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

The original of this mirror site is HERE. My Blogroll; Archives here or here; My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this site.
****************************************************************************************



March 31, 2013

When did I miss the “tipping point”?

This is really the sort of country I long for as articulated by Troy Senik:

"I want a “leave me alone” society — one where Christian schools can turn people away for rejecting their doctrine, just as gay rights groups can reject those who don’t share their beliefs. I don’t want us all to get along — not because I’m misanthropic (well, not just because I’m misanthropic), but because I know that “consensus” is usually a fancy word for muting minority viewpoints. I want us all to be free to be annoyed with each other from our separate corners. Is that too much to ask?"

Apparently.  Ask Sarah Conly (I still can’t get over the title of her book [“Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism.”] and the implication it carries which, if she even realizes it, should chill her to the bone).  Ask Mayor Bloomberg.  Ask most of the left and a good portion of the right.

How did we ever wander away from that direction and end up on the one where a major news organ, the NYT, even gives a forum to crypto-fascists like Conly?  What a horrifying person she is.  Imagine someone as cavalier about your rights actually in a position of power.  Imagine the possibilities.  Oh, that’s right, we don’t have too, do we.  We have history to provide the examples.  Tons of them.

And yet here is this supposed “learned” academic parroting the same authoritarian themes in a soothing voice designed to lull you into feeling good about giving everything away to the authoritarians (or at least enough so that at some point they can just take the rest).

I want what Senik wants.  I don’t have a problem with most discrimination.  Yeah, I know – that’s heresy isn’t it?  Look, if someone wants to discriminate let them – and let them pay the “stupid tax” for doing so.  But here’s the point – you should be free to do that.  You should have the right to be stupid and to do stupid things (with the usual caveat that it’s only okay as long as your stupid acts don’t harm others or violate their rights). You should have the right to fail, get fat, smoke, drink, and be an ignorant slob without the do gooders deciding they have to save you from yourself and the only way to do that is to take your freedom away.  Or to tell you how to act, talk, or interact with penalties for not being politically correct.

Why is it that the Sarah Conlys of the world are published in the NYT and the ideas of the Troy Seniks of the world have to settle for blogs?  When did Senik's idea, which was once very main stream in this country, become extremist while what was once not only extremist, an anathema to America,  but thoroughly discredited throughout history somehow gain respectability again?

When you boil it all down, it is that dilemma which amply describes why we’re in the awful shape we’re in and why we see our freedoms under constant assault and slowly being taken away.

I’m just wondering when the tipping point occurred.

SOURCE

*****************************

Mike Bloomberg, Liberal Fascist

That’s New York City’s nasty little fascist mayor, the ersatz and erstwhile “Republican” who used the party to sneak into Gracie Mansion in the wake of the Giuliani administration’s successful war on street crime, and then double-crossed the GOP in his bald-faced but successful attempt to subvert term limits, lecturing David Gregory in his Boston honk that he knows what’s best for New Yorkers — and us.

Yes, it’s the Soda Jerk himself, tossing his pint-sized weight around as he attempts to remain politically viable after his reign as the successor to such corrupt and incompetent wretches as Jimmy Walker, William O’Dwyer, Abe Beame and David Dinkins mercifully comes to an end. Let’s unpack a little of what the Terror of Tinytown had to say.

We’re not banning anything.  All we’re saying is, we want to show you just how big the cup is. If you want 32 ounces, take two cups to your seat. If you want 64, carry four. But our hope is, if you only take one, you won’t go back.

If you believe that, Bloomberg has a bridge to Brooklyn to sell you. And to which the only proper response — the one that until New York turned into a city of Upper West Side conformist sheep he would have justly received — is (to quote Kurt Schlichter) “bite me.”

Note how piously the unctuous Nanny Bloomberg claims he’s not “banning anything,” when in fact that’s exactly what he tried to do until a New York state judge drop-kicked his assertion of unfettered government authority and bureaucratic oversight through the goal posts of personal freedom — a concept that is itself under direct attack by fascists like Bloomberg, who has married his $27 billion personal fortune to his power as NYC mayor in an attempt to impose his will on the residents of the five boroughs and beyond.

Our job is to educate .., all we’re trying to do is educate.

No, yer honor, your job is to manage the city government, to make sure the snow gets shoveled and the trash gets picked up, not to lecture the rest of us and use the power of City Hall to impose your particular life-style choices on everybody else. But that’s what happens when conservatives let the Left seize the narrative and promote governmental mission creep. Once government “addresses” a problem by throwing taxpayer money at it, it’s only a short hop to government claiming — as Bloomberg does in the clip — that because government spends money on a “problem,” it now has the right to dictate personal behavior. Sheer genius, really.

By now, the notion that government from the feds on down has the “right” to interfere in every aspect of American life is well-established and nearly unquestioned. Two generations of red-diaper babies have grown up with visions of the Frankfurt School dancing in their heads; they’ve adapted Marxist tactics to the capitalist system in the furtherance of their world-view — George Soros, take a bow — but their goal remains the same: power, disguised as “compassion.”

The collapse of free societies doesn’t start with the Vandals’ assault on the gates of Rome. It starts with “reasonable” restrictions on freedom, “carve-outs” and “exemptions” to constitutional principles, “temporary” taxes and suspensions of civil liberties — all designed to inure the public to the destruction of bedrock guarantees ( i.e. “Congress shall make no law…”) in the name of what’s good for them.

Gregory asks, “Where’s the line? Where is too far for government to go?” Bloomy’s comforting answer: "I do not think we should ban most things."  And to think this man still harbors a desire to run for president.

UPDATE: His Bloominess is launching another capitalism-financed regressive assault on the Second Amendment this very day:

[A] $12 million ad blitz targeting senators wavering on gun control will be just the beginning, Mayor Bloomberg warned Sunday.

“I have a responsibility … to try to make this country safer,” Bloomberg said on “Meet the Press” when asked if he’d spend big-time in next year’s elections to target the National Rifle Association and members of Congress for opposing gun restrictions.

“If I can do that by spending some money, and taking the NRA from being the only voice to being one of the voices, so the public can really understand the issues, then I think my money will be well spent and I think I have an obligation to do that,” he said.

SOURCE

*****************************

“Me too” Republicans

by Thomas Sowell

Many ideas presented as "new" are just rehashes of old ideas that have been tried before – and have failed before. So it is no surprise that the recent "Growth and Opportunity Project" report to the Republican National Committee is a classic example of what previous generations called "Me too" Republicanism.

These are Republicans who think that the key to winning elections is to do more of what the Democrats are doing. In effect, they say "me too" on issues such as immigration, in hopes of gaining more new votes than they lose by betraying their existing supporters.

In the wake of last year's presidential election debacle for the Republicans, the explanation preferred by "moderate" Republicans has been that the GOP has been too narrowly ideological, and needs to reach out to minorities, women and young people, rather than just to conservatives.

In the words of the "Growth and Opportunity Project," the problem is that conservative Republican candidates have been "driving around in circles on an ideological cul-de-sac."

But the report itself says that the Republicans' election problems have been at the national level, not at the state level, where a majority of the governors are Republicans. Are the Republican moderates suggesting that the reason Mitt Romney lost in 2012 is that he was driving around in a conservative cul-de-sac? Romney was as mushy a moderate as Senator John McCain was before him – and as many other Republican losers in presidential elections have been, going all the way back to the 1940s. The only Republican candidate who might fit the charge of being a complete conservative was Ronald Reagan, who won two landslide elections.

The report to the Republican National Committee is on firmer ground when it says that national Republican candidates have not articulated their case very well – that "we too often sound like bookkeepers." Republican candidates "need to do a better job talking in normal, people-oriented terms."

Absolutely. It doesn't matter how good your case is, if you don't bother to articulate it so that voters understand you.

The heart of the report, however, is the argument that Republicans need to reach out to minorities, women and young people. With Hispanics and blacks becoming a growing proportion of the American population – and both groups voting overwhelmingly for Democrats – the Republicans are obviously in big trouble in future elections if they don't do something.

But if they do what this report advocates, they could be in even bigger trouble. Here again, facts seem to mean nothing to those who wrote this report.

They propose going through such organizations as the NAACP to reach black voters, as if the NAACP owns blacks, in violation of the 13th Amendment. Not only is the NAACP virtually a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, the kind of black voters that the Republicans have some hope of winning over are unlikely to be enthralled to the NAACP, and many of them may see through such race hustlers.

Or do all blacks look alike to those who wrote this report?

It is the same story with Hispanics and Asian Americans. The Republicans are supposed to go through these groups' "leaders" as well – mostly leaders tied to the Democratic Party ideologically or otherwise. You might think that a Republican Party that talks about individualism would try to appeal to individuals.

Individuals whom the Republicans have some chance of winning over may well be a small minority within these groups. However, if the GOP can reduce the Democrats' 80 percent of these groups' votes to 70 percent, that can swing elections.

But a shotgun approach to minorities won't do it.

When it comes to minority votes, the Democratic Party is much like Eastman Kodak during the long period when it sold the vast majority of the film and cameras in the country. How did its competitors manage to drive Kodak into bankruptcy?

Not by saying "me too" while trying to imitate Kodak and trying to outdo Kodak with better film and better film cameras. They went digital instead. But that approach requires a lot more thought than apparently went into this report. Polls and focus groups are not a substitute for thought.

SOURCE

***************************

Democrat extremism

The American left cares so much for humanity that it even expends copious draughts of compassion toward us, toward you and me, toward suave, degage conservatives. The left's members really fret over how elements of the "extreme right" are undermining the Republican Party, consigning it to oblivion.

The latest moral colossus to perform this exemplary task is Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, but there are many more from all the precincts of the left. This past weekend, I even detected this concern for us from the pollster, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center. Writing a piece on the future of the Republican Party, he expressed his concern that advocates of "staunch conservatism" have left the Republican Party "estranged from America." If moderate Republicans do not smarten up and presumably rid the party of these "staunch conservatives," the party will go so far to the right that it will be replicating the political suicide of Senator George McGovern and his McGovernite zealots back in 1972.

If you are old enough you may remember how in 1972 the left was apoplectic that McGovern was leading the Democratic Party out into the wilderness. You do not recall it that way? You have forgotten? It did not seem like that at the time? The left in 1972 was full of its usual brag and bounce that crazy George was on the right side of history, and victory was only months away. Is Kohut mistaken?

I think he is. Actually, this grave concern by the left over the projects of the "staunch conservatives" within the Republican Party is one vast sham. A similar concern by the left for the extremist tilt of the Democratic Party is never apparent, and the reason is obvious. The concern does not exist. Yet the Democratic Party over the years has, for a certitude, gone left, far left. Review the evidence. On issue after issue -- from social policy to fiscal policy -- the Democrats have moved leftward. With the help of their amanuenses in the media, the left is never forced to talk about it, but it is a fact. With the leftward rush of the party proclaimed in the Prophet Obama's State of the Union address, it is the Democrats who are extreme. Their day of reckoning will come on Nov. 4, 2014.

The left's sham is not without its effects on weak-kneed Republicans and independents, however. Senator Ted Cruz, Texas's latest gift to American politics, is reportedly stunned by his wobbly-legged Republican colleagues, who patter up and down the halls of the Senate. Apparently, they believe that the American left really has the best interests of the Republicans at heart. Of course, they are wrong.

Perhaps one has to live out in the states and the congressional districts to see how wrong the left and susceptible Republicans are. Out across the fruited plain, a majority of governors' mansions (30) are controlled by the Republicans. The Republicans also control a majority of state legislatures (Republicans 27, Democrats 17). Back in Washington, the Republicans control the House of Representatives, and as of yesterday, five Senate Democrats are stepping down in 2014. The upper chamber is very delicately balanced now and will probably shift to the Republicans in 2014. Then there is one additional element to give the Republicans something to smile about. Back in 2012, the year that gave the left so much reason for hope, the Prophet Obama won 3,591,303 fewer votes than in 2008. The Democrats suppressed the Republican turnout in 2012 by rendering Mitt Romney an oligarch. What is more, they had a splendid ground game that got out theretofore non-voting minorities in the swing votes. But 2014 will be different.

Then, thanks to the cost and confusion of Obamacare and the ongoing economic malaise, the same issue will be salient that was salient in 2010, the economy. Roughly 42 percent of the American electorate is conservative compared to 18-20 percent that is of the left. Roughly 35 percent of the electorate is independent. The majority of the independents, provoked by the sour economy and by budget overruns, voted with the conservatives in 2010 and 2012. If the "staunch conservatives" turn out to vote in 2014 it is going to be another landslide on the order of 2010 ... and you know who won that landslide.

SOURCE

******************************

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)

***************************



March 29, 2013

Francois Hollande lurches Right in historic U-Turn to save French economy

The U.S. Democrats have a love affair with Europe in general and France in particular. Will they absorb the French lesson below?

French president François Hollande has bowed to massive pressure for business tax cuts to pull France’s economy out of slump and stave off industrial decline, ditching a core element of his socialist platform.

Company taxes will fall by €20bn a year equal to 1pc of GDP, to be phased in gradually by 2015 under a convoluted system of rebates.

Premier Jean-Marc Ayrault said it amounted to a 6pc cut in unit labour costs, enough to close the gap with eurozone rivals. "France is not condemned to a spiral of decline, but we need a national jolt to regain control of our destiny," he said.

The mid-rate of VAT for restaurants and services will jump from 7pc to 10pc. The top rate will rise slightly to 20pc. Spending cuts will plug the revenue gap in order to meet the EU’s 3pc deficit target.

Critics call it the most humiliating U-turn in French politics since François Mitterrand abandoned his disastrous experiment of "Socialism in one country" under a D-Mark currency peg in 1983.

Mr Hollande came to office vowing lower VAT rates to protect the buying power of workers, and called business tax cuts a "gift to the rich". He imposed €10bn of fresh taxes on firms just weeks ago in his 2013 budget, a move that set off a revolt by business leaders.

The French National Assembly was in uproar on Tuesday as Gaulliste deputies derided the volte-face as a confession of misrule for the past six months.

His plan comes a day after French industrialist Louis Gallois delivered a report calling for "shock therapy" to halt the relentless decline of France’s eurozone export share, and the loss of 60,000 industrial jobs each year. He recommended deep cuts in payroll levies to bridge the gap in labour costs with Germany.

"President Hollande is finally starting to back away from some of his economically dangerous campaign promises," said Christian Schulz from Berenberg Bank.

Mr Schulz said the French leader has faced his "Schröder moment", reaching out like Germany’s Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder a decade ago to a respected businessman to provide cover for reform.

Less clear is whether Mr Hollande will try to tame the Leviathan state, now Euroland’s biggest at 56pc of GDP. Such a move would entail a head-on clash with the socialist party base. "The new measures do not come anywhere close to what France would need to do to arrest its trend decline. He will need to go much further to end the maladie française," said Mr Schulz.

Pressure is mounting from all sides. The International Monetary Fund warned this week that France risked being left behind by Italy and Spain as they embrace root-and-branch reforms.

Mr Hollande appears to have been stung by accusations that his government is "anti-enterprise". The corporate lobby MEDEF said last month that investment was collapsing, and warned of capital flight in tones reminiscent of attacks on Leon Blum’s leftist Popular Front in 1936.

The new plan adopts most of the 22 proposals in the Gallois Report, including a state bank to steer cheap credit to exporters, though it falls short of Mr Gallois’ call for a €30bn cut in payroll levies.

Jean-François Copé, the Gaulliste leader, said the Hollande package was "hyper-complex, bureaucratic, and wholly inadaquate". Business leaders said it helps but comes too late reverse a collapse in profit margins as recession looms.

The tax reform aims to switch the burden from wealth creation to consumption, a trick used by Germany to carry out its "internal devaluation" within EMU. The policy was pioneered by Margaret Thatcher, a detail that France’s socialists prefer to keep quiet.

For Mr Hollande, it has been a painful wake-up from the utopian reverie of his first months in office. "Exercising power today is very hard. You don’t get any breaks, of any kind," he confessed.

 SOURCE

*****************************

Cyprus has finally killed myth that European Monetary Union is benign

The punishment regime imposed on Cyprus is a trick against everybody involved in this squalid saga, against the Cypriot people and the German people, against savers and creditors. All are being deceived.

It is not a bail-out. There is no debt relief for the state of Cyprus. The Diktat will push the island’s debt ratio to 120pc in short order, with a high risk of an economic death spiral, a la Grecque.

Capital controls have shattered the monetary unity of EMU. A Cypriot euro is no longer a core euro. We wait to hear the first stories of shops across Europe refusing to accept euro notes issued by Cyprus, with a G in the serial number.

The curbs are draconian. There will be a forced rollover of debt. Cheques may not be cashed. Basic cross-border trade is severely curtailed. Credit card use abroad will be limited to €5,000 (£4,200) a month. “We wonder how such capital controls could eventually be lifted with no obvious cure of the underlying problem,” said Credit Suisse.

The complicity of EU authorities in the original plan to violate insured bank savings – halted only by the revolt of the Cypriot parliament – leaves the suspicion that they will steal anybody’s money if leaders of the creditor states think it is in their immediate interest to do so. Monetary union has become a danger to property.

One can only smile at the denunciations of Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem for letting slip that the Cypriot package is a template for future EMU rescues, with further haircuts for “uninsured deposit holders”.

That is not the script. Cyprus is supposed to be a special case. Yet the “Dijssel Bomb” merely confirms that the creditor powers – the people who run EMU at the moment – will impose just such a policy on the rest of Club Med if push ever comes to shove. At the same time, the German bloc is lying to its own people about the real costs of holding the euro together. The accord pretends to shield the taxpayers of EMU creditor states from future losses. By seizing €5.8bn from savings accounts, it has reduced the headline figure on the EU-IMF Troika rescue to €10bn.

This is legerdemain. They have simply switched the cost of the new credit line for Cyprus to the European Central Bank. The ECB will have to offset the slow-motion bank run in Cyprus with its Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA), and this is likely to be a big chunk of the remaining €68bn in deposits after what has happened over the past two weeks.

Much of this will show up on the balance sheet of the Bundesbank and its peers through the ECB’s Target2 payment nexus. The money will leak out of Cyprus unless the Troika tries to encircle the island with razor wire.

“In saving €5.8bn in bail-out money, the other euro area countries will likely be on the hook for four to five times more in contingent liabilities. But, of course, the former represents real money that gives politicians a headache; the latter is monopoly central bank money,” said Marchel Alexandrovich, from Jefferies.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will do anything before the elections in September to disguise the true cost of the EMU project. It has been clear since August 2012 that she is willing let the ECB carry out bail-outs by stealth, as the lesser of evils. Such action is invisible to the German public. It does not require a vote in the Bundestag. It circumvents democracy.

Mrs Merkel can get away with this, provided Cyprus does not leave EMU and default on the Bundesbank’s Target2 claims, yet that may well happen.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 20pc fall in real GDP,” said Nobel economist Paul Krugman. “Cyprus should leave the euro. Staying in means an incredibly severe depression.”

“Nobody knows what is going to happen. The economy could go into a free fall,” said Dimitris Drakopoulos, from Nomura.

The country has just lost its core industry, a banking system with assets equal to eight times GDP, and has little to replace it with. Cyprus cannot hope to claw its way back to viability with a tourist boom because EMU membership has made it shockingly expensive. Turkey, Croatia or Egypt are all much cheaper. Manufacturing is just 7pc of GDP. The IMF says the labour cost index has risen even faster than in Greece, Spain or Italy since the late 1990s.

What saved Iceland from mass unemployment after its banks blew up – or saved Sweden and Finland in the early 1990s – was a currency devaluation that brought industries back from the dead. Iceland’s krona has fallen low enough to make it worthwhile growing tomatoes for sale in greenhouses near the Arctic Circle.

If Cyprus tries to claw back competitiveness with an “internal devaluation”, it will drive unemployment to Greek levels (27pc) and cause the economy to contract so fast that the debt ratio explodes.

The IMF’s Christine Lagarde has given her blessing to the Troika deal, claiming that the package will restore Cyprus to full health, with public debt below 100pc of GDP by 2020.

Yet the Fund has already been through this charade in Greece, and her own staff discredited the doctrine behind EMU crisis measures. It has shown that the “fiscal multiplier” is three times higher than thought for the Club Med bloc. Austerity beyond the therapeutic dose is self-defeating.

Some in Nicosia cling to the hope that Cyprus can carry on as a financial gateway for Russians and Kazakhs, as if nothing has happened. RBS says the Russians will pull what remains of their money out of Cyprus “as soon as the capital controls are lifted”.

The willingness of the Cypriot authorities last week to seize money from anybody in any bank in Cyprus – even healthy banks – was an act of state madness. We will find out over time whether this epic blunder has destroyed confidence in the country as a financial centre, or whether parts of the financial and legal services sector can rebound.

Yet surely there is no going back to the old model, even though the final package restricts the losses to the two banks that are actually in trouble. Savers above €100,000 at Laiki will lose 80pc of their money, if they get anything back. Those at the Bank of Cyprus will lose 40pc.

Thousands of small firms trying to hang on face seizure of their operating funds. One Cypriot told me that the €400,000 trading account of his father at Laiki had just been frozen, leaving him unable to pay an Egyptian firm for a consignment of shoes.

The Cyprus debacle has taught us yet again that EMU has gone off the rails, is a danger to stability, and should be dismantled before it destroys Europe’s post-War order.

SOURCE

*************************

Repeal Obamacare

Liberals had hoped, and some conservatives had feared, that the legislative Frankenstein’s monster known as Obamacare would become more popular as its sundry measures were implemented. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is no more popular now than when it was passed, as Americans have come to realize that it will neither protect patients nor provide for affordable care. While full repeal of the law is not within the realm of short-term political reality — the presence of Barack Obama in the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate ensures that — repeal should nonetheless remain the end goal, either one piece at a time for now or root and branch.

The price tag for Obamacare has gone from shocking to preposterous. In March 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the ten-year cost of the law at $898 billion; by February 2013, that number had climbed to $1.6 trillion, and it is likely that further revisions will be in the upward direction. That is a very high price to pay for a system that will, by the admission of its own supporters, leave some 30 million Americans uninsured. Long gone is the fiction pronounced by President Obama and repeated by his media enablers that the law will not add “one dime” to the deficit; the latest estimate is that Obamacare will add as much as $6.2 trillion to the long-term national debt, according to the Government Accountability Office. No thinking person takes President Obama seriously on fiscal questions, but those alleged experts and pundits who argued for Obamacare on fiscal grounds should be regarded as thoroughly discredited.

As mind-boggling as its price tag is, expense is not the main reason to repeal Obamacare. What is not sufficiently understood is that Obamacare does not reform or regulate health insurance: It effectively abolishes health insurance. Health insurance functions by creating pools of beneficiaries large enough that the incidence of particular health-care expenses — for everything from heart attacks to injuries in car accidents — can be predicted by actuaries with some statistical reliability, thus enabling costs to be distributed among beneficiaries over time. Obamacare demands that all insurance beneficiaries be offered identical rates regardless of health-related variables, and severely restricts the kinds of plans that may be offered. The most important variable is, of course, the question of whether somebody already is sick. Under Obamacare, an uninsured person who develops a serious illness can demand that he be insured at a rate no different from that of a person who had been purchasing insurance for decades before he became ill.

The “individual mandate” was supposed to prevent that problem by requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance, but it is a mandate that manages to be both too invasive and too lax at the same time: The mandate will invite the micromanagement of individuals and businesses by the federal government, but Americans will in many cases find themselves financially better off paying the tax for not getting insurance (as Chief Justice Roberts has reformulated the mandate) until they become sick and need insurance. Because of that defect, the main rationale for Obamacare — bringing all Americans into a large insurance market that can then be regulated and subsidized to bring it into accord with the tastes of the central planners in Washington — will prove impossible to realize.

Obamacare proposes to control health-care costs by empowering a small panel of unaccountable political appointees — the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) — to keep a lid on medical costs by imposing price controls. We have two relevant bodies of experience from which to draw insight on how this is likely to play out: Medicaid payments are subject to similar price controls, and doctors have responded to low rates of reimbursement by refusing to see Medicaid patients. Medicare is supposed to be subject to similar price controls, but, because the elderly are more politically influential than the poor, Congress has declined to actually cut payments to Medicare doctors, year after year after year, knowing that doing so would make doctors just as unwilling to take Medicare patients as they are to take Medicaid patients. The result in the former case is price controls that work by hurting Medicaid’s intended beneficiaries, who often have worse health-care outcomes than those with no coverage at all; the result in the latter case is price controls that do not work, period.

During the debate over Obamacare, the president and his supporters promised that enacting the law would cause insurance premiums for the typical family to decline by some $2,500 a year. In fact, premiums have continued to go up, now at an accelerated pace. In 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president, health-insurance premiums rose by 0.6 percent. In 2009, the year Obamacare was passed, they rose by 1.3 percent. In 2011, they rose by 9.6 percent, or 16 times as quickly as they did the year before the law was passed. Expenses are expected to rise the most severely for young and healthy people. Because of the perverse incentives the law creates, the CBO estimates that the number of people insured through the subsidized health-insurance exchanges will begin to decline quickly after 2018 as the young and healthy realize that paying the fine is more economical than paying ever-higher insurance premiums. That means that those remaining in the insurance pool will be on average older and sicker, which is why the CBO estimates that the cost of subsidizing them will grow by almost 6 percent a year. Put another way, the cost of subsidizing the exchanges is expected to double every twelve years.

In short, the system created by this ill-advised law would prevent the emergence of normally functioning markets in medical services and health insurance. Instead, it establishes a top-down system of price controls and subsidies that will discourage healthy people from buying insurance in the first place, reward those who exploit the system’s defects, and discourage doctors and other health-care providers from extending their care to those who most need it.

Obamacare is too flawed in in its basic conception to be improved through reform. It must be replaced, either all at once or step by step. Replacement remains a viable option because the law is still unpopular and still unlikely to work. Indeed, the next phase of its implementation promises to be a chaotic enterprise that will further undermine the standing and credibility of the law and its architects. Republicans can and should begin taking it apart and building something better on the ruins.

 SOURCE

******************************

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)

****************************



March 28, 2013

Devout Jews detained for attempted animal sacrifice

This is thoroughly obnoxious.  By what strange logic are Jews to be denied equal rights in Israel? Muslims can do whatever they like on the temple mount.  Animal sacrifice is clearly commanded in the Torah.  Is the Bible the book of the Jews or is it not?  If Jews renounce continuity with the Israelites of old, their entitlement to the land of Israel becomes very shaky



A lamb and two humans were detained by police in Jerusalem on Monday as they were making their way to the Temple Mount.

The humans, hard-right political and religious activists Noam Federman and Arye Sunnenberg, intended to go to the Temple Mount and carry out the Jewish ritual of the Passover Sacrifice, involving the slaughter of a lamb.

The sacrifice is an important commandment within Jewish law, which some religious authorities argues does not require the existence of a Temple for its performance.  It must, however, be conducted on the Temple Mount.

Federman and Sunnenberg are both associated with several Temple Mount organizations that insist on the right to Jewish prayer and worship at the holy site.

Both men were released a short time later although as of Tuesday night, the lamb remained in police custody.

Federman was stopped by the police close to the city center with the lamb in his car.

He said that since he had not been conducting any criminal activity, the police had detained him for infracting an Agriculture Ministry ordinance prohibiting the transport of livestock without a permit from a veterinarian.

Federman claimed that since he had made public his intentions to perform a Passover Sacrifice on the Temple Mount, the police had conducted a search in the city for his vehicle.

The Joint Association of Temple Organizations said it was concerned that the police intended to keep the lamb in administrative detention for another month, to prevent it from being brought as a sacrifice at the latest possible date, a month after the first day of Passover.

Although the Supreme Court has upheld Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount, the court allows the police to prevent prayer and other forms of worship if they believe that such activity will cause a disturbance of the public order.

The Wakf Muslim religious trust which administers the Temple Mount is fiercely opposed to any non-Muslim prayer there.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Federman said that for the police to prevent Jews from carrying out a central Jewish commandment like the Passover Sacrifice was extremely troubling.

“It’s unbelievable that Arabs are allowed to do whatever they feel like on the Temple Mount, yet Jews are forbidden from doing a mitzva which, according to Jewish law, if someone doesn’t perform incurs the punishment of spiritual excommunication,” he said.

Yehuda Glick, the association spokesman, said the Temple Mount organizations felt that that there needed to be some kind of protest at the infringement of the freedom of religion that prohibiting the performance of the Passover Sacrifice constitutes.

Asked whether the concern for public disturbance was reasonable given Muslim sensitivities, Glick said that the police exaggerate the threat and impose a de facto blanket ban on prayer and worship regardless of the situation.

He added that the police considerations should not come at the expense of freedom of religion.

SOURCE

*************************

The day the Euro banks became bank robbers

By Robert Romano

How can deposits in Cyprus be unavailable for withdrawal, and yet somehow available for taxation?

This has been a burning question for me as I have observed the banking crisis in the Mediterranean island nation — where banks have faced heavy losses on Greek sovereign debt, European officials proposed a levy on Cypriot bank deposits, and all the while banks were shut down to prevent withdrawals.

So I asked an expert, Mike “Mish” Shedlock of Mish’s Global Economic Analysis fame to reconcile the seeming contradiction. If there’s no money in the banks, how can deposits in them be taxed?

Mr. Shedlock even kindly created a blog post to answer the question publicly, wherein he wrote, “I believe that’s a rhetorical question. Robert knows the answer. Even with the EU kicking in 10 billion euros (a loan not a gift), the money is not there. If the banks were sufficiently capitalized, there would not be a need for capital controls.”

To be fair, when I wrote my letter, I was legitimately baffled. But as it turned out I was simply in denial. I had answered my own question.

So, now that Cyprus has agreed to confiscate up to 30 percent of the savings of those with uninsured deposits over €100,000, many from Russia, where did the money go?

Technically, it went nowhere — as it had already been lent out by the Cypriot banks. It was lost the moment they lent the money to Greece by purchasing their bonds. When Greece defaulted, it put the Cypriot banks who lent them the money effectively into default as well.

What is occurring now is that the banks are writing off a liability — some €4.2 billion of uninsured deposits they owe — effectively defaulting on their obligations to those depositors. A move that in reality does not require any funds to be transferred anywhere.

If it makes it simpler to think about, the money is effectively being destroyed. The Cypriot banks will no longer show losses on Greek debt, and the uninsured depositors’ account statements will be now €4.2 billion lighter.

In fact, in this latest deal, there was no deposit tax levied by the Cypriot parliament. There was no vote to do so. The legislation that did ultimately pass Cyprus’ parliament provided for the restructuring of the banks there.

As German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble explained, “The Commission informed us today that the necessary legislation to implement these points has already been passed… Additional legislation would only have been necessary if a levy on uninsured deposits would have been raised but (not) for restructuring of the banks in question.”

Such a move was a necessary precondition for those banks to receive €10.7 billion of recapitalization loans from the so-called Troika: The European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

In short, to “avert” a bank collapse in Cyprus, the banks there are defaulting on depositors’ savings. Which, basically means they collapsed anyway — and will be reconstituted using new Troika loans.

A similar result occurred in Iceland in 2008 when the Icesave bank collapsed and British and Dutch depositors were not covered under Iceland’s deposit insurance regime. The reason that had to be so was because the banking system — which was up to 10 times larger than Iceland’s economy — was too big to save.

In other words, when financial institutions bet everyone’s savings on the roulette wheel landing on red, and it lands on black, somebody has to end up holding the bag. In that case, Iceland guaranteed domestic depositors, devalued its currency, and utilized some capital controls. And then when the United Kingdom and the Netherlands came looking for their citizens’ money, the Icelanders told them to go pound sand. As well they should have.

What made the original deposit tax in Cyprus so outrageous — and even the latest deposit write-off — is that although it falls on foreign depositors, any Cypriot with more than €100,000 in savings is taking it on the chin, too.

At least Iceland protected its own citizens, who were the government’s primary concern there. It let the banks fail themselves. Whereas in Cyprus, the banks are being saved — and the euro itself — at the expense of the wealthy.

Both cases underscore something that everyone should have already known: Uninsured deposits are, well, uninsured. If the bank that holds them goes kaput, so do the savings.

The key takeaway now is that anyone who keeps uninsured deposits in the Eurozone — or anywhere else for that matter — is doing so at their own risk.

Already, this “one-off” is being discussed as a template to resolving the sovereign debt crisis across Europe.  Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said after the Cyprus episode that if a bank cannot meet capital requirements, “then we’ll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we’ll ask them to contribute to recapitalizing the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders.”

Can you say, “bank run”? Why should any depositor keep their funds in Eurozone banks if they are subject to seizure at any moment?

Dijsselbloem’s comments have since been walked back by the Eurogroup which stated “Macro-economic adjustment programmes are tailor-made to the situation of the country concerned and no models or templates are used.”

Nonetheless, even the prospect of deposit seizures raises serious questions about the nature of bank deposits and the relationship between depositors and banks. No longer an asset to be protected, deposits — especially large deposits — can readily be seized and converted into bank capital at will at any time without warning.

That would be bad enough. But this episode also raises troubling questions about property rights. Whether officials care to admit it, the door is now open even for insured deposits to be seized as well.

And since it is practically impossible to live in today’s society without participating in the banking system, this exposes a fundamental shift in the social contract. The fruits of our labor can be taken from us without a moment’s notice at the state’s whim in order to shore up the solvency of a financial institution.

This turns the notion of the government as the protector of property rights on its head. There can be no property rights if the people do not even have a right to keep their own money after taxes.

How can the people trust the government or the banking system to protect their assets when the Cyprus precedent turns the government and the banks into bank robbers with an open vault. Something to think about.

SOURCE

**************************

Why Harry Reid is ashamed of the Senate budget

By Rick Manning – Hell must have frozen over this past weekend as the U.S. Senate broke a four year record of intransigence and failure as it unleashed a blizzard of votes that culminated with the passage of a budget document that reveals the plans and priorities of the 50 Democrats who supported it.

It was no mistake that the big reveal by Senate Democrats was that they had no plan whatsoever to ever bring the budget into balance came on Friday evening going into pre-dawn Saturday morning.  Harry Reid and crew clearly were embarrassed by their budget and hoped to avoid widespread media coverage by scheduling votes when they would receive the least amount of attention.

Ironically, Democrat Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) actually had the audacity to complain that it was irresponsible for the Senate to be considering major foreign policy decisions at 3 am on Saturday, referring to a budget amendment that passed putting the Senate on record as opposing the United Nations Small Arms Treaty which the Obama Administration is currently negotiating.

Menendez’s complaint should have been with Majority Leader Reid who deliberately scheduled the vote-a-thon in the wee hours of the morning to keep the results cloaked from real time reporting as much as possible.

But the rationale behind Reid’s Hide the Budget Act makes perfect sense.

The Senate Democrats claimed that their budget was “balanced” a grand total of 230 times as noted by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) in spite of their voting for a budget that never even gets close to balance.

In spite of these rhetorical claims, every Democrat Senator with the exception of West Virginia’s Joe Manchin voted against sending the budget back to Committee with instructions that it balance within ten years.  The motion to recommit by Sessions was defeated by a 46–53 margin with Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) not voting.

The significance of this admission by 53 Democrat Senators — 50 of whom voted for final passage of the budget — that they have no intention of ever bringing the budget to balance cannot be overstated.

No matter their orchestrated protestations to the contrary, and their attempts to spin the American people by perverting the definition of balancing the budget, their votes do not lie. The budget that was passed by the Senate Democrats creates $7.3 trillion in new debt over the next ten years despite a $1.5 trillion tax increase.

It immediately increases the budget deficit and grows federal government spending by 60 percent over the next ten years.  Even more stunning, the growth of means-tested spending increases by 80 percent — i.e spending on those who are the poorest amongst us.

This last point is a bald admission that the Democrats who voted for this budget do not believe that their big government policies will work. Nor do they think their budget will grow the economy or ween people away from government dependency, but instead they project that the very dependency that sucks the self-respect from the least of these, will dramatically increase. Incredibly, the Senate Democrats actually budgeted for the failure of their policies.

To put an exclamation point on the devastating impact that the Senate Democrat vision for federal government taxing and spending would have on American’s who want a job, the Heritage Foundation found that if passed into law, it would cost our nation an average of 853,000 jobs per year for the next ten years.

That’s 8.5 million jobs that either won’t be created or would go away entirely if the Senate Democrats’ vision for America became a reality.

That’s 8.5 million Americans consigned to perpetual dependency rather than developing the kind of sustainable careers that our nation’s workers have traditionally been able to depend upon.

That’s 8.5 million disappointments, tears and putting off a vibrant future for another day as American workers are stuck in a cycle of Democrat Senate induced dependency rather than being able to stand on their own two feet to determine their own futures based upon their ability and hard work.

That’s simply unacceptable and inexcusable.  Yet, it is the consequence of a Senate Democrat vision that dramatically increases government, puts another $7 trillion onto the national debt, all the while sucking an additional $1.5 trillion in new taxes out of the economy.

Thankfully, one of the positives from the Senate budget debate is that our U.S. Senate went on the record on a number of other issues, producing mixed results.

Beyond the UN Small Arms Treaty vote, another of these was the vote of support by 56 Senators in favor of illegal immigrants having access to free taxpayer funded health care should they become legal under a future immigration reform bill.

Another vote that is good news for those who believe in free markets but bodes ill for those in the Obama Administration who hope to pass a carbon tax, as 53 Senators rejected this holy grail for the environmental left on a bi-partisan basis.

This past weekend was indeed momentous for not only the Senate Democrats being forced to actually do their jobs and lay out their budgetary vision for the country, but also for the 47 votes taken that put every Senator on record on many of the other critical issues facing our nation.

It is just too bad that Harry Reid was so ashamed of the product his Budget Committee produced that he attempted to hide their work behind a late night curtain.

SOURCE

******************************

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)

****************************



March 27, 2013

Bipartisanship

I have received a mailout from the Boston Globe asking me to comment on one of their articles ("A lesson for Bob Dole: old rules no longer apply"  by  Michael Kranish).  I am not quite sure why I deserved that honor but I do indeed have something to say about the article concerned.

The article claims, rightly I think, that Congress has become intractably polarized.   It goes on to give an example. It says that the Senate recently refused to ratify an international treaty  giving rights to the disabled.  All the votes against were cast by Republicans.  A two thirds majority is needed to ratify treaties.

The article portrays the GOP opposition to ratification as irrational.   It was not.  Once ratified, a treaty becomes legally binding.  And once you've got a law it is in the hands of the courts.  And it is an old, old, strategy in America to get the courts to impose what no legislature would.

If America's legal system were simply judicial and not political it might have been reasonable to give the courts a new set of rights to chew on but America's courts are an abomination right from the Supreme Court down.  SCOTUS has "found" rights in the constitution that are not even mentioned there (a right to abortion) and denied rights that are explicitly set out in the constitution (allowed "affirmative action" despite the 14th amendment requirement for equal treatment).  The GOP senators were right to be leery.

A bigger question, however, is why there is little or no bipartisanship in Congress these days.  The article I am discussing is persuasive that in the not too distant past there was substantial bipartisanship.

I think much of the fault lies with Obama and his Senate henchman, Harry Reid.  Obama came to power floating on a promise of bipartisanship and "reaching across the aisle".  It was soft-soap.  He has done the opposite.  His idea of compromise is getting people to agree with him.  The GOP have got nothing from him.

And Obamacare exemplifies the Reid/Obama axis of intransigence.  They got that legislation though without a single Replublican vote and by way of gigantic arm-twisting of their own congressmen.  The small group of anti-abortion Democrats that stood in the way were bought off by a meaningless promise from Obama that has been breached virtually from the get-go.  The fear that Obamacare would affect the rights of abortion opponents has been amply justified, with a ruling that church bodies and others must pay for health insurance that includes a right to abortion. Catholics are particularly affected and are in court trying to get the ruling overturned.

So when the Donk establishment will go to any length to get its way, they have got to expect the GOP to dig in its heels too.  It takes two to tango.

****************************

Republicans must be aggressive to secure smaller government

 Republicans in Congress have a problem reducing the size and scope of the federal government. Far too often, they introduce watered-down legislation that they hope will not be torn to shreds by the media. This strategy has failed to pay off.

Instead of continuing down this road of failure, Congressional Republicans should focus on big ideas and craft their message around big plans. This is what Democrats have done to pass their own proposals and continue to do while they run circles around Republicans.

When Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats launched their efforts to pass Obamacare, their initial message focused on a single-payer health care plan. While their dream health care plan was not what ultimately passed Congress, the end result moved them much closer to their end goal of making government the sole entity that distributes health care. Their strategy was to ask for a lot knowing you will get a big part of it.

Republicans do not do this. They play in to the media’s hand each time a major debate is occurring. Instead of laying out broad plans for reducing the role of government, they endorse plans that should be the compromise deals Democrats would seek if the President were a Republican. The GOP does not have the same fire in legislating that Pelosi does.

With the upcoming debt ceiling debate — Republicans supported suspending the debt ceiling in January effectively allowing Obama to spend and borrow without a limit — the GOP has a chance to turn the page and finally push for a real plan to cut spending and force the federal government to spend within their means.

If Republicans in the House want to be the party of limited government, they will have to start legislating like it. If they cave to the same old media and Democrat pressure that calls Republican ideas “radical” and “out of touch”, they will have effectively signaled to those who want leaders in Washington to champion limited government issues that they are not up to the job.

Instead of caving, Republicans should lay out a broad plan, tied to something such as a vote on the debt ceiling, that finally begins to rein in the mountain of debt and out-of-control spending that Congressional Republicans have allowed to continue. Rhetoric without action must not be allowed.

If Congressional Republicans are not aggressive in fighting the downward debt spiral, then who will be? That answer is probably no one.

SOURCE

****************************

Cyprus:  Can It Happen Here?

 Thomas Sowell

The decision of the government in Cyprus to simply take money out of people's bank accounts there sent shock waves around the world. People far removed from that small island nation had to wonder: "Can this happen here?"

The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to.

Multi-billion dollar corporations, whose economies of scale can bring down the prices of goods and services -- thereby raising our standard of living -- are seldom financed by a few billionaires.

Far more often they are financed by millions of people, who have neither the specific knowledge nor the economic expertise to risk their savings by investing directly in those enterprises. Banks are crucial intermediaries, which provide the financial expertise without which these transfers of money are too risky.

There are poor nations with rich natural resources, which are not developed because they lack either the sophisticated financial institutions necessary to make these key transfers of money or because their legal or political systems are too unreliable for people to put their money into these financial intermediaries.

Whether in Cyprus or in other countries, politicians tend to think in short run terms, if only because elections are held in the short run. Therefore, there is always a temptation to do reckless and short-sighted things to get over some current problem, even if that creates far worse problems in the long run.

Seizing money that people put in the bank would be a classic example of such short-sighted policies.

After thousands of American banks failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were people who would never put their money in a bank again, even after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created, to have the federal government guarantee individual bank accounts when the bank itself failed.

For years after the Great Depression, stories appeared in the press from time to time about some older person who died and was found to have substantial sums of money stored under a mattress or in some other hiding place, because they never trusted banks again.

After going back and forth, the government of Cyprus ultimately decided, under international pressure, to go ahead with its plan to raid people's bank accounts. But could similar policies be imposed in other countries, including the United States?

One of the big differences between the United States and Cyprus is that the U.S. government can simply print more money to get out of a financial crisis. But Cyprus cannot print more euros, which are controlled by international institutions.

Does that mean that Americans' money is safe in banks? Yes and no.

The U.S. government is very unlikely to just seize money wholesale from people's bank accounts, as is being done in Cyprus. But does that mean that your life savings are safe?

No. There are more sophisticated ways for governments to take what you have put aside for yourself and use it for whatever the politicians feel like using it for. If they do it slowly but steadily, they can take a big chunk of what you have sacrificed for years to save, before you are even aware, much less alarmed.

That is in fact already happening. When officials of the Federal Reserve System speak in vague and lofty terms about "quantitative easing," what they are talking about is creating more money out of thin air, as the Federal Reserve is authorized to do -- and has been doing in recent years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a month.

When the federal government spends far beyond the tax revenues it has, it gets the extra money by selling bonds. The Federal Reserve has become the biggest buyer of these bonds, since it costs them nothing to create more money.

This new money buys just as much as the money you sacrificed to save for years. More money in circulation, without a corresponding increase in output, means rising prices. Although the numbers in your bank book may remain the same, part of the purchasing power of your money is transferred to the government. Is that really different from what Cyprus has done?

SOURCE

********************************

25 Examples of Liberal Racism in Quotes

1) "(Obama’s) a nice person, he’s very articulate this is what’s been used against him, but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic." -- Dan Rather

2) “White folks was in the caves while we [blacks] was building empires … We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was … we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it." -- Al Sharpton

3) "‘Hymies.’ ‘Hymietown.’" -- Jesse Jackson’s description of New York City while on the 1984 presidential campaign trail.

4) "A few years ago, (Barack Obama) would have been getting us coffee." -- Bill Clinton to Ted Kennedy

5) "The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington and meets with the puppet in the White House. He then goes down Pennsylvania Avenue and meets with the puppets in Congress. The Israeli leader then 'brings back millions of dollars' in aid to Israel." -- Ralph Nader

6) "(Harry Reid) was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." -- Harry Reid's comments reported by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

7) "I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation." -- Former Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd (D.,Conn.)

8) “Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.” -- Mary Frances Berry, former Chairwoman, US Commission on Civil Rights

9) "Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness." -- Mary Frances Berry, former Chairwoman, US Commission on Civil Rights

10) “Well, because the Arabs who were involved in 9/11 cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs. It’s a racist sort of thing, really racist – you know, picking out these 19 or 20 terrorists – they were terrorists – and saying all the Arabs are like them.” — Former Democratic Senator James Abourezk on Hizbullah TV

11) "Let me see one of you adopt one of those ugly black babies." -- Abortionist Ashutosh Ron Virmani

12) “There’s no great, white bigot; there’s just about 200 million little white bigots out there.” -- USA Today columnist Julienne Malveaux

13) "Them Jews aren’t going to let (Obama) talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office. …They will not let him talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is.” -- Jeremiah Wright

14) "There’s white racist DNA running through the synapses of his or her brain tissue. They will kill their own kind, defend the enemies of their kind or anyone who is perceived to be the enemy of the milky white way of life." -- Jeremiah Wright

15) "The white man is our mortal enemy, and we cannot accept him. I will fight to see that vicious beast go down into the lake of fire prepared for him from the beginning, that he never rise again to give any innocent black man, woman or child the hell that he has delighted in pouring on us for 400 years.” -- Louis Farrakhan

16) “White people shouldn’t be allowed to vote. It’s for the good of the country and for those who’re bitter for a reason and armed because they’re scared.” -- Left-wing journalist Jonathan Valania

17) "(Joseph Lowery) said that when he was a young militant, he used to say all white folks were going to hell. ...'Then he mellowed and just said most of them were. Now, he said, he is back to where he was.’" -- The Daily Mail quotes Joseph Lowery, who gave the benediction at President Obama’s inauguration

18) "We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is…We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way." -- Helen Thomas

19) “You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent.” -- Joe Biden

20) “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” -- Joe Biden

21) "I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street." -- Spike Lee

22) “I want to go up to the closest white person and say: ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my mental health.” — New York City Councilman, Charles Barron

23) "We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops. They ought to go." -- Marion Barry

24) “The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person…” -- Barack Obama

25) “That’s just how white folks will do you. It wasn’t merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn’t know that they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserving of their scorn.” -- Barack Obama

SOURCE

******************************

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)





March 26, 2013

The double standards never stop<



*************************

Gravy!

It has been federal for three years. It has brought chaos to the labor markets. It has cost people their livelihoods and it is more unpopular than ever.

So why does “Obamacare” (officially known as the “Affordable Care Act”) remain so irresistible for so many of our fellow Americans? Because at its core Obamacare is not about health care, so much as it is about the redistribution of wealth, and for those who are on the receiving end of the redistribution the agenda is completely irresistible.

When the federal government doles-out cash, it’s difficult to say “no.” That’s why many of our nation’s top business consulting firms are cashing-in, as state government officials hire the consulting firms to figure out how to set up the new federal health care bureaucracies, complete with their own state-specific websites and call centers.

How difficult and costly could it be, do you suppose, to set up a website and a call center for the residents of one individual state? In the world of private enterprise, most small to midsize companies doing business within a specific region of the U.S. would be foolish to spend much more than a hundred thousand dollars for their customer service website and the infrastructure for a call center, and in many cases the project could be completed for much less.

But with Obamacare, the “customer service” element has become more of a “corporate welfare” element. Companies, careers, and personal fortunes are being made by people who are the states, as firms bill the individual states millions of taxpayer dollars for the website and call center set-ups (and the Obama administration frequently offers to reimburse the states for the set-up costs).

Take for example a company called Leavitt Partners, LLC. Founded by the former Republican Governor of Utah (and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services) Michael Leavitt, the company describes itself as a “healthcare intelligence business,” and is focused solely on state-by-state Obamacare compliance (they have already completed Utah’s insurance exchange start-up).

We’re talking here about Michael Leavitt, the former Utah Governor who last year endorsed and campaigned on behalf of Mitt Romney, the presidential candidate who pledged to “end” Obamacare. Yes, that Michael Leavitt is making millions advising the states on how to comply with the monstrosity that his pal Mitt wanted to eliminate.

How much money is in play for these companies? Consider that last fall representatives from Leavitt’s company traveled north and proposed to build an exchange for their tiny nieghboring state of Idaho, a state with a population of less than 1.7 million people. Once the Leavitt representatives unveiled their proposed price tag to build an exchange - $70 million-an incredulous member of Idaho’s state insurance task force asked “does Governor Leavitt really believe that this is a good idea?”

Company associate Brett Graham replied with the nuanced explanation that “Governor Leavitt doesn’t like the feds dictating to the states,” however, the Governor also believes that the states should “stand inside the circle with the feds rather than stand outside of it”- which was an artful way of saying “yes, Governor Leavitt likes this and wants to get paid to show you how to do it.”

Leavitt’s proposal was not the most expensive that the sparsely populated Idaho received. The global accounting and consulting firm KPMG weighed-in with a price tag of $77 million, and when a state official asked what the residents of Idaho would get in return for such a large expenditure, KPMG representative Andrew Gottschalk was vague: “It’s hard to explain exactly what you get…It’s hardware, it’s software, there’s infrastructure, there’s people and staffing” he stated. “There would likely be a call center. It’s all kinds of things… there’s a lot of stuff….but it’s hard to be specific.”

States spending millions of taxpayer dollars, and receiving “all kinds of things” and “a lot of stuff” in return. That’s our present-day reality with Obamacare. Along with Leavitt Partners and KPMG, global consulting firms Maximus and Mercer are also cashing-in. These firms employ well educated, highly skilled professionals with JD’s, MBA’s, and advanced degrees in information systems and healthcare management, most of whom would undoubtedly reject the idea that they are welfare recipients. As the Maximus corporate website states, “we leverage our extensive experience and strong commitment to ethics to provide high quality services and solutions.”

This is the reality of Obamacare. It’s wildly unpopular for the masses, but irresistible for those on the receiving end of the money grab.

SOURCE

**************************

Self-Wrecking Pols Take 'Public' Out of 'Republican'

 Paul Jacob

Since the dawning of Obama Nation in 2008, Republicans have made significant gains at the state level — historic victories in 2010, and even small gains made last year, which at the federal level was a debacle for the GOP. Republicans now control both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion in 25 states; Democrats have such universal control in only 13 states.

“This is significant. While we may expect more of the gridlock in Washington that we have seen over the past two years,” wrote Grover Norquist and Patrick Gleason in Politico, “. . . the states, over three-quarters of which are completely controlled by Republicans or Democrats, are unobstructed from moving in whichever direction the party in power chooses.

Republicans, therefore, have many opportunities to connect with the voters, to show voters their best side.

Or, infuriate.

Right now, in a number of state capitols, Republican legislators are at risk of giving up the game by using their legislative power to enact new laws to frustrate and undermine citizen-initiated ballot measures.

To be blunt, neither Republican nor Democrat career politicians much like the idea of citizens having any involvement in politics — save voting for them or mailing them a big, fat check. And the thought of voters making real decisions by proposing and imposing reforms through the citizen initiative or challenging legislative enactments by forcing a voter referendum is absolutely anathema.

But voters very much like making decisions; they know that even their own favored parties and politicians need the discipline of a independent, democratic check. Without initiative and referendum, the citizenry loses all manner of control over runaway spending and taxes, crony corporate welfare schemes, excessive nannyism and government corruption.

No wonder voters don’t like it when politicians try to silence their voice.

But that is precisely what is happening in several Republican-controlled states — none more critical for congressional and also presidential success than Ohio.

Last week, Senate Bill 47 passed the House of Representatives with every Republican member voting yes and every Democrat voting no. Two weeks ago, the bill had passed the state Senate with one Republican (bless him) joining every Democrat in voting no, with every other elephant approving the legislation.

SB 47 would reduce the amount of time initiatives or referendums have to gather signatures from voters, which makes it tougher for voters to get to decide issues.

And it throws a few other rods into the engine of petitioning, as well. For example, it would re-impose an unconstitutional residency requirement already once struck down by a court and previously deemed unenforceable by state officials.

Why would Republican legislators want to do such a thing? Unions have beaten them at the ballot box on a referendum and some initiatives.

Meanwhile, grassroots conservatives and Republicans and libertarians join liberals, Democrats and independents in opposing this anti-initiative legislation. Not a single person or group, except for the bill’s Republican sponsor, testified in favor of SB 47.

If Kasich signs this bill, will these supporters of basic citizen democracy vote for him for governor in 2014 anyway? And if they don’t, will they be more or less willing to vote Democrat or Libertarian or Constitution Party for president in 2016?

In Idaho, Republican legislators got whupped by the powerful state teachers union on three citizen referendums on last November’s ballot. Voters sided with the teachers. I would have sided with legislators, but in a democratic republic, these are issues the people of Idaho decide.

When we lose a vote, the answer isn’t to end the practice of voting.

Nonetheless, Idaho legislators were busy, last week, passing Senate Bill 1108. Though only three of the 26 states with statewide initiative and/or referendum have a more difficult petition signature threshold than Idaho, SB 1108 would raise it higher yet. In addition to satisfying the current statewide signature requirement, SB 1108 would add a requirement to run 18 additional petition drives to qualify in 18 legislative districts.

Not a single Democrat voted for the bill. Anti-tax and property rights conservatives weren’t with the state teachers union or Democrats on the referendums, but they have been making common cause with them in opposing this assault on a constitutional citizen check on big government.

Maybe it doesn’t matter in a state as red as Idaho. But dissing citizens doesn’t seem helpful to the GOP brand. Or to maintaining a grassroots base of energy for actually mobilizing neighbors and friends for winning elections.

I grew up in Arkansas, which just last November voted Republicans into majorities in both houses of the legislature for the first time since Reconstruction (the century before last). There have been some good bills passed, I trust, but Monday the full state senate will vote on an awful one: Senate Bill 821.

The legislation is designed to attack fraud in petitions, and it appears from reports that there were indeed forged signatures on petitions turned in for a couple of 2012 ballot initiatives. The problem is that no one has been charged with a crime. Instead, legislators are slapping a cumbersome and expensive new state registration and training program on future initiative and referendum petitions.

The frightening result of any transgression of the new Labyrinth of rules and regs embedded in SB 821 is that the perfectly valid petition signatures of registered Arkansas voters would be thrown out and discounted, right along with the bad. A simple technical mistake made by someone working for the campaign — petition circulator, manager, clerk, notary public — can deny voters a signature and, thus, a vote.

Will Arkansas Republicans throw this monkey wrench into Arkansas’s long, proud tradition of initiative and referendum? Will they allow this law to pass on their very first watch?

Republicans have the opportunity to prove to voters close to home that they are different — indeed, better — than Democrats, who haven’t always been very nice to small-d democracy, either. But in Ohio, Idaho and Arkansas (and elsewhere) Republican politicians seem bent on taking whacks at democracy . . . and, in the process, losing future elections.

Politics is a struggle over hearts and minds. The Republican Party now points its weaponry at the hearts and minds of its own supporters.

SOURCE

*******************************

Targeting Multinationals, the OECD Launches New Scheme to Boost the Tax Burden on Business

 Daniel J. Mitchell

I’ve been very critical of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Most recently, I criticized the Paris-based bureaucracy for making the rather remarkable assertion that a value-added tax would boost growth and employment.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The OECD has allied itself with the nutjobs from the so-called Occupy movement to push for bigger government and higher taxes.

The OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or Turkey.

The OECD is pushing a “Multilateral Convention” that is designed to become something akin to a World Tax Organization, with the power to persecute nations with free-market tax policy.

The OECD supports Obama’s class-warfare agenda, publishing documents endorsing “higher marginal tax rates” so that the so-called rich “contribute their fair share.”

Now the bureaucrats have concocted another scheme to increase the size and scope of government. The OECD just published a study on “Addressing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting” that seemingly is designed to lay the groundwork for a radical rewrite of business taxation.

In a new Tax & Budget Bulletin for Cato, I outline some of my concerns with this new “BEPS” initiative.

"…the BEPS report…calls for dramatic changes in corporate tax policy based on the presumption that governments are not seizing enough revenue from multinational companies. The OECD essentially argues that it is illegitimate for businesses to shift economic activity to jurisdictions that have more favorable tax laws. …The core accusation in the OECD report is that firms systematically—but legally—reduce their tax burdens by taking advantage of differences in national tax policies."

To elaborate, the BEPS scheme should be considered Part II of the OECD’s anti-tax competition project. Part I was the attack on so-called tax havens, which began back in the mid- to late-1990s.

The OECD justified that campaign by asserting there was a need to fight illegal tax evasion (conveniently overlooking, of course, the fact that nations should not have the right to impose their laws on what happens in other countries).

The BEPS initiative is remarkable because it is going after legal tax avoidance. Even though governments already have carte blanche to change business tax policy.

So what does the OECD want?

"…the OECD hints at its intended outcome when it says that the effort “will require some ‘out of the box’ thinking” and that business activity could be “identified through elements such as sales, workforce, payroll, and fixed assets.” That language suggests that the OECD intends to push global formula apportionment, which means that governments would have the power to reallocate corporate income regardless of where it is actually earned."

And what does this mean? Nothing good, unless you think governments should have more money and investment should be further penalized.

Formula apportionment is attractive to governments that have punitive tax regimes, and it would be a blow to nations with more sensible low-tax systems. …business income currently earned in tax-friendly countries, such as Ireland and the Netherlands, would be reclassified as French-source income or German-source income based on arbitrary calculations of company sales and other factors. …nations with high tax rates would likely gain revenue, while jurisdictions with pro-growth systems would be losers, including Ireland, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Estonia, Luxembourg, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

Since the United States is a high-tax nation for corporations, why should Americans care?

For several reasons, including the fact that it wouldn’t be a good idea to give politicians more revenue that will be used to increase the burden of government spending.

But most important, tax policy will get worse everywhere if tax competition is undermined.

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

******************************

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)

****************************



March 25, 2013

Violence of the Left

The article below is from a couple of years back but still makes some good points -- JR

Most violence and violent rhetoric is leftist in origin. As the left has a firm grip on the reins of mainstream media, it should come as no surprise that the right is the scapegoat for the sins of the left. The irony is that the left is guilty of what its favorite leftist psychologist, Sigmund Freud, coined “projection.” The left denies its own violent actions and rhetoric and instead ascribes it to its chief political opposition—the right.

The left projects its own violent tendencies upon the right through extensive use of media propaganda. “Right-wingers” are immediately blamed for any outburst of random violence perpetrated by isolated and disturbed individuals, yet the entire history of leftist aggression, angry rhetoric, and physical violence is swept into the dustbin of history. Leftist riots, leftist terrorists, leftist serial bombers, leftist calls for genocide—all of these sink down the memory hole, purposefully eclipsed by a barrage of stories about right-wing violence. Reality is quite different.

Worldwide, the left-wing forces of communism are responsible for more than 100 million civilian deaths in the Twentieth Century. Russia, Romania, Yugoslavia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and other communist-controlled nations became killing fields in the name of social progress—a favorite term of the left. America mistakenly believes that Marxism and leftism largely died with the fall of the Soviet Union, but the parasite merely changed hosts.

As far as violent and hateful language and calls for White genocide, there is a long list of belligerent quotations by leftists in the media, politics, and academia. The following is a small sample.

Jewish intellectual and leftist activist Susan Sontag snarled, “The White race is the cancer of history.”

Leonard Jeffries, chairman of African-American studies at the City College of New York, said he wanted to leave his children in a “world in which there aren’t any White people.”

Jewish Harvard professor and editor of “Race Traitor” magazine Noel Ignatiev trumpeted, “The goal of abolishing the White race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed White supremacists… Keep bashing the dead White males, and the live ones, and the females, too, until the social construct known as the White race is destroyed. Not deconstructed, but destroyed.”

Mario Obledo, founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), remarked on radio station KIEV, “California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. If they don’t like Mexicans, they ought to go back to Europe.”

Miles Davis, famous Black jazz man, quipped in a Jet magazine feature: “If somebody told me I had only one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a White man. I’d do it nice and slow.”

Professor Jose Gutierrez of the University of Texas gleefully boasted, “We have an aging White America. They are dying. They are [expletive] in their pants with fear! I love it!”

Malcolm X described a plane crash in 1962 as follows: “The death of over 120 White people is a very beautiful thing.”

Eldridge Cleaver, former Black Panther leader, explained why he raped White women: “Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the White man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women.”

Even President Barack Obama is not above the use of violent language: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun…Folks in Philly like a good brawl.”

Leftists have conducted an incessant and strident media, political, and educational campaign to spread the lie that White Americans are irredeemably racist. This slander and libel has motivated many Blacks to murder, rape, rob, and assault Whites, or at the very least has lessened apprehensions toward doing so. The amount of Black-on-White violent crime overshadows White-on-Black violent crime by such an egregious magnitude that it should enrage any reasonable person. Black men rape White women approximately twenty to thirty thousand times every single year in America. The annual count of White men raping Black women rarely breaks into the double digits.

Instead of pointing out the horrendous amount of Black-on-White violent crime, the left purposefully covers it up by not reporting it in the mainstream media. The silence is deafening, especially for victims and their families. Even worse, the left plays up any examples of White-on-Black violence to warp the public’s perception of reality. Instead of taking steps to reduce or call attention to Black-on-White rape, robbery, assault, and murder, the left clamors for “Hate Crime” laws which only apply to White perpetrators.

Former head of the US Commission on Civil Rights, Mary Frances Berry, explained that “Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of White men and do not apply to them.” When Whites are beaten, raped, or killed in a racially-motivated fashion, the motive is always swept under the rug and described as a “random act of violence.” When Whites speak out against the disproportionate amount of non-White crime in America, leftists cry “racism!” and push for “Hate Speech” laws to silence dissent and sidestep the First Amendment by legislative means. Leftists have encouraged, incited, sanctioned, obfuscated, and defended unspeakably vicious acts of violent crime in America, and will continue to do so in the future—unless the perpetrator is White or conservative. In that case, the incident will become front-page news and transform into an endlessly-repeated “talking point.”

The mainstream right in America stands for traditional moral values, property rights, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and individual liberty—all non-violent ideals. Conversely, the left in America stands for coercive redistribution, forced integration, silence of political opposition, and laws restricting individual liberty—all of which require violence and the threat thereof to enforce. The lion’s share of political violence towards the citizenry emanates from leftist political ideals. The rolling avalanche of violent crime in America resonates from leftist propaganda, leftist social policy, and leftist agitation. The left has the blood of millions on its hands yet dares to point a red-stained finger at others.

SOURCE

*******************************

Obama Retreats After High Water Mark

Call it over-reach, hubris, arrogance; call it what you will, but for all practical purposes Obama’s presidency and experimentation in transformative politics is over.

Oh sure; we’ll have four more years of strident rhetoric, of evasions, of ruses and stratagems.

Obama’s nothing if not persistent.  He wants to be the guy who transformed America -in fact, moved it on the path toward the socialist, state-sponsored model of Europe.  He might even be the guy who recognizes that only under a “dictatorship of the proletariat” or some modern version of it, will African-Americans enjoy anything like real power as a minority group that represents only about 13 percent of the population.

But his re-election didn’t change the fact that his power to change things is still limited right now.

Much of his presidency has been the story of Obama not being able to come to grips with that very fact. So instead of using the legitimate mechanisms granted a president to get things done, Obama pushes and bullies from above to try to accomplish what he can’t under the law.    

No nation can undergo a permanent revolution from above. Especially a nation that essentially remains one of the most free, just and tolerant societies ever created. Eventually the 99 percent who aren’t bused-in, paid-to-protest, or paid to act as a political commissariat disguised as government employees, asks to be let alone.

At least that’s the way it works in America.

The United States of America today is not the turn-of-the-Century Russia of 1917.  It’s not even Victorian England.  It’s not even the United States of America of the 1950’s.

While racial and gender equality is not perfect in the US, nobody can argue with a straight face that, in the main, everyone doesn’t have a shot at the American Dream.  Not an equal shot to be sure, but even Franklin Roosevelt understood that government couldn’t or shouldn’t protect everyone from all the circumstances that life brings.

Obama’s problem, then, essentially, is one that he readily recognizes: “This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency,” said Obama in a moment that could have been sponsored by the Contemporary Freudian Society. “The problem is that I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.”

Yes, that is his problem, but it’s our problem too.

As Democrats busy themselves with disarming the population, state by state, to distract from the poor economic record amassed by Obama and his liberal friends, “Americans are still worried about government being a threat to freedom,” reported Gallup. “The 64% of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high.”

And this was before Obama’s latest, greatest Big Government push.

In the meantime, something that really makes a difference in all of our lives- gas prices- are again hitting seasonal highs, just prior to driving season ramping up. So expect higher prices still

The result will almost certainly be higher unemployment, as we have correctly demonstrated again, and again.  Add in runaway healthcare costs, which Obamcare - now three years old- was supposed to fix, higher taxes on everyone, and more taxes to come and you get the idea why the job "emperor" seems so much more appealing to Obama, than being a weak, ineffective president.

His tax increase was the high water mark.

Because re-election returns aside, Obama is still much more mouth than magic. Nothing he’s done has actually worked.  And we know from history that it won’t work.

You could give Obama a trillion dollars and he still couldn’t create a credible recovery.

Yes, that’s right we tried that already.  And that’s why it will never happen again.

So, all Obama has left is his desire to be a Napoleon, while trapped in an intellect 5’2’’ tall, a permanent bully from above that truly is beneath us.

SOURCE

*****************************

Sorry, GOP, but You Will Never Out-Care the Democrats

Republicans now have a comprehensive "autopsy" report detailing some of the perceived and some of the real shortcomings of the 2012 presidential election. And the rather optimistically named Growth and Opportunity Project's report is jampacked with so many painfully obvious observations that one wonders why it had to be written in the first place.

You may not be surprised to learn, for instance, that a bunch of people find the Republican Party "scary," "narrow minded," "out of touch" and a party of "stuffy old men." Alas, the "perception that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates," states the report. This theme was in full display at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, as well. The GOP has to care more, a lot more.

As practical politics go (not to mention personal morality), compassion is never a bad idea. But rest assured, politically speaking, the GOP will never out-"care" the Democratic Party. It will never out-empathize it. Or out-diversify it. Or be able to promise that government can do more. And it shouldn't want to.

For starters, there's no reason to accept the liberal definition of caring -- at all. Conservatives can be as compassionate as anyone else; just look at polls that gauge who gives to charities. It just so happens that conservatives don't like to do their caring with other people's money. If Republicans start holding up government as the principal source of empathy, hope and charity, America can expect an even bigger arms race in spending and dependency -- the kind that, in the end, burdens the young and poor and everyone else.

It's one thing to be more diverse and open-minded, to engage all sorts of people, even to shift your opinions when generational forces or facts demand it. It's quite another to, as Newt Gingrich explained at CPAC, become a "party focused on the right to life and the right to a good life." To begin with, politicians are in no position to offer you a good life -- or a right to it. Secondly, it's a myth that a good life isn't available to anyone who is genuinely seeking it. In any event, liberal populism already has a monopoly on victimhood, so there's scarce room for Republicans in that space.

In many tactical areas, the Growth and Opportunity Project seems to make sense. Modernization and more effective outreach are great ideas. The problem is that too often, the RNC allows Democrats to define the parameters of debate. There's way too much worrying about acceptance and far too little about persuasion.

As a practical matter, let's concede for a moment that conceding issues such as immigration, gay marriage and abortion makes sense -- and that's the implicit message of the project's report. I'm sympathetic on a number of points, but what's the cost-benefit analysis? Folks in Washington are obsessed with winning, and winning is nice. But politics is their livelihood. Average Americans don't participate in the political process to join a team; they knock on doors because -- as surprising as this may be to some -- they believe in something.

And even though social conservatives feel as if they're being swept aside by Republican Beltway types, fiscal conservatism will fare no better under this thinking. The idea of free markets is a moral one -- an American idea -- and a sellable one. Yes, polls show that young Americans are more pro-government than ever. So it'd be nice if there were a plan to convince them of how wrong they are -- as opposed to trying to sound more like the people they already agree with.

SOURCE

*****************************

Obama Delivers Recipe For Disaster in Israel

The president’s wish is for Israelis to lose their resolve against Palestinian terrorism, to shrug and just let a Palestinian state sprout in their midst.

For the record, there are plenty of Israelis willing to do just that, which has confounded me for years.

How is it that I, an American Christian, am more vigilant about the security of Israel than some Israeli jews?

Polls show that many young Israelis are more skeptical of the “two-state solution” than their parents. I hope so, but I wonder if Israel has the time for these youngsters to grow up, achieve power, and spread the kind of clarity currently offered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, I hope Netanyahu is eating right and hitting the treadmill often. At 63, he needs to be around a very long time to awaken some of his own people and educate current and perhaps future American presidents.

To be bipartisan about this, the Bush administration bought into this two-state nonsense, willingly marching Israel toward shared space with a freshly-created country that would surely be peppered with leadership flavored by Hezbollah and Hamas.

This is, as they say in international affairs, crazy.

I know it is hard to tell long-suffering Palestinians that their propensity to elevate leaders of a terrorist bent is a deal-breaker for any group looking for its own country.

It is even harder to deliver the ultimate clarity-- that there is in fact no basis in logic or history for a new nation called Palestine, carved from the soil of Israel.

There is already a Palestinian state in the region. It’s called Jordan. If geography is a sticking point, any Palestinian seeking to remain on Israeli soil can be assured of a life far more promising under Israeli governance than the violent third-world lives they lead in the West Bank and Gaza, lands handed over to them in the most recent phony offer of land for peace.

It’s never enough. if Israel, a tiny slice of land surrounded by millions of square miles of people longing for its extinction, will just give up a little more territory, then, finally, there will supposedly be peace.

So goes the scam. How many times will people fall for this? How many times will Israelis listen to leaders, from America and among their own ranks, who recommend such a suicidal march?

More HERE

******************************

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)

****************************



March 24, 2013

Fiction that will unfortunately be remembered as fact

Thirteen minutes into the Oscar-winning movie "Argo," CIA agent Tony Mendez asks supervisor Jack O'Donnell what happened to a group of Americans when the U.S. Embassy was stormed in Tehran.

"The six of them went out a back exit," O'Donnell tells Mendez, played by Ben Affleck. "Brits turned them away. Kiwis turned them away. Canadians took them in."

That passing reference to New Zealand is rankling Kiwis five months after "Argo" was released in the South Pacific nation. Even Parliament has expressed its dismay, passing a motion stating that Affleck, who also directed the film, "saw fit to mislead the world about what actually happened."

New Zealand joins other countries, including Iran and Canada, that have felt offended by the fictionalized account of how the six Americans were sheltered and secreted out of Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Some in New Zealand have taken those words — "Kiwis turned them away" — as implying the country did nothing to help.

In fact, a U.S. State Department document dated Feb. 6, 1980, says "four Embassies — Canadians, British, Swedish and New Zealand — were involved in their protection and escape." The document was posted online last fall by the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum.

And published interviews indicate diplomats from Britain and New Zealand did help by briefly sheltering the Americans, visiting them and bringing them food, even driving them to the airport when they left.

Yet those interviews also indicate that both countries considered it too risky to shelter the Americans for long. That left the Canadians shouldering the biggest risk by taking them in.

Lawmaker Winston Peters, who brought last week's uncontested motion before Parliament, said New Zealanders are unfairly portrayed as "a bunch of cowards," an impression that would be given to millions who watch the movie.

"It's a diabolical misrepresentation of the acts of courage and bravery, done at significant risk to themselves, by New Zealand diplomats," he said.

Affleck could not be reached for comment this week.

During Oscar media interviews last month, Affleck told reporters: "Let me just start by saying I love New Zealand, and I love New Zealanders." He added that "I think that it's tricky. You walk a fine line. You are doing a historical movie and naturally you have to make some creative choices about how you are going to condense this into a three-act structure."

But Affleck and his screenwriter, Chris Terrio, who won the adapted screenplay Oscar, did catch some flak from critics for taking major liberties, especially a heart-stopping — but fictional — airport finale that had gun-wielding Iranian Revolutionary Guards chasing the Swissair plane down the tarmac, with the plane lifting off just in the nick of time. (In reality, the airport exit went smoothly.)

And after the film was made, Affleck took the step of changing the film's postscript, the Toronto Star reported, to more generously credit Canada and its ambassador at the time, Ken Taylor, who protected the Americans at huge personal risk and was uncomfortable with some details in the film.

SOURCE

*****************************

A big story about racial conflict that gets ignored by the media

Unless you read the Los Angeles Times, you probably have not heard much about the Latino-on-black violence that has been plaguing southern California on and off for many years. Most recently, four Latino gang members jumped a black stranger in Compton and beat him with pipes. The man was visiting a black family that had just moved into the neighborhood; the men who beat him called him n*gger, informing him that blacks were no longer welcome in that neighborhood.

For several days after the beating, crowds gathered on the family’s lawn, shouting racial epithets and throwing beer bottles at the house. They disbanded each time the police arrived but returned as soon as they left. They achieved their goal; the mother sent her children to live with relatives and is packing up to move. According to federal authorities, this is not an isolated incident; Latino gangs have been forcing blacks out of particular neighborhoods all over southern California.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. Last year I wrote of the 2008 slaying of high school football player Jamiel Shaw by gang member (and illegal immigrant) Pedro Espinoza. The court concluded that Shaw, a standout football player recruited by colleges like Stanford and Rutgers, was targeted because he was black. And I can’t help but wonder: if Espinoza had been white, would more of us know Jamiel Shaw’s name?

Few have heard of this Latino-on-black crime wave because it doesn’t fit the narrative that many in the media perpetuate. Media elitists would have us to believe that aristocratic whites are relentlessly oppressing all racial minorities and causing all of their woes. (Except Asians, whose high levels of education and economic success they find difficult to explain.) Hence blacks and Latinos are supposedly in the same boat: recipients of the short end of the stick in a white man’s world.

There are several dangerous consequences to this cookie cutter approach to race relations. First of all, the disparity of media coverage for certain crimes implies that justice for the black victim of a Latino (or black) killer is a less pressing concern. The murder of fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton in Chicago by Michael Ward and Kenneth Williams (also black) briefly made national news because Pendleton had sung at President Obama’s inauguration. But how many more Hadiya Pendletons are there whose stories will never be told? Deaths of teens like Pendleton and Shaw speak to a much larger, more complicated problem: lawlessness in many urban areas would never be tolerated in a white, middle class suburb.

The one dimensional understanding of race relations also leads to perilous media inaccuracies. Any event that doesn’t fit the narrative of “white oppressor, black/brown victim” must either be forced into that mold or ignored altogether. This is why, when the Latino George Zimmerman (who grew up in a multi-racial family and modest neighborhood) shot black teenager Trayvon Martin, we were told Zimmerman was a “white Hispanic.” This was only the sixth time in its 160-year history the New York Times had used such a term; would they have used it if Zimmerman had been shot by a white man?

Perhaps the most harmful aspect of an overly simplistic approach to race relations is that it presumes that the power to improve the prospects of blacks and Latinos lies solely with powerful whites. If the plight of suffering blacks and Latinos is due entirely to the racist attitudes of whites, then it follows that only a change in those attitudes will improve their standard of living. This attitude trivializes both the power and importance of the families, churches and community organizations that have been so pivotal in lifting successful blacks and Latinos out of poverty.

It is also easier for a journalist to lament the existence of racism than to report on interventions in areas like education and community development that actually work. The politically incorrect truth is that popular government sponsored programs, such as Head Start, have very little impact on outcomes for lower income black and Latino children. Despite receiving over $150 billion in funding, a 2010 study of Head Start by the Department of Health and Human Services concluded that “the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by first grade for the program population as a whole.”

What does have a positive effect on at risk youth? Multiple studies, from institutions including Harvard University, have concluded that regular church attendance, even when controlled for income and parental marital status, has a dramatically positive effect on an at risk child’s likelihood to graduate from high school, avoid crime and become gainfully employed. But don’t expect to read that in the newspaper anytime soon.

SOURCE

******************************

The Obamacare Revolt: Physicians Fight Back Against the Bureaucratization of Health Care

Dr. Ryan Neuhofel, 31, offers a rare glimpse at what it would be like to go to the doctor without massive government interference in health care. Dr. Neuhofel, based in the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, charges for his services according to an online price list that's as straightforward as a restaurant menu. A drained abscess runs $30, a pap smear, $40, a 30-minute house call, $100. Strep cultures, glucose tolerance tests, and pregnancy tests are on the house. Neuhofel doesn't accept insurance. He even barters on occasion with cash-strapped locals. One patient pays with fresh eggs and another with homemade cheese and goat's milk.

"Direct primary care," which is the industry term for Neuhofel's business model, does away with the bureaucratic hassle of insurance, which translates into much lower prices. "What people don't realize is that most doctors employ an army of people for coding, billing, and gathering payment," says Neuhofel. "That means you have to charge $200 to remove an ingrown toenail." Neuhofel charges $50.

He consults with his patients over email and Skype in exchange for a monthly membership fee of $20-30. "I realized people would come in for visits with the simplest questions and I'd wonder, why can't they just email me?" says Neuhofel. Traditional doctors have no way to get paid when they consult with patients over the phone or by email because insurance companies only pay for office visits.

Why did he choose this course? Neuhofel’s answer: “I didn’t want to waste my career being frustrated.”

This model is growing in popularity. Leading practitioners of direct primary care include Seattle, Washington-based Qliance, which has raised venture capital funding from Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, and comedian (and Reason Foundation Trustee) Drew Carey; MedLion, which is about to expand its business to five states; and AMG Medical Group, which operates several offices in New York City. Popular health care blogger Dr. Rob Lamberts has written at length about his decision to dump his traditional practice in favor of this model.

"Since I started my practice, I seem to hear about another doctor or clinic doing direct primary care every other week." says Neuhofel.

Direct primary care is part of a larger trend of physician-entrepreneurs all across the country fighting to bring transparent prices and market forces back to health care. This is happening just as the federal government is poised to interfere with the health care market in many new and profoundly destructive ways.

Obamacare, which takes full effect in 2014, will drive up costs and erode quality—and Americans will increasingly seek out alternatives. That could bring hordes of new business to practitioners like Neuhofel, potentially offering a countervailing force to Obamacare. (One example, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma's Dr. Keith Smith, profiled for Reason TV in September, is doing big business offering cash pricing for outpatient surgery at prices about 80 percent less than at traditional hospitals.)

Health "insurance" is more than just insurance; it's also "a payment plan for routine expenses," as University of Chicago business school economist John Cochrane puts it in a superb recent paper. The late free-market economist Milton Friedman pointed out that we insure our houses against fire and our cars against major damage, but we don't also insure ourselves against cutting the lawn and buying gas. That's the main reason innovation almost never makes health care cheaper. Most patients never see the bill for an ingrown toenail removal or a glucose tolerance test, so doctors have little incentive to seek ways to offer their services for less. For simple consultations, why bother with Skype when insurance will pay full price for an office visit.

Insurance plans that cover everything, a situation that came about largely because of a quirk in our tax code, have also led to the "bureaucratization of medical care," Friedman wrote in a 2001 essay, in which "the caregiver has become, in effect, an employee of the insurance company or...the government."

Dr. Lisa Davidson had 8 years of frustration while running a successful traditional practice in Denver, Colorado. She had 6,000 patients when she decided to stop taking insurance and adopt the same business model as Neuhofel. Her patient list has dropped to about 2,000. She used to spend about 15 minutes with each patient and now it's more like 45 minutes. "We're on track to make more money and take better care of our patients," says Davidson. "It's a win-win all around."Dr. Lisa Davidson (pictured to the far right) and her staff

Before adopting direct primary care, Davidson was unhappy working at the practice she had built because the insurance system imposed a way of doing business that resembled an assembly line. "It's true that in 2014, many more people will have insurance, so there will be a profound need for primary care doctors," says Davidson. "You might say I've done a disservice by dramatically cutting the size of my practice. However, if we make it desirable again to be a primary care physician more people will want to do it."

Under Obamacare, more and more doctors are becoming employees of large hospitals, where there will be more control over how they practice medicine. Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Dr. Scott Atlas fears this will cause a brain drain in medicine. "Really smart people want autonomy, and when you take that away it's naive to think you're going to get really bright people becoming doctors," says Atlas. "The best doctors could excel at any profession, so why go into medicine if they won't have the opportunity to be their best?"

When she was operating a traditional practice, Davidson witnessed firsthand how our "payment plans for routine expenses" drive up prices and block innovation. She recalls that one insurance company paid $118 for a routine PSA test. Now that her patients pay the bill directly the cost is $18. Insurance used to pay $128 for a bag of IV fluid. Now Davidson doesn't bother passing on the cost of IV bags because they run $1.50 each.

Dr. Eric Bricker is the medical director at Compass, a Dallas-based company that helps individuals with high-deductible insurance plans. In a previous job, Bricker was a finance consultant for hospitals, giving him firsthand knowledge of how health insurance drives up prices. "When insurance companies and hospitals negotiate," says Bricker, "it's an exercise in horse trading." For example, an insurance company might let a hospital get away with charging $2,000 for an MRI, says Bricker. In exchange, the hospital agrees to charge the bargain price of $2,000 to deliver a baby. "You do that mixing and matching," says Bricker, "and at the end of the day it works out about even."

According to Bricker, this horse-trading method provides an opportunity for hospitals to earn windfall profits: If the hospital gets $2,000 for MRIs, it will start encouraging patients to get more MRIs.

Given how prices are set, it's no mystery why in health care high costs often correlate with low quality. Bricker cites one facility in Dallas, where a 3-tesla MRI (the more teslas, the higher the resolution) can be had for $860, while a nearby facility offers a 1.5-tesla MRI for $2,500. The latter facility stays in business only because many of its customers don't know the difference. They pay the same $20 co-pay wherever they go for an MRI.

So Bricker co-founded Compass, which works with about 1,200 firms to guide their employees to those doctors and testing facilities that offer both high quality and low prices. These employees have an incentive to seek out value because they're responsible for paying a large portion of their own routine medical costs before their insurance coverage kicks in.

High-threshold plans are exploding in popularity, which is a promising trend. According to a 2012 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 31 percent of firms now offer health plans in which patients pay most routine costs out of pocket, like a Health Savings Account (HSA) or Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA), and 19 percent of covered workers have one of these plans. High-deductible plans go a long way towards unbundling our "payment plans for routine expenses" from the catastrophic coverage that should be the sole function of health insurance.

SOURCE

******************************

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)

****************************



March 22, 2013

The "diminishing" man

President Barack Obama distorted Palestinian Authority terror at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Wednesday night and asserted that 2012 was a good year in Judea and Samaria because no one died from terrorist attacks.

He also implicitly stated Israel could settle for less than total security so long as the possibility of rocket attacks from Judea and Samaria were “diminished.”

President Obama tried to minimize his comments on the “peace process” during the “Barack and Bibi” show, which showed that they are the best of chums who never disagree.

The president called Netanyahu “Bibi” several times, and both of them poured lavish praise on each other while being remarkably honest on Iran. Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted for the first time that President Obama is correct in saying that Iran is at least a year from manufacturing a nuclear weapon. He differentiated between Iran’s ability to make a weapon and its capability to produce enough enriched uranium for one.

It was the “peace process” that prompted comments from the president that were enough to show that his advisers still think terrorist attacks, at least in Israel, are only dangerous when people are killed. That was the same kind of thinking that kept Israel from striking at Hamas terrorists in Gaza so long as rockets landed in “open areas” and wounded “only” a few farmers and foreign workers. After missiles started wounding and murdering civilians closer to Tel Aviv last November, Israel finally “had a right to defend itself.”

President Obama made two statements that ignore reality and which will give him the excuse to lecture Israelis at his speech at the Jerusalem Conference Center Thursday night that Israel faces disaster if it does not admit that the country cannot exist so long as Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria remain an “obstacle” to a Palestinian Authority state.

First of all, the president said that there was not a single death in Judea and Samaria in 2012 due to Palestinian terror.

Secondly, he stated that a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority cannot be concluded until Israelis feel that the possibility of rocket attacks has “diminished.” He did not say that there should be “no chance” of missile attacks but only that the “possibility of rockets has diminished.”

A “diminishing” possibility is what the United States and well-meaning starry-eyed Israeli dreamers, like President Shimon Peres, supposedly created in 2005 with the expulsion of Jews and the withdrawal of all Israeli soldiers from Gaza.

Knesset Members scoffed at right-warnings that rockets would land on Ashkelon, let alone Tel Aviv. President Peres found himself stating later that he simply cannot understand why Hamas would attack Israel with rockets after the withdrawal from Gaza.

Obama’s mention that no one died in attacks from Judea and Samaria last year is even more off the mark.

First of all, there were many serious injuries.

Secondly, an infant’s life is hanging in the air at this very moment after last week’s savage rock-throwing terrorist attack on a central Samaria highway. The rock-throwers achieved their aim of causing a crash, similar to the fatal accident in Kiryat Arba in September 2011 that killed Asher Palmer and is two-year-old son. But that happened less than four months before 2012, so Obama could forget about it in his wrap-up for the year. And last week’s attack is in 2013, so that also does not count.

Thirdly, the reason there were no deaths is not because Palestinian Authority terrorists did not try but because the IDF has been able to deploy from within Judea and Samaria to prevent them, an impossibility if Mahmoud Abbas takes full control of Judea and Samaria and excludes the IDF.

SOURCE

*****************************

Fusion Power on the Right

By Jonah Goldberg.  Jonah might have quoted the Gipper: "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism..... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom"

"At CPAC, the Future Looks Libertarian," read a dispatch on Time magazine's website. "CPAC: Rand Paul's Big Moment," proclaimed The Week magazine. Meanwhile, the New York Times headlined its story about the annual conservative political action conference "GOP divisions fester at conservative retreat."

George Will, a man who actually knows a thing or two about conservatism, responded to the NYT's use of the word "fester" on ABC News' "This Week." "Festering: an infected wound, it's awful. I guarantee you, if there were a liberal conclave comparable to this, and there were vigorous debates going on there, the New York Times' headline would be 'Healthy diversity flourishes at the liberal conclave.'"

Will went on to note that social conservatives and libertarian free-market conservatives in the GOP have been arguing "since the 1950s, when the National Review was founded on the idea of the fusion of the two. It has worked before with Ronald Reagan. It can work again."

Will was right as far as he went, but I would go further. Fusionism was an idea hatched by Frank Meyer, a brilliant intellectual and editor at National Review. An ex-communist Christian libertarian, Meyer argued that freedom was a prerequisite for virtue and therefore a virtuous society must be a free society. (If I force you to do the right thing against your will, you cannot claim to have acted virtuously.)

Philosophically, the idea took fire from all sides. But as a uniting principle, fusionism worked well. It provided a rationale for most libertarians and most social conservatives to fight side by side against communism abroad and big government at home.

What often gets left out in discussions of the American right is that fusionism isn't merely an alliance, it is an alloy. Fusionism runs through the conservative heart. William F. Buckley, the founder of the conservative movement, often called himself a "libertarian journalist." Asked about that in a 1993 interview, he told CSPAN's Brian Lamb that the question "Does this augment or diminish human liberty?" informed most of what he wrote.

Most pure libertarians and the tiny number of truly statist social conservatives live along the outer edge of the Venn diagram that is the American right. Most self-identified conservatives reside in the vast overlapping terrain between the two sides.

Just look at where libertarianism has had its greatest impact: economics. There simply isn't a conservative economics that is distinct from a libertarian one. Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, James M. Buchanan & Co. are gods of the libertarian and conservative pantheons alike. When Pat Buchanan wanted to move America towards protectionism and statism, he had to leave the party to do it.

Libertarian and conservative critiques of Obamacare, the stimulus and other Democratic policies are indistinguishable from one another. On trade, taxes, property rights, energy, the environment, intellectual property and other issues, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you the difference, if any, between the conservative and libertarian positions.

On the Constitution, there are some interesting debates, but both factions are united in rejecting a "living Constitution." The debate on the right is over what the Constitution says, not what liberals think it should say.

When Jim DeMint resigned from the Senate, the pro-life libertarian journalist Timothy Carney wrote for the Washington Examiner, "For libertarians, Christian conservative pro-lifer Jim DeMint was the best thing to come through the Senate in decades." DeMint had a 93 percent rating from the National Taxpayers Union and a perfect 100 percent from the libertarian Club for Growth.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), according to most media accounts, represents a new, younger, more libertarian approach. But at CPAC, Paul also announced that he would be introducing the "Life at Conception Act." On gay marriage, Paul's position is that it should be left to the states. And on immigration, Paul's newfound support for a path to citizenship has more in common with George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism than it does with doctrinaire libertarianism.

Libertarianism has a better brand name than conservatism these days, particularly among young people. Conservatives shouldn't be freaking out about this any more than libertarians should start a victory dance. The agreements between the two sides remain far greater than the differences.

SOURCE

**************************

U.S. National Security Document Will Omit References to Islamic Extremism and Jihad

In what appears to be another victory for the US Muslim Brotherhood, Associated Press is reporting that "religious terms" such as Islamic extremism and Jihad will be removed from the document known as the National Security Strategy. According to the AP report:

"President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said. The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used. The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.

The AP report also identifies a little known White House office that appears to have played a major role in the language change:
"You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, ‘We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense," said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy. Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives."

Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from the Ramamurthy or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming. Ramamurthy maintains a database of interviews conducted by 50 U.S. embassies worldwide. And business leaders from more than 40 countries head to Washington this month for an "entrepreneurship summit" for Muslim businesses.

A post from 2008 discussed a Department of Homeland Security memo urging employees not to use terms including ‘jihad,' ‘jihadist' or ‘Islamic terrorist' in describing Islamic terrorism. As that post noted, the efforts of the US Brotherhood to change US counterterrorism language dates back to the 1988  bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa:

"Prior to the activities of Al Qaeda, MPAC and CAIR focused their efforts on defending the activities of Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas, arguing as noted above that they were motivated by suffering and oppression. Following the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, the Brotherhood groups were faced with a new issue- organized Islamic terrorists attacking the United States and killing civilians who were not party to any conflict involving Muslims.

After initial denials that Muslims were involved in the attacks, the U.S Brotherhood groups began arguing that although the grievances were "legitimate", the action were "un-Islamic." In total, the U.S. Brotherhood effort is in accord with the larger Muslim Brotherhood notion of "defensive Jihad" which holds that Jihad is justified where Muslims or "Muslim honor" is under attack. Therefore, under this definition, Hamas/Hezbollah violence is not terrorism because it is justified and Al Qaeda violence is not "Islamic" because it is not justified.

Another earlier post discussed the Leadership Group of the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project, an organization whose report expressed support for changing the language used to describe terrorism. Members of the Leadership Group include well-known past and present political figures including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, US Muslim Brotherhood leaders such as Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) President Ingrid Mattson, and Obama Muslim "Faith Advisor Dalia Mogahed.

The US Brotherhood effort to remove terms such as "Islamic extremism", in turn, is part of a larger rhetorical strategy which appears designed to obscure the true goals of the organization.

It should be noted that the change in the tone of US counterterrorism language was presaged in President Obama's counterterrorism adviser John Brennan's February speech at NYU at which Ingrid Mattson was present.

SOURCE

********************************

The Unmourned

By Mark Steyn

In 2011, I wrote about mass murder at Kermit Gosnell’s abortion “clinic”:  "From the Office of the District Attorney in Philadelphia:   Viable babies were born. Gosnell killed them by plunging scissors into their spinal cords. He taught his staff to do the same."

    This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale – and it barely makes the papers. Had he plunged his scissors into the spinal cord of a Democrat politician in Arizona, then The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC and everyone else would be linking it to Sarah Palin’s uncivil call for dramatic cuts in government spending. But “Doctor” Kermit Gosnell’s mound of corpses is apparently entirely unconnected to the broader culture.

And so it goes two years on, at “Doctor” Gosnell’s trial:

"Medical assistant Adrienne Moton admitted Tuesday that she had cut the necks of at least 10 babies after they were delivered, as Gosnell had instructed her. Gosnell and another employee regularly “snipped” the spines “to ensure fetal demise,” she said.   Moton sobbed as she recalled taking a cellphone photograph of one baby because he was bigger than any she had seen aborted before. She measured the fetus at nearly 30 weeks, and thought he could have survived, given his size and pinkish color. Gosnell later joked that the baby was so big he could have walked to the bus stop, she said."

Funny!

Notwithstanding Dr. Gosnell’s jest, and the fact that newborns delivered alive are generally regarded as “babies,” the New York Times’ only story on the case is punctilious enough to refer to Gosnell’s victims as “viable fetuses,” and its early paragraphs emphasize the defense’s wearily predictable line that this is a “racist prosecution.”

Instead of my Arizona comparison, what about Sandy Hook? One solitary act of mass infanticide by a mentally-ill loner calls into question the constitutional right to guns, but a sustained conveyor belt of infanticide by an entire cadre of cold-blooded killers apparently has no implications for the constitutional right to abortion. As one commentator wondered two years ago:

    "Does 30 years of calling babies “blobs of tissue” have no effect on the culture?"

For the answer, consider the testimony of “Nurse” Moton — and the clarification by AP writer Maryclaire Dale:

    "She once had to kill a baby delivered in a toilet, cutting its neck with scissors, she said. Asked if she knew that was wrong, she said, “At first I didn’t.”  Abortions are typically performed in utero."

“Typically.” So, finding oneself called on to “abort” a “viable fetus” in a toilet with a pair of scissors, who wouldn’t be confused as to whether it’s “wrong” or merely marginally atypical?

Gosnell’s murderous regime in Philadelphia reflects on him. The case’s all but total absence from the public discourse reflects on America:

    It’s time for the lukewarm to get over whatever prejudices are keeping them from getting on the right side of this issue, for the good of the victims of this ghastly culture, and for their own good as well.

SOURCE

******************************

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)

****************************



March 21, 2013

Some interesting experiments on "racism"

In the 1950's and 60s there was a concerted Marxist-led effort by psychologists to prove that people with "racist" attitudes were psychologically maladjusted. The fact that the whole world had been racist up until the war didn't seem to hold them up any.

Reality triumphed eventually however and psychology textbooks these days routinely concede that some form of "in group favoritism" is normal, natural and essentially universal. We all tend to like best people similar to ourselves. In Freudian terms it is an extension of self-love.

It seems, however, that economists have been reinventing the wheel by demonstrating in-group favoritism yet again. There is a description below. The authors found that bus drivers were less likely to give a free ride to dark-skinned people.

As with all such experiments, however, the problem of generalizability arises. What generalizations, if any, can we extract from the findings? The authors of the study offer a fairly expansive interpretation of their findings but a simpler explanation might be that dark skin is in all the English-speaking countries associated with a high crime rate, so the drivers may have been more likely to suspect dark-skinned requests for a free ride of being dishonest. The principle of parsimony would favour that explanation.

But in reality it is all speculative. NOTHING firm can be concluded from the data. And the authors themselves show how weak generalizations in that field are. They show that what the drivers said they would do and what they actually did were roughly opposite. As LaPiere showed in the 1930s, you cannot infer behaviour from expressed behavioural intention. But if you cannot predict behaviour even from behavioural intention, what can you predict? Again the answer is nothing.

So these little experiments are fun but are no cause for any heartburn. We are all "racists" to a degree but what implications that has for behaviour will vary with both the individual and the situation. Only a Leftist could deny that.

Of course, part of the problem is how racism is defined. To the hysterical Left any mention of race is racism and any mention of racial differences is doubly so. Such reactions are irrational however so the most expansive definition I would support is "preference for one group over another". And that is the sense in which I have used it above.

Even that usage, however tends to associate too much with racism. It associates probably harmless attitudes with some of the great evils of history. A more historically-grounded definition would be: "Advocating or practicing harm or disadvantage to other people solely on account of their race". Racism of that sort is exceedingly rare today outside Muslim countries. -- JR

Two economists from the University of Queensland, Redzo Mujcic and Professor Paul Frijters, will publish the results of a natural field experiment on Thursday in which trained "testers" of different ethnic appearance got on buses in Brisbane, discovered their travel card wouldn't work, but then asked the driver to let them to make the trip anyway.

Various testers did this more than 1500 times. Overall, the driver agreed in almost two-thirds of cases.

But whereas the success rate for testers of white appearance was 72 per cent, for testers of black appearance it was just 36 per cent.

Testers of Indian appearance were let on 51 per cent of the time, whereas those of Chinese, Japanese or Malaysian appearance were allowed to travel about as much as Caucasians were.

On average, bus drivers were 6 percentage points more likely to favour someone of the same race. Black drivers tended to be the most generous, accepting in 72 per cent of cases, compared with 54 per cent by Indian drivers and 64 per cent by Asian and white bus drivers.

If you think that's interesting, try this: to test the importance of how people were clothed, the testers were then dressed in business suits with briefcases. The success rate of whites rose by 21 percentage points and the combined rate for blacks and Indians rose to 75 per cent.

Next, the testers were dressed in military clothes. The success rate of whites rose by 25 percentage points while the combined rate for blacks and Indians rose to 85 per cent.

As a follow-up, the researchers then conducted a random survey of bus drivers at selected resting stations in Brisbane, presenting them with pictures of the same test subjects and asking the bus drivers whether they would let them on or not with an empty travel card.

Some 80 per cent of the bus drivers at resting stations indicated they would give free rides to Indian and black test subjects, even though in reality less than 50 per cent were let on.

Indeed, bus drivers said they would let on white subjects 5 percentage points less often than black subjects, whilst in reality white test subjects were favoured at least 40 percentage points more than black testers.

The main reason given for not letting someone on was it was against the rules, while the main reason to let someone on was it was no burden to do so.

It's all a bit disturbing - if not so surprising - but how do we make sense of it? And what's it got to do with economics?

Frijters, perhaps Australia's leading exponent of "behavioural" economics, is developing an economic theory of groups: the different types of groups and how and why they form. All of us feel an affinity with a range of groups. Businesses and government agencies are groups, but there can be groups within those groups; working teams as well as sporting teams. Mixed in with all this are in-groups and out-groups - people we want to associate with and people we don't.

Often we form groups so as to co-operate in achieving some goal. And groups often involve reciprocation - I do you a favour in the expectation that, when my need arises, you'll do me one.

So Frijters explains the results of his experiment in terms of group behaviour. "People with Indian or black complexions are more likely to be treated as an out-group and less worthy of help compared to Caucasians and Asians," he says.

"The reason bus drivers were more reluctant to give black and Indian help-seekers a free ride was that they did not personally relate to them."

When testers were sent to bus stops in military clothes this made them appear to be patriots, defending the same community as the bus driver. So the drivers' original out-group reaction could be overcome by in-group clothing.

The more favourable treatment of testers in business dress suggests the "aspirational groups" of the bus drivers include people richer than themselves, people with more desirable visual characteristics. That is, people the drivers regard as part of their in-group.

If all this sounds more sociological or to do with social psychology than with economics, it is. But that's the point of behavioural economics: to incorporate insights from other social sciences into economics.

And what have groups got to do with economics? That's simple: the objective of many groups is to give their members greater control over economic resources.

Frijter's new book, An Economic Theory of Greed, Love, Groups and Networks, written with Gigi Foster, will be published this month.

SOURCE

Footnote:

The research described above is still unpublished in its original form so I am not entirely sure what is in it but the authors would appear to be reinventing the work of Hechter as in:

Hechter, M. (1986) Rational choice theory and the study of race and ethnic relations. Ch. 12 in J. Rex & D. Mason (Eds.) "Theories of race and ethnic relations", Cambridge: U.P.

Hechter, M. (1987) Nationalism as group solidarity. "Ethnic & Racial Studies" 10, 415-426.

Hechter, M., Friedman, D. & Appelbaum, M. (1982) A theory of ethnic collective action. "International Migration Review" 16, 412-434.

*********************************

Behind the Cyprus turmoil

An attempt to rein in Greek and Russian collaboration in crookedness

The European Union's $13 billion bailout plan for Cyprus has nothing to do with socialism but rather with much greater stakes. This is the EU attempting to outmaneuver an uncharacteristically flat-footed Vladimir Putin and Russia in a key battleground, over long-festering issues: transparency, corruption, and support of Syria and Iran. This is also a case of the EU calling out a Trojan-horse country embedded inside the Eurozone.

In exchange for the $13 billion from the EU, Cyprus would have to impose a one-time tax on bank deposits, increase corporate taxes from 10 percent to 12.5 percent, and submit to greater financial transparency. It's about time. But what a potential nightmare of transparency for Russia.

Cyprus accepted a 2.5 billion euro loan from Russia in 2011, with Russia denying a more recent loan request for 5 billion euros. Now, Russia is saying that it will be so generous as to, at the very least, ease conditions on the initial loan if Cyprus provides the Russian government with the identities of Russians sheltering money in Cyprus banks. And Russia isn't forking over any more cash because it isn't convinced that it has to (yet) in order to maintain Cyprus as an ally. The two nations are as thick as thieves, and both have been playing the EU for utter morons.

Foreigners hold an estimated 40 percent of the cash in Cyprus banks, most of it belonging to Russians. It's not hard to imagine why, when a 10 percent corporate tax rate is available to anyone willing to spend 300,000 euros on a Cyprus residence. As an added bonus, after five years you get Cypriot citizenship, an EU passport and zero taxation on your global income. Russia has also been trying to get Cyprus to lobby the EU to lift Russian visa requirements.

The World Bank lists the gross domestic product of Cyprus at $24.7 billion, yet Russians (including 80 oligarchs) hold an estimated $25.6 billion in Cyprus banks, according to German intelligence.

What's the nature of this cash, exactly? Seedy-to-filthy at best. In February, the EU's Financial Intelligence Unit launched an investigation into whether Russian mafia cash had been laundered through EU banks. And late last year, according to Russia's own RIA Novosti state media, Cyprus opened an investigation into whether $31 million in Russian tax-fraud cash uncovered by anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died while awaiting trial in a Russian jail after accusing Russian officials of $230 million worth of tax fraud, had been moved to five Cyprus banks.

Cypriot and Russian authorities have been playing the EU and the rest of the world for fools since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both say they want to fight corruption, though they never seem to get around to actually doing anything about it. When American intelligence busted a Russian spy ring in 2010 -- which most famously included redheaded Anna Chapman -- the alleged money-man and SVR (Russian foreign intelligence) point man, Pavel Kapustin (alias: Christopher Metsos), was nabbed on an Interpol warrant in Cyprus and successfully fled because he was conveniently bailed by Cypriot authorities. Nice crime-fighting.

In early 2012, the Guardian reported that a Russian transport ship carrying 60 tons of ammunition purchased by the Syrian government from state-controlled Russian munitions exporter Rosoboronexport pulled into the Cypriot port in a storm and, despite being in clear violation of sanctions, was sent back on its way by Cyprus authorities.

Similarly, key Russian trade partner Iran has long circumvented sanctions through Cypriot front companies. Intelligence Online reported last year: "According to our sources, one of the traders supplying Syria is the small Cypriot company Q-One Energy Ltd, headquartered at Soboh House, Limassol, in the same building as fellow trader Soboh Pentroleum, headed by Aiman Soboh and which works closely with Russian traders. Q-One delivered two shipments of 30,000 tonnes of petrol to Syria on board the Breeze A on March 11 and the Voyager A on March 22."

Sounds cozy.

There are 19 Iranian front companies circumventing U.S. sanctions via Cyprus, according to the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control -- and those are just the ones identified so far.

If Russia does offer Cyprus another bailout, it will be because Russia fears the revelations and strategic losses that would result from the tiny nation moving squarely into the Western sphere of influence. No doubt Putin has been hoping to get the EU to pay the bill for propping up Russian business accounts, backed by Russian banks, in Cyprus. Any cash Russia offers will come under the guise of "fighting corruption," of course. "Don't worry, we'll take care of this cleanup. Nothing to see here, so please don't look."

Sure. Russia has done such a crack job with that so far. The EU is finally trying to do right.

SOURCE

*******************************

To Save Traditional Marriage, End State Involvement in Marriage

Within the next few months, Justice Anthony Kennedy will likely rule that same-sex marriage is mandated by the Constitution of the United States. The ruling will offend both common sense and Constitutional law. But it will nonetheless become the law of the land. With it, states will be forced to recognize same-sex marriages; same-sex marriage will enter the public school lexicon; religious institutions will be forced to recognize same-sex marriages or lose their tax-exempt status. Religious Americans will be forced into violating their beliefs or facing legal consequences by the government. The First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty will largely become obsolete.

There is only one way to stop this development: Get the government out of the business of marriage. Right now.

States and localities originally gave tax benefits and crafted specific legal systems in order to incentivize Americans to get married and have children within the context of marriage. But those legal institutions have been undermined over the past several decades by a culture that degrades marriage and child rearing. Incentive structures that used to provide the cherry on top of good moral decision-making no longer matter enough to drive such decision-making.

That gap between culture and the legal system has led to a cycle of defining deviancy down, with government taking the lead. The view of the value of marriage in American life changed in the 1950's and 1960's; the left used that cultural shift in order to legitimize no-fault divorce laws, legal custody and child support arrangements that incentivized divorce and social welfare systems that incentivized unwed motherhood.

The last bastion of the old value system was the state's approval of traditional marriage. But thanks to a decades-long cultural shift away from marriage, the left is now in position to use the levers of government to redefine the institution once and for all -- and in the process, destroy the American religious culture that under-girds American freedom.

Unlike the movement to retract laws restricting sexual behavior, the same-sex marriage movement has never been about freedom in any real sense. The push for same-sex marriage is not about wanting freedom to copulate; same-sex copulation has been effectively legal in this country for decades, and formally legal since Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The push for same-sex marriage is not about wanting legal benefits available to heterosexual couples; same-sex couples are largely able to make contractual arrangements to achieve those benefits, and in many states, civil unions equate legally with marriage.

The push for same-sex marriage is about placing the power of government in direct opposition to traditional religious viewpoints.

And conservatives cannot stop that push unless they are willing to restrict government power. Conservatism has always been about preventing the power of government from invading the lives of citizens. Leftism has always been about using the power of government to restrict the behavior of others. It is time for conservatives to recognize the reality of their situation, realize the dangers inherent in their insistence on government interventionism and act quickly.

Getting the government out of marriage would mean voluntary lifestyle arrangements governed by contract -- a practice that has roots stretching back millennia. Religious people would not be forced by the state to approve behavior they find morally problematic. They would not have to worry about their children being taught about such behavior. Conservatives would be forced to rebuild a culture of marriage rather than focusing on a crumbling legal bulwark.

Conservatives lost the culture. Then they lost the law. They can only regain traditional values by removing legal coercion and incentivization from the table -- the left will never hesitate to use those means -- and focusing once again on the raising and production of children within a culture of traditional morality.

SOURCE

******************************

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)

****************************



March 20, 2013

Anti-Semitism is a light sleeper. Look at Agatha Christie

I agree that antisemitism is a light sleeper.  It suffuses the British Left to this day. See  here (scroll down) and here and here and here and here and here.  But I don't think there is anything significant in the antisemitism of Agatha Christie.  She was simply a person of her time.  And the whole world (more or less) was antisemitic before WWII.  Do I have to refer to FDR sending Jewish refugees from Hitler back to Germany?  Christie didn't know any better.  The modern-day Left should

It should also be remarked that not all antisemitism is the same.  At the height of the British Empire there were laws in Britain restricting what Jews could do.  And Britons generally at that time thought that the British were clearly a superior race.  Yet the British Conservative party elected as their leader a man most unapologetic about his "Hebrew" origins -- Disraeli.  And Disraeli had a most distinguished subsequent career as British Prime Minister.  As Bismarck said:  "Der alte Jude.  Das ist der Mann". ("The old Jew.  That's the man").

So compare antisemitism among conservatives with the antisemitism of the socialist Hitler. Anybody who can't see a huge difference isn't thinking.  It's the hate that makes the difference and hate is what makes you a Leftist -- JR

In reflections on Perspectives: The Mystery of Agatha Christie – in which David Suchet, the most popular of all Hercule Poirots, looked at her famous disappearance in 1926 – Matthew Sweet wonders why Christie’s work is so unexamined.  She was always pretty political in her way. As a child I was perplexed by the intrusion into her later books of her burning resentment of high taxes.  And because my parents deplored anti-Semitism, I noticed jarring anti-Jewish references in some of those she published pre-war.

Christie’s anti-Semitism was not eradicated by the horrors of the Holocaust, though it no longer disfigured her books. Sweet recalls Christopher Hitchens describing dinner chez Christie in the 1960s, when "the anti-Jewish flavour of the talk was not to be ignored or overlooked, or put down to heavy humour or generational prejudice. It was vividly unpleasant."

She was, of course, by no means alone.  I’ve been reading the canon of that fine crime-writer, Cyril Hare, a judge whose Tragedy at Law is both a superb puzzle and a marvellous guide to the almost unbelievable pomposity of an untrammelled bench. It’s the casual anti-Semitism in dialogue that gets one, eg, the throw-away description of someone as a "sub-Aryan". Yet Christie and Hare were decent, civilised, well-read people who abhorred cruelty.

I’ve three thoughts on this. Firstly, looking at the anti-Semitism that so often  lurks under the guise of anti-Zionism, we should remember Conor Cruise-O’Brien’s description of anti-Semitism as “a light sleeper”.  The language may have changed, but the instincts remain.

Secondly, is it because of the contempt of the intelligentsia for crime writers that so little attention has been paid to the politics of so important and influential a writer as Christie?
And, thirdly, the call for retrospective censorship is always stupid: there’s no better way to understand the fears and prejudices of any period than by reading its unexpurgated fiction.

SOURCE

******************************

Obama falsely claims credit for America's energy boom

Stealing conservative talking points is what Obama does.  He got the idea from Tony Blair. He is all talk, however.  He does nothing to implement conservative policies

During the Friday event at which President Obama announced $2 billion in new green energy subsidies, he erroneously credited his administration's "all of the above" energy policy for the nation's increased oil and gas production. "We produce more oil than we have in 15 years," he said. "We import less oil than we have in 20 years. We're producing more natural gas than we ever have before -- with hundreds of thousands of good jobs to show for it."

The numbers and facts that Obama cited were all correct. But his claim is still false, unless he can somehow claim credit (and we wouldn't necessarily put it past him) for placing massive shale deposits below ground stretching from Texas to North Dakota and from the mountain West to western Maryland.

Obama's energy policy has done nothing positive for the current boom in the "unconventional" (shale and tar sands) oil and gas extraction industry -- a boom that has providentially boosted employment, improved the nation's balance of trade, and probably saved the incumbent president from defeat last November. Further, Obama's policy has actually reduced oil and gas production on federal lands, where it genuinely falls under Obama's power. A recent study by the Congressional Research Service found that all of the increased production from fiscal years 2007 to 2012 took place on nonfederal lands.

Between fiscal 2010 and 2012, total U.S. oil production rose by about 1.1 million barrels per day. U.S. production will likely eclipse that of Saudi Arabia by the end of the decade. Natural gas production is an even bigger story. It rose by 20 percent during the same period, driving down prices and revolutionizing the way Americans generate their electricity. This all comes thanks to advances in technology and hydraulic fracturing techniques.

During the same period, oil and gas production on federal lands fell sharply, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of production. Federal lands accounted for more than a quarter of U.S. gas production as recently as 2009, but in 2012 made up only 15 percent. Federal offshore gas production in 2012 was less than half what it was in 2007.

Obama has made no secret of his goal of getting America off oil completely. His latest plan to subsidize green energy is funded by $2 billion in fees on oil and gas companies. He announced in his Saturday radio address that his goal is to "shift our cars and trucks off of oil for good."

How much more important will American oil production have to become to the health of the economy before Obama gives up on his ideologically charged defiance of economics and embraces oil and gas as the fuels of America's next century?

SOURCE

******************************

What DOES lead to black success

 Thomas Sowell

A remarkable book titled Gifted Hands tells the personal story of Benjamin Carson, a black kid from the Detroit ghetto who went on to become a renowned neurosurgeon.

At one time young Ben Carson had the lowest grades in his middle school class, and was the butt of teasing by his white classmates. Worse yet, he himself believed that he was just not smart enough to do the work.

Fortunately for him, his mother, whose own education went no further than the third grade, insisted that he was smart. She cut off the television set and made him and his brother hit the books--books that she herself could scarcely read.

As young Ben's school work began to catch up with that of his classmates, and then began to surpass that of his classmates, his whole view of himself and of the wider world around him began to change. He began to think that he wanted to become a doctor.

There were a lot of obstacles to overcome along the way, including the fact that his mother had to be away from time to time for psychiatric treatment, as she tried to cope with the heavy pressures of trying to raise two boys whose father had deserted the family that she now had to support on a maid's wages.

In many ways the obstacles facing young Ben Carson were like those faced by so many other youngsters in the ghetto. What was different was that he overcame those obstacles with the help of a truly heroic mother and the values she instilled in him.

It is an inspiring personal story, told plainly and unpretentiously, including the continuing challenges he faced later as a neurosurgeon operating on the brains of people with life-threatening medical problems, often with the odds against them.

To me it was a personal story in another sense, that some of his experiences as a youngster brought back experiences that I went through growing up in Harlem many years earlier.

I could understand all too well what it was like to be the lowest performing child in a class. That was my situation in the fourth grade, after my family had moved up from the South, where I had been one of the best students in the third grade -- but in a grossly inferior school system.

Now I sometimes found myself in tears because it was so hard to try to get through my homework.

But in one sense I was much more fortunate than Ben Carson and other black youngsters today. The shock of being in a school, whose standards were higher than I was able to meet at first, took place in an all-black school in Harlem, so that there was none of the additional complications that such an experience can have for a black youngster in a predominantly white school.

By the time I first entered a predominantly white school; I had already caught up, and had no trouble with the school work. Decades later, in the course of running a research project, I learned that the Harlem school, where I had so much trouble catching up, had an average IQ of 84 back when I was there.

In the predominantly white school to which I later went, I was put in a class for children with IQs of 120 and up, and had no trouble competing with them. But I would have been totally wiped out if I had gone there two years earlier -- and who knows what racial hang-ups that might have led to?

Chance plays a large part in everyone's life. The home in which you are raised is often a big part of luck being on your side or against you. But you don't need parents with Ph.D.’s to make sure that you make the most of your education.

The kinds of things that statisticians can measure, such as family income or parents' education, are not the crucial things. The family's attitude toward education and toward life can make all the difference.

Virtually everything was against young Ben Carson, except for his mother's attitudes and values. But, armed with her outlook, he was able to fight his way through many battles, including battles to control his own temper, as well as external obstacles.

Today, Dr. Benjamin Carson is a renowned neurosurgeon at a renowned institution, Johns Hopkins University. But what got him there was wholly different from what is being offered to many ghetto youths today, much of which is not merely futile but counterproductive.

SOURCE

***************************

The Cyprus Cash Grab - Coming to America?

 Neal Boortz remembers

You were shocked - SHOCKED, you say - at the very idea that the government of Cyprus would order banks to seize 10% of every bank account and hand the money over the government? Well … excuse me for being rude, but maybe if you had been spending a better part of the last 20 years paying attention to the atrocities that happen with nauseating regularity in Washington, instead of going into an annual swoon over March Madness and/or the Oscars, or blindly tuning in to Entertainment Tonight every evening rather than an actual newscast, you might have seen this money grab coming. I’m no rocket surgeon, and I saw it coming (in America, not Cyprus) and I been warning the listeners to my talk show from 1993 right up until my retirement two months ago.
It’s simple. Taxing your income is simply not enough. The left is coming after your wealth. They’ll be satisfied with some of your retirement funds … for now.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the Cyprus story, here’s your short version: Cyprus is in financial trouble. The Cypriot government is led by communists. Trade unions are fighting austerity programs needed to erase huge deficits. Sound familiar? That is similar to the situation in the United States in more ways that you might imagine. So Cyprus did what every other troubled Eurozone country is doing: went to the Eurozone finance commissioners for a bailout. The commissioners said fine, but as a condition of the bailout Cyprus must levy a 10% tax against the outstanding balance in all depository accounts in Cyprus banks. Call it a tax. Or call it stealing. Either way, every Cypriot depositor loses 10% of their account. The government screws up, the people pay. Again, it sounds so very familiar.

Oddly enough, the people of Cyprus weren’t particularly elated over this move, nor were investors and citizens throughout the Eurozone. Imagine that! Cypriots immediately grabbed their ATM cards and started to withdraw as much money as they could from their accounts. Cash in their hands wouldn’t be hit for 10%. It was clear there would be a run on the banks as soon as they reopened. Now the plan to simply seize individual wealth is being delayed, though not abandoned.

Could it happen here? Well certainly it could. Congress could pass and the President could sign legislation calling for the seizure of 10% of every checking and savings account in every bank in America. This might finally be enough to cause a resurrection, but they could do it. So in America the wealth seizure has to be just a bit more selective and subtle. And that brings us to the warning I’ve been voicing for 20 years.

Go back to 1993. Bill Clinton has just been sworn in. The Democrats are running the show. They’ve passed a nice little tax increase – retroactive, mind you – and they feel encouraged. Along comes a lady by the name of Alicia Munnell. She’s been appointed by Clinton to be an Assistant Treasury Secretary for Economic Development. Munnell proposes a plan to come up with some cash to shore up Social Security. Not everyone, it seems, is “fortunate” enough to have a nice little IRA or 401k retirement account. Why this just isn’t fair! Everyone should have a comfortable retirement, not just the people who actually planned and worked for one! So Munnell proposed to Clinton an idea! Let’s just go out there and seize 15% of the outstanding balance of every IRA and 401k. Seize that money and pump it into the Social Security system. As it turns out, Munnell and Clinton never really had the chance to put their plan into action since the very next year the Republicans took control of the House and the Senate in the voter revolution of 1994. Munnell hasn’t gone away though. She now hatches her wealth seizure and redistribution schemes as the Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Never fear .. the idea is alive. House and Senate Democrats are even now toying with various plots to seize retirement and pension plans and pour them into some grand new government operated and controlled pension system .. a system that would be “fair” to everyone. This is just a perfect scenario for Obamian class warfare. “Those rich people are enjoying their fat-cat retirements with the money that should have been used to pay workers a living wage. They steal a comfortable retirement from the middle class and laugh at them from their yachts and private jets.” Yeah … that works. And as you should know, the government would certainly do a better job providing for American’s retirements than could free people interacting in a system of economic liberty.

Cyprus? I hope you enjoy that spectacle as it unfolds. Shake your heads and tsk tsk all you like. Just remember … the Democrat party is watching this episode and celebrating. You’re next.

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

****************************



March 19, 2013

Eroding the Fifth Amendment

Soviet USA?

If attorneys for James E. Holmes, the criminal defendant in the Aurora Colorado movie theater shootings recommend their client plead not-guilty by reason of insanity, his judge has said that he can be subjected to a “truth serum” injection and a polygraph examination as part of an evaluation to determine if he was legally insane at the time of the July 20 massacre.

Holmes will be administered a powerful drug to reduce his inhibitions in a procedure called a “narcoanalytic interview” while hooked up to a polygraph machine for the purpose of evaluating his credibility. Presumably, if he refuses to submit, he’ll not be allowed to claim insanity as a defense.

Obviously, anything he says while undergoing the interview will be taken down and used against him at his trial. In short, he must give up his right to remain silent, a fundamental constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. That could very well have disastrous consequences for his defense.

I was trained to apply the legal courtroom standard that in a criminal case the prosecutor has the burden to prove each and every element of the alleged crime beyond a reasonable doubt, including the fact that the accused exhibited the necessary intent and mental capacity to know what he was doing and that what he was doing was wrong. The defendant has no obligation to prove anything.

This boils down to a legal requirement that a potentially insane accused is assigned the burden of proving that he’s not insane.  It’s akin to compelling a mentally incompetent defendant to prove his or her own mental incompetence, something that is not likely given that the person is probably retarded or insane in the first place – one would have to be competent to accomplish that task.

Naturally this prospect has his defense attorneys up in arms. They've filed motions objecting to it before their client’s plea hearing on to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. He is charged with killing 12 people and wounding 70 at a midnight showing of batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.”

If he actually is insane or mentally incapacitated it would be easy for his inquisitors using skillful cross-examination to manipulate the interview in such a way as to make things appear that he was perfectly sane and mentally competent at the time of the crime. That’s precisely why our centuries old justice system permits defendants to remain silent and make their accusers prove the case.

What is next in the evolution of American criminal law after forcing defendants to take truth serums and undergo polygraph examinations if they wish to plead not guilty?

Can you imagine an Orwellian process like this in which defendants in every criminal case are required to prove it if they plead not guilty? The Fifth Amendment would evaporate completely right before our eyes.

This situation illustrates the problem with the insanity defense in American jurisprudence.

What possible difference does it make whether or not a person was insane when considering the question of whether or not he committed the acts forming the basis of the crime?

Insanity or mental incapacity should not even enter the picture until the trial is over and the accused is found guilty. The jury should determine only whether the accused is the person who committed the crime. They aren’t psychiatrists.

If the verdict is not-guilty then the question of mental state need not ever be considered. If guilty, it should affect only the disposition of the sentence.

Throughout the process the defendant should retain the right to remain silent and his Fifth Amendment rights should be respected. If he’s found guilty the trial is over and the question becomes what to do with him.

In that situation Fifth Amendment rights do not apply.
There is simply no good reason to erode the Fifth Amendment during the accusatory phase of the proceedings.
It’s unconstitutional.

SOURCE

**************************

SNAP, Crackle, and Bust

By Mark Steyn
 
From Eli Saslow in the Washington Post, a portrait of America as Dependistan:

He wiped the front counter and smoothed the edges of a sign posted near his register. “Yes! We take Food Stamps, SNAP, EBT!”

“Today, we fill the store up with everything,” he said. “Tomorrow, we sell it all.”

At precisely one second after midnight, on March 1, Woonsocket would experience its monthly financial windfall — nearly $2 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Federal money would be electronically transferred to the broke residents of a nearly bankrupt town, where it would flow first into grocery stores and then on to food companies, employees and banks, beginning the monthly cycle that has helped Woonsocket survive.

The “economy” (unemployment, shuttered factories, debt) is permanent, but the economic cycle is monthly, thanks to “Uncle Sam Day”:

The 1st is always circled on the office calendar at International Meat Market, where customers refer to the day in the familiar slang of a holiday. It is Check Day. Milk Day. Pay Day. Mother’s Day.

“Uncle Sam Day,” Pichardo said now, late on Feb. 28, as he watched new merchandise roll off the trucks. Out came 40 cases of Ramen Noodles. Out came 230 pounds of ground beef and 180 gallons of orange juice.

SNAP enrollment in Rhode Island had been rising for six years, up from 73,000 people to nearly 180,000, and now three-quarters of purchases at International Meat Market are paid for with Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. Government money had in effect funded the truckloads of food at Pichardo’s dock . . . and the three part-time employees he had hired to unload it . . . and the walk-in freezer he had installed to store surplus product . . . and the electric bills he paid to run that freezer, at nearly $2,000 each month.

Pichardo’s profits from SNAP had also helped pay for International Meat Market itself, a 10-aisle store in a yellow building that he had bought and refurbished in 2010, when the rise in government spending persuaded him to expand out of a smaller market down the block.

That old Democratic Depression anthem is too idealistic for such a world. But, for the new normal, “Snappy Days Are Here Again”:

Grocery store chains had started discount spinoffs. Farmers markets had incentivized SNAP shopping by rewarding customers with $2 extra for every $5 of government money spent. Restaurants, long forbidden from accepting SNAP, had begun a major lobbying campaign in Washington, and now a handful of Subways in Rhode Island were accepting the benefit as part of a pilot program.

And then what? Where does this story end? What happens to change the trajectory of these lives?

SOURCE

**************************

My Unrecognizable Democratic Party

The stakes are too high, please get serious about governing before it's too late

By TED VAN DYK

As a lifelong Democrat, I have a mental picture these days of my president, smiling broadly, at the wheel of a speeding convertible. His passengers are Democratic elected officials and candidates. Ahead of them, concealed by a bend in the road, is a concrete barrier.

They didn't have to take that route. Other Democratic presidents have won bipartisan support for proposals as liberal in their time as some of Mr. Obama's are now. Why does this administration seem so determined to head toward a potential crash and burn?

Even after the embarrassing playout of the Obama-invented Great Sequester Game, after the fiasco of the president's Fiscal Cliff Game, conventional wisdom among Democrats holds that disunited Republicans will be routed in the 2014 midterm elections, leaving an open field for the president's agenda in the final two years of his term. Yet modern political history indicates that big midterm Democratic gains are unlikely, and presidential second terms are notably unproductive, most of all in their waning months. Since 2012 there has been nothing about the Obama presidency to justify the confidence that Democrats now exhibit.

Mr. Obama was elected in 2008 on the basis of his persona and his pledge to end political and ideological polarization. His apparent everyone-in-it-together idealism was exactly what the country wanted and needed. On taking office, however, the president adopted a my-way-or-the-highway style of governance. He pursued his stimulus and health-care proposals on a congressional-Democrats-only basis. He rejected proposals of his own bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, which would have provided long-term deficit reduction and stabilized rapidly growing entitlement programs. He opted instead to demonize Republicans for their supposed hostility to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

No serious attempt—for instance, by offering tort reform or allowing the sale of health-insurance products across state lines—was made to enlist GOP congressional support for the health bill. It passed, but the constituents of moderate Democrats punished them: 63 lost their seats in 2010 and Republicans took control of the House.

Faced with a similar situation in 1995, following another GOP House takeover, President Bill Clinton shifted to bipartisan governance. Mr. Obama did not, then blamed Republicans for their "obstructionism" in not yielding to him.

Defying the odds, Mr. Obama did become the first president since Franklin Roosevelt to be re-elected with an election-year unemployment rate above 7.8%. Yet his victory wasn't based on public affirmation of his agenda. Instead, it was based on a four-year mobilization—executed with unprecedented skill—of core Democratic constituencies, and on fear campaigns in which Mitt Romney and the Republicans were painted as waging a "war on women," being servants of the wealthy, and of being hostile toward Latinos, African Americans, gays and the middle class. I couldn't have imagined any one of the Democratic presidents or presidential candidates I served from 1960-92 using such down-on-all-fours tactics.

The unifier of 2008 became the calculated divider of 2012. Yes, it worked, but only narrowly, as the president's vote total fell off sharply from 2008.

Other modern Democratic presidents have had much more success with very different governing strategies. In 1961-62, John Kennedy won Republican congressional and public support with the proposals of his Keynesian Council of Economic Advisers chairman, Walter Heller, to cut personal and business taxes "to get America moving again," and for the global free movement of goods, services, capital and people.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson had Democratic congressional majorities sufficient to pass any legislation he wanted. But he sought and received GOP congressional support for Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights, education and other Great Society legislation. He knew that in order to last, these initiatives needed consensus support. He did not want them re-debated later, as ObamaCare is being re-debated now.

Johnson got bipartisan backing for deficit reduction in 1967, when he learned that the deficit had reached an unthinkable $28 billion. Faced with today's annual deficits of $1 trillion and federal debt between $16.7 and $31 trillion, depending on whether you count off-budget obligations, LBJ no doubt would appoint a bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission and use it to get a tax, spending and entitlements fix so that he could move on to the rest of his agenda. Bill Clinton took the same practical approach and got to a balanced federal budget as soon as he could, at the beginning of his second term.

These former Democratic presidents would also know today that no Democratic or liberal agenda can go forward if debt service is eating available resources. Nor can successful governance take place if presidential and Democratic Party rhetoric consistently portrays loyal-opposition leaders as having devious or extremist motives. We really are, as Mr. Obama pointed out in 2008, in it together.

It's not too late for the president to take a cue from his predecessors and enter good-faith budget negotiations with congressional Republicans. A few posturing meetings with GOP congressional leaders will not suffice. President Obama's hype about the horrors of fiscal-cliff and sequestration cuts, and his placing of blame on Republicans, have been correctly viewed as low politics. His approval ratings have plunged since the end of the sequestration exercise.

But time is running out for Democrats to get serious about governance. That concrete barrier—in the form of the 2014 midterm—lies just ahead on the highway, and they're joy riding straight toward it.

SOURCE

******************************

Senate Democrats’ long-awaited budget fizzles



There was a lot of buildup to the first budget released by Senate Democrats since 2009, but the actual document didn’t even meet low expectations.

After blasting House Republicans for being overly intransigent and unwilling to compromise, Senate Democrats unveiled a budget that not only raises taxes by nearly $1 trillion by closing unspecified loopholes, but it actually increases spending on a net basis.

In theory, the plan authored by Senate Budget Committee Chair Sen. Patty Murray claims to cut spending by about $975 billion from fiscal years 2014 through 2023. That includes $240 billion in defense cuts accounting for the winding down of the war in Afghanistan, $240 billion in claimed “responsible savings across domestic spending” and $275 billion in Medicare savings from “further realigning incentives throughout the system, cutting waste and fraud, and seeking greater engagement across the health care system.” The budget also assumes interest payment savings.

The problem is that these paper spending cuts are more than offset by the proposal to spend $960 billion to replace the automatic sequestration spending cuts as well as the $100 billion in new stimulus spending.

The deficit reduction that does exist comes in the form of tax increases. The budget says, it, “Achieves $975 billion in deficit reduction by closing loopholes and eliminating wasteful spending in the tax code that benefits the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.” But it doesn’t specify which loopholes will be closed.

The plan also offers no specific, broader reforms to the nation’s entitlement programs.

Democrats’ clear political calculation here is that their vague budget will be less of a target, allowing them to focus on blasting the House Budget Committee Chair Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal for being cruel. But in the process, they’ve shown themselves to be completely un-serious.

 SOURCE  

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

*******************************

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)

***************************



March 18, 2013

More Leftist racism -- as of 1975

Following is a Letter to the Editor from me which appeared in the "Sydney Morning Herald" on 2 October, 1975. It refers to a play I attended in Sydney called "The Floating World" written by Australian playwright, John Romeril. The play is his most notable work and displays the usual Leftist double standards. More history of Leftist racism here.

"The Floating World" is a derogatory Japanese term describing the life of the pleasure-oriented idle rich in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan. Romeril was at the time of the performance aged 30 and I was 32. The play was written in 1975

A recent picture of Romeril (as of 2013)

"The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre", edited by Colin Chambers, says of Romeril:

"Socialism and a determined anti-imperialism have led him to champion the cause of the underdog and to examine contradictions in class, gender and racial conflict as well as Australia's geopolitical identity. This is evident in his version of "Love Suicides" (1997) and his involvement in the Landmines Project (from 1999)." -- JR

The letter:

2 October, 1975

Play accused of stirring up hatred against the Japanese

SIR, I wish to make a protest against a particularly deplorable piece of racism being perpetrated in Sydney theatre. I refer to the anti-Japanese play "The Floating World" being presented at the Nimrod in Surry Hills. The racism starts even in the play's program notes. These feature several excerpts from anti-Asian diatribes written in Australia around the turn of the century.

When I attended the play, I at first took these ludicrous utterances about the "poor moral character of Asiatics," etc. as being something intended to amuse. The content of the play, however, suggests that they were meant to be taken seriously. Although the play is essentially about the reminiscences of an ex-digger survivor of the Burma railroad, the play starts out with a prologue attacking the involvement of Japanese business in the Australian economy. The only common element between the World War II incidents being recalled in the body of the play and the prologue is the common theme of anti-Japanese sentiment.

While the incidents paraded in the play did no doubt take place, while the World War II Japanese Army was no doubt brutal to Its prisoners, surely there is no point in stirring up these old hatreds and resentments now. Surely incidents such as the My Lai massacre convince us all that all armies are brutal to the defenceless from time to time - even the armies of the supposedly moral West. Who are we to criticise? And yet this play has the gall to parrot the old saws about how immoral it is for 350,000 Australians to drive Toyota cars because of what the Japanese did in the war. If I had been asked to conceive of a more anti-Japanese play than this one, I would be hard put to do so.

It explicitly engages in the "stirring up of racial hatred and resentment" which in Britain is now illegal and which in Australia there have been some attempt to make illegal. Given the usual liberal commitment to encouraging one another to treat people as individuals rather than as instances of a race or nationality, this anti-group, anti-race propaganda seems something we can do without.

Given the undoubted sensitivity of the modern-day Japanese to foreign criticism, and given their undoubted importance to us as partners in developing a better world, this play can have only negative effects. It is an example of the worst sort of taste. We must surely look to the future and not go on stoking up the resentments of the past. One gets the impression that among the trendies it is all right to be racist as long as the group criticised is successul and powerful - the Japanese. A play devoted to portraying the uglinesses of Aborigines would presumably never be presented in Sydney theatre. And yet the Jews can testify that racism directed against a successful and powerful group is every bit as destructive and dangerous as racism directed against the oppressed.

(Dr) JOHN J. RAY,
Lecturer in Sociology,
University of NSW.

****************************

Liberal politicians make rules for others -- exempting themselves

I'm of the opinion that self-dealing amongst our political class is the worst of all possible crimes. It's the thing that has done the most to undermine the credibility of our American system in the last two decades.

Take, for example, Obama's real estate deal with Tony Rezko. Obama was paid off on a real estate deal by Illinois fundraiser Tony Rezko, even though Rezko was already facing indictment for political corruption.

The deal only happened because Obama was a United States Senator at the time. As Obama told the Chicago Tribune's editorial board when he threw himself on their mercy saying it was a "bone-head" mistake, he was already having a hard time buying the house without the cash sweetener that Rezko brought to the table.

Obama knew that Rezko was bad news, but he did the deal anyway knowing: 1) the hometown paper would give him a break, slapping him for poor judgment but not veniality; 2) the "party of the people," the Democrats, instead of holding their own to high standards decided a long time ago that they would hold their leaders to no standards at all, thinking it the same thing.

Morals and ethics and such are just for us little people.

Harry Reid never spent a day working for anyone but the government but yet has an estimated net worth of between $3 million and $6 million.

And that's not all. As Senate Majority Leader, Reid dumped his holdings in energy companies in 2008, right before the energy market crashed and bought healthcare stocks with the proceeds. Within 6 months Reid was heavily involved in re-writing healthcare laws.

You want to get the money out of politics? Then get politicians out of the business of regulating everything.

Living under different laws than the rest of us is so ingrained in our national leadership, that it seems they hardly give it a second thought.

"The present era of incredible rottenness is not Democratic," wrote Mark Twain, "it is not Republican, it is national."

And that's the paradox that all of us must grapple with seriously if we wish to preserve both our free markets and our free people.

SOURCE

*********************************

The Left are coming for you

They came to "clean up" the healthcare mess. They would take the sick and poor off our hands. We would no longer have to join together as a community to provide for those who can't provide for themselves; dear, benevolent government would do this for us. First, with Medicare for the old. Then, with Medicaid for the poor. Then, the definition of poor would expand . and expand . and expand ... and nobody would speak up because who wants to come out against the old, the sick and the poor?

And then it wasn't just the poor. It also was the uninsured. Some were uninsured because they were unemployed. Others because their income level didn't permit them to buy health insurance. Can't be for allowing them to just hang there. No convincing evidence they were dying in the streets or were significantly underserved by the healthcare system regardless of their health insurance status. And plenty had the money to buy health insurance and chose not to.

But hey, when you're a Progressive, and you've tried for a half-century to take over health care, who are you to let minor details such as this stand in the way? And when you get your chance - so much disaffection with a spendthrift Republican president that Democrats could grab control of both houses of Congress and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, you grab that chance and you pass the most sweeping Progressive legislation since the New Deal - Obamacare.

And when the rest of us find we can't afford our health insurance because of all the new requirements placed on it by our Progressive friends and their enlightened legislation, nobody can do much more than complain. Who defends greedy insurance companies? Who defends faceless corporations when costs finally reach the point where they drop their plans, forcing their employers into the Obamacare system where Progressives have wanted them all along, or even drop their employees?

The secret is the impact is felt gradually. It's like a boa constrictor. By the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late.

Now, they come for our guns. It's for our own good. Otherwise, we'll have more school shootings, such as the terrible incident in Connecticut. Never mind the guns used that day were stolen. We hear about the need Newtown illustrates to limit weapons and ammunition clips that can fire several rounds per minute. We are never reminded the killer at Newtown shot 24 people in 22 minutes. Speed or power of the weapon was not an issue. One person somewhere in that school with a weapon would've saved many lives.

But most of us don't think of those details, and we don't own guns . particularly the geniuses in Washington who make these decisions. So we don't complain sufficiently, and the Progressive agenda advances.

They also have come for the rich people. I'm not rich; what do I care if the rich get taxed a little more? Never mind that I might like to be rich one day or that almost certainly a rich person pays my salary. Never mind what it might mean to him paying salaries that his taxes keep going up. He is indefensible. He's taken more than his fair share. Tax him. And tax him some more. And when that's not enough, tax the rest of us . but do it in a way we don't really see it. Not income taxes. Payroll taxes. They're gone before we even get our checks.

If there's one thing progressives love it's a power grab in the name of "doing good," and the "good" they most often wrap themselves in is "for the children." When they eventually discover the "good" they sought to accomplish by quashing a little piece of our personal liberty did not come to pass, they never reverse course and retract their government intrusion. Instead, they offer a solution that seizes a little bit more. It's a never-ending cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies, a Yellow Brick Road that leads to an Emerald Prison of mini-tyrannies populated by a disconnected people who stood by doing nothing because the power government was exerting did not affect them.

But sooner or later government will run out of other people to tax, other things to ban, other choices to regulate and, like a caged tiger, it will turn on the hand that feeds it. It's its nature.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't want his people to be fat. So he tried to ban "sugary beverages larger than 16 ounces" but was rebuffed by a court, at least temporarily. Progressives do not quit, or get deterred, when voters reject their ideas, what chance does a court have?

He's now going after Styrofoam containers to leave a "better" planet for the children. This will lead to higher costs to restaurants, which will lead to higher prices for customers. Customers will ignore it or blame the restaurants. There's always another kabuki dance.

What do the non-rich care if taxes were raised on people who were not them? What do those with health insurance care if government enacts a requirement that everyone who doesn't have it buy health insurance?

Tyranny seldom comes all at once, it comes slowing, incrementally, in small doses cloaked as something else, something good. Each thread appears innocuous and unimportant but is part of a tapestry rarely recognized as what it is until too late.

You may not care about any of the targets progressives are pursuing now or in the near future, but they will run out of things you don't care about before they run out of will to control. Sooner or later they will come after something you like or do. If you sit by do nothing as the individual liberty of others is continually limited, you'd better hope there are enough people left able and willing to speak up when they get around to you.

SOURCE

*****************************

The Continuing Wimpification of America

I've reached the point where I can't even get agitated any more.

The anti-gun ideology in government schools has led to so many stupid incidents that all I can do is shake my head and be thankful my kids somehow were spared this nonsense.

Our latest story comes from Michigan, where a third grader brought some cupcakes to school for his birthday. That seems innocuous, but the boy's mother (gasp!) decorated them with toy army men.

The school decided "to remove the Army soldiers from the cupcakes" and called the boy's family to inform them that they had committed a thought crime.

Last week, Casey Fountain's third-grade son had a birthday party at his school in Caro. His wife decided to whip up 30 cupcakes for the boy's classmates. She topped the treats with plastic army guys like the ones countless boys and girls have played with for decades. Fountain says he never thought his innocent act of party planning would lead to controversy. Fountain says the principal of Schall Elementary School called him personally and told him that dressing the cupcakes with soldiers was, in the principal's words, "insensitive" considering recent gun-related tragedies.

This definitely belongs in the Hall of Fame for brainless political correctness and hysterical overreaction. Other members of this distinguished Hall of Fame include:

Bureaucrats suspended a little boy for taking bites out of a pop tart in such a way that it was shaped like a gun.

Bureaucrats suspended a 7-year boy for pretending to throw a non-existent grenade on the playground.

Bureaucrats suspended a 6-year old boy in Maryland for making a gun shape with his finger.

Bureaucrats busted a 5-year old girl in Pennsylvania for having a pink plastic gun that shoots bubbles.

A teacher in Rhode Island caught an 8-year old boy with some plastic toy army men.

Bureaucrats evacuated a school because an 11-year old boy made a motion detector for his science experiment.

Bureaucrats in Florida kicked an 8-year old boy out of school for a year because he had a plastic gun in his backpack.

A dual award in Virginia, with half the prize for the bureaucrats who suspended a 10-year old boy for a toy gun and half the prize for the cops who then arrested the kid.

At some point, you have to ask whether sending your kids to a government school not only puts them at risk of a substandard education, but also is a form of child abuse.

P.S. Actually, I am getting agitated the more I think about this. For all intents and purposes, the principal was equating soldiers with crazy mass killers. Why hasn't this person been fired?

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

****************************



March 17, 2013

China: Freer in some ways; less free in others

Libertarians and those with free-market inclinations don’t want to accept the idea that an officially communist country has achieved human progress at a combined scale and rate that is unprecedented.

I actually find myself very free in China. You can drink openly in public (as you can in most of Asia). You can trade, and even scam people, right in front of the police, who are not trained to be busybodies. In many places cute girls approach you with scams, offering to take you to bars. They talk openly within hearing distance of the police. In major cities, there is a rampant market in fake diplomas or ID cards. At night, I often saw several business cards shoved under the door of my hotel room, offering the service of an evening rendezvous.

Chinese traders always seem to say, “Yes, I have what you want. Now, tell me: what do you want?”

There has been much talk about the X-ray machines that check your bags at Chinese subways and at the entrance to Tiananmen Square. In my experience, the authorities are never serious about checking your bags.

“But you can’t protest against the government in China.” There are hundreds of thousands of recorded protests every year in China. You ought to see the Chinese protesting. I have seen them hurling abuse at policemen, shouting and screaming, throwing their arms and legs around. Yes, they can’t make a democratic change in China. But in Canada, my vote — one among millions of other votes — wasn’t worth spare change. In my view, “democracy” is a farce at best. It has a strong tendency to degenerate into the dictatorship of the masses. Compared with that, Chinese protest is real. People who protest in Canada mostly lobby for government favors — they protest to steal from me. And people like me are always on the sidelines, refusing to make jackasses of themselves, worried about any inconvenience their protests might cause to others.

Every time I deal with a bureaucrat in China, I am offered the chance to participate in a quick electronic assessment of his performance: Was he courteous and efficient? Where else in the world are you asked to evaluate a public servant? When I don’t care to participate in the survey, I often see the hand of the bureaucrat himself coming out of the window to do the assessment on my behalf — ironic proof that the surveys have real value.

Having been in Guangzhou for a week, I have seen virtually no foreign tourists. Yet downtown Guangzhou is among the most modern cities I know. Its skyline competes with the very best in Hong Kong, New York, and Singapore. Yet a closer inspection of those modern buildings shows that a lot of them are partially or fully empty. And the quality of buildings falls off rapidly once you are outside the downtown area. BMWs and Audis parked outside the grim apartment buildings in the outskirts show how important the public face is for many Chinese. The hazy air, the expensive shops, where rich people likely won’t shop unless they overpay, and the massive Pearl River, which for all practical purposes is the main sewage and industrial-waste artery, all remind me that I am in China.

Chinese women have probably shed their clothes faster than any other women in history, so much so that during my initial visits I thought more than once of asking them if they had forgotten something. Yet ugly buildings are often hidden behind massive posters or some other kind of façade. Packaging is more important than substance in China. The well-dressed people on the streets often share a room with several others — no air-conditioning, and the bathing facility in an adjoining building, with hot water carefully rationed.

The ultra-modern subway systems and extremely modern buildings calibrate people’s thinking, leading them to assess China as if it were a fully modern economy. Alas, China is still a developing economy, which can best be judged by comparison with where it was (a mere) two decades ago.

There is much talk about increasing nationalism in China, yet it is hard to believe that a society that had grown as fast as China would not at the same time grow nationalistic. A local acquaintance tells me that a mere 15 years back there were cows roaming the streets of what is now the modern city of Guangzhou. You can see how Guangzhou changed over the last few decades using the time-function on Google Earth.

This is a society that thinks in herds, and I have had neither the occasion nor the courage to discuss these issues in a group.

Was there a lot of pain involved in these sweeping changes in the city? Yes. Of course. The property of poor people was confiscated for little or no compensation. Such people increasingly protest, sometimes with violence against public officials. And property confiscations can be worse in democratic countries, where short-term politicians have incentives to cater to their corrupt connections, fund-providers, and lobbies.

The Chinese do have a visceral anti-Japanese sentiment. They are heavily indoctrinated, through movies and the educational system, to hate Japan. But when I challenge people about their views, I have never seen an individual refuse to engage in a rational discussion. I say “individual,” because this is a society that thinks in herds, and I have had neither the occasion nor the courage to discuss these issues in a group.

The political systems of China, the Koreas, and Japan have been heavily influenced by Confucian culture. In these hierarchical societies, creative thinking doesn’t have much place. Their culture and social systems make people shining cogs in a big machine, the better for them to work diligently and unworryingly in their boring jobs and studies. Even in Vancouver, the library is packed with Chinese students, cramming away from books. Libraries in China are similar.

But one must take a walk to the multi-story bookstores in China. They have scores of self-improvement books, proving that Chinese people increasingly read outside assigned academic works. You see covers showing the faces of Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Dale Carnegie, and Stephen Covey. In a country where illegal copying is believed to be rampant, there must still be considerable profit from legally marketed translations. Could the Chinese be becoming more creative? I have no doubt they are. Even if you look through the lenses of “communism” (with all kinds of fancy connotations) that you might wear in China, you cannot ignore the fact that there are many modern, creative solutions to be found in predominantly Confucian countries.

People are forever comparing China with India. Thirty years ago, when China had a per capita GDP that was lower than India’s, this would have made sense. It no longer does. Today, an average Chinese is three times richer than an average Indian. And strangely, I find India a lot more expensive than China, and a lot less free. India is stagnating. China continues to grow. China wants to make money.

But am I not over-romanticising China? I witnessed an old lady, who was selling fruit at a corner in the small city of Lijiang, being hit hard on her stomach by Chengguan, government goons — a vivid reminder that all is not well. It is very hard to trust the quality of food in China. I love the 30 cent, nicely-cut pineapples, but I do ask myself if they are unnaturally sweetened. Cheap massages, usually for less than $10, are great for me. But what about the people who render those services? What about all the people who live in extremely congested spaces? What about all the people who work in extraordinarily exploitative situations under “greedy” businessmen? What about the sweatshops? What about the ruthless abortion of the second child?

I am not in a situation to compare China with truly stateless societies, because today’s world offers no examples. But China has very little regulatory control — the biggest reason behind its low costs. And, yes, I do feel for small children living and working under tough situations, or my masseurs who work for a pittance. But I gladly use their services, for the choice they have is not between a good job and a bad job. If they had that option they would have chosen the good job. Their choice is between a bad job and hunger. Trading with them, I get my massage and they get food. China understands this concept well. And that is the only way to move up economically.

China has moved up. Chinese salaries are rising much faster than the nation’s growth rate or inflation rate, meaning that the benefits of continued growth are accruing increasingly to the workers. Workers are fighting for better conditions. People are increasingly resisting work in factories where other people have been used like automatons. In fact, the increasing worry is that as China becomes a more expensive place to operate, some manufacturing is moving back to the West. A lot of clothing factories have already moved to Vietnam and Bangladesh. This is how human conditions improve. Not by increasing demand, in the way that Keynesian Western governments think things happen, but by working hard, by slogging along and creating the supply first. Sweatshops then go away naturally.

My guess is that manufacturing that is moving back to the US is not necessarily doing that for economic reasons but to keep Obama happy and possibly to access earmarked money. It would be erroneous to think that China had lost its competitive advantages and that the short-term, democratic Western world had learned anything, for that world continues to do more of what created its current problems. I continue to be bullish about the future in China.

More HERE

************************


In honor of Pat's day



***********************


Useful idiots

Jeff Jacoby

ON THE 60th anniversary of Josef Stalin's death last week, the Associated Press reported that admirers of the Soviet dictator, one of history's bloodiest tyrants, were flocking to the Kremlin to venerate him as a great leader despite his ghastly record of repression. With polls showing a rise in Russians' admiration and nostalgia for Stalin, observed AP, "experts and politicians puzzled and despaired over his enduring popularity."

As many as 7 million Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death under Josef Stalin. That didn't deter prominent Americans from hailing Stalinist rule as the "moral light at the top of the world."

That some Russians express approval for a despot who has been dead since 1953 is distressing, though perhaps not surprising given the ongoing campaign to burnish Stalin's image by Russia's autocratic president, Vladimir Putin. But even more of a reason for puzzlement and despair is the enthusiastic applause for Stalin by influential American liberals when he was at the height of his bloody reign -- and the willingness of similar propagandists, naifs, and true believers today to sing the praises of other thugs and dictators.

In the 1930s, as millions were being murdered in Stalin's terror-famine and Great Purge, Walter Duranty was assuring readers of The New York Times that the Soviet ruler was "giving the Russian people … what they really want, namely joint effort, communal effort." The renowned literary critic Edmund Wilson extolled Stalinist Russia as the "moral light at the top of the world." Upton Sinclair, who would later win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, vigorously defended the integrity of the "confessions" extracted by the secret police from many of Stalin's victims: It "seems obvious," Sinclair wrote, that they would not have "confessed to actions which they had not committed."

The adulation of left-wing dictators and strongmen by Western intellectuals, journalists, and celebrities didn't begin with Stalin (in 1921 Duranty had hailed Lenin for his "cool, far-sighted, reasoned sense of realities"), and it certainly didn't end with him. Mona Charen chronicled the phenomenon in her superb 2003 book Useful Idiots, which recalls example after jaw-dropping example of American liberals defending, flattering, and excusing the crimes of one Communist ruler and regime after another. Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tung, the Khmer Rouge, Leonid Brezhnev, Kim Il Sung, the Sandinistas: Over and over the pattern was repeated, from the dawn of the Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the Iron Curtain – and beyond.

And the useful idiocy lives on.

When Venezuela's America-hating caudillo Hugo Chávez died last week, Human Rights Watch summarized his legacy starkly: "a dramatic concentration of power and open disregard for basic human rights guarantees." Over his 14-year rule, Chávez succeeded in rewriting the constitution to abolish the Venezuelan Senate and repeal the one-term limit for presidents. He stifled judicial independence, cracked down on freedom of speech, and used his power to "intimidate, censor, and prosecute Venezuelans" who opposed his political agenda. Chávez cemented Venezuela's alliance with Cuba – "the only country in Latin America that systematically represses virtually all forms of political dissent," Human Rights Watch noted – and vocally backed dictators elsewhere, including Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Libya's Moammar Qaddafi.

Hugo Chavez, an America-hating megalomaniac, stifled human rights, jailed critics, vocally supported dictators, and ravaged Venezuela's economy. But useful idiots in America gushed over him as a humanitarian and a moral hero.

None of that troubled the ideologues who raced to praise the dead bully. Chávez "understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life," gushed US Representative José Serrano of New York. Former President Jimmy Carter saluted his "commitment to improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen." And former Massachusetts Congressman Joseph Kennedy II, a longtime Chavez booster, eulogized Chávez as a humanitarian who cared about the poor.

All this was preceded by Dennis Rodman's return to the headlines, as the former basketball star traveled to North Korea, where the planet's most ghastly regime presides over a Stalinist hellhole in which hundreds of thousands of people are imprisoned in slave-labor camps. But Rodman, whose trip was financed by Vice Media, an American documentary production company, wasn't there to see a human-rights nightmare. He came to watch some basketball, to hang out with the country's new dictator, Kim Jong Un, and – in a country where starvation is a leading cause of death -- to eat 10-course meals that participants described as "an epic feast."

All in all, the trip's organizer said, "they had a grand old time." So much so, apparently, that before a crowd of thousands, Rodman assured Kim: "You have a friend for life."

Indeed. It's a shameful thing, but dictators like Kim always do.

SOURCE

******************************

The old America is not yet dead

There are certain people that catch your eye in day-to-day life for a variety of reasons. Last year, a guy named Sal was someone I noticed, although it would have been difficult not to. Sal is about six feet tall and weighs 290 pounds. Moreover, Sal wore an apron and name tag in his job at the corner sandwich shop. It's a friendly place with okay sandwiches (too healthy for my taste) but great staff. It's one of those New York establishments where nearly 200,000 workers get fed, fueled and ready for the day ahead. I'm not sure how much the people in this one spot earn, but I would be shocked if Sal made more than $30,000 a year.

That's why he caught my eye-he was different in that he wasn't young, wasn't from a foreign country, and his personality was extremely outgoing. I initially wonder how he got to this place; surely he had a higher position in life at some time. Did he commit a crime? Was he in some kind of management training that had him learning all facets of the business? Something wasn't right, this guy was something else - bigger than the person lugging a tray of fresh made sandwiches from the back and placing them in the open refrigerator. Well, as it turns out Sal was something else, and what made him big was his willingness to tough out a rough patch in this place in order to take care of his family.

Yesterday Sal told me this was his last week. He told me his business was back and he had business but made sure to give me a card in case I needed work done.

Yes, Sal had his own business all this time, but there was no business for him, so he took what was out there. We often talked about family, and he always greeted me and everyone else with a smile. I'm going to miss him but will not forget. I know too many people personally that would take the same punch in the gut and wait at home collecting government checks until things turned around. I know people that would have spewed resentment at others, joining the chorus of those that think the sweat and blood of others should be part of a wider public domain.

When Sal asked me how my day was you could sense he wanted to hear only good news.

Guys like Sal make America great. He is a man's man dealing with a winding road of life with a smile on his face and no chips on his shoulders. I looked at his card as I approached the elevator and could only smile. It read:

Sal C Principal
The rest of the card reads:

15 Years Experience/Free Estimates
Custom Interior Lighting, Audio/Video Home Systems, Cable TV/Telephone Lines, Security Camera Systems, Service Upgrades, Circuits, Central AC and Landscape Lighting.

I'm going to call Sal for a few projects but mostly to see his smile, upbeat manner and hope some of his perseverance rubs off.

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

****************************



March 15, 2013

New pope, Jorge Mario Bergogli of Argentina, has Jewish connections

It seems clear that the new Pontifex Maximus is a man of genuine humility and real holiness. I am delighted. Although Argentinian by nationality he is of course of Italian descent and speaks Italian. He will fit right in at the Vatican. I wish him good health -- JR

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentinian cardinal who was elected pope late Wednesday and will take the name Francis I, is said to have a good relationship with Argentinian Jews.

Bergoglio, 76, a Jesuit, was the choice of the College of Cardinals following two days of voting in Vatican City. He is the first pope to come from outside Europe in more than a millennium; reflecting the changing demographics of Catholics, he comes from Latin America.

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio attended Rosh Hashanah services at the Benei Tikva Slijot synagogue in September 2007.

Rabbi David Rosen, the director of interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee, told JTA that the new pope is a "warm and sweet and modest man" known in Buenos Aires for doing his own cooking and personally answering his phone.

After the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in 1994, he "showed solidarity with the Jewish community," Rosen said.

In 2005, Bergoglio was the first public personality to sign a petition for justice in the AMIA bombing case. He also was one of the signatories on a document called "85 victims, 85 signatures" as part of the bombing's 11th anniversary. In June 2010, he visited the rebuilt AMIA building to talk with Jewish leaders.

"Those who said Benedict was the last pope who would be a pope that lived through the Shoah, or that said there would not be another pope who had a personal connection to the Jewish people, they were wrong," Rosen said.

Soon after the chimney of the Sistine Chapel sent up a puff of white smoke signifying that the cardinals had selected a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, Francis addressed thousands of faithful from the balcony of St. Peter’s Baslica.

“Buonasera,” he told them, saying "Good evening" in Italian, and thanked his fellow cardinals for going “almost to the ends of the earth” to find him.

Benedict was the first pontiff to step down since 1415.

Israel Singer, the former head of the World Jewish Congress, said he spent time working with Bergoglio when the two were distributing aid to the poor in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s, part of a joint Jewish-Catholic program called Tzedaka.

“We went out to the barrios where Jews and Catholics were suffering togeher,” Singer told JTA. “If everyone sat in chairs with handles, he would sit in the one without. He was always looking to be more modest. He's going to find it hard to wear all these uniforms.”

Bergoglio also wrote the foreward of a book by Rabbi Sergio Bergman and referred to him as “one of my teachers.”

Last November, Bergoglio hosted a Kristallnacht memorial event at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral with Rabbi Alejandro Avruj from the NCI-Emanuel World Masorti congregation.

He also has worked with the Latin American Jewish Congress and held meetings with Jewish youth who participate in its New Generations program.

“The Latin American Jewish Congress has had a close relationship with Jorge Bergoglio for several years," Claudio Epelman, executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, told JTA. "We know his values and strengths. We have no doubt he will do a great job leading the Catholic Church."

In his visit to the Buenos Aires synagogue, according to the Catholic Zenit news agency, Bergoglio told the congregation that he was there to examine his heart "like a pilgrim, together with you, my elder brothers."

"Today, here in this synagogue, we are made newly aware of the fact that we are a people on a journey and we place ourselves in God’s presence," Zenit quoted the then-archbishop as saying. "We must look at him and let him look at us, to examine our heart in his presence and to ask ourselves if we are walking blamelessly."

Renzo Gattegna, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, offered Italian Jewry's congratualations to the new pope with the “most fervent wishes” that his pontificate could bring “peace and brotherhood to all humanity.”

In particular, Gattegna voiced the hope that there would be a continuation “with reciprocal satisfaction” of “the intense course of dialogue that the Jews have always hoped for and that has been also realized through the work of the popes who have led the church in the recent past."

SOURCE

*****************************

Obama and his advisers plan his trip to the Middle East

Some satire from Israel



******************************

Maine's Battle to Save America from EMP

Your life may depend upon what happens in Augusta, Maine on March 21. Please bear with me patiently a little, as some background is needed to explain why. But first and foremost, no surprise, it has to do with the ineptitude of Washington.

Yet another symptom that Washington is broken, perhaps beyond repair, is that the federal government is now failing in its most basic function--"to provide for the common defense" of the American People. Exhibit Number One proving the incompetence and dereliction of Washington is its failure to protect the people from the genocidal consequences of a natural or nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

The EMP Threat--and Solutions

For nearly a decade, the Congressional EMP Commission and other responsible expert bodies of the U.S. Government have been warning that terrorists or rogue states--armed with a single crude nuclear weapon--could use a missile or balloon or other delivery system to loft a warhead to high-altitude, 30 kilometers or more anywhere over the United States, to inflict an EMP catastrophe. Any nuclear weapon detonated at high-altitude will generate a powerful electromagnetic pulse that will fry electronics and cause cascading failures that would collapse the electric power grid and other critical infrastructures--communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water--that make possible modern civilization.

The Sun can cause an even worse EMP catastrophe. Roughly every century, the Sun causes a geomagnetic super-storm on Earth, so powerful that it would collapse electric grids and life-sustaining critical infrastructures everywhere, plunging the entire world into a protracted blackout--perhaps permanently. The last such geomagnetic super-storm happened in 1859, called the Carrington Event. The Carrington Event made telegraph wires burst into flame causing forest fires, burned down telegraph stations, and fried the newly laid intercontinental telegraph cable, miles down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Fortunately, in those horse and buggy days, electricity was still a novelty, and not the foundation of civilization, as it is today.

The Congressional EMP Commission estimated, given the nation's current utter unpreparedness, within a year of a natural or nuclear EMP catastrophe, about two of every three Americans would perish. EMP by destroying the high-tech foundations of civilization, kills millions of people the old fashioned way--through starvation, disease, and societal collapse. In the aftermath of an EMP, America's over 300 million people would find themselves, virtually overnight, confronted with exactly the same structural deficiencies that in underdeveloped nations cause mass famines--too many mouths, not enough resources.

Yet there is no excuse for the United States to be vulnerable to EMP. The Department of Defense has known for 50 years how to protect military forces from EMP. Technologies currently exist to protect the national electric grid--the most important of the critical infrastructures. The Congressional EMP Commission concluded that, if the electric grid is protected from EMP, the other critical infrastructures can also be quickly recovered--but the electric grid must be protected if there is to be any hope for recovery.

Nor would it be costly to protect the national electric grid from EMP. Estimates range from a high of $2 billion to less than $100 million, depending upon the technology used and the hardness level desired, to protect the entire contiguous United States. $2 billion is what the United States spends on foreign aid to Pakistan every year. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission estimates that protecting the national electric grid from EMP can be accomplished at a cost to the average rate payer of merely 20 cents annually.

EMP protection of the grid would also mitigate all other threats--including cyber attack, sabotage, and natural disasters like hurricanes.

Washington Fails to Act

So is Washington crashing on a program to protect the national electric grid, and the American people, from an EMP catastrophe? The short answer is--no. "Sequestration" and the endless politics of the federal budget and--above all--the 2014 congressional elections, are the only "crises" visible to most in Washington.

However, there are a valiant few in Washington who have tried to protect the nation from a looming EMP catastrophe. Rep. Trent Franks (R) has formed the bipartisan Congressional EMP Caucus, co-chaired with Rep. Yvette Clarke (D). Franks and Clarke for two years have tried to pass the SHIELD Act, which would grant the federal government the necessary legal authorities to require the electric power industry to protect the national grid from EMP. It is the absence of these authorities that has been the chief obstacle to achieving national EMP preparedness.

Earlier, when Democrats controlled the House, Rep. Edward Markey and Rep. Henry Waxman succeeded in passing the GRID Act--a bill virtually identical to the SHIELD Act--with unanimous bipartisan support, only to have the bill blocked from a vote by a single Senator. Strangely, in a Congress bitterly polarized on almost everything, the media have shown no interest in the strong bipartisan virtual unanimity on the singular issue of national EMP preparedness. If the GRID or SHIELD Acts are allowed to come to the floor, one of them would pass overwhelmingly.

But the electric power industry has very deep pockets, and an army of K Street lobbyists, and so far has always been able to buy just the right member of Congress to keep GRID or SHIELD locked-up in committee. Consequently, after nearly a half decade of trying, the Congress has been unable to implement the most important recommendation of the EMP Commission--protection of the electric grid.

Maine to the Rescue?

Enter Maine State Rep. Andrea Boland (D). Boland learned about EMP from the struggle over the SHIELD Act, and visited Washington to urge the Maine delegation to support SHIELD. Frustrated with the lack of progress in Washington, Boland introduced a bill in the Maine legislature--LD-131 "An Act To Secure the Safety of Electrical Power Transmission Lines" that would have the practical effect of protecting the Maine electric grid from EMP.

Boland reasons, correctly, that if Washington will not protect the American people from an EMP catastrophe, then it is the obligation of state governments to step into the leadership breach and protect at least the citizens of their state. Although states tend to be part of a larger regional electric grid, it is technically possible, at low cost, to "island" that portion of the electric grid within a state, so that it is protected from EMP. Not only would this spare the citizens of that state from the probably fatal consequences of a protracted blackout from a natural or nuclear EMP event--but it would very significantly increase the energy security of neighboring states.

If Maine is protected from EMP, it would greatly facilitate the repair and restoration of neighboring states belonging to the New England grid. Nothing is harder, it may not even be possible, to "black start" a national or regional electric grid that has collapsed into complete blackout. If the lights stay on in Maine, it will be much easier to bring them back on in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

Maine and New England have special reasons to be concerned about becoming the victims of an EMP catastrophe. All of these states are at relatively high northern latitudes, and most of them have granitic soil geology, which makes them more susceptible to geomagnetic storms. New England is in a neighborhood known to be dangerous for geomagnetic storms. In 1989, the Hydro-Quebec geomagnetic storm damaged and blacked out the electric grid of eastern Canada, causing billions of dollars in economic losses.

The 1989 Hydro-Quebec Storm also destroyed an extra high voltage transformer at the Salem nuclear power reactor in New Jersey. One of the more worrisome consequences of a natural or nuclear EMP is the protracted blackout resulting in meltdown of nuclear reactors or of their fuel rods in cooling ponds, as happened at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan. A Carrington Event would probably be one hundred times more powerful than the Hydro-Quebec Storm.

Moreover, Maine and New England are in a dangerous neighborhood for nuclear EMP attack because of their proximity to New York City. Terrorists have a demonstrated preference for attacking New York. A nuclear EMP attack centered on New York City would encompass all of New England too.

Finally, there are non-nuclear EMP devices, more commonly known as Radio Frequency Weapons, that are becoming increasingly available and common in the activities of terrorists, criminals, and even disgruntled individuals. Indeed, it is possible to build a Radio Frequency Weapon using design information available on the internet and parts purchased from Radio Shack or any electronics store. A Radio Frequency Weapon does not have the range or power to threaten the entire nation. But we have arrived at a place where, for the first time in history, a lunatic armed with an RFW could topple the technological pillars of an entire metropolis, and blackout a major city.

Underdog Rep. Andrea Boland is in a showdown against the entire electric power industry in Maine over her bill for protecting the electric grid. Beginning virtually alone, Boland is garnering significant support among her colleagues.

Maine's Joint Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology deserves high praise for learning quickly and showing grave concern about the EMP threat, that has been dropped in their laps because of paralysis in Washington. The Joint Committee has displayed professionalism and competence worthy of such a grave issue, asking excellent and exhaustive questions of both EMP experts and the electric power industry.

Boland's bill has survived intense scrutiny before the Maine legislature, where her bill LD-131 has been under debate since February. Boland has brought in scientific and strategic experts from Washington and around the nation to testify in support of her bill in Augusta, the Maine state capitol.

The Boland bill merely asks the electric power industry to protect the Maine grid from EMP, and trusts that they will do so. Yet ISO New England opposes even this modest bill. This strongly suggests that the electric power industry cannot be trusted to do anything for EMP protection.

As Rep. Andrea Boland's bill to protect Maine from an EMP catastrophe draws closer to a vote, the electric power lobby is growing more frantic in its opposition, hoping to duplicate in Maine the success they had in Washington blocking the bipartisan GRID and SHIELD Acts. They are on the hunt for that one politician or influential official in Maine who can save their day by derailing or defeating LD-131.

Other states are looking to Maine to see if it is politically possible to bypass Washington and launch their own initiatives to protect their electric grids and their people from EMP. Alaska, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Utah all have groups interested in "islanding" their state grids to protect their families and communities from an EMP catastrophe.

If Andrea Boland succeeds in Maine, other states will follow, and the bureaucratic logjam that has for so long impeded national EMP preparedness in Washington will at last be broken.

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

****************************



March 14, 2013

Utter Contempt

Our Israeli correspondent MC returns with a reflection on the commonalities that can be observed among Socialism, National Socialism, and Islam

The recent dialogue featured on Gates of Vienna between the Baron and an unnamed British journalist got me thinking a bit…

Of note was the utter contempt with which the journalist approached a right-of-centre position, and the holder of that position.

I grew up among Socialists, but I did a very unacceptable thing: I kept an open mind.

I suppose it started around the family television, there used to be a programme “All our Yesterdays: This Week 25 Years Ago”.

I was really too young to understand this programme, but in an unheated house in winter there was only one room kept warm enough for comfort, and the TV was in that room, and, of course the TV dominated.

I could not understand why National Socialists were bad, but Socialists were good. Yet my grandfather had been a convener for the early Labour Party in the twenties; Socialism was not to be questioned.

However, being very naïve, I asked my father, who just happened to be at home at the time on one those rare visits (he was an officer in the Royal Navy). My father did not answer the question; he just made me feel about six inches (rather than four feet) tall.

I had touched on a very sore point, and perhaps a key deception that is a prime cause of the trouble our countries find themselves in today.

It was many years later that I became comfortable with the idea that National Socialism is just another form of Socialism, one which is almost identical to Stalinist Communist Socialism.

The idea of extreme left, and extreme right is a fabrication. Stalin invaded Poland two weeks after Hitler did. In 1941, the Allies had to rehabilitate Stalin by creating a propaganda myth:

“Hitler bad, Stalin good. The political left is honest and caring; the political right is corrupt and greedy.”

Many have fallen for this meme, and it is now burnt into the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) of those who have “never thought of thinking for themselves at all”, a.k.a. Lenin’s useful idiots .

So Mr. Indoctrinated British Journalist approaches the dialogue with a preconceived notion that the Baron is part of a greedy and corrupt right wing establishment only worthy of the contempt of civilised “educated” people.

The sign of a good journalist is that he or she can recognise bias, and can therefore contain contempt. I have utter contempt for the leftist establishment; but then, I make no claim to being a journalist either.

As a child, I was taught to be contemptuous of certain types and classes of people. My mother’s family was very anti-Semitic, even though their father was Jewish (maybe because their father was Jewish). My father’s family (from Manchester) was very contemptuous of our very ‘nice’ southern English accents, and the accusation of being “la di dah” was not unknown…

I never knowingly met a Jew until University, where my Maths tutor was Orthodox. I got on very well with him.

I had my first clash with the reality of Socialism at university (in the form of the Student Union) as well, and I discovered to my horror that the reality of hard-left Socialism was extremely nasty. As a moderate Socialist, I was deemed contemptible and was treated with derision. There was no respect due to anything or anybody that did not conform to their core beliefs.

Islam too holds everything outside of Islam in contempt, and there is commonality of belief in this. In fact, Socialism and Islam hold so much in common it prompts the question: Did they come from the same source?

In a way, yes; Socialism arose through the trashing of the Bible in the 19th century. It resulted from the combined culture shocks of Darwin, Freud and Einstein. Darwin posited the first realistic alternative to creation, Freud redefined the human psyche, and Einstein redefined Newtonian physics. From these culture shocks arose a belief system based upon the idea that man is God.

Islam is, in effect, the worship of Mohammed, a 7th century brigand king who espoused the belief that one man (himself) could be the sole mouthpiece of god. For those who delve, there is a connection here. Mohammed used Allah as a kind of ventriloquist’s dummy — whenever he needed to make a statement, Allah, would give it voice through Mohammed. So Islam is a belief system that sees a man as God.

Any difference is semantic.

In their extreme forms, both Socialism and Islam believe in world domination, both use violence and terror as acceptable forms of evangelism, and both believe in an elite vanguard controlling the backward masses. Islam shows a contempt for women, seeing them as live ‘meat’ and other more vulgar epithets, ensnaring men in their evil sexuality and thus denying women entry into heaven. The Socialists show contempt for women in the role of mother, carer and giver of life; in their view women should be men, and work for a living. Women should bestow their sexual favours according to need and desire (especially the needs and desires of the Socialist elite) and, if necessary, murder the consequences.

The contempt shows up in many ways. In this case, the Baron is guilty of “inhumanity” because a Norwegian psychopath happened to read his blog posts and agree with some of them. Whilst this association is totally irrational, contempt makes it plausible in the context that, if the Baron had not expressed (contemptible) opinions, the shootings might not have happened.

Curiously, this fluffy teddy-bear logic endows the Baron with a supernatural ability to control events, and thus be responsible for them, by expressing his opinions, in writing, in a blog where he has no control whatsoever on the readership. This is the stuff of fairy tales!

And of such is the poison of Utter Contempt.

SOURCE

****************************

Slow Train Coming?

Misguided Economic Regulation of U.S. Railroads, Then and Now

The last few decades have seen tremendous improvements in the U.S. railroad industry. After a century of severe regulation nearly brought the United States railroad industry to ruin, policy makers in the 1970s began a process that ultimately resulted in the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which largely deregulated the industry. But that has not put an end to the political fight over freight rail.

Beginning with the enactment of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, the federal government increasingly regulated railroad ownership, operations, and investments in the United States through the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). While initially the ICC had little power to enforce rulings, it was subsequently granted significant ratemaking, entry and exit, and operational authority due to the efforts of the Progressive movement. Once railroads became heavily regulated, innovation slowed and American railroads began their long decline. During World War I, the heavily regulated railroads were nationalized by President Woodrow Wilson. After the war, the railroads were returned to private management—albeit in the context of a stultifying regulatory environment.

In the 1930s, new competition from motor carriers and more advanced waterborne transportation began costing the railroads passengers and freight. The U.S. railroad industry enjoyed a brief resurgence during World War II, as tires and gasoline were tightly controlled for consumers and the military relied heavily on the railway network to move goods and troops.

Yet following World War II, the railroads continued their decline. By the 1960s, it had become apparent to all that the industry was in dire straits. It was during this decade that economists, regulators, and politicians began seriously considering deregulatory relief—as the alternative, widely discussed at the time, was outright and permanent nationalization of the nation’s railroads.

Following the 1970 bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad—the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history until it was eclipsed by Enron in 2001—Congress and the Nixon administration began advancing a deregulatory agenda. In the meantime, the federal government created Amtrak to take responsibility for unprofitable passenger movements and Conrail to assume control of freight rail operations in the Northeastern U.S.

Finally, in 1980, Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act, which largely deregulated the railroads. Since 1980, America’s railroads—and indeed their customers and consumers—have enjoyed large gains. These include steep declines in real freight rates and train accidents, and a massive increase in railroad worker productivity. Unlike other modes of transportation, the railroad industry has financed these improvements—to the tune of $500 billion since the Staggers Act.

But some shippers are upset with the market rates they must pay to access rail carriers’ private networks. The most vocal are bulk commodity shippers in the West and Midwest, who may lack access to inland waterways and may be served by only one or two railroads. They allege that railroads are using their market power to extract monopoly rents and that federal regulators must step in to resolve this problem.

These claims are not new and they are baseless. These shippers are pushing a set of policies that will ultimately harm railroads, shippers, consumers, and the overall U.S. economy.

SOURCE

****************************

Sam’s Smear: Preposterous history from The New Republic

‘Every contributor to this collection . . . blandly ignores the possibility that there could be any real issue of a rational kind in American politics today which would justify the existence of an opposition, and proceeds to a sociological-psychological analysis of the extraordinary fact that there is one.”

Frank Meyer was writing more than 50 years ago, but the impulse he described is still at work. The explanation for conservatives’ opposition to President Obama and his agenda must be found not in our ideas but in our pathologies.

Thus many liberals seem to have convinced themselves that we resist Obama’s agenda because he is black. It is a theory that does not depend on evidence. Liberals read elaborations of the theory not to understand the world around them but to feel the warm glow of moral superiority.

It is a glow that suffuses the long cover story Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, recently wrote for The New Republic. Titled “Original Sin: Why the GOP Is and Will Continue to Be the Party of White People,”

Tanenhaus’s essay purports to show that Republicans’ crippling weakness among non-whites ultimately has its roots in the infatuation of conservative intellectuals with — John C. Calhoun.

Yes, the antebellum politician best known for his defense of slavery as a “positive good” is, on Tanenhaus’s telling, the real founder of the conservative movement: “When the intellectual authors of the modern right created its doctrines in the 1950s, they drew on nineteenth-century political thought, borrowing explicitly from the great apologists for slavery, above all, the intellectually fierce South Carolinian John C. Calhoun.”

Now Tanenhaus doesn’t want you to think he is saying that today’s conservatives are just a bunch of racists. Certainly not. He is up to something much more subtle than that. “This is not to say conservatives today share Calhoun’s ideas about race. It is to say instead that the Calhoun revival, based on his complex theories of constitutional democracy, became the justification for conservative politicians to resist, ignore, or even overturn the will of the electoral majority.”

With that to-be-sure throat-clearing out of the way, Tanenhaus continues with an essay that makes sense only as an attempt to identify racism as the core of conservatism. Rarely has slander been so tedious.

That slander does not consist of reminding us that many conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr. and National Review, were grievously wrong about the civil-rights movement. That fact is something all conservatives should ponder. Nor does it consist of suggesting, correctly, that certain conservative principles — federalism, traditionalism, economic freedom, judicial restraint — contributed to this moral error (just as certain liberal tendencies led The New Republic and the New York Times to make their apologias for Mussolini, Castro, and Stalin). Instead, Tanenhaus seeks to make, without defending, the dubious claim that any invocation of these principles is necessarily an implicit or explicit appeal to Calhoun’s worldview.

Because Calhoun was an articulate exponent of arguments for state sovereignty properly credited to Jefferson, Madison, and other Founders, many conservatives, including Buckley himself, occasionally quoted him. The notion that the conservative movement was ever enthralled to Calhoun is, however, not merely wrong, but preposterous.

Tanenhaus wildly overstates Calhoun’s status in the early years of National Review. Calhoun, he says, was the conservative movement’s “Ur theorist.” Yet in George Nash’s universally respected book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, Calhoun’s name appears twice: the first time in a favorable quote from the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the second 50-odd pages later, in Schlesinger’s criticism of Russell Kirk for lumping Calhoun and abolitionist John Quincy Adams into the same political tradition.

Calhoun is absent from the memoirs of the supposedly “Calhounist” William Rusher, the longtime publisher of National Review. He is mostly absent from the writings of James Burnham, although Burnham does reject Calhoun’s idea of a plural executive in a brief discussion in Congress and the American Tradition.

There’s no mention of Calhoun in Tanenhaus’s own biography of Whittaker Chambers. Perhaps more telling, there’s no mention of Calhoun in his more recent book The Death of Conservatism, which he marketed as the official autopsy of the intellectual Right. Odd that he missed the role of conservatism’s ur-theorist.

And Calhoun’s infrequent appearances in Buckley’s writings betray no adulation. The one reference in Buckley’s Miles Gone By, for instance, notes that Calhoun practiced his speeches in a field and then wrote them down when he came back inside. If that is a Calhounist dog whistle it must be one that only a liberal can hear (which, as it happens, is the case with most allegedly racist code from the right).

SOURCE

****************************

Limits on the Right to Exit: The New Slavery

The federal fascists respond with threats and vilification when a few knowledgeable citizens renounce their American citizenship and move — with capital and assets that they have accumulated by honest endeavor — to a more hospitable state, one that does not mulct them as rigorously by the theft benignly called taxation. The government bullies, who threaten to follow the departed and to claim their “rightful share” of the emigrant’s assets, apparently mean to wreak violence upon those who exercise their right to exit. Such threats sound less hollow now that the current political apparatus has emasculated all vestige of the rule of law in the cases of Osama bin La-den and Anwar al-Awlaki.

We live in strange and frightening times. Most of my ancestors came to this land two or three centuries ago in search of a free life. They had tired of the constant wars and rumors of war, of conscription and compulsion and slavery, of princes and other jackals who robbed rich and poor alike, enabling the robber to live an unproductive life of ease. In those halcyon days of yore, most immigrants came to this new and lightly populated land far from the Arabic, Asian, and European maladies, to a place where distance alone provided them a better and freer opportunity to make their own choices and to abide by the results. To those sturdy yeomen, freedom was not a word bandied about recklessly; it comprised an essential concept of universality and duality: liberty meant that one chose his path in life and bore responsibility for the consequences of his choice, and it also necessarily and concurrently entailed recognition that all other persons deserved the equivalent freedom.

In simple terms that even a modern United States senator should comprehend, the freedom to come to America necessarily includes the freedom to leave this country for any reason whatsoever without having to explain and defend that choice and without any fine or tax or any other penalty. In the context of interstate immigration and emigration within the United States, the Supreme Court of the United States has placed its imprimatur on an unimpeded right of mobility to move within the union. By a parity of any acceptable reasoning, that right of mobility must include the right to outbound mobility as well, an absolute freedom to leave this country without any requirement to state or prove any “acceptable” reason.

Any restriction on the freedom to exit disparages a fundamental human right and necessarily condemns the emigrant to a modern and odious slavery. Does that assertion of slavery misstate or overstate the case? The untutored mass, graduates of public institutions of state indoctrination, associate slavery with skin color. In fact, readers of history recognize that the past is littered with slaves of every kind, kindred, color, and other description. Slavery exists when one class or group within a society enjoys legal power to direct the conduct of another class or group to their detriment and in contradiction to the equal liberties all others enjoy. The right to leave represents a seminal element of human liberty, a cognate extension of the fundamental right to life. Hence, the new slavery differs little from the old failed systems, and it deserves the opprobrium of all free men.

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

****************************



March 13, 2013

Florida Senate axes Rick Scott’s Medicaid expansion

Last month, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the one-time foe of President Obama’s health care law, rocked the health care policy world by announcing plans to participate in the legislation’s expansion of Medicaid. At the time, I criticized Scott, while noting that the decision would ultimately be left in the hands of the state legislature. On Monday, the Florida Senate joined the state House in saying no to the expansion, effectively killing it.

The decision by the legislature, if final, would mean about 1 million fewer beneficiaries on the Medicaid rolls. As I previously wrote, ” After the Supreme Court decision, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that adding 11 million people to Medicaid would cost $643 billion over the next decade — meaning a back of the envelope estimate is that Scott’s decision could ultimately cost federal taxpayers about $58 billion over the next decade.” Now, that decision has been blocked.

SOURCE

***************************

Beware liberals' hyperbole

Gregory Kane

Not that I planned it this way, but for the past year I've been quite the frequent visitor to Johns Hopkins Hospital. The shortest, quickest route from the venerable Baltimore institution back to my home in the northwest section of the city takes me past a collection of buildings far less venerable.

One is the Maryland State Penitentiary, a building that has been around since the 19th century. Another is the Central Booking and Intake Facility; in linguistically simpler times, we called this the Baltimore City Jail. I call the series of edifices "the house of reprobates." And yes, the Maryland State Penitentiary does have a death row.

During a recent drive home from Hopkins -- I ALWAYS always seem to get done in the middle of afternoon rush-hour traffic -- I saw a lone protester standing in front of the entrance to the Central Booking and Intake Facility. He held up a sign that read, "The death penalty is a hate crime." In a flash, I was reminded, once again, of why I just love liberals, progressives and leftists.

Sign Up for the Opinion Digest newsletter!
The main reason I love them is that they say and do things, constantly, to make me glad I'm not one of them. Take the lone protester, for instance. As I mentioned, it's the Maryland State Penitentiary that houses the state's death row. The protester should have been on the other side of the complex, where the penitentiary is located. But his problem with geography was less pronounced than his problem with hyperbole.

That brings me to yet another quality about liberals-progressives-leftists that I love: Their yen for hyperbole causes them to frequently cram their feet down their throats.

"The death penalty is a hate crime," is it? There are probably grade-schoolers who can point out the flaw in the logic. A careful reading of the Constitution -- which liberals-progressives-leftists seldom read but love to rewrite -- reveals that the death penalty is not only not a hate crime, but also not even a crime.

The Fifth Amendment states that "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The 14th Amendment adds: "no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty property without due process of law."

So, in two different amendments, we learn that the death penalty is perfectly legal if the person being executed has been given due process of law. Liberals-progressive-leftists conventiently forget this language when, with their flair for hyperbole, they claim that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

When they're not using hyperbole, this same bunch tends to make cheap, tawdry appeals to emotion, since they have so few facts to back up their arguments. In the death penalty debate, they drag in racial disparity, knowing race to be a topic that rouses emotions. When they couldn't show that blacks convicted of murder were being executed disproportionately, they tried to move the goal posts.

Those who ended up on death row, they claimed, were more likely to have gotten there if they murdered whites.

Felony homicide is the path that leads most miscreants to death row. FBI stats show that the majority of felony homicide victims are white; the majority of those who commit felony homicide are black. The liberals have yet to talk about this particular racial disparity. That's because they won't even acknowledge the disparity. They can't talk about what they won't even acknowledge.

The death penalty is a "hate crime"? It looks more like opponents of capital punishment have resorted to cheap demagoguery.

SOURCE

**************************

Why do the Koch Brothers get all the sunshine?

Here's a couple of data points that bear serious thought this week by transparency advocates celebrating Sunshine Week and by everybody else who cares about protecting and preserving a free and independent press:

1,130 - Number of results for search term "Koch Brothers" on The New York Times web site.

64 - Number of results for search term "The Tides Foundation" on The New York Times web site.

For the few stray souls out there who don't know, the Koch Brothers are Charles and David, principals of the Koch corporate conglomerate and chief bete noirs of President Obama, liberal journalists covering national politics and Citizens United obsessives everywhere.

Sign Up for the Politics Digest newsletter!
It's equally certain that few reading this post know anything at all about the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, even though its roots go deep into the radical student movement of the 1960s and it has helped fund or startup virtually every significant liberal, progressive and radical cause in the years since.

Similar results appear from the same searches on The Washington Post web site, which turns up 277 links to the Koch Brothers and 11 for Tides. And on the New Yorker web site, Koch Brothers generated 35 links and none for Tides.

The contrast was even more dramatic on the Common Cause site, where the Koch Brothers were linked 4,560 times versus one for Tides.

What do these search results tell us? Only that it appears the Koch Brothers are of vastly heightened interest to two of America's greatest daily newspapers and to the dean of campaign finance reform advocacy organizations than is the Tides Foundation.

Which is curious, considering that it is all but certain nobody in these two August newsrooms or among the leadership of Common Cause would reject the proposition that "the rich" have far too much influence in American politics, thanks to their wealth.

Consider these numbers, derived from multiple searches of foundation grant databases, IRS Form 990s and other public records:

Three Koch foundations made a total of 181 grants worth $25,405,525 in 2010 (most recent available records). The one Tides Foundation made a total of 2,627 grants worth $143,529,590 in 2010.

Put otherwise, for every one grant made by a Koch foundation, Tides made more than five grants.

There are important qualifications to these numbers, including that the two Koch brothers also contributed to numerous political candidates, there may be other Koch-controlled foundations that didn't surface in this study, not all of the grants included here went to political or ideological groups or causes, and the two men may have significant influence on yet other foundations not under their direction.

What is crystal clear is this: The Koch Brothers get vastly more attention from two of the nation's elite media outlets and the grand sire of the "too much money corrupts" school of campaign finance reform than an obscure foundation that bankrolls multiple legions of leftist political groups and causes.

Might we conclude then that, like the collectivized creatures of Animal Farm, some of the rich money in American politics is more equal than others?

SOURCE

************************

False hopes in the new employment numbers

White House economic adviser Alan Krueger greeted last Friday's employment numbers with optimism, noting that they suggest "the recovery that began in mid-2009 is gaining traction." His sanguine assessment echoes previous Obama administration claims in 2010, 2011 and 2012 that the recovery was just around the corner. Could it finally be for real?

To be sure, the report's top line contained signs of hope, such as better-than-expected net job gains and a modest tick downward in the unemployment rate. But this bit of good news was tempered by the fact that more Americans gave up looking for work and dropped out of the labor force last month (296,000) than took new jobs (260,000).

And at 63.5 percent, the share of Americans participating in the labor force -- that is, either working or looking for work -- has fallen again to last year's low, which had not been seen since the Carter era. What's more, this ominous trend obscures the labor market's true condition because the unemployment rate goes down every time someone stops trying to find work.

Unfortunately, there is worse news than this. One of the most important but least-covered stories of the 2012 election was the labor market depression currently being experienced by Americans between the ages of 25 and 54. These are the Americans in the midst of making something of themselves -- building careers and lives, reaching their peak earning years, forming families, and providing the economy with vitality and innovative thinking. Sadly, this is no longer the case in the Obama era.

It was dispiriting enough that 5.2 million Americans aged 25 to 54 lost their jobs in the Great Recession, which ran from December 2007 through June 2009. Far more unsettling is the fact that in the time since -- after three years and nine months of the Obama "recovery," during which millions of lost jobs were restored -- not a single net job has been regained in this age group. In fact, the number of midcareer adults working today is still lower than it was not only in June 2009 but also in May 1997, despite a 20 percent increase in U.S. population over the last 16 years. And the number of Americans in this age group neither working nor seeking work has surged in recent months to a new all-time high, after falling sharply last fall and creating new false hopes.

Nearly all of the jobs regained in the Obama recovery have gone to the over-55 age group. The "gray jobs" recovery has emerged through a combination of workers aging and near-retirees hanging on longer than they once did. This suggests that America is losing a generation of workers -- millions with blank years in their resumes that make them less employable. In the long term, their lack of job experience will diminish their value as replacements for the growing number of older and highly experienced workers who will eventually retire. In the longer term, today's lost young adults threaten to become impoverished wards of the state in retirement.

This reality underscores the inefficacy of the 2009 stimulus package. If it accomplished anything, it appears only to have allowed employers to hang on to their oldest and most experienced employees. The continued stagnation also demonstrates the need for President Obama to put job creation ahead of ideological objectives such as the abolition of coal, the establishment of futile renewable energy projects and tax changes whose primary purpose is to punish someone rather than raise revenue. Stop killing the job market, and it might just come back to life.

SOURCE

***************************

The TSA is just theater

Today the NY Post published an exclusive titled "Former Newark Airport TSA screener says the job does little to keep fliers safe" in the article the former TSA agent states: "We're [the TSA] not any big deterrent. It's all for show."

Well, you don't say! At the cost of approximately 8 billion dollars annually, according to TSA News, it is one hell of an expensive show. The budget cuts and sequester didn't seem to affect the show too much either as the TSA just ordered 50 million dollars in new uniforms.

CNS reported on March 5:

"The impending sequester did not prevent the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from acting in late February to seal a $50-million deal to purchase new uniforms for its agents--uniforms that will be partly manufactured in Mexico. The TSA employs 50,000 security officers, inspectors, air marshals and managers. That means that the uniform contract will pay the equivalent of $1,000 per TSA employee over the course of the year."

Well at least the TSA will look good while groping us if nothing else.

Just last week the TSA made the news because an undercover TSA inspector got a fake bomb through security at Newark Liberty International Airport. The fake improvised explosive device was stashed in his pants and he cleared two different layers of security and managed to be cleared to board a commercial flight.

CBS New York reported: "The incident was part of an undercover inspection at Newark and followed an abysmal performance on an audit last October."

The audit found that Newark TSA agents:

* Followed proper pat down procedures just 16.7 percent of the time.

* Confiscated banned items from carry-on luggage just 25 percent of the time.

What's worse is that the TSA evidently didn't catch 3 out of 4 fake bombs. The NY Post reported: "Only one member of the four-man "Red Team" that purported to bring explosives onto planes on Feb. 25 was caught, according to the report. That actor was detected with an IED hidden inside a doll, though sources told the Post that it had wires sticking out of it and was quite obvious."

I have written 10 different articles on the TSA over the years and spoken about the "joke of security" that it is. I have stated time and time again both on my radio program as well as in my lectures "it isn't a question of if we will suffer another terrorist attack but, rather, when." Once again, I must refer back to the NY Post interview where the former TSA agent stated:

"What are the chances of you being on a flight where something happens? We always said it's not a question of if terrorists get through - it's a question of when. Our feeling is nothing's happened because they haven't wanted it to happen."

That sounds familiar. What I found to me one of the most disturbing things in the interview was where the former agent explained: "These are the employees who could never keep a job in the private sector. I wouldn't trust them to walk my dog."

He explained the education level needed to work as an agent as well: "Did you know you don't need a high-school diploma or GED to work as a security screener? These are the same screeners that TSA chief John Pistole and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refer to as a first-class first line of defense in the war on terror."

"First line of defense?" That is a joke. As my friends and family know I hate to fly, if I can drive there I'll opt for the car ride rather than being in the air. It's not due to a fear of flying as much as that I know the truth behind our so-called security.

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

***************************



March 12, 2013

The Gruesome Reality of Racist South Africa

For decades, the country of South Africa was the focus of an international rallying cry against the injustices of apartheid. On June 17, 1991, South Africa's Parliament abolished the legal framework for the practice of racial persecution. In 1994, Nelson Mandela and his Marxist African National Congress (ANC) assumed the reins of power. The international community looked away, satisfied that justice had prevailed. They continue to look away, even as South Africa has degenerated into another racist pit, best described by an Afrikaner farm owner: "It's politically correct to kill whites these days."

In July of 2012, Dr. Gregory Stanton, head of the nonprofit group Genocide Watch, conducted a fact-finding mission in South Africa. He concluded that there is a coordinated campaign of genocide being conducted against white farmers, known as Boers. "The farm murders, we have become convinced, are not accidental," Stanton contended. "It was very clear that the massacres were not common crimes," he added - especially because of the absolute barbarity used against the victims. "We don't know exactly who is planning them yet, but what we are calling for is an international investigation," he added.

The number of farm murders, or "plaasmoorde" as it is called in Afrikaans, is staggering. Over the last decade, it is estimated that at least 3000 Boers have been killed. Estimating the number of murders is necessary because the ANC has banned crime statistics from being compiled, claiming they scare off foreign investment. Moreover, the world knows little about the savagery that accompanies those killings. Many victims, including women and infant children, are raped or tortured before they are killed. Some have boiling water poured down their throats, some are burned with hot pokers, and some are hacked to death with machetes, or disemboweled. Several others have been tied to their own cars and dragged for miles.

The ANC, whose leader Jacob Zuma was reelected with over 75 per cent of the total voting delegates at the ANC National Conference held in Bloemfontein last December, denies that genocide is occurring, insisting that such attacks are part of the larger crime problem. Yet a report filed by the South African Institute of Race Relations notes that while crime has ostensibly declined between 1994 and 2011, "substantial numbers" of police stations have manipulated their crime statistics. The report sub-headline underscores the corrupt nature of crime statistics in the country: "Is this a true reflection of the crime statistics in South Africa? Who knows!" it states.

What is known is that the ANC celebrated in 100th year anniversary with a song led by President Zuma himself. "Dubula iBhunu" or "Shoot the Boer" was a line in the lyrics of an apartheid-era song, "Ayesaba Amagwala" ("the cowards are scared") that violates the South Africa constitution prohibiting the "advocacy of hatred that is based on race . and that constitutes incitement to cause harm." Yet Zuma apparently felt no compunction to refrain from singing it, because the ANC considers it an integral part of the anti-apartheid movement that is part of their heritage.

In 2010, Julius Malema, then leader of the ANC Youth League, revived the practice of singing the song after many years. After the South Africa High Court ruled it was hate speech, the ANC appealed. Last October, the ANC and AfriForum, a lobby group that wanted the song banned from public performance, reached an out-of-court settlement.

Dr. Stanton concluded that Malema's revival of a song advocating murder moved South Africa from the fifth stage on his genocidal scale to stage six. When the South African judiciary ruled it to be unlawful hate speech, Genocide Watch put South Africa back at stage five. When President Zuma was caught on tape January 2012 singing, "We are going to shoot them with the machine gun, they are going to run/You are a Boer, we are going to hit them, and you are going to run/shoot the Boer." South Africa was raised to stage six once again.

Stage six is known as Preparation: "Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is expropriated. They are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved."

The sixth stage is followed by stage seven: Extermination.

In December, more than 200 protesters of the Afrikaner civil rights group AfriForum, which included families of murdered farmers and survivors of farm attacks, marched in the capital city of Pretoria. They were commemorating the second anniversary of the murders of farm caretaker Attie Potgieter and his family. Potgieter was stabbed and hacked 151 times with a knife, a fork, and a machete, while his wife and two-year-old daughter were forced to watch. They were then executed with shots to the head. "If you kill a rhinoceros in South Africa, you get more time in jail then if you kill a person," said Susan Nortje, 26, Mrs. Potgieter's younger sister. "I don't think people understand. We must show people what's really happening."

The group is calling for attacks on South Africa's mostly white farmers to be designated a crime of national priority. They delivered a memorandum to the country's police minister, Nathi Mthethwa, urging him to give the murder of farmers the same level of urgency aimed at rhinoceros poachers and copper cable thieves. Mthethwa was not present at the time, but police spokesman Zweli Mnisi accused the protesters of "grandstanding." "They are only representing people based on their color," he contended. "For us, racializing crime is problematic. You can't have a separate category that says, farmers are the special golden boys and girls. You end up saying the life of a white person is more important. You cannot do this," he added.

Yet according to Johan Burger, a senior researcher with the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies' crime and justice program, white farmers' concerns are legitimately "special." He reveals that it is now twice as dangerous to be a farmer in South Africa than a police officer. The overall murder rate in the nation is 31.9 per 100,000 people, 30 times that of Great Britain. For police it's 51 out of 100,000. For farmers, who are overwhelmingly white, the rate soars to 99 out 100,000. Burger rejects the notion that such a rate constitutes genocide-even as he concedes that many murderers "take out their hatred for all those past wrongs, and show who's in control now."

Like so many societies where demonstrating who's in control becomes a necessity, disarming the population becomes a priority. In 2010, the ANC-led regime changed the Firearms Registration Act, demanding that all legal guns be re-registered by July 31, 2011. In the process of re-registration, more than half the applicants were turned down, and 90 percent were turned down again on appeal. Thus, white farm families were forced to relinquish their last line of defense against the tens of thousands of criminal gangs roaming the countryside-armed with AK47s. and as Genocide Watch noted on its website last July one more step was taken as well. "The government has disbanded the commando units of white farmers that once protected their farms, and has passed laws to confiscate the farmers' weapons," it reported. "Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocidal killings."

There is also a movement, much like the one that occurred in Zimbabwe, to confiscate white farmers' land. Julius Malema led the charge, saying all whites are criminals, and that his ANC Youth League members were going to take all the land back without compensation, unless farmers relinquish 80 percent of it. At a conference in 2011, Malema reiterated his plans, contending that the nation's "willing buyer, willing seller" program, aimed at redistributing 30 percent of white-owned land to blacks within the first five years of the country's democracy (a deadline later shifted to 2014, and then to 2025), wasn't working. "You can never be diplomatic about willing-buyer, willing-seller. It has failed. You have not come with an alternative," said Mr. Malema at the time. "We are giving you an alternative; we must take the land without payment."

That is a recipe for famine, as revealed by Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti. In 2009, he told Parliament that more than half of the farms purchased for black farmers, at a cost of $891 million in government outlays, had either failed or were "declining."

Yet ANC president Zuma remains undeterred. "The structure of the apartheid economy has remained largely intact," Mr. Zuma said, in a speech given June 26, 2012 to thousands of delegates at ANC's policy conference, held every five years, where the party's pre-presidential election platform is discussed. "The ownership of the economy is still primarily in the hands of white males, as it has always been."

Embedded in that platform is the idea that making peace with white South Africans following the end of apartheid has "hampered" the transfer of wealth to black South Africans. Thus, a "second transition," was proposed, which even the see-no-progressive-evil New York Times was forced to concede represents a "sharp leftward shift for the A.N.C., which despite its roots has largely backed a free-market economy with minimal state intervention."

Stanton sees a bigger picture. In a speech in Pretoria, organized by the Transvaal Agricultural Union, Stanton claimed the ANC was demonizing white farmers, who have been in South Africa since the 1600s, by calling them "settlers." A Genocide Watch reports reveals the strategy behind those efforts. "High-ranking ANC government officials who continuously refer to Whites as `settlers' and `colonialists of a special type' are using racial epithets in a campaign of state-sponsored dehumanization of the White population as a whole," it stated. "They sanction gang-organized hate crimes against Whites, with the goal of terrorizing Whites through fear of genocidal annihilation."

ANC President Jacob Zuma continues to fan the flames of racial division. Last December, he admonished black South Africans for being dog owners, saying that doing so amounts to copying white culture. Zuma's office contended the message was aimed at "the need to decolonize the African mind post-liberation."

It is a post-liberation effort that remains alarmingly on track to emulate all the other historically blood-soaked efforts by Marxists, who invariably need an enemy at whom to direct their anger. White African farmers are that enemy. Pieter Mulder, leader of political party FF Plus and South Africa's deputy agriculture minister, who was focused on the excesses of Julius Malema a year and a half ago, nevertheless offered an inadvertently prescient statement about his country's future. After noting that Malema and his ilk were attempting to take the country "back to the period before 1994 when violence and even the possibility of a civil war was part of the South African debate" he revealed why such forces remain seemingly unstoppable. "We don't have a Mandela that stands up and says: `This is wrong,'" he warned.

SOURCE

******************************

DNA tests reveal Hitler's Jewish and African roots

Socialists never let reality bother them. It has often been claimed that Hitler had some Jewish ancestry. That would seem to be confirmed below. Note however that they did not have a sample of AH's own DNA -- only that of his relatives

The Fuhrer 'would not have been happy' to learn he was more Berber tribesman than Aryan superman.

Adolf Hitler may have owed more to the 'subhuman' races he tried to exterminate than to his 'Aryan' compatriots, according to new finding published in Belgium this week.

In research for the Flemish-language magazine Knack, journalist Jean-Paul Mulders traced Hitler's living relatives in the Fuhrer's native Austria, as well as the United States.

"The results of this study are surprising," said Ronny Decorte, a geneticist interviewed by Knack. "Hitler would not have been happy."

Geneticists identify groups of chromosomes called haplogroups, 'genetic fingerprints' that define populations. According to Mulders, Hitler's dominant haplogroup, E1b1b, is relatively rare in Western Europe - but strongest in some 25 percent of Greeks and Sicilians, who apparently acquired the genes from Africa: Between 50 percent and 80 percent of North Africans share Hitler's dominant group, which is especially prevalent among in the Berber tribes of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and Somalis.

More surprising still, perhaps, is that Hitler's second most dominant haplogroup is the most common in Ashkenazi Jews. "The findings are fascinating if you look at them in terms of the Nazi worldview, which ascribed such an extreme priority to notions of blood and race," Decorte said.

Knack said it would now petition Russian government archives to release a human jawbone wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth, retrieved from a Berlin bunker where Hitler is thought to have committed suicide and believed to have belonged to the Fuhrer, who dreamed of engineering a Nazi superman.

"For modern science, there are no more races, Decorte said. "This pure type of 'superman' and the [Nazi] breeding programs to perfect 'purity' were sheer fabrication."

SOURCE

***************************

Obama Keeps it Real: Fake Plant for Fake Products for Fake Cars

Here's something that slipped through the cracks thanks to the fake drama that was going on during the fake fiscal crisis coming from our fake government in Washington, DC: Another fake green company boondoggle has resulted in federal dollars being spent on .nothing.

According to a report issued by the Department of Energy's own inspector general, employees at LG Chem, a Korean company that operates a battery plant in Holland, Michigan- a plant that's supposed to support the Chevy Volt- were paid for playing video games, board games, volunteer work at Habitat for Humanity and other local charities.

Another fake-work program brought to you by the DOE and Nate Silver.

"An investigation by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General," reports Mlive.com, "blasted the federal government for negligent oversight and LG Chem for wasteful spending of a $151 million stimulus project to build batteries for electric cars. Despite spending a majority of the money, LG Chem has yet to produce a battery."

LG Chem's defense seems to be: "Oh. You mean, we were supposed to WORK for that money, not play video games?"

Wired Magazine says, "LG Chem officials submitted those non-productive labor costs [that is, the costs for playing video games, etc.] for reimbursement because they were `unfamiliar with the types of costs that were allowable.'"

That seems to be a familiar complaint under the Obama administration. Not being familiar with stuff is kind of rampant. See, for example Ghazi, Ben.

This is not exactly a government that recognizes boundaries, laws, the United States Constitution, common sense, Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP), or even basic shapes and colors.

These are the same guys who pay unemployment benefits to convicts serving time for murder; they pay an adult male, who wears a diaper, a disability payment so said male- so-called- can pursue the "lifestyle" of an "adult baby." Oh, and they pay the diaper changer who tends to him too.

So, really who can blame LG Chem?

Not manufacturing a single battery for the Chevy Volt- the sole purpose for which LG Chem built a plant in Holland, Michigan- actually seems kind of like an act of mercy toward the taxpayers comparatively speaking.

Yes, wasting over $75 million in tax dollars on a plant was fool-hearted, but at least the losses end at some point, probably.

In contrast, three years into manufacturing the GREATEST CAR IN THE HISTORY of the Empire, designed by the GREATEST PRESIDENT EMPEROR EVEH! the Volt just keeps losing money, selling poorly and is still not using the batteries that LG Chem was supposed to provide.

Fake batteries for a fake Car-of-the-Year. Gee: And some wonder why Detroit is going bankrupt?

So, congrats to the US Senate and Korea's LG Chem on their new, low scores. Both have gone zero-for-three-years: LG Chem failed to produce a single battery for the Chevy Volt and the US Senate failed to produce a single vote for an Obama budget, fake or otherwise.

Since 2011, it's gotten so bad that Democrats have pleaded with The Big Zero to submit no budget at all.

Which leads us to the burning issue of the day.

What's a better use of taxpayer dollars? Funding high scores on Grand Theft Auto for employees of Korean crony capitalists, or funding the United States Senate to be against raising taxes before they were for them?

Although LG Chem has reimbursed Uncle Same Ole, Same Ole about $900,000 for the fraudulent labor, the real fraud here is elsewhere.

Because the fake budget item that allowed the theft to begin with, WAS authorized by the United States Senate.

The problem it seems for LG Chem and "those non-productive labor costs" was that the costs just weren't big enough. Steal $900,000 and you're just faker.

Steal over $75 million and you're an official line item in the last budget passed by fake Democrat majority.

SOURCE

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

*******************************

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)

***************************



March 11, 2013

Train Men Not to Rape? Or Train Women to Shoot to Kill?

Doug Giles

Last week on Hannity a “Democratic Strategist” named Zerlina Maxwell told Sean and his audience that guns are not the proper deterrent to dissuade rapists, but rather “teaching men not to rape is the key”. When I heard that chunk of stupidity I blew apple juice out of my nostrils -- and I haven’t had any apple juice in the last eight years.

That’s what you call “strategy”, Zerlina? Man, I hope she advises the Dems in the upcoming midterms and in 2016, because she’s denser than a chunk of Turkish walnut.

First off, I don’t know what planet Maxwell hails from, but here on Mother Earth I would say, aside from certain countries influenced by the religion of peace, pretty much everyone and their dog knows it’s wrong to put a knife or gun up to a woman’s noggin and then forcibly molest her.

Secondly, I don’t think, from a viability standpoint, her plan is workable. Primarily, because no matter how much men are “trained not to rape women” our society counters that tutelage by fueling notions of entitlement and narcissism within an atmosphere of violence that’s saturated with porn, where if you don’t get what you want then you act out.

From Zerlina’s zinger of teaching men not to rape, we then move to the brilliance of a girl named “Liberal Chick” who, in order to eschew an “evil gun” firearm defense in rape situations, states that we should train boys to …

1. Play with dolls so they will learn to be gentle.

2. Avoid hunting, football and other macho stupid activities that lead to rape.

3. Be vegetarians and suppress their love of eating meat that also leads to rape.

4. Purchase Prius’s instead of big SUV’s, which we all know macho, stupid rapists drive.

5. Become gay, or at least metro sexual, so that as men they will be more delicate and complex.

Look, if I were a lass I’d tell both Zerlina and Liberal Chick, “No, gracias, senoritas”. Liberal Chick’s and Maxwell’s brain farts are right up there with Democratic Congressman Salazar’s “rape whistle” and University of Colorado’s “pee your pants” prevention in molestation situations.

Given our malevolent milieu, here are three ditties that’ll greatly decrease your chances of getting raped, ladies.

1. Hone your BS Detector. The BS detector is essentially that little voice inside your head telling you to listen to the little voice inside your head. It’s an internal salvific alarm alerting you to dangerous situations. If you hone your BS Detector and listen to it when it starts screaming at you, you’ll be safer.

2. Become an expert in self-defense. In this violent environment you’re crazy to play the damsel in distress. Learn to kick some ass. Take formal training, throughout your life, as much as you can, by the best of the best.

3. Get a gun. Forget rape whistles, pepper spray and screaming for help. Get a firearm, sister. It is the great equalizer. A 5’1” petite coed with a Colt Python or a pump 20-guage, who knows how to use it, is a scary girl indeed. Think Lara Croft.

The thing that’s truly pathetic and evil is that Maxwell and her Leftist cabal, in order to forward their anti-gun agenda, will table such unworkable, scat-based nonsense to the very women they claim to champion.

SOURCE

*****************************

How the demographic shift could hurt Democrats, too

Since the November election, in which President Obama won huge majorities among minority voters, it’s been taken as gospel that the Republican Party must, for its own survival, seek to appeal to those groups by moving to the left on topics such as immigration reform. But as the nation becomes more diverse, the demographic shift can cut the other way, too: Some Democratic voters are likely to move to the right.

It’s assumed that, as the United States becomes increasingly non-white, white Democrats will continue to support the party. But a substantial amount of social-science evidence suggests a different conclusion: As the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, liberal whites might start leaning Republican.

Consider a straightforward experiment I conducted last year: Over two weeks, I sent pairs of Latino men in their 20s to ride commuter trains in the greater Boston area, often cited as one of the nation’s most liberal regions.

These people were not asked to do anything out of the ordinary, just to wait for the train and ride it. The pairs I sent were native Spanish speakers, so when they spoke to each other, it was probably in Spanish. To gauge other riders’ attitudes about Latinos, I surveyed them before the experiment and two weeks into the tests. In each case, the trains and times were randomly selected and were later compared with a control group of riders on different trains. These trains originated in communities with very few Latino residents, and the men I sent to ride the trains were often the only Latinos at those stations on a day-to-day basis. In this sense, the experiment was testing how people react when a very small group of Latinos moves to a new community.

The results were clear. After coming into contact, for just minutes each day, with two more Latinos than they would otherwise see or interact with, the riders, who were mostly white and liberal, were sharply more opposed to allowing more immigrants into the country and favored returning the children of illegal immigrants to their parents’ home country. It was a stark shift from their pre-experiment interviews, during which they expressed more neutral attitudes.

Political scientists, economists, sociologists and psychologists have long noted that, under most circumstances, when people from different ethnic, racial and religious groups come into new contact, conflict ensues. Just look at the battles over busing students from different neighborhoods into public schools in the 1960s and ’70s.

And those conflicts often change the way people vote.

In the 1930s, political scientist V.O. Key found evidence that, in Southern counties with large numbers of African Americans, white voters were politically mobilized: They voted more than whites in neighboring counties and supported candidates espousing discriminatory views in greater numbers. A similar trend recurred a generation later, when liberal Sen. Paul Douglas of Illinois lost his 1966 reelection bid, in large part because of votes cast by whites living in parts of Chicago that had seen an influx of African Americans.

In a more recent example, the city of Chicago began a massive effort in 2000 to overhaul its public housing. Large and notorious housing projects, such as Cabrini-Green, were demolished, and their residents were relocated. More than 99 percent of the relocated residents were African American. The outcome of the effort was the reverse of my experiment in Boston — rather than coming into contact, groups were separated.

Did that separation result in more liberal political views? Voting patterns among white residents living near these projects before and after their demolition showed that it did. After their African American neighbors left, fewer white residents turned out to vote, and voters became less likely to choose Republican candidates, whom they had previously supported at higher levels than had residents in other parts of the city. It seems that the contact with African Americans had politically mobilized whites in Chicago, similar to how Southern whites were mobilized in the 1930s.

To explore whether there was a similar effect among minority voters, in 2008 I conducted an experiment in which I sent a letter to African American voters just before an election in Los Angeles. The content of the letter was simple: It reminded people to vote and included a map noting how often people on their block voted compared with a nearby block. In some randomly selected cases, the comparison block consisted of African American residents; in others, it was largely Latino. When the letter pointed to a majority-Latino block, African Americans were significantly more likely to vote, suggesting that they were concerned about political competition with Latinos — even though both groups vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

In that same year, I examined the voting of Latinos in Los Angeles and found that those who lived near predominantly African American neighborhoods were far less likely to vote for Obama than Latinos who lived farther away — suggesting that contact with their African American neighbors may have prompted them to vote against an African American candidate.

As different groups come into contact, people often have adverse reactions, and this can cause them to vote for a party that represents opposition to other groups. In today’s electoral landscape, that might mean white Democrats would be more willing to vote Republican. There is some evidence that when most people vote against their party identification — perhaps as a Reagan Democrat, just once — they return to their regular partisan identity within an election or so. However, if people make that switch during their impressionable years, in their teens or 20s, it can last a long time. And if they become familiar with members of the other group on a personal level, then the initial aversion might diminish. For example, this might be why attitudes about same-sex marriage are changing — as more people come to know gay friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members.

Of course, people might change the way they vote for reasons other than the race or ethnicity of their neighbors, such as a change in their job or the birth of a child. However, these experiments tell us that, all else equal, contact between different groups, such as native whites and Latino immigrants, leads to more conservative voting.

None of these findings bode well for Democrats. As ethnic groups mix, voters become more exclusionary and tend to vote for more racially conservative candidates — which may make it more difficult to maintain a diverse Democratic Party and could tilt the field in favor of Republicans.

SOURCE

****************************


Amateur Beats Gov't at Digitizing Newspapers: Tom Tryniski’s Weird, Wonderful Website

A retiree with a scanner builds one of the world's largest historic newspaper sites while tax-funded projects stall.

One computer expert working alone has built a historic newspaper site that's orders of magnitude bigger and more popular than one created by a federal bureaucracy with millions of dollars to spend. Armed only with a few PCs and a cheap microfilm scanner, Tom Tryniski has played David to the Library of Congress’ Goliath.

Tryniski's site, which he created in his living room in upstate New York, has grown into one of the largest historic newspaper databases in the world, with 22 million newspaper pages. By contrast, the Library of Congress' historic newspaper site, Chronicling America, has 5 million newspaper pages on its site while costing taxpayers about $3 per page.[*] In January, visitors to Fultonhistory.com accessed just over 6 million pages while Chronicling America pulled fewer than 3 million views.

Fourteen years ago, Tryniski, a retired engineer, launched his website after a friend loaned him a collection of old postcards of Fulton, New York, the town where he's lived all his life. He decided to scan and share them online with his neighbors.

Fulton fell on hard times in the mid-1970s, and Tryniski is nostalgic for the thriving factory town in which he grew up. He relishes in particular the small details of life in old Fulton—wedding announcements, obituaries, school events, society gossip—the sort of information that's the bread and butter of local newspapers.So after the postcards, he digitized the entire run of the Oswego Valley News, which is the paper of record for Fulton and its surrounding county. It took about a year to finish scanning by hand the entire run of the paper, which began publishing in 1946.

Fultonhistory.com really got going in 2003, when Tryniski, a high school graduate, bought a scanner that handles microfilm for $3500 in a fire sale. That meant he didn't need access to the original newspaper copies and he could work quickly because microfilm scanners are largely automated. He installed a keyword recognition program, set up a network of PCs to do the heavy processing, and began uploading his scans to a server that's located in a gazebo on his front deck. He never bothered to change the original name of his website.

Tryniski pays all expenses for the site himself. The only significant costs are bandwidth, for which he pays $630 per month, and hard drives, which run him about $200 per month. He gets his microfilm at no cost from small libraries and historical societies. In exchange, he gives them a copy of all the scanned images analyzed for keyword recognition. Most of the papers Tryniski has digitized are from New York, but he’s rapidly expanding his coverage to other states as well. He is adding new content at a rate of about a quarter-million pages per month with no plans to slow down.

SOURCE

***************************

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery



Russia’s ruling party put up patriotic billboards around the city of Orel last month showing an image of a soldier in a tank and wishing residents a Happy Defender of Fatherland Day. Rather than showing a Russian soldier and tank, however, the photo actually featured an Israeli soldier in an Israeli-made Merkava III tank.

The United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin commissioned the billboards in honor of the Russian nationalistic holiday, celebrated on February 23, which is dedicated to soldiers serving in the Russian Armed Forces.

A Russian blogger identified the armored vehicle as an Israeli-made Merkava III. The photo, showing a reserves exercise by the IDF’s Armored and Engineering Corps, was quickly traced back to the IDF’s Flickr account.

The blogger drew attention to the irony of a foreign-produced tank featuring on a sign in honor of Defender of the Fatherland Day.

SOURCE

********************************

ELSEWHERE

British fashionista criticizes Mrs. Obama's style: "Dame Vivienne Westwood is giving Karl Lagerfeld a run for his money in the provocative quotes stakes. Speaking to the New York Times , Westwood seemed to recoil when asked about Michelle Obama's style, saying "Don't talk about her. It's dreadful what she wears… I don't want to talk about it. Really, I can't." "She's a very nice looking lady, but it's a non-starter regarding clothes that suit her," she elaborated, before going on to compare her to the eternally-stylish Jackie Kennedy. "Jackie Kennedy was a different matter altogether. It just has to suit her and be something that makes a human being more glamorous. That's what fashion is there for. It's there to help, not just to make you look more conservative."

U.S. unemployment is nearly double the official figures: "The official unemployment rate is 7.7%. However, if you start counting all the people who want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6. U-6 is much higher at 14.3%. Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years. Digging under the surface, much of the drop in the unemployment rate over the past two years is nothing but a statistical mirage. Things are much worse than the reported numbers indicate."

*******************************

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)

***************************



March 10, 2013

Why Jonathan Haidt is wrong

Jonathan Haidt is a remarkable man. He is the dominant thinker on the psychology of morality today. And he got there by doing something amazing. He listened to what conservatives have to say about moral issues! For someone with his liberal background that was a wrenching move. Leftist psychologists have built up in their own minds a caricature of what conservatism is and work with that (e.g. here). It is however a caricature that is more or less totally divorced from reality. But since they never talk to conservatives they never find that out. Haidt did talk -- and listen.

And what Haidt found was a real revolution in psychology. He found that liberals were simplistic thinkers on questions of right and wrong (can you get much more simplistic than: "There is no such thing as right and wrong"?) while conservatives had a much more complex account of moral issues. And that conclusion was precisely the opposite of what Leftist psychologists had been preaching for over 60 years at least.

I share that broad conclusion. In my own academic career in the 70's and 80's I regularly got research published which challenged the prevailing notion that it was the conservatives who were the simple thinkers.

So where does Haidt go wrong? I have set that out previously but the essence is that Haidt believes what people say about their own motivations. He believes Leftists when they talk about their noble motivations of achieving equality etc.

Haidt has therefore built his castle on sand. Ever since the work of LaPiere in the '30s psychologists have known of the large gap between people's attitudes and behaviour. What they say about their values and intentions is a poor guide to what they will actually do in any given situation.

Why is that so? Why can you not rely on what people report about their own inner life? A very common answer to that which has been around for a long time is that people commonly "fake good": They say what they think will make you think well of them. They hide their real thoughts because they suspect that other people will disapprove of such thoughts. And as a result, psychologists routinely use "Lie scales" or "social desirability scales" in their questionnaires to get some handle on such distortions.

I would argue that looking at what actually happens or has happened in politics (history) gives us a much more accurate interpretation of what actually drives people.

Leftists for instance are big preachers of tolerance but just listen to what they regularly say about conservatives and Christians. Very often it is pure hate. They have no actual tolerance at all. They tolerate only their own views. I document it often on my TONGUE-TIED blog.

And they rail against discrimination. But as Haidt himself has emphasized, liberal professors discriminate heavily against conservatives in hiring and firing. See also here.

And Leftists regularly claim to be anti-authority but in the global warming debate almost their only argument is that "the authorities" support global warming. That the whole global warming scare relies on totally hypothetical (and improbable) "tipping points" seems generally to be unknown to them. I document that authoritarianism regularly too -- on my GREENIE WATCH blog. And that arguments from authority are among the classic informal fallacies of logic seems to bother them not a bit.

And what about the great volte face from pre-war Leftism to modern-day Leftism? Before WWII, Democrats and socialists generally energetically advocated eugenics, were great patriots, convinced racists and were by far the most antisemitic. FDR turned back Jewish refugees and TR (founder of America's "progressive" party) and his allies built battleships, invaded several other countries and glorified war, seeing it as a purifying force. But Hitler had those ideas too so, when he was defeated, Leftists reversed direction and disowned most of their previous enthusiasms. In other words, they stand for nothing. They have NO lasting principles or moral anchors.

So what DOES motivate Leftists and their Greenie fellow-travellers? I think it's obvious if you look at real-life politics: Anger/Rage/Hate, closely related emotions that readily morph into one-another. Leftists are always claiming that hate motivates conservatives but that is just projection. And projection is a good protective strategy. It tends to make people say: "A pox on both their houses!"

Like that great hater, Karl Marx, today's Green/Left hate just about everything in the world about them and want to change it. And the torrent of abuse directed at those who disagree with them is patently in many cases pure hate. Abuse is their shtick, not factual argument. Haidt is failing to see the wood for the trees. He is naive in a way that no psychologist should be. He needs to look at real life political behaviour, not self-serving lies and airy theories.

***************************

Three Takeaways from Rand Paul's Filibuster About Drone Strikes

Yesterday's 12-hours-plus filibuster led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is among the most electrifying and insipiring events in recent political memory. The point of the filibuster - which derailed a confirmation vote on John Brennan as Barack Obama's CIA head - was to call attention to the president's insufficient answers to questions about his policy of targeted killings via drones and, one assumes, other methods.

Here are three takeaways from yesterday's epic event:

1. It shows what one man can do to call attention to a hugely important issue that nonetheless is largley ignored by the mainstream media and the political establishment.

Elected in 2010, Rand Paul has rarely been the Republican - or the Democrat's - media favorite. He's been heckled big time from his own side (which initially worked against his election) and across the aisle as an irresponsible ideologue (he's a dirty tea-bagger don't you know!). Among a good chunk of his father's most devoted followers, he's been assailed as a neo-con war hawk who was willing to trim his libertarian bona fides to win favor with the D.C. party crowd. His sad-sack opponent in the general election the GOP primary, Jack Conway, set new lows with the infamous "Aqua Buddha" ad that accused Paul of everything short of devil worship; his general election opponent in the GOP primary, Trey Grayson, had already trotted out many of the same pathetic lines.

reasonYet since showing up in D.C., Paul has been exactly what Reason dubbed him: "The most intersting man in the Senate" who has offered specific legislation and made extended arguments for a unified vision of limited government that is not only fully within some great lines of American political tradition but urgently needed in the current moment. Senators who pride themselves on their foreign policy expertise and have free-loaded for decades in D.C. haven't made a speech as thoughtful and out-front as the one he delivered a while back at The Heritage Foundation, for god's sake.

Rand Paul didn't speak or act alone yesterday, of course - and props to the dozen or so colleagues (including a Democrat or two) who joined him on stage or otherwise engaged him. But the opthamologist from Bowling Green, Kentucky almost singelhandedly brought the news cycle to a halt yesterday by insisting that the American government answer some basic questions about how, when, where, and under what circumstances it thinks it has the right to kill its own citizens.

2. It shows the power of transpartisan thought and action. Make no mistake: Despite the presence of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), yesterday's filibuster was a GOP-conducted orchestra. But what was most bracing and ultimately powerful thing about the filibuster was that none of the speakers exempted the Republican Party or former President George W. Bush, whose aggrandized view of executive power still roils the sleep of the Founding Fathers, from withering criticism and scrutiny. How else to explain that hard-left groups such as Code Pink were proud to #standwithrand yesterday on Twitter? The same with reliable Rand and GOP critic Eugene Robinson and many others who up until yesterday thought little of Rand Paul.

The filibuster succeeded precisely because it wasn't a cheap partisan ploy but because the substance under discussion - why won't the president of the United States, his attorney general, and his nominee to head the CIA explain their views on limits to their power? - transcends anything so banal or ephemeral as party affiliation or ideological score-settling.

The chills started early in the filibuster as Paul said things along the lines of, "If you're gonna kill people in America [as terrorists], you need rules and we need to know your rules," and "To be bombed in your sleep - there's nothing American, nothing constitutional, about that" (these quotes are paraphrases). Those are not the words of a career politician trying to gain an advantage during the next round of horse-trading over a pork-barrel project. They are the words of a patriot who puts his country first and they inspire accordingly.

3. It ties a direct line between the abuses of power and the growth of the state.

Despite using various self-identifiers over the years (he's called himself a libertarian, a conservative, a constitutional conservative, etc.) Rand Paul has always been rightly understood as an advocate of sharply limited and small government. During his Senate race, for instance, he said questions about drug legalization should be pushed back towards the states, where different models could be tried in accordance with the wishes of the people most directly affected. He presented a budget that was heavy on spending cuts that would have balanced the budget in five years. He has called for either actually declaring war on countries such as Iraq and Libya or getting the hell out. What unites his positions is a default setting against giving the federal government a free hand to do whatever it wants irrespective of constitutional limits.

A year or so ago, we were debating whether the government had the right to force its citizens to engage in particular economic activity - that was the heart of the fight over the mandate to buy insurance in Obamacare. That overreach - and the fear that a government that can make you buy something can also theoretically make you eat broccoli - was at the heart of Rand Paul's opposition to the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court ruled that in fact, the federal government not only has the right to regulate commercial transactions that take place anywhere in these United States, it has the right to force them to take place.

And now, we're arguing over whether the president of the United States in his role as commander in chief in an ill-defined, barely articulated "global war on terror" has the right to kill U.S. citizens without presenting any sort of charges to any sort of court. In fact, it's worse than that, since the president won't even share his rationale for what he may or may not believe with the country's legislature.

By foregounding the issues of limited government, transparency, and oversight as they relate specifically to the most obvious and brazen threat to civil liberties imaginable, Rand Paul and his filibuster have also tied a direct line to a far more wide-ranging and urgently needed conversation about what sort of government we have in America - and what sort of government we should have.

SOURCE

****************************

To create growth, unleash the invisible foot

Across the political spectrum, there is a growing recognition that while short-term battles over government spending are important, they would be far less ferocious and intense if our economy were growing at a faster clip. But while conservatives and liberals alike clamor for more growth, they disagree about how to produce it. The key is unleashing what the economist Joseph Berliner once called the “Invisible Foot,” the neglected counterpart to Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand.”

Before we turn to the Invisible Foot, let’s think through the prescriptions for growth offered by Democrats and Republicans. President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies often argue that substantial increases in public investment will deliver robust growth. Republicans, in contrast, emphasize the notion that reductions in marginal tax rates will spur growth by increasing the incentives to work and invest. These approaches are obviously far apart, yet they face at least two common obstacles. First, the aging of the population and the high cost of health entitlements severely limit the government’s ability to increase spending or cut taxes. Second, advanced economies have by definition already taken advantage of the most obvious sources of productivity growth and so are forced to innovate to find new sources of productivity growth. And innovation is a trial-and-error process that is far more expensive and arduous than simply following the leader.

So the question of the day isn’t whether we want growth (yes, we want it badly) or whether we can dramatically increase public investment or dramatically cut taxes (neither strategy is in the cards). Rather, it is whether there is anything we can do to make the American economy friendlier to the kind of risk-taking and innovation that will eventually yield productivity gains without breaking the bank.

Enter the invisible foot. Despite sluggish growth, large U.S. business enterprises have fared reasonably well in the post-crisis years. Corporate profits after taxes have hovered around 10 percent of gross domestic product, almost twice as high as they were during the Reagan years. High corporate profits aren’t an intrinsically bad thing. Yet we’d normally expect that they would over time be reduced by competition from new entrants enticed by the prospect of making their own fortunes. This invisible foot of new competition is what drives incumbent firms to either step up their games ‑ a process that often involves burning through stockpiles of cash and shrinking profits ‑ or go out of business.

Unfortunately, this reallocation of resources ‑ from inefficient incumbents to innovative upstarts and the incumbents that manage to keep up with them ‑ stops when incumbent firms succeed in erecting regulatory and legal barriers to shield themselves against competitors, which is why regulatory reform and patent reform are so important. It is also why we ought to take care not to give large incumbents any undue advantages in our tax code.

As it turns out, the U.S. tax code does give large incumbents an enormous advantage over start-ups by subsidizing corporate debt. When businesses want to raise money for operations, they can pour their profits back into the business, they can sell shares or they can borrow. In an ideal world, we’d want business enterprises to make these decisions on the basis of what makes the most sense based on underlying economic conditions. But in the United States, we allow companies to deduct interest expenses from their taxes but not dividends on their stocks. This makes it far cheaper for companies to raise money by borrowing than by selling shares.

One reason this debt bias is a problem is that it leads companies to take on large amounts of debt, which raises the risk that they will go bankrupt. Yet there is another problem: It is much easier for some companies to borrow than for others. Specifically, well-established firms ‑ for example, large incumbents with pricing power that have been around for years ‑ find it much easier to borrow than new, unproven firms with high-growth potential, which have little choice but to rely on selling shares to finance investment. And so the tax-deductibility of interest expenses and not dividends gives the entrenched corporate Goliaths that have the option to borrow a big boost, while doing nothing for the would-be corporate Davids eager to take them on.

With this in mind, Robert Pozen of the Brookings Institution and Harvard Business School and his research associate, Lucas Goodman, have devised an ingenious plan to level the playing field. First, they call for cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. This lower statutory rate will make the U.S. a much more attractive destination for profitable investment projects, particularly since our current corporate tax rate of 35 percent is the highest in the industrialized world. To finance this substantial cut, Pozen and Goodman propose a modest 60 percent to 85 percent cap on the amount of interest companies can deduct from their tax bills, sharply reducing debt bias and keeping the proposal revenue-neutral. Firms that rely heavily on debt would cry foul, and for some the process of reducing debt levels would be painful. Yet start-ups that don’t have the option of raising money by taking on enormous amounts of debt would find themselves at far less of a disadvantage. The end result could be an entrepreneurial renaissance, as lumbering corporate dinosaurs that had used cheap credit to scare off competitors are forced to reckon with innovative new rivals.

And if reducing the debt bias really does encourage start-up activity, the implications for employment levels could be significant. As the economists John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin, and Javier Miranda have observed, start-ups and young firms make a substantial direct contribution to creating jobs. Yet they can also make an indirect contribution to job creation by forcing incumbent firms out of their defensive crouch and into a fight to retain and gain market share. Consumers will also stand to benefit from this kick of the invisible foot as competition forces down prices and gives rise to entirely new products and services.

There is obviously no guarantee that reducing the tax code’s debt bias will be a silver bullet for economic growth. But Pozen and Goodman’s plan has enormous upside potential and, if designed with care, wouldn’t add a dime to the deficit. It would be foolish not to give it a try.

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

****************************



March 08, 2013

Regulatory barriers to innovation in Britain (and elsewhere)

What do you think of when picturing an ‘innovator’? I would hazard a guess that the skinny, t-shirted frame of a computer developer forces his way into mind. He is likely in the middle of developing a new app or website, and is keen to end his summons before your mind’s eye to get on with typing inscrutable code and eating pop tarts.

This is a shame. Not the interruption of our computer nerd - who we’ll leave alone now - but the fact that innovation has become such an internet and computer centred phenomenon. It is also, however, no coincidence. The ‘techy’ sectors have enjoyed huge advances in recent years in no small part because of the relative lack of regulation and red tape they’ve faced.

This has kept start-up costs low, compliance with legislation cheap, and product development swift. The economic benefits of this business freedom have been extraordinary. In 2010 the UK internet economy contributed £121bn to GDP, in 2016 this is set to be £225bn. This is a remarkable 86% growth in 6 years. According to McKinsey in 2011 2.6 jobs were created for every (mainly high-street) job lost. It is no surprise that London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ has grown in notoriety in recent years. We would do well to follow the advice of Dominique Lazanski’s recent ASI paper to keep the stellar growth going.

Other sectors have not been so lucky – over the decades industries like pharmaceuticals and food production, which once saw equally impressive innovation, have been overwhelmed by creeping legislative burdens. The rise of the grisly ‘ealf and safety brigade, backed by big business eager to block new entrants, has gradually put a stop to the leaping advances. The regulatory obstacles are so great now that aspirin would not be passed by the FDA (it would be red flagged because it risks causing gastrointenstinal bleeding). Similarly, rising levels of regulation contributed to the end of so-called ‘green revolution’ in food production between the 1940s and 70s, which hugely increased yields and lowered prices.

The risk of failing to comply with standards discourages businesses from engaging in the kind of innovation that can lead to radical break-throughs. It is safer to opt for more mundane improvements safe in the knowledge that they will be allowed to make it to the market-place.

I can hear the hard-hatted inspectors and boardrooms bursting to object. ‘This regulation is designed specifically for the benefit of consumers, they clamour; in its absence people would be exposed to improperly tested, and therefore potentially lethal medicines and foods. ‘Are you in favour of sacrificing human lives at the altar of innovation?’ they ask.

I can think of two replies to this. First, in the developing world millions die of starvation and disease; if more rapid advances were allowed many more lives would be saved than lost. Second, as our President Dr. Madsen Pirie argued so persuasively on the Daily Politics, the expectation of progress and improvement is an important component of a society’s well-being. Increased optimism about the development of new life-saving medicines and lower food prices would be a welcome addition to looking forward to the new iPad.

A bonfire of regulation would attract the best innovative minds from around the world and reignite economic growth and job creation in Britain. Exit double dip recession, enter double digit levels of growth. Who knows, we might even discover another drug as effective as aspirin.

SOURCE

***************************

"The War"

BOOK REVIEW of "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War" by Patrick Buchanan. Review by Jim Davies

There is little doubt that FDR was itching for a war, even though the American people were not. So the theory (advanced below) that FDR supported Britain even before the war began is plausible -- JR

The book is about the origins of World War II, and there are very few who have no need of intense interest in that subject, for it affected hundreds of millions of lives and ended 50 to 80 million of them prematurely. My own ne plus ultra on the subject is A.J.P. Taylor's masterpiece of that title, but CHUW is a welcome and worthy augmentation. Interesting, that Buchanan often quotes from that work and clearly admires it; yet he is an Old Right conservative while Taylor was a socialist. Their common ground is to demolish the conventional wisdom that still infests government school classrooms and The History Channel. Buchanan, more than Taylor, begins by detailing the origins of the First World War, because that was the true, basic origin of the Second due to the vicious terms imposed on Germany at Versailles.

So the first two chapters of CHUW deal with the end of the 19th Century and the disastrous blunders of the European government leaders in the first decade and a half that followed it. Those chapters are worth the price of the book on their own, and far exceed in value the standard textbook on the subject, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, which to my mind is hardly a history at all, rather a mere chronology.

Of particular interest to me was how Buchanan brings out the fact that there was no treaty obligation on the British government to take part, because the Anglo-French entente of 1905 was just that – an understanding, not a formal obligation. Thus, while all the other participants did have treaty obligations in that early form of Mutual Assured Destruction, the UK could have opted out – but for one factor: the Germans chose to attack France via Belgium, and there was in effect a 75-year-old treaty to guarantee Belgium's neutrality. Buchanan suggests that this was used in London as an excuse to join the war, the real motive being that without her participation, a German-Austrian victory was very probable, and domination of Europe by a German empire would have upset the stability of the worldwide British one. So entry hadn't much to do with pity for “little Belgium” as advertised, but a great deal to do with its centuries-old policy of opposing whichever nation in Europe stood poised to dominate the others.

At any rate, Buchanan analyses the moves in that terrible summer of 1914 and allocates blame – there was plenty to go around – and while a lot of mud sticks to the Brits, notably to Churchill who could ill restrain his enthusiasm for war, he shows that the Germans were the most eager to avoid a conflict if possible, and tried hardest to do so. Yet five years later, savage punishment for having started it was loaded on to them, the losers.

That fundamental injustice was forced by Clemenceau of France and Lloyd George of Britain, with US President Wilson ineffectively opposing and eventually concurring. Later, American public opinion correctly judged that the “treaty” had betrayed all the reasons Americans had had for joining the War, and turned away from European affairs in disgust.

Germans, of course, could not turn away, and the injustice rankled, and inevitably a leader emerged with promises to shred the treaty and reverse its provisions. By then – the 1930s – even most French and British pols had concluded that they were too harsh by far, so when Hitler skilfully reclaimed territory occupied mostly by German speakers who desired to live in a restored Germany, there was no wholehearted opposition. Not until Prague, that is, as Pat Buchanan shows; that was the turning point, on March 15th, 1939. Prague was not a Germanic city. Its part of Czechoslovakia was taken as a conquest by Hitler, and that was something up with which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did not feel able to put. So from that date, Buchanan says, he changed his mind; from appeaser, he became an opposer.

So he leads us to his Chapter 9, dealing with the pivotal, infamous “Polish Guarantee.”

I've been puzzled by that for many years. Everyone now agrees that it was by far the biggest blunder ever made in British foreign policy; on March 30th 1939, after a brief Cabinet discussion, Chamberlain announced that Britain would intervene if Polish integrity were violated. No quid pro quo, no prior discussions, even; it came as a surprise to all, including Polish Foreign Minister Beck, and to Hitler, who was furious. Just a blank check, out of the blue. Who suggested this catastrophic error, which did indeed prove, five months later, to be the trigger for World War II? That's the mystery, which I'd hoped CHUW would reveal.

It does not. Buchanan's treatment of the motivation is reasonable, but comes down to the theory that Chamberlain was a gentleman statesman who had accepted Hitler's word six months earlier in Munich, but who now felt betrayed and humiliated by the latter's grab of Prague and his demand for access to Danzig, a Germanic port in Northern Poland. So (it's alleged) he strung that trip wire for war in a fit of pique, as the quickest way to express anger.

Well, maybe. That says Chamberlain was naïve; for he knew full well in Munich in 1938 that he was accepting the word of a man who had systematically murdered some 200 of his own supporters in 1934, to foil an intra-party coup; so he was or should have been well aware that Hitler was no gentleman whose word could be trusted.

An alternative theory is that someone put him up to it. Paul Craig-Roberts, in this recent article on some “What-Ifs” of modern history, names Churchill as the villain, and it's true that he had in the late 1930s been calling on the government to oppose Hitler more firmly. But there is no hint in CHUW of any phone call or meeting between Churchill and Chamberlain, in which the former urged the latter to issue the Polish Guarantee--nor mention of any newspaper article to that effect. Churchill did applaud the announcement at once, but a few days later he backpedalled fast, having recognized with almost everyone else that it was a colossal blunder that left the fate of the British Empire in the hands of a Polish politician.

My own theory is that FDR is the one who put Chamberlain up to it, through his London Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. I've held that view for some years, but have seen no evidence to support it. The motive would be that FDR wanted a new war in Europe, which he could lead the US to join and win, as in 1917-18, bringing huge additional worldwide influence to the USA while diminishing that of Britain. He would have persuaded Chamberlain that the time had come to stand up to Hitler, and promised that if the outcome should be war, America would under his leadership once again come to pluck England's chestnuts from the fire.

CHUW gives me no support, either; Buchanan evidently found no trace of such a meeting. However, coincidentally, another recent publication does. It's a posthumous one by Herbert Hoover, a close friend of Joe Kennedy. The key passage from his Freedom Betrayed is revealed here, and confirms that Kennedy did indeed deliver that message to Chamberlain, at FDR's behest, in spite of his own personal disinclination; he was (or said he was) much in favor of appeasement throughout his London appointment. Hence, not only did FDR provoke Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, not only did he leak the Rainbow Five plan to stimulate Hitler to declare war on the US a few days later, but from the London Ambassador himself we have evidence that he even arranged for the European war to begin in the first place. And this is the President most lauded by every Statist in the land--unless it be that other mega-murderer, Abraham Lincoln.

Buchanan seems to have missed that one, but so had everyone else until Hoover's book emerged. Blame government restrictions on what can be published about its “statecraft.”

That's one of the few disappointments in CHUW, the other being a characteristic absence of relevant economic analysis. For example, Buchanan fails to expose the alleged German prosperity of the 1930s as a complete myth, being based on well-doctored statistics. However, I did learn one thing under this subject head: before FDR authorized the famous “lend lease” program in 1941, to supply the UK with badly needed materiel, he obliged Churchill to part with all the British government's gold. Not quite as altruistic as I'd thought.

Otherwise, it's a thrilling read, certain to invert many long-held suppositions. Churchill's contribution to his era is soberly analyzed, and he comes up very short. When he entered public life, Britain was astride the world, and when he left it, Britain was a second rate power, and nobody had contributed more than Churchill to the decisions that produced that decline. Time and time and time again, he blundered, and at no time more than in the early days of WWII. He had many opportunities to withdraw from that devastating conflict, but spat on them, every one. He helped achieve the destruction of one totalitarian monster, but at the cost of sicking a worse one on the whole world, as well as bankrupting his own country. Buchanan asks: “...we cannot ignore the costs of Churchill’s wars... Was it truly necessary that fifty million die to bring Hitler down? For World War II was the worst evil ever to befall Christians and Jews and may prove the mortal blow that brings down our common civilization.”

He treats Hitler impartially too, though is by no means an apologist for the Nazi liquidator of six million Jews. But he acknowledges superior statecraft when he sees it, and he sees plenty. Hitler would have waged war on the Soviets, without doubt, but at every turn in the preamble to the war with France and Britain, Hitler tried hard to avoid it. That part of World War II was completely unnecessary – and but for that part, the US would have stayed out.

SOURCE

**************************

Congress Goes Bipartisan —Against Civil Liberties

The parties collude to defeat accountability for the national-security state

By W. James Antle III

Civil liberties are theoretically a bipartisan concern. Conservative Republicans who don’t like Obamacare’s “death panels” should be outraged by presidential kill lists. Liberal Democrats who defend due process ought to be offended by secret surveillance law. Protectors of the First and Second Amendments should have a high regard for the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth.

Yet restricting civil liberties is what actually commands bipartisan support in Washington. The same Congress that barely averted the fiscal cliff swiftly passed extensions of warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention, assuring Americans that only the bad guys will be affected but evincing little interest in establishing whether this is really the case.

The same Congress that failed to come up with an agreement to avoid sequestration appears to have bipartisan majorities in favor of profligate drone use at home and abroad. Lawmakers are generally less exercised about the confirmation of likely CIA chief John Brennan than Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

At the very time it appears Washington is so dysfunctional that the two parties cannot get anything done, Democrats and Republicans cooperate regularly—when it it comes to jailing, spying on, and meting out extrajudicial punishments in ways that on their face contradict the Bill of Rights.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid argued that preserving the Bush administration’s national surveillance program—now for the benefit of the Obama administration—was more important than Christmas. Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss didn’t even want any amendments.

The Senate overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would apply the same protections against unlawful search and seizure to emails and text messages that already exist for letters, phone calls, and presumably the carrier pigeon.

Despite deep divisions over taxes and domestic spending, members of both parties tend to sing from the same song sheet about the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendments.

So much for the Democrats’ bedrock belief in the right to privacy or Republicans’ convictions about limited government.

Civil libertarians are currently a rump caucus in both parties. But they are at least starting to work together. In fact, a critical mass of legislators seeks to use this week’s Brennan vote to extract additional drone memos from the Obama administration.

More promisingly, liberal Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado have been teaming up with such conservative Republicans as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, seeking to impose real checks on powers the federal government acquired to fight the war on terror—a conflict with no real boundaries or identifiable endpoint.

The core purpose of the Constitution is to balance the powers necessary for the federal government to protect the United States with the need to erect institutional barriers to protect against the abuse of those powers. But in emergencies, constitutional restraints often go out the window and it is difficult to restore them after the fact.

This is especially true when there is no transparency or public accountability. Many details about national surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and even the spending habits of intelligence agencies remain state secrets.

Some level of secrecy is undoubtedly necessary to preserve national security. But giving federal officials sweeping, routinely exercised powers without sunlight or scrutiny is an invitation to abuse. That’s why having even a small group of senators pressing for public information is important.

Eli Lake noted in The Daily Beast, “[A]t a moment when inter-party cooperation is almost nonexistent in Washington, any bipartisan alliance—especially one that includes some of DC’s most committed ideological opposites—is both unusual and noteworthy.”

Lake was referring to the bipartisan alliance between civil libertarian-leaning senators like Paul and Wyden. But until they make legislative inroads, the more usual and less noteworthy bipartisan alliance will be the one that exists between John Yoo and the Obama administration, united by a predilection for virtually unchecked executive power.

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

***************************



March 07, 2013

Some beautiful music

I know that few people share my love of early music.  Maybe this piece will persuade someone



*****************************

Now Hiring Ex-Cons

My column for Defining Ideas last week stressed that antidiscrimination laws can wreak havoc on job creation. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, a federal agency tasked with enforcing antidiscrimination laws, has demonstrated just how destructive such laws can be. One instance of its folly is its “Enforcement Guidance” of April 2012, which has come to prominence after recent public hearings before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

With the Enforcement Guidance, all private employers and all state employers must use detailed and particularized inquiries before turning down a minority applicant who has a criminal arrest or conviction on his record, even though employers can turn down a white applicant with the same past record without going through such hoops.

An Upside Down Civil Rights Case

To the unpracticed eye, the EEOC ruling looks genuinely perverse. The law that was intended to end discrimination by private parties now institutionalizes it by government. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has, as its purpose, to make it “an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual…because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

Thus, the newest confection out of the EEOC orders most employers to do exactly what the law forbids. It introduces an explicit classification into the hiring equation by imposing a higher standard for refusing to hire minority workers than for others. The Enforcement Guidance also applies even when it is clear that the employer’s refusal to hire certain workers is not because of race but because of the evident risk that a criminal record could present to the employer, its other employees, and its customers.

The EEOC introduces what is termed “disparate treatment” by race in its supposed effort to prevent discrimination. The results are perverse at best. To take just one example, James Bovard, writing in the Wall Street Journal, reports that in 2010, the EEOC initiated litigation against G4S Secure Solutions “after the company refused to hire a twice-convicted Pennsylvania thief as a security guard.” Needless to say, the EEOC did not offer to indemnify G4S should they be held liable for any torts of their employee while on the job.

The legislative history makes it painfully clear that in order to overcome political opposition, the Act did nothing to prevent an employer from using whatever tests it liked to select those employees whom it thought best for the job. Indeed the law contained an explicit protection for any employer “to give and to act upon the results of any professionally developed ability test provided that such test, its administration or action upon the results is not designed, intended or used to discriminate because of race…”

Owing to the major differences in education and job history, most tests do have disparate impact by race. Under the Griggs rule, the employer could use that test only if some “business necessity” required its use, and then only if it had a near-perfect predictive power, which virtually no test ever has.

Unfortunately, this pattern of facts gives no indication of how to treat potential security guards who have committed violent crimes. The EEOC’s useless Enforcement Guidance only offers far-fetched examples at best. Additionally, the guidance neglects to tell an employer, who may receive hundreds of applications for a single position, how to make a detailed “individuated assessment” of each applicant and still remain economically viable. Nor does it say whether an employer remains in violation of Title VII by turning down ten minority applicants with criminal records after hiring the eleventh.

What makes this entire approach even more bizarre is that many agencies of the federal government make the same use of criminal conviction records that the EEOC demands that all states and private employers reject. At no point, however, does the EEOC claim that these federal agencies discriminate in any way. Nor does the EEOC address why it thinks these federal agencies are misguided in making their own considered judgments regarding the hiring of employees.

Who Benefits?

At the end of the day, what good does the EEOC hope to gain from this massive undertaking?

One of the great benefits of a competitive labor market is its self-corrective nature. The correct social question therefore is not whether this or that firm decides to hire a worthy applicant with a criminal record. It is whether any firm makes a positive hiring decision for a worthy candidate; if not, in competitive labor markets, any errors made by one potential employer can be corrected by favorable decisions by another.

Ironically, however, that redundancy is undercut by the EEOC’s uniform Enforcement Guidance. Some studies already suggest that firms are “much less likely to hire minority applicants when background checks are banned.” That result should not come as any surprise. The white male workers who are not protected by Title VII can offer employees this precious guarantee: the ability to hire and fire at will. Minority workers cannot waive their ill-conceived protections under Title VII, and thus are prevented from competing along this critical dimension. The EEOC Guidance may help some minority workers in a few cases, but it will hurt even more.

And by raising transaction costs, the EEOC will continue on its mindless job-killing path. Once again, the EEOC seems utterly oblivious to the harm that it causes to the groups that it most wants to help—and indeed to everyone else.

More HERE

*****************************

How to end overcriminalization

In June 2011, 11-year-old Skylar Capo saved a baby woodpecker from her family's cat. "I've just always loved animals," the aspiring veterinarian told her local news station. "I couldn't stand to watch it be eaten."

After rescuing the bird, Capo kept it by her side in a small cage for a few days to make sure it wasn't injured. She even took it along on a family trip to the local Lowe's hardware store. With the hot sun beating down overhead, Capo decided to carry the cage inside the store so the tiny woodpecker wouldn't get overheated in her car.

Little did she know, these acts of compassion violated a federal statute against the "possession" or "transport" of a migratory bird -- or that a Virginia game warden would be on her family's doorstep days later demanding payment of a $535 fine.

Because this story involved a little girl and a baby bird it made national headlines. But the underlying problem of overcriminalization rarely receives such attention -- which is just how big government likes it.

The proliferation of needless criminal statutes makes lawbreakers of ordinary people who have no ill intentions. As Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute puts it, they "find themselves on the wrong side the law without even realizing it."

Take Eddie Leroy Anderson, a retired logger from Idaho whose only crime was loaning his son "some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs," according to the Wall Street Journal. Anderson and his son found no arrowheads, but because they were unknowingly on federal land at the time they were judged to be in violation of an obscure Carter-era law called the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

The government showed no mercy. Wendy Olson, the Obama appointee prosecuting the case, saw to it that father and son were fined $1,500 apiece and each sentenced to a year's probation. "Folks do need to pay attention to where they are," she said.

Statutory law in America has expanded to the point that government's primary activity is no longer to protect, preserve and defend our lives, liberty and property, but rather to stalk and entrap normal American citizens doing everyday things.

After identifying three federal offenses in the U.S. Constitution -- treason, piracy and counterfeiting -- the federal government left most matters of law enforcement to the states. By the time President Obama took office in 2009, however, there were more than 4,500 federal criminal statutes on the books.

"Too many people in Washington seem to think that the more laws Congress enacts, the better the job performance of the policymakers," Lynch notes. "That's twisted."

Not long after Skyler Capo's battle with Virginia game wardens, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese joined Lynch in testifying before a House committee exploring the problem of overcriminalization. "The federal criminal code is overly extensive," Meese testified. "There are more laws than are needed or could possibly be enforced. There are too many redundant, superfluous and unnecessary criminal laws. They should be consolidated and/or eliminated."

A compelling new study on overcriminalization by University of Tennessee professor Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit fame) shows that there are many solutions to this problem, including an end to prosecutorial immunity, "loser pays" legislation and a ban on plea bargains.

But more drastic measures may be required. Reformers should really begin by going through the entire body of federal criminal law -- starting with all statutes that carry jail time -- operating under the presumption that every statute should be eliminated unless it can be justified as essential. The federal government, especially, has no business duplicating state functions or applying criminal penalties to advance mere social engineering objectives.

SOURCE

******************************

Chris Christie and the future of the GOP

It's a safe bet that most conservative Republicans would rush to support a political leader with the following record, especially in a traditionally Democratic state:

-- Reversed a $2.2 billion deficit and brought it into balance without raising taxes, largely by reduced spending and eliminating wasteful and unaffordable programs, allowing for a projected fiscal 2014 budget surplus of $300 million.

-- Bipartisan pension and benefits reforms, saving the state $120 billion over 30 years.

-- Streamlining government by eliminating 5,200 government jobs.
-- Vetoing tax increase bills three times while cutting taxes for job creators.

-- Reforming the nation's oldest teacher tenure law by making it conditional on teacher performance in the classroom.

-- Reduced property tax increases to a 21-year low and capped them at a maximum 2 percent.

There's more, but shouldn't conservative Republicans be ecstatic by this record compiled by New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie?

Not the folks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which decided not to invite one of the party's superstars to its annual gathering in Washington. Apparently, the reason had to do with Christie upsetting conservative orthodoxy by saying something nice about President Obama for approving emergency aid to distressed New Jerseyans affected by Super Storm Sandy.

I'm all for orthodoxy, which some call principle. I am orthodox in many things, but in politics compromise in the pursuit of ultimate goals does not necessarily make one a compromiser.

Gov. Chris Christie is no liberal. He is proving his ideas work, which is why, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, he has a 74 percent approval rating in one of the bluest states in the country.

Most politicians would, as they say, "kill" for a number like that, but instead CPAC organizers "killed" Christie from their list of speakers.

Conservative Republicans have a unique opportunity to present a positive, forward-looking and reform-minded agenda at a time when most voters' approval of government is scraping rock bottom. Americans are aware of the current dysfunction in Washington and may be ready for a creative message if Republicans could show them how a 21st-century model would mutually benefit themselves and the nation.

Former George W. Bush aide Peter Wehner offers some suggestions in a Time magazine essay:

"First, Republicans should make front-and-center their plans to reform public institutions that were designed for the needs of the mid-20th century. Our health-care and entitlement system, tax code, schools, immigration policies and regulatory regime are outdated, breaking down, and creating substantial wreckage. If I had to boil it down to a single sentence, I'd urge the GOP to develop its reputation as the party of reform and modernization. Second, Republican leaders at every level need to conduct themselves in a manner that not just reassures voters but appeals to them. As former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has put it, 'as we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit.' ... Third, Republicans must resist the temptation of defeatism, enervation, and turning against the country. It is entirely within the power of the GOP to both remain principled and appeal to a majority of Americans. An intellectually self-confident party would, in fact, be energized by a challenge of this scale."

Read this line again: "It is entirely within the power of the GOP to both remain principled and appeal to a majority of Americans."

A bold agenda that does these things reflects Gov. Christie's record in New Jersey. By not inviting him to speak, CPAC invites comparison with a pessimistic and hypercritical political environment of the past. If the Republican "tent" isn't large enough for Chris Christie, then it will resemble a pup tent for some time to come.

Republicans should be focused on deconstructing failed liberalism and styling their alternative in positive terms, not rejecting one of their own. Hating President Obama is not a policy. Intellectually defeating his policies is.

SOURCE

*****************************

The campaign against free and fair elections

The elections are only a few months behind us, but Democrats are already busy working to ensure citizens and non-citizens, the dead, felons and those registered in two or more states can cast a ballot in the next political contests.

These “new Americans,” as Democratic rising star and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley calls illegal immigrants, used-to-be Americans, those who gave up their voting rights after committing a crime and those extra-engaged citizens have one thing in common. They like Democrats.

That is why the left is busy pushing voter “access” from the top down. President Barack Obama said in his inauguration speech that, “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” And in his state of the union speech he proposed a commission to study electoral reform to make voting faster and easier.

But that is really not the mission. The average wait time around the country is 14 minutes, hardly an overwhelming burden.

The real issue is finding ways to ensure Democratic hegemony for decades to come. That is why the party and liberal activists want federal and state reforms allowing same day registration and voting and expanded early voting – but go postal over laws requiring voter identification and refuse to acknowledge fraud and election security issues.

Instead, they say the real problem is a vast conservative conspiracy to prevent minorities and the poor from voting.

There is plenty of evidence of fraud, however. Wendy Rosen, a Democrat who ran for Congress in Maryland last year, withdrew from her race after news broke that she voted in both Florida and Maryland. The New York Daily News found that 46,000 snowbirds, mostly Democrats, were registered in both New York City and Florida. Its analysis exposed that up to 1,000 of them voted in both states in multiple elections. As the paper wrote, “The finding is even more stunning given the pivotal role Florida played in the 2000 presidential election, when a margin there of 537 votes tipped a victory to George W. Bush.” And a group in Minnesota found by comparing criminal records with voting rolls that over 1,000 ineligible felons voted in the state’s 2008 election where the U.S. Senate seat, won by Democrat Al Franken, was decided by 312 votes.

Waiting in line to vote is an inconvenience, but reducing the wait time to zero is not worth it if it jeopardizes the integrity of elections across the United States. If those on the left truly cared about free and fair elections, they would focus their efforts on ensuring those allowed to vote have appropriate identification and that voter rolls do not allow people to vote in multiple states.

Couching the lie of “voter suppression” in the guise of “voter access” makes it no less dangerous

SOURCE

*******************************

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)

****************************



March 06, 2013

Dead in the Water: The Federal Flood Insurance Fiasco

By almost any analysis, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)—the recipient of a $9.7 billion bailout in the wake of Hurricane Sandy—doesn’t work. It is poorly conceived, it’s terribly mismanaged, and it encourages harmful behavior.

Of course, the same can be said for dozens of other federal efforts. What sets the NFIP apart is that, in looking to address what was at the time a clear market failure, Congress created a program that has so influenced the course of society these past four and a half decades that getting rid of it would be nearly impossible.

Before Congress set up the NFIP in 1968, only a handful of very small insurance companies wrote flood coverage as part of conventional homeowners’ policies. Although a demand for flood insurance clearly existed, nobody would sell it. This was a market failure as almost any economist would describe it. And it happened for several reasons.

Insurance works best when a large number of people who face similar but uncorrelated risks pool their risk together. But floods are heavily correlated. While they aren’t a serious concern in many parts of the country, they can be a constant menace in areas near river valleys or along coasts that face threats from tropical storms. In an era when small, local insurers that served one or two states provided most insurance, a single big flood could drive many of them out of business.

Not that the business of home insurance has ever been particularly lucrative. Over nearly any given 10-year period, the property and casualty insurance industry as a whole pays out in claims roughly as much as it takes in in premiums, and the home insurance business is one of the least attractive from an underwriting standpoint. Insurers earn their returns mostly by investing premium dollars in high quality, low-yield bonds. With very thin margins, in those years when the business is profitable at all, the main attraction to insurers of offering home insurance—required of everyone who has a mortgage—is the chance to cross-sell more lucrative products, like investments, life insurance, and automobile insurance. Indeed, no company of any size sells only homeowners’ insurance.

Most important, the data that insurers needed to make good underwriting decisions about flood risks didn’t really exist at the time Congress created NFIP. Before air conditioning and the near-elimination of malaria-carrying mosquitos made them pleasant places to live, wet areas were mostly the domain of poor “river rats” who couldn’t afford homeowners’ insurance. Because the flow of water continually changes the contours of flood-prone areas, mapping such areas remains inherently difficult and expensive and was nearly impossible given the technology of the time. And it follows that the paltry returns they expected to earn on flood insurance offered little incentive for insurers to invest in and improve these systems.

Government policy made things worse. Since the 1920s, nearly all states have passed laws to regulate how much insurers are allowed to charge. Although these laws have eased slightly since the 1960s—and vanished entirely in Illinois—they still make insurers very reluctant to take on new types of risks. They have a legitimate fear that state governments may not let them charge enough to cover their costs and, thus, face the no-win choice of either “nonrenewing” their customers or losing money.

Even worse, from the standpoint of any insurer contemplating entering the flood insurance business, Sen. Prescott Bush (father and grandfather of the Presidents Bush) succeeded in convincing his colleagues in Congress to pass a law creating a flood insurance program in 1956. While the program was never funded, its very existence in statute provided a powerful reminder that the federal government planned to nationalize flood insurance and thus was a disincentive for anyone who might otherwise have thought of investing in the market.

This combination of the nature of the flood risk, the insurance business, the limitations of technology, and the regulatory climate made it impossible to provide flood insurance in most of the country. Spurred on by the GI Bill, the new interstate highway system, and the FHA mortgage insurance created by the Housing Act of 1949, an exploding population began moving into brand new suburbs, many of them constructed in naturally flat flood-prone areas where building was easy.

Flood damages began to rise, and Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the first post-World War II storm to do more than $1 billion in damage, provided an additional potent incentive for the federal government to do something about flood insurance.

On paper, the flood insurance law passed by Congress in 1968 looked sensible: It required participating communities to take steps to avoid building in disaster-prone areas, left requirements loose enough that private companies could take on risk if they wanted to, assured that rates on all future construction would be “actuarially adequate,” and promised that the federal government would draw up the maps that the private sector needed in the first place. As an incentive for people to buy the insurance, it denied all federal aid to those who qualified for the program but didn’t buy in. Although its creators allowed it to borrow funds from the Treasury—a stop-gap measure, lest major floods had hit in its first few years—the program was intended to break even over time and, some thought, might eventually be sold off to the private sector.

Almost none of these good intentions proved justified. The requirement to purchase insurance or lose federal aid fell by the wayside as soon as hard-hit areas came crying to Congress. Government definitions of “actuarial adequacy” ended up leaving out most of the costs private companies would factor into their rates. While communities wishing to let their residents buy into the program did have to discourage the most obviously foolhardy building, poor mapping and the natural clout of local developers made these requirements a triviality. So much for a financially responsible program. “Temporary” subsidies became permanent. Congress periodically forgave the program’s debts and, following Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005, authorized it to borrow $20 billion from the Treasury that it had no chance of ever paying back. On the eve of Hurricane Sandy, the NFIP still owed the Treasury more than $17 billion, with another chunk of debt taken out to pay claims from Hurricane Ike in 2008.

With Congress expected to re-authorize the program every five years, many aspects of the NFIP grew worse over time. Even as Congress corrected obvious absurdities—such as subsidies for writing insurance on coastal barrier islands and other areas likely to wash away entirely—members added various benefits and even made the private insurance industry a beneficiary of the program. Under a “write your own” (WYO) program that pays them to adjust claims and service policies, private insurers get to keep about a third of the total premiums collected, but take on no real risk. While this program isn’t enormously lucrative for insurance company home offices—the tasks they’re asked to undertake are reasonably labor-intensive—it’s not a money loser either. Most large, well-known national property insurers participate in this WYO program, and not a single one was willing to step forward and offer to take on any risk when lobbyists and activists surveyed them about the topic last year.

Over the NFIP’s 45 years of existence, moreover, it has influenced the built environment to such an extent that full-scale privatization couldn’t happen, even if insurers were willing. For those whose mortgages were issued by federally chartered banks, or were purchased by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, policy requires the purchase of flood insurance if a property faces at least a 1 percent chance of flooding in a given year. Because NFIP rates have been kept artificially low for decades, millions of people now live in places that wouldn’t be inhabited at all absent the program’s subsidies.

Under Congress’s budget rules, eliminating the program outright would actually cost more money than keeping it operating. Once it finishes paying claims from Hurricane Sandy, the NFIP will owe nearly $30 billion to the Treasury. So long as those loans are outstanding, they don’t count toward the federal budget. Discontinuing the program, on the other hand, would leave taxpayers on the hook for that debt (and for scheduled mapping improvements) without any new premium dollars coming in the door.

The legally binding insurance contracts the program offers, likewise, make it impossible for Congress not to offer bailouts like the one that took place earlier this month. Had Congress not approved the funding, flood insurance policyholders would have gone to court and won judgments ordering the government to pay the claims anyway. Furthermore, the program, to the extent it will repay its debt at all, will never reach the point where it would look attractive to private suitors.

Everybody who has taken a close look at the NFIP realizes that the program is a mess. Once the symbolic votes to end the program had passed, both Democrats and Republicans came to basically the same conclusions that changes needed to happen. A set of reforms that became law last summer was written jointly by the moderate Republican Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) and far-left Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). That bill promises to improve maps, phase out some premium subsidies, and allow the program to transfer some of its risk to private reinsurers (insurers for insurance companies).

All of these changes make sense, and no sizable organized group stood against them, but they’re hardly the kinds of radical reforms that the program would need to put itself on firm fiscal footing for the long term. Even if all of the proposed changes work as promised, the program’s finances will remain such that any state regulator who looked over its books would forbid it from operating if it were a private company, on the basis that it can’t pay the claims it will reasonably expect to receive. At best, it will take an additional round of reforms—reforms that are unlikely to until the current program expires in September 2017—for the private sector to seriously begin assuming the liability. And that assumes Congress has the political will to ask coastal property owners to see their property insurance bills soar.

Better by far that the program had never been started. International examples show that private flood insurance can work. Germany and the United Kingdom, among other countries, write almost all flood insurance through private parties. While the business isn’t a major profit center for the insurance industry, it, at least, isn’t a taxpayer liability. And building is deterred in the most flood-prone areas.

More than anything else, the NFIP offers a stern warning to anybody who wants government to solve every problem. In the case of flood insurance, even the existence of a market failure didn’t mean the public sector necessarily had a better solution. For the foreseeable future, America is stuck with the NFIP.

SOURCE

******************************

The New Swedish Model

Among policy nerds back in the day, “Swedish model” meant the brand of social democracy practiced in Sweden in the second half of the twentieth century. (Somebody would usually crack wise about Anita Ekberg whenever the phrase was uttered.) But for a very long time, whenever the problems of socialism were discussed, it was common to hear people say as a kind of shut-up argument: “Ah, but socialism works in Sweden; what about the Swedish model?”

Swedish social democracy created an extensive welfare state—including comprehensive health care, generous unemployment benefits, and marginal tax rates commonly in excess of 70 percent. But that followed years of relatively free-market policies in the early twentieth century, which generated impressive economic growth. Government intervention in Sweden didn’t really get going until the 1960s.

The Economist on “Northern Lights”

Interventionists in the United States could learn something from what’s going on now in Sweden (although I fear they won’t). According to a recent spread in The Economist magazine:

"Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67 percent in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983, to 57%, and scrapped a mare’s nest of taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. This year it is cutting the corporate-tax rate from 26.3% to 22%."

Compare these rates with the U.S. tax rates, under the 2013 tax law, of 39.6 percent on incomes above $400,000 (filing single) and 35 percent on corporations.

But in some sense the current dramatic policy changes in Sweden are just a continuation, after an interruption of several years, of a dis-interventionist trend that began in the 1990s. The “new” Swedish model is not really that new. Indeed, Sweden has climbed to 30th out of 144 countries in economic freedom according to FreetheWorld.com, compared to the United States, which has fallen to 18th, just ahead of Germany (31st) and far outpacing France (47th) and China (107th).

So What About the United States?

The federal deficit numbers in the United States, however, look worse compared to Sweden’s. Again, according to The Economist:

"Sweden has also donned the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy with its pledge to produce a fiscal surplus over the economic cycle. Its public debt fell from 70% of GDP in 1993 to 37% in 2010, and its budget moved from an 11% deficit to a surplus of 0.3% over the same period."

The current federal deficit—the annual excess of government spending over tax revenue—is around $1.1 trillion.

The accumulated debt of the United States federal government now exceeds $15 trillion, which is roughly equal to the current gross domestic product (GDP), the dollar value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. economy in 2012. That means that the federal debt as a percentage of GDP is now slightly more than 100% percent (compared to 37 percent in Sweden).

The United States does compare favorably to Sweden in federal spending as a percentage of GDP. For the United States, that’s about 39 percent, versus over 50 percent for Sweden. Including state and local spending boosts this figure somewhat over 40% percent of GDP for the United States, but that’s still significantly below Sweden's figure. Sweden, though, with one-thirtieth the population of the United States, has a per capita GDP of $57,091 to the United States’s $48,112.

If Sweden Can Do It, Can the United States?

Some fear that a debt-to-GDP ratio above 100 percent places the United States past the fiscal “point of no return”—that is, past the point where in modern times governments have been able to significantly reduce the percentage of debt to GDP. How did things get so bad?

Milton Friedman brilliantly characterized the main alternative politico-economic systems as follows:

1) spending my own money on myself (capitalist model)

2) spending my money on someone else (Christmas model)

3) spending someone else’s money on myself (rent-seeking model)

4) spending someone else’s money on someone else (socialism)

He went on to say that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

But if Sweden, a country in which the welfare state has been so entrenched over so many decades, can make such dramatic, even radical, changes in its interventionist habits, why couldn’t the United States? A comparably dramatic reform here—perhaps “revolution” comes closer to describing what would be needed—is certainly possible, despite staggering institutional barriers, tenacious entrenched interests, and sheer economic ignorance.

The biggest obstacle, as I see it, is not having the strength of will to sustain the relentless intellectual and political battle needed to overcome all those other obstacles. And in all honesty, I find it hard to be very optimistic about that.

The Greek Model

Well into my sixth decade of life, one of the things I think I’ve learned is that radical change and the will to see it through are indeed possible—beyond any so-called point of no return—but only when it’s clearly a matter of life and death. There has to be a sense of urgency, even desperation, to the extent that you become willing to do whatever it takes to survive. But of course desperation is tricky; desperate people can easily make matters worse. It’s perhaps during crises, moments of widespread desperation, that a well-developed philosophy of freedom can have its finest moment by guiding desperate people toward real solutions.

So does the United States have to follow, say, hapless Greece—with its bloated welfare state, strangling regulation and taxation, and monetary profligacy—before our crony-capitalist system develops cracks wide enough for enough of us to see that embracing liberty and rejecting statism is our last, our best, and our only hope?

I’m afraid our economy will have to look much more like the Greeks’ before we’ll muster the will to follow the example of the Swedes.

SOURCE

***************************

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)



March 05, 2013

How Liberals Live

It's all about control. Liberals can control the poor by patronizing them but the middle class are a bit pesky

The Democratic Party has two reliable groups of adherents: the rich and the poor. Not all of the rich, of course. Not all of the poor, either.

But a large swath of wealthy people, especially those whose wealth was inherited rather than earned, wouldn’t dream of voting for a Republican. Ditto for a large number of poor people who have discovered how to sign up for various welfare programs and intend to remain on the dole for the rest of their lives.

What do these groups have in common? Nothing. They rarely meet. And if they did they wouldn't like each other.

You might be inclined to think that the political union of these two groups is an accident of modern electoral politics. But there may be something else involved. Both groups have little use for the middle class -- the poor envy them and the wealthy disdain them.

To test the idea the there might be some sort of weird sociology involved, I decided to look in on some communities where limousine liberals are firmly in control and have no fear of being ousted in the next election by middle class voters with middle class values.

Welcome to the People's Republic of Boulder, Colorado. When you ask the residents what they like about Boulder, they are quick to respond. "You won't find any large billboards telling you where the nearest Target is," I was told. And, "Where you might find a McDonald's or a Taco Bell in some other city, in Boulder you are more likely to find Starbucks or Whole Foods."

To make sure that things stay that way, Boulder has virtually destroyed any possibility of new housing that people who shop at Target and eat at McDonald's would find affordable. Through tight zoning restrictions, the city has virtually legislated new, middle class housing out of existence. The city has even purchased large tracts of land to make sure development doesn't occur.

As a result, the average price of a home in Boulder is $375,000, in contrast to an average price of $220,000 in Colorado Springs.

Boulder has its own global warming policy. In fact, it is one of the few cities in the country that is about to jettison a private electric utility company for a publicly owned one. The reason: the private electric company isn't "green" enough. This would be comical until you stop to realize that Boulder has a lot to atone for on the climate change front. Two thirds of all the people who work in Boulder must drive to work from outside the city because they cannot afford to live there.

That's 60,000 automobiles spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every morning and every evening of every congested business day, thanks to Boulder's land use planning.

While Boulder forces its middle class workforce to live in neighboring communities, it is surprisingly generous to the poor. A multimillion dollar homeless shelter is so luxurious, it actually attracts vagabonds from other Colorado cities. As one local writer explains:

"Boulder Shelter for the Homeless is a multimillion dollar facility of recent construction. It has a spacious day room, a TV room, washing machines ($1 per load) and dryers (free) available, showers, a few dozen small storage lockers, and a large kitchen/dining room… It has a 160 person occupancy limit, and the nightly "overflow" is accommodated by a network of local churches and a synagogue managed by Boulder Outreach for Homeless Overflow.

There is also an active program to provide subsidized housing to low-income families. One development on prime real estate with a mountain view is estimated to have a market value of $500,000 per unit. In other words, low-income families are living in housing units that are worth considerably more than the average home in Boulder! Unfortunately, poor families cannot sell their homes to the highest bidders, however. Were they able to, they would immediately become non-poor and the property would go to its highest valued use.

Maximizing the value of property, however, is not the goal of the citizens of Boulder. If you have a house built, say, before 1950, there's a good chance the Landmark's Board will designate it a historic preservation site and not allow you to modify it. For new houses and renovations, the city virtually dictates how big the house can be. It also tells you what kind of fireplace you can have and what you can or can't burn in it. If you want to tear down an existing structure, you can't just bulldoze it. You have to disassemble it and recycle all the pieces.

When the owners of a trailer park decided to use the property to build condominiums instead, the trailer owners appealed to the city leaders, who rezoned the property so that it could only be used as a trailer park.

Then, of course, there is the nanny state desire to tell everyone what to do with their personal lives. Smoking in Boulder is banned in almost all indoor facilities and also outside on the sidewalk.

SOURCE

**************************

Economic growth centered in America's more conservative States

In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, some political commentators have written political obituaries of the "red" or conservative-leaning states, envisioning a brave new world dominated by fashionably blue bastions in the Northeast or California. But political fortunes are notoriously fickle, while economic trends tend to be more enduring.

These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt.

Overall, these corridors account for 45% of the nation's land mass and 30% of its population. Between 2001 and 2011, job growth in the Great Plains, the Intermountain West and the Third Coast was between 7% and 8%—nearly 10 times the job growth rate for the rest of the country. Only the Southeastern industrial belt tracked close to the national average.

Historically, these regions were little more than resource colonies or low-wage labor sites for richer, more technically advanced areas. By promoting policies that encourage enterprise and spark economic growth, they're catching up.

Such policies have been pursued not only by Republicans but also by Democrats who don't share their national party's notion that business should serve as a cash cow to fund ever more expensive social-welfare, cultural or environmental programs. While California, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota have either enacted or pursued higher income taxes, many corridor states have no income taxes or are planning, like Kansas and Louisiana, to lower or even eliminate them.

The result is that corridor states took 11 of the top 15 spots in Chief Executive magazine's 2012 review of best state business climates. California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts were at the bottom. The states of the old Confederacy boast 10 of the top 12 places for locating new plants, according to a recent 2012 study by Site Selection magazine.

Energy, manufacturing and agriculture are playing a major role in the corridor states' revival. The resurgence of fossil fuel–based energy, notably shale oil and natural gas, is especially important. Over the past decade, Texas alone has added 180,000 mostly high-paying energy-related jobs, Oklahoma another 40,000, and the Intermountain West well over 30,000. Energy-rich California, despite the nation's third-highest unemployment rate, has created a mere 20,000 such jobs. In New York, meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is still delaying a decision on hydraulic fracturing.

Cheap U.S. natural gas has some envisioning the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge as an "American Ruhr." Much of this growth, notes Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, will be financed by German and other European firms that are reeling from electricity costs now three times higher than in places like Louisiana.

Korean and Japanese firms are already swarming into South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. What the Boston Consulting Group calls a "reallocation of global manufacturing" is shifting production away from expensive East Asia and Europe and toward these lower-cost locales. The arrival of auto, steel and petrochemical plants—and, increasingly, the aerospace industry—reflects a critical shift for the Southeast, which historically depended on lower-wage industries such as textiles and furniture.

Since 2000, the Intermountain West's population has grown by 20%, the Third Coast's by 14%, the long-depopulating Great Plains by over 14%, and the Southeast by 13%. Population in the rest of the U.S. has grown barely 7%. Last year, the largest net recipients of domestic migrants were Texas and Florida, which between them gained 150,000. The biggest losers? New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California.

As a result, the corridors are home to most of America's fastest-growing big cities, including Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City and Denver. Critically for the economic and political future, the growth corridor seems particularly appealing to young families with children.

Cities such as Raleigh, Charlotte, Austin, Dallas and Houston enjoy among the country's fastest growth rates in the under-15 population. That demographic is on the wane in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. Immigrants, too, flock to once-unfamiliar places like Nashville, Charlotte and Oklahoma City. Houston and Dallas already have more new immigrants per capita than Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle and Chicago.

Coastal-city boosters suggest that what they lose in numbers they make up for in "quality" migration. "The Feet are moving south and west while the Brains are moving toward coastal cities," Derek Thompson wrote a few years ago in The Atlantic. Yet over the past decade, the number of people with bachelor's degrees grew by a remarkable 50% in Austin and Charlotte and by over 30% in Tampa, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta—a far greater percentage growth rate than in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago or New York.

Raleigh, Austin, Denver and Salt Lake City have all become high-tech hubs. Charlotte is now the country's second-largest financial center. Houston isn't only the world's energy capital but also boasts the world's largest medical center and, along with Dallas, has become a major corporate and global transportation hub.

The corridors' growing success is a testament to the resiliency and adaptability of the American economy. It also challenges the established coastal states and cities to reconsider their current high-tax, high-regulation climates if they would like to join the growth party.

SOURCE

****************************

ELSEWHERE

20 years ago today: Operation Showtime: "On February 28, 1993, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau raided the home of the Branch Davidians, a religious sect just outside Waco, Texas. The agency, which has suffered bad press due to sexual harassment and racial discrimination scandals, made sure reporters were there to witness its planned heroics and dubbed the raid 'Operation Showtime.' The agents sought to apprehend sect leader David Koresh, whom they deemed a dangerous cult leader, but who, as an integrated member of the community, they could have easily arrested peacefully on his regular jog or during one of his frequent visits to the bar."

Waco: 20th Anniversary of the ATF attack on the Branch Davidians: "Today is the 20th anniversary of the ATF’s attack on the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas. I thought Waco might be the most important public education lesson of the 1990s, but I don’t see the learning curve yet. Most Americans forgot or never undertstood Waco, paving the way for politicians to commit other grave abuses in the following years. Following are a few pieces I did on Waco back in ‘95, when some members of Congress briefly acted like they gave a damn about the carnage."

The coming default: "I think it's more practical to address those who continue investing, through the purchase of government bonds, in the debts run up by Obama, Reid, Boehner et. al. and let them know that the likelihood of making their money back over the long haul passed 'slim'quite some time back and as of now is right at 'none.' Sooner or later -- probably much sooner than most people think -- that debt is going to be defaulted upon and repudiated. There is no 'if' involved, only an unspecified 'when.' Heck, it may even be this generation! Regardless of when the when is, one thing is certain: You don't want to be holding T-Bills when it arrives."

Lincoln’s inversion of the American union: "By 1860, a choice lay open between either re-negotiating the compact between the states in order to form more perfect unions, as John Quincy Adams counseled should happen, or a powerful section would have to conquer the whole and reconstruct it into its own image, subordinating all else to its own interests. Everything in the older American tradition of the self-government of peoples points to the former path. Lincoln chose the latter path, and in doing so was in step with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century trend of industrial society to consolidationism."

NY: Bloomberg booed at annual St. Patrick’s Parade in storm-ravaged Rockaways: "Mayor Bloomberg was booed yesterday as he walked in the annual St. Patrick’s Parade in the hurricane-ravaged Rockaways. The jeers grew so loud toward the end of the Queens parade that mayoral candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn appeared to break away from the mayor to march separately. ... The mayor wasn’t the only politician crossed by paradegoers. Revelers heckled Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer after he cheered through a bullhorn, 'Let’s hear it for the Rockaways.' 'Send money, pal. Send money!' one heckler yelled back. 'Talk is cheap!'"

CA: Smart kid designs compact nuclear reactor: "Eighteen-year-old Taylor Wilson has designed a compact nuclear reactor that could one day burn waste from old atomic weapons to power anything from homes and factories to space colonies. The American teen, who gained fame four years ago after designing a fusion reactor he planned to build in the garage of his family’s home, shared his latest endeavor at a TED Conference in southern California on Thursday. 'It’s about bringing something old, fission, into the 21st Century,' Wilson said. 'I think this has huge potential to change the world.' He has designed a small reactor capable of generating 50-100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power as many as 100,000 homes."

Switzerland: Voters approve limits on “fat cat” executive pay: "Swiss voters approved some of the world’s toughest limits on executives’ pay in a referendum, a move critics say could make Switzerland less attractive to multinational corporations. ... The proposal gives shareholders an annual ballot on managers’ pay. It eliminates sign-on bonuses, as well as severance packages and extra incentives for completing merger transactions. The initiative also includes rules punishing executives who violate the terms with as long as three years in jail."

From Hollywood to Kansas, drones flying under the radar: "They hover over Hollywood film sets and professional sports events. They track wildfires in Colorado, survey Kansas farm crops and vineyards in California. They inspect miles of industrial pipeline and monitor wildlife, river temperatures and volcanic activity. They also locate marijuana fields, reconstruct crime scenes and spot illegal immigrants breaching U.S. borders. Tens of thousands of domestic drones are zipping through U.S. skies, often flouting tight federal restrictions on drone use that require even the police and the military to get special permits."

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

***************************

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)

***************************



March 04, 2013


Pictures, pictures, pictures!

Every now and again I find a picture, graphic or toon that amuses me in some way and I put it up on this blog or on one of my other blogs. I have just put together what I see as the "best" of my pictures for the period of July to December last year. You can access it here or here

**************************

False Prophets and the End of the World

Krista Kafer

Remember back in 2011 when radio broadcaster and end-of-the-world prognosticator Harold Camping predicted the world’s end on October 21 yet the day passed with nary a sign of Armageddon?

Last year, the ancient Mayans and a few North American self-proclaimed prophets like Warren Jeffs had various dates in December pegged for the end. Imagine the surprise of their true believers when the sun came up the next day. Did they feel relief? Disappointment? Skepticism (somewhat overdue) toward their leaders? Some no doubt have left the cult while others wait in trepidation for their prophet to predict a new date of apocalypse.

More recently, what did those who believed in the sequestration end-of-the-world feel when they woke up this morning and everything was as they left it last night? Air traffic controllers are still directing flights and no planes have fallen from the sky. Medical research is still going on. Teachers are on their way to work as are health inspectors. National parks are open. Children are getting vaccinated. Government satellites continue to orbit the earth. The day will go on as every other day before it. No need to stay in the bunker.

As for the true believers, are they experiencing relief that the $85 billion cut—a mere 2.3 percent from this year’s $3.6 trillion budget—has not thrown the country into crisis? Or disappointment that the great federal government is not so indispensable that its growth rate cannot be trimmed a little without dire consequences? Will they feel skepticism (somewhat overdue) toward the self-interested politicians who use scare tactics to get what they want and the press that hypes fears for ratings? Some no doubt are now tuning out the fear mongering while others wait for the politicians to cry Armageddon once again.

During the past couple of “crises,” politicians’ fear mongering has successfully prevented any spending cuts while justifying tax hikes. It’s been “A tournament, tournament, a tournament of lies” to quote R.E.M.’s manic song It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Tales of fiscal cliffs and government shut-downs have distracted from the real problems ahead like the $16 trillion in national debt, Social Security and Medicare’s fragile financial footing, and yearly trillion plus dollar deficits.

While sequestration may not be the best way to cut an irresponsible $3.6 trillion budget, it has become the only way that politicians will do what is right. Only the House of Representatives has had the courage to cut spending, but it cannot act alone. Incredibly, Senate Democrats and the White House tried to pass a bill yesterday that would have increased spending and raised taxes. Didn’t Congress just raise taxes? Without sequestration, the status quo remains unchallenged and that is a truly scary situation.

In the end, however, sequestration is insufficient to adequately reduce the deficit. Because it is only a cut in the growth of spending, the government will still spend more taxpayer money next year than it did this year. More cuts in discretionary spending are long overdue and there are countless examples of duplicative and ineffective federal programs and endless corporate and farm subsidies from which lawmakers can choose. Half of the budget, however, is devoted to mandatory spending—Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and interest on the debt—all of which is exempt from the sequester. It is clear that lawmakers must summon the will to reform these programs in order to balance the budget now and for the long term. In 2020,interest on the federal debt will rise to $1 trillion a year. Over the next decade the Social Security disability fund and Medicare hospital insurance run out of reserves. In another ten years, Social Security will run dry. The sequester does nothing to stave off these daunting budget crises.

The sequester does, however, prove that government spending can be cut without triggering the end of the world. It shows the crisis mongering on the Left for what it is—a con designed to milk the public for more money.

SOURCE

**********************

Leftist obfuscation and deception

Emmett Tyrrell

I have long contended that public policy issues are as complicated as they appear because the giants of Capitol Hill like it that way, particularly the giants of the left. Bills can be written more simply. Decisions can be phrased with a certain lucidity. Yet, if they were, the electorate would mull them over and, after a cup of coffee, make a decision on them. As things stand today, with talk of budget imbalance and of esoteric matters such as "sequestration," voters scratch their heads, blink their eyes and walk away. Who gives a hoot? It is time for my morning nap, perhaps, two naps.

This is another anti-democratic way that Washington politicians have bootlegged our legislative process. Make policy so confusing to normal people that they will take little or no interest in it. It is all a game reserved exclusively for the political class. Al Gore in his new book, prosaically titled "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change," bangs on about the power of lobbyists and giant corporations in shaping legislation -- do you know anyone who sits on more corporate boards than Gore? Has he considered the unwieldy nature of the legislation in the first place? Debt piled atop debt that even Warren Buffett cannot conceptualize. Sequestration, indeed -- why not segregation or constipation? It is a geek to me.

Then there is another of Washington's ways, lying. Or merely indulging in double talk until it reaches the point of lying or at least of deceiving. Both Republicans and Democrats do that all the time, though the number one Democrat is showing himself to be a master in the art. Now, however, he is going over the top. I believe, in his current row over sequestration, he has misstated the truth so shamelessly that he is in danger of destroying the one thing he as a politician needs the most, credibility. Once that is gone, he will have critics and even friends raising doubts about what he says on matters vast and puny.

The White House and the president have claimed that the Republicans have raised the present hullabaloo over sequestration. It was their idea, according to the White House and the president. That struck me as odd because, according to my recollection in the summer of 2011, the White House devised the idea of sequestration to ease both Republicans and Democrats into a deal enabling them to raise the debt ceiling -- remember the debt ceiling? Furthermore, if memory serves, included in the 2011 deal was a provision to bar any further tax increases. The president himself endorsed the idea. Actually, in his third debate with Mitt Romney he specifically said, "The sequester is not something I proposed." No, "It is something that the Congress proposed."

Now he is continuing to misstate the truth, but in so doing he casts doubt on Bob Woodward's latest book, and that has aroused Woodward. Says Woodward, "My extensive reporting for my book, "The Price of Politics," shows the automatic spending cuts [sequestration] were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of [Jack] Lew [at the time White House chief of staff and now Obama's nominee for secretary of the treasury] and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors ... " And more: "Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved."

President Obama, you are being watched. I would not resort to such tricks typical of a community organizer but not so easily resorted to by a president. Too many people are watching. Bill Clinton could advise you on this. It is not wise to play cute with the historic record.

President Obama has a problem on Capitol Hill. He is not trusted. The Republicans do not trust him and Democrats are wary. My guess is that this administration is going to find the years ahead painful.

SOURCE

******************************

Study Says Free Lunches Expensive, Lack Nutrition‏

A controversial government study today revealed an astounding conclusion: free lunches are expensive and lack nutrition. All copies of the study have since disappeared and the members of the blue-ribbon panel which produced it have not been seen since it was released.

President Obama condemned the results, alleging that the panelists were "receiving bread under the table from the restaurant industry."

"It's nonsense," said the president. "Michelle and I get free lunches all the time and they don't cost us a thing. As far as not being nutritious, well, can anyone believe that after seeing the size of my wife's..." The president was interrupted by a loud noise off stage before completing his thought.

Other critics were less tactful than our unifying president.

"Their conclusion is ridiculous!" claimed Mora Forrus, president of Free Stuff Distribution Employees Union, a nationwide labor organization, which represents workers who help distribute free lunches.

"Just think about it: 'free' means it don't cost anything, so it's free! And 'lunch' is food, which means it's nourishing. Put them together and you get a nourishing free lunch! It's not rocket science!"

"This is right wing propaganda designed to deprive people of their free lunches!" said Forrus, whose union is threatening to strike unless their demands for a wage increase are met. "Distributing free lunches is a tough job - you can't expect us to work for NOTHING!"

"I have never read anything so heartless and insensitive in my life" stated Willie Cheatem, spokesperson for the Lunch Manufacturers Association, a food processing and repast fabricators trade group.

More Here

*****************************

A thug union

What would you say if a group of employees working the Alzheimer’s ward in a health care facility deliberately switched the name tags on patient’s doors making patient identification difficult and removed dietary instructions from the patient’s room, putting patients at risk?

Would it matter that these actions were deliberately taken as part of a labor dispute?

That is exactly what happened at HealthBridge, where SEIU members engaged in a deliberate campaign of sabotage against the company, targeting patient’s health in a “work action.”

HealthBridge for their part, refused to let the offending SEIU local that sanctioned the attack on their patient’s safety, back to work.

Pretty clear cut situation, and truth be told, each of the offenders should have been hauled off to jail for reckless endangerment.

But that isn’t what happens in Obama’s America 2013.

In Obama’s America, his National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) appointees ruled that HealthBridge had to take back the nearly 700 striking “workers.”

HealthBridge is now asking the Supreme Court to take up the case, with a request they have submitted to Justice Antonin Scalia.

But Obama’s NLRB rulings of the past 16 months are in trouble for a different reason. The U.S. District Court of Appeals in the Noel Canning versus NLRB decision threw the NLRB’s ability to make decisions into question as they found that Obama had illegally bypassed the Senate confirmation process in putting three members on the Board in Jan. 2012.

This seemingly benign decision has massive ramifications for the NLRB and all of its rulings over the past year and a half due to a separate Supreme Court case known as New Process Steel. In New Process Steel, the Supreme Court ruled that the NLRB needed to have a quorum of at least three out of five members in order to make any decisions or rulings.

If the Canning decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, then all of the NLRB decisions for the past year and a half will become null and void.

This is certainly good news for the patients at HealthBridge, who deserve quality care, rather than being endangered by union shenanigans.

SOURCE

**************************

Detroit faces the music

Michigan’s Rick Snyder has appointed an emergency city manager to do for Detroit what Obama, Biden, the UAW, GM, Chrysler, the city’s council and mayor have not been able to even with a $80 billion bailout of the automotive industry.

“Snyder’s decision comes after a state review team report concluded last week that Detroit is in a financial emergency that it cannot fix on its own,” reports the Detroit Free Press. “The report detailed $14 billion in long-term bond debt and retiree pension and health benefits the city owes in addition to a $327-million accumulated deficit Detroit has been unable to tame. That figure could inflate by $100 million by July.”

The city has been powerless to stop plunging tax revenues. According to the Detroit News almost half of the city’s homeowners have not been able to pay property taxes:

“The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47 percent of the city's taxable parcels are delinquent on their 2011 bills. Some $246.5 million in taxes and fees went uncollected, about half of which was due Detroit and the rest to other entities, including Wayne County, Detroit Public Schools and the library.”

The article notes that delinquency is so bad that in one stretch of 77 blocks only one owner had paid their taxes.

And it’s not just that residents can’t pay. It’s that many of the taxpayers say they won’t pay taxes for services they aren’t getting.

More from the Detroit News: "Why pay taxes?" asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $2,600 on his home on an east-side block where five owners paid 2011 taxes. "Why should I send them taxes when they aren't supplying services? It is sickening. … Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came."

But at least the average American can take satisfaction that we have a thriving automotive industry, leading an American comeback in manufacturing. Right?

Nope. CNBC reported this week that the average Americans family can no longer afford to buy new cars.

According to a report by Intrest.com, there is only one major city where the average household income is sufficient to buy a new car.

Bingo! You guessed it: Washington, DC.

“According to the 2013 Car Affordability Study by Interest.com,” says CNBC via Yahoo Finance, “only in Washington could the typical household swing the payments, the median income there running $86,680 a year. At the other extreme, Tampa, Fla., was at the bottom of the 25 large cities included in the study, with a median household income of $43,832.”

Only the countries of Lichtenstein and Qatar enjoy higher per capita income than DC’s median income of $86,680 a year.

Thank goodness. All this time, I thought that the runaway federal spending was just fueling a sense of entitlement, privilege and contempt for us commoners amongst the people who run our government.

More HERE

***************************

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)

****************************



March 03, 2013

People who are less reflective are more religious?

I would have thought that religious people reflect on things all the time but Hey Ho, Nonny O

Following is the "Cognitive Reflection Test", a set of riddles. Maybe you might like to try answering the questions yourself.

* A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

* If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long does it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

* In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would ittake for the patch to cover half of the lake?

* Correct Answers: Five cents, five minutes, and forty-seven days.

Most people get the "wrong" answers. That is the point of the test. It is claimed that people who get the answers right, however, have a general tendency towards "reflective" thinking. The source article for the test is here.

But as the authors acknowledge, it is basically a measure of mathematical IQ, though a particular subset of it. So therefore any correlations with it could be explained as the outcome of general mathematics ability as well as a particular subset of mathematics ability.

But when Huffpo notes that religious people do poorly on the test, they make large inferences from that, claiming that religious people are not critical thinkers. Unbelievers, on the other hand are "reflective".

As I have always struggled with mathematics but am as atheist as you can get, I found that rather amusing. So I looked up the research on which Huffpo hung its hat. There was only one study that gave the correlation between religion and test score while also controlling for general IQ. It is here.

And it sure is amusing. Even BEFORE controlling for IQ, the correlation between test score and belief in God was .14, which is of only marginal statistical significance (significant on a one-tailed test only despite N=large) and of negligible significance in any other sense. And controlling for IQ reduced the "relationship" even further, of course.

So, to put it plainly, it is all hokum. Religious people are about as likely to get the questions right as are atheists. Hey Ho, Nonny O indeed. I could make other criticisms of the research concerned (sampling etc.) but I can see no point in flogging a dead horse.

***********************

I cannot tell a lie



*************************

A nasty, brutish, imperial presidency

Thomas Hobbes wrote that the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Today’s White House definitely isn’t poor, lavishly feeding off the wealth of the American taxpayer, and the current presidency certainly isn’t short, with nearly four more years to run. But it is undeniably nasty and brutish, as veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has found after questioning President Obama’s narrative on the sequester issue.

Woodward, one of two reporters who broke the Watergate story that led to Richard Nixon’s downfall (immortalised in the 1976 Oscar winner All The President’s Men), has revealed to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the White House warned him that he would “regret” his recent remarks on the sequester, made in a Washington Post column. (Read the exchange of emails between White House economic adviser Gene Sperling and Woodward posted by Politico here.) Woodward is hardly a conservative, and has been at the heart of the liberal media establishment for decades. He is, however, not afraid of challenging the status quo, as he did with his 2010 book Obama’s Wars. Woodward is not alone. Lanny Davis, another liberal columnist and former special counsel to Bill Clinton, who has penned several pieces critical of Obama’s policies, has also spoken out against similar White House tactics.

The threats being dished out to Woodward, Davis and others are extremely disturbing in a free society, and are a reflection of an imperial presidency that acts with impunity and is highly intolerant of dissent. The heavy-arm tactics that Obama’s team have deployed for years against conservatives are now being increasingly implemented as well against liberals questioning the president’s record.

Leading US political analyst Michael Barone predicted all this in a piece for National Review Online back in October 2008, when he wrote about “The Coming Obama Thugocracy.” It is an article that is strikingly accurate in its predictions. Here’s what Barone had to say before Obama even entered the White House:
 

“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up.

… Once upon a time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s made the case that they should have access to employees to speak freely to them, and union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment.

Today’s liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don’t like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

Will American liberals now stand up to the Obama White House and condemn its blatant attempts to suppress criticism and free speech? I doubt it. The Washington Post has provided relatively little coverage of the story, despite the fact that one its own star writers has been targeted. The New York Times is, unsurprisingly, completely silent (with the exception of a small mention in a single blog) on the issue. Ironically, most of the reporting of the White House’s attempts to intimidate liberal critics has come from the conservative press, led by the Drudge Report, which has propelled the story to national prominence. Both conservatives and liberals should be rallying to the defence of free speech and freedom of the press, holding the Obama presidency to account. All Americans should be concerned by government attempts to stifle press criticism in the land of the free, tactics which undermine the very foundations of liberty.

SOURCE

****************************

The lesson of the Iraq war is that benign intervention can work

An unusual POV from Britain below but he has a point

Ten years after the start of the Iraq war, it is often overlooked that Britain’s participation in the highly complex military operation to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime was deemed to be an unqualified success.

Because of the bitter controversies over the legality of the invasion in March 2003, as well as the non-existent stockpiles of WMD, all the attention tends to focus on what happened after Saddam’s removal from power, rather than what went before. For, in purely military terms, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US-led campaign to remove Saddam, achieved remarkable results. Within the space of just 21 days, American forces, backed by a 10,000-strong British combat division, overthrew the Ba’athists and delivered the country in a still functioning state to the Iraqi people.

But then winning military campaigns has always been the easy part of the West’s various attempts to intervene in failed states. From the original post-September 11 intervention in Afghanistan to France’s more recent involvement in tackling al-Qaeda in Mali, Islamist militants rarely offer much resistance against well-organised Western forces equipped with devastating firepower.

It is after the fighting ends that the really difficult challenges arise. In Afghanistan the Taliban simply fled across the border and regrouped in Pakistan, while in post-Saddam Iraq the wilful failure of the Americans to impose order resulted in the country’s rapid descent into sectarian conflict. The French may have enjoyed early military success in Mali, but already Islamist militants are making their presence felt by launching suicidal attacks against French and Malian army positions. No matter how great the provocation, though, French commanders insist that a resurgence in Islamist activity will not affect their withdrawal strategy, which is due to begin this month.

We will see whether the French find the process of leaving Mali as painless as their arrival, but this desire to speed the departure is certainly motivated by a determination not to repeat the mistakes of Iraq, a conflict in which the French declined to participate.

And so far as Iraq is concerned, it is undeniable that the initial, post-Saddam administration of the country was a disaster. By meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs, with ill-considered policies such as the de-Ba’athification programme, coalition forces overstayed their welcome, with the liberators quickly turning into occupiers in the eyes of the resentful populace.

Indeed, the country was only saved from the devastation of all-out civil war by the military surge masterminded by former US General David Petraeus in the summer of 2007, which succeeded in destroying al-Qaeda’s attempts to turn the Sunni heartlands into a self-contained Islamist state and reduced the violence to manageable levels.

There will be those who argue that, with an estimated 1,500 Iraqis still losing their lives to sectarian conflict each year, that country could hardly be described as a haven of security and stability. But then its people have always had a tendency towards violence. During the 1920s, when the British created the kingdom of Iraq, the Royal Air Force was regularly ordered to bomb Shia villages to keep the natives in check.

But, for all the traumas, it is also worth remembering that Iraq today has far better prospects than it would ever have had under Saddam. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki might have inherited some of his Ba’athist predecessor’s taste for corruption and brutality, but Iraq has a constitution that enshrines democratic principles – whether Mr Maliki likes it or not – and obliges the government to uphold the rule of law. But arguably the country’s greatest asset is its booming oil-based economy, with predictions that it could enjoy double-digit growth for the rest of the decade – so long as it can steer clear of further sectarian infighting. The lesson of Iraq, therefore, must be that, handled the right way, interventionism works.

There will certainly be many who have participated in the Arab uprisings of the past two years who now cast covetous glances at the legacy the West has bequeathed to Iraq. Egyptians, Libyans and Syrians – to name but a few – would dearly love to have the freedoms that are enjoyed by post-Saddam Iraq. But without Western help, they have little chance of fulfilling their dreams.

SOURCE

*****************************

The Nordic economic example

Take Estonia: its response to the crash was to make immediate and deep savings in the cost of government, while keeping taxes flat and low. Its economy quickly bounced back and its deficit vanished. Jürgen Ligi, its finance minister, does not need to make speeches blaming the eurozone for various national ills. He has been bold enough to make his own luck.

Estonia’s economy is smaller than Birmingham’s, so it can be written off as a curiosity. It is harder to dismiss Sweden, which is transforming itself from the most socialistic nation in the continent into a land of sun, snow and supply-side economics. The hero of its economic reforms is Anders Borg, who looks more like someone you might see protesting outside a meeting of European finance ministers than someone setting the agenda inside. He sports an earring and ponytail, as if to illustrate his cheery contempt for received wisdom. He showed this when he responded to the crash with a permanent tax cut for the low-paid, a move regarded across Europe as a bizarre gamble.

“Everybody was told 'stimulus, stimulus, stimulus’,” Borg said to me later. Britain and Spain followed this advice, and Borg now points to both as an example of what not to do. “Very little of the stimulus went to the economy, but they are stuck with the debt.” As a former chief economist of SEB bank, Borg approached his job with almost clinical detachment. The political clamour to borrow, spend and bail out companies made no sense to him (he briefly set up a blog to take on critics and explain why). The problem lay not so much with economic demand, he argued, but with the supply of workers. If he targeted tax cuts at the low-paid, they would have a greater incentive to move off welfare and into work.

So it was to prove. Before long, Sweden was celebrating the abolition of its deficit and the fastest economic growth in Europe. The tax cut, which almost entirely paid for itself, came alongside deeply controversial cuts to welfare, but Borg felt he had to make a choice. It was elegantly summed up in a new campaign slogan: “We are the new workers’ party.” That is a claim that many can make, but Borg had given low-paid workers the equivalent of an extra month’s salary a year. Good economics became good politics, and the Swedish Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.

The Nordic way has been to come up with policies that are radical, but sound dull. Borg has posed not as a ponytailed Thatcher but a slightly bored economist prescribing basic medicine. His tax cuts were justified not by grandstanding slogans (they came later) but by a 270-page book on labour market policy. His latest move, an instant, deficit-financed trimming of corporation tax from 26 per cent to 22, was described as an obvious way to “protect” the tax base. Borg has ensured the success of the Swedish pro-growth revolution by making it sound like most self-evident thing in the world.

SOURCE

*************************

More on Joe McCarthy

Thanks to Joe McCarthy, many Americans whom the left angelicized as "free thinkers" or "liberals" were finally unmasked as hardened Soviet agents. These would include, to take 10 examples from M. Stanton Evans' masterpiece, "Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies," Solomon Adler, Cedric Belfrage, T.A. Bisson, V. Frank Coe, Lauchlin Currie, Harold Glasser, David Karr, Mary Jane Keeney, Leonard Mins and Franz Neumann.

As for "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" This tiresome catchphrase may quiver with righteousness on history's eternal wavelength, but it is probably the biggest crock of all. As Evans writes, Army counsel Joseph Welch famously hurled the question as an accusation at McCarthy. McCarthy's transgression, we are supposed to believe, was outing Welch's young legal associate, Frederick G. Fisher Jr., as a former member of the National Lawyers Guild, a notorious communist front group.

The truth is quite different. Six weeks earlier, Welch himself was quoted in The New York Times, confirming that Fisher had belonged to the communist front and that, as a result, Welch himself had "relieved (Fisher) from duty." Welch's hearing-room histrionics, in other words, were a lot of hot air. But they worked. To this day, the truth remains lost to most people, while this thinnest fiction is immortal.

Failing to unmask the McCarthyism libel for what it is and always was -- bunk and agitprop designed to demonize conservatives, from Joe then to Ted [Freshman Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas] today -- does exactly what conservatives continue to take pains to disavow. It slanders a patriot -- Joe McCarthy -- by cavalierly associating him with an odious and politically radioactive "ism." It's time to thank the man instead.

SOURCE

****************************

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)

****************************



1 March, 2013

Again: Obama says one thing and does another

President Obama told a meeting of the National Governors Association: "At some point, we've got to do some governing. And certainly, what we can't do is keep careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis." Really?

Yes, really. He added, referring to the sequestration: "These cuts do not have to happen. Congress can turn them off anytime with just a little bit of compromise."

Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not consider himself bound by a duty of good faith to square with the American people. He has shown that he is unafraid to utter the most egregious distortions and exaggerations; he has no fear of being called on them.

Just consider the few assertions I've cited. "At some point, we've got to do some governing." Does he mean that at some point, he needs to quit using every possible opportunity to play golf on the public's dime, that he should stop treating the people's White House as a platform for permanently campaigning, that he intends to forgo his Alinskyite tactics of bullying and demonizing in lieu of dealing with issues on the merits, that he aims to quit flouting his legal obligation to present a budget and that he will begin to exercise leadership over his party and pressure its leaders in the Senate to pass a budget? I didn't think so.

How about his statement that we can't keep careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis? Does he mean that he is finally going to renounce his policy, first divulged by his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, not to let a crisis go to waste, that he regrets having painted a false picture of crisis about the nation's uninsured to force Obamacare through Congress, that he is sorry that he used the 2008 financial collapse as an excuse to enact recklessly irresponsible bills to spend more borrowed money under the guise of stimulating the economy, that he is sorry he leapt on the Sandy Hook shootings to begin a frantic manufactured-crisis-driven crusade to ratchet up his effort to severely restrict the rights of gun owners, that he plans to repent for falsely laying the blame for our disgracefully unbalanced budgets on the "rich," who are already contributing more than their fair share, that he is going to square with the American people about the shameless hyperbole and corruption in his environmental agenda and cease and desist from his dishonest fear-mongering about carbon emissions to advance that agenda, that he is sorry for exaggerating the effects of the Gulf oil spill in order to justify breaching his promises to remove restrictions on offshore drilling and that he is going to quit pretending that America's infrastructure is in a crisis state of repair in order to fuel his case for ever-greater government control and the creation of public-sector jobs? I didn't think so.

Indeed, if Obama is so weary of crisis governance, of which he is the peerless master, then why is he using these very same speeches to manufacture a phony crisis over the sequestration? We are talking about very small-percentage cuts here, mostly in the rate of spending increases.

If Obama were interested in changing his MO from crisis-mongering to governance -- instead of doubling down on his effort to expand the scope, reach and control of the federal government at any cost, literally -- then he would quit characterizing every single activity of the enormously wasteful federal government as an essential service.

Private-sector businesses don't enjoy the luxury of simply injecting public funds into their ailing enterprises to avoid cutting expenditures they can't afford. Are private-sector businesses and employees that much less important to Obama than public-sector services and employees? Silly question.

In his ongoing crisis-stoking, Obama never laments the real economic destruction his own policies have already caused. When he does deign to acknowledge economic difficulties, he callously understates the dismal conditions we're experiencing -- and the hardship people are already enduring as a result of his ideological intransigence against cutting spending and reforming entitlements.

But what makes Obama's oratorical flurry against crisis governance an even more insulting farce is that we do have a real, wholly unmanufactured crisis looming that will affect far more than a limited number of government jobs and programs. At the risk of breaking an already broken record, I'd like to point out again that we are going bankrupt because Obama won't agree to spending cuts and entitlement reform.

It is time that he quit playing games and insulting our intelligence by blaming Republicans for the sequestration he authored and for allegedly refusing to compromise when they are the ones who have compromised. They have done so on taxes, whereas he has refused to compromise on spending and entitlements. You make a deal with Obama, and he moves the goal posts.

Seriously, how can Obama continue this charade with a straight face? How long will the public tolerate it?

SOURCE

******************************

Pro-homosexual bias at The Washington Post

If you're a reporter at the Washington Post and you aspire to write unsigned editorials, just send an email to the ombudsman.

That's a lesson one might draw from yesterday's extraordinary column by Patrick Pexton, the veteran journalist who, according to the Post's website, "represents readers who have concerns or complaints" about "accuracy, fairness, ethics and the newsgathering process." One such reader wrote to both Pexton and a Post reporter to complain that the paper's coverage of same-sex marriage gives "short shrift" to "the conservative, pro-family side of the argument."

Pexton, who withholds the names of both the reader and the reporter "at their requests," quotes the reporter's response at length: "The reason that legitimate media outlets routinely cover gays is because it is the civil rights issue of our time.

Journalism, at its core, is about justice and fairness, and that's the 'view of the world' that we espouse; therefore, journalists are going to cover the segment of society that is still not treated equally under the law."

The reader wrote back: "The mission of journalism is not justice. Defining justice is a political matter, not journalistic. Journalism should be about accuracy and fairness."

Whereupon the reporter dug in: "Should the media make room for racists, i.e. those people who believe that black people shouldn't marry white people? Any story on African-Americans wouldn't be wholly accurate without the opinion of a racist, right? Of course I have a bias. I have a bias toward fairness. The true conservative would have the same bias. The true conservative would want the government out of people's bedrooms, and religion out of government."

In addressing the disagreement, Pexton acknowledges his own bias on the subject and his incomprehension of opposing arguments:

Many Americans feel that allowing gay men and lesbians to marry diminishes the value of their heterosexual marriages. I don't understand this. The lesbian couple down the street raising two kids or the two men across the hall in your condominium--how do those unions take anything away from the sanctity, fidelity or joy you take in your heterosexual marriage? Isn't your marriage, at root, based on the love and commitment you have for your spouse, not what you think about the neighbors?

That's a straw man. We've been following this debate for years, and we've never heard opponents claim that same-sex marriage would diminish or endanger their own marriages. Their arguments are based on morality, tradition, and worries about the effects on the institution of marriage, on society as a whole, and on the rights of individuals and institutions that adhere to the traditional view of marriage. The merits of those concerns are of course debatable, but Pexton is either obtuse or disingenuous in reducing them to a nonsensical appeal to self-interest.

Even so, the reporter's self-righteous rant went too far for the ombudsman. Pexton concludes by agreeing with the reader that the Post "should do a better job of understanding and conveying to readers, with detachment and objectivity, the beliefs and the fears of social conservatives." Along the way he comes very close to conceding outright the paper's liberal bias:

Because our profession lives and dies on the First Amendment--one of the libertarian cornerstones of the Constitution--most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do. We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies pretty much when, where and how we choose.

That "libertarian" is quite a dodge. Most journalists are anything but libertarian in areas where that would mean siding against the left, such as guns, education, taxes, nonsexual health care and nonmedia corporate free speech. And as blogress Mollie Hemingway notes, Pexton's disparagement of those who disagree with him as "religionists," which means zealots, is invidious. Was Martin Luther King a religionist?

The anonymous reporter, however, goes far beyond bias, and even beyond bad faith--that is, beyond abusing his credibility as an "objective" reporter to further his cause. To judge by his emails to the reader, he has achieved a perfect Orwellian inversion. He has convinced himself that objectivity and bias (or at least his bias) are one and the same thing.

Or has he? This is where the reporter's insistence on anonymity is telling. If he really believes that propagandizing for same-sex marriage constitutes good journalism, why wouldn't he leap at the opportunity to express that view openly in the pages of the newspaper? There are two possible answers. One is cognitive dissonance: Upon further reflection, he realized that his view was illogical and would make him look foolish. The other is social pressure.

Notwithstanding the pervasive so-called libertarian bias that Pexton describes, it is possible that enough of the old-fashioned ethos of objectivity survives in the Post newsroom that it would be harmful to a reporter's career to be exposed as so brazen an advocate. In other words, while there seems to be little question that the Post is biased, it may be less biased than the anonymous reporter's screed would indicate.

Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat in "All the President's Men. Four decades later, a Washington Post reporter requests anonymity.
If that's the case, then in granting the reporter anonymity and not affording other reporters or editors an opportunity to respond, Pexton depicted the problem of bias at the Post in an inaccurately harsh light. That would be a disservice to readers, but even more a disservice to the Post--and especially to any conscientious journalists who happen to work for the Post. Imagine that you're a Post reporter who covers the debate over same-sex marriage but, unlike Pexton's secretive scribe, you make an honest effort to play it straight and be fair to both sides. Your reputation is now tainted by the supposition--propagated in the very pages of the Post--that Post reporters believe bias is objectivity.

Why would the Post agree to grant one of its own reporters anonymity to ventilate views that make the paper's own newsroom look like a den of bias and unprofessionalism? According to the paper's website, Pexton "operates under a contract with The Post that guarantees him independence." That presumably means he has complete discretion in interpreting the paper's policies on source confidentiality, if he is expected to follow them at all.

Pexton's two-year term as ombudsman ends this week. In his Feb. 17 column, he broke the news that "discussions are underway within The Post" about abolishing the position of ombudsman: "For cost-cutting reasons, for modern media-technology reasons and because The Post, like other news organizations, is financially weaker and hence even more sensitive to criticism, my bet is that this position will disappear." Unsurprisingly, he hopes it doesn't:

Can I say for certain that an ombudsman makes The Post more credible? No, I can't point to any good study saying that. But people's trust in the media is declining. Eliminating the ombudsman seems a shortsighted move.

Surely Pexton's spotlighting a particularly egregious example of journalistic bias at the Post doesn't enhance the paper's credibility. And his agreement to conceal the reporter's identity makes it difficult if not impossible for the editors to take remedial action aimed at restoring readers' trust.

One may salute Pexton for being honest enough to broach the subject of liberal bias and to report on a compelling example of it. But even that doesn't do much to burnish the Post's credibility. After all, he operates under a contract that guarantees him independence.

SOURCE

**************************

The savage intolerance of the liberal media



Fox News political analyst and “Special Report” panelist Juan Williams said in an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas that mainstream media outlets “stab” and “kill” dissenting voices.

Williams was fired from National Public Radio in 2010 after saying he sometimes gets “nervous” when seated on an airplane with Muslims, while making a broader point about the importance of religious tolerance.

“I always thought it was the Archie Bunkers of the world, the right wingers of world, who were more resistant and more closed-minded about hearing the other side,” he said. “In fact, what I have learned is, in a very painful way — and I can open this shirt and show you the scars and the knife wounds — is that it is big media institutions who are identifiably more liberal to left-leaning who will shut you down, stab you and kill you, fire you, if they perceive that you are not telling the story in the way that they want it told.”

SOURCE

******************************

Hollywood again

Argo — the movie that won Best Film — is yet another piece of Hollywood’s Brit-bashing junk history that casts Brits in a poor light.

The film, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, tells the story of how the Canadian government and the CIA managed to rescue six American diplomats from the clutches of the Iranian students who occupied the U.S. embassy during the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Although the movie is a cracker — tense and terrifying — like so much that comes out Hollywood, Argo plays fast and loose with the facts. And unsurprisingly, the Brits are given a real pasting. For, according to the Affleck version of the rescue mission, the six embassy staff were refused refuge by British diplomats. ‘Brits turned them away,’ says a senior CIA character in the film.

The sad irony is that what really happened in Tehran in 1979 is just as thrilling as Argo, if not more so — and it involved astonishing British pluck.

When the American Embassy was overrun by armed students on November 4, 1979, five members of staff managed to escape by a side exit. The remaining 55 embassy staff were to be held captive for a further 444 days.

The most senior member of the escaped group was Robert Anders, who worked in the visa department. He decided the best place to find refuge was the British Embassy.

The group made its way through the bustling streets, only to find the British embassy was also surrounded by an angry mob.

Thinking on his feet, Anders quickly took the group back to his flat and from there tried to contact anybody who might help rescue them.

After a tense night, a call came through from the British embassy informing the five terrified Americans that it could give them refuge in its residential compound, which was known as Gulhak.

As Argo neglects to mention, this was an exceedingly brave offer. Both the British embassy and residential compounds were under serious threat. After what had happened to the Americans, the British understandably feared an attack on their own staff.

The Iranian revolutionaries had dubbed Britain the ‘Little Satan’, and for our officials to shelter diplomats from the ‘Great Satan’ (America) meant running a huge risk.

Much more HERE

*************************

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)

****************************







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):

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?

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


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 Republicans are the gracious side of American politics. It is the Democrats who are the nasty party, the haters

The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is not envy. It's rage

Leftists are committed to grievance, not truth

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)

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.

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, 1931–2005: "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.


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/