration. Some Right-wingers will, presumably, feel a little private inner glow at the death of a properly wicked dictator, like Fidel Castro; but it's difficult to imagine them taking to the streets to celebrate with such public gusto.

Why is this? Part of the reason is that conservatives accept the unfairnesses and shortcomings of the world as an inevitable reflection of the human condition. In their understanding that public spending cannot be infinite, that there must be some realistic restraint on altruistic impulses, they are often thought to be ruthless and heartless.

That supposed heartlessness is, more often than not, pragmatism. Margaret Thatcher didn't actively want to put lots of miners out of work, as those who celebrated her death might think. What she saw, in an utterly pragmatic way, was that there was no economic sense in propping up a failing industry – she didn't close down the mines; she refused to go on subsidising them. If they had been making money, they would still be open today.

The knowledge that their pragmatic, economic good sense is often perceived as being heartless often makes conservatives rather diffident, self-effacing and apologetic – all nice characteristics (although, it must be said, Margaret Thatcher, for all her personal kindness and decency, didn't have these particular qualities in abundance).

It's the other way round on the Left. Because you are always advocating milk and honey for the oppressed – even if that milk and honey is economically unaffordable or impossible to get hold of – you are protected by a forcefield of advertised niceness. With your public goodness established, you can then allow yourself all the personal bile in the world – by, say, opening a bottle of champagne on the death of a frail, 87-year-old woman.

Which is better? Public niceness and personal nastiness, or public pragmatism and personal niceness?

SOURCE

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Take My Child...Please



A few years ago, Hillary wrote a book titled "It Takes a Village." That was a palatable notion. The family had the primary responsibility, but there was also community environmental impact as well. Hillary's observation was mostly reasonable, acceptable, and very politically correct.

But the gradual morphing of the Liberal Progressive message is suddenly obvious. MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry said...

"...break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities."

Where in the world would parents get the "private idea" that that child was actually theirs? How old fashioned and backward thinking!

What is more bothersome is that the notion, the "private idea", is easily dismissed by the single parent, especially when they are encouraged to do so by the likes of Melissa Harris-Perry. The child is of the community they are told, and hence becomes the community's responsibility. The notion is welcomed. Maybe the mother and the child are both somehow victims too. We await Melissa Harris-Perry to tell us.

From the New York Times..

"73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites."

And when the unwed woman gets pregnant, we are led to believe that it was due to a shortfall in women's healthcare, i.e. the availability of contraceptive products, that is the real culprit. So the community is responsible for providing "women's healthcare", i.e. contraception....but the community is also responsible for the child born out of wedlock.

Right Sandra Fluke?

There is also the troubling disconnect between the "pro choice" camp and the "communal child" camp. "It is my body", but it will be "your child". The choice is mine alone, but the child "belong(s) to the whole community". Asking a liberal to logically square these positions is futile.

As the child grows, the notion that "how they do in school is solely up to the teacher" is a natural extrapolation of the communal concept. And what else? Where they are and what they do in their spare time is also more of a community issue then a familial one.

If the child ends up in a "flash mob" certainly this is not poor decision making or an underperformance of parenting but a failure of the community.

Is there a clearer depiction of the liberal left's attitude on individual responsibility?

How convenient and how easily received and embraced is this notion that your mistake is now 'our' mistake. Spread the wealth and spread the responsibilities, or more appropriately the irresponsibilities.

Notice the precise word selection. The "private idea" is a bad idea...kind of like "private industry". "Private" is suggested a bad word. "Communal" and "collective" are offered as good words. Communal...communism. Collective responsibility....collectives. These terms are right out of the Marx-Engels dictionary.

These ideas, these concepts of shedding and then spreading responsibility are easily sold to a certain stratum of our population. It is born, pardon the analogy, in the same womb as "victimhood".

But the grand subliminal suggestion is that because the child is of the community, and the community is reliant upon the Federal Government, we can now read, "It takes a government" to raise a child. That is the actual mantra. Forward.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 11, 2013

Will Cyprus trigger inflation?

Now that bank deposits have been revealed as unsafe, will people rush to spend their money before they lose it? China has been on a worldwide buying spree for a few years now. They don't trust the value of all those greenbacks they hold and want to exchange them for more tangible things. Maybe they know something.

When people and institutions stop spending -- as has happened in recent years -- economists call it "a collapse in the velocity of circulation of money". But if people suddenly do the opposite and start to spend up big time that will bid up the prices of everything -- which will also bring about destruction of the value of savings. So you can only win by getting in early -- JR

The balance sheet of the bank in which you deposit/lend your hard-earned savings should always be a matter of keen interest to you. Any scheme that supposedly de-risks deposits without truly reflecting the cost of removing such risks is just allowing them to accumulate to unsustainable levels - with predictable consequences as we have seen in Cyprus.

I do believe some good will come of the events in Cyprus. Middle class savers have had their eyes opened and are now being forced to pay attention to:

1) bank balance sheets - deposit insurance schemes are a global fiction which, in part, have allowed modern banks to become the highly leveraged, opaque, risk agglomerating machines that they are;

2) alternatives to bank deposits as capital preservation tools with consequences for the velocity of money and inflation; and

3) the risk of outright wealth confiscation and sudden capital controls as the new in extremis method of financing bankrupt states.

There has been much discussion about the collapse of the velocity of money since 2008. Despite certain reservations that the concept of the velocity of money may be simply an accounting identity with no real existence outside of economics textbooks, there has certainly been an increased preference on the part of the middle class to hold money balances with the idea that deposits at banks, although they generate meagre returns, will not generate nominal losses.

That fiction is being stripped away. Middle class wealth is the only the source of funds to bail out the insolvent state and financial sectors and what remains of that capital is largely held in bank deposits and pension plans. To date, it has been sufficient to "appropriate" this wealth slowly via negative real interest rates, but as events move progressively more swiftly in the bankrupt developed world, the well proven gradual process appears to be failing to yield the requisite funds - hence the transition to bail-ins and outright deposit confiscation. A steady 5-6% a year real interest rate tax is not sufficient when 30% or more is required overnight.

Where such confiscations are imposed, capital controls will not be far behind in order to prevent any remaining middle class wealth from fleeing, worsening state and financial sector solvency further and depriving the political class of future emergency funds. Will the next stage of the developed world financial crisis witness confiscatory bail-in schemes followed by severe clampdowns on all ways to get capital to safe harbours?

This leads me to my point on the velocity of money. If bank deposits are finally revealed to be vastly more risky than the 1-2% nominal interest rates they provide and capital flight is going to be progressively more difficult, then perhaps we are about to see an increase in the velocity of money, whereby middle class capital rotates into real assets outside of the financial system - passive, un-leveraged hard asset investments with reliable cash generating capacity where possible.

Think of the growing interest in investing in farmland and other productive assets as examples. Time will tell, but we may look back on the events in Cyprus as the catalyst for an upswing in headline rates of inflation - at least in real assets. Ask yourself if a physical gold holding is now really more risky than a European bank deposit and the consequences this may have on nominal real asset prices?

SOURCE

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In Tribute To The Iron Lady: The 25 Greatest Quotes From Margaret Thatcher



If we had more leaders with Margaret Thatcher's heart, courage and wisdom, this would be a different, better world. As you read these quotes from one of the towering figures of the 20th century, you'll see why.

25) "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t."

24) "I too have a certain idea of America. Moreover, I would not feel entitled to say that of any other country, except my own. This is not just sentiment, though I always feel ten years younger – despite the jet-lag – when I set foot on American soil: there is something so positive, generous, and open about the people – and everything actually works. I also feel, though, that I have in a sense a share of America."

23) "They’ve got the usual Socialist disease — they’ve run out of other people’s money."

22) "My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police."

21) "If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage."

20) "Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper."

19) "I never hugged him, I bombed him." -- Thatcher on dictator, Muammar Gaddafi

18) "I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left."

17) "It is always important in matters of high politics to know what you do not know. Those who think that they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge."

16) "I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand 'I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!' or 'I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!' 'I am homeless, the Government must house me!' and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."

15) "The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom."

14) "A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country's flag."

13) "Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians."

12) "The defence budget is one of the very few elements of public expenditure that can truly be described as essential. This point was well-made by a robust Labour Defence Minister, Denis (Now Lord) Healey, many years ago: ‘Once we have cut expenditure to the extent where our security is imperiled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.’"

11) "...The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone."

10) "Whether manufactured by black, white, brown or yellow hands, a widget remains a widget – and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be."

9) "To be free is better than to be unfree – always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect."

8) "During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it."

7) "There is much to be said for trying to improve some disadvantaged people’s lot. There is nothing to be said for trying to create heaven on earth."

6) "Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag."

5) "It is one of the great weaknesses of reasonable men and women that they imagine that projects which fly in the face of commonsense are not serious or being seriously undertaken."

4) "...Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts, and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world’s population and defending it for most of the rest."

3) "Oh, but you know, you do not achieve anything without trouble, ever."

2) "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it."

1) "Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story."

SOURCE

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'Proportional' Response?

Thomas Sowell

Since when has it been considered smart to tell your enemies what your plans are?

Yet there on the front page of the April 8th New York Times was a story about how unnamed "American officials" were planning a "proportional" response to any North Korean attack. This was spelled in an example: If the North Koreans "shell a South Korean island that had military installations" then the South Koreans would retaliate with "a barrage of artillery of similar intensity."

Whatever the merits or demerits of such a plan, what conceivable purpose can be served by telling the North Koreans in advance that they need fear nothing beyond a tit for tat? All that does is lower the prospective cost of aggression.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, should we have simply gone over and bombed a harbor in Japan? Does anyone think that this response would have stopped Japanese aggression? Or stop other nations from taking shots at the United States, when the price was a lot lower than facing massive retaliation?

Back before the clever new notion of "proportional" response became the vogue, our response to Pearl Harbor was ultimately Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And Japan has not attacked or even threatened anybody since then. Nor has any war broken out anywhere that is at all comparable with World War II.

Which policy is better? There was a time when we followed the ancient adage "By their fruits ye shall know them." The track record of massive retaliation easily beats that of the more sophisticated-sounding proportional response.

Back in ancient times, when Carthage attacked Rome, the Romans did not respond "proportionally." They wiped Carthage off the face of the earth. That may have had something to do with the centuries of what was called the Pax Romano -- the Roman peace.

When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, the British simply sent troops to take the islands back -- despite American efforts to dissuade Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from doing even that.

For more than a century since the British settled in the Falkland Islands, Argentina had not dared to invade them. Why?

Because, until recent times, an Argentine attack on a British settlement would be risking not only a British counterattack there, but the danger of a major British attack on Argentina itself. That could mean leaving Buenos Aires in ruins.

Today, Argentina's government is again making threatening noises about the Falkland Islands. Why not? The most the Argentines have to fear is a "proportional" response to aggression -- and the Obama administration has already urged "negotiations" instead of even that. When threats are rewarded, why not make threats, when there are few dangers to fear?

Can you think of any war prior to Iraq and Afghanistan where the United States announced to the world when it planned to pull its troops out? What has this accomplished? "By their fruits ye shall know them." What have been the fruits?

First of all, this constant talk in Washington about not only pulling out, but announcing in advance what their pullout timetable was, meant that Iraqi political leaders knew that a powerful Iran was on their border permanently, while Washington was a long way away and intended to stay away.

Should we be surprised that the Iraqi government has increasingly come to pay more attention to what Iran wants than to what Washington wants? Once more, vast numbers of American lives have been sacrificed winning victories on the battlefield that the politicians in Washington then frittered away and turned into defeat politically.

What about other countries around the world who are watching what the American government is doing? Many have to decide whether they want to cooperate with the United States, and risk the wrath of our enemies, or cooperate with our enemies and risk nothing.

There is no need to respond to a North Korean artillery barrage by wiping North Korea off the map. But there is also no need to reassure the North Koreans in advance that we won't.

What announcing the doctrine of "proportional" response does is lower the price of aggression. Why would we want to do that?

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 10, 2013

The Moral Foundations of Society

In November 1994, Lady Thatcher delivered the concluding lecture in Hillsdale Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar, "God and Man: Perspectives on Christianity in the 20th Century" before an audience of 2,500 students, faculty, and guests. In an edited version of that lecture, she examines how the Judeo-Christian tradition has provided the moral foundations of America and other nations in the West and contrasts their experience with that of the former Soviet Union.

The Moral Foundations of the American Founding

History has taught us that freedom cannot long survive unless it is based on moral foundations. The American founding bears ample witness to this fact. America has become the most powerful nation in history, yet she uses her power not for territorial expansion but to perpetuate freedom and justice throughout the world.

For over two centuries, Americans have held fast to their belief in freedom for all men-a belief that springs from their spiritual heritage. John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote in 1789, "Our Constitution was designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." That was an astonishing thing to say, but it was true.

What kind of people built America and thus prompted Adams to make such a statement? Sadly, too many people, especially young people, have a hard time answering that question. They know little of their own history (This is also true in Great Britain.) But America's is a very distinguished history, nonetheless, and it has important lessons to teach us regarding the necessity of moral foundations.

John Winthrop, who led the Great Migration to America in the early 17th century and who helped found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared, "We shall be as a City upon a Hill." On the voyage to the New World, he told the members of his company that they must rise to their responsibilities and learn to live as God intended men should live: in charity, love, and cooperation with one another. Most of the early founders affirmed the colonists were infused with the same spirit, and they tried to live in accord with a Biblical ethic. They felt they weren't able to do so in Great Britain or elsewhere in Europe. Some of them were Protestant, and some were Catholic; it didn't matter. What mattered was that they did not feel they had the liberty to worship freely and, therefore, to live freely, at home. With enormous courage, the first American colonists set out on a perilous journey to an unknown land-without government subsidies and not in order to amass fortunes but to fulfill their faith.

Christianity is based on the belief in a single God as evolved from Judaism. Most important of all, the faith of America's founders affirmed the sanctity of each individual. Every human life-man or woman, child or adult, commoner or aristocrat, rich or poor-was equal in the eyes of the Lord. It also affirmed the responsibility of each individual.

This was not a faith that allowed people to do whatever they wished, regardless of the consequences. The Ten Commandments, the injunction of Moses ("Look after your neighbor as yourself"), the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule made Americans feel precious-and also accountable-for the way in which they used their God-given talents. Thus they shared a deep sense of obligation to one another. And, as the years passed, they not only formed strong communities but devised laws that would protect individual freedom-laws that would eventually be enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

Freedom with Responsibility

Great Britain, which shares much of her history in common with America, has also derived strength from its moral foundations, especially since the 18th century when freedom gradually began to spread throughout her socie!y Many people were greatly influenced by the sermons of John Wesley (1703-1791), who took the Biblical ethic to the people in a way which the institutional church itself had not done previously.

But we in the West must also recognize our debt to other cultures. In the pre-Christian era, for example, the ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had much to contribute to our understanding of such concepts as truth, goodness, and virtue. They knew full well that responsibility was the price of freedom. Yet it is doubtful whether truth, goodness, and virtue founded on reason alone would have endured in the same way as they did in the West, where they were based upon a Biblical ethic.

Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote tellingly of the collapse of Athens, which was the birthplace of democracy. He judged that, in the end, more than they wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they lost everything-security, comfort, and freedom. This was because they wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then, that they ceased to be free. In the modern world, we should recall the Athenians' dire fate whenever we confront demands for increased state paternalism.

To cite a more recent lesson in the importance of moral foundations, we should listen to Czech President Vaclav Havel, who suffered grievously for speaking up for freedom when his nation was still under the thumb of communism. He has observed, "In everyone there is some longing for humanity's rightful dignity, for moral integrity, and for a sense that transcends the world of existence." His words suggest that in spite of all the dread terrors of communism, it could not crush the religious fervor of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

So long as freedom, that is, freedom with responsibility, is grounded in morality and religion, it will last far longer than the kind that is grounded only in abstract, philosophical notions. Of course, many foes of morality and religion have attempted to argue that new scientific discoveries make belief in God obsolete, but what they actually demonstrate is the remarkable and unique nature of man and the universe. It is hard not to believe that these gifts were given by a divine Creator, who alone can unlock the secrets of existence.

Societies Without Moral Foundations

The most important problems we have to tackle today are problems, ultimately, having to do with the moral foundations of society There are people who eagerly accept their own freedom but do not respect the freedom of others-they, like the Athenians, want freedom from responsibility. But if they accept freedom for themselves, they must respect the freedom of others. If they expect to go about their business unhindered and to be protected from violence, they must not hinder the business of or do violence to others.

They would do well to look at what has happened in societies without moral foundations. Accepting no laws but the laws of force, these societies have been ruled by totalitarian ideologies like Nazism, fascism, and communism, which do not spring from the general populace, but are imposed on it by intellectual elites.

It was two members of such an elite, Marx and Lenin, who conceived of "dialectical materialism," the basic doctrine of communism. It robs people of all freedom-from freedom of worship to freedom of ownership. Marx and Lenin desired to substitute their will not only for all individual will but for God's will. They wanted to plan everything; in short, they wanted to become gods. Theirs was a breathtakingly arrogant creed, and it denied above all else the sanctity of human life.

The 19th century French economist and philosopher Frederic Bastiat once warned against this creed. He questioned those who, "though they are made of the same human clay as the rest of us, think they can take away all our freedoms and exercise them on our behalf." He would have been appalled but not surprised that the communists of the 20th century took away the freedom of millions of individuals, starting with the freedom to worship. The communists viewed religion as "the opiate of the people." They seized Bibles as well as all other private property at gun point and murdered at least 10 million souls in the process.

Thus 20th century Russia entered into the greatest experiment in government and atheism the world had ever seen, just as America several centuries earlier had entered into the world's greatest experiment in freedom and faith.

Communism denied all that the Judeo-Christian tradition taught about individual worth, human dignity, and moral responsibility. It was not surprising that it collapsed after a relatively brief existence. It could not survive more than a few generations because it denied human nature, which is fundamentally moral and spiritual. (It is true that no one predicted the collapse would come so quickly and so easily. In retrospect, we know that this was due in large measure to the firmness of President Ronald Reagan who said, in effect, to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, "Do not try to beat us militarily, and do not think that you can extend your creed to the rest of the world by force.")

The West began to fight the mora! battle against communism in earnest in the 1980s, and it was our resolve-combined with the spiritual strength of the people suffering under the system who finally said, "Enough!"-that helped restore freedom in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union-the freedom to worship, speak, associate, vote, establish political parties, start businesses, own property, and much more. If communism had been a creed with moral foundations, it might have survived, but it was not, and it simply could not sustain itself in a world that had such shining examples of freedom, namely, America and Great Britain.

The Moral Foundations of Capitalism

It is important to understand that the moral foundations of a society do not extend only to its political system; they must extend to its economic system as well. America's commitment to capitalism is unquestionably the best example of this principle. Capitalism is not, contrary to what those on the Left have tried to argue, an amoral system based on selfishness, greed, and exploitation. It is a moral system based on a Biblical ethic. There is no other comparable system that has raised the standard of living of millions of people, created vast new wealth and resources, or inspired so many beneficial innovations and technologies.

The wonderful thing about capitalism is that it does not discriminate against the poor, as has been so often charged; indeed, it is the only economic system that raises the poor out of poverty. Capitalism also allows nations that are not rich in natural resources to prosper. If resources were the key to wealth, the richest country in the world would be Russia, because it has abundant supplies of everything from oil, gas, platinum, gold, silver, aluminum, and copper to timber, water, wildlife, and fertile soil.

Why isn't Russia the wealthiest country in the world? Why aren't other resource-rich countries in the Third World at the top of the list? It is because their governments deny citizens the liberty to use their God-given talents. Man's greatest resource is himself, but he must be free to use that resource.

In his recent encyclical, Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul I1 addressed this issue. He wrote that the collapse of communism is not merely to be considered as a "technical problem." It is a consequence of the violation of human rights. He specifically referred to such human rights as the right to private initiative, to own property, and to act in the marketplace. Remember the "Parable of the Talents" in the New Testament? Christ exhorts us to be the best we can be by developing our skills and abilities, by succeeding in all our tasks and endeavors. What better description can there be of capitalism? In creating new products, new services, and new jobs, we create a vibrant community of work. And that community of work serves as the basis of peace and good will among all men.

The Pope also acknowledged that capitalism encourages important virtues, like diligence, industriousness, prudence, reliability, fidelity, conscientiousness, and a tendency to save in order to invest in the future. It is not material goods but all of these great virtues, exhibited by individuals working together, that constitute what we call the "marketplace."

The Moral Foundations of the Law

Freedom, whether it is the freedom of the marketplace or any other kind, must exist within the framework of law. 0thenvise it means only freedom for the strong to oppress the weak. Whenever I visit the former Soviet Union, I stress this point with students, scholars, politicians, and businessmen-in short, with everyone I meet. Over and over again, I repeat: Freedom must be informed by the principle of justice in order to make it work between people. A system of laws based on solid moral foundations must regulate the entire life of a nation.

But this is an extremely difficult point to get across to people with little or no experience with laws except those based on force. The concept of justice is entirely foreign to communism. So, too, is the concept of equality. For over seventy years, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had no system of common law. There were only the arbitrary and often contradictory dictates of the Communist Party. There was no independent judiciary There was no such thing as truth in the communist system.

And what is freedom without truth? I have been a scientist, a lawyer, and a politician, and from my own experience I can testify that it is nothing. The third century Roman jurist Julius Paulus said, "What is right is not derived from the rule, but the rule arises from our knowledge of what is right." In other words, the law is founded on what we believe to be true and just. It has moral foundations. Once again, it is important to note that the free societies of America and Great Britain derive such foundations from a Biblical ethic.

The Moral Foundations of Democracy

Democracy is never mentioned in the Bible. When people are gathered together, whether as families, communities or nations, their purpose is not to ascertain the will of the majority, but the will of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, I am an enthusiast of democracy because it is about more than the will of the majority. If it were only about the will of the majority, it would be the right of the majority to oppress the minority. The American Declaration of Independence and Constitution make it clear that this is not the case. There are certain rights which are human rights and which no government can displace. And when it comes to how you Americans exercise your rights under democracy, your hearts seem to be touched by something greater than yourselves. Your role in democracy does not end when you cast your vote in an election. It applies daily; the standards and values that are the moral foundations of society are also the foundations of your lives.

Democracy is essential to preserving freedom. As Lord Acton reminded us, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." If no individual can be trusted with power indefinitely, it is even more true that no government can be. It has to be checked, and the best way of doing so is through the will of the majority, bearing in mind that this will can never be a substitute for individual human rights.

I am often asked whether I think there will be a single international democracy, known as a "new world order." Though many of us may yearn for one, I do not believe it will ever arrive. We are misleading ourselves about human nature when we say, "Surely we're too civilized, too reasonable, ever to go to war again," or, "We can rely on our governments to get together and reconcile our differences." Tyrants are not moved by idealism. They are moved by naked ambition. Idealism did not stop Hitler; it did not stop Stalin. Our best hope as sovereign nations is to maintain strong defenses. Indeed, that has been one of the most important moral as well as geopolitical lessons of the 20th century. Dictators are encouraged by weakness; they are stopped by strength. By strength, of course, I do not merely mean military might but the resolve to use that might against evil.

The West did show sufficient resolve against Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. But we failed bitterly in Bosnia. In this case, instead of showing resolve, we preferred "diplomacy" and "consensus." As a result, a quarter of a million people were massacred. This was a horror that I, for one, never expected to see again in my lifetime. But it happened. Who knows what tragedies the future holds if we do not learn from the repeated lessons of histoy? The price of freedom is still, and always will be, eternal vigilance.

Free societies demand more care and devotion than any others. They are, moreover, the only societies with moral foundations, and those foundations are evident in their political, economic, legal, cultural, and, most importantly, spiritual life.

We who are living in the West today are fortunate. Freedom has been bequeathed to us. We have not had to carve it out of nothing; we have not had to pay for it with our lives. Others before us have done so. But it would be a grave mistake to think that freedom requires nothing of us. Each of us has to earn freedom anew in order to possess it. We do so not just for our own sake, but for the sake of our children, so that they may build a better future that will sustain over the wider world the responsibilities and blessings of freedom.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 9, 2013

In memoriam

It is one of the ironies of nature that Margaret Thatcher never inspired great affection despite having done more for Britain and the world than almost anyone else in modern times. She showed that it is possible to break the ratchet of socialism and in so doing made government ownership of business an idea whose time had gone. She will be remembered.

And she will be a permanent rebuke to feminist madness. Britain's first female Prime Minister was not a feminist yet was hugely influential. Had feminists truly been advocates for women they would have embraced her as their icon and beacon of hope. In fact they despised her and she ignored them. She was a real woman who loved her children to distraction and derived much of her strength and assurance from the unfailing support of her devoted husband. No wonder feminists hate her.

There are some gracious tributes to her (as well as some mindless hate from British Leftists) here




How it should be

Americans who have been put through the wringer by the TSA when they travel by air might like to reflect on the following report from a New Zealand mother (and her husband) arriving home after a trip overseas with her 2-year old daughter (Hannah) in her arms.
We landed home in Queenstown to a cold but sunny day with Daylight Saving on its last day. Having Hannah in our arms always gets us through customs quickly as security sends us through the express line and we were greeted by customs with a smile, after reading our arrival card she said "welcome home".

Wouldn't we all like to be treated like that by officials? I think it is arguable that New Zealand is the last outpost of civilization. Maybe there's some remnant of it in small-town America. My favorite New Zealand story is here.

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Obama double standards again

Some media types these days don’t like “Bible thumping.” But there are times when, as the author of Cultural Literacy, Prof. E. D. Hirsch noted, the Bible can be a useful communications tool. Let’s take that Jesus phrase, “swallow camels while straining at gnats.” That’s a pretty succinct way of describing our all-too-human tendency to commit huge mistakes in judgment while getting choked up on lesser things.

Take the current controversy over sequestration. Our colleague, Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, notes that the Obama administration is releasing prisoners who have entered the U.S. illegally. But this Obama administration wants to deport a family of German refugees who are living a quiet and godly life in Tennessee.

Swallowing camels—releasing actual lawbreakers—straining at gnats—trying to harass harmless Christian parents and kids. Nothing so well describes the absurdity of government action under the Obama administration. The Romeike family (roh-MIKE-uh) fled Germany and sought asylum in the U.S. in 2008. This is because they are not allowed to homeschool their children in Germany. The Romeikes were initially granted refugee status, but the Obama administration is opposed to this and is seeking their deportation

Fortunately, the Home School Legal Defense Association (www.hslda.org/Romeike) is raising an alarm. This pioneering group has a long history of defending parental rights. HSLDA is asking us to sign a petition to the Obama White House to stop the cruel and unjust persecution of the Romeikes.

HSLDA recognizes that the position being taken by the Obama administration poses a grave threat to religious freedom for all Americans. The Obama view has recently been advanced that “freedom of worship” may be conceded, grudgingly, but freedom of religion—a broader right—is seriously questioned. The Obama administration went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 in a critical case. There, a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod school was trying to defend its historic doctrine that Christian teachers are ministers. The Obama administration said, no, we will decide who is and is not a minister in your church schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court slapped down the Obama administration on a rare vote of 9-0. Even Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan voted to reject the extreme secularist views of the Obama administration. We can all be grateful that the High Court could not swallow that particular camel! But here they are again, persecuting these modern-day Pilgrims. The Romeikes and their children are as inoffensive and law-abiding a group of refugees as you could want.

Just contrast this hounding of the Romeikes with the slap-dash performance of federal officials who allowed dangerous terrorists to enter our country prior to 9/11. As our friend Terry Jeffrey wrote some years ago, the 9/11 Commission Report sharply criticized the failures to check Saudi visa applications thoroughly:

"In fact, the hijackers submitted a total of 24 U.S. visa applications, of which 20 were retained in U.S. State Department files. “All 20 of these applications,” a 9/11 Commission staff report concluded, “were incomplete in some way, with a data field left blank or not answered fully.” “Three of the hijackers submitted applications that contained false statements that could have been proven to be false at the time they applied,” said the staff report, entitled “Entry of the 9/11 Hijackers into the United States.” “During their stays in the United States at least six of the 9/11 hijackers violated immigration laws,” said the report. According to the report, the 9/11 hijackers who were given visas to enter and stay in the U.S.: “Included among them known al Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted; Presented passports ‘manipulated in a fraudulent manner;’ Presented passports with ‘suspicious indictors’ of extremism; Made detectable false statements on their visa applications; Were pulled out of the travel stream and given greater scrutiny by border officials; Made false statements to border officials to gain entry into the United States; and Violated immigration laws while inside the United States.”

The Obama administration today wants to boot dad Uwe and mom Hannalore Romeike and their children out of the United States because “homeschooling is not a fundamental right. ”Therefore, Obama officialsargue, these refugees are not really facing persecution at home.

We praise German Chancellor Angela Merkel for saying that Christians throughout the world are suffering the greatest persecution of any religious group. She’s right about that. But her own government has a blind spot when it comes to homeschooling.

The reason why Germany’s history was so tragic for a hundred years—from the 1840s to the 1940s—is because their government failed to recognize the fundamental religious freedom of their people. Our Supreme Court said it well as long ago as 1925: “The child is not the mere creature of the state.”

Therefore, we all need to rally to the Romeikes. Our own religious freedom depends upon it. If the Obama administration succeeds in trampling parental rights, we will see our government continuing to swallow camels.

SOURCE

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Reverend Leon and Obama Wrong on Easter

Bruce Bialosky

A controversy exploded into the national forum when President Obama and his family crossed the street to attend Easter services at St. John’s Church, an Episcopal church attended by every President since James Madison. In the end both the Reverend who delivered the sermon and the President were wrong.

In the sermon, Reverend Luis Leon lurched into a political diatribe against conservatives. He is quoted as saying “It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back…for blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet, and for immigrants to be back on their side of the border.”

First, Leon is wrong on the facts. Maybe he needs a primer on history. As for Blacks, he could just watch the recent movie Lincoln where he would see it is Republicans who lead the fight for the emancipation of Black people. He could go back to 1964 where the people stonewalling against The Civil Rights Act of 1964 were Democrats. Or he could take measure of the recent Supreme Court case regarding Gay Rights. The centerpiece of the case was a woman who was unable to inherit her partner’s assets upon her death in the same manner as heterosexual couples. The Reverend should look at who has tried to eliminate the Death Tax and which party has kept Gays from equal rights on inheritance – Democrats. Lastly, Leon should point out the Conservative or member of the religious right that has ever spoken negatively about legal immigrants to this country. He would be hard-pressed to find one.

The more important issue focuses on why Reverend Leon delivered this sermon in the first place. As a Jew, I am not an expert on Christian customs. But it would seem to me there are two days where religious leaders might keep their opinions on public policy to themselves – that would be Christmas and Easter. One would think they could stick to the subject at hand because it would seem those days are like the Super Bowl of Christianity. But Mr. Leon could not help himself and had to divert from the discussion of the Resurrection to assert himself into the national debate.

Now we do not believe that President Obama had anything to do with the inappropriate behavior of the Reverend as he used the opportunity of having the leader of the Free World to pontificate. Instead of taking a position of principle and state that as a Christian he would have preferred to hear a strictly religious sermon, Mr. Obama sent his spokesperson out to flop and flounder defending the non-defensible. Another instance of no leadership from this President.

That there are people that are upset about the Reverend doing this is almost laughable – to Jews. We have been abused by this political rhetoric at the Jewish High Holy Day services for years. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur would seem to be sacrosanct times where Rabbis would reserve their comments to be focused on the Torah, Israel, and a commitment to Jewish Life. Just as frequently Rabbis see their biggest crowd of the year and think it is their opportunity to educate the flock on great Jewish issues like Climate Change. When George W. Bush was President, many Rabbis railed against whatever Bush had recently done that irritated them.

A bigger-picture question has to be what makes these people qualified to be religious leaders in the first place. Certainly we have seen religious leaders like Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan -- a man of massive abilities and leadership. The new Pope appears to be that way. But there are a lot of people entering the clergy who are doing so to further their public policy positions. Many of the candidates coming out of rabbinical school seem as impressive as wet noodles.

We have had some discussions with experienced rabbis who are summarily unimpressed with young Rabbis. When we asked what the credentials are for getting into rabbinical school, it certainly seemed like it was not high standards. More importantly, they are not drawing the cream of the crop of Jewish youth. Many are deeply confused about a central tenet of Jewish life today – Israel. They are not becoming Rabbis because they have heard a calling, but as we said to advance their favorite social issues.

What I saw of Reverend Leon fit right into this class of political leader. He seems entirely unimpressive as a man and deeply confused about what he should be doing in front of his parishioners. Unfortunately, our President did not see the clear rationale to set him straight. Easter is a holy day. Keep your political opinions off the pulpit.

SOURCE

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Fight for the right to grow raisins

The Supreme Court could soon end one of the federal government's most archaic practices.

Since the 1930s, the Agriculture Department has turned California raisin growers into pawns of its Raisin Administrative Committee, which can commandeer up to half of the farmer's crop and then pay them little or nothing for the product.

Marvin Horne, a 67-year-old raisin farmer in Fresno, Calif., was fined almost $700,000 for refusing to surrender control of much of his harvest to the government committee in 2002. Horne, who has been growing raisins for more than 40 years, has battled the raisin committee for more than a decade and describes its regime as "involuntary servitude."

His challenge -- which is supported by many California raisin growers -- landed in front of the Supreme Court last month.

According to the Obama Administration and USDA, the Raisin Administrative Committee needs vast power to protect farmers against themselves. Otherwise, farmers might sell too many raisins and cause a plunge in prices. Justice Antonin Scalia aptly described USDA as offering farmers a choice: "your raisins or your life." Since farmers chose to sell their crop in interstate commerce, the government claims that it is entitled to nearly unlimited sway over the harvest.

The Obama Administration and USDA insist that, even though the government commandeers raisin farmers' harvest, there is no "taking" because the seizure drives up the price of the remaining raisins.

Justice Stephen Breyer was dumbfounded by this argument, declaring that "I can't believe that Congress wanted the taxpayers to pay for a program that's going to mean they have to pay higher prices as consumers."

Breyer apparently never heard of USDA's sugar program, which intentionally inflates prices and costs consumers billions of dollars a year. Actually, the raisin regime is even more perverse -- since it intentionally dumps allegedly "surplus" raisins on world markets at firesale prices. Foreigners often pay much lower prices for California raisins than do Americans.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested that 1937 Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act, which authorizes the raisin restrictions, could be "the world's most outdated law." Though purportedly created to serve farmers, the act creates endless administrative hoops and legal tripwires for its beneficiaries. Brian Leighton, one of the lawyers for the dissident raisin growers noted,"Thieves, murderers and rapists have far greater rights of due process and speedy appeal than do farmers regulated under USDA marketing orders."

There is nothing about unique about raisins that requires nullifying the constitutional rights of raisin growers. Markets for raisins are volatile -- as are the markets for hundreds of other farm products grown in the U.S. The raisin committee's sweeping powers have failed to prevent vast swings in prices farmers receive. Many California farmers have simply given up, and the acreage devoted to raisin production decreased by 75,000 acres since 2000.

"All we want to do is pack our raisins and sell them," Marvin Horne recently declared. "The only thing I wanted, along with my group, was to be free." Free markets are not perfect but they are far superior to the iron fists of government committees that scorn both farmers and consumers. If the Supreme Court cannot smack down the raisin racket, then it should forfeit any pretense of safeguarding Americans' rights and liberties.

SOURCE

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Nederland in trouble too

Ironically, the Netherlands, widely viewed as a model economy, is facing the kind of real estate crisis that has only affected the United States and Spain until now. Banks in the Netherlands have also pumped billions upon billions in loans into the private and commercial real estate market since the 1990s, without ensuring that borrowers had sufficient collateral.

Private homebuyers, for example, could easily find banks to finance more than 100 percent of a property's price. "You could readily obtain a loan for five times your annual salary," says Scheepens, "and all that without a cent of equity." This was only possible because property owners were able to fully deduct mortgage interest from their taxes.

Instead of paying off the loans, borrowers normally put some of the money into an investment fund, month after month, hoping for a profit. The money was to be used eventually to pay off the loan, at least in part. But it quickly became customary to expect the value of a given property to increase substantially. Many Dutch savers expected that the resale of their homes would generate enough money to pay off the loans, along with a healthy profit.

More than a decade ago, the Dutch central bank recognized the dangers of this euphoria, but its warnings went unheeded. Only last year did the new government, under conservative-liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte, amend the generous tax loopholes, which gradually began to expire in January. But now it's almost too late. No nation in the euro zone is as deeply in debt as the Netherlands, where banks have a total of about €650 billion in mortgage loans on their books.

Consumer debt amounts to about 250 percent of available income. By comparison, in 2011 even the Spaniards only reached a debt ratio of 125 percent.

The Netherlands is still one of the most competitive countries in the European Union, but now that the real estate bubble has burst, it threatens to take down the entire economy with it. Unemployment is on the rise, consumption is down and growth has come to a standstill. Despite tough austerity measures, this year the government in The Hague will violate the EU deficit criterion, which forbid new borrowing of more than 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

More HERE

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 8, 2013

Buying Off Discontent: The Economic Wreckage of Disability Benefits in America

You lose the factory job you’ve had since high school due to cut-backs. When the unemployment runs out, the only jobs around for high school graduates are fast food joints and entry-level work – a huge pay cut. You discover you can make nearly as much money on disability. Your doctor diagnoses you with chronic back pain (all those years of standing on the factory floor), and you have joined the ranks of “not-unemployed-but-disabled.” The state in which you live is happy because you don’t need any more of their unemployment money, and the federal government is happy that you are not an unemployment statistic, gumming up jobless rates.

Or there’s this. You scrape by on your job, managing bare essentials, but it’s tough. There’s no health insurance. You find out from your kid’s school counselor that because he has ADHD and isn’t learning at grade level, he may be eligible for disability. Suddenly, you’ve got $700 more every month, so long as your kid stays below grade level. You have a perverse hope that your kid doesn’t catch up in school.

It’s a boardwalk shell game with the federal government as huckster: Is the money under the shell marked “unemployment,” “disability” or “Social Security”? Is the disabled person the kid who can’t read, the factory worker whose unemployment ran out, or the truly disabled? The shells get moved, sleight of hand is performed, and the player’s money is quickly scooped up.

Disability has become America’s hidden welfare and unemployment program. People on disability don’t count in the ranks of the unemployed, and those unwilling to work but not eligible for welfare can often find a medical issue to keep checks rolling in. Perhaps most devastating, we’ve unwittingly created a system where people who could genuinely be helped by neighbors, churches, and charitable organizations are simply sent a check and told to go away.

By now, NPR’s Unfit for Work: the startling rise of disability in America has made the media rounds. Chana Joffe-Walt spent months researching the enormous rise in disability payments in the United States. Is the health of Americans spiraling downward at an alarming rate? Are disability claims being rubber-stamped by careless government wonks? Why are 14 million Americans (more than the total number of employees in the manufacturing sector of the economy) categorized by the government to be so ill that they’re unable to work?

In Samuel Gregg’s Becoming Europe, he examines the entitlement state that is modern Europe. In today’s European Union, people expect life-long job security, health care and education, along with cushy pensions. Politicians, not wanting to deal with civil unrest and eager to please voters, have been happy to “buy off discontent” (Gregg) despite the cost.

That’s the problem: “Wilhelm Röpke pointed out that welfare states are like progressive taxation: once one accepts the basic principle, there is nothing in the welfare state’s conception to set a limit to it,” Gregg writes.

In other words, where does it stop? When does the government say, “We can’t and won’t pay for that?” In the EU’s case, the answer seems to be “never”.

Increasingly, this seems to be the American answer as well. Is it hard to get disability? Yes and no. The process is tedious, but the categories that constitute disability are broad and ambiguous. An infographic for those researching disability says this: “If you believe you’re eligible for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits, don’t be discouraged by funding issues. These should ease when the economy improves and the government tightens spending on lower priorities.”

Americans should not only be discouraged, but deeply alarmed by funding issues. Since 1960, entitlement programs (like Social Security, unemployment and disability) have grown twice as fast as personal income. Today, government entitlement accounts for two-thirds of government spending. One in five Americans now receives some form of government benefit. The cost for disability, including health care for the disabled, is at least $260 billion a year.

Beyond the obvious fiscal nightmare, there is a cultural timbre that resonates throughout the numbers, statistics, and programs: We are a nation of takers. Increasingly, we want what our European counterparts have: a guaranteed paycheck, free education and health insurance, all government-provided.

There has always been a generous spirit in America towards the downtrodden, but it’s time to realize that we are no longer being generous: the government is leading us merrily along the path of fiscal fugue. If you’ve got a job, you’re paying for someone else’s big screen TV, disability check and health insurance. This is not to say that there are not those who are genuinely disabled. However, America has millions of people who could work but don’t. There aren’t jobs for them, they don’t have the skills for the jobs available, or they just plain don’t want to work. We’ve got children whose inability to read well is helping pay the family rent.

This is our miserable “system”: we have a cultural climate that wants something for nothing. We’ve got people who’d like to work, but have to function in a stagnant economy that removes incentives to creativity and entrepreneurship. For jobs that are available, there are millions of under-skilled people. We are paying to keep children from learning. We’re in the midst of shredding a safety net for the truly needy, attempting to solve issues such as learning disabilities, under- and unemployment with a program that can’t and won’t ever resolve those problems, and are stalled in finding real solutions because the federal disability program as it stands now is essentially hiding these dilemmas.

America is attempting to buy off people in their discontent. The discontent remains, the money will dry up, and we’re left with 14 million people who’ve been taught their gifts and talents have no value in this American society. Our disability system needs to be dismantled.

SOURCE

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Vermont First State To Reveal Big Incentive For People To NOT Buy Health Insurance‏

Vermont is the first state to reveal what insurers will likely be charging for policies on its exchange. That also makes Vermont the first state to reveal that many individuals and families will have a big financial incentive to forego insurance and pay the ObamaCare penalty.

Here are some of the examples the Vermont exchange provides of the premiums people will pay after the tax credits kick in. Keep in mind that the ObamaCare penalty for not buying coverage is $695 or 2.5% of one’s income*, whichever is higher.:

1. One article about Vermont notes that a “single self-employed person earning $40,000 a year could go from a $600 a month premium, down to $317 a month.” That’s about $3,804 a year. Since the ObamaCare penalty for this person is $1,000 ($40,000 * 2.5%), the single self-employed person will have about $2,804 worth of incentive to decline insurance. But what if he gets sick? Well, ObamaCare has “guaranteed issue” which means that an insurance company must sell him a policy at anytime. So why pay $3,804 a year when he could pay $1,000 knowing that he’ll still be able to buy coverage if he falls ill?

2. According to a Vermont Exchange press release, “a family of four with a household income of $75,000 per year will pay a little under $600 per month for family coverage with a federal premium tax credit. This is compared to over $900 for the lowest cost small group plans available today.” The Exchange forgot to mention that also is compared to the $1,875 penalty which is about $5,325 less than the $7,200 that family will be paying for coverage annually. In this case, ObamaCare not only incentivizes the family to forego insurance, it incentivizes the parents to teach the children that it’s best to wait until you get sick to get coverage. Who says family values are dead?

For more on the fiasco that is the individual mandate, see this excellent post by Avik Roy from July of last year.

*$695 or 2.5% of income is the ObamaCare penalty in 2016. In 2014 it is $95 or 1.5% and in 2015 it is $325 or 2%. Of course, that means that in 2014-15 people have even more incentive not to buy coverage.

SOURCE

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Small Cities in Small Counties

I love county-level political events.

Unlike major Washington, DC-based events or national political conventions, the people who come to Lincoln Day (on the GOP side) or Jefferson-Jackson Day (for the Dems) dinners, or county picnics during the summer, or participate in parades are the people who are truly the backbone of American politics.

The tickets to the event here at the local Shrine hall were, I think $35 per head. Silent auction, extra. The meal itself would have cost $85 each at a restaurant in downtown Washington.

I am certainly not opposed to events that bring in the high rollers. You don't have to have a PhD in political science to understand that an event that will attract 50 guests at $1,000 per will raise a lot more money than an even that has 250 people at $35 each. ($50,000 vs. $8,750.)

County events are a collection of people who know each other. In a county like Washington (one of Ohio's 99), these same people belong to the Rotary, or Lion's clubs or the Masonic lodge.

They are retailers, run small engineering, public relations, or manufacturing firms. Or they are the lawyers and CPAs who support them. Their spouses are school teachers or scout leaders or manage the Sunday school at their church.

These are people who could have moved to, and been successful in, Columbus, or L.A. or New York, but they chose to stay here.

They have known each other since grade school. They played on the same teams in Little League or Legion Ball. They had the same teachers in high school - or they are the high school teachers and the Little League coaches.

They remember the same stories and retell them with relish every time they get together - the rolling eyes of their spouses notwithstanding. They tell the stories at their Saturday golf game, or their regular Thursday girls-night-out dinner.

At election time they walk their precincts and drop of materials at the homes of people they know are Republicans and skip the homes of the people who are Democrats (or the other way around). They know which is which without computer print-outs or micro-targeting reports because they knew their parents were Republicans (or Democrats).

When they attend a Lincoln or Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner they don't come back later asking for an Ambassadorship to France or an appointment to a national Commission. They might need a curb cut for the new garage to house the truck they just bought for their business, but $35 isn't likely to buy that decision.

It doesn't matter if MSNBC is pushing the most Liberal Democrat, or Fox is pushing the most Conservative Tea Party candidate. It doesn't matter what the national print reporters are tweeting about, or what the cable punditry is focused on.

These people are trying to elect members of the City Council. Or County Commissioners. Or local judges. Or a State Representative.

I got to talk about being Dan Quayle's and Newt Gingrich's press secretary and being a senior advisor on the Fred Thompson campaign. I think they liked hearing about my being on TV with Donna Brazile and Bob Beckel, but only in the way they might thumb through a magazine in the checkout line at the supermarket.

This Lincoln Day dinner was special for me because I've known many of these people for decades - the MC, in fact, said that next year will mark our 40th year of knowing one another.

They listened to me on the radio as the local news director. They saw me covering events - both news events and community events. One person reminded the audience that a long-ago Mayor declared I was a major pain in his "posterior."

I was a City Councilman here. Many of the people at the dinner voted for me, lo those many years ago. Nancy Hollister, the woman who took my Council seat when we moved to DC went on to become the Lt. Governor of Ohio.

She was there, too.

The Mullings Director of Standards & Practices and our son were born here.

If you wonder why I make such a big deal about Marietta, Ohio 45750 it’s because, as I said in my remarks "I wasn't born here, I wasn't raised here, but I came of age here."

Small cities, in small counties are the backbone of American politics and, in a very real way, are the heart and soul of the American dream.

SOURCE

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The Progressive Bible

Since I have absolutely no authority to amend or alter the Word of God, who better than me to follow in the equally unqualified and arrogant footsteps of the secularists and do so anyway. True, I could be risking Hell by doing so, but Rob Bell has convinced me Hell doesn’t exist so I’m good to go. After all, if you can’t rely on a wannabe shaman peddling postmodernism in hipster glasses who can you trust?

Thus, to make the Bible more contemporary, inclusive, and progressive, here are my top 10 verses that need to be “updated” for our enlightened age.

10. In the beginning the god of your understanding watched the “big bang” occur, and then stood idly by for billions of years curious to see how this whole evolution thing would turn out.

9. For we so love the state that we give it our only begotten offspring. Whosoever believes in the state will not perish but get an Obama-phone and cash for clunkers.

8. Thou shall steal when it’s your “right”, when someone is “rich,” or when you’re a victim of white privilege.

7. Therefore, whatever god you recognize gave you over to the pure desires of your loins, to hit it with any consenting adult and/or organic orifice that floats your boat.

6. And one day every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that god is whomever you need him/her/it to be.

5. Judge not lest ye believe in redistributing wealth, then judge much and judge harshly.

4. Do not murder, unless you’re going to be “punished with a baby.”

3. And Moses said to the theocratic authoritarian denying diversity in Egypt: “Let my people go into the wilderness so that they may recycle, commune with nature, and repent for their carbon footprint.”

2. Jesus’ mother came to him because the same-sex wedding party had run out of legalized marijuana. Jesus replied, “Maternal unit, why do you involve me? I am still buzzing from our last stash.” Jesus’ mother replied to the undocumented immigrants tending the wedding, “Do whatever he tells you.” So Jesus told them: “Puff, puff, pass man…puff, puff, pass.”

1. Jesus said, “I am a good moral teacher. Believe in what you will, for all roads lead to Heaven.”

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 7, 2013

Why the No-Fly List Doesn't Fly

Innocent people don't know why they're on it and get off

Flying commercial can be a terrible hassle these days, but not for Steven Washburn. The people in charge of airport security have decided to spare him all the inconveniences. No taking off his shoes and belt, no putting his liquids in a plastic bag, no enduring a naked body scan. Oh, and one more thing: no flying.

Washburn is on the government's no-fly list. He doesn't know why, and the government won't tell him. Nor will it take him off. He's much like Franz Kafka's Gregor Samsa, who wakes up to find he has turned into a bug. There is no accounting for it and no escape. He may go to the grave without ever flying again — or learning the reason.

He's just one of the many people tabbed as potential terrorists who must be kept off the nation's airliners, including, at one point, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. An estimated 21,000 people now populate the no-fly list.

That number alone should raise serious questions about its accuracy. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there is no known instance of the Transportation Security Administration catching a terrorist trying to board a plane.

Remember all those sleeper cells of al-Qaida operatives, waiting for the right moment to strike? They never turned up either. Since 9/11, the number of terrorist attacks in the United States amounts to 127. If you believe there are 21,000 fanatics itching to blow up a regional jet, I have some Mitt Romney inauguration tickets to sell you.

But none of this is any comfort if you're one of the unfortunates who are not free to move about the country — or out of it. So the American Civil Liberties Union has gone to court on behalf of 13 people (including four military veterans) who had flown for years only to show up at the airport and find themselves persona non grata. Each petitioned the Department of Homeland Security to be removed from the no-fly list — and each was rebuffed without explanation.

The ACLU is not dreaming big here. It doesn't ask that the government take these individuals off the list. It doesn't insist that they be exempt from monitoring. The only request is that they be told why they are deemed so dangerous and have the chance to show why they really aren't.

Being on the no-fly list is not a trivial matter. It prevents Washburn from seeing his wife, a Spanish citizen who lives in Ireland. Some people never fly. But for anyone who does so even occasionally, it is a serious burden to be told: You can drive, or you can stay home.

The "right to travel" is not just a pleasant notion; it's a constitutional guarantee. Although it's not mentioned in the text, the Supreme Court has long treated it as thunderously obvious. In 1900, it said that "the right to remove from one place to another according to inclination is an attribute of personal liberty" firmly "secured by the Fourteenth Amendment and by other provisions of the Constitution."

The document also guarantees the right of due process, which those on the no-fly list can only dream about. The decision is made in secret by unseen officials who provide no reasons, entertain no disputes and allow no independent review. You could get a fairer hearing from a crowd toting tar and feathers.

This is only one of the defects in the system. A bigger one is why the list is needed at all. Since the 9/11 hijackings, various steps have been taken to prevent a repetition —reinforcing cockpit doors, putting thousands of armed marshals on flights, screening liquids and patting down travelers. Passengers, meanwhile, will no longer sit quietly if someone becomes a problem.

The Transportation Security Administration feels so confident about its ability to defuse genuine risks that it's decided to allow small knives on board aircraft. But if the government can keep troublemakers from employing the weapons they need, the troublemakers will have only pitifully ineffectual options — which means they aren't likely to fly in the first place.

The nice thing about these other security measures is that they work not only against anyone who is deemed dangerous but also anyone who is not. And they impede the guilty without inflicting serious harm on the innocent.

Maybe the people who compile the no-fly list can say the same thing. But I don't really want to take their word for it. If Ted Kennedy were around, he wouldn't either.

SOURCE

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ObamaCare Was Designed, Passed, and Implemented by Democrats. Obviously Republicans Must Be Responsible for Its Failures

It was probably inevitable that as ObamaCare began to fail, Republicans would get the blame. After all, Republican legislators in Congress didn’t vote for it, Republican voters have never supported it, and nearly every Republican governor has let the federal government build and run the law’s health exchange in their state. Republican critics of the law warned before it was passed that it would be too expensive, to complicated, and too onerous on both individuals and businesses. So of course now that the implementation process has begun to reveal signs of trouble, it’s the Grand Old Party’s fault. Who else could possibly be responsible?

If you want the complete argument for why Republicans are the culprit here, you can find it in Think Progress health wonk Igor Volsky’s piece making the case for, in his words, “why Republicans are to blame for ObamaCare’s delays.” The piece is hooked to this week’s announcement that the choice option in ObamaCare’s small business exchanges would be delayed for a year, and the short version is that because Republicans refused to implement the law themselves in the states and have declined to provide additional funding for implementation at the federal level, the GOP is on the hook for delays and failures.

It’s hard to blame Republicans for the delay of the small business choice option: it’s not something that Republicans have focused on to any great degree, and the main reasons for the delay seems to be a the technical challenge of designing a multitude of plans that fit the exchange requirements and the administrative burden of having to design those plans while working on other exchange features in the law. Republican opposition doesn’t have anything to do with it.

Overall, Volsky makes a good try, but sorry, no: Democrats are to blame for the failures and problems of a law designed by Democrats, passed by Democrats, and implemented by Democrats. That it is not working now is the fault of the people who said it would work, decided to try making it work, and are now tasked with the responsibility to make it work. They are failing, and the law is failing because of them—not because of Republicans.

More generally, though, this offers a lesson in why it’s ill advised to pass major legislation on strict party lines that is supported by neither the opposition party nor the bulk of the public. Especially when the law is predicated on the assumption that the opposition will cheerfully help with implementation. That Democrats seem to have assumed that Republicans would give in and play ball suggests some mix of deep arrogance, wishful thinking, and willful ignorance of the national political dynamic. It’s just plain bad policy design: A law passed by Democrats that can only work if Republicans decline to oppose the law is a law that almost certainly will not work.

And sure enough, three years after passage, ObamaCare shows signs that it might not be quite as wonderful as promised. But ObamaCare’s supporters are so determined to avoid admitting that it might be a failure—or even just less functional than they insisted it would be—that they are refusing to take responsibility for the politically troubled bureaucratic mess they created.

SOURCE

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Record 89,967,000 Not in Labor Force; Another 663,000 Drop Out In March

A record 89,967,000 Americans were not in the labor force in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is an increase of 663,000 from the 89,304,000 Americans who were not in the labor force in February.

The BLS counts a person as not in the civilian labor force if they are at least 16 years old, are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home, and have not actively looked for a job in the last four weeks. The department counts a person as in the civilian labor force if they are at least 16, are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home, and either do have a job or have actively looked for one in the last four weeks.

The number of people that BLS considers "in the labor force" affects the unemployment rate--which is the percentage of people "in the labor force" who are unable to find a job during the month. If someone previously considered "not in the labor force" were to go out and search for a job and not find one, they would have to be counted as in the labor force for that period--and thus would increase the unemployment rate.

To the degree that Americans choose to simply drop out of the labor force rather than search unsuccessful for a job they decrease the unemployment rate.

In keeping with the increase in the number of people not in the labor force, the labor force participation rate decreased from 63.5 percent in February to 63.3 percent in March. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of Americans in the civilian population over age 16 who did not have a job or seek a job during the month.

In January 2009, when Obama was first inaugurated, there were 80,507,000 people not in the labor force compared to the 89,967,000 who were not in the labor force in March.

SOURCE

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Smiley-Face Lies and Homicide Hogwash in Dem Hellholes

President Obama's hometown of Chicago still goes by the old nickname "Windy City." But after three miserable decades of strict gun control and permanent Democratic rule, Chicago has cemented its reputation as America's Bloody City.

No amount of statistical whitewashing can cover up the stains of the left's ideological failures there. But as Obama continues to wage war on law-abiding gun owners, his home team is trying its hardest to spread smiley-face lies upon damned lies to downplay Chicago homicide statistics.

On Monday, April Fools' Day, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy held a press conference to tout a "dramatic" drop in the city's homicide rate. The headlines read: "March homicides drop dramatically in Chicago" (USA Today); "Murders fall 42 percent in America's deadliest city: Chicago" (NBC News); and "March homicides drop 69 percent in Chicago" (Las Vegas Sun)."

Emanuel trumpeted the drop as a "good sign." He hyped statistics to the Associated Press showing that first-quarter 2013 murders in Chicago tied the same time period in 2009. Murders decreased 69 percent compared to the same month last year; first-quarter homicides fell by 42 percent compared to the same time frame last year. Emanuel insisted: "We are clearly having an impact on the homicides."

But it's all in how you slice, dice and spin it, of course.

Let's face it. Gun-grabbers in Democratic-dominated cities have an institutional incentive to fudge the numbers. In New York City, which rivals Chicago when it comes to out-of-control gun-control regulations, a New York Police Department whistleblower recently exposed systemic manipulation of crime data.

As anti-Second Amendment crusader Michael Bloomberg made the rounds last spring touting the Big Apple as "the safest big city in America," an internal NYPD report confirmed that more than a dozen crime reports had been manipulated — including felonies downgraded and incident reports deep-sixed — to lower the crime rate. As punishment for exposing the tampering and corruption, the whistle-blowing officer, Adrian Schoolcraft, who secretly taped the manipulation, was suspended and forced into a psych ward.
He's still fighting for justice and has never received an apology.

So, call me crazy, but I wouldn't put it past Team Obama's Chicago theater directors to goose their numbers to improve the optics for Dear Leader. Speaking of the lobbyist in chief, he parachuted into Colorado this week and surrounded himself with Denver police officer human props during a gun-control campaign event. The rank-and-filers were none too happy with being exploited for political purposes. "To protect and serve" is supposed to be a public safety imperative, not a campaign imperative.

But back to the Bloody City. In 2012, Chicago racked up the nation's deadliest death toll, with 506 of its residents murdered. The murder rate has simply returned to its bloody business as usual over the past five years. Here's the first-quarter death toll breakdown:

2013: 70
2012: 120
2011: 75
2010: 75
2009: 70

The Second City Cop crime blog adds that Emanuel's claim regarding the homicide rate dropping to levels not seen since the 1950s "is based solely on the population decrease in the city of Chicago. This is an amazing abuse of numbers, but as Mark Twain said, 'There are lies, damned lies and statistics.' Welcome to 'statistics.'"

Local Chicago CBS 2 reporter Jay Levine didn't buy the whitewashing bunk, either. He challenged City Hall with a piece entitled: "City Touts Lower Homicide Stats, But Context Reveals Return To Normal." Put simply, "2013's 70 first-quarter homicides was a major improvement over 2012's 120 — but not over 2011 or 2010 or 2009."

While Emanuel sang "Don't Worry, Be Happy" for the press, the Bloody City was still reeling after a 6-month-old baby was shot and killed in gang crossfire. On Easter weekend, a mob of violent teens terrorized shoppers in the Magnificent Mile district. Similar outbreaks of racially driven attacks have escalated in Chicago under the reign of Daley-Emanuel-Obama. By some police estimates, gang violence accounts for up to 80 percent of the city's homicides.

Plagued by juvenile delinquency, organized crime, ruinous government dependency, corruption and out-of-control spending, these liberal-dominated hellholes have proved impervious to progressive "social justice" engineering. It's the insane demagogues blaming guns who need their heads examined.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 6, 2013

It's my Sabbath today but just a brief reminder of what sane people are up against





April 5, 2013

Stockton Was Murdered

Were a rational person given the assignment to search this planet to find the best place for human beings to live and build wealth, he might well settle on San Joaquin County, Calif.

That is where Americans built a city called Stockton -- the municipality a federal bankruptcy judge just declared dead.

How did Stockton die? It was cold-blood murder.

San Joaquin County truly enjoys as many natural advantages as any place on Earth. It sits in the broad valley that lies between California's Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada. Two massive navigable river systems -- the Sacramento and the San Joaquin -- descend from the Sierras and converge in an inland delta upon whose eastern edge the city of Stockton stands.

Anciently, these rivers deposited rich soils in the valley. More recently, they have provided the world with access to the agricultural wealth the valley produces. Oceangoing cargo ships can sail the San Joaquin right into the heart of Stockton itself.

Yet, despite being surrounded by fresh water, Stockton basks beneath warm and sunny skies from early in spring until well into fall.

"San Joaquin County has a dry climate, marked by very little rain," says a county planning document. "Its summers are long and dry (with a growing season averaging 292 days around Stockton), and colder, rainy weather is typical between November and April. Average annual rainfall ranges from 8 inches a year in the southern part of the county to 18 inches in the northern part."

The pioneers who arrived there in the 19th century looked at the abundant water, the dark soil and the sunny skies and did the obvious thing: They built incredible farms, planting things that would not grow in other parts of the country or would not grow as well.

Driving down a secondary highway in 20th century San Joaquin County meant driving for miles and miles along unbroken avenues of grape vines and cherry, peach and walnut trees.

Culturally, in the age of the automobile, San Joaquin County had the privilege of being about two hours east of San Francisco and two hours west of the high mountains. It was neither snowbound in winter like the mountains, nor fogbound in summer like the city -- but was within easy driving distance of some of the most desolate places in the country and some of the most cosmopolitan.

So what happened to this place so favored by geology, geography and climate?

On Monday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein allowed Stockton to move forward into Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

The city's biggest bill is for the pensions of government employees -- which are run by a state agency called the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS).

"Stockton's biggest creditors insured $165 million in bonds the city issued in 2007 to keep up with CalPERS payments as property taxes plummeted during the recession," The Associated Press reports. "Stockton now owes CalPERS about $900 million to cover pension promises, by far the city's largest financial obligation."

In Stockton, as in many other American cities, government became the dominant industry.

Data developed by the Census Bureau on the economic characteristics of Stockton in the years from 2007 to 2011 show that the city had an adult population (16 or older) of 212,365. Among these, there were only 84,204 private-sector wage and salary workers and another 6,927 people who were self-employed in their own unincorporated businesses.

That added up to 91,131 people in Stockton working in the private sector for a wage or salary or for their own business.

Another 18,778 in the city worked for government, and 11,426 collected food stamps.

Assuming (for the sake of argument) that none of the government workers were also collecting food stamps, there was a combined 30,204 government workers and food stamp collectors in Stockton. Those 30,204 people living off the taxpayers in the city equaled one for every three private-sector workers and self-employed business owners.

For every family in Stockton where both the mom and dad work and a teenage child also toils at, say, the local fast-food place, there is one person working for the government or collecting food stamps.

To the degree that government does not redistribute wealth from other parts of California or the nation to Stockton, that local mom, dad and teenager must carry on their shoulders the 30,204 local government workers and food stamp collectors.

Then there is that $900 million Stockton owes to the state's government worker pension system. That, too, must rest on the shoulders of the local mom, dad and working teenager -- unless the state or federal government taxes money away from people elsewhere to pay for the pensions of retired Stockton government workers.

A little more than two years ago in this column, I wrote that government had killed the state of California. That crime has now been repeated on a municipal scale. Nature gave America something with unparalleled potential in Stockton and its environs. Government murdered it.

SOURCE

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How the US oil, gas boom could shake up global order

Without fanfare, China passed the United States in December to become the world's leading importer of oil – the first time in nearly 40 years that the U.S. didn’t own that dubious distinction. That same month, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania together produced 1.5 million barrels of oil a day -- more than Iran exported.

As detailed in the first two installments of Power Shift, an NBC News/CNBC special report, the United States is reaping the benefits of an energy boom created by new drilling technologies that have unlocked vast domestic oil and natural gas reserves. Coupled with decreasing demand due to energy efficiency and continued cultivation of alternative energy sources, an increasing number of experts believe the U.S. could achieve energy independence by the end of the decade – realizing a dream born during the gas crisis of 1973.

But who would be the global winners and losers in such a scenario?

Most U.S. policy makers and experts agree that the U.S. and its allies – particularly its North American neighbors -- would be the biggest beneficiaries.

In fact, they say, the West already has realized one major benefit: the success of international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

Carlos Pascual, the State Department’s coordinator for international energy affairs, noted last month at the CERAWEEK energy conference in Houston that increased U.S. oil production, coupled with a boost in exports from Iraq and Libya, has kept oil prices stable despite the loss, because of sanctions, of up to 1.5 million barrels a day in Iranian exports.

“What this has taught us, and helped underscore, is that within the world we live in today, hard security issues and energy policy issues have become fundamentally intertwined,” he said.

Hossein Moussavian, a former Iranian ambassador to Germany and nuclear negotiator who's now a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, said "the radicals" in Tehran failed to foresee the changing energy picture, believing that sanctions wouldn't be imposed and that, if they were, they wouldn't work because oil prices would surge.

"The Iranian mistake was to believe … the threats of referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council, imposing sanctions, was just a bluff," he said.

In the longer term, observers say that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and many of its member nations are likely to be the biggest losers if the U.S. continues to cut oil imports, likely decreasing oil prices in the process.

"A dramatic expansion of U.S. production could … push global spare capacity to exceed 8 million barrels per day, at which point OPEC could lose price control and crude oil prices would drop, possibly sharply," the U.S. intelligence community's internal think tank, the National Intelligence Council, said in its “Global Trends 2030” report in December. "Such a drop would take a heavy toll on many energy producers who are increasingly dependent on relatively high energy prices to balance their budgets."

With some analysts predicting that oil prices could drop as low as $70 to $90 a barrel – down from the current price of nearly $110 per barrel of Brent crude oil – a “scramble” among OPEC members for market share could ensue, said Edward Morse, an energy analyst with Citigroup and co-author of a recent report on titled “Energy 2020: Independence Day.”

An International Monetary Fund analysis indicates that many major oil-producing states need more than that lowest price level to meet their budgets and would be forced to increase output or reduce spending, which could trigger unrest. Among them, according to the report: Iran, Libya and Russia, at $117 a barrel; Iraq, $112; Yemen, $237; and the UAE, $84.

Iraq, which has had production from its rich oil fields curtailed by war or sanctions for half of the 53 years of OPEC’s existence, poses another challenge to the organization.

Now that it’s finally free of such interference, its production is increasing by between 500,000 and 900,000 barrels a year, making it the second fastest growing oil-producing country in the world after the U.S.

“And, by God, no one’s going to impose any quota limitations on them,” said Morse, referring to Iraq’s OPEC partners. “So part of the challenge to OPEC is internal as well as external.”

For its part, OPEC professes to be not unduly alarmed by the U.S. oil and natural gas boom. It highlights the "considerable uncertainties" surrounding wells drilled using hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” and associated technologies.

Yergin said he believes that the Saudis will be able to withstand the turbulence, and that they will provide a buffer for the organization’s lesser producers.

“It's too quick to write the obit for OPEC,” he said. “… The Saudis will figure it out. They are re-orientated to Asian markets, turning left instead of right.”

But some members of the oil cartel -- particularly Nigeria and Angola -- already are feeling the impact of the U.S. production surge, according to the Citigroup report. U.S. imports from the two countries dropped to 700,000 barrels a day at the end of 2012, down from 1.6 million barrels in 2007. That’s because U.S. production of light, sweet crude -- the kind of oil the West African nations produce -- has burgeoned in recent years. Citigroup forecasts that by the end of 2013, the market for Nigerian oil at Gulf Coast refineries could entirely dry up.

Longer term, say by 2020, cheaper heavy oil from Canada, freed from the so-called oil sands by new recovery technologies, could push similar oil from Venezuela out of the U.S. Gulf Coast market, (assuming the Obama administration approves construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry it), according to forecasts.

Mexico also is expected to increase production, offering the U.S. access to another convenient and friendly provider.

"The Eagle Ford formation in Texas extends into Mexico and if you look at the Gulf, you'll see thousands of black dots marking oil platforms on the U.S. side but nothing on the Mexican side,” said Yergin. “That's changing. There is a political consensus among the three major parties on energy. You will see less immigration from Mexico. Mexico could become more of a BRIC (the term used for fast-developing economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China) than Brazil."

More HERE

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National Science Foundation subsidizes authors of left-wing racism

Your tax dollars subsidized left-wing “consultants” who published a race-baiting op-ed in the Washington Post falsely claiming that white men commit virtually all mass shootings, and that we need to collectively ”hold them accountable” for a culture that spawns such killings. The website of consultants Charlotte and Harriet Childress boasts that they have “received close to a million dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation.” As the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto notes, “The NSF is a federal agency, so your tax dollars have subsidized the authors of what can only be described as a racist rant.”

Many other leftists, like David Sirota, have made this argument in a less extreme form, arguing that it is noteworthy that more than 70 percent of mass murderers are white. (But that really isn’t noteworthy, in light of the fact that more than three-quarters of all Americans are white. It’s also not clear why we should focus on just mass murder, rather than all murders — slightly less than half of all murders are committed by whites, even though they are a substantial majority of the overall population. By contrast, blacks, who are only 13% of the U.S. population, commit nearly half of America's murders). The Journal’s Taranto lists a number of well-known cases in which mass murders were committed by non-whites, cases that the Childresses ignored even though they would be obvious to any competent researcher writing about this issue. The Childresses ignored even high-profile mass murders committed by non-whites that occurred in the Washington Post‘s own backyard, like the Beltway Sniper mass killings.

Earlier, another federal agency, the National Institutes of Health, used Federal cancer research money to fund a “laughable conspiracy-theory report smearing” the Tea Party as being created by the tobacco companies, which we earlier debunked. The left-wing academics that authored it had “received $7 million” from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. That “study” was a tissue-thin, 10-page smear, produced using federal grants that reportedly exceeded $1 million, that contained wild claims, such as the ridiculous assertion that “the Tea Party has origins in the ultra-right John Birch Society of the 1950s.”

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

AR: House votes to override veto of voter turnout suppression bill: "The Republican-controlled Arkansas House of Representatives voted on Monday to override a veto by the state's Democratic governor of a bill that would require voters to show photo identification. Representatives voted 52-45 to override Governor Mike Beebe's veto, joining the state Senate, which had voted on March 27 to override the governor's veto."

CA: Judge allows Stockton to enter bankruptcy: "The people of Stockton will feel financial fallout for years after a federal judge ruled Monday to let the city become the most populous in the nation to enter bankruptcy. But the case is also being watched closely because it could answer the significant question of who gets paid first by financially strapped cities -- retirement funds or creditors."

Liberal hypocrisy on Bloomberg’s moneyed gun control fight: "'Bloomberg is buying another term in office! It’s an outrage!' That’s what lots of my fellow liberals said when billionaire Michael Bloomberg spent $102 million of his own cash to win re-election as New York mayor in 2009. ... So why aren’t these same critics complaining, now that Mr. Bloomberg is showering his millions on candidates who back gun control and same-sex marriage? Because liberals like these causes, of course. ... [I]f we are truly opposed to the undue influence of money in politics, we should protest that influence in all cases -- no matter who wins. If we only call for limits on campaign spending when our team is losing, then we don’t really believe in those limits at all."

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 4, 2013

Is Leftism the politics of envy?

Because there are so many rich Leftists, I have long argued (see the sidebar here) that material envy is not now, if it ever was, the driver of Leftism. Even Marx, Engels and the Russian Bolsheviks were middle class rather than working class. They were not generally poor. I have argued that hate of the world about them and the people in it are the key factors behind Leftism. And the people Leftists hate most are those who cheerfully get on with life, as conservatives do. Much more here.

So it is interesting that an academic journal article has recently emerged that also discounts the role of envy. I reproduce the journal abstract below.

It should be noted however that the sampling underlying the article is fairly ludicrous. Sophisticated internet users do not represent the population at large. And the over-representation of Democrat voters in the sample confirms that.

Additionally, the possibility of getting honest answers about political questions from Leftists has to be discounted. They know how dismal is their internal world so tend to misrepresent it. Pol Pot tells you how Leftists really think. So the article is a straw in the wind rather than anything conclusive.
Envy, politics, and age

By Christine R. Harris and Nicole E. Henniger

In the last 5 years, the phrase “politics of envy” has appeared more than 621 times in English-language newspapers, generally in opinion essays contending that political liberalism reflects and exploits feelings of envy. Oddly, this assertion has not been tested empirically. We did so with a large adult sample (n = 357). Participants completed a Dispositional Envy Scale and questions about political ideology, socioeconomic status, and age. Envy and age were moderately correlated; younger people reported greater envy. Political ideology and envy were weakly correlated; however, this relationship was not significant when controlling for age.

SOURCE

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Liberals really do feel that way



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A little bit of history



Then Senator Al Gore, a leading sponsor in the Senate of the Brady Bill talked incessantly about "safety" and "the children." Note this doofus however looking down the barrel of his M-16 when he was in Vietnam (as a reporter no less - though he looks all tricked out like an infantryman). Note also that there is no magazine in his rifle there could be one in the chamber. Now, having said that, if you were in a combat zone, would you be stupid enough NOT to have a magazine in your weapon? Me neither.

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Black racism getting worse

Attacks on whites by groups of blacks are happening in many places in America but "dozens of mob groups" reported below seems an ominous escalation. When the Left are constantly telling blacks that they are the victims of discrimination by whites, however, the result is no surprise

Several teens were arrested after dozens of mob groups began attacking pedestrians on Chicago’s downtown Magnificent Mile area on Saturday night. Police said 28 teens were arrested during the incident and no serious injuries were reported.

The teens charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct and battery and later released, according to News Affairs Officer Perkus.
Eleven other teens were charged with the same misdemeanor charges after they attacked a group of women on the CTA Red Line, police said.

“You have over three to four hundred teenagers with mob action, jumping on individuals that are downtown,” said community activist Andrew Holmes. “Multiple people have been arrested and I caution those parents that get this call about your child being arrested -- maybe you need to check your child.”

Officers began breaking up the attacks by ushering teens to the Red Line. Chaos continued underground but many attackers reportedly left the area.

“I just saw a cluster run down to the Red Line,” said Red Line passenger Amanda Dobson. “I didn't know what was going on. I just kind of stepped back and let the police do what they needed to do.”

Police continued to patrol the area on bikes, horses and on foot as smaller groups wandered around the Loop.

It is not clear if the attacks are related to a similar mobbing of Ford City Mall last month.

Residents were concerned that this could be the first in a long line of attacks after warm weather brought on a string of similar instances last year.

"It's been happening a lot around here," said Eric Baldinger, who works along the Magnificent Mile. "Just keep your wallet close and your purse closer."

Others said the attacks were disappointing and feared for the future of the city. "I think it’s very childish," said resident Angelica Wilson. "That’s what wrong with the generation today because there’s always petty fights going on down here and everybody getting hurt. We don’t need more problems."

SOURCE

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Five simple ways to create economic growth

Americans want lower deficits and more economic growth; that much is clear. The problems arise when we leave it to lawmakers to agree on policies to achieve those goals. Republicans oppose new taxes, while Democrats abhor cuts to entitlement spending. Even the sequester, which included minimal cuts off a growth budget of eight percent for defense spending and five percent for other spending, was passed with great opposition.

Fortunately, there are common-sense policies that would spur economic growth if political leaders would put aside their partisanship and compromise for the good of the country. Here’s my advice for five simple ways to cut spending or add revenue sources, and jumpstart economic growth:

1. Cut Medicare and Medicaid spending. Lawmakers should encourage competition between U.S. pricing and international pricing for drugs. Americans are now the chumps pay the highest price in the world. With competition, pharmaceutical companies will lower the prices of drugs in the U.S.

To cut costs, doctors should be reimbursed based on procedures, not based on a percentage of drug costs or tests performed. To reduce end-of-life procedures for the terminally ill, Americans should be asked to state their end-of-life wishes when they renew their driver’s licenses. This could help ill patients who, if conscious, might say they want compassion and pain relief rather than uncomfortable and ineffective treatments.

2. Stop the war on drugs. Like Prohibition before it, the war on drugs has failed. An innovator doesn’t insist on repeating the same mistakes he’s already made; he learns from them and pursues new tactics with a higher likelihood of success.

Legalizing and taxing marijuana would not only generate new revenue, but it would also curb our spending on overcrowded jails. State lawmakers in Washington are hoping for hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue because of a now-legal pot market. For many of the unemployed, legalizing marijuana would also create new job opportunities.

3. Give Green Cards to the best and brightest. Those who receive advanced science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees in our universities should be encouraged to stay here. The world’s brightest people help our best companies create new ventures and train others. If they can stay in the U.S., they will help our economy, create jobs and generate new tax revenue.

4. Require those getting unemployment benefits to volunteer. Research shows the longer unemployment benefits are given, the longer the jobless stay jobless. Instead of incentivizing the jobless to find work, we continue to pay them benefits. If we simply require the unemployed to volunteer 20 hours a week at a non-profit, the unemployment rolls would drop and those volunteering would develop skills and create job networks.

5. Allow companies to bring back foreign profits. American companies have parked more than a trillion dollars overseas because the money was made abroad and has been taxed by another country. The U.S. uniquely taxes it again and does so at one of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. If we want to jump-start the economy, jobs, and thus tax revenue, companies should be allowed to return their profits at a lower rate (say, 10 percent) if at least half the money is spent on new U.S. jobs or capital investment.

To cut our deficit and jump-start our economy, we need creative, bipartisan thinking. By adopting ideas like these, we can begin to meet sequestration goals without raising taxes or cutting entitlements. These are common-sense solutions that will help our nation balance the budget and put the U.S. back on the path to prosperity

SOURCE

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If There Are No Winners, We’re All Losers

Robert Knight

The last time I was in Ipswich, Massachusetts, I had one of the tastiest plates of fried clams imaginable. They were fresh, full-bellied and cooked perfectly. Try getting something like this outside the Bay State.

If it weren’t for the bizarre political culture, which ranges from the Kennedys on the left to the Kennedys on the far left, Massachusetts would be a wonderful place to live if only to enjoy the superlative seafood.

But I’ve thought about this a lot, and have concluded that it’s unfair. Yes, it’s not right that this little mom-and-pop place should have an advantage over restaurateurs who serve mediocre food. It’s especially unfair to restaurateurs in land bound places like Iowa or Nebraska, where fish sticks pretty much rule the seafood scene.

To even things up, the Ipswich eatery ought to dump its clams and start serving something you can get anywhere, say, a greasy burger. Then, everyone will feel better.

I gleaned this idea from the principal of the Ipswich Middle School, David Fabrizio, who recently cancelled the school’s tradition of Honors Night. That’s when top students are recognized for their scholarship. I’ll let Mr. Fabrizio explain, from the letter he sent to parents:

"The Honors Night, which can be a great sense of pride for the recipients' families, can also be devastating to a child who has worked extremely hard in a difficult class but who, despite growth, has not been able to maintain a high grade-point average," Fox News reported.

In other words, because not everyone wins, no one should win. This is the liberal mantra of “equality,” which, taken to the extreme, results in regular assaults on common sense.

Any parent with a child in an organized sport knows what I’m talking about. Regardless of merit, your kid can rack up a whole shelf full of trophies just for showing up. Who needs to win?

The problem is that the world does not work like this. When feminists, trying to cheat nature in the name of equality, insist on giving their daughters trucks to play with and encourage their sons to find their inner mommy, they’re not preparing them for real life. And when the children are directed toward games where winning doesn’t matter, they are being set up for disappointment when their boss finds their work ethic lacking.

Enforced sameness for the sake of equality breeds all sorts of unnatural outcomes. Strong-arm edicts issued under Title IX to make sports participation exactly equal for men and women on campuses, has produced a striking result: colleges are dropping traditionally male sports as fast as they can.

“The total number of athletes, the gender ratio of the athletes in your athletic department must mirror the gender ratio of your undergraduate student population,” said Eric Pearson, chairman of the American Sports Council, which works to reform Title IX. Since female students now comprise 57 percent of undergraduates but only 43 percent of student athletes, sports like wrestling are getting the boot.

Like children, many progressives live in the present, fixated with “equality,” and oblivious or resistant to historic norms. Even the idea of “norms” is offensive to some.

The very existence of norms challenges the paramount importance that liberal culture places on self-fulfillment. Plus, it was once the norm in parts of America to own slaves and later to put Jim Crow laws on the books, not to mention denying women the right to vote or own property. All points taken. But the civil rights movement, created to right profound wrongs, has been hijacked by people engaged primarily in expanding government and creating dependency in the name of equality.

Along with the obsession with equality, progressives tend to embrace change, any change, that is, unless it's toward traditional or conservative ends.

In his new book Return to Order (on which I consulted on an early draft), author John Horvat II coins a phrase to summarize our culture’s dizzying, fast-paced, and increasingly unstable core: “frenetic intemperance.”

The term describes a spirit of lawlessness combined with a frantic drive to satiate desires. The result is an inability to distinguish the important from the trivial, and to surrender to “a bland secularism that admits few heroic, sublime or sacred elements to fill our lives with meaning.”

Mr. Horvat, who heads the Tradition, Family Property Commission for American Studies, says that, “We do not think it is caused by our vibrant system of private property and free enterprise as so many socialists are wont to claim…. Far from promoting a free market, frenetic intemperance undermines and throws it out of balance and even prepares the way for socialism.”

One manifestation of our culture’s becoming unhinged from its heritage is the recent creation of same-sex “marriage.” People contemptuous of the past and who yearn to evolve to some imagined ideal actually argue with a straight face (pun intended) that marriage was invented to exclude homosexuals. That was the basic finding of U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who struck down California’s voter-approved marriage amendment.

Judge Walker, who has his reasons, wants the option of marrying a man instead of a woman, so he dismissed 6,000 years of history, the state constitutional amendment process, and the idea of self-government. He declared that “animus” toward same-sex relationships was the reason that men have been marrying women since time began.

If you’re living solely in the present and are obsessed with faux equality, it’s necessary to deconstruct marriage, plucking it from the rich soil of kinship and making it strictly about individuals’ feelings.

However, living only in the present has some odd advantages. You can spend trillions of dollars that we don’t have and not worry about the next couple of generations who will have to pay for it all. We’re busy creating equality!

You can turn over the world’s finest health care system to the government and hope that it won’t evolve into a giant Division of Motor Vehicles with band-aids.

As for future generations, well, pass some clams, will you? That’s still okay for now in Ipswich.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 3, 2013

Libertarians (And Fiscal Conservatives) Should Oppose Road Socialism

Libertarians and transport economists for decades have advocated tolling as an alternative to fuel taxes, which have always been a poor proxy for charging users and have since become obsolete. That’s why it was so disheartening to read Rachel Alexander’s recent Townhall article “Toll Roads and Double Taxation: The Left and Libertarians Converge.” Instead of bringing greater market discipline to road funding, Alexander pushes the view that perpetuating certain government subsidies is consistent with libertarian principles.

This argument is based on a faulty premise. Instead of asking, “How should we pay for roads?” we should be asking, “How should we be paying for roads?” This distinction may seem minor, but it is not. Alexander accuses libertarians of “agree[ing] with the left on double taxation.” In this context, “double taxation” is a buzzword for a myth propagated by the trucking industry, which wants to continue receiving government subsidies.

Tolling opponents argue that roads have already been paid for, so any further funding for their upkeep therefore constitutes “double taxation.” Construction has been completed, they claim, so why should we continue to charge users for something they’ve already paid for? The idea that roads, once they have been built, are paid for is absolutely false. The majority of costs associated with a given highway over time are operating, maintenance, and rehabilitation costs—not initial construction. In fact, tolling can make it possible for users to internalize the social costs of accidents and congestion.

Another favorite argument of the “double taxation” crowd is that we are already paying for roads through other means. This is technically true, but what are those other means? Primarily, it comes in the form of non-user taxes such as property taxes or general revenue bailouts of transportation trust funds. As Alexander highlights, the majority of road spending in the United States does not come from user fees. This is a problem; it means that federal, state, and local authorities are taxing everyone to subsidize the road use of some. The proper and pragmatic libertarian solution would be to expand tolling in order to shrink the share of non-user revenue and eventually phase it out completely.

The idea that tolling is too costly ignores recent research. A recent Reason Foundation study found that modern all-electronic toll collection costs were now broadly on par with collection costs for fuel excise taxes. And under all-electronic tolling, there is no need for costly and congestion-inducing manual tollbooth collection.

In contrast to the claim that public-private partnerships (P3s) are “essentially crony capitalism,” P3s are important tools to advance private-sector ownership and control of the road network. While long-term concessions based on a “design-build-finance-operate-maintain” model do not technically amount to full privatization, they do increase private sector involvement in infrastructure ownership and management. P3s also serve as demonstration models that could facilitate full privatization at the end of the concession agreements.

Alexander also repeats the “Lexus Lane” myth that toll lanes are only for rich motorists. On the contrary, lower-income commuters also need to get places on time and are often willing to pay for the ability to do so, as research findings show. Yet somehow, Alexander suggests that denying lower-income drivers the choice to pay for travel-time savings is consistent with libertarian principles. Equity concerns could be better addressed by offering lower-income drivers toll reimbursements or travel vouchers.

Furthermore, linking the monstrously irresponsible Central Artery project in Boston (widely known as “The Big Dig”) with tolling is disingenuous at best. The article she cites as proof of toll collection’s inherent evil focuses on engineering and construction mismanagement that led to shoddy infrastructure and out-of-control cost overruns. Nowhere is tolling mentioned—probably because Massachusetts’ limited use of tolling had absolutely nothing to do with The Big Dig disaster.

Concern over penalties for turnpike scofflaws and arguments to continue our current road subsidization schemes ignore the most important question: how should we be paying for roads? To transportation experts at national libertarian think tanks, including the Reason Foundation, Cato Institute, Independent Institute, and my own Competitive Enterprise Institute, the answer is clear: more tolling, more decentralization, and more private-sector provision of roads. And it isn’t just libertarians: conservative transportation analysts affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute share our goal of curtailing road socialism.

Is it the case that virtually every libertarian transportation scholar in existence holds profoundly un-libertarian views regarding transportation and that their support for tolling is an egregious ideological sin? I suppose it’s possible, but Alexander’s case as presented runs against the overwhelming opinion of experts at some of the most renowned free-market think tanks in the United States

SOURCE

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Why Do Liberals hate Success?

There are many successful liberals, so why do so many of them wish to subsidize failure for the poor, instead of showing them how to succeed?

Take Dr. Ben Carson, as one example. Dr. Carson, the renowned neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., is enjoying a certain amount of celebrity unrelated to his profession for speaking his mind about how individuals and the nation might succeed if more Americans were less dependent on government.

Dr. Carson, who is African-American, has been denounced as insufficiently black because he won't toe the liberal line when it comes to big government and the implication that those in the African-American voting bloc, huge supporters of the Democratic Party, who fall below the poverty line, cannot succeed without it. The fact that many have not succeeded with government has apparently escaped the notice of his critics.

Speaking with Megyn Kelly on Fox News' "America Live" last week, Dr. Carson addressed some of the slurs tossed at him, saying they are what you might expect to hear "on a third grade playground." He appealed to his detractors to "move beyond" such rhetoric "and let's have a real discussion about the real facts. If somebody disagrees, let's talk about why they disagree, let's talk about the pros and cons, let's see if we can find some accommodation."

That is precisely what the left does not want to do, because to have such a discussion would expose liberalism's failure to solve the problems of poverty and education -- to cite just two examples -- through government.

MSNBC's Toure Monday has called Dr. Carson a token "black friend" to the Republican Party. I don't recall Carson ever saying he belongs to the Republican Party, do you? Even so, labels should not define the man. What Carson is saying and what he represents ought to be the beginning point for the discussion he is trying to initiate.

Dr. Carson dismissed one suggestion he might be an "Uncle Tom" this way: "Well, obviously they don't know what an Uncle Tom is because they need to read Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' You'll see that he was very, very subservient, kind of go along to get along type of person. Obviously, that's not what I'm doing." Obviously.

In the Kelly interview, Dr. Carson hit his main point about liberal reaction on subjects ranging from Obamacare to higher taxes: "They feel that if you look a certain way then you have to stay on the plantation."

Isn't such a personal attack also a form of racism? All whites don't think alike, why should all African-Americans be expected to?

If government were the solution and not the problem, shouldn't we expect that the amount of money spent on anti-poverty programs -- $15 trillion since 1964, according to a CATO Institute analysis -- might have moved the needle on poverty? Instead there are nearly as many poor people today as there were 49 years ago. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the modern-day food-stamp benefit is known, has soared 70 percent since 2008 to a record 47.8 million as of December 2012." Government as solution isn't working and Dr. Carson wants to discuss why. For this he is attacked?

The nightmare for liberals would be if Ben Carson became a role model for the poor instead of a target. If more of the poor had mothers like his (and maybe active fathers, which he didn't have), who focused on reading and discipline, more might grow up to be like him. They might reject the lie that they are incapable of succeeding because of their circumstances.

In addition to Carson's remarks about government dependency, he is also under attack for his unorthodox positions on same-sex marriage and evolution, which the National Review Online reports has led to a petition being circulated at Johns Hopkins Medical School asking that he be disinvited as commencement speaker. That would add censorship to racism.

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Bureaucratic Incompetence and the VA

Sadly, bureaucracy is a time-honored tradition in the United States government, but perhaps no greater bureaucratic juggernaut exists today than the Veteran’s Administration (VA) run by the Obama Administration.

The abject failure of the VA under the leadership of the three-ring circus we know as the Obama Administration is a case in point that increasing funding does little to inject competence or efficiency.

Recent documents from an Internal Veterans Affairs Department reveal some veterans actually die before receiving the care they need and others are forced to wait up to eight months to see a doctor, well beyond the VA’s standard of 14 days.

A House Veterans Oversight and Investigations committee appointed to look into the problem found evidence the VA is falsifying numbers and closing out veterans’ appointment requests in response to the backlog. According to the Military Times, the committee chairman, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), cites reasons for the closeouts include: “the request was years old, too much time had elapsed, or the veteran had died.”

A March 14, 2013 witness testimony by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Health Care Director, Debra Draper stated no one actually knows how long veterans are waiting for care because “the reported dates are unreliable” -- a large number of VA appointment schedulers don’t know how to do their job, the whole system is obsolete, and dates are massaged to “show clinic wait times within VHA’s performance goals.”

I digress to note that similar complaints are also documented within Britain’s National Healthcare System where workers manipulate numbers to meet quotas to keep their jobs. If the VA can’t provide benefits to our nation’s veterans, how does the Obama administration plan to deliver healthcare for 30-plus million Americans?

Liberals would have us believe that a bloated federal government has the ability to play a meaningful role in nurturing people’s lives, but if they can’t get this one right, they just need to just fuhgeddaboutit. Case closed. Done.

Additionally, internal VA documents secured by the Center for Investigative Reporting found wait times for first-time disability compensation claims and other benefit claims are much longer than the VA cares to admit, with claims taking anywhere from 316 to 642 days.

In the first year of President Obama’s presidency, 11,000 veterans were on a claim waiting list for more than a year. Five years later, despite promises for improvement, and massive dollars “invested,” the situation has deteriorated.

Those on a one-year waiting list for claims rose by more than 2000 percent, to 245,000 in 2012. Currently, the average wait time for 900,000 veterans who have been willing to sacrifice life and limb for our freedom is 273 days. With that kind of malfeasance taking place under my watch, I think I’d do a little less golfing if I were president.

If you think this has something to do with “the mess Obama inherited,” then think again. The Center for Investigative Reporting found, “the average wait time for veterans filing disability claims fell by more than a third under President George W. Bush, even as more than 320,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans filed disability claims.”

SOURCE

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Faith in Freedom

Rick Santorum

On Easter Sunday, Christians around the world celebrated the resurrection of the Lord, Jesus Christ. For us, it was a time of renewal -- a renewal of our baptismal promises, a rebirth of our faith in the Father, a moment to rejoice in our love for the church and its teachings. Also, our Jewish friends and neighbors recently observed Passover and hosted Seder dinners for family and friends.

It's a joyous time of year, and I'm grateful we live in a country where we are free to observe and celebrate our traditions and our faiths -- a country where people of different faiths can respect one another. It's something we often take for granted here in America, for the same cannot be said in many other parts of the world. Too often people endure daily slights for their religious beliefs -- or worse. In many cases, they live in fear of persecution, imprisonment or death for what they believe. Millions are denied what we believe to be a basic right: the right to live their faith freely in a free society.

Our Founding Fathers themselves were witness to much religious persecution and, therefore, sought to create a nation that treated freedom to worship as a fundamental right, the first freedom. In the Declaration of Independence, our founders highlighted our inalienable rights -- which come from our Creator, not government. As the leaders of free people around the world, it is my hope that we would advance our founders' vision and serve as voices for the millions around the world who are oppressed.

But sadly, I'm too frequently reminded that this is not happening. Either it has not been a priority or our leaders don't truly believe in protecting this first freedom. Either way, this is unacceptable. For example, on multiple occasions, President Barack Obama has chosen not to raise concerns with Chinese leaders about their frequent imprisonment of human rights advocates or treatment of Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and Falun Gong members -- all of whom have been oppressed because the Chinese government views them as a threat. The administration also has chosen not to speak out on the one-child policy.

But notwithstanding the recent admission by the Chinese government that the country has aborted more than 336 million unborn children -- many by force -- over the past four decades, China's treatment of minority religions is nothing like the oppression suffered by millions in the Middle East today. A recent study by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that just 4 percent of people in the Middle East and Africa are Christian, down from more than 20 percent a century ago. In the cradle of Christianity, nearly all of the Christians have fled. In Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Iran and Pakistan, among many others, there come reports of the tormenting and murdering of Christians. And we have basically abandoned them. Despite the president's now quite famous 2009 speech in Cairo -- in which he committed to upholding religious freedom around the world -- we have done almost nothing to help these people as radical and intolerant Islamist regimes come to power.

Throughout these Muslim countries, religious minorities are being purged from lands they have occupied for 7,000 years. In recent months in Nigeria, as many as 50 Catholic churches have been destroyed by Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group. They also reportedly have targeted and killed Christians and intend to "Islamize" the country. Across the region daily, reports such as the one from Egypt in which a family of eight was sentenced to 15 years in prison for converting to Christianity are very common. You probably won't hear much from our leaders or the mainstream media on this, though. But please know that not all enjoy the freedom to worship that we do.

During his recent trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, President Obama said he would do his best to help the people of the Holy Land keep the Christian presence there. His visit was met with appreciation from Christian leaders in the region, one of whom described the visit as a "pilgrimage" to a place that is "important for the whole of mankind." Time will tell whether his words were more than hollow gestures. I pray that they are.

Throughout history, our great nation has confronted and defeated threats to human rights here at home and abroad. From civil rights to defeating the Nazis and liberating the concentration camps to going toe-to-toe with the Soviets, we've had leaders who, when they've seen injustice and egregious violations of human rights, have stepped up and, in the spirit of our founders, have protected our first principles and beliefs as a nation. It's time our leaders stood up for the equal treatment of women and the freedom of conscience of religious minorities around the world, for example. And we must stand up against violence in the name of religion. Perhaps more importantly, we also must recognize that religious liberty is under assault by not only Muslim radicals but also radical secularists who are intolerant of expressions of faith. Many of these secularists hold prominent public positions in Western nations.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 2, 2013

The Chart from Hell

On August 7, 2009 Barack Obama thumped his chest in the Rose Garden and proclaimed "We've rescued our economy from catastrophe." Supposedly, the economic recovery had officially begun two months earlier.

That was 1328 days ago. But, try telling that to somebody that has to work for a living. Median Household Income continues to fall.



While the President pretends that the end to life as we know it is near because of the incy wincy sequester cuts, families have been forced to live on less for years – and, it's still getting worse.

As reported by the New York Times:

"For the first time in over a year, median annual income fell by a statistically significant amount from the previous month, according to a report from Sentier Research.

Median annual household income in February 2013 was $51,404, about 1.1 percent (or $590) lower than the January 2013 level of $51,994. The numbers are all pretax, and are adjusted for both inflation and seasonal changes.

… The longer-run trends are even more depressing.

February’s median annual household income was 5.6 percent lower than it was in June 2009, the month the recovery technically began; 7.3 percent lower than in December 2007, when the most recent recession officially started; and 8.4 percent lower than in January 2000, the earliest date that this statistical series became available."

Note that these numbers are "pretax." In January, the Payroll Tax was increased by 2 percent by Obama's $600 billion fiscal cliff tax hike. On average, that tax increase will suck another $700 per year out of the wallets of 160 million Americans.

Little wonder that 6-in-10 Americans believe the economy is still in recession. And, the really big hit from ObamaCare is right around the corner.

And, what do we get from the White House? Denial. Last month, Joe Biden said Americans are "no longer worried" about the economy.

SOURCE

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1913 — the final days of the old regime in the United States

In 1913, exactly a century ago, the United States was a flourishing, economically advanced country. Its real output per capita was the world’s highest. It produced a great abundance of agricultural products and was a leading exporter of cotton, wheat, and many other farm products. Yet it also had the world’s largest industrial sector, producing as much manufactured output as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. It brought forth new technological marvels almost daily, and its cities featured well paved and lighted streets, automobiles, modern sewerage and water-supply systems, central electrical-supply systems, skyscrapers, street cars, subways, and frequent intercity train service. During the preceding fifty years, its real income per capita had grown by about 2 percent per year, on average, and its total real output by about 4 percent per year, on average. All races, classes, and regions participated in this progress. In 1913, the rate of unemployment was 4.3 percent, and the price level was roughly the same as its average during the nineteenth century.

Yet the United States in 1913 had no federal income tax, no central bank, no social security taxes, no general sales taxes, no Securities and Exchange Commission, no Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, no Department of Health and Human Services, no National Labor Relations Board, no federal this, that, and the other as far as the eye can see. Except for restrictions on Chinese and Japanese immigration, nothing but perfunctory health examinations impeded the free flow of foreigners into the country, and hundreds of thousands arrived each year, mostly from Europe. All governments combined spent an amount equal to about 7 percent of GDP; the federal government’s part amounted to only about 3 percent of GDP. Local governments were the biggest actors in terms of regulations and expenditures. The average American had no regular contact with the federal government aside from the postman and little or none with the state and local governments aside from the school teachers and the public streets. The country was on an official gold standard. Gold and silver coins circulated as normal media of exchange, and gold certificates issued by individual commercial banks, as well as their checking accounts, served the public for making larger transactions.

Never before had so much prosperity been attained by a comparably large population, and never before had so many people enjoyed such spacious freedom to live their lives and go about their business as they chose in a context where voluntary transactions dominated economic affairs and governments were relatively inconsequential factors in the economy and society. Such was the garden in which the serpents of war would soon whisper in the ears of politicians and government officials, who shortly afterward would blast this auspicious scene to smithereens.

The Old Regime would then be lost forever, as the war’s pervasive legacies insinuated themselves permanently into economic and political life. Gone forever was a world that, notwithstanding its many defects and crying needs, had been traveling a sure road to improvements and remedies largely within a nurturing spontaneous order. Henceforward, the intrusion of politics and governments into ever more aspects of social and economic life would poison the people’s public affairs and turn them away from creative activity and self-responsibility toward more and more political conflict, suppression of freedom, and plunder of one another.

SOURCE

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The Left's Continuing War on Women

Ann Coulter

The New York Times caused a sensation with its kazillion-word, March 17 article by Michael Luo on the failures of state courts to get guns out of the hands of men in domestic violence situations.

The main purpose of the article was to tweak America's oldest civil rights organization, the National Rifle Association, for opposing some of the more rash anti-gun proposals being considered by state legislatures, such as allowing courts to take away a person's firearms on the basis of a temporary restraining order.

It's a new position for liberals to oppose the rights of the accused. Usually the Times is demanding that even convicted criminals be given voting rights, light sentences, sex-change operations and vegan meals in prison.

Another recent Times article about communities trying to keep sex offenders out of their neighborhoods quoted a liberal saying: "It's counterproductive to public safety, because when you have nothing to lose, you are much more likely to commit a crime than when you are rebuilding your life."

But that was about convicted child molesters. This is about guns, so all new rules apply.

As is usually the case when liberals start proposing gun restrictions, they assume only men will be disarmed by laws taking guns from those subjected to temporary restraining orders. But such orders aren't particularly difficult to get. It doesn't occur to liberals that an abusive man could also get one against his wife, whether or not his accusations are true.

Rather than helping victims of domestic abuse, this -- and other Times' proposals on guns -- only ensures that more women will get killed. A gun in the hand of an abused woman changes the power dynamic far more than keeping a gun out of the hands of her abuser, who generally can murder his wife in any number of ways.

The vast majority of rapists, for example, don't even bother using a gun because -- as renowned criminologist Gary Kleck notes -- they typically have a "substantial power advantage over the victim," making the use of a weapon redundant.

As the Times eventually admits around paragraph 400: "In fairness, it was not always clear that such an order (taking guns from the accused wife abuser) would have prevented the deaths."

No kidding. In one case the Times cites, Robert Wigg ripped a door off its hinges and heaved it at his wife, Deborah, after having thrown her to the floor by her hair.

Deborah Wigg moved out, got a protective order and filed for divorce. But doors were not an impediment to Robert Wigg. He showed up at her new house and, in short order, broke down the door and murdered her.

He happened to have used a gun, but he might as well have used his fists. Or an illegal gun, had the court taken away his legal guns. Or another door.

As her husband was breaking in, Deborah called her parents and 911. Her neighbors called 911, too. But the police didn't arrive in time. Even her parents got to the house before the cops did, only to find their daughter murdered.

The protective order didn't help Deborah Wigg; the police couldn't help; her neighbors and parents couldn't help. Only if she'd had a gun and knew how to use it -- after carefully disregarding everything Joe Biden has said on the subject -- might she have been able to save her own life.

Numerous studies, including one by the National Institute of Justice, show that crime victims who resist a criminal with a gun are less likely to be injured than those who do not resist at all or who resist without a gun. That's true even when the assailant is armed.

Liberals' advice to rape and domestic abuse victims is: Lie back and enjoy it. The Times' advice is: Get a protective order. The NRA's advice is: Blow the dirtbag's head off. Or, for the delicate: Resist with a gun, the only effective means to stop an attack.

Apparently a lot of abused women prefer not to lie back and take it. Looking at data from Detroit, Houston and Miami, Margo Wilson and Martin Daly found that the vast majority of wives who killed their husbands were not even indicted, much less convicted, because it was found they were acting in self-defense.

But the Times doesn't want abused women to have a fighting chance. Instead, it keeps pushing gun control policies that not only won't stop violent men from murdering their wives, but will disarm their intended victims.

SOURCE

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Disability abuse

In the U.S. we like to think we’re all about enabling people. We ban discrimination based on creed or color. We insist that facilities be accessible to the disabled. We brag about an America where anyone can climb the ladder of success.

We’re also a compassionate people, eager to help each other. That’s why there’s a generous safety net in place, to catch anyone who happens to fall while climbing the ladder. Welfare, Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps and many other programs are in place to help those who are down-on-their-luck.

The problem is when the safety net becomes an actual net, ensnaring people and preventing them from rising.

Consider the Social Security Disability program. Here’s a safety net built especially to catch those who are severely injured and simply unable to work. That’s been a problem throughout human history, of course. People get hurt at work, lose digits or limbs, or simply wear out after decades of hard labor. Many have needed some help over the decades.

However, in our time, most work is less physically taxing than it’s ever been. Rather than plowing the fields, most people ply computer keyboards. Rather than working with big industrial machines such as Stephen King’s “The Mangler,” most people work in safe office buildings. Even smoking on the job, once ubiquitous, is a thing of the past.

And yet, the share of the U.S. population on Social Security Disability almost doubled between 1985 and 2005. And that’s before the 2008 recession hit.

“A record 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office, according to the latest official government data, as discouraged workers increasingly give up looking for jobs and take advantage of the federal program,” Investor’s Business Daily wrote last year.

Not only are there more people filing for disability benefits, there are more people getting stuck on disability.

“Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work. Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then,” NPR’s Chana Joffe-Walt reports. “Disability has also become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills. But it wasn't supposed to serve this purpose; it’s not a retraining program designed to get people back onto their feet.”

Something scary is going on here. Far from enabling Americans to rise, we’re trapping millions at the bottom. And once they’ve gone to the government and announced “I can’t work,” the chances are slim that they’ll change their minds five or ten years later. “Going on disability means, assuming you rely only on those disability payments, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That’s the deal. And it’s a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for,” Joffe-Walt adds.

Disability programs can be mentally as well as physically disabling. A friend who used to handle worker’s compensation claims told me about a woman who “tested out” of the disability program. A third-party medical review stated she was fit to return to work, so her benefits were scheduled to end. The recipient was so upset she threatened to jump off her balcony. “That’s when I knew I had to leave that job,” my friend comments. Luckily, she left it for another job, not to go on disability.

The message of empowerment remains powerful in American politics. “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else,” the president announced during his second Inaugural Address.

Set aside questions about whether that is true (it will simply never be possible to give a child born in “the bleakest poverty” the same opportunities that Bill Gates’ children enjoy). Instead, we should ask whether we’re really empowering poor children, and poor Americans in general, today.

Today’s bleak economy has many fathers, so there will be no easy solution. But as a starter we need to regulations and encourage companies to hire again. And we need to enable more Americans to work, by reducing the number stuck on disability. Only when we do that will we be true to our American creed.

SOURCE

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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April 1, 2013

The New York Times is a Crypto-Nazi Paper

The New York Times has become the official paper of Israel’s Western would-be eradicators.

Joseph Levine's latest oped argued that Israel has no right to exist and that history should be reversed: “I conclude, then, that the very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic”. The New York Times' relentless attacks could well play out in ways that indeed attempt to put an end to Israeli sovereignty.

According to Levine's racist belief, “native species” originate in a certain place and that is where they “belong.” Hence, Israel’s "colonization" threatens the “original” Arab environment. This is pure and simple Nazism. The New York Times’ Israel-bashers use a style similar to the language used by anti-Semites the world over: Israel is inferior and must not enjoy the rights accorded to other peoples.

The New York Times articles are not attacking the “occupation” anymore, but the very idea of a Jewish state. The Times' incitement against Zionism is compulsive, full of half-baked truths and ill-disguised hysteria. The Times just hosted an oped by Rashid Khalidi, the PLO supporter and anti-Zionist militant from Columbia University. In his latest column, he charges Israel of being an alien, settler entity, comparing its existence to South Africa's apartheid.

At the Times there are also those who do not advocate eradicating Israel, but work to remove any shred of justification for supporting it by following some elementary rules: promoting the myth of Palestinian "moderation", whitewashing terror groups and demonizing the "settlers".

As in the 1930's, when the New York Times downplayed the Nazi genocide of European Jews in order to avoid being seen as a “Jewish” newspaper, today Thomas Friedman, Roger Cohen (the dupe of Tehran) and Nicolas Kristof are the Jewish journalists who have been leading the charge in demonizing Israel and unabashedly praising the "Arab Spring" and Iran's "pragmatism".

Thomas Friedman plays a major role in shaping Obama’s plan for Israel’s return to the pre-1967 armistice line, which the late Abba Eban dubbed the “Auschwitz borders”. It was Friedman who wrote that the White House is “disgusted” with Israeli interlocutors. The famous Jewish columnist has always been a militant suporter of the Palestinian cause. According to the US columnist, Israeli settlers are a “cancer for the Jewish people” and those who “collaborate” in the building of settlements are “enemies of peace” and “enemies of America’s national interest”, no less.

“What Israeli settlers and Palestinian suicide bombers have in common is that they are each pushing for the maximum use of force against the other side”, he wrote after the killing of young grade-schooler Kobi Mandell. For Friedman, building a home on disputed territory is apparently the moral equivalent of stoning Jews - even school age ones - to death. To equate the two, as Friedman always does, is to create moral mush. At age fourteen, Kobi was immobilized and stoned to death as was his friend, his body hidden in a cave. The terrorists soaked their hands in the boy’s blood and smeared the walls of the cave with it.

Friedman also crossed the Rubicon when he opined that "Jewish money" (note not Israeli money) caused the standing ovations Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, gave the Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu.

As far back as 1929, during the Arab riots, the local Times correspondent Joseph Levy boasted that he was a committed anti-Zionist. Eighty years later, when the Fogels were slaughtered in Itamar, the New York Times chose not to cover that event on the front page, nor to comment it.

And how to forget the "Pharisees on the Potomac” headline by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on what she considers to be the moral hypocrisy of Republican Party?

Every morning, opening the New York Times, the reader finds very accurate stuff about the Holocaust, the most extreme demonstration of Jewish powerlessness, (ignored and put on the back pages of the Times while it was taking place) along with opeds like that of Peter Beinart titled “To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements”.

The New York Times’ avid PLO supporters and propagandists are the descendamts of one of the most celebrated journalists of his time, the first New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Duranty, who in the thirties fed the American public instantly-rewritten history of the famine in the Ukraine. By persuading the world that Stalin’s version of events was true, Duranty’s fairy tales cost thousands,if not millions,of lives.

The Times consistently ignores the genocidal anti-Semitism that governs Hamas and Hizbullah, described therein as "militant" groups concerned with the social welfare of Palestinians and Lebanese. The Times' articles from Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem and Bethlehem during the Second Intifada could have been written about the Taliban in the Afghan caves. These depicted the Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters meeting their noble fate.

That favorable press in the New York Times encourages the Arabs to believe they can get away with murder is a given. By reinforcing the Islamic claim that those who died on the Temple Mount were martyred defenders of holy places, mowed down by savage, unprovoked Israeli authorities, the New York Times also helped inflame millions of Muslims against Israel. By calling the area “Muslim compound” and omitting any mention of the Temple Mount or its Jewish connection, the New York Times convinced the world that Ariel Sharon had intruded upon a site holy solely to Islam, helping to trigger the second Intifada.

As the latest Levine's oped shows, the New York Times is a crypto-Nazi publication whose message is, plain and simple, “Jews, go home, again”. There is a Klezmer [Jewish traditional music] festival in Krakow this year.

SOURCE

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The Bloody Company Hollywood Keeps

Michelle Malkin

Bleeding-heart liberal Robert Redford is already the subject of early Oscar buzz. His much-hyped new film glamorizing the lives of Weather Underground domestic terrorists, "The Company You Keep," will be released in the U.S. next week. But peace-loving moviegoers should save their money and take a stand.
Hollywood's romanticizing of murderous radicals is an affront to decency. Redford and Company's rose-colored hagiography of bloodstained killers defiles the memory of all those victimized by leftwing militants on American soil.

Tinseltown cheerleaders can't stop gushing about Redford's paean to gun-toting progressives, of course. Variety called the flick an "unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism." The entertainment daily effused: "There is something undeniably compelling, perhaps even romantic, about America's '60s radicals and the compromises they did or didn't make." One of the film executives promoting the Weather Underground movie slavered: "This is an edge-of-your-seat thriller about real Americans who stood for their beliefs, thinking they were patriots and defending their country's ideals against their government."

Compelling? Romantic? Real Americans? Patriots? The movie plot centers on a 1970s Michigan bank robbery perpetrated by fictional Weather Underground members Sharon Solarz (portrayed by bigwig Democratic activist Susan Sarandon) and Jim Grant (played by Redford). The group shoots and kills one off-duty police officer working as a bank security guard. Grant goes on the lam and assumes a fake identity; decades later, a reporter launches an investigation into his role in the crime. The movie drums up "unabashedly heartfelt" sympathy for Grant as he works to exonerate himself.

Moviegoers would be better served by educating themselves about the real-life bank robbery and murder on which the movie is loosely based. In 1981, rich-kid Weathermen ideologues and lovers Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert joined forces with Black Liberation Army thugs and other ragtag commie revolutionaries to hold up an armored Brink's vehicle in Nyack, N.Y. Their booty: $1.6 million to fund their violent activities. Before taking up her assignment as the getaway vehicle driver, Boudin dropped off her toddler son, Chesa Boudin, at a babysitter's house.

Two of the holdup victims gunned down in the botched Brink's robbery were police officers. One was a private security guard. All three were veterans from working-class backgrounds. Their names: Waverly Brown, Edward O'Grady and Peter Paige.

Boudin and Gilbert were convicted and sent to prison. Prior to her arrest in Nyack, she had been an 11-year fugitive from justice after an accidental homemade bomb explosion at her New York City townhouse resulted in the death of three people. At the time of her arrest in Nyack, Boudin gave police one of many false identities she had used to evade the law.

Boudin was paroled in 2003 after convincing parole board members that she acted nobly out of "white guilt" to protest racism against blacks. Never mind that one of the officers killed, Waverly Brown, was black.

While Redford glorifies his fictional Weather Underground murderers as "patriots," he ignores the patriotic legacy of the victims of Weather Underground violence. And while Redford lionizes the Weather Underground zealots as compassionate parents, where are his passion and compassion for the children of the Weather Underground victims?

Brown served in the Air Force after the Korean War and had two grown daughters and a teenage son when he died in the brutal shootout. O'Grady, who served in the Marines and did two tours of duty in Vietnam, left behind a wife and three children -- 6, 2 and 6 months old. Paige, a Navy veteran, also left behind a wife and three kids -- 19, 16 and 9.

The sons and daughters of those gunned down by Weather Underground killers have lived in obscurity. Meanwhile, as I first reported more than a decade ago, Chesa Boudin has lived a pampered life surrounded by tenured academics and celebrity friends. His adoptive parents? The infamous pals of Barack Obama, Weathermen organizers Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Refresher course: Dohrn declared war on "AmeriKKKa," helped stage the "Days of Rage" in Chicago, when Weathermen blew up a memorial statue to police officers and rioted violently, leaving 75 policemen wounded and one permanently injured in a wheelchair, and then spent years as a fugitive from justice before settling into a comfy post as director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University.

Ayers remains in the limelight after celebrating the Weathermen bombing the Pentagon and flitting from campuses to socialist regimes and back preaching education as the "motor force for revolution."

Chesa Boudin attended Yale, won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship, shilled for Hugo Chavez, wrote books and keeps a busy speaking schedule. He still stands by the Weathermen's revolutionary agenda: "My parents were all dedicated to fighting U.S. imperialism around the world. I'm dedicated to the same thing."

Cinematically and metaphorically, Redford manufactures the same stance that unrepentant Weather Underground criminals and apologists still hold of themselves today: Not guilty.

SOURCE

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A nation suckered

Bilking billions from the government

No doubt you were shocked, shocked to learn that Jeffrey Hillman, the “barefoot beggar” who famously received a free pair of boots from a kindly NYPD cop, turned out to be a scam artist who preys on the kindness of strangers to provide him with an apartment, money and plenty of footwear — as a Post investigation discovered.

That’s right — someone pretending to be in dire straits turns out to be a) not destitute, b) not homeless and c) not shoeless.

But then, Hillman’s just a piker when it comes to the rising culture of sham dependency that is rapidly turning this country from a nation of self-reliant citizens to shuffling pseudo-mendicants and conniving criminals who have one hand extended to collect government largesse while the other is busily picking your pocket.

Consider the numbers:

* The Government Accountability Office estimates that improper — i.e., fraudulent — Medicare payments amount to at least $17 billion per annum. Other independent estimates run even higher — as much as one-fifth of total federal health-care spending (about $550 billion), according to one Harvard analyst.

And that’s before ObamaCare fully kicks in.

* A fresh source of abuse is the Bush-era prescription-drug benefit, which one physician’s publication has called “staggeringly complicated and largely incomprehensible to the very population it was intended to help . . .the drug program’s very complexity is a source of fraud.”

* The jobless recovery may equal misery for millions of Americans, but it’s created a boom in Social Security disability claims, many of them no doubt sheer gold-bricking via “personality disorders” and other imaginary illnesses.

Nearly 18 million people — one in 20 Americans — are collecting some $170 billion a year in disability payments, a record high, and the government estimates that fraud and other improper payments account for $25 billion of disability spending over a recent four-year period.

Like the “barefoot beggar,” who only needs to take his shoes off to get free stuff, Dependency Nation has learned how easy it is to take the government for a ride. In many cases, it’s simply a matter of correctly — if fraudulently — filling out the right forms and sending them in.

Unseen by human eyes, claims are processed by computer and checks go flying out in return; Medicare alone handles some 1.2 billion such claims annually.

Another tactic is fictitious patients and procedures: One dentist a few years ago bilked New York’s Medicaid program of more than $1 million in part by claiming she performed 991 procedures in a single day.

Organized crime has horned in on the act as well, setting up sham companies to fool the feds, stealing drugs meant for AIDS patients and getting kickbacks on unnecessary items such as motorized wheelchairs that Medicare is only too happy to shell out for.

In 2009, the Government Accountability Office catalogued examples of waste, fraud and abuse in just about every federal do-gooder program, including school lunches ($1.4 billion), children’s health insurance ($800 million, or roughly 15 percent of the total), the Earned Income Tax Credit ($12 billion), plus housing subsidies, child-care, unemployment insurance . . . You name it, and some sizable chunk of it is a scam.

In all, the cost to the taxpayers is estimated at some $100 billion a year.And things are only likely to get worse.

Take Social Security and Medicare, which together accounted for a whopping 36 percent of total federal expenditures in fiscal 2011. Everyone knows they’re unsustainable at current funding levels, so expect higher taxes. Yet more money going to the feds inevitably means more waste, fraud and abuse — because as famed robber Willie Sutton said of banks: That’s where the money is.

But in a kind of bureaucratic Catch-22, greater oversight would also mean more regulations and soaring enforcement costs, thus redirecting resources away from the very people the programs were meant to help — while still allowing the scam artists to enrich themselves.

Just ask Jeffrey Hilman, the “shoeless” man who, as it happens, has at least 30 pairs of shoes and boots — courtesy of the suckers.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate. And you may not even survive at all. Stalin killed off all the old Bolsheviks.


MYTH BUSTING:


The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.



R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.



IN BRIEF:

The U.S. Constitution is neither "living" nor dead. It is fixed until it is amended. But amending it is the privilege of the people, not of politicians or judges

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

It's the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left.

American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.

The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant

The Democratic Party is a strange amalgam of elites, would-be elites and minorities. No wonder their policies are so confused and irrational

The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is not envy. It's rage

Leftists are committed to grievance, not truth

The British Left poured out a torrent of hate for Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death. She rescued Britain from chaos and restored Britain's prosperity. What's not to hate about that?

Something you didn't know about Margaret Thatcher

The world's dumbest investor? Without doubt it is Uncle Sam. Nobody anywhere could rival the scale of the losses on "investments" made under the Obama administration

"Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power" -- Murray Rothbard - Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995)

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them--all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach." -- Solzhenitsyn

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. -- Thomas Jefferson

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power" -- Bertrand Russell

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

The Republicans are the gracious side of American politics. It is the Democrats who are the nasty party, the haters

Wanting to stay out of the quarrels of other nations is conservative -- but conservatives will fight if attacked or seriously endangered. Anglo/Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), who led the political coalition that defeated Napoleon, was an isolationist, as were traditional American conservatives.

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

There is better evidence for creation than there is for the Leftist claim that “gender” is a “social construct”. Most Leftist claims seem to be faith-based rather than founded on the facts

Leftists are classic weak characters. They dish out abuse by the bucketload but cannot take it when they get it back. Witness the Loughner hysteria.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

The Leftist motto: "I love humanity. It's just people I can't stand"

Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

Gore Vidal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little". Vidal was of course a Leftist

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left. Some evidence here showing that envy is not what defines the Left

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

Was Confucius a conservative? The following saying would seem to reflect good conservative caution: "The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

Some Leftist hatred arises from the fact that they blame "society" for their own personal problems and inadequacies

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

Leftist policies are candy-coated rat poison that may appear appealing at first, but inevitably do a lot of damage to everyone impacted by them.

A tribute and thanks to Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death was reprehensible but she probably did more by her death that she ever would have in life: She spared the world a President Ted Kennedy. That the heap of corruption that was Ted Kennedy died peacefully in his bed is one of the clearest demonstrations that we do not live in a just world. Even Joe Stalin seems to have been smothered to death by Nikita Khrushchev

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

Even in the Old Testament they knew about "Postmodernism": "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

Was Solomon the first conservative? "The hearts of men are full of evil and madness is in their hearts" -- Ecclesiastes: 9:3 (RSV). He could almost have been talking about Global Warming.

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present.

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among intelligent people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics. -- C.J. Keyser

Hell is paved with good intentions" -- Boswell's Life of Johnson of 1775

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state -- capitalism frees them.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.

"Some action that is unconstitutional has much to recommend it" -- Elena Kagan, nominated to SCOTUS by Obama

Frank Sulloway, the anti-scientist

The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Some ancient wisdom for Leftists: "Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise: Why shouldest thou die before thy time?" -- Ecclesiastes 7:16

Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."



The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Big business is not your friend. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary

How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values. -- John Maynard Keynes

Some wisdom from "Bron" Waugh: "The purpose of politics is to help them [politicians] overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power"

"There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible"

The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to Parliament [or Congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever"

"It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled"


Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean


It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were. Freedom needs a soldier

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

3 memoirs of "Supermac", a 20th century Disraeli (Aristocratic British Conservative Prime Minister -- 1957 to 1963 -- Harold Macmillan):

"It breaks my heart to see (I can't interfere or do anything at my age) what is happening in our country today - this terrible strike of the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's army and beat Hitler's army, and never gave in. Pointless, endless. We can't afford that kind of thing. And then this growing division which the noble Lord who has just spoken mentioned, of a comparatively prosperous south, and an ailing north and midlands. That can't go on." -- Mac on the British working class: "the best men in the world" (From his Maiden speech in the House of Lords, 13 November 1984)

"As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism"

During Macmillan's time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out



JEWS AND ISRAEL

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" -- Genesis 12:3

If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy -- Psalm 137 (NIV)

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

I have always liked the story of Gideon (See Judges chapters 6 to 8) and it is surely no surprise that in the present age Israel is the Gideon of nations: Few in numbers but big in power and impact.

If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!

And the other side of the coin is that Jews tend to despise conservatives and Christians. Yet American fundamentalist Christians are the bedrock of the vital American support for Israel, the ultimate bolthole for all Jews. So Jewish political irrationality seems to be a rather good example of the saying that "The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away". There are many other examples of such perversity (or "balance"). The sometimes severe side-effects of most pharmaceutical drugs is an obvious one but there is another ethnic example too, a rather amusing one. Chinese people are in general smart and patient people but their rate of traffic accidents in China is about 10 times higher than what prevails in Western societies. They are brilliant mathematicians and fearless business entrepreneurs but at the same time bad drivers!

Conservatives, on the other hand, could be antisemitic on entirely rational grounds: Namely, the overwhelming Leftism of the Diaspora Jewish population as a whole. Because they judge the individual, however, only a tiny minority of conservative-oriented people make such general judgments. The longer Jews continue on their "stiff-necked" course, however, the more that is in danger of changing. The children of Israel have been a stiff necked people since the days of Moses, however, so they will no doubt continue to vote with their emotions rather than their reason.

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

Fortunately for America, though, liberal Jews there are rapidly dying out through intermarriage and failure to reproduce. And the quite poisonous liberal Jews of Israel are not much better off. Judaism is slowly returning to Orthodoxy and the Orthodox tend to be conservative.

The above is good testimony to the accuracy of the basic conservative insight that almost anything in human life is too complex to be reduced to any simple rule and too complex to be reduced to any rule at all without allowance for important exceptions to the rule concerned

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there'd be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there'd be genocide.

Eugenio Pacelli, a righteous Gentile, a true man of God and a brilliant Pope


ABOUT

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsy ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsy but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

Throughout the world today, possession of a U.S. or U.K. passport is greatly valued. I once shared that view. Developments in recent years have however made me profoundly grateful that I am a 5th generation Australian. My Australian passport is a door into a much less oppressive and much less messed-up place than either the USA or Britain

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

"Intellectual" = Leftist dreamer. I have more publications in the academic journals than almost all "public intellectuals" but I am never called an intellectual and nor would I want to be. Call me a scholar or an academic, however, and I will accept either as a just and earned appellation


My academic background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

Very occasionally in my writings I make reference to the greats of analytical philosophy such as Carnap and Wittgenstein. As philosophy is a heavily Leftist discipline however, I have long awaited an attack from some philosopher accusing me of making coat-trailing references not backed by any real philosophical erudition. I suppose it is encouraging that no such attacks have eventuated but I thought that I should perhaps forestall them anyway -- by pointing out that in my younger days I did complete three full-year courses in analytical philosophy (at 3 different universities!) and that I have had papers on mainstream analytical philosophy topics published in academic journals

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

A real army story here

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and there is JUST ONE saying of Hitler's that I rather like. It may not even be original to him but it is found in chapter 2 of Mein Kampf (published in 1925): "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht". The equivalent English saying is "Difficulties exist to be overcome" and that traces back at least to the 1920s -- with attributions to Montessori and others. Hitler's metaphor is however one of smashing barriers rather than of politely hopping over them and I am myself certainly more outspoken than polite. Hitler's colloquial Southern German is notoriously difficult to translate but I think I can manage a reasonable translation of that saying: "Resistance is there not for us to capitulate to but for us to break". I am quite sure that I don't have anything like that degree of determination in my own life but it seems to me to be a good attitude in general anyway

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

You can email me here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"




Index page for this site


DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism" (Backup here)
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International" blog.


BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
"Paralipomena"
To be continued ....
Queensland Police -- A barrel with lots of bad apples
Australian Police News
Of Interest


BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
Western Heart
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
The Kogarah Madhouse (St George Bank)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Vodafrauds (vodafone)
Bank of Queensland blues


There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)



Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
basic home page
Pictorial Home Page (Backup here).
Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here)
Another picture page (Best with broadband. Rarely updated)



Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/