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DISSECTING LEFTISM MIRROR
Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.. Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts |
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30 September, 2016
A biased and misinformed "moderator"
Debate moderator Lester Holt’s claim that the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” practice was declared unconstitutional because it was racist, an assertion seconded by Hillary Clinton, was more evidence that Holt was heavily biased toward Clinton. The actual facts surrounding the case against “stop and frisk” are these: In the 1968 Terry v. Ohio case, an 8-1 Supreme Court ruling upheld as constitutional law enforcement’s practice of stopping and frisking individuals who they deemed reasonably suspicious. This law has never been overturned and is practiced by police departments across the country to this today.
Holt’s reference to it being declared unconstitutional is based upon a ruling by federal Judge Shira Scheindlin, who ruled in 2013 that the NYPD’s application of the law was racially biased and therefore unconstitutional. Judge Scheindlin was later removed from the case under allegations of her own bias against police — just as Donald Trump correctly noted Monday night. It has been argued that Scheindlin’s ruling would have been overturned based on the circumstances surrounding the case, had then-newly elected mayor Bill de Blasio chosen to pursue it. The judge’s ruling was not concerned with the constitutionality of “stop and frisk” in general, but the specific manner in which it was applied in New York City. Holt completely misrepresented the case in order to challenge Trump’s statements on law and order. Clearly, Trump was correct and Holt was wrong.
The nuances of political gamesmanship are something the Leftmedia has become very adept at applying. It’s always a good practice to apply a healthy level of skepticism to any political claim, especially if the claims are made by the mainstream media.
SOURCE
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Narrative-Building Has Become a Political Obsession
Jonah Goldberg
The most exhausting thing about our politics these days — other than the never-ending presidential election itself — is the obsession with “shaping the narrative.” By that I mean the effort to connect the dots between a selective number of facts and statistics to support one storyline about the state of the union.
Narrative-building is essential for almost every complicated argument because it’s the only way to get our pattern-seeking brains to discount contradictory facts and data. Trial lawyers understand this implicitly. Get the jury to buy the story, and they’ll do the heavy lifting of arranging the facts in just the right way.
President Obama understands this too. Just consider the way he talks about terrorism — often reassuring Americans that they’re more likely to die in a bathtub accident than in a terror attack.
And he’s right. On the other hand, bathtubs aren’t trying to get nuclear weapons. Nor are bathtubs destabilizing the Middle East (often killing massive numbers of non-Americans) or otherwise plotting to conquer the world.
Obama’s goal is obvious. He wants the story of terrorism to lose its potency and recede from our politics. Secretary of State John Kerry recently suggested as much when he said, “Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover [terrorism] quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
This mindset helps explain the now-familiar pattern whereby the Obama administration responds to a terror attack by slow-walking acknowledgement of reality. First there is the reluctance to call it terrorism, then the reluctance to call it Islamic terrorism, and finally the reluctance to admit that it was plotted or inspired in any way by the Islamic State or al-Qaida. Lone wolves are the new fallback, because they are self-radicalized and hence not part of some larger challenge — or story.
One problem with this effort to so aggressively edit the terrorism narrative in real time is that it sows skepticism about the truthfulness of our political leaders.
Another is that it inadvertently fuels a story that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, rightly wants to downplay: that Islam itself is the problem. If all of these “homegrown” “lone wolves” are “self-radicalizing” — without aid or assistance from foreign powers — you can see why some people might conclude that Islam itself is the source of extremism.
Republicans are hardly immune to the temptation to drive a storyline ahead of the facts. Donald Trump says our country is a “divided crime scene” and that African-American “communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in before. Ever. Ever. Ever.”
This storyline, never mind this paragraph, desperately needs an editor.
But so does the tale of an “epidemic” of police “hunting” unarmed black men — in the words of some activists.
There’s no disputing that the unwarranted use of deadly force by police is a legitimate concern. But the narrative — increasingly pushed by Hillary Clinton in an effort to rev up African-American voters — that it is open season on black men not only does a disservice to the police, it also makes it harder to put the problem in perspective.
What might perspective entail? It happens to be true that young black men are more likely to die in domestic accidents than at the hands of the police. Of course, if a politician said that, liberals would attack him or her for minimizing the issue — just like conservatives attack Obama for his bathtub comments.
The anger wouldn’t be over the veracity of the claim, but the attempt to dilute the narrative.
I’m not naive. Crafting stories to serve political purposes is as old as politics itself. But the problem seems to be getting worse.
Perhaps it’s because our country is so polarized and our media environment so balkanized and instantaneous. Politicians and journalists alike feel compelled to make facts serve some larger tale in every utterance.
The reality is that life is complicated and every well-crafted narrative leaves out important facts.
SOURCE
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Clinton Promises Malaise in the Name of 'Fairness'
A look at Hillary's plan for taxes and the economy
Hillary Clinton used a fair portion of her awful debate appearance Monday to sell America on her economic vision. Though she framed taxes as the typical leftist issue of “fairness,” whether or not she openly admitted she is going to raise taxes on the middle class, her plans for this country’s fiscal future mean dark days for everyone.
It’s not as if we’re in a robust economy right now. The Census Bureau would have us believe that we’re in good shape. After all, median household income rose 5.2% in 2015, the first jump since 2007, and the biggest since 1968. That should be good news, but it’s really just manufactured good news.
The Census Bureau changed its reporting methods to measure income, the result being that reported income actually appears more than actual income. And in time for election season, too. What a coincidence. This explains the supposedly mysterious question as to why Americans are making more money but don’t feel like they are getting ahead. Answer: they are not making more money.
This gimmick, along with the economic fantasies being spun by Barack Obama to shore up his legacy and put Clinton in the White House, have the electorate confused. That’s just how the Left wants it.
That is also why Monday night’s debate moderator Lester Holt was able to get away with his opening statement: “There are two economic realities in America today. There’s been a record six straight years of job growth, and new census numbers show incomes have increased at a record rate after years of stagnation. However, income inequality remains significant, and nearly half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”
The very premise was part White House press release, part Bernie Sanders stump speech.
Clinton also trotted out the usual lie that George W. Bush’s tax cuts “for the wealthy” caused the recession. That’s baloney. First of all, Bush’s tax cuts were for everyone, not just the wealthy. Second, and more important, it was Hillary’s husband who set the stage for the financial crisis with his home lending policies.
As for Clinton’s tax plan, there should be no confusion about its true nature. She spoke wistfully Monday night about the great 1990s when “Bill” was president. And there were some good economic years during that period. The trouble is she isn’t going to come remotely close to achieving those budget surpluses and strong business and investment sector with the policies she wants to implement or expand.
On the contrary, Clinton doesn’t even consider capping the growth of federal budget deficits, and calls for $1.8 trillion in new taxes to fund new projects. She isn’t looking to rein in the size of the government as Republican policies of 1990s did. She wants to push the federal government into more areas of our daily lives while refusing entitlement reform and spending cuts, and our reward will be to pay through the nose for it.
Hillary is nothing if not thorough in her tax plan. No one will be spared. Sure, the $350 billion income tax hike and the $275 business tax hike are meant to target the top earners, as is a $400 billion “fairness” tax, which is about as arbitrary a tax as one might conceive.
Clinton calls to raise the capital gains tax (which millions of middle class Americans pay), taxes on stock trading, and implement an “exit tax” on income earned overseas. And she wants a 65% death tax for the largest estates, with jacked up rates for estates that fall into lower income categories. This would crush small businesses that even she admitted Monday create most of the jobs in America.
The problem with all these taxes is that they will stifle growth. Donald Trump spoke frequently Monday night about how American business is in apocalyptic shape. Clinton just shook her head and smiled. But that’s all she could do. She’s never worked in the private sector, so she cannot truly relate to what a majority of American taxpayers are experiencing. After all, she just funnels her income into the Clinton Foundation.
It makes perfect sense that Clinton is the Democrat nominee for president. She is the poster child for statist, centralized policies in which every citizen really works to fund the government so that it can become larger and more intrusive. And her central message Monday was that the government under her direction will spend your money better than you will. She says her tax policies will help our economy. What she really wants to do is continue the transformation of America that Obama started.
SOURCE
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Lessons From Norway's Refugee Policy
With much of western Europe mired in a mostly self-inflicted migration crisis due to their liberal open-door policies, one country stands out for its decidedly non-politically correct policies on immigration. In 2015 Norway adopted an immigration policy it termed “strict but fair.” Since Norway is not a member of the European Union, it was not obligated to accept any refugees, however it elected to accept 8,000 migrants, but on its own conditions. Norway’s primary concern was to prevent uncontrolled migration. Similar to Donald Trump’s reasoning in his call to limit immigration, Norway’s government understood that its first obligation was to Norwegians, as any immigrants that were to be accepted would need to be carefully vetted along clear guidelines that would both prevent economic strain and preserve distinct Norwegian cultural and character.
Sweden, the country to the immediate east of Norway, took a much more liberal open-door approach, welcoming in well over 280,000 migrants since 2013. Sweden’s radical policy has proved to be untenable and increasingly unpopular with Swedes, which has given popular rise to the Sweden Democrats, a controversial immigration-restrictionist party that more than doubled its presence in the nation’s 2014 election, becoming the country’s third largest party. As public dissatisfaction continued to grow and the cost for migrant services swelled to 7% of the 2016 budget, the Swedish government finally enacted laws to impose border controls. With the lack of immigrant vetting and assimilation, the social impact upon Sweden is yet to be fully realized.
Norway’s Norwegian-first policy in regards to immigration is the fairest both to its own citizens, but also to those refugees who are genuinely seeking refuge and help assimilating into a new and better life.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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29 September, 2016
US election debate: a draw with the edge to everyman Trump
The account below is from a conservative Australian journalist. I thought an outside view might be more balanced
It was a tale of two debates. And for each candidate, it was both the best and worst of debates.
For the first half-hour, Donald Trump wiped the floor with Hillary Clinton. It looked as though the New York property mogul would win not only the debate but the presidency itself there in Hofstra, New York, in one debate.
He spoke in the powerful, plain language of everyman.
Clinton began with characteristic politician waffle about building the right kind of economy.
Trump’s appeal was visceral and direct: “We have to stop our jobs being stolen from us and our companies leaving us.”
There is, of course, a lie at the heart of Trump’s appeal. Free trade has been good for the American economy. A dynamic economy destroys old jobs and creates new ones all the time. In so far as old jobs have been lost, this is much more because of technological change than trade.
Nonetheless, Trump’s message on trade is powerful and straightforward: America is being taken for a chump. In a very bad sign for Australia, Trump demonised the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal and witheringly and accurately accused Clinton of flip-flopping on the issue.
Trump truthfully said Clinton had described the TPP as “the gold standard of trade agreements”, a remark she made, as it happens, on a visit to Australia when she was secretary of state.
Clinton dishonestly claimed she never said the TPP was “the gold standard” but merely hoped it would be. “I was against it when it was finally presented,” was her lame response.
Trump promised to cut taxes to stimulate investment, growth and jobs. Clinton promised to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, because her priority was to produce a “fair economy”.
She will raise the minimum wage, provide paid parental leave and ensure women get equal pay to men. Trump promised to cut regulation. Polls show that US voters think Trump is better on the economy than Clinton.
As usual, there was something outrageous, with him accusing the Federal Reserve of acting politically in keeping interest rates low. This too echoes a concern of older Americans trying to live off the interest on their savings.
This whole section of the debate was won decisively by Trump.
But then, in a debate judo move of great artistry and astonishing effectiveness, Clinton turned the whole debate around. Though her brand is stolid, wooden reliability and stoic attachment to uttering the right cliche of the right zeitgeist, she began to provoke Trump with personal attacks. She certainly had a lot of material to work with and Trump allowed himself to be provoked.
First, she tackled him on the birther controversy, the insane argument Trump made for years that Barack Obama was not born in the US and therefore shouldn’t be president. Only in the past two weeks has Trump accepted Obama was born in the US.
Trump had no answer to this except to say Clinton’s campaign in 2008 began the birther controversy, a ditzy claim of no possible use to Trump. But he went on and on about the alleged friends of Clinton who had spread the birther myth and ended up accusing Clinton of having been too mean to Obama. Of all the things he might attack Clinton for, being mean to Obama was surely the most irrelevant and ridiculous.
Then Clinton accused him of having something to hide by not releasing his tax returns. For a moment, it looked like Trump might pivot back to the attack when he said: “I’ll release my tax returns if she’ll release the 33,000 emails”, which Clinton mysteriously deleted from the private server she wrongly used as secretary of state.
The email scandal is a huge vulnerability for Clinton. But Trump forgot all his attack lines and got bogged down in a ridiculous defence of his own company’s practices and his own tax behaviour.
The same pattern repeated itself later when Clinton, with ample justification, accused Trump of a history of insulting, demeaning sexist behaviour and remarks.
Trump showed an uncharacteristic flat footedness. He couldn’t pivot to the attack but got caught up in a ludicrous defence of an argument he had with Z grade entertainer Rosie O’Donnell.
These were Trump’s weakest moments, and there were plenty of them.
In what was a pretty weird debate, there was not much real policy substance. The most reassuring remark for Australia came from Clinton, who said: “We have mutual defence treaties and we will honour them.”
Trump dialled back his criticism of US allies. He wants to support them all, but the US spends an enormous amount of money defending allies and they must contribute more, or maybe they will have to defend themselves. Though he has often expressed this crudely, the idea allies are free riding on the US is undeniable. But this election won’t be won and lost on foreign policy, where Clinton has a strong lead.
Overall, I scored the debate about a draw, though CNN polls had voters saying Clinton had won. But I still think a draw is the right call, and it probably favours the challenger.
Trump did nothing to rule himself out of the presidency and he had no trouble on policy questions. Unexpectedly, it was the personal that tripped him up.
The underlying structure of the contest remains unchanged. Trump is the outsider promising change. Clinton is the ultimate insider, the registered adult offering a responsible alternative to Trump.
Beyond that, she lacks a narrative or any compelling rationale for her candidacy. Being the registered adult and safe alternative to Trump didn’t work for any of the heavyweight Republicans who ran against him in the primaries. Whether it is enough for Clinton is the $64 million question not at all resolved by this gruesomely compelling debate.
SOURCE
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A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall
V.D. Hanson
This summer, President Obama was often golfing. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were promising to let the world be. The end of summer seemed sleepy, the world relatively calm.
The summer of 1914 in Europe also seemed quiet. But on July 28, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip with help from his accomplices, fellow Serbian separatists. That isolated act sparked World War I.
In the summer of 1939, most observers thought Adolf Hitler was finally through with his serial bullying. Appeasement supposedly had satiated his once enormous territorial appetites. But on Sept. 1, Nazi Germany unexpectedly invaded Poland and touched off World War II, which consumed some 60 million lives.
Wars often seem to come out of nowhere, as unlikely events ignite long-simmering disputes into global conflagrations.
The instigators often are weaker attackers who foolishly assume that more powerful nations wish peace at any cost, and so will not react to opportunistic aggression.
Unfortunately, our late-summer calm of 2016 has masked a lot of festering tensions that are now coming to a head — largely due to disengagement by a supposedly tired United States.
In contrast, war, unlike individual states, does not sleep.
Russia has been massing troops on its border with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently believes that Europe is in utter disarray and assumes that President Obama remains most interested in apologizing to foreigners for the past evils of the United States. Putin is wagering that no tired Western power could or would stop his reabsorption of Ukraine — or the Baltic states next. Who in hip Amsterdam cares what happens to faraway Kiev?
Iran swapped American hostages for cash. An Iranian missile narrowly missed a U.S. aircraft carrier not long ago. Iranians hijacked an American boat and buzzed our warships in the Persian Gulf. There are frequent promises from Tehran to destroy either Israel, America or both. So much for the peace dividend of the “Iran deal.”
North Korea is more than just delusional. Recent nuclear tests and missile launches toward Japan suggest that North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un actually believes that he could win a war — and thereby gain even larger concessions from the West and from his Asian neighbors.
Radical Islamists likewise seem emboldened to try more attacks on the premise that Western nations will hardly respond with overwhelming power. The past weekend brought pipe bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey as well as a mass stabbing in a Minnesota mall — and American frustration.
Europe and the United States have been bewildered by huge numbers of largely young male migrants from the war-torn Middle East. Political correctness has paralyzed Western leaders from even articulating the threat, much less replying to it.
Instead, the American government appears more concerned with shutting down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, ensuring that no administration official utters the words “Islamic terror,” and issuing warnings to Americans not to lash out due to their supposedly innate prejudices.
Aggressors are also encouraged by vast cutbacks in the U.S. defense budget. The lame-duck Obama presidency, lead-from-behind policies and a culturally and racially divided America reflect voter weariness with overseas commitments.
It would be a mistake to assume that war is impossible because it logically benefits no one, or is outdated in our sophisticated 21st century, or would be insane in a world of nuclear weapons.
Human nature is unchanging and remains irrational. Evil is eternal. Unfortunately, appeasement is often seen by thugs not as magnanimity to be reciprocated but as timidity to be exploited.
Someone soon will have to tell the North Koreans that a stable world order cannot endure its frequent missile launches and nuclear detonations.
Someone could remind Putin that the former Soviet republics have a right to self-determination.
Someone might inform the Chinese that no one can plop down artificial islands and military bases to control commercial sea lanes.
Someone might make it clear to radical Islamic terrorists that there is a limit to Western patience with their chronic bombing, murdering and destruction.
The problem is that there is no other “someone” (especially not the United Nations or the European Union) with the requisite power and authority except the United States. But for a long time America has done more than its fair share of international policing — and its people are tired of costly dragon-slaying abroad.
The result is that at this late date, the tough medicine of restoring long-term deterrence is as almost as dangerous as the disease of continual short-term appeasement.
Obama apparently assumes he can leave office as a peacemaker before his appeased chickens come home to roost in violent fashion. He has assured us that the world has never been calmer and quieter.
Others said the same thing in the last calm summer weeks of 1914 and 1939.
War clouds are gathering. A hard rain is soon going to fall.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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28 September, 2016
Hillary insults white people
American whites have been kicked in the teeth so often by the Left that there has been little reaction to this so far. Hillary thinks she can persuade white people not to be racist, thus assuming that they are. She is blaming a shooting of a black man by a panicky female cop (who happens to be white. Black cops also shoot and kill troublesome black men) on white people generally. It's an extraordinary generalization of exactly the sort that the Left are always warning us against. For instance, no matter what individual Muslims do, you can't say anything about Muslims generally. She is an utter racist. Race, race, race. That's all the Left talk about. It's the Left who are the ultimate racists
On Tuesday's episode of "The Steve Harvey Morning Show," Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stated:
"This horrible shooting again. How many times do we have to see this in our country?...And maybe I can, by speaking directly to white people, say, ‘Look, this is not who we are’…We have got to do everything possible to improve policing, to go right at implicit bias"
She was referring to the police shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Ok.—a recent killing of a black man by the hands of police that has caused widespread outrage.
Clinton, who recently criticized Donald Trump for jumping to conclusions regarding the NYC bombing, saying, “I think it’s also wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions, because we are just in the beginning stages of trying to determine what happened,” seems to have chosen a different method when discussing the possibility of police officers making fatal mistakes.
This is not the first time Clinton has deemed white people responsible for the deaths of black men by police. In an interview with CNN back in July, Clinton discussed the Dallas shooting of five police officers saying, “I’m going to be talking to white people, we’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries coming from our African-American fellow citizens.”
At the 107th NAACP convention this year, she stated, “We white Americans need to do a better job of listening when African-Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day. We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility, rather than assume our experiences are everyone’s experiences.”
SOURCE
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Media decide that Trump is a racist
At least eight times Monday on CNN, various anchors and correspondents made the claim that Donald Trump called for racial profiling. The problem is, he didn’t. Starting at the 4:00 hour all the way through early Tuesday morning, CNN journalists added the term “racial” to Trump’s comments on profiling to combat terrorism, even devoting entire segments to discussing his statement he never actually said.
This isn’t the first time CNN has selectively subtracted or added to what someone said in their reports in order to skew their stories.
Starting on The Lead with Jake Tapper, correspondent Sara Murray stated Trump made an “apparent suggestion” for racial profiling on Fox and Friends Monday morning.
MURRAY: But offering few specifics, beyond his apparent suggestion that the U.S. should begin racial profiling.
But here’s what he actually said:
TRUMP: Our police are amazing, our local police, they know who a lot of these people are. They're afraid to do anything about it because they don't want to be accused of profiling. But Israel has done an unbelievable job. And they will profile. They profile. They see somebody that's suspicious, they will profile. They see somebody that's suspicious, they will profile and they will take that person in. They will check out. Do we have a choice? Look what's going on. Do we really have a choice?
Again on The Situation Room, anchor Wolf Blitzer made the same assumption:
BLITZER: Donald Trump this morning said police are simply afraid to go after people in cases like this because they're afraid of being accused of racial profiling. Is that a serious concern among law enforcement?
In a report, Sara Murray also repeated that Trump “suggested” racial profiling:
MURRAY: The G.O.P. nominee suggesting that the U.S. should instate, racial profiling.
Even after Trump came on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor to repeat a similar statement on profiling, again without using the word “racial,” CNN continued to hammer home their message. Erin Burnett Outfront was the worst example on CNN, where the host devoted nearly the whole hour to discussing Trump’s “racial profiling” comments that he never actually said.
Burnett began the show by stating twice, “Donald Trump defending a call for racial profiling” with a chyron that read, “Trump Says ‘Racial Profiling’ Will Stop Terror.”
Burnett then brought on two guests to discuss Trump’s comments, prefacing several questions with the loaded expression.
SOURCE
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A Distant gleam of freedom
MARTIN HUTCHINSON
Donald Trump’s tax plan, revealed at the Economic Club of New York on September 15, does not add up, as most Presidential candidates’ tax plans don’t. Still, it did contain one provision that is fiscally insignificant but economically enormous: by capping all tax deductions at $100,000 for single filers, $200,000 for married couples, without exceptions, it went a long way to eliminate the charitable tax deduction scam. Removing that, and thereby shrinking the nonprofit sector, would be a gigantic blow for economic freedom second only to abolishing the Fed.
By capping tax deductions, even at such a high level, Trump has taken an ax to the most egregious feature of the U.S. tax system, by which billionaires often pay less tax than their secretaries. Warren Buffett has whined about this anomaly, with the implication that the solution is the left’s favorite panacea of higher tax rates. Of course, that would merely allow the lobbyists to insert yet more loopholes into the U.S. tax system, increasing the power of politicians to allocate resources and removing the U.S, economy even further from anything resembling a free market.
There are three major tax allowances that would be capped by Trump’s proposal. Of these, the home mortgage interest deduction is least affected, because of today’s ultra-low mortgage interest rates. $100,000 in mortgage interest would only be incurred on a $3 million mortgage, at today’s interest rate of 3.3%. Of course, there are people with mortgages larger than this, though the limitation of home mortgage interest to the first house makes their number relatively small. Mostly, the cap would affect mortgages in ultra-high cost areas such as Manhattan, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, perhaps knocking the top off the excessively bubbly real estate markets in those areas.
Trump’s cap on tax allowances would also affect the state and local tax deduction. Here an individual with an income of a bare $1 million living in Westchester County, who would not be in the top New York state tax bracket, would run up $100,000 in tax deductions from state tax of about $68,000 plus about $32,000 in local real estate taxes on his $1.2 million home. The limit thus catches a much broader swathe of the upper middle class, especially those in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey or California.
However, the tax deduction most seriously affected by Trump’s cap on allowances would be that for charitable donations. This is the favorite tax-avoidance strategy of the super-rich; by giving vast sums of money to charities, whether genuine or phony like the Clinton Foundation, they end up paying minuscule amounts of tax. Indeed, as the Congressional Budget Office showed in 2013, by far the greatest beneficiaries of the charitable tax deduction are the top 1%, who benefit by about 1.4% of their income, compared to a 0.7% of income benefit to even the next richest group, between the top and the fifth percentile of the income distribution. Capping this tax deduction would remove the largest current loophole from the current U.S. tax system.
Trump’s proposal would cap the sum of the deductions at $200,000 for a married couple; it would therefore severely limit the tax deductibility of charitable donations for wealthy people who had already used up much of their allowance in mortgage and state/local income tax deductions.
As we are beginning to see from accounts of the Clinton Foundation, tax-deductible gifts to “charity” may be used to generate benefits elsewhere, often much larger than the gift itself. This is clearly a scam of the first order; not only is the Federal budget being deprived of much-needed revenue, but costs are often also imposed on government through favors to the charitable donor.
Even when “charities” are not abusive political slush funds like the Clinton Foundation, the charitable tax deduction is highly damaging. For one thing; it redistributes from the poor to the rich. When a hedge fund executive deducts $1,000 for the cost of a charity dinner to boost his tawdry social life and make new contacts, there is $396 less at the federal and maybe $80 at the state level that is no longer available for necessary programs, at least some of which benefit the worse off. Given the expenses, legitimate and illegitimate, incurred by charities, even if their activities benefit the poor, the inefficiency of the charitable tax deduction may well be net damaging to the interests of the poor and especially to the working poor.
However, in reality most charitable giving does not benefit the poor. There have been few studies of this important question, but one by Indiana University in 2005 suggested that only 31% of charitable donations go to the poor, with 69% going to the non-poor. Religion, elite colleges and the arts are especial non-poor beneficiaries.
Combine these two figures together, and you have a remarkable result. On average, of a $1,000 charitable donation by a taxpayer in the top bracket, $476 is returned to him in deductions from his taxes, $690 goes to the non-poor and only $310 goes to the poor. In other words, charitable giving is on balance reducing the funds available for the poor, by $166 per $1,000 in this example. This is a truly disgraceful result, and illustrates the iniquity of the charitable tax deduction, even without considering the charities that are outright scams.
The charitable deduction costs the Federal budget directly about $60 billion per annum, a figure that is almost certainly an underestimate, because as in the case of the Harvard endowment, money given to charity is often invested in tax-free funds that earn returns that also escape the tax net. A more complete figure can be calculated from The NonProfit Times estimate that the tax-exempt sector “contributed” $887 billion to the U.S. economy in 2012, 5.4% of Gross Domestic Product. That is all money allocated by the murky though processes of charities, and thus not available for the truly productive private sector; in itself it represents a major drain on the U.S. economy and the current anemic productivity growth therein.
Tax that $887 billion at an average rate of 40%, including income taxes, sales taxes and excise duties, and you will generate over $350 billion per annum to the fiscal balance, more than half even the current swollen budget deficit. And, as I said, the economy will be more productive, the poor will be better off, and the Clintons will be deprived of their principal source of funding. A win all round, it appears to me.
If Trump is elected, state and local governments of high-tax badly run states like New York, New Jersey and California will raise all kinds of hell to get themselves exempted from his deductions cap, because forcing rich residents to pay the full costs of the states’ fiscal profligacy would drive the last of their long-suffering residents to more civilized locations. There will also be attempts by the realtors’ lobby to remove the cap altogether or exempt home mortgage interest, although in this case only a modest percentage of their income comes from residences with such huge mortgages, so the squawking will be muted.
However, the lobbying from the states and the realtors will be as nothing compared to the massive and revolting PR campaign that will be waged by the charity lobby. Pictures of starving and diseased children will be all over the airwaves. K Street will see new records of activity, as Washington’s swollen armies of lobbyists swing into action, with the charities calling in past favors, so the farm lobbyists, the Pentagon lobbyists, Hollywood’s copyright lobbyists and Silicon Valley’s patent lobbyists lend their efforts to block Trump’s proposed legislation, or at least exempt charities from it. Money will pour into the coffers of every Congressman prepared to sell his soul for just one more betrayal of the people who elected him. The battle will long and vicious, and with allies like the feeble Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican Congressional corruptocrats it is most unlikely that Trump will win.
But the battle is worth fighting. Of all possible tax reforms to revive the U.S. economy and return prosperity to the American people, that to de-fund the charitable Leviathan, divert its resources to more productive uses and make the rich pay their fair share of taxes is the most important.
SOURCE
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Voter Fraud Far From ‘Myth,’ Panel Asserts
The Obama administration opposes states verifying citizenship status of registered voters. Inquiries into voter fraud are typically met with derision from both government and the media—and in at least one instance with prosecution. Prosecutors don’t prioritize voter fraud, while convictions only garner light sentences.
These are among the voter fraud problems facing the United States, experts noted this week, even as prominent voices on the left say such fraud is a myth.
The left’s opposition to voter integrity laws or even inquiry can be simply explained, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
“Why on earth would you not want to make sure that only citizens are registered and voting?” Fitton, author of “Clean House: Exposing Our Government’s Secrets and Lies,” said at a forum at The Heritage Foundation Tuesday. “That to me shows that the Obama administration and the left generally, which is behind this, wants to be able to steal elections if necessary. To me, that’s a crisis.”
“The percentages of non-citizens in the United States are approaching nearly 15 percent now,” said Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “So it’s a numbers game. A certain number of those citizens — a certain number of those residents, both legally were present and illegally present, are going to register to vote.”
A 2014 study by Old Dominion University found that 6.4 percent of all noncitizens voted in the 2008 election and 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm elections. The study concludes this likely put Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat, over the top in the race in his 312-vote statewide victory over Republican Norm Coleman in 2008.
“The left generally, which is behind this, wants to be able to steal elections if necessary,” says @TomFitton.
In the past, opponents have argued that ID requirements hurt minority participation. Meanwhile, studies have found minority voting has increased after voter ID was implemented.
“If you think your vote is going to be stolen, especially in urban areas where you have political machines controlling the voting process or the perception that they control the voting process, you may not bother to vote,” Fitton said. “But, if you think your vote will be counted, of course you’re going to be more likely to turn out.”
Some recent cases cited by the panelists demonstrate the reality of voter fraud.
In August, in St. Louis, a court ordered a do-over in a Democratic primary for a Missouri state legislative seats after finding absentee voter fraud.
Last year in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a state legislator was convicted of voter fraud and given a suspended sentence.
Still, some commentators contend there is no voter fraud problem in the United States. For example, this week a New York Times editorial called voter fraud a “myth” and “fake”:
As study after study has shown, there is virtually no voter fraud anywhere in the country. The most comprehensive investigation to date found that out of one billion votes cast in all American elections between 2000 and 2014, there were 31 possible cases of impersonation fraud. Other violations—like absentee ballot fraud, multiple voting and registration fraud—are also exceedingly rare. So why do so many people continue to believe this falsehood?
Credit for this mass deception goes to Republican lawmakers, who have for years pushed a fake story about voter fraud, and thus the necessity of voter ID laws, in an effort to reduce voting among specific groups of Democratic-leaning voters.
However, it was in New York City where the city’s Department of Investigation (DOI) determined the city’s Board of Elections (BOE) was doing a poor job of preventing ineligible voters from voting. During the 2013 mayor’s race, 63 city investigators went to polling places impersonating someone who was either dead, moved outside the city, or was in jail. Of those, 61 were cleared to vote. The department’s report stated:
The 60 investigators, among other investigative activities, conducted quality assurance surveys of voters at poll sites throughout the five boroughs, logging complaints from 596 of 1,438 voters relating to subjects such as ballot readability, poll workers, and poll site locations. DOI’s operations also revealed that there are names of ineligible voters (e.g. felons and people no longer City residents), and deceased voters, on the BOE voter rolls, some for periods of up to four years.
Accordingly, DOI investigators posing as a number of those ineligible or deceased individuals, were permitted to obtain, mark, and submit ballots in the scanners or in the lever voting booths in 61 cases, with no challenge or question by BOE poll workers. Investigators were turned away in 2 other cases. No votes were cast for any actual candidate or on any proposal during the course of the DOI operation.
Interestingly, the result was not to demand more accountability from the city’s Board of Elections. Rather, the New York City Council voted to prosecute the investigators for impersonating voters, said John Fund, a National Review columnist, previously with The Wall Street Journal, during the panel.
Progressive critics reference the rarity of voter fraud prosecutions as evidence of a “myth.” Fund said it is actually because such cases can be politically disadvantageous to elected district attorneys.
“Most prosecutors run for election. Most prosecutors want to have higher election,” Fund said. “The last thing you want to do is take on voter fraud cases which are highly politicized and infuriate half the people in your community on partisan basis. Judges require incredible standards of proof and often the sentences of the few people who are convicted of voter fraud are community service.”
Maintaining clean voter rolls from ineligible voters is also important and required by law, said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation. And New York isn’t the only place with a problem. In Indiana, 16 counties had more registered voters than voting-age adults based on U.S. Census Bureau data, he said.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as the “Motor Voter Law” allows people to register to vote when they get their driver’s license law. But it also requires local governments to maintain clean voter rolls, which the federal government can enforce. The Obama administration has never enforced this provision, von Spakovsky said at the forum.
“There has been a war being waged against election integrity for the past decade,” von Spakovsky said. “The leader in this has been the U.S. Justice Department. Instead of making sure every voter can vote and that no one’s vote is stolen through fraud, they have been on the other side of that, waging war against any efforts to prove election integrity.”
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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27 September, 2016
Without 'Lone Wolf' Lie, U.S. Could Have Stopped Nearly EVERY ATTACK
Some time ago, the invaluable Patrick Poole coined the term “known wolf,” sharply shredding the conventional Washington wisdom that “lone wolf” terrorism is a major domestic threat.
Pat has tracked the phenomenon for years, right up to the jihadist attacks this weekend in both the New York metropolitan area and St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Virtually every time a terror attack has occurred, the actor initially portrayed as a solo plotter lurking under the government’s radar turns out to be -- after not much digging – an already known (sometimes even, notorious) Islamic extremist.
As amply demonstrated by Poole’s reporting, catalogued here by PJ Media, "lone wolves" --virtually every single one -- end up having actually had extensive connections to other Islamic extremists, radical mosques, and (on not rare occasions) jihadist training facilities.
The overarching point I have been trying to make is fortified by Pat’s factual reporting. It is this: There are, and can be, no lone wolves.
The very concept is inane, and only stems from a willfully blind aversion to the ideological foundation of jihadist terror: Islamic supremacism.
The global, scripturally rooted movement to impose sharia -- in the West, to incrementally supersede our culture of reason, liberty, and equality with the repressive, discriminatory norms of classical Islamic law -- is a pack. The wolves are members of the pack, and that’s why they are the antithesis of “lone” actors. And, indeed, they always turn out to be “known” precisely because their association with the pack, with components of the global movement, is what ought to have alerted us to the danger they portended before they struck.
This is willful blindness, because of the restrictions we have gratuitously imposed on ourselves.
The U.S. government refuses to acknowledge the ideology that drives the movement until after some violent action is either too imminent to be ignored or, sadly more often, until after the Islamic supremacist has acted out the savagery his ideology commands.
The U.S. government consciously avoids the ideology because it is rooted in a fundamentalist, literalist interpretation of Islam. Though it is but one of many ways to construe that religion, the remorseless fact is that it is a mainstream construction, adhered to by tens of millions of Muslims and supported by centuries of scholarship.
I say “the U.S. government” is at fault here because, contrary to Republican campaign rhetoric that is apparently seized by amnesia, this is not merely an Obama administration dereliction -- however much the president and his former secretary of State (and would-be successor) Hillary Clinton have exacerbated the problem.
Since the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, the bipartisan Beltway cognoscenti have “reasoned” (a euphemism for “reckless self-delusion”) that conceding the Islamic doctrinal roots of jihadist terror -- which would implicitly concede the vast Islamist (sharia-supremacist) support system without which the global jihadist onslaught would be impossible -- is impractical.
But how could acknowledging the truth be impractical?
Especially given that national security hinges on an accurate assessment of threats?
Bipartisan Washington “reasons” that telling the truth would portray the United States as “at war with Islam.” To be blunt, this conventional wisdom can only be described as sheer idiocy.
We know that tens of millions of Muslims worldwide, and what appears to be a preponderance (though perhaps a diminishing one) of Muslims in the West, reject Islamic supremacism and its sharia-encroachment agenda. We know that, by a large percentage, Muslims are the most common victims of jihadist terror. We know that Muslim reformers are courageously working to undermine and reinterpret the scriptural roots of Islamic supremacism -- a crucial battle our default from makes far more difficult for them to win. We know that Muslims, particularly those assimilated into the West, have been working with our law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies for decades to gather intelligence, infiltrate jihadist cells, thwart jihadist attacks, and fight jihadist militias.
None of those Muslims -- who are not only our allies, but are in fact us -- believes that America is at war with Islam.
So why does Washington base crucial, life-and-death policy on nonsense?
Because it is in the thrall of the enemy. The “war on Islam” propaganda is manufactured by Islamist groups, particularly those tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
While we resist study of our enemies’ ideology, they go to school on us. They thus grasp three key things:
(1) Washington is so bloated and dysfunctional, it will leap on any excuse to refrain from strong action;
(2) the American tradition of religious liberty can be exploited to paralyze our government if national defense against a totalitarian political ideology can be framed as hostility and persecution against an entire religious faith; and
(3) because Washington has so much difficulty taking action, it welcomes claims (or, to be faddish, “narratives”) that minimize the scope and depth of the threat. Topping the “narrative” list is the fantasy that the Islamist ideological support system that nurtures jihadism (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood and its tentacles) is better seen as a “moderate,” “non-violent” partner with whom we can work, than as what it actually is: the enemy’s most effective agent. The stealth operative that exploits the atmosphere of intimidation created by the jihadists.
In other words, in proceeding from the premise that we must do nothing to convey the notion that we are “at war with Islam” -- or, in Obama-Clinton parlance, in proceeding from the premise that we need a good “narrative” rather than a truth-based strategy -- we have internalized the enemy’s worldview, a view that is actually rejected by our actual Islamic allies and the vast majority of Americans.
The delusion comes into sharp relief if one listens to Hillary Clinton’s campaign bombast. Robert Spencer incisively quoted it earlier this week:
[W]e know that a lot of the rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS, because they are looking to make this into a war against Islam, rather than a war against jihadists, violent terrorists, people who number maybe in the maybe tens of thousands, not the tens of millions, they want to use that to recruit more fighters to their cause, by turning it into a religious conflict. That’s why I’ve been very clear. We’re going after the bad guys and we’re going to get them, but we’re not going to go after an entire religion and give ISIS exactly what it’s wanting in order for them to enhance their position.
Sheer idiocy.
Our enemy is not the mere “tens of thousands” of jihadists. (She’s probably low-balling the number of jihadists worldwide, but let’s indulge her.) It is not merely ISIS, nor merely ISIS and al-Qaeda -- an organization Mrs. Clinton conveniently omits mentioning, since it has replenished, thanks to Obama-Clinton governance and despite Obama-Clinton claims to have defeated it, to the point that it is now at least as much a threat as it was on the eve of 9/11.
ISIS and al-Qaeda are not the sources of the threat against us. They are the inevitable results of that threat. The actual threat, the source, is Islamic supremacism and its sharia imposition agenda.
The support system, which the threat needs to thrive, does indeed include tens of millions of Islamists, some small percentage of whom will inexorably become violent jihadists, but the rest of whom will nurture the ideological aggression and push the radical sharia agenda -- in the media, on the campus, in the courts, and in the policy councils of government that they have so successfully influenced and infiltrated.
Obviously, to acknowledge that we are at war with this movement, at war with Islamic supremacism, is not remotely to be “at war with Islam.” After all, Islamic supremacism seeks conquest over all of Islam, too, and on a much more rapid schedule than its long-term pursuit of conquest over the West. Islamic supremacism is not a fringe movement; it is large and, at the moment, a juggernaut. But too much of Islam opposes Islamic supremacism to be confused with it.
Moreover, even if being at war with Islamic supremacists could be persuasively spun as being “at war with Islam” -- i.e., even if we were too incompetent to refute our enemies’ propaganda convincingly -- it would make no difference.
The war would still be being prosecuted against us. We have to fight it against the actual enemy, and we lose if we allow enemies to dupe us into thinking they are allies. We have to act on reality, even if Washington is too tongue-tied to find the right words for describing reality.
The enemy is in our heads and has shaped our perception of the conflict, to the enemy’s great advantage. That’s how you end up with inanities like “lone wolf.”
SOURCE
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Stealth Regulation: Regulation by Any Other Name Is Just as Sour
When the media and the public think about the term “regulation” they tend to think about official rules issued by agencies after going through the standard multi-year regulatory process. This process, governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, is designed to be transparent and public, allowing potentially affected parties to engage in the development of the rule though comments, hearings, and other less formal discussions. But this formal, open process is not the only way the administrative state regulates. There are huge classes of administrative actions which together create a category of stealth regulation; regulation from the shadows that is difficult to challenge, difficult to keep track of, and often difficult to know how to even comply with.
Stealth regulation goes by many names: guidance, executive order, executive memorandum, consent decree, compliance policy guide, manual, notice of permit approval, dear colleague letter. And that’s just to name a few. Each of these documents is issued unilaterally by an executive branch entity and includes instructions, sometimes couched merely as suggestions, on how citizens should comply with will of regulators. For many of types of stealth regulation, regulated entities are not technically legally required to follow the guidelines they contain. However, each “suggestion” is backed by an implicit threat: failure to follow can be met with severe regulatory harassment.
Rather than risk investigations, enforcement actions, litigation, or other regulatory oppression, most regulated entities fall into line. Thus we end up with a situation where regulators are regulating without officially issuing regulations. Kafka’s idea of regulation.
Stealth regulation, existing as it does outside the official regulatory process, is intentionally designed to hide from the general public. The “suggestions” or “guidance” are typically made available to the specific entities that are affected, but not made easily available beyond that. Because of this, there is no true accounting of all the off-books regulating that federal agencies are doing. And this is not accidental.
An attempt by the Competitive Enterprise Institute to compile such a list found a total of 517,812 “notices” had been published in the Federal Register since 1994, averaging 23-26 thousand a year. Each one had potentially regulatory effect, and these are just what were published. There are an unknown number of stealth regulations which are never published in the official record of the federal government.
Thankfully this activity from the administrative state is not going completely overlooked. Today the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee held another in a series of hearings examining the stealth regulation phenomenon. But this is an issue that must be heard and understood far more widely. Without understanding how the regulatory state is robbing us of our freedom, we cannot effectively fight back.
The lesson here is, as ever, that the administrative state cannot be trusted to act with restraint. Any ambiguity or leeway granted to the regulators will be seized upon to expand their powers, expansions that come at the expense of the rights and freedoms of American citizens. Tighter rules, greater transparency, and ultimately smaller federal government are the only true answer for recovering our liberty.
SOURCE
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Blocking Internet surrender helped unite Trump, Cruz and GOP
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to Ted Cruz’ endorsement of Donald Trump for President, where he cited as one reason, “Internet freedom. Clinton supports Obama’s plan to hand over control of the Internet to an international community of stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran. Just this week, Trump came out strongly against that plan, and in support of free speech online”:
“Donald Trump doing a statement on the Internet giveaway helped facilitate Ted Cruz’ endorsement of Trump just two days later, in turn helping to unite grassroots Republicans nationwide in the sprint to November. This makes it all the more important that House and Senate Republicans unite in their resolve to stop the Internet giveaway in the continuing resolution before the end of the month. It would be tragic that an issue which unites Republicans would be scrapped just to pass a bill that funds the Obama administration’s priorities, including surrendering U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system to foreign powers and multinational corporations, creating an unaccountable global monopoly and risking censorship of every American’s vital Internet freedoms.”
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- with posts on IQ, Muslims and Russia
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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26 September, 2016
The pill and Massey Ferguson
The great moral questioning of the '60s is normally attributed to the contraceptive pill, which became generally available at that time. The pill did what conventional morality had long done: remove the risk of ex-nuptial births. So conventional morality lost its authority among the young. Whether any sexual restraint of any kind was warranted became questionable. So sexual promiscuity probably reached its peak at that time. I was there and was a cautious participant in the mood of the times.
And ALL morality, not only sexual morality, came into question at that time. There was a collapse of values and standards across the board at that time. If sexual restraint had become irrelevant, might not all forms of restraint be old-fashioned and irrelevant? So practices that had evolved over millennia for the guidance of society lost their authority and there was nothing to replace them. People were cast adrift from all guidance and had to figure out entirely from new how to live the good life. Nobody knew any longer what was wise.
Fortunately, however, Christians in particular kept the old moral thinking alive and showed by results that it gave a better balanced life. I was myself a fundamentalist Protestant throughout my teens (late '50's to early '60s) and that gave me a great set of rules to live by. I did not have to invent my own rules. I had the wisdom of the ages on my side.
So I got though my teens with no trauma at all and much happiness. I took no mind altering substances so was not damaged by them. I did not drink alcohol so avoided all the risks associated with that. I had friends who drank who died while drunk driving but I did not. I was celibate so avoided some nasty diseases. I kept clear of crime. So I arrived undamaged at adulthood and mental maturity.
And at around age 20 (1963) I became an atheist. But my teen-aged experience of a very puritanical lifestyle gave me strong habits of restraint so I participated in the sexual revolution from that time on only as part of affectionate relationships. A lot of my old Christian values stay with me to this day and even in the '60s casual sex had no attractions for me.
So I saw it all in the '60s and was sober enough to remember what I saw. Many of the people who glorify the life they had in the '60s can't actually remember much detail of what they did. They can't remember what they saw through a blur of drugs and alcohol.
So what I have given so far is a conventional explanation of the great break of the '60s. But the pill is in fact only half the story. It's not the whole explanation for that break. The other half is the Massey Ferguson tractor! How's that for a strange proposition? To understand that proposition we have to go back to what was behind the conventional morality of the pre-1960 era.
Conventional morality was heavily influenced by a shortage of food. In our present era of cheap and abundant food, we find it hard to comprehend that for most of human history, it was a struggle for most families to put enough bread on the table for their children. Most people were poor and the money often did not stretch far enough to buy all the food that the family wanted. They often had to make do with the cheapest possible food in order to eat at all. Oaten porridge was a lifesaver.
So in those circumstances men wanted to be absolutely certain that the children they were feeding were their own. "Cuckoos" were regarded as robbing the man's natural children of what was rightfully theirs. But the problem was how to tell who was the father of the various children. Women mostly had a pretty good idea of it but the men did not. And there is no doubt that both men and women sometimes "stray". In a moment of passion a woman might easily sleep with someone other than her husband and produce a child from that union.
So there was only one way a man could ensure that his scarce resources were spent on his own children: He had to convince his wife to sleep only with him. And all the persuasive resources of society were brought to bear on that need. Sexual restraint became the highest morality, with everything from ostracism to hellfire deployed to produce it.
And the pill did little to reduce that need. Sex became less perilous but the man still needed to know which children were his. So how come a highly functional morality broke down? Why did not the pill simply drive promiscuity underground?
And that's where we come to Massey Ferguson. The Massey Ferguson tractor was only one part of a broader phenonenon but it was a very visible one. The Massey Ferguson was a small, cheap tractor that was a remarkably tough machine. I remember seeing lots of them in Australia and I gather that they were equally popular in Britain. Massey Ferguson have made tractors of all shapes and sizes over the years but those small post-war models had a big impact.
With a Massey Ferguson farmers could pull bigger implements than a horse team could, could pull them for longer and could pull them more cheaply. A horse team was not cheap to maintain. You had farrier's bills, veterinary bills and feed bills. And a team of big working horses can go though a phenomenal amount of feed every day. For his Massey Ferguson the farmer just had to keep a drum of fuel handy.
So a farmer's productivity was at least doubled when he bought a Massey Ferguson. And what does a farmer's productivity add up to? Food. Along with other agricultural advances of the postwar era, the Massey Ferguson steadily drove down the price of food. In t
he USA it was probably John Deere who provided most of the tractors but the result was the same.
So by the time the '60s hit, feeding your family was a difficulty only for the very unfortunate. So it was no longer a tragedy if a man fed a child who was not his own. His other children were not deprived thereby. So the great need for the sexual control of women largely fell away. Conventional morality had lost its main function.
So the Massey Ferguson is at least as important as the pill as an explanation of the '60s moral revolution -- JR
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Who's the Treasonous Candidate?
Lie often and long enough and one will begin to believe one’s own lies to be reality. Evidently, Hillary Clinton has been living in the reality of her own lies for quite a while now. On Tuesday, Clinton claimed that Donald Trump’s rhetoric against Islamic terrorism “is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.” That’s right, Hillary just accused Trump of treason — for calling Islamic terrorism … Islamic terrorism. It is this kind of backward and dishonest thinking which underhandedly vilifies those who speak the truth while at the same time justifying the motives of those who commit these heinous acts of terror. The truth is Trump is not the one who should be accused of treasonous actions.
Actually, the fault lies with Clinton and her former boss, Barack Obama, who did “create the Islamic State,” which emerged as the direct consequence of the politically motivated and premature withdrawal from Iraq. That, in turn, created the most catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the history of the region.
As an additional consequence of the failure of Obama and Clinton to contain Islamic terror, the frequency of attacks targeting Americans on our soil will increase. Don’t buy into the errant “lone wolf” rhetoric. All of these attackers are unified by Islamist doctrine. But according to Hillary, even the suggestion of an Islamic connection to the actions of these terrorists is tantamount to treason. Clinton’s deceit has blinded her from reality, and, sadly, too many Americans have bought into this lie as well.
SOURCE
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Dozens Injured in 'Narrative Fight' With Islamic Terrorists
Everything is only a narrative to this administration
In Aeneid, the epic by the ancient Greek poet Virgil, the story is told of how the Greeks defeated the Trojans through the use of stratagem. As the story goes, the Greeks, after a decade-long siege of the city of Troy failed to secure a victory, deceived the Trojans by building a huge wooden horse, leaving it at the gates of the city as the Greek army sailed away. The Trojans, believing the Greeks had given up, brought the great horse within the city walls as a symbol of their victory. Unbeknownst to the Trojans, an elite force of Greek soldiers was hidden inside, which came out under cover of night, opened the gates for the Greek army (which had sailed back), and destroyed the city, ending the war decisively.
As the philosopher George Santayana noted, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Barack Obama and his legions of progressive Democrats certainly seem determined to repeat history when it comes to allowing our enemies within our borders.
Following Islamist terror attacks this past weekend in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, Obama once again buried his head in the proverbial sand, berating the media for reporting the incidents as acts of terrorism. He admonished the press to “try to refrain from getting out ahead of the investigation” because, he argued, “it does not help if false reports or incomplete information is out there.”
Except no one was getting out ahead of anything. The perpetrator was yet another radicalized Muslim — this one from Afghanistan who became a U.S. citizen. Ahmad Khan Rahami, suspected of the bombings that caused an explosion in New Jersey and another which injured 29 in New York, has traveled between the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan multiple times in the last five years, and he was interviewed each time upon return though never suspected of being radicalized.
In a separate incident, nine people were injured by a knife-wielding man at a mall in Minnesota who, as he slashed his victims, reportedly made references to Allah.
These are just the latest of dozens of terrorist attacks (or, as Obama calls them, incidents of “workplace violence”) that have occurred under Obama’s watch, and yet he and his would-be successor Hillary Clinton are both calling for an increase in the flow of “refugees” from countries infested with Islamic radicals.
This despite Obama’s own FBI director admitting there is no way to properly vet Syrian refugees to weed out potential terrorists. Yet Obama plans to increase the number of refugees next year from 85,000 to 110,000, and Clinton has announced she will raise that quota even higher. This becomes of even greater concern when considering a recent report out of the U.S. Southern Command warning that, in 2015, of the 331,000 illegal aliens known to have crossed the U.S. border with Mexico, a staggering 30,000 of those come from “countries of terrorist concern.” If only 1% of those turn out to be terrorists, that is still 300 terrorists that we have allowed to come into our borders.
This is on top of a report from Homeland Security revealing that the U.S. “mistakenly” granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants (and perhaps more than 1,800) from “special interest countries” that are struggling to deal with Islamic terrorism.
Speaking in response to the revelations, Donald Trump stated that the attacks “should be a wake-up call for every American” regarding the need to get tougher on immigration and secure our borders. He continued, “We need to get smart and get tough fast so that this weekend’s attacks do not become the new normal here as it has in Europe and other parts of the world. … The safety and security of the homeland must be the overriding objective of our leaders when it comes to our immigration policy.”
Shockingly, as if we are engaged in a mere policy debate with radical Islam rather than a shooting war where thousands of innocents are beheaded, burned, shot, stoned, raped and tortured, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, in response to the attacks, “When it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight — a narrative fight with them. A narrative battle.”
Everything is only a narrative to this administration.
That is weapons-grade stupidity that will get more Americans killed. Hillary Clinton must be getting the message though, because after insisting we import hundreds of thousands of unvetted “refugees” from radicalized Muslim countries, she has changed her tune, suddenly talking tough on vetting immigrants. It will be remembered, however, that in her four years as secretary of state, she showed no such interest in stronger vetting of potentially dangerous refugees.
America simply cannot survive this suicidal self-loathing in which we paint ourselves as a racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic (one might say, “deplorable”) nation, and refuse to defend our borders, our citizens, our values, and our way of life. We cannot ignore the existential danger of the progressive, globalist agenda which seeks to undermine U.S. sovereignty and security while importing millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, who have no desire to become adopted members of their new home country, who have no desire to assimilate, and who in many cases openly seek to destroy the very things that made us the greatest engine of freedom and prosperity in the history of the world.
Of course, when it comes to America-hating, maybe they are just following Obama’s example. He never misses an opportunity to denigrate and browbeat the country he supposedly leads, as he just did on Tuesday in his final speech to the UN.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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25 September, 2016
Racism and freedom of thought
I am a racist -- as the Left define that term. I think that there are different races and that some (not all) of the differences between those races matter. Aside from the fanatic Left, most people would concede that there are differences between people and that some of those differences can matter so why deny that groups of people can be different too? I suppose an answer to that is possible but I have yet to hear one.
The reason the Left get such a charge out of the "racist" accusation is that it puts people in mind of the deeds of the unforgotten Uncle Adolf. Adolf was for a time seen as a kindly uncle by most Germans. So Leftists exploit that memory to imply that anybody who mentions race at all must be only a hairsbreadth away from being a genocidal maniac. I suppose most people can see that such an inference is too sweeping but I want to show that it is very sweeping indeed.
And I intend to use myself to show how incorrect that inference is. Although I am a racist, one of the people I most admire is David P. To my mind he is worth more to humanity than a whole skyscraper full of bureaucrats. David runs a small cafe where I often have brunch. He takes orders, he makes coffees, he delivers orders to the tables, he clears away dirty dishes and wipes down tables. And he has got a ready smile for everyone all the time.
And all those things are needed. They are things that people voluntarily seek out and pay money for. And the benefit of them is totally clear and uncontrovertible -- unlike the dubious "services" provided by bureaucrats in skyscrapers. I certainly enjoy my excellent brunches from David but when has any bureaucrat given me pleasure? If a skyscraper full of bureaucrats vanished overnight, few people would notice. But if David did not come in one morning, there would be a lot of people milling around and feeling very deprived.
David is Vietnamese. He grew up in Australia but his parents were "boat people": People who fled Communism in small boats to get to a safer place. So what sort of racist am I when I admire immensely a brownish man of unambiguously Asian appearance? I will tell you what sort I am. I think the Vietnamese are a fine race who pull their weight more than most. I am racially pro-Vietnamese. Not all of them are as good as David but Vietnamese have been in Australia for a long time now and I have been observing them for a long time. And a lot of them are as good as David P.
I could go on with other examples of people I admire. I could mention Pavan, who is Indian and also the most good humoured man I know. I could mention Les, who is one of the manliest men I know but who, like a lot of Kiwis, has both English and Maori ancestors. And so on. And more broadly, I could mention how much I admire the Japanese and Chinese for their unusual intelligence. I am in fact a Sinophile of sorts. I admire the Han.
So, you see, it is possible to be a racist without thinking ill of people, let alone wishing to harm them.
But I don't think highly of all people I meet and I don't think highly of all human groups that I encounter. It could hardly be clearer that people of Sub-Saharan African ancestry are in general dangerous people to have around and I understand well the "white flight" to the suburbs whereby mainstream Americans seek to avoid them. Their problem is not their skin color but their aggressive behavior.
And it is that aggressive behaviour that should in my view be focused on, not their racial origin. As I have long argued, I think it is crazy to catch malefactors and then let them go. Once someone has been found guilty of some foul deed, it seems crazy to let them go so that they can re-offend. So how to improve that situation? We once did deal with it well. Up until the early 19th century, murderers and other grave offenders in England were hanged at Tyburn and similar places. There was a zero rate of re-offending for them.
There are so many people who commit crimes these days that we can hardly hang them all. Even in the early 19th century, the British didn't hang everybody. Petty criminals were, for instance, banished to Australia. I am descended from two such petty criminals.
It seems to me, however, that recidivists (repeat offenders) are a special case. It is often said that anybody can make a mistake and that people should be given an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. So a first-offender should be punished but after that let go in the hope that he will not re-offend. But what if he does reoffend? I think that shows him as a seriously deficient person who is unlikely to change in response to mercy and forgiveness.
That doesn't mean that we have to hang him but it does mean that he has to be kept permanently out of circulation in the law-abiding community. Low-cost permanent detention would be one possibility. Only about 2% of the population commit crimes and only about half of them re-offend so the numbers to be accommodated might not be impossibly costly -- particularly if bare-bones accommodation only were provided.
And a traditional method could be used too: Exile. Exile goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times and probably earlier. As a descendant of exiled people, I think it could almost be called humane. There is no doubt that some poor countries could be paid a small sum to take in exiled Western criminals. Africa might be particularly receptive. Afro-Americans would not seem too different from the local population and criminals of Caucasian origin would usually seem positively law-abiding compared to the African locals.
And then there are the Jihadis. There is no doubt that they are a problem group at the moment. To deal with them I think we have to deny Muslims not only freedom of speech but even freedom of thought. That is an extraordinary thing to propose but the only other way I can see of protecting ourselves from the insane minority of Muslims is to repatriate all Muslims to their ancestral lands.
So what do I mean by freedom of thought? I mean that any evidence of Jihadi sympathies among Muslims has to be made illegal so that the person concerned can be caught before he carries out Jihadi deeds. He is then exiled to his ancestral country.
The cooperation of the Muslim population at large would be needed for that to be done effectively but if it is put strongly to them that their permission to stay in Western countries is at stake, I have no doubt that co-operation would be forthcoming. Very quietly, a lot of co-operation at preventing terrorist acts is already given. There have even been instances of Muslim parents incriminating their radicalized children.
But what about the First Amendment, Americans will say? I hate to state the obvious here but the First Amendment protects speech only, not thought! I think a court could find the two to be separable.
So I don't want to harm anyone on the basis of their race but I do believe that we need to use firmer measures to protect ourselves from crime. And noting the differences between different groups of people can aid that. The characteristic crimes of each group may benefit from solutions "tailor-made for that group: Jihadis need thought control, Africans need Africa.
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More corroboration of what a nasty piece of work Hillary is in private
Note that Facebook Suspended the Military K9 Handler’s Account After He Wrote the above
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Cruz Endorses Trump for President
Sen. Ted Cruz has endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump for President four months after dropping out of the race for president, returning to his work in the U.S. Senate, and beginning to campaign for re-election in 2018. A statement from Cruz read:
"This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election.
In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.
Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary.
Six key policy differences inform my decision. First, and most important, the Supreme Court. For anyone concerned about the Bill of Rights — free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment — the Court hangs in the balance. I have spent my professional career fighting before the Court to defend the Constitution. We are only one justice away from losing our most basic rights, and the next president will appoint as many as four new justices. We know, without a doubt, that every Clinton appointee would be a left-wing ideologue. Trump, in contrast, has promised to appoint justices “in the mold of Scalia.”
For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters, and it provides a serious reason for voters to choose to support Trump.
Second, Obamacare. The failed healthcare law is hurting millions of Americans. If Republicans hold Congress, leadership has committed to passing legislation repealing Obamacare. Clinton, we know beyond a shadow of doubt, would veto that legislation. Trump has said he would sign it.
Third, energy. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s war on coal and relentless efforts to crush the oil and gas industry. Trump has said he will reduce regulations and allow the blossoming American energy renaissance to create millions of new high-paying jobs.
Fourth, immigration. Clinton would continue and even expand President Obama’s lawless executive amnesty. Trump has promised that he would revoke those illegal executive orders.
Fifth, national security. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s willful blindness to radical Islamic terrorism. She would continue importing Middle Eastern refugees whom the FBI cannot vet to make sure they are not terrorists. Trump has promised to stop the deluge of unvetted refugees.
Sixth, Internet freedom. Clinton supports Obama’s plan to hand over control of the Internet to an international community of stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran. Just this week, Trump came out strongly against that plan, and in support of free speech online.
These are six vital issues where the candidates’ positions present a clear choice for the American people.
If Clinton wins, we know — with 100% certainty — that she would deliver on her left-wing promises, with devastating results for our country.
My conscience tells me I must do whatever I can to stop that.
We also have seen, over the past few weeks and months, a Trump campaign focusing more and more on freedom — including emphasizing school choice and the power of economic growth to lift African-Americans and Hispanics to prosperity.
Finally, after eight years of a lawless Obama administration, targeting and persecuting those disfavored by the administration, fidelity to the rule of law has never been more important.
The Supreme Court will be critical in preserving the rule of law. And, if the next administration fails to honor the Constitution and Bill of Rights, then I hope that Republicans and Democrats will stand united in protecting our fundamental liberties.
Our country is in crisis. Hillary Clinton is manifestly unfit to be president, and her policies would harm millions of Americans. And Donald Trump is the only thing standing in her way.
A year ago, I pledged to endorse the Republican nominee, and I am honoring that commitment. And if you don’t want to see a Hillary Clinton presidency, I encourage you to vote for him"
During the first Republican presidential primary debate, all the candidates on the stage were asked if they would support whichever candidate won the Republican nomination. Only Trump expressed at the time that he could not yet make that commitment. Cruz was on that stage. Eventually, each candidate present at the first debate made the pledge to back the Republican nominee. Cruz re-affirmed that pledge in March as the race tightened.
Trump invited Cruz to speak at the Republican National Convention in July, where Trump was officially named and accepted the Republican nomination for president of the United States. Rumors flew around the convention speculating on whether Cruz would seize the public opportunity to endorse Trump. But while Cruz congratulated Trump on winning the nomination and made several indictments of Democratic nominee-to-be Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, he stopped short of endorsing Trump, instructing those listening rather to “vote your conscience.”
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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23 September, 2016
Trump is Hitler? Why HILLARY is More Like The Führer...
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The Experiment: Capitalism versus Socialism
What if we could have an experiment to compare the two systems? Wait – we already did
David R. Legates
Experimentation is a major tool in the scientist’s arsenal. We can put the same strain of bacteria into two Petri dishes, for example, and compare the relative effects of two different antibiotics.
What if we could do the same with economic systems? We could take a country and destroy its political and economic fabric through, say, a natural disaster or widespread pestilence – or a war. War is the ultimate political and economic cleansing agent. Its full devastation can send a country back almost to the beginning of civilization.
We could then take this war-torn country and divide it into two parts. It would have similar people, similar climate, similar potential trading partners, similar geography – but one part is rebuilt using capitalism as its base, while the other rebuilds using socialism and its principles. We’d let the virtues of each system play out and see where these two new countries would be after, say, fifty years.
Don’t you wonder what the outcome might be? Well, as it turns out, we have already performed The Experiment. It’s post-war Germany.
Following the devastation of World War II, Germany was split into two parts. The German Federal Republic, or West Germany, was rebuilt in the image of the western allies and a capitalist legal-political-economic system. By contrast, the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, was reconstructed using the socialist/communist principles championed by the Soviet Union. The Experiment pitted the market economy of the West against the command economy of the East.
On the western side, considering what’s being taught in our schools, one might expect that “greedy capitalism” would create a state where a few people became the rich elite, while the vast majority were left as deprived masses. Socialism, by contrast, promised East Germany the best that life had to offer, through rights guaranteed by the state, including “human rights” to employment and living wages, time for rest and leisure, health care and elder care, and guaranteed housing, education and cultural programs.
So the Petri dishes were set, and The Experiment began. In 1990, after just 45 years, The Experiment abruptly and surprisingly ended – with reunification back into a single country. How did it work out?
In West Germany, capitalism rebuilt the devastated country into a political and economic power in Europe, rivaled only by its former enemy, Great Britain. Instead of creating a rich 1% and a poor 99%, West Germans thrived: average West Germans were considerably wealthier than their Eastern counterparts. The country developed economically, and its people enjoyed lives with all the pleasures that wealth, modern technologies and quality free time could provide.
By contrast, East Germany’s socialist policies created a state that fell woefully behind. Its people were much poorer; property ownership was virtually non-existent amid a collectivist regime; food and material goods were scarce and expensive, available mostly to Communist Party elites; spies were everywhere, and people were summarily arrested and jailed; the state pretended to pay its workers, and they pretended to work. A wall of concrete, barbed wire and guard towers was built to separate the two halves of Berlin – and keep disgruntled Eastern citizens from defecting to the West. Many who tried to leave were shot.
By the time of reunification, productivity in East Germany was barely 70% of that in West Germany. The West boasted large, vibrant industries and other highly productive sectors, while dirty antiquated factories and outmoded farming methods dominated the East. Even staples like butter, eggs and chicken – abundant and affordable in West Germany – were twice as expensive in the eastern “workers’ paradise.”
Coffee was seven times more expensive, while gasoline and laundry detergent were more than 2½ times more expensive. Luxury items, like automobiles and men’s suits were twice as expensive, color televisions five times more costly. About the only staple that was cheaper in East Germany were potatoes, which could be distilled into vodka, so that lower caste East Germans could commiserate better with their abundant Russian comrades.
Moreover, state-guaranteed health care in the East did not translate into a healthier society. In 1990, life expectancy in the West was about 3½ years longer than in the East for men, and more than 2½ years longer for women. Studies found that unfavorable working conditions, psychological reactions to political suppression, differences in cardiovascular risk factors and lifestyles, and lower standards of medical technology in East Germany were largely responsible for their lower health standards.
The socialist mentality of full employment for everyone led to more women working in the East than in the West. This pressure resulted in better childcare facilities in East Germany, as mothers there returned to work sooner after giving birth and were more inclined to work full-time – or more compelled to work, to put food on the table, which meant they had to work full-time and run the household. This also meant East German children had far less contact with their parents and families, even as West Germans became convinced that children fared better under their mothers’ loving care than growing up in nurseries.
As the education system in East Germany was deeply rooted in socialism, the state ran an extensive network of schools that indoctrinated children into the socialist system from just after their birth to the university level. While it’s true that today East Germans perform better at STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) studies than their Western counterparts, that may be explained in part by the influx of numerous poorly educated immigrants to former West German areas, and the extensive money invested in the eastern region since reunification.
However, schools of the East were not intended to establish creative thinking, which results in creativity and innovation. Rather, they were authoritarian and rigid, encouraging collective group-think and consensus ideas, rather than fostering outside-the-box thinking, novel philosophies and enhanced productivity. Thus, East German technology was slow to develop and students were often overqualified for available jobs.
Did the East gain any advantage? Nudism was more prevalent in the East, if that was your thing. Personal interaction was higher too, because telephones and other technologies were lacking. But even though East Germany was much better off than other Soviet satellite countries (a tribute to innate German resourcefulness), East German socialism offered few advantages over its capitalist western counterpart. In fact, in the years since reunification, homogenization of Germany has been slow, due largely to the legacy of years lived under socialist domination, where any work ethic was unrewarded, even repressed.
Freedom was the single most important ingredient that caused West Germany to succeed. Freedom is the elixir that fuels innovation, supports a diversity of thought, and allows people to become who they want to be, not what the state demands they must be. When the government guarantees equality of outcomes, it also stifles the creativity, diversity, ingenuity and reward systems that allow people and countries to grow, develop and prosper. The Experiment has proven this.
These days in the United States, however, forgetful, unobservant and ideological politicians are again touting the supposed benefits of socialism. Government-provided health and elder care, free tuition, paid day care and pre-school education, guaranteed jobs and wages are all peddled by candidates who feel government can and should care for us from cradle to grave. They apparently think East German socialism is preferable to West German capitalism. Have they learned nothing from The Experiment?
A friend of mine believes capitalism is greedy and evil – and socialism, if “properly implemented,” will take us forward to realizing a better future. I counter that The Experiment proves society is doomed to mediocrity at best under autocratic socialism. Indeed, those who turn toward the Siren call of socialism always crash upon its rocks. But my friend assures me: “Trust me, this time it will be different.”
That’s what they always say. Perhaps Venezuela and Cuba are finally making socialism work?
Via email
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A Battle of Narratives?
On Sunday, while the search for bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami was unfolding, CNN had Barack Obama spokesman Josh Earnest in the studio for an interview. Earnest made a point to stress that the U.S. battle against Islamic terror was a “battle of narratives.” He said, “What I am telling you is that we are, when it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight — a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle, and what ISIL wants to do is they want to project that they are an organization that is representing Islam in a fight and a war against the West and a war against the United States.”
However, it appears that the real battle over narratives is not primarily between the U.S. and ISIL but between leftists and conservatives. Consider how CNN reported on Donald Trump’s remarks after the bombings. A CNN headline read: “Trump Says ‘Racial Profiling’ Will Stop Terror.” The problem is that Trump never said “racial” in his comments on the need for better vetting of immigrants. CNN simply injected the word into its coverage. Clearly, CNN wants to promote a false image of Trump being a racist.
Then there was MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. He tweeted: “We’re also very very lucky that the attackers tried to use explosives rather than guns.” Hayes, seeking to make some anti-gun point, comes across as completely out of touch with regards to the actual issue at hand. This kind of unabashed exploitation of a horrific event in order to further some unconnected social agenda has become increasingly common for the Leftmedia. On a side note, to counter Hayes' foolish comment, it was a citizen armed with a handgun who stopped the knife-wielding attacker in Minnesota.
Back to Earnest’s comments on a “battle of narratives,” the Democrat leadership and specifically Hillary Clinton, who was the secretary of state at the time of ISIL’s rise, and current Secretary of State John Kerry are responsible for framing this as a battle of narratives rather than what it truly is — a war against American values. To deny the radical Islamic ideological motivation for these terrorist attacks and boil them down to merely a “battle of narratives” is to deny reality.
SOURCE
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No Thank You, Obama
Last week, while touting the new Census report on income and poverty in America, Barack Obama took credit for $2 a gallon gasoline, and immodestly shouted to his crowd of supporters: “Thank you, Obama.”
I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but given that for eight years your administration has done everything to decapitate the oil and gas industry that gave us low gas prices, sorry: No thanks are in order, Mr. President.
Even more amazing was Obama’s victory lap on the income numbers. Yes, incomes for middle-class families rose by an impressive 5 percent in 2015. And poverty fell. Thank goodness. It’s about time.
But the Census report was anything but cause for celebration. It is a stinging indictment of the policy results of both the George W. Bush and the Obama legacies. They both miserably failed and are equally culpable for the sad state of the American family’s finances today.
Census found that American incomes are lower today (adjusted for inflation) than they were in 2007. What kind of recovery is this, when we still haven’t made up the lost ground from a recession that happened seven years ago? Thank you, Obama.
Even more worrisome is the Census revelation that Americans are poorer today than they were in 2000. In other words, for 15 years, average families have made no progress at all in terms of their personal financial situations. That’s a decade and a half of no growth. That’s sad. The Bush administration has to be held accountable for this malaise, since most of it happened on Bush’s watch. This is a good point to make to the pro-Bush “never-Trumpers,” who keep sanctimoniously denouncing Trump’s policies as reckless. They should look in the mirror.
Other decade-long trends brought to light by the Census report were equally gloomy. We still have more than 43 million Americans in poverty today. About 1 in 7 of our citizens is poor. The absolute number of poor people is so large it is now the equivalent of every resident of California being in poverty. Obama’s record on fighting poverty has been a complete failure. The number of families that are poor grew by 3.2 million since the self-proclaimed savior entered office. Thank you, Obama.
If the poverty rate stood today where it was 15 years ago, we would have 7 million fewer Americans under the poverty threshold.
Why is poverty higher? Two reasons. One is that economic growth has been abysmally low over the last decade. And second: a smaller share of adults are actually working. Getting a job and a paycheck is usually a good way to move out of poverty, but we now have a near-record number of adults who are unemployed. Thank you, Obama.
These numbers are not just worrisome; they are scandalous. They point to a decade of failed policies enacted by our clueless political leaders. As the great Reagan economist Arthur Laffer has put it so aptly, we keep punishing success through taxes and rewarding failure through welfare, and then we wonder why we are getting nothing but failure.
One other depressing statistic is the lack of economic progress for black Americans under Obama. You won’t likely hear this from Black Lives Matter or the NAACP, but blacks have lost ground economically since Obama entered office. Their incomes have fallen by 2 percent. That’s especially disappointing because blacks already have much lower incomes than whites and Asians, so they are falling further behind relatively. Thank you, Obama.
The left’s flimsy explanation for all this slow growth is that this is the best America can do in the 21st century. But Donald Trump put it very well in his economic speech last Thursday at the New York Economic Club when he admonished the liberal policies that have put us in this current state. “This isn’t the best America can do; this is the best they can do,” he explained.
He’s right. Tax cuts, regulatory relief, energy production, school choice and repealing Obamacare will fix these problems and create, as John F. Kennedy put it half a century ago, a rising tide that lifts all boats.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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22 September, 2016
Fascism in the open
The stranglehold that the Left have on American education strives to ensure that no part of history that might embarrass the Left becomes generally known. The slogan in the graphic above would never have been used except that a knowledge of Benito Mussolini has been thoroughly anaesthetized. Mussolini invented the word Fascism to convey exactly what Mrs Clinton is conveying. He was a scholarly man who knew his history and he knew that the symbol of authority in ancient Rome was a bundle of rods called a Fasces borne by the lictors. The image was that the bundle was much stronger than any single rod it contains. In historical terms, then, Mrs Clinton is quite explicitly a Fascist. She has chosen as her theme the central message of Italian Fascism.
And in their intolerance of dissent, the Left are getting close to another great Fascist slogan: Mussolini ha sempre ragione (Mussolini is always right).
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It doesn’t matter what names the mainstream media call Trump – he says exactly what most Americans think, especially when it comes to Islamic terror
By Piers Morgan, who knows Trump well
Donald Trump’s a monster. A vile, hideous, bigoted, nasty, ignorant, deluded, psychotic, ruthless, preposterous, demented buffoon on a collision course to steal the White House and destroy the planet.
Oh, and he’s a sexist, racist, homophobic, misogynist pig too, and every other word ending in ‘–ist’ you can think of for that matter.
Actually he’s even worse than that; in fact, Trump’s the new Hitler – a man who, you may recall, ordered the slaughter of six million Jews.
I know all this because I’ve been reading those exact descriptions about Trump for weeks in the US media, from a whole phalanx of intelligent, experienced journalists, broadcasters, politicians and pundits.
All of them sounding increasingly like Dr Frankenstein in their desperation to try to put this ‘disgusting’ political creature they helped create, nurture and flourish firmly back in his reality TV box.
Yet despite this unprecedented bombardment of mainstream abuse, Trump’s poll numbers keep rising and his chances of becoming President keep increasing.
The reason, to me, is obvious: tens of millions of Americans just don’t agree with that withering verdict.
They think Trump’s a fiery, flamboyant, super-rich, shoot-from-the-hip buccaneer on a mission to make America great again.
They agree with him about illegal immigration, about big Government corruption, about Wall Street greed, about ‘crooked’ Hillary Clinton and most pertinently, about the threat of Islamic terrorism.
They see Trump as standing up for them, the little guys, especially the working class little guys, against the Establishment that’s conspiring to ruin their lives.
To them, he’s a towering, unbelievably self-confident fusion of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck who has decided ‘enough is enough’ and wants to reclaim the American dream from those who’ve abused it and take it back to the way it was, to what it was meant to be.
They like the way he talks, struts and fights. So the more the media whack him, the more they root for their guy. Especially when he whacks the media back with even greater ferocity.
All this came to a head over the past week with the two terrorist attacks by radicalised Muslims in Minnesota and New York. This was a perfect storm for both Trump-haters and Trump-lovers.
The former knew he would benefit politically from the incidents, because they were of the exact type he has been vociferously warning about for the past year.
The latter shared his outrage at the indiscriminate attacks on fellow Americans and the apparent impotence of President Obama in doing anything to stop them.
Hillary Clinton, as she normally does, tried to be all calm and collected. This is not a war against Islam, she insisted. We can’t blame all Muslims for what’s happened, she declared.
She’s right, it’s not and we can’t. But what neither she nor Obama offers the American people is any kind of plan to combat such attacks. They talk of how awful it all is, but studiously avoid advocating any real action for fear of upsetting or offending people.
The President doesn’t even like using the phrase ‘Islamic terrorism’, which is utterly absurd given that’s plainly what it is.
In the face of such apparently weak, insipid, mealy-mouthed and frankly meaningless rhetoric, it’s hardly surprising that Trump emerges as a non-PC, no-nonsense voice of reason to many Americans.
His anger is THEIR anger. It’s real.
I’ve been down to places like Florida and Texas recently and heard with my own ears many people ranting about the abject failure of their government to tackle ISIS.
In Trump, they see someone at least prepared to say the unsayable, even if it ruffles a few feathers.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, the New Jersey and New York pipe and pressure cooker bomber, is the perfect illustration of what Trump has been talking about. His family came to the US as asylum seekers in the 1990s, when he was seven years old. In recent years, Rahami made ‘multiple’ visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Authorities told CNN that he spent a whole year, between 2013 and 2014, in the Pakistan city of Quetta, a hotbed of Islamic extremism. A friend revealed the shocking change in him after these trips.
‘He left to go to Afghanistan,’ said Flee Jones, ‘and two years ago he came back, popped up again and was real religious. It was shocking. I’m trying to understand what made him like this.’
It’s not hard to work out the likely answer: Rahami was radicalised by jihadis. He then brought his new radicalised views back to America where they festered inside his rage-filled mind until he finally erupted in an orgy of violence.
His story, and his method of attack, bear a striking resemblance to the Russian-born Tsarnaev brothers who terrorised the Boston marathon.
The case of the Minnesota terrorist, Dahir Ahmed Adan, is less clear. We know he was a 22-year-old student who randomly stabbed ten people in a shopping mall, making ‘some reference to Allah’ and asking at least one victim whether they were Muslim before knifing them.
ISIS gleefully claimed responsibility, as they will for any attack of this nature where there’s even a suggestion of allegiance to or inspiration from their barbarous group.
Who knows what his exact connection might have been? But the FBI seem pretty firmly of the belief Adan was radicalised too.
How many more of these potential killers are out there, ready to strike in the name of their warped view of Islam? We don’t know, nobody does.
That’s the problem. And that’s why Donald Trump is damn right to keep shouting about it, even if some of his comments are unpalatable. At least he seems to understand the gravity of the situation and is coming up with plans to try to deal with it.
This week, it emerged the Obama administration wrongly granted citizenship to over 800 immigrants awaiting deportation from ‘countries of concern’ because the Department of Homeland Security didn’t have their fingerprints on file.
The Washington and media elite seems more intent on mocking, belittling and abusing Trump himself than on such staggering and dangerous incompetence.
They need to realise he’s not the real enemy here, and that when it comes to Islamic terror, Trump’s been proven absolutely, horribly right.
SOURCE
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Clinton blames Trump for N.Y., N.J. and Minn. terror attacks
“I don’t want to speculate, but here’s what we know, and I think it’s important for voters to hear this and weigh it in making their choice in November. We know that a lot of the rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS…”
That was Hillary Clinton’s response to an outlandish question on Sept. 19 by Bloomberg Politics reporter Jennifer Epstein on if Islamic State or Islamic State-inspired terrorists in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota were a part of a foreign plot to influence the presidential election. Epstein even added for good measure, “or really any other group, maybe it’s Russian.”
As if after decades of terrorist attacks aimed at Americans, Islamist terrorists really needed any more excuses to attack the U.S.
In any event, Clinton didn’t want to speculate, but she proceeded to do so anyway. In her view, the terrorists want Trump to win the presidential elections to boost recruitment in response to his calls for a halt to immigration from nations with a history of terrorism. Following her logic, a vote for Trump is a vote for terrorism.
I don’t know, maybe the terrorists just hate us, Secretary Clinton?
Then Clinton accused Trump of treason, attributing her thoughts to the former head of our Counterterrorism Center, Matt Olsen, adding, “[T]he kinds of language and rhetoric Trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.”
Ludicrous. As if taking stances against Islamist terrorism by focusing on border security and immigration from countries where terrorists tend to come from — a proposal of the Trump campaign — are somehow the reason for terrorist attacks.
In the meantime, real terrorist attacks have actually been enabled by U.S. immigration policy. For example, the 9/11 hijackers, who killed more than 3,000 Americans, were in the U.S. legally on student visas. If they hadn’t been issued visas, they probably would not have been able to complete the attacks. Pointing that fact out doesn’t cause terrorist attacks.
The suspect in the most recent New York pressure cooker bombing attack, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was an Afghan-born immigrant who became a naturalized citizen. If he hadn’t been issued his visa, he probably couldn’t have completed his attack either. Pointing this fact out doesn’t cause any more terrorist attacks.
You know what causes terrorist attacks? Terrorists.
And it is undeniable that many of the major attacks on U.S. soil in recent history have been religiously motivated by Islam.
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was completed by terrorists who were or whose families were originally from Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, and the West Bank.
The aforementioned 9/11 hijackers were on student visas from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
The Boston Marathon bombing was completed by the Tsarnaev brothers, who were here on refugee status from Chechnya.
The San Bernardino attacks were by U.S. citizen of Pakastani origin and his wife on a fiancé visa from Saudi Arabia.
The Orlando gay night club attack was by a U.S. citizen of Afghan origin.
The New York bomber was from Afghanistan, and the Minnesota stabber, who was shot and killed by a former police chief, was a refugee from Somalia.
Yes, that is not every Islamist terrorist attack. There have been others. And there have also been many other non-Islamist terrorist attacks, including Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City, the Unabomber and others.
One can disagree with Trump’s proposed policy that would restrict immigration from areas of the world with a clear history of terrorism, where the vast majority of residents are Muslims. Or argue that it would not stop every attack, which is most certainly true. Those are reasonable objections to be raised.
But to suggest Trump’s proposal — or even noting the Islamic origins of the attackers — is somehow the cause of Islamic-inspired terrorist attacks which go back decades ignores who the real enemy is. And that’s Islamic State and other terrorist organizations.
These were not Trump protestors. Or Russian agents. Or really trying to influence the elections. They were ruthless Islamist killers. They want us dead. Isn’t that enough? This time, it’s a miracle nobody was killed. Here, Clinton politicized the attacks and immediately blamed her opponent for what just as likely could have been a national day of mourning. There’s something sick and twisted about that.
Trump for his part responded to Clinton’s remarks in kind, being far more explicit, “Today, Hillary Clinton showed again that she will say anything — and blame anyone — to shift attention away from the weakness she showed as Secretary of State. The Obama-Clinton doctrine of not taking ISIS seriously enough has emboldened terrorists all over the world. They are hoping and praying that Hillary Clinton becomes President so that they can continue their savagery and murder.”
Which, is about the response you’d expect from Trump. What’s good for the goose, as the saying goes. If Clinton wants to blame her opponent for terrorist attacks, that’s fine. For what it’s worth, weakness is provocative. And it is perfectly legitimate to note the Obama administration’s failure to put a stop to Islamic State in Iraq long before the war got to this point as a potential cause for the group’s continued success. That certainly makes more sense than blaming Trump, who as a businessman and politician, has wielded no power to affect policy the past many years.
Here it is Clinton who is missing the mark, and now is sounding rather outlandish in her assessment of the threats facing the country. To hear her tell it, it is not Islamic extremist terrorists who pose a danger, but those who want to keep them out of the country. Nonsense.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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21 September, 2016
Famous last words
DeBlasio would seem to have egg on his face now that Ahmad Khan Rahami has been arrested in connection with the Chelsea bombing. But Leftists have hides like Rhinoceroses so he is probably untroubled
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, evidently fearing negative optics regarding the latest terror bombing, said, "We ... want to be upfront saying that there is no evidence at this point of a terror connection to this incident. This is preliminary information. It's something we will be investigating very carefully, but there is no evidence at this point of a terror connection." While de Blasio did acknowledge that it was "an intentional act," his claiming there is no "terror connection" is simply asinine. As the investigation unfolds, Americans will learn who is responsible for these acts of terror — jihadis. But Democrats like Obama and de Blasio seem more concerned about Americans' perception of terrorists than actual Islamists and their hateful violence.
SOURCE
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Leftmedia's Racial Bias
According to the Leftmedia, Donald Trump is the modern example of a bigoted racist. Story upon story go after Trump for such things as David Duke’s endorsement, which Trump rejected, or Trump’s call to limit immigration from Islamic countries or his plan to build a wall on the U.S. southern border. But which side is most responsible for injecting racism into the campaign?
On Saturday Barack Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, “There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter. It all matters, and after we have achieved historic turnout in 2008 and 2012, especially in the African-American community, I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote!” In other words, if you’re black and you don’t vote for Hillary Clinton because Obama supports her, then you are insulting him. This statement is blatantly racist, yet there are no accusations from the media of Obama being a racist.
The New York Times on Monday ran a story with the following headline: “White Voters Keep Trump’s Hopes Alive in Must-Win Florida.” Once again, the media is fixated on maintaining a carefully crafted image that implies racism because a majority of Trump’s supporters are white.
As Dallas police sergeant Demetrick Pennie has recognized with his lawsuit against Black Lives Matter and other prominent liberal black leaders including Barack Obama for inciting violence against law enforcement, it is not Donald Trump who is responsible for inciting racial polarization but liberals with their obsession on viewing all political perspectives through the lens of race.
SOURCE
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Banks and Banksters: Too Big to Fail or Jail?
There's one set of laws for the ruling class elitists and another set for us "deplorables."
In 2008, when a combination of government mandates severely compounded by Wall Street greed nearly blew up the world’s financial system, Congress and the Bush administration conjured up the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to save institutions deemed “too big to fail.” Ever since, too big to fail has rendered large financial institutions, and the executives that run them, virtually immune from criminal prosecution. And nothing speaks more forcefully to this reality than the latest scandal perpetrated by Wells Fargo.
Two weeks ago, federal regulators revealed the country’s third-largest bank spent the last five years opening 1.5 million bank accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts without customer permission. A staggering 5,300 employees were involved in the scam that included using a customer’s personal information from a legitimate account to open a bogus one and moving money from one to the other. Workers even created fake email addresses and PIN numbers to facilitate the corruption.
The reason? They were trying to meet sales quotas, even though this practice, known as “sandbagging,” resulted in $50 fines for the customer.
Wells Fargo’s punishment? The 5,300 employees were terminated, and the bank paid a $185 million fine levied by officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which boasted that “Wells Fargo is paying the largest penalty the CFPB has ever imposed” since its creation following the financial meltdown.
Yet those officials didn’t mention a despicable reality revealed by The New York Times, which explained the deal “was classic Wall Street.” In short, no matter how egregious the activity, many cases are settled “without a bank having to admit doing anything wrong.”
Enter Wells Fargo Chief Executive John Stumpf, who offered the standard faux-mea culpa. “Our goal is to get it right with every customer 100% of the time,” he stated. “When we fall short of that goal, I feel accountable and our leadership team feels accountable — and we want all our stakeholders to know that.”
Feeling accountable? Stumpf and his senior management team have suffered no consequences whatsoever for the bank’s malfeasance. And adding insult to injury, Carrie Tolstedt, the Wells Fargo executive who ran the phony accounts unit she resigned from the firm in July, received a $124.6 million golden parachute. At the time, Stumpf referred to Tolstedt as “a standard-bearer of our culture” and “a champion for our customers.”
Champion sandbagger is more like it.
Moreover, those boastful CFPB officials apparently looked the other way. “Regulators never determined the extent of Tolstedt’s knowledge about the abuse, and she was never named directly in the lawsuits brought over it,” reports the New York Daily News. “But she took over the division in 2008, meaning she oversaw it for the entirety of the racket.”
Even worse, this racket was exposed three years ago by Los Angeles Times reporter E. Scott Reckard, who chronicled the frenzied level of company-pressured “cross-selling” and the concomitant threats of termination that battered employee morale to the point where it led to ethical breaches. “To meet quotas, employees have opened unneeded accounts for customers, ordered credit cards without customers' permission and forged client signatures on paperwork,” he revealed.
Three years later, Americans are supposed to believe this scam was the sole handiwork of middle management and staffers, “some of whom were being paid as little as $10 an hour,” as the Chicago Sun Times put it.
Hopefully it won’t fly. Tomorrow, Stumpf is scheduled to appear at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that will focus on Wells Fargo’s sales practices. While he’s there, maybe he’ll be asked to explain how his insistence there was no incentive to perpetrate this fraud squares with a series of videos — many of which were posted in 2011 — blasting those sales incentives.
Even more important — maybe — the Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to Wells Fargo. Maybe because the DOJ has yet to characterize its involvement as a criminal investigation, without which any subsequent penalties will amount to the aforementioned “classic Wall Street” outcome. And maybe because the DOJ’s track record is utterly dismal in that regard. As Fortune revealed in 2013, despite a total of $62.2 billion in fines paid by the nation’s six largest banks over three years, and another $24.7 billion needed to settle pending lawsuits, not a single bank has had to admit any wrongdoing, and not one dollar of these billions in fines has been paid by any bank executive.
It was shareholders who took all the hits.
Why? The title of a report prepared by the Republican staff of the House Financial Services Committee and issued on July 11 says it all. “Too Big to Jail” reveals the depredation of British banking giant HSBC, which laundered nearly $900 million for drug traffickers and processed transactions for Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar/Burma, despite them being subject to U.S. sanctions. HSBC paid a $2 billion fine — and the DOJ granted the bank a “deferred prosecution” arrangement that amounts to a delay, or no prosecution whatsoever, because it promised to change its behavior.
That would be the same HSBC whose clients donated $81 million to the Clinton Foundation. The same HSBC that in 2013 appointed as a Director of HSBC Holdings … current FBI Director James Comey.
“Back in 2008, the smart people said we had to bail out the banks — because if we didn’t, we’d get an economic catastrophe,” writes New York Post columnist Nicole Gelinas. “Maybe. We know what we did get: generations of voters, liberal and conservative, who are disillusioned with capitalism. They can see that the chief of Wells Fargo gets $19.3 million annually to preside over systemic fraud, while they get blots on their credit reports.”
We also know what we didn’t get: Not a single resignation required in exchange for the $700 billion taxpayer-funded TARP bailout. Thus, it’s not just the banks the ruling class considers too big to fail. The bankers themselves who ran the system into the ground also remain conspicuously immune from anything resembling genuine accountability.
In an appearance on CNBC’s “Mad Money,” Stumpf resisted the suggestion he should resign, telling host Jim Cramer the best thing he could do now is provide leadership for his company.
Really? Stumpf became chairman of Wells Fargo in 2010. Under his “leadership” between then and now, the bank has paid out billions of dollars in fines and lawsuit settlements related to a host of infractions that include fraud, reckless underwriting, improper certification of home loans, and illegal student loan servicing practices.
This nation remains divided over a host of issues. But one suspects an overwhelming majority of Americans on both sides of the political divide are thoroughly disgusted with the reality that there appears to be one set of laws for the ruling class elitists and another set for the rest of us “deplorables.” Few things would restore a sense of justice more effectively than tossing the odious concepts of too big to fail and too big to jail on the ash heap of history.
The alternative? Abiding criminal activity mitigated solely by fines. Fines large financial institutions see as little more than the cost of doing business.
SOURCE
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Sanctuary cities kill
Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old San Franciscan women, was murdered by an undocumented immigrant living in the city illegally in July of 2015. Now her family blames more than just her murderer Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, Kate’s family has decided to sue the city for being an “sanctuary city”.
The lawsuit writes that “Kate’s death was both foreseeable and preventable had the law enforcement agencies, officials and/or officers involved simply followed the laws, regulations and/or procedures which they swore to uphold.”
By definition, these sanctuary cities are known to defy the law in order to provide a safe haven for illegal immigrants living in the United States. However, this also provides no protection in situations like Kate’s, where Juan had been a repeat felony offender and deported 5 times after illegal activity aside from his residence.
These safety cities for illegal immigrants have now taken center stage on the immigration debate. The issue was brought to the Senate floor by Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey in July to strip funding from sanctuary cities, however; Democrats united to protect the cities claiming the legislation does not provide a “real solution to our broken immigration system.”
Later, Donald Trump made it one of the pillars of his immigration agenda on the campaign trail. At a Phoenix, Arizona rally on August 31, 2016, Trump discussed the importance of working with Congress to prevent taxpayer money from funding institutions which are not following through on their simple promises to citizens-to enforce the law.
Trump noted “Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars, and we will work with Congress to pass legislation to protect those jurisdictions that do assist federal authorities… Block funding for sanctuary cities… We will end the sanctuary cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths.”
Sanctuary cities are committing far more than an act against federal law. According to the Washington Post of July 2016, from 2004 to 2012 sanctuary cities generated agreements between local and federal law enforcement to keep illegal immigrants in U.S. prisons after completing time served for crimes in order to provide shelter and resources to stall deportation and provide an opportunity to fight immigration court. Often passing the “prisoners” from prison to prison without providing family notice or legal counsel, only to eventually release the illegal immigrant back into society.
However, this plan has been criticized as an obvious violation of international human rights accords and simply a method to keep and rerelease illegal immigrants. Without consequence for a lack of adherence to federal law, cities were able to commit any number of legal violations they desired.
Federal immigration law becomes absolutely purposeless without state and local adherence to the policies. Even in situations where cities tried to imprison illegal immigrants without warrant to protect against deportation, human rights violations ran rampant. Sanctuary cities must be discovered and punished for their lack of accountability, if they are not any possibility of immigration reform will be a lost cause.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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20 September, 2016
Children born with big heads have higher IQs and thus a better chance of a successful future
The connection between larger head size and higher IQ is well-known but is usually given as a correlation around .3. But in this very careful research it came out at .5, which is a major effect. Interestingly, autistic people tend to have big heads too, and they often have quite extraordinary abilities in some field. The study mentioned below was not confined to head size. It looked at many physical attributes -- and many were intertwined with IQ and achievement. IQ is a physical reality and an important one. All men are not equal
Babies with big heads are more likely to be clever and have successful futures, a study has shown. Research carried out by UK Biobank has strongly linked higher intelligence with large head circumferences and brain volume.
Half a million Brits are being monitored by the charity to discover the connection between their genes, their physical and mental health and their path through life.
The latest evidence is the first finding to emerge from the study that aims to break down the relationship between brain function and DNA.
Researchers in a paper published by the Molecular Psychiatry journal said: 'Highly significant associations were observed between the cognitive test scores in the UK Biobank sample and many polygenic profile scores, including . . . intracranial volume, infant head circumference and childhood cognitive ability.'
Professor Ian Deary, of Edinburgh University, who is leading the research, said gene variants were also strongly associated with intelligence, according to The Times.
The new evidence is so accurate that experts claim it could even predict how likely it was that a baby would go to university based on their DNA.
SOURCE
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House conservatives are winning
If one listens to the narrative advanced by rent-seeking, parasitic Washington political establishment, conservatives were “trounced,” as one publication put it, in Republican congressional primaries this cycle. This narrative could not be further from the truth.
Certainly, there were some disappointments in this election cycle. The loss of Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), one of the most principled conservative members of the House, was a huge blow. Of course, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other crony special interests spent heavily to boost his moderate Republican primary opponent.
Former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who, rather than be spurned by the conservative members of his conference and lose his the speakership, resigned his House seat. He may have toasted a glass of red wine when Rep. Huelskamp lost, but this old House seat is now in the hands of a member of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio).
The House Freedom Caucus’ win in Boehner’s backyard was not the only victory for conservatives in 2016. Principled conservatives like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), and Dave Brat (R-Va.) avoided primary challenges by sticking to their limited government, constitutionalist principles.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) won more than 71 percent of the vote against his establishment-backed primary challenger, despite more than $500,000 in outside spending against him, proving that the model that may have worked in one race may not work in another. In Arizona’s 5th District, Andy Biggs won the Republican primary over a challenger favored by the D.C. political elite.
Conservatives are playing the long game, not that the House Republican leadership and the self-important pundit class have noticed. The fact of the matter is, we are winning. Although success may not always be defined by year-by-year primary election results, conservatives are advancing the ball down the field, a few yards at a time.
In the 1990s, there were only a handful of House conservatives -- including Reps. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Ron Paul (R-Texas), and Steve Largent (R-Okla.) -- who stuck to their principles when under pressure from Republican leadership. Today, we can count on the nearly 40-member House Freedom Caucus, as well as several other conservatives who aren’t members of the group, who consistently stay true to the limited government values.
The influence and importance of conservatives in the House Republican Conference is increasing, and, as the United States’ fiscal challenges continue to grow and the expansive federal bureaucracy strangles entrepreneurs with red tape, the power they wield to move the GOP in a pro-economic growth direction is happening at the right time.
Another definition of success is a shift in the voting habits of Republican incumbents. The very same publication which declared that conservatives were “trounced” during this election cycle noted that conservative challengers are “making [Republican incumbents] think harder about their primaries, and making them work harder to keep their base happy than in the recent past.” Although this particular point was made in reference to current members of the Senate Republican Conference, the same is true of House Republican incumbents.
Evolution is not an overnight process. It takes time. What the evolution of congressional Republicans has showed is that conservatives have more influence than ever before. That doesn’t mean that challenges, both electoral and legislative, won’t arise. And, of course, evolution is a slow process. With every passing moment, the national debt continues to rise, the regulatory state continues to grow, and rent-seeking, parasitic special interests are concocting the next scheme in their playbook to try to defeat principled conservatives in Congress.
In order to preserve the Republic, we absolutely must work to defend and strengthen conservatism on Capitol Hill and speed up the evolutionary process.
SOURCE
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Meet the Alt-Left
Alt-right is becoming a term of soft bigotry whereas “alt-left” accurately describes the political ideology of today’s Democratic Party.
A strong offense is the best defense when fighting bullies. Today, our offense is to turn Hillary’s words against her. She and her ilk are the alternative-left. They have fallen away from the pragmatic Democratic ideals of John F. Kennedy and embraced a radical “power at any cost” fringe philosophy of Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers.
Alt-Left Extremist Behavior:
Here are a few examples of the radical measures that today’s Democratic Party supports that indicate they have morphed into a fringe group:
1.) Ignoring Science: “Science-denier” is the modern Democrat’s middle name. Hillary Clinton opposed the construction of the Keystone Pipeline even though her own State Department thrice declared it to be environmentally safe.
2.) Pretending States Don’t Exist: Obama’s administration sued Arizona forexercising its own immigration laws; North Carolina over its bathroom laws. Obama’s administration also used aggressive and excessive measures to challenge California’s state authority on medical marijuana.
3.) Coddling Thugs, Killing Free Speech: Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik stormed a gun free zone in San Bernardino, CA last December—fatally shooting 14 individuals and injuring 24. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch threatened to prosecute anyone who dared say anything that could be in any way construed as anti-Muslim—despite Farook and Malik being radicalized jihadist Muslims.
4.) Crushing Bakeries and Pizzerias: Obama doesn’t think you can build a layered wedding cake “on your own” let alone open your own bakery. So, it’s not entirely surprising that his administration wouldn’t intervene when alt-left protesters put a bakery out of business when the owner practiced her 1st Amendment right to free speech.
5.) No ID to Vote: You must show an ID to withdraw cash from a bank; buy cigarettes; purchase alcohol; patronize a bar or dance club; buy ammo; or use your credit card at the U.S. Post Office—but the government doesn’t want to know who is voting. Could politicians want to hide their attempts to buy votes from illegal immigrants?
6.) Double Standards: If a Marine had access to classified material, he or she would be Court-Martialed for failing to follow basic security procedures with that material. If that Marine deleted tens of thousands of potentially jeopardized emails before turning over her emails to the FBI, she would likely spend a decade in jail. Not Hillary Clinton! She’s the Queen of the Alt-Left, which means she’s above the law.
7.) Normalizing Child Abuse: “As president, I will always have your back,” Hillary recently told Planned Parenthood. Democrats support using taxpayer dollars to fund the murder of a baby during the final months of pregnancy (partial-birth abortion) despite the baby showing signs of life and viability. In this objectively cruel procedure, the baby’s scull is punctured with a sharp surgical tool and its brain is suctioned, inducing the collapse of the baby’s scull and ultimately the child’s death.
8.) Security Blankets for College Students: Democrats want taxpayers to subsidize “safe spaces” so that students do not encounter intellectual diversity. The alt-left wants us to bankroll silly laws (think California Gov. Jerry Brown’s “Just Say No” law designed to stop rape on college campuses) that prevent students from exercising their 2nd Amendment right to carry concealed. Result: college students cry and stamp their feet when a professor corrects their grammar errors. Yes, this happened at the University of California at Los Angeles.
SOURCE
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12 Hours of Terror: Just Another Weekend in Leftist-run America
We live in a country run by people who tell us that if a man puts on a dress and says he’s a woman we are supposed to take him at his word. But, if a man goes on a murderous rampage in the name of Allah, and ISIS claims responsibility, we shouldn’t draw conclusions.
The weak and ridiculous position in which we find ourselves did not happen on its own. Americans selected this band of leftist fools who have zero aptitude for dealing with terrorism. A quote from King Solomon, the wisest earthly leader to ever grace the planet comes to mind:
“As dead flies give perfume to a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are.” (Ecclesiastes 10:1-3)
Thanks to those whose hearts incline “to the left,” the terrorism which was once a rarity in America can happen anytime and anywhere.
And does. In a 12-hour span over the weekend, we saw that it is not safe to shop in a mall in Minnesota, or run a 5k in New Jersey or walk in New York City without risk of terrorism.
“Rest assured,” they tell us, “justice will be served.” Of course, they are always quick to remind us to not make assumptions. Heaven forbid we offend someone’s sensibilities.
Fox News reports ISIS claimed responsibility for the shopping mall stabbing spree saying the attacker “asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim and referenced Allah.” The group posted this public statement on AMAQ, a news agency known for speaking for ISIS: “The executor of the stabbing attacks in Minnesota yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition.”
Apparently, this information wasn’t enough for the FBI to draw conclusions about the motive of the stabber which the Somali-American community in St. Cloud quickly identified as Dahir Adan.
According to the St. Cloud Times: “Like the police, Minnesota FBI spokesman Kyle Loven declined to say Sunday if investigators believe the attack was a terrorist act.” Nor was it enough for Police Chief William Blair Anderson who “pointedly declined to call the attacks an act of terrorism, saying the motive isn’t yet known,” reports a local paper.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a pipe bomb-like explosive device detonated along the route of a 5k charity race to help Marines and sailors, and in New York City, 29 people were injured when an improvised explosive device went off in a Manhattan neighborhood. Business Insider reports that after the explosion, officials later found a “pressure cooker with an apparent mobile phone attached to it and wires protruding.”
And the mayor overly obsessed with controlling what New Yorkers eat immediately called the bombing “a very serious incident.”
Later at a press conference a reporter grilled Mayor Bill de Blasio asking, “How can you say there is no link to terrorism when the Inspire magazine published instructions on how to build one of these pressure-cooker bombs, like the one used in the Boston Marathon bombing?” De Blasio dug in his heels, saying it was “a very serious incident,” and reiterating “we have a lot more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this…”
Apparently, the mayor couldn’t get his sodium-free tongue to utter the word “terror,” proving to us just how true the Bible verse is: “Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are.”
SOURCE
Note
A bearded person known as Ahmad Khan Rahami, is being sought in connection with the Chelsea bombing. That sounds like an Irish name to me. What do you think?
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- about Muslims, free speech and IQ
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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19 September, 2016
"Ethical Socialism"
I owe the excerpt from Oswald Spengler below to statistician Briggs. It is indeed interesting. Spengler was a popular German thinker of the early 20th century. He thought that European civilization had just about reached its limit and was bound to fall while some other civilization arose. The gutless reaction to Islamic hostility in the Western world today certainly does bring Spengler to mind.
And it is notable that Spengler identifies socialism as the power-hungry but ultimately nihilistic force that is destroying the countries it dominates. His diagnosis of socialism as inherently totalitarian has certainly been borne out by subsequent events in Russia and Germany.
But in an indirect way, Spengler was responsible for the rise of Nazism. He never was a Nazi and rejected its antisemitism but his diagnosis of his own society as dying from its own weakness and lack of self-confidence did plant in people's minds the hope that a strong leader would emerge who would restore the national will and self-confidence -- make it great again -- and thus rescue European civilization from its decline. And we all know who came along in Germany to offer just that.
Hitler was of course an idol who had feet of clay but it is not unreasonable to hope that a new leader with fewer flaws could arise. And that seems to be where we are now. No matter how often Muslim terrorists murder us, our Left-dominated leaders refuse to do anything about it. And the rise of Trump has exposed the great discontent among the people about the lack of reaction to Islamic supremacism.
Trump is also far from a perfect saviour but he seems to be the only saviour we've got. A successful American businessman and an undistinguished Austrian artist are very different people so very different things are to be expected from them. What we get may not be ideal but it may include what we need.
But the rescue we need is NOT from Islam. As Spengler foresaw, it is from the ever more powerful Left. There is no lack of patriotic pride and civilizational confidence among ordinary Americans. It is the Left who are keeping a lid on it rather than proclaiming and defending it. There is nothing wrong with America and Americans. It is only the Leftist and Left-dominated parasites riding on its back that are the problem. Reagan neutered them for a while but they have regrouped. Trump is our best hope of purging their influence and hitting back at Islam
In spite of its foreground appearances, ethical Socialism is not a system of compassion, humanity, peace and kindly care, but one of will-to-power. Any other reading of it is illusory. The Stoic takes the world as he finds it, but the Socialist wants to organize and recast it in form and substance, to fill it with his own spirit. The Stoic adapts himself, the Socialist commands. He would have the whole would take the shape he desires, thus transferring the idea of the Critique of Pure Reason into the ethical field.
This is the ultimate meaning of the Categorical Imperative, which he brings to bear in political, social and economic matters alike—act as thought the maxims that you practise were to become by your will the law for all. And this tyrannical tendency is not absent from even the shallowest phenomena of the time. It is not attitude and mien, but activity that is to be given form. As in China and Egypt, life only counts insofar as it is deed. And it is mechanicalizing of the organic concept of Deed that leads to the concept of work as commonly understood, the civilized form of Faustian effecting.
Apollian man looked back to a Golden Age; this relieved him of the trouble of thinking upon what was still to come. The Socialist feels the Future as his task and aim, and accounts the happiness of the moment as worthless in comparison. The Classical spirit, with its oracles and its omens, wants only to know the future, but the Westerner would shape it. The Third Kingdom is the Germanic ideal. From Joachim of Floris to Nietzsche and Ibsen—arrows of yearning to the other bank, as the Zarathustra says—every great man has linked his life to an eternal morning.
And here Socialism becomes tragic. It is of the deepest significance that Nietzsche, so completely clear and sure in dealing with what should be destroyed, what transvalued, loses himself in nebulous generalities as soon as he comes to discuss the Whither, the Aim. His criticism of decadence is unanswerable, but his theory of the Superman is a castle in the air.
And therein lies a deep necessity; for, from Rousseau onwards, Faustian man has nothing more to hope for in anything pertaining to the grand style of Life. Something has come to an end. The Northern soul has exhausted its inner possibilities, and of the dynamic force and insistence that had exposed itself in world-historical visions of the future—visions of a millennial scope—nothing remains but the mere pressure, the passionate desire to create, the form without the content.
The soul was Will and nothing but Will. It needed an aim for its Columbus-longing; it had to give its inherent activity at least the illusion of a meaning and an object. And so the keener critic will find a trace of Hjalmar Ekdal in all modernity, even its highest phenomena. Ibsen called it the lie of life.
For deep down beneath it all is the gloomy feeling, not to be repressed, that all this hectic zeal is the despairing self-deception of a soul that may not and cannot rest. This is the tragic situation—the inversion of the Hamlet motive—and a thread of it runs through the entire fabric of Socialism, political, economic and ethical, which forces itself to ignore the annihilating seriousness of its own final implications, so as to keep alive the illusion of the historical necessity of its own existence.
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IQ rediscovered yet again. You can't suppress reality for long
They account for around one per cent of the population and much of their success has been put down to dedication and perseverance.
But new studies are now challenging the notion that extremely intelligent children earn their achievements through hard work.
Instead, they suggest that they may have a genetic advantage from birth, and that success is built on this early head-start.
Two clusters of genes have been found that are directly linked to human intelligence.
Called M1 and M3, these 'gene networks' appear to determine how smart a person is by controlling their memory, attention, processing speed and reasoning.
Crucially, scientists have also discovered that these two networks - which each contain hundreds of genes - are likely to be under the control of master regulator switches.
Researchers from Imperial College London are now keen to identify these switches and explore whether it might be feasible to manipulate them.
The research is at a very early stage, but the scientists would ultimately like to investigate whether it is possible to use this knowledge of gene networks to boost cognitive function.
The investigators analysed thousands of genes expressed in the human brain, and then combined these results with genetic information from healthy people who had undergone IQ tests.
Remarkably, they found that some of the same genes that influence human intelligence in healthy people were also the same genes that cause impaired cognitive ability and epilepsy when mutated.
In the US, there are several universities that look out for early talent and have been tracking where high-achieving children end up. Their results show that those who succeed have an early cognitive advantage.
Johns Hopkins University in Maryland runs a talent programme which is open to adolescents who scored in the top one per cent in maths and English. Notable alumni include Mark Zuckerburg, founder of Facebook, and Lady Gaga.
While many of the children on this programme have gone on to achieve great things, Jonathan Wai, a psychologist in the Talent Identification Programme at Duke University in North Carolina, wanted to test whether childhood aptitude was a guide to success in general.
He looked at five subsets of the US elite – federal judges, billionaires, Fortune 500 chief executives and members of the Senate and House of Representatives. He found that in each subset, those in the top one per cent of ability were over-represented.
While these people could have pushy parents, or have attended top schools, Mr Wai argues that environment factors alone cannot account for success.....
While these studies do suggest that intelligence has a high genetic basis, education and opportunity could still lead to success for those without a strong genetic basis.
SOURCE
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Did the bank bailouts really save the free market system?
Eight years ago, on September 15, Lehman Brothers failed, starting a rapid series of events that resulted in the bank bailouts and the country has not been the same in so many ways.
While President George W. Bush famously said that he, “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system” explaining his decision to bail out Wall Street, General Motors and other failing entities. But did he save it, and if so, for who?
General Motors for its part, emboldened by its debt-free balance sheet invested in new factories in China and is now importing a mid-sized crossover SUV known as the Envision. Meanwhile Flint, Michigan, which used to be known as Buick City, finds itself struggling as a city left behind, more known as a place which messed up its drinking water treatment than for its auto legacy.
The banks have largely pulled out of the tailspin, but after bailing them out, the Obama Justice Department has been busily suing the survivors and winning massive awards with the big winners being local advocacy groups who have been cut into a big piece of the pie, even though they were not harmed in any way. Investor’s Business Daily reports, “Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder’s record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America. Buried in the fine print of the deal, which includes $7 billion in soft-dollar consumer relief, are a raft of political payoffs to Obama constituency groups. In effect, the government has ordered the nation’s largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests.”
This creation of a well-funded new network of housing advocacy groups, exactly like the discredited ACORN which served as the community organizers who encouraged people with next to no ability to take out loans to buy first or sometimes even bigger homes.
Since the 2008 bailout, the labor participation of workers between the ages of 16-64 has continued to drop and millions more workers have increasingly been shifted to the service economy, or what’s left of it. Those who can’t make it wash out of the economy altogether.
But perhaps most significantly, the banking collapse and subsequent bailout led to eight years of President Obama’s constantly pulling at the threads of America finding the frayed edges and sowing discontent wherever possible.
America today is less confident and surefooted about the future economically and abroad, and while it can’t all be attributed to the bank crisis, it was this seminal event that threw us collectively off balance. Our economic lives tossed about due to events that were not only out of our control, but were not understandable.
Eight years ago today, Lehman Brothers fell, starting a domino effect which continues to this day with persistent minimal economic growth numbers and unemployment numbers dependent upon people dropping out of the economy to be maintained.
Oh what an eight years it has been.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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18 September, 2016
Ford moving all production of small cars from U.S. to Mexico
This announcement has produced a lot of criticism so I thought I might mention the reason for it. The reason is that small car production is extremely competitive -- and becoming more so as China enters the market. So Ford needs a cost saving to compete with the Asian manufacturers. Otherwise sales of small Fords could nosedive, which would throw American workers out of work anyway. And the benefit to the consumer of the move is a reduced price for their small car buy.
I agree that there can be social reasons why moving production may be undesirable but in this case no American workers will lose work so I can't see any reasonable objection to the Ford move. If Trump does put a tariff on imports from Mexico he will simply be giving the entire small car market to Asian producers, notably China. Does he really want that? Ford's profits will mainly go to America. China's profits will go to China
Ford Motor said Wednesday it is shifting all of its U.S. small car production to Mexico, a development that drew fresh criticism from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Ford's declaration came as CEO Mark Fields sought to appeal to investors.
"Over the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small car production to Mexico and out of the United States," Fields told a meeting in Dearborn, Mich., where the company is based.
But the new development played perfectly for Trump, who was campaigning in Michigan, the traditional home to the nation's auto industry. As recently as April, he blasted Ford's plans to move production to Mexico as an "absolute disgrace." And on Wednesday, he picked up the beat again as he visited Flint, which has been hard hit by the loss of auto worker jobs.
"We shouldn’t allow it to happen. They’ll make their cars, they’ll employ thousands of people, not from this country, and they’ll sell their car across the border," Trump said. "When we send our jobs out of Michigan, we’re also sending our tax base."
In Michigan, Ford's announcement didn't come as a great surprise. Ford has said it continues to invest heavily in its U.S. plants and isn't cutting jobs here. Last fall, the automaker made a commitment to invest $9 billion in U.S. plants, with about half going to 11 facilities in Michigan. The deal created or retained more than 8,500 jobs as part of a new four-year contract with the United Auto Workers union, a net increase in the U.S.
Still, UAW President Dennis Williams has repeatedly blasted Ford and other automakers for investing so much money in Mexico.
"There is no reason, mathematically, to go ahead and run to countries like Mexico, Thailand and Taiwan," Williams said earlier this year. "We all recognize there is a huge problem in Mexico. So we have to address it as a nation. The UAW cannot do it alone. We are not naive."
SOURCE
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Explaining Donald Trump's Penny Plan for Non-Defense Spending
Much of the attention in Thursday's remarks by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has focused on his revised tax plan, but another new policy could have significant effects on the budget: applying the "Penny Plan" to certain domestic spending. This plan would gradually reduce the caps on non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending by shrinking them 1 percent per year (as opposed to allowing them to grow roughly with inflation) and doing the same to certain other mandatory non-defense spending. By our estimates, applying the Penny Plan to the NDD caps alone would save roughly $630 billion but would shrink the NDD budget by roughly one-quarter within a decade.
The Penny Plan has been proposed before, including by Representative Connie Mack (R-FL) and Senate Budget Committee Chair Mike Enzi (R-WY) in Congress and by former presidential candidates Ben Carson and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) during the Republican presidential primary. The basic idea behind the Penny Plan is straightforward: it would reduce spending by 1 percent per year in nominal dollars, so that, for example, $100 billion of spending would decline to $99 billion the next year, then $98.01 billion the following year, and so on. Over time, a 1 percent reduction would represent a significant reduction in spending relative to current law, where average spending is projected to grow by over 4 percent per year. Indeed, the traditional version of the Penny Plan would lead to potentially drastic cuts since it would be working against rising health costs and an aging population.
Unlike the traditional version, Trump's Penny Plan would only apply cuts to a subset of the budget, most of which is already capped and not growing particularly rapidly. Specifically, he would apply the Penny Plan to the NDD caps and select non-defense, non-entitlement, and non-safety net spending. The campaign claims this could save $1 trillion over ten years – a bit higher than our estimates, but not dramatically so.
This year, NDD budget authority (the amount of new obligations federal agencies can make) was capped at $518 billion, and under current law, this cap is scheduled to remain roughly flat for the next two years then increase roughly with inflation each year after that, reaching $627 billion in 2026. Under Trump's plan, spending would instead decline one percent each year to $469 billion by 2026 for total ten-year BA savings of nearly $740 billion. Since the plan affects growth rates, the cuts would grow larger over time so that by 2026, non-defense discretionary spending would be cut by one-quarter relative to current law. It would be cut by somewhat more than one-quarter compared to current spending adjusted for inflation.
As a result of these cuts, the caps would be about $740 billion lower over the next decade than under current law, which would translate into $630 billion of outlay savings over a decade. Scheduling these savings to occur would be relatively easy: it would simply require lowering and extending the existing NDD caps. Meeting those caps, however, would require lawmakers to make tough choices and identify significant cuts to many areas of government spending each year.
Trump's Penny Plan would also apply to some mandatory spending, though it's not exactly clear to which programs. He specifically mentions that he would exempt Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans' programs but otherwise states he would exempt "entitlement" and/or "safety net" programs. The majority of the remaining spending comes from federal retirement programs, but it is not clear whether those would count as entitlement programs or not. Either way, it does not seem likely that applying the Penny Plan to the mandatory spending that Trump does not exempt would yield enough savings to bring the total savings to $1 trillion. Savings of $700 billion to $800 billion over a decade are more likely.
Trump's Penny Plan is a welcome proposal to offset a portion the cost of his tax plan and other proposals. It appears that the savings would fall slightly short of the $1 trillion the campaign claims but would still generate substantial budget savings. Still, implementing the proposal would be quite difficult without eliminating or dramatically scaling back several government functions, and we would encourage the Trump campaign to identify where at least some of these cuts would come from.
In addition, this Penny plan would only pay for a fraction of Trump's tax plan, so significant additional savings – particularly from the fastest growing parts of the budget – will ultimately be necessary.
SOURCE
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Washington’s Wake-Up Call
Mitch Daniels
When I testified on Capitol Hill last week on the subject of the national debt, I found myself in the odd position of hoping our elected representatives would find my testimony of little value because it would strike them as so obvious.
As I told them, they know, or should know, that our federal deficits have been running at historically unprecedented levels, so much so that another half-trillion dollars this year was met with a yawn. They know, or should know, that our national debt has reached a peacetime record, and is heading for territory where other nations have spiraled into default, or into the loss of sovereignty as creditors use their leverage to dictate terms.
They know, or should know, that public debt this large weighs heavily on economic growth, crowding out private investment and discouraging it through uncertainty. And that much faster growth than today’s is the sine qua non of the greater revenues necessary to meet federal obligations, let alone reduce our debt burdens.
They know, or should know, that the unchecked explosion of so-called entitlement spending, coupled with debt service, is squeezing every other federal activity—from the FBI to basic scientific research to our national parks to the defense on which the physical survival of the country depends.
They know, or should know, that the problem is getting worse, and fast. Even if reform began today, past overpromising and demographic realities mean that the entitlement monster is going to devour accelerating amounts of additional dollars, all of which are scheduled to be borrowed rather than funded honestly.
They know, or should know, that official projections of growing indebtedness—even the appalling estimates I just referred to—are built on a foundation of wishful thinking: productivity assumptions are too high, interest rate assumptions too low; growth too high, spending too low. As each of these is proven unduly rosy, more zeros will be added to the bill we hand to the young people of this country. So let me offer an appeal on behalf of those young people and the new Americans not yet with us. The appeal is for a shift in national policy to the growth of the private, productive economy as our all-out, primary priority. And for decisive action soon that begins the gradual moderation of unkeepable promises and unpayable debts that will otherwise be dumped on coming generations.
A national government that, year after year, borrows enormous sums and spends them not on genuine investment in the future but on current consumption, passing the bill down to others, pretending that the problem is smaller than it really is, lacks not only good judgment but integrity. It is not hyperbole to label such behavior immoral. For a long time, people have gone to Congress decrying the intergenerational injustice of this policy, yet things keep getting worse.
A near-decade of anemic growth and the weakest postrecession recovery on record has eroded Americans’ economic optimism. A 2015 Rasmussen survey found that nearly half (48%) of likely voters “think America’s best days are in the past.” As this new pessimism has deepened, it has turned into an ugliness, a meanness, a new cynicism in our national life, with a search for scapegoats on the left and the right.
For nearly two and a half centuries, Americans have shared a resilient determination to be self-governing, to guard against tyranny at home and, on occasion, to resist by force its spread elsewhere. But lately there are alarming signals of a different outlook.
According to the World Values Survey, as reported by Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk in the July edition of the Journal of Democracy, in 2011 a record one in four American citizens said that democracy is a “bad way” to run the country, and an even larger number would prefer an authoritarian leader who didn’t have to deal with the nuisance of elections.
When today’s young Americans learn the extent of the debt burden we have left them, they will legitimately question the premises of self-government. When tomorrow’s older Americans finally understand how they have been misled about the nature and the reliability of our fundamental social welfare programs, it may be the last straw breaking the public confidence on which democracy itself depends.
In fairness, a few members in each political party have tried to address the coming crisis. To them, all thanks and credit. To those still in denial, or even advocating steps that would make our debts even higher, please reconsider. Your careers may end happily before the reckoning. Your re-elections may not be threatened by your inaction. But your consciences—and what Lincoln called “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—will be.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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16 September, 2016
The relationship between conservatism and racism
The nature and extent of the relationship is contested but the Left are quite convinced that it is conservatives who are racist. That conservatives are generally OPPOSED to the blatant racism that is affirmative action never quite gets into their heads. Leftists are OBSESSED with race. They look for racial implications in everything. "Racist" is their big swear sword. Conservatives just wish they would stop.
What Leftists do to support their suspicion of conservatives is to do survey research in which they ask one series of questions that identifies conservatism and then another that identifies racism. That such opinion surveys don't predict racial behaviour has been known since the 1930s but let that pass.
They then ask who agrees most with the statements that express conservastism and then ask are they the same people who agree most with statements expressing racism. And they do generally find some overlap.
An unusually sophisticated study in that mould has just come out that has some interesting results, however. The new study looked at the social context in which the statements were made. What do people say when most people around them are conservative and does that differ from when most people around them are Leftish? And they found that context made a big difference.
What they found was that in a generally conservative society, conservatives were NOT racist. It was only among Leftists that conservatives agreed with some racist statements. So Leftism provokes racism. Who'd a thunk it? The Leftist obsession with race makes conservatives a bit racist too. I find that a big laugh. It certainly torpedoes the conventional Leftist view of conservatives.
In summary: In a conservative environment, where little is heard of the constant Leftist yammering about race, "negative outgroup attitudes" are rare and likely to come from both Right and Left. But a Leftist environment is polarizing. The constant Leftist yammering about the evils of whites and the innocence of minorities causes conservatives to react against that and make them more likely to express attitudes that are critical of "outgroups". So it is actually Leftism that causes "negative outgroup attitudes" to be expressed by conservatives.
The journal abstract is below. For the statistically-minded, note that restriction of range effects were allowed for:
The Mobilizing Effect of Right-Wing Ideological Climates: Cross-Level Interaction Effects on Different Types of Outgroup Attitudes
Jasper Van Assche et al.
The present research investigated a multilevel person-context interactionist framework for the relationship between right-wing ideologies and prejudice across two large, representative samples (Study 1: European Social Survey: N 5 56,752; Study 2: World Values Survey: N 5 74,042). Across three different operationalizations of right-wing ideology, two contextual levels (regional and national) of right-wing climate, and three types of outgroup attitudes (i.e., age-, ethnicity-, and gender-based), the analyses consistently revealed cross-level interactions, showing a strong association between right-wing attitudes and negative outgroup attitudes at the individual level in contexts with a low right-wing climate, whereas this relationship is weaker and often even absent in contexts with a high right-wing climate. These cross-level interactions remained significant after controlling for statistical artefacts (i.e., restriction of range and outliers). The authors propose norm setting as the mobilizing mechanism through which a right-wing climate develops and curbs the influence of individual right-wing social-ideological attitudes on outgroup attitudes.
Political Psychology, 2016. doi: 10.1111/pops.12359
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Hillary’s health is a problem, but her lack of honesty could be deadly
“Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What’s the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?”
That was former Barack Obama chief campaign strategist David Axelrod’s Twitter reaction to Hillary Clinton’s near-collapse as she was entering a van after a September 11 memorial in New York.
Coming from Axelrod, it is a clear shot across Clinton’s bow coming directly from the Democrat Party establishment as rumors begin to swirl about replacing her atop the party’s ticket in November.
The Clinton campaign’s explanation is that she had seasonal allergies leading to a cough, and then pneumonia which led to heat exhaustion at the ceremony on Sunday. But, based on her actions, it is clear that but for the Twitter video showing her wobbling and falling forward into her van amid Secret Service and personal handlers attempting prevent her from hitting the pavement, the American people would almost certainly never have heard about this episode.
How do we know that? Clinton’s destination after her fall was to her daughter Chelsea’s residence, not to a hospital to treat heat exhaustion, which the New York Post reports was to avoid media exposure. The heat exhaustion explanation was only in response to disclosure of the video, and the bout of pneumonia was not included in the official explanation until hours after that. They were going to cover it up. What if it had been a much more serious condition?
That is not a conspiracy theory. That’s what happened. Clinton was comfortable with failing to disclose a major medical episode even as questions on her health and fitness to serve as commander-in-chief were dogging the campaign. And her campaign only came forward when the truth could not be denied.
What else might the campaign be hiding? Did Clinton lose consciousness? Does she have any other ailments? How often does she fall? In 2012, Clinton had another fall and suffered a concussion. Soon thereafter, she had a blood clot in the brain that was treated. Is that everything?
Nowadays, we tend to romanticize past presidents’ ailments — and how the mainstream media tended to cover them up — such as Franklin Roosevelt’s polio or John Kennedy’s battle with extreme pain and anxiety along with the powerful cocktails of drugs he took. The way these are often portrayed is that the illness did not affect the policies or performance of these presidents. But is that really true?
Consider Woodrow Wilson, who in 1919 suffered a severe stroke and was incapacitated for the remainder of his presidency. It was covered up, only to be pieced together later by historians, but if the 25th Amendment had been in place then it is highly possible he would have been deposed by his Cabinet for being physically and mentally unable to fulfill his duties of office.
These matters were and are so serious that countermeasures were put in place into the Constitution itself.
So, if the future president was going to have a potentially fatal illness, wouldn’t you want to know about it?
For Clinton, the issue could become a major headache going forward, particularly if voters perceive that she and her campaign sought to mislead the public about her health. In this case, Axelrod is right. Her illnesses can be treated, but the public faith and trust, once lost, will not easily recover.
SOURCE
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What if Hillary collapsed after winning the election?
Jeff Jacoby
"CONCEALING ONE'S true medical condition from the voting public," the historian Robert Dallek wrote in a 2002 essay, "is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency." During the presidential campaign of 1960, John F. Kennedy went to extreme lengths to hide from voters any hint of his severe medical problems, which ranged from Addison's disease to crippling spinal degeneration. By comparison, Hillary Clinton's recent dissembling over pneumonia and fainting spells is small potatoes.
Hillary Clinton staggered and apparently fainted after leaving a 9/11 memorial ceremony early on Sunday. Her campaign later acknowledged that she often suffers from dehydration, and had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.
Kennedy's deception succeeded not only because disclosure standards were so different in his time — public figures were accorded far more privacy than they are now — but also because he was a young man, just 42 when he ran for president. Candidates today can't expect to keep their medical problems secret, especially not candidates as old as Clinton (almost 69) and Donald Trump (70). Last month, the Clinton campaign snorted that Republicans questioning her health were peddling "deranged conspiracy theories." That won't fly anymore.
Already Democratic Party insiders are talking about having a Plan B ready in case Clinton's health problems become insurmountable. On Monday, former Democratic Party chairman Don Fowler urged the party to quickly set up a contingency plan to replace Clinton in case a medical crisis forces her from the race. "It's something you would be a fool not to prepare for," he told Politico.
No major-party presidential candidate has ever been forced by illness, or anything else, to quit the race after winning the nomination. But in 1972, the Democrats' vice-presidential nominee, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, had to drop out after it became known that he had been treated for depression with electroshock therapy. The DNC quickly regrouped, naming Sargent Shriver to take Eagleton's place. Now as then, it would be the responsibility of the party to fill any pre-election vacancy in its national ticket — regardless of whether the vacancy were caused by sickness, scandal, death, or mental debility. (Or, for that matter, by party leaders belatedly coming to their senses and realizing that a disastrous nominee was steering the Titanic straight for the iceberg.)
But suppose a vacancy materialized after the November election. Then the power to choose a replacement would no longer belong to the parties, but to the Electoral College.
Presidents are not elected directly by the people, but by state-based slates of electors. Under the Constitution, it is up to the states to appoint electors "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." Legislatures need not defer to the popular vote. They can, if they choose, name their state's electors directly, with instructions to vote for someone other than the candidate who won the most votes on Election Day.
Thomas Eagleton (L) was nominated by the 1972 Democratic convention to be George McGovern's running mate. But he was forced to leave the ticket once it became known that he had been treated for depression with electroshock therapy.
Clinton's collapse on Sept. 11 was quickly treated, and only a churl would wish her anything but a full recovery. But anything can happen. So far no president-elect has died, become incapacitated, or voluntarily withdrawn in the month and a half between the November election and the convening of the electors. It probably won't happen this year, either.
Yet if the 2016 cycle has taught us anything, it is to rule nothing out. With 70-year-old candidates, it isn't hard to imagine a serious medical crisis, such as a stroke or a massive heart attack, occurring just days after the election. Nor is it that hard — considering how ethically tainted the major-party nominees are — to imagine some devastating post-election revelation (perhaps via WikiLeaks) of wrongdoing or corruption that would make it unthinkable to allow the popular-vote winner to take the oath of office.
The Electoral College is routinely disparaged as undemocratic and archaic, but it exists for the excellent reason that mass democracy can go wrong. The people can be led wildly astray. Or they can make a choice that suddenly turns unviable. Or disaster can strike. Clinton's late-in-the-campaign illness may prove a mere blip. Still, it's a good opportunity to remind ourselves that the Framers built an escape hatch into the presidential election process. Even if voters screw the pooch on Nov. 8, the Electoral College can undo the damage.
SOURCE
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Stop Big Government, Seek Bigger Growth
Seventeen years ago, near the close of the 20th century, the typical American household had a higher income than it did in 2015.
The Census Bureau's annual report on income and poverty in the United States, released this week, did not focus on that fact. But it did note that real median household income was higher in 2015 than in 2014.
"Median household income was $56,516 in 2015, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from the 2014 median of $53,718," the report said in its "Highlights" section.
"This is the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession," the report said.
In 2007 — nine years ago — real median household income (in constant 2015 dollars) was $57,423, according to Table A-1 in the report. America has not gotten back there yet.
In the nearly five decades between 1967 and 2015, according to that table, real median household income peaked in 1999 at $57,909. It has never been that high in the 21st century.
But the Census Bureau data also shows — as it has shown in the past — that some types of households tend to have higher incomes than others.
To modern American liberals, this would be evidence of a class war, where rich and evil people exploit the poor.
But the Census Bureau's Table FINC-01, which shows median household income by "characteristics of families," demonstrates something else.
In 2015, according to this table, "married couple families" had a median household income of $84,324. By contrast, families with a male householder and "no wife present" had a median income of only $49,895. Families with a female householder and "no husband present" had a median income of $34,126.
Families where the householder had a bachelor's degree had a median income of $103,224. By contrast, families where the householder had a high school degree had a median income of $52,906, and families where the householder had attended high school but not graduated had a median income of $32,906.
One lesson from the Census Bureau data: If you want to do better financially in the United States, earn a degree, get married, have kids and work. Another lesson: America needs a new era of economic growth.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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15 September, 2016
Is Hillary epileptic?
Those strange blue "sunglasses" Hillary has been wearing lately have now been identified as Zeiss f133 glasses, designed to prevent epileptic seizures. Can America afford an epileptic as Commander in Chief? Others are writing a lot on this (e.g. here) but you can be sure that vast efforts are being made to prevent any hard information getting out.
Even so, I think Hillary is finished. Her age has caught up with her. Those old bones can't hack it anymore -- unless she has a body double of course.
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Deconstructing "inclusivity"
Inclusivity is something of a buzzword on the Left these days. It has always seemed complete nonsense to me. You don't include golf players in football games or vice versa. Far from being a good thing, inclusivity would seem to create one big muddle. Different people need to be treated differently, not herded into one big corral. It only makes sense if you believe the absurd Leftist doctrine that all men are equal. They may all be equal in the sight of God -- to quote a famous political compromise -- but God's optometrical difficulties are not widely shared.
I regard myself as having had a blessed life and at age 73 still laugh my way through the day. I don't sound very jolly in my writing a lot of the time but who could be jolly in discussing the slimy con-men of the Left?
Yet, as I have previously set out at some length, I have lived most of my life in a state of great exclusion. And I am delighted that I was able to separate myself from uncongenial company. Because "inclusivity" was not forced down my throat, I was free to go my own way and do my own thing. When most of my fellow pupils at school were running around chasing balls, I was reading books. From infancy on, chasing balls is clearly one of humanity's greatest pleasures but I much preferred books. And I could do that. I could separate myself from other people. I lived happily outside the big Corral. And to this day I have quite a small social circle.
So the great good to me seems to be discrimination. Each of us is very discriminatory in choosing things as diverse as our wine and our life partners so being discriminatory in choosing our company should be optimal for our life satisfaction. We do best by excluding the unsuitable, not by including it.
I suppose at this stage I must seem like a bit of a moron. I have been treating the desirability of inclusion as a general proposition. I think one does need to look at it in such an objective way but, in reality, it is a very particular policy goal hiding behind a generally good-sounding name -- in the usual Leftist style. Candy-coating their destructive proposals is what Leftists do.
What inclusion is all about was brought home to me by this article. The language was inclusion but the starting point of the article was was outrage at the occasional deaths of unco-operative black criminals at the hands of the police. Voila! Being inclusive means being nicer to blacks! That is the whole meaning and purpose of the doctrine concerned. I am all in favour of everybody being nice to everyone else but being permissive towards criminals of any skin color seems grossly maladaptive to me. They should be excluded, not included.
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A defence of Trump
Trump is not the statesman I would have chosen for this moment. My preferences run toward Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Reagan, and the like. Trump doesn’t measure up to any of them. But his flaws are overstated. One of the dumber things often said about Trump is that “you can’t trust him with the nuclear codes.” This statement, first, betrays a complete lack of understanding of nuclear command and control. More important, it’s an extraordinary calumny, one that accuses the man of a wish or propensity to commit mass murder on the scale of Pol Pot. On what basis does anyone make such an accusation? Can Trump be erratic, obnoxious, and offensive? Of course, he can be all that and more. But while these qualities are not virtues, they may well have helped him punch through the Overton Window, in which case I am willing to make allowances.
For this objection to be decisive, Trump’s personal immoderation would have to be on a level that aspires to tyrannical rule. I don’t see it. Not even close. The charge of “buffoon” seems a million times more apt than “tyrant.” And even so, one must wonder how buffoonish the alleged buffoon really is when he is right on the most important issues while so many others who are esteemed wise are wrong. Hillary Clinton launched the Libya war, perhaps the worst security policy mistake in US history—which divided a country between two American enemies and anarchy, and took a stream of refugees into Europe and surged it into a flood. She pledges to vastly increase the refugee flow from the Middle East into our communities (and, mark my words, they will be Red State communities). Trump by contrast promises not to launch misguided wars, to protect our borders, and to focus immigration policy on the well-being of the currently-constituted American people. Who is truly more moderate: the colorful loudmouth with the sensible agenda or the corrupt, icy careerist with the radical agenda?
Conservatives have shouted since the beginning of Trump’s improbable rise: He’s not one of us! He is not conservative! And, indeed, in many ways, Trump is downright liberal. You might think that would make him more acceptable to the Left. But no. As “compassionate conservatism” did nothing to blunt leftist hatred of George W. Bush, neither do Trump’s quasi-liberal economic positions. In fact, they hate Trump much more. Trump is not conservative enough for the conservatives but way too conservative for the Left, yet somehow they find common cause. Earlier I posited that the reason is Trump’s position on immigration. Let me add two others.
The first is simply that Trump might win. He is not playing his assigned role of gentlemanly loser the way McCain and Romney did, and may well have tapped into some previously untapped sentiment that he can ride to victory. This is a problem for both the Right and the Left. The professional Right (correctly) fears that a Trump victory will finally make their irrelevance undeniable. The Left knows that so long as Republicans kept playing by the same rules and appealing to the same dwindling base of voters, there was no danger. Even if one of the old breed had won, nothing much would have changed, since their positions on the most decisive issues were effectively the same as the Democrats and because they posed no serious challenge to the administrative state.
Which points to the far more important reason. The current governing arrangement of the United States is rule by a transnational managerial class in conjunction with the administrative state. To the extent that the parties are adversarial at the national level, it is merely to determine who gets to run the administrative state for four years. Challenging the administrative state is out of the question. The Democrats are united on this point. The Republicans are at least nominally divided. But those nominally opposed (to the extent that they even understand the problem, which is: not much) are unwilling or unable to actually do anything about it. Are challenges to the administrative state allowed only if they are guaranteed to be ineffectual? If so, the current conservative movement is tailor-made for the task. Meanwhile, the much stronger Ryan wing of the Party actively abets the administrative state and works to further the managerial class agenda.
Trump is the first candidate since Reagan to threaten this arrangement. To again oversimplify, the question here is: who rules? The many or the few? The people or the oligarchs? Our Constitution says: the people are sovereign, and their rule is mediated through representative institutions, limited by written Constitutional norms. The administrative state says: experts must rule because various advances (the march of history) have made governing too complicated for public deliberation, and besides, the unwise people often lack knowledge of their own best interests even on rudimentary matters. When the people want something that they shouldn’t want or mustn’t have, the administrative state prevents it, no matter what the people vote for. When the people don’t want something that the administrative state sees as salutary or necessary, it is simply imposed by fiat.
Don’t want more immigration? Too bad, we know what’s best. Think bathrooms should be reserved for the two biological sexes? Too bad, we rule. And so on and on.
To all the “conservatives” yammering about my supposed opposition to Constitutional principle (more on that below) and who hate Trump, I say: Trump is mounting the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation. He may not see himself in those terms. I believe he sees himself as a straightforward patriot who just wants to do what is best for his country and its people. Whatever the case, he is asserting the right of the sovereign people to make their government do what they want it to do, and not do things they don’t want it to do, in the teeth of determined opposition from a managerial class and administrative state that wants not merely different policies but above all to perpetuate their own rule.
If the Constitution has any force or meaning, then “We the People” get to decide not merely who gets to run the administrative state—which, whatever the outcome, will always continue on the same path—more fundamentally, we get to decide what policies we want and which we don’t. Apparently, to the whole Left and much of the Right, this stance is immoderate and dangerous. The people who make that charge claim to do so in defense of Constitutional principle. I can’t square that circle. Can you?
(To those tempted to accuse me of advocating a crude majoritarianism, I refer you to what I said above and will say below on the proper, Constitutional operation of the United States government as originally designed and improved by the pre-Progressive Amendments.)
One must also wonder what is so “immoderate” about Trump’s program. As noted, it’s to the left of the last several decades of Republican-conservative orthodoxy. “Moderate” in the modern political (as opposed to the Aristotelean) sense tends to be synonymous with “centrist.” By that definition, Trump is a moderate. That’s why National Review and the rest of the conservatives came out of the gate so strongly against him. I admit that, not all that long ago, I probably would have too. But I have come to see conservatism in a different light. To oversimplify (again), the only “eternal principle” is the good. What, specifically, is good in a political context varies with the times and with circumstance, as does how best to achieve the good in a given context. The good is not tax rates or free trade. Those aren’t even principles. In the American political context, the good is the well-being of the physical America and its people, well-being defined (in terms that reflect both Aristotle and the American founding) as their “safety and happiness.” That’s what conservatism should be working to conserve.
Trump seems to grasp that the best way to do so in these times is to promote more solidarity and unity. The “conservatives” by contrast think it means more individualism. Neither of these, either, is an eternal principle. Prudence calls for a balance. Few would want the maximized (and forced) unity of ancient Sparta or modern North Korea. Only fool libertarians seek the maximized individualism of Ayn Rand. No unity means no nation. No individualism means no liberty. In an actual republic, a balance must be maintained, which can require occasional course corrections. In 1980, after a decade of stagnation, we needed an infusion of individualism. In 2016, we are too fragmented and atomized—united for the most part only by being equally under the thumb of the administrative state—and desperately need more unity.
Which means that Trump, right now, is right and the conservatives are wrong. His moderate program of secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy—all things that liberals and conservatives alike used to take for granted, if they disagreed on implementation—holds the promise of fostering more unity. But today, liberals are apoplectic at the mere mention of this program—controlling borders is “extreme” but a “borderless world” is the “ultimate wisdom”—and the Finlandized conservatives aid them in attacking the candidate who promotes it. Conservatives claim to deplore the way the Democrats slice and dice the electorate, reduce it to voting blocks and interest groups, and stoke resentments to boost turnout. But faced with a candidate explicitly running on a unity agenda they insist he is too extreme to trust with the reins of power. One wants to ask, again: which is it, conservatives? Is Trump to be rejected because he is too moderate or because he is too extreme? The answer appears to be that it doesn’t matter, so long as Trump is rejected.
So that’s my “immoderate” case for Trump: do things that are in the interests of lower, working, and middle class Americans in order to improve their lives and increase unity across all swaths and sectors of society. And in so doing, reassert the people’s rightful, Constitutional control of their government. “Dangerous.” “Extreme.” “Radical.” “Poison.” “Authoritarian.”
Much more HERE.
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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14 September, 2016
15 Years After 9/11 We’re Less Safe, Less Free
September 11 marks the 15th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As with the assassination of JFK and the attack on Pearl Harbor, 9/11 will forever be seen as a critical moment in American history.
For those who lived through the 9/11 attacks the anniversary brings up many unpleasant memories. I was young—a junior high school student. Our teachers told us there had been an attack, but refused to discuss it further. It was not until I got home and turned on the television that I began to understand that I was seeing something unlike anything I’d ever encountered.
Like many Americans, I was scared and worried about what the terrorist acts would mean for our country. I remember asking my parents if there would be more attacks and if there were terrorists living in the United States. I wondered what I would do if I or someone I loved was a victim of an attack. Although they tried to be comforting, it was clear my parents didn’t have the answers.
Lucky for me and other Americans, the chance of being killed (or even injured) in an act of terror is remarkably low—about one in 20 million. You are more likely to die while moving your couch, or from being struck by lightning, from falling out of bed, from the flu, or from brain-eating parasites!
Some would argue that this illustrates that government has done a good job since 9/11. Consider, however, that the number of Americans killed in terror attacks on an annualized basis has remained remarkably constant and low over several decades, with a few exceptions like 9/11. In the period from 1995 through 2014, for example, seven years saw no deaths in the United States related to terrorism. In six other years, one to four Americans were killed on U.S. soil in “terror-related” incidents. Even looking worldwide, the number of Americans killed in terror attacks pales in comparison to other causes of death. In 2013 just under 2.6 million U.S. citizens died. Thirteen of these deaths were terror-related, 0.0005 percent of all deaths. In 2001, taking into account the deaths from the 9/11 attacks, terror deaths still represented less than 0.2 percent of all U.S. deaths.
Yet despite these comforting numbers, Americans are less safe and less free than they were 15 years ago. The danger comes not from terrorism, but rather from the U.S. government. The War on Terror has enabled massive government expansion. The cost is not “just” the nearly $2 trillion in taxpayer money, but our liberty.
Consider that during the last 15 years, U.S. government has spied (and continues to spy) on U.S. citizens and international leaders. The U.S. government has used “enhanced interrogation,” otherwise known as torture, to combat terrorism. These techniques are not exclusively used in foreign combat zones, however. Recent investigations of the Chicago Police Department, for example, indicate that local governments have employed these same techniques at home, not against terrorists but against US. citizens.
Drones and other forms of extrajudicial killing are now standard practice. These activities not only fail to eliminate terror threats, but provide a rallying cry and recruitment tool for terrorist organizations, making Americans at home and abroad less safe. The push to use drone technology domestically by state and local law enforcement has substantial consequences for privacy. Militarized police, now on the “front lines” of the war on terror at home, have trampled the rights of Americans with a barrage of “no-knock” raids and unauthorized surveillance.
Moreover, those who speak out against these activities, whistleblowers who expose the wrongdoings of the U.S. government, are labeled as un-American, anti-military or even traitors, and punished. Meanwhile, questionable and perhaps illegal activity by government officials goes unchecked.
Many Americans look outside of the United States to determine who represents the biggest threat to freedom and safety. Fifteen years after 9/11, we’d do well to realize that the largest threat to our liberties comes not from people thousands of miles away but from our own government.
SOURCE
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Gary Bauer: Teddy Roosevelt Banned Muslims; Jimmy Carter Banned Iranians
In a speech Friday at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., American Values Founder and President Gary Bauer said that former President Theodore Roosevelt banned Muslims during his presidency by prohibiting immigration to the U.S. of anyone who believed in polygamy, promoted it or lived in a country that practiced it.
“Donald Trump has been crucified, because a number of months ago, he said that we ought to have a pause in Muslim immigration to the United States, and it took about 10 minutes for the president and quite frankly, a number of Republican leaders to run to a microphone and basically say that’s not who we are. That’s not our values. Well they’re wrong,” Bauer said.
“Teddy Roosevelt enforced the law during his presidency that prohibited immigration to the United States of anybody who believed in polygamy, promoted polygamy, or lived in a country that practiced polygamy. Who do you think he was trying to keep out of the country, Episcopalians?” Bauer asked.
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, the Immigration Act of 1891 barred “the immigration of polygamists, persons convicted of crimes of moral turpitude, and those suffering loathsome or contagious diseases.”
“How about Jimmy Carter, that well known right wing bigoted extremist, right? Jimmy Carter, who the guy I worked for, Ronald Reagan, clobbered on Election Day, Jimmy Carter, after the Iranian Revolution, announced that effective immediately there would be no more immigration from Iran into the United States, but that’s not all,” Bauer said.
In 1980, Carter announced that the U.S. was breaking diplomatic relations with Iran and ordered all Iranian diplomats and officials to leave the country by midnight the next day, according to an April 8, 1980 article in The Crimson. This was 157 days into the Iran hostage crisis. Fifty Americans were held hostage by militants occupying the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. At the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ruled that the Americans must stay with the militants until the new Iranian Parliament decided their fate.
“Jimmy Carter went on national TV and said, there are 25,000 Iranian students attending our universities. You have 30 days to report to your closest immigration center with your papers. He expelled thousands of Iranian university students from the United States,” Bauer said. “That was weakling, left-wing, Democrat Jimmy Carter.
“And today, taking that commonsense position gets you attacked the way Trump is attacked. It’s unbelievable what’s happening in this country,” he said, referring to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s initial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.
“Donald Trump has done a little bit more on his proposal. Now he says that he’s gonna really zero in on a handful of countries, and that’s fine – countries where there’s a lot of terrorist activity, etcetera, but then he said something else that again set people off on a tirade,” Bauer said.
“He said we’re going to start having an ideological test. Of course we should. The Pew Research Center did a study of the Muslim world and found that it is permeated with hatred of Jews, of Christians, rejection of religious liberty. Why would we import that to the United States?” Bauer asked.
Bauer said the world has been “cursed with leaders that at best are clueless” when it comes to combatting terrorism.
“We have been cursed with leaders that at best are clueless,” Bauer said, pointing to President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “How do you explain Merkel in Germany, who doesn’t have an unexpected influx of young Muslim migrants coming to the country?
“She invites them in, and a million of them accept her invitation, pouring across the borders, and then in the weeks and months that follow, Merkel expresses surprise and shock that German women are being molested and raped,” Bauer said.
“What did she think would happen when you bring in hundreds of thousands of young men from third world countries that have been taught in their houses of worship that infidel women are all whores and you could do to them what you want to do? That’s who she invited into Germany,” he said.
“How about in France, where after the brutal attack in Nice, families run over by a jihadist in a truck, empty carriages littered all over the beach where babies used to be sitting, and a French government official says, ‘well, this is almost impossible to stop. The French people may just have to get used to tolerating a certain level of terrorism in our pluralistic country,’” Bauer said.
“And then there’s President Obama. My gosh, if I’d shared with you all of his contributions to helping us understand what is going on, I’d be speaking through the rest of my time and the next two speakers,” Bauer said.
“A few months ago, he had this really incredible insight to share with us. The president said you America, you Americans have more risk of drowning in a bathtub, he said, than you do of being killed by terrorists. Well thank you, Mr. President, for that incredible insight. Churchill, he ain’t,” Bauer added.
“I guess my reaction would be that when my bathtub starts yelling Allah Akbar and trying to kill me, I’ll start worrying about baths, but right now, I’m going to worry about the people, whose numbers are growing ladies and gentleman, who have declared war on western civilization – Judeo-Christian civilization,” he said.
Bauer then referenced Kerry’s comments Bangladesh in August during a press availability in Dhaka.
“Secretary Kerry a couple weeks ago went to a conference in Europe – don’t want to leave him out. This was a conference on the importance of open societies, and he brought the crowd – many of them journalists and government officials - to their feet in raucous applause when he said if the media would just stop reporting the terror attacks, the impact they have would be lessened,” Bauer said.
“He offered no guidance on what reporters should do when they come across the mass graves. Should they not report those either? Cause if you report that they just found another grave with a thousand dead Christians in it or Yazidis or other religious minorities, people might go, Wow, that’s big news. Who killed them?” Bauer added.
SOURCE
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Houston Jury Rules Against SEIU Tactics
Marking the end of a 10-year legal battle, a Houston jury today ruled in favor of Professional Janitorial Services and against the SEIU, ordering the union to pay $5.3 million in damages for the union’s campaign to drive away the company’s business.
The “Kill PJS” campaign was a three-year effort by the SEIU to do exactly what the name suggests. Throughout that time, the union implemented a three pronged strategy of media collaboration, baseless lawsuits, and union-planted employees in an effort to drive customers away from the janitorial company.
“The jury found what PJS and its employees have known for more than a decade, which is that SEIU is a corrupt organization that is rotten to its core,” said Brent Southwell, CEO of PJS. “The next step is to ensure the union is removed from Texas and sent packing back to Chicago.”
Founded in Chicago, the Service Employees International Union is a DC-based union with deep ties to the Obama administration.
Throughout the four week trial, jurors learned of false allegations, threatening tactics, and an all-out smear campaign waged by the SEIU against the janitorial company for one simple reason— PJS refused to allow the union to organize its workforce of janitors without a secret ballot election.
In a statement, PJS added that they “will now ask local prosecutors to investigate apparent perjury by union officials and an attorney who testified in the trial, and will increase its efforts with state legislators to remove the SEIU from eligibility in state-provided union dues collection programs.”
The PJS trial was the first time the union’s tactics were brought in front of a jury, as other companies have opted to settle their cases and avoid a trial.
Today’s ruling sends a clear message that unions who attempt to use corrupt tactics and political connections to pressure business owners into giving in to their demands will no longer be tolerated in the Lone Star State.
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- about both British and American matters
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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13 September, 2016
Fifteen Years after 9/11, and America Still Sleeps
How much worse will the destruction and death have to be to wake us up?
Fifteen years after the carnage of 9/11, American foreign policy is still mired in its fossilized dogmas and dangerous delusions. The consequences are obvious. Iran, the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism and long an avowed enemy of the United States, has filled the vacuum of our ignominious retreat from the Middle East, even as the mullahs move ever closer to possessing nuclear weapons. Russia, Iran's improbable ally, bombs civilians in Syria, kills the Syrian fighters we have trained, bullies its neighbor Ukraine, consolidates its take-over of the Crimea, and relentlessly pursues its interests with disregard for international law and contempt for our feeble protests. Iraq, for which thousands of Americans bled and died, is now a puppet state of Iran. Afghanistan is poised to be overrun by the Taliban in a few years, and ISIS, al Qaeda 2.0, continues to inspire franchises throughout the world and to murder European and American citizens.
So much for the belief, frequently heard in the months after the attacks of 9/11, that "this changes everything." The smoking ruins and 3000 dead surely had awoken us from our delusions that the "end of history" and a "new world order" had followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, "a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak," as George H.W. Bush said in 1990. The following decade seemed to confirm this optimism. Didn't we quickly slap down the brutal Saddam Hussein and stop his aggression against his neighbors? Didn't we punish the Serbs for their revanchist depredations in the Balkans? With American military power providing the muscle, the institutions of international cooperation like NATO, the International Court of Justice, and the U.N. Security Council would patrol and protect the network of new democracies that were set to evolve into versions of Western nations and enjoy such boons as individual rights, political freedom, leisure and prosperity, tolerance for minorities, equality for women, and a benign secularism.
The gruesome mayhem of 9/11 should have alerted us to the fact many Muslims didn't get the memo about history's demise. Indeed, long before that tragic day in September, we had been serially warned that history still had some unpleasant surprises. Theorists of neo-jihadism like Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb for decades had laid out the case for war against the infidel West and its aggression against Islam. "It is the nature of Islam," al-Banna wrote, "to dominate not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations and extend its power to the entire planet." So too the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini: "Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world," which is why "Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers." The kidnapping of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Tehran by a group called "Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam [Khomeini]" sent us a message that we were engaged in the religious war the jihadists warned would come. But few of those responsible for our security and interests had ears to hear or eyes to see.
Not even when the words became bloody deeds did we listen. The bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks in 1983, which killed 241 servicemen, was supported by Iran and executed by its proxy terrorist group Hezbollah. Our refusal to respond reflected our failure to take seriously Khomeini's vow to spread his revolution to the whole world. The humiliating televised abuse of our dead soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993, followed by our withdrawal, was exploited by Osama bin Laden in his sermons as signs that America had "foundations of straw." That same year came the first World Trade Center attack, which killed six and wounded 1,042, an operation inspired by al Qaeda and traditional jihadist doctrine. In 1995 five Americans were killed by al Qaeda operatives at a training facility in Riyadh. In 1996 a truck bomb exploded in front of a residential complex housing Air Force personnel near Dhahran, killing 19 Americans. In 1998 al Qaeda bombed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Twelve Americans died in Nairobi. And the last warning came in October of 2000, when the destroyer Cole was attacked by a fishing boat loaded with explosive. Seventeen sailors died and 39 were wounded.
Yet during these two decades of attacks that proved the jihadists' words were not just bluster, we did little in response. We interpreted the attacks as crimes, not battles in a war, and reflections of poverty, autocracy, or vague "evil," rather than as the fulfillment of Allah's divine commands. Instead, Clinton launched cruise missiles that made a lot of noise but accomplished nothing, limited as those attacks were by timid rules of engagement. His foreign policy was internationalist and idealist, seeing the spread of democracy and the promotion of human rights as paramount in foreign affairs. America's presence needed to be reduced in the world, and the use of force should be a last resort, and even then carefully calibrated to avoid international condemnation and American casualties. "Dialogue" and "outreach" were preferable, for the jihadists were just defending "traditional values," as one State Department official said. The wages of that delusion were the burned and dismembered bodies in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
This history is worth reviewing, for all these mistakes, these failures of imagination, these indulgences of naïve idealism, these sacrifices of our security and interests to political advantage, all comprise the "everything" that 9/11 was supposed to "change." But here we are, fifteen years later, with a similar history of folly. George W. Bush pursued a delusional program of democracy promotion in Iraq and Afghanistan, with scant appreciation for the profound cultural differences between Islam and the West. But he at least left his successor a stabilized Iraq, which Obama quickly abandoned just to fulfill a campaign promise and assert his progressive bona fides. Then Obama blustered that Syria's "Assad has to go" and laid down "red lines" that were not to be crossed, only to do nothing when they were serially crossed, and to sacrifice this country's credibility in his pursuit of the disastrous deal with Iran, our inveterate enemy stained with four decades' worth of American blood. ISIS was allowed to flourish in the vacuum created by our withdrawal, creating a Hobbesian war of all against all, whose beneficiaries so far have been our rival Russia and our sworn enemy Iran.
Perhaps worst of all, Obama has turned jihad denial into a fatal disease. He is not alone in this delusion, for "religion of peace" and "nothing to do with Islam" have been mantras chanted by our foreign policy savants going back to the Iranian Revolution. No matter that al-Banna, Qutb, Khomeini, bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the mullahs in Iran all have grounded their violence and aggression in Islamic scripture and tradition. Our smug Western analysts and apologists dismiss the jihadists' exegesis as a "hijacking" or "distortion" of the "true" Islam, presuming to understand the Islamic faith better than pious Muslims do. So we half-heartedly fight an enemy whose name we cannot even say, and whose religion of violence we desperately distort into a religion of peace and tolerance. Meanwhile, like Bill Clinton and now Obama, we use bombs and drones as telegenic marketing tools to hide our failure of nerve and short-sighted political calculations.
So fifteen years later, we still sleep. And don't expect things to change after November. Neither candidate has shown any indication he or she is willing to make the hard decisions required to destroy ISIS and reaffirm American prestige. Trump issues vague threats about "bombing the shit" out of ISIS, while Hillary chatters about "smart power" and "coalitions," doubling down on Obama's failing policy. But no one proposes using the mind-concentrating levels of force, including troops as well as bombs, necessary to repair our broken foreign policy in the Middle East. Too many voters are in an isolationist mood, sick of wars and casualties, and concerned more about jobs and the economy.
The attacks on 9/11 supposedly "changed everything." When it comes to foreign policy, they didn't. One shudders to think how much worse the destruction and death will have to be to wake us up.
SOURCE
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‘Socialism of the 21st Century’ Collapses in Brazil. Here’s Why It Failed
With the Senate impeachment vote to remove from office former President Dilma Rousseff, Brazilians joined a lengthening line of Latin Americans who have soured on the populist, corrupting, and impoverishing policies of “21st Century Socialism.”
Faced with its disastrous consequences, people in some neighboring countries had already turned the page and moved on. Argentina wised up late last year and installed center-right President Mauricio Macri after more than a decade of misrule by the Peronist Kirchner family.
Earlier this year, Peruvians voted for a 78-year-old center-right economist to get them back on track. And in Caracas, Venezuela, tens of thousands took to the streets demanding the removal of the brutally fascistic regime put in power by one of 21st Century Socialism’s founding fathers, the late Hugo Chávez.
In Brazil, government spending programs championed by Rousseff and her socialist mentor and predecessor, “Lula” da Silva, only managed to pull Brazilians out of poverty temporarily, through cash transfers and welfare benefits that ended up nearly bankrupting the country and plunging it into its deepest recession since the 1930s.
After squandering many opportunities during the era of booming commodity prices, these countries now face the difficult—but necessary—structural reform process to remove the real obstacles that have limited productivity growth and thwarted convergence with more advanced economies.
Many of these reforms are detailed in The Heritage Foundation’s newly published “2017 Global Agenda for Economic Freedom.” They include:
Stronger protection of property rights and more effective anti-corruption measures.
Renewed efforts to reduce barriers to trade and investment (e.g. nontariff barriers and nontransparent investment regimes).
Liberalization of energy markets.
Reduction of support for massively subsidized state-owned enterprises that are especially toxic breeding grounds for cronyism and favoritism (e.g. Petrobras in Brazil).
By taking these steps under new President Michel Temer, Brazil can soon make strides to raise its scores in the annual Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom and, more importantly, make sustainable improvements to the living standards of its millions of citizens.
Rousseff’s downfall was sealed when it was revealed that she and her socialist PT political party had cooked the budget books to boost vote-buying spending measures in advance of her squeaker re-election victory in the 2014 presidential election. Now, Brazilians have slammed those books closed and opened the door to greater prosperity in a post-socialist Latin America.
SOURCE
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Obama will leave us defenseless
Our Commander-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama, is out to sabotage the U.S. Military. His deliberate actions have exposed this great nation to dangers never before seen in our history.
At first I thought it was mere incompetence. But now I can see it for what it really is.
Obama's every move is designed to deplete our military, bring our armed forces to their knees and establish him as Ruler.
His sneaky actions are unparalleled and pose a HUGE threat to the future of our military and the safety of our entire nation.
Right under our noses, Obama has purged a huge number of senior military officials from top positions in our armed forces.
Last year alone, he "relieved of duty" nine generals and flag officers -- making a total of over 200 top-class officers fired since he came to office in 2009, including nine very powerful generals and admirals in the past year alone.
The question is: Why?
One veteran Army intel officer shared the reason. He said that Obama wants a "compliant officer class" and "it's getting harder and harder to find senior officers with a pair of b*lls above the rank of major" because above that rank "it's all politics."
That's right. Our mighty U.S. Military is being purged by a former dope-smoking, terrorist-loving, communist-sympathizing, America-hating hippy.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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12 September, 2016
Trump is sounding better
BY ROGER KIMBALL
I think Publius is right that the demonization of the Right would only accelerate in a Hillary Clinton administration. Which brings Publius—and me—to Donald Trump. “Yes, Trump is worse than imperfect, “ he admits. “So what? We can lament until we choke the lack of a great statesman to address the fundamental issues of our time.” Publius goes further than I would. “Trump,” he says,
"alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity"
There were others, in my opinion, who fit this bill, including Ted Cruz. But Ted Cruz is not a candidate for the presidency in 2016. Donald Trump is. Which brings me back to my second thoughts about Trump. As recently as a few weeks back, I was a lesser-of-two-evils, reluctant Trump supporter: classic Russian roulette vs. the loaded semi-automatic that is a Hillary Clinton victory.
But then Trump embarked on a series of high-profile speeches and rallies. I liked what he said about taxes and economic policy. I liked his list of possible SCOTUS nominees. I liked what he said about supporting the police and the plight of blacks in the inner cities. I liked what he said about combatting Islamic terrorism (what Barack Obama calls “workplace violence”). I even liked most of what he said in his immigration speech in Arizona. I thought it was courageous and “presidential” for him to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. I thought he did the right thing in going to lend moral, and even a bit of material, support to the victims of the floods in Louisiana. I was grateful when he released a video commemorating the canonization of Mother Teresa. I was happy to see him supporting school choice, standing up for religious freedom, and criticizing those who mock Christians and people of faith.
I know there will be some who object, “But how do you know he will do all things things.” The answer is, I don’t.
But I do know what Hillary would do: Obama on steroids. She’s a known-known. She would, as Publius warns, complete the “fundamental transformation” of this country into a third-world, politically correct socialist redoubt.
There is a fair amount of hysteria among NeverTrumpers about “The Flight 93 Election,” which I guess underscores just how potent its argument is. (The fact that Rush Limbaugh read it aloud on his radio show redoubled that potency.) As I say, I’ve come around to thinking that there are plenty of good reasons for someone of conservative principles to support Trump. I know, and have repeatedly rehearsed, the standard litany of criticisms about Trump. But they fade if not into insignificance then at least into near irrelevance in the face of his actual program (see above) and, most of all, in the face of the horror that is his opponent. I’ll give the last word to Publius: “The election of 2016 is a test . . . of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.”
The great James Burnham once remarked that where there is no alternative there is no problem. Fortunately, we do have an alternative, and, my, we do have a problem. I was wrong when I predicted that Donald Trump would not be the candidate. I hope I will be proved wrong about my prediction that, were he the candidate, he would not win. The trends are promising, I think, but it would be foolish to deny that there are madmen in the cockpit or that many of the passengers are scared, apathetic, deluded, or just plain cowardly. We need a real-life Decius Mus who is willing to say “Let’s roll” and make a concerted charge. It may be the last chance we have.
SOURCE
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Hypocrites
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Charles Murray talks about the new class war cleaving the US in two
With the publication in 2012 of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, political scientist Charles Murray – celebrated and denigrated in equal measure for his earlier works, Losing Ground (1984) and The Bell Curve (1994) – produced a searing, searching analysis of a nation cleaving along the lines of class, a nation, as he put it, ‘coming apart at the seams’. On the one side of this conflicted society, as Murray sees it, there is the intellectual or ‘cognitive’ elite, graduates of America’s leading universities, bound together through marriage and work, and clustered together in the same exclusive zipcodes, places such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Boston.
In these communities of the likeminded, which Murray gives the fictional title of ‘Belmont’, the inhabitants share the same values, the same moral outlook, the same distinct sense of themselves as superior. And on the other side, there is the ‘new lower class’, the white Americans who left education with no more than a high-school diploma, who increasingly divorce among themselves, endure unemployment together, and are gathered in neighbourhoods that Murray gives the title of ‘Fishtown’ – inspired by an actual white, blue-collar neighbourhood of the same name in Philadelphia.
It is in Fishtown that the trends Murray identifies as the most damaging over the past 50 years – family breakdown, loss of employment, crime and a loss of social capital – are felt and experienced. Its inhabitants have a set of values (albeit threadbare ones), an outlook and a way of life that are entirely at odds with those from Belmont. And it is between these two almost entirely distinct moral communities, that the new Culture Wars now appear to be being fought. Sean Collins caught up with Murray to talk about the cultural drivers of this latent class conflict; how it plays into the rise of Trump; and what can be done about this dangerous division
Sean Collins: In Coming Apart, you argue that the top and bottom of American society are divided culturally as well as economically. Fishtown is not only poorer than Belmont, but engages in different cultural practices, and has different values. For example, the value placed on marriage and religion differs among the people in your two archetypal towns. What forces have created this divide? To what extent have economic trends, such as a lack of employment opportunities, contributed to the divide?
Charles Murray: In Coming Apart I deliberately avoided talking about causes, and the reason for that was to enable people on the left to read the book without giving up on it. In my own view, many of the left’s policies, starting in the 1960s, contributed to this breakdown. They contributed to the breakdown of the family; they contributed to rising crime; they indirectly contributed to declining religiosity; and, above all, they contributed to the withdrawal of a lot of males from the labour force. Those policies weren’t the only causes, but I didn’t want to talk about those I had discussed in an earlier book, Losing Ground. Instead, I wanted my audience to confront the fact that this division between top and bottom had occurred.
However, in terms of the forces driving this division, I would say the economy’s role has been vastly overstated. My reasons for saying that are, first, that we have had a natural experiment. We have had prolonged periods in the US where the job market has been tight, with more jobs than workers: we had scattered years in the 1970s, for instance; then we had a period in the mid 1980s, during the second term of the Reagan administration; and, most obviously, in the latter half of the 1990s, labour markets were very tight. Yet during all of this time we saw the low-skilled, poorly educated workers of Fishtown drop out of the labour force. If the labour market was to blame, then presumably males would have come back into the labour market during those periods – they did not. The decline slowed somewhat during those periods, but it did not reverse. So, when people say, ‘oh, we can solve this problem by creating plenty of jobs at good pay’, I say, we tried that. You have to tell me what is going to be different about a tight labour market in the future, that was different from, say, the latter half of the 1990s.
I think the much larger changes in the culture were driven by, as I mentioned, a variety of social policies that I discussed in Losing Ground. But I should add to those a couple of others. First, the invention of the birth control pill, which liberated women from the fear of pregnancy and generated a sexual revolution. This led to a situation in which males’ incentives for marriage changed. A major incentive for a young male to marry prior to 1960 was to have regular sexual access to a woman, which was hard to do at that time if you were not wealthy or otherwise in a fortunate position.
So are working-class Americans angry? Yeah. And is Trump a vehicle for expressing that anger? Absolutely
Second, feminism. Women were able to get into the labour market in ways they had not before. It was a good thing to happen, but it also fundamentally changed the role and status of the working-class male. So before the entrance of women into the workplace, he could say ‘I am the head of the family; I am putting food on the table, and a roof over the heads of my children’, which gave him not only a personal sense of satisfaction, but also a status within the community. But the role and status of males changed when so many women started to become economically independent of men.
So, it’s a classic case of many forces creating the problem I described in Coming Apart. Forces which were progressive – I’m glad that the feminist revolution occurred, I’m glad that better contraception was available for women. But they had collateral effects which were problematic.
Collins: You paint a fairly bleak picture of life in Fishtown. People are not only poor but despairing, and otherwise leading difficult lives. Do you think the elite is to blame for Fishtown? Do the people of Fishtown have any culpability for their situation?
Murray: The people of Fishtown have a lot of responsibility for what’s gone on. If you go to a Fishtown in the US – that includes lots of small towns in the Midwest and West, as well as urban working-class neighbourhoods – you will see, for example, lots of healthy, able-bodied males in their twenties and thirties, who are not working. They are not looking for work; they do not take jobs if they are available; and they spend their lives essentially playing video games. That’s not really an exaggeration. The statistics on the number of hours spent by these guys on video games are stunning.
Now, it is a classic argument of the left to say, ‘ah, they are demoralised. They are not responsible for their decisions.’ And I agree, in some sense they are demoralised. But I also do not want to deprive them of moral agency. They have the option to behave differently. There are people in those same communities who are behaving differently. There are men who are in the labour market, are employed, are doing the right thing. So, if you talk about the new lower class, there are two points to make. One, do forces outside the control of the people in those communities have a bearing on their lives? Absolutely. Two, does that excuse them from the choices they make, to live off of others – girlfriends, parents, friends, the government? No, it does not excuse them from making those choices.
Collins: Coming Apart was published in 2012. Have the culture divisions you identified in the book persisted? Have they evolved at all?
Murray: The divisions have continued to get worse, but not that rapidly. For example, if you look at the marriage rate for guys in their thirties and forties, it hasn’t fallen much more than had it done when I compiled my data (in 2010) for Coming Apart. So have things gotten a lot worse over the past six years? Not a lot, but they have gotten worse. The thing that I did not pick up on in Coming Apart was the decline in working-class women’s labour-force participation, which is quite pronounced. I did look at women’s labour participation while writing Coming Apart, but my breakdowns did not trigger the recognition of how large that reduction was. So, it’s not just demoralisation among men any more; it’s demoralisation among women as well, and that’s been going on since the early 2000s. That’s one thing which I think has probably gotten worse.
Also, I should add, that there was a confirmation of the radical change that’s going on, in the work of the Nobel Prize-winner Angus Deaton and his co-author, Anne Case, who documented an astonishing rise in death rates among lower-class whites, from diseases related to addiction, substance abuse, and so on. This trend is also an indirect indicator of a huge cultural change for the worse in working-class America.
Collins: Do you see the culture divides and trends you identified in Coming Apart as contributing to the rise of Donald Trump?
Murray: Yes, I do. There are two developments. First, if you look at those people who are out of the labour force – what I call the ‘new lower class’ – they are no longer participating in the major institutions of American society. To put it crudely, I think they look upon Trump as sticking it to the man in a way they find gratifying. But I think they also look upon this as entertainment. I’m exaggerating to some extent, but there’s a sentiment of ‘well, this is a really interesting reality show, look at what this guy is getting away with, with all his outrageous stuff – let’s see what happens next’.
The elites are promulgating policies for which they do not pay the price. That’s true of immigration, that’s true of education
Then you have other people in the white working class who are getting married, holding jobs, playing by the rules – and they are pissed as hell. They see all of these shenanigans among the elites, the Wall Street types, for instance, with their 20,000-square-foot mansions. And most aggravating of all, they have to suffer the cognitive elite’s incredible smugness and condescension. The elites don’t even bother to hide this condescension towards the white working class. They are constantly making fun of rednecks, of evangelical Christians. And they talk about ‘flyover country’, as if nothing between the East Coast and West Coast really makes any difference. Indeed, cognitive elites are contemptuous of the working class. At the same time, working-class people, trying hard to makes ends meet, are being faced with an awful lot of competition for work from an influx of low-skilled, immigrant labour – an influx that the elites have encouraged and done nothing to stop. So, are they angry? Yeah. And is Trump a vehicle for expressing that anger? Absolutely.
More HERE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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11 September, 2016
The ‘False Economy’
With Donald Trump’s use over Labor Day of the phrase the “false economy” we finally have a candidate who is getting to the bottom of the so-called Obama recovery. On the one hand the President’s approval ratings are above 50%. On the other hand, vast majorities think the country is moving in the wrong direction. Official unemployment is below 5%, but because the job participation rate is at its lowest point in decades. The government has racked up more debt than all previous administrations combined. Yet it has eked out growth of less than 2%.
To millions of Americans this is just unreal — and Mr. Trump, in the most important and even radical feature of his demarche, lays the blame at the clay feet of the Federal Reserve. The GOP nominee, speaking to newspapermen on his campaign plane, accused the Fed, as Reuters paraphrased him, “of keeping interest rates low to help President Barack Obama.” He’d been asked about interest rates. Said The Donald: “They’re keeping the rates down so that everything else doesn’t go down. We have a very false economy,” he said.
We don’t think we’ve heard a presidential candidate talk about the economy in quite this way — at least not since Congressman Ron Paul, whom James Grant likes to call the “party of one,” sought the GOP nomination. Not that Mr. Trump’s ideas are so heretical. “At some point the rates are going to have to change,” Reuters quoted him as saying. Both the Wall Street Journal and economist David Malpass have been making that point for months (or years). “The only thing that is strong,” Reuters quoted Mr. Trump as saying, “is the artificial stock market.”
This strikes us as a positive development in Mr. Trump’s campaign. It puts him in front on the economy and leaves Mrs. Clinton with few options than to put a falsely rosy tint on an economy that has stranded tens of millions of Americans. She has abandoned, in the Trans Pacific Partnership, the very trade agreement that she once praised as ideal and that is a lynchpin to the pivot to Asia for which the administration forsook victory in the Middle East. And she offers little but tax increases, spending, borrowing, and regulation as a forward strategy.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, can take the next step and address the monetary question. If the Fed has failed — and it is not the only central bank that has had and that has found itself without further monetary ammunition — can monetary reform be far behind? The most significant monetary move in the past month, in our view, was the endorsement by the Wall Street Journal of a proper monetary commission, which is now before the Senate. That would put the GOP candidate on the same page with the Speaker, Paul Ryan, and Congressman Kevin Brady.
Chairman Brady has been plumping for a centennial monetary commission for several years now, starting when he was chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and continuing into his chairmanship of Ways and Means. What an alignment of leadership he and Messrs. Ryan and Trump and a Vice President Pence could provide. The commission would open up the whole question of monetary policy, including whether to return America to a system of a dollar defined in gold. In using the phrase “false economy” Mr. Trump has signaled that he comprehends that we need to reconnect the economy to some measure of value that is real.
SOURCE
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UK to Build a Wall — Sound Familiar?
Great Britain will build a wall in Calais, France, in order to help prevent illegal immigration. The recent surge of migrants coming into Europe from the middle east has been cited as one of the primary factors in the UK’s recent vote to exit the European Union. The British plan is to build a 13 foot wall around the port of Calais, which is the busiest port between the two countries. The Brits say that the wall is needed to better prevent illegal immigrants from jumping on board ships or intercepting vehicles in order to gain entry into the UK where they can then lodge applications as asylum seekers.
Donald Trump and his pledge to build a wall along the American southern border with Mexico has been much maligned by Hillary Clinton who once supported a wall herself, Democrats and some Republicans as a ridiculous and impractical plan. Yet Trump and company have repeatedly highlighted the effectiveness of walls — such as the wall separating Israel from the Palestinian West Bank, which has been credited with helping to limit terrorist attacks. As Trump said to a crowd in New Hampshire last year, “You ask Israel whether or not a wall works.” Well, it appears that the British government certainly thinks that it does.
SOURCE
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Media bias
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China claims to have developed radar that can detect STEALTH jets
The F35 will be obsolete before it is fully operational. Its only strong feature is its stealth capacity. It is slow and unmaneuverable otherwise. There have been reports of Russia defeating stealth too
A Chinese firm has claimed that they have developed radar technology that can detect stealth jets. The quantum radar was reportedly created by Intelligent Perception Technology, a branch of defence and electronics firm CETC.
They claim it is capable of detecting a target at a range of 60 miles and according to the Xinhua news agency, it was successfully tested last month.
It is believed the radar uses quantum entanglement photons, which means it has better detection capabilities than conventional systems. This means it can more easily track modern aircraft that use stealth technology or baffle enemy radar.
The new technology also comes after China launched the world's first quantum communications satellite, which uses quantum entanglement to solve codes.
SOURCE
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Navy Mismanagement of Carrier Force Bites America
The Navy is in a world of hurt. It’s less than half the size it was when Ronald Reagan left office. Carrier air wings have fewer combat aircraft than they did in 1991 — about 33% less. We’ve gone from 15 carriers to 10. Now, the Navy’s newest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), may not be able to deploy on time, leaving America short one more carrier.
That’s not a good thing. The ChiComs have played a Cersei Lannister gambit in the South China Sea — and that puts American allies like the Philippines in a bind. America also has to confront the presence of China’s DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missile — which, while overhyped, still inflicts virtual attrition on a Navy with too few hulls.
How did we get here? First, the Navy chose to prematurely retire the USS Enterprise (CVN 65), banking on the Ford being ready to fill in. Even though Newport News Shipbuilding could have done a second overhaul on the Big E, the Obama administration ignored the growing threats from China, Iran (which has been harassing American ships), and the Islamic State (not to mention the fact that the Russian reset wasn’t quite working), and went ahead with the scrapping process. Second, the Obama administration began to scrap seven older carriers that were being kept in reserve.
Did we mention the world was getting more dangerous while we junk eight major strategic assets?
It took almost seven years from laying the Gerald R. Ford’s keel to getting her to this point, and even then, with all of the new technology on board — like the electromagnetic catapults, the AN/SPY-3 radar, and new arresting gear — it may take time even after she’s commissioned for her to be ready to deploy.
You’d think that Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus would have acted to address this before it got too severe. But Mabus has been more interested in dissing Navy heroes who don’t buy into the politically correct changes in DOD policy he and others have been pushing.
Sadly, the Navy’s carrier force isn’t the only place there the mismanagement of our forces has been a continuing trend. Three of the Navy’s Freedom-class littoral combat ships have suffered damage to their engines. The Marine Corps has been struggling to find sufficient numbers of flyable F/A-18 Hornets. The Air Force is falling short of pilots. Army OH-58s are getting older as proposed replacements like the RAH-66 and ARH-70 fall victim to the budget axe. Even ground troops could see defense cuts rob them of the game-changing XM25 “Punisher,” officially known as the Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System, even though it performed well in operational testing in Afghanistan.
Cuts like these, not to mention the onslaught of political correctness and social engineering, don’t just hurt the material performance of our troops. As Mark Alexander wrote Wednesday, they also kill the military’s most valuable resource — morale. That means troops, some with combat experience, may retire or not re-enlist, creating a vicious cycle of declining readiness due to subpar training due to loss of experience.
Reversing this trend won’t be easy, but it will be essential. Because an unprepared military invites aggression — which will be far more expensive in money, equipment and lives than it would have been to properly maintain our forces in the first place.
So how were those defense cuts a bargain, again?
SOURCE
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The Coast Guard Needs a Boost
U.S. maritime borders should be secured, too
The U.S.-Mexico border gets a lot of attention. Yet here’s what many people don’t realize: It’s probably the shortest of the borders the United States has. The U.S.-Canadian border is longer, at 5,525 miles to 1,960. And America’s largest border is its 12,380-mile coastline — 65% longer than the combined land borders the U.S. shares with its northern and southern neighbors. Yet Customs and Border Protection, which handles the land border, has about 50% more personnel than the U.S. Coast Guard. Does something seem wrong with this picture?
It should. The Coast Guard, the smallest of America’s Armed Forces — and the only one not under the Department of Defense — has multiple missions: It is the primary maritime search-and-rescue agency; it’s responsible for interdicting drugs and migrants; and provides port security, law enforcement, national security missions, environmental protection, maritime safety, maintenance of navigation aids, and tracking of icebergs. It doesn’t just have a full plate — it has a full buffet table. In 2014, the commander of United States Southern Command, General John Kelly, admitted that 75% of drug smugglers were getting through.
Yet the Coast Guard could very well end up with fewer hulls available to put into the water — and that makes it unlikely that the percentage of smugglers getting through will go down. Plans call for eight Bertholf-class “national security” cutters to replace 12 Hamilton-class high-endurance cutters. That process is well underway, and the Hamiltons are being handed over to allies like the Philippines, giving them a needed boost (although far from what may be necessary to deal with an aggressive China). But eight hulls cannot cover 12 locations, no matter how good each individual vessel is. Quantity matters.
The same issue is emerging with the Coast Guard’s plans to replace 14 active Reliance-class and 13 Bear-class medium endurance cutters. The Offshore Patrol Cutter program plans to purchase 25 cutters to replace 27 for $484 million each. That’s pretty expensive, and here’s the kicker — there may be a better option already in service with most of the R&D already done.
The Freedom-class littoral combat ship has had its problems, to put it mildly. However, in 2010, USS Freedom racked up four drug busts in a SOUTHCOM deployment that lasted 47 days, and it made those four busts while also carrying out three “theater security cooperation” port visits. Furthermore, each of those vessels costs only $362 million — and with no R&D, the Coast Guard could afford 33 vessels for the $12.1 billion that the Offshore Patrol Cutter is slated to cost. That would give the Coast Guard 41 major cutters, as opposed to the 33 that they would have if current plans went into effect. And a bulk buy like this could further reduce the price.
But the Coast Guard has other problems, including a grand total of just 210 aircraft and helicopters. That total should be much higher, and in 2014, the Coast Guard retired its fastest aircraft, the HU-25 Guardian — hampering its ability to respond quickly to drug smuggling or other emergencies. The Coast Guard could also get some of its own eyes in the sky by getting in on the Navy’s purchase of the E-2D Hawkeye radar plane. Buying a dozen of those planes would cost about $2.15 billion — a little over 25% more than the ransom we recently paid to Iran for four hostages. It would do far more to make Americans safe.
Securing America’s maritime borders will be a need in the future — particularly if the U.S.-Mexico border is ever secured. Drug cartels will be looking for a new route to deliver their product, and if the Coast Guard is stretched too thin, the sea may very well become their avenue of choice.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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9 September, 2016
What Really Creates a Peaceful, Orderly, and Prosperous Society?
The idea that genuine self-government—the system in which individuals contract for the type of governance they prefer—must fail because under such a system no one can make others obey the rules is stunningly misconceived. On any given day, even in a world pervaded by states and their dictates, nearly everything that people do or refrain from doing is so not because the state threatens them with violence for acting otherwise, but because they find conformity with rules—honesty, promise keeping, careful handling of goods, avoidance of opportunism, working hard and responsibly, refraining from shirking and malingering, and so forth—to be in their interest. The world does not run on the state’s threats of violence; it runs in spite of those threats. Notwithstanding the supercilious declaration that “you didn’t build that,” you actually did, and not because the state threatened to hurt you if you didn’t.
Many sanctions besides violence and threats of violence may be—and are even in the world in which we now live—effective incentives for adherence to law and order. Ostracization of dishonest dealers, for example, works wonders, and in the world of modern communications it can be more effective than ever. Many people conduct their affairs honorably and fairly in order to preserve an upstanding reputation and thereby to retain beneficial commercial and personal relations. Many people subscribe to religious or other moral codes that regulate their conduct and direct it into decent and productive channels. The state’s contribution to creating a successful world is, as a rule, to stand in the way and, all too often, to punish those who are trying to serve their fellow human beings in free markets and other peaceful, cooperative arrangements.
States don’t make our world peaceful, cooperative, and productive—to the extent that it is so. Insofar as the world works successfully, it does so in spite of the state’s characteristic bloodthirst, oppression, and plunder, not because of it. Upon real reflection, the puzzle is that anyone believes that the relationship is the other way around. People who think, work, create, invest, plan, and carry out productive projects make the world work. People who collect taxes, create mountains of unnecessary regulations, threatening violence against those who fail to comply with them, and devote vast amounts of extorted resources to wreaking senseless death and destruction at home and abroad also make the world work—but much, much for the worse.
So, to the extent that the state is necessary to make people obey the rules, chances are that the rules to which it compels obedience ought never to have been made in the first place. But don’t take my word for it: open up the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, and the corresponding legal documents for any of the state, county, and city governments in the USA and see for yourself. If you conclude that all of this legal outrage and the police who enforce it make economic or moral sense, you may be a unique person, indeed.
SOURCE
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Strange liberals
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Post Detroit, the Press Will Redouble Their Attack on Trump as Racist
BY ROGER L SIMON
Fifty years ago exactly I spent my summer as a civil rights worker in South Carolina. I am proud of my participation, but I did one thing for which I am ashamed. I was reminded of it by Donald Trump's visit to the African-American church in Detroit Saturday when he recalled that Republicans were the party of Lincoln.
One of my tasks back then was voter registration. We would go to the cotton fields and drive black field workers to the registrar's office. Most of those workers were illiterate and I would sign for them as witness just below where they put their X.
I would also -- and here's the act for which I am ashamed -- uniformly register the field workers in the Democratic Party. In my snot-nosed, Ivy League arrogance, I thought I was doing the right thing -- for them.
My world view then was similar to the one dominating the mainstream media to this day -- though few of these journalists, to my knowledge, actually participated in the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, they came to identify with us, fighting second hand what they thought was the good fight.
But for the last fifty years that's about all they did, identify with a cause without paying any attention to the results of the policies they and the Democratic Party espoused. It was a feel-good enterprise by the press and a perpetual voter power grab by the Democrats. We all know what the results have been for African-Americans, the inevitable fruits of one-party rule as seen today in Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago, among so many other places.
Besides the fact that what I did taking it upon myself to register those field workers as Democrats was probably illegal, or should have been, I was helping, in my tiny way, create that situation we live in today. This is a situation that is rapidly becoming intolerable.
That is why Donald Trump's outreach to African-Americans is the most significant action of the 2016 campaign so far, especially for its potential longterm implications for our culture.
The liberal media and their academic and entertainment industry allies know this and for that reason they will redouble their efforts to portray Trump as a racist. This is not just to defend the pathological liar Hillary--can you imagine the moral cartwheels necessary to support Clinton at this point?--but to defend themselves, to justify the way they have been living their lives for decades, all the "progressive" pronouncements covering up the most comfortable of bourgeois lifestyles, as far from the inner city as Mars.
Donald Trump Should Go for the Black Vote—NOW!
The intention of the Founders was for the Fourth Estate to be the people's watch dogs on our rulers; instead they have increasingly become the willing collaborators and enablers of elites, particularly of important Democratic politicians. Hillary Clinton's house boy Sidney Blumenthal, who began as a journalist, is the prototype, the selfish man masquerading as the "liberal" man, personified. (Perhaps we need a new Biblical injunction: "By your emails shall we know ye.")
Donald Trump has put them "up against the wall," especially by receiving a standing ovation in, of all places, a black church. My how the journos must hate him now.
I have seen this enmity personally, riding the Trump press plane on a couple of occasions. I have also noticed how the press almost never talked to the thousands of Trump supporters at the several rallies I have attended, as if these people were members of some untouchable class secretly migrated from the sub-continent. Actually, these "untouchables" were remarkably decent and open-hearted people if you bothered to communicate with them, some of the nicest I have ever met. I never heard a racist word from any of them. They were also unfailingly polite. You wouldn't know it from the reportage, but Trump rallies have been among the most peaceful crowds I have ever been in.
Now that Trump has broken the code and actually solicited the African-American vote, going personally to Detroit with more such visits to come, it's important for all of us to support him against the coming media onslaught, especially if we care about our African-American brothers and sisters. The members of that community willing to welcome Donald are some of the bravest people in our country, just as some black conservatives are the most valuable and insightful of our pundit class.
I will conclude with a special nod to Dr. Ben Carson, whose presence on the campaign trail has turned the neurosurgeon into the moral voice of our country. Bravo!
SOURCE
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Six Years After Obamacare, 11 Percent Remain Uninsured
Six years after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, into law, nearly 11 percent of Americans remain without health insurance.
According to a new Gallup poll, 10.8 Americans are still living without health insurance in 2016, more than half a decade after the president’s health-insurance-for-all program was passed and two years after the law’s individual mandate went into effect. Gallup notes the vast majority of the still-uninsured are minorities, young adults and low-income Americans.
The U.S. Census Bureau states that in 2010, the percentage of people without health insurance was 16.3 percent. The percentage of people without health insurance in 2008 – two years before Obamacare was passed – was about 14.8 percent.
Additionally, 15.5 percent of respondents to the poll said that they had lacked the ability to pay for their health insurance or necessary medications at some point in 2016, a drop of only three percent since Gallup asked the same question in 2010. The polling group notes:
Even though fewer Americans are struggling to afford healthcare, other Gallup trends suggest that the Affordable Care Act may not be meeting its goal of reducing healthcare costs...
Gallup also previously reported that since the individual mandate took effect, there has been a rise in the percentage of U.S. adults paying for all or some of their health insurance premiums who say that their premiums have gone up "a lot" over the past year.
Gallup also recently found the number of Americans who say they're "satisfied" with the quality of their health care has dropped five percentage points since 2010.
President Obama touted Obamacare as a federal program that would ensure each and every American had health insurance, especially those who could not previously afford it. But the data shows Obama’s costly health insurance law – which has been plagued with a botched multi-million-dollar rollout, pricey penalties, costly legal battles, underestimated Medicaid expenses, ever-rising insurance premiums, deceptive marketplace costs and devastating financial impacts on some of the nation’s largest insurers – has so far failed to cut the number of Americans without health insurance in half in six years.
But it’s still the greatest federal program in the history of ever, because President Obama says so.
SOURCE
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U.S. Military Spending Doesn’t Add Up
The Pentagon’s accounting system has long been held in low regard. In 2013, revelations surfaced that for several years the Department of Defense had falsified its books. More recently, in June 2016, the U.S. Army’s ledgers were discovered to have been “cooked”—by a whopping $6.5 trillion in a single year. Aside from intentional malfeasance and professional incompetence, at least two fundamental factors have driven the accounting scandals, according to Independent Institute Senior Fellow Ivan Eland. One is the enormous size of military budgets—a size far greater than what’s actually needed for defense.
The United States accounts for 37 percent of global defense spending, despite its having geographic advantages (such as two huge oceans and two weak neighbors) that make the nation intrinsically secure. While 9/11 proved that terrorism can pose a deadlier threat to the American homeland than most had previously believed, terrorist attacks are usually blowback in response to U.S. intervention overseas.
While defense policy is one cause of large and therefore more scandal-prone military budgets, another driver is the permissive attitude of certain politicians—namely, those who think that their advocacy of more defense spending will make them more appealing to voters than their election-year rivals. How might we stop these two drivers of fiscal recklessness? Eland calls for voters to advocate a complete restructuring of U.S. defense, such as “by transferring most of [the U.S. army’s] heavy armored and mechanized divisions into the cheaper National Guard,” Eland writes. “This would make it harder for politicians to get the country involved in overseas quagmires on the ground, but still provide a potent land force capability to mobilize in case a legitimate security emergency arises.”
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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8 September, 2016
Happy Labor Day — If You Have a Job
The headline unemployment rate is at 4.9% after Friday’s jobs report — about where it has been for the last nine months. But, the real unemployment rate, when taking into account Americans who are now chronically unemployed and no longer looking for work, is in excess of 10%. The fact is, a record number of Americans are out of the labor force, and in a now familiar refrain, job growth slowed in August and remains stuck in the same ditch it’s been in for the last seven years — stagnating.
Cue Barack Obama’s Labor Day radio address, where even he conceded that “too many working folks still feel left behind by an economy that’s constantly changing.” Actually, they have been “left behind” by Obama and his Democrat Party — they have betrayed American workers.
Let’s look at the Democrat record. A year after they took over Congress in 2007, the housing market bubble, previously inflated by easy-lending policies enacted by Bill Clinton a decade earlier, began a rapid deflation. Democrats' answer to government-caused cascading economic crisis of confidence was, as always, more government. In 2009 Obama and his Democrat Congress passed a near-trillion dollar “stimulus spending package” that did nothing to stimulate the economy and everything to grow the size of government, while lining the pockets of leftist constituents and cronies. Additionally, Democrats passed the so-called “Affordable Care Act,” which has proven a colossal failure and an huge obstacle to economic growth. So yeah, you could say the economy is “constantly changing,” and the net effect of Obama’s policies have crushed the middle class.
In regard to labor unions, one of the Left’s most vociferous captive constituencies, since 2008 an estimated 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created, but none were union. In fact, since Obama took office, labor union membership has dropped 4% overall. Commercial sector unions are now at 7% down from 20% 30 years ago, because union labor is not competitive. But, government employee unions – federal, state and local – have now grown to 35%, because they are not subject to competition – which explains the chronic lack of productivity in the bowels of federal bureaucracies. However, state government unions will likely slide in the future, primarily due to right-to-work legislation such as that in Wisconsin, where teacher unions have sided with Gov. Scott Walker and are decertifying their unions.
And as far as working folks being left behind, Obama has undermined workers at every turn. He’s pushed for a record number of economically suppressing regulations, a higher minimum wage that will price low-skilled laborers out of the jobs market, and advocated a virtual open borders policy, which has flooded the market with low-skilled labor. In short, Democrats are bad for business, which means they are bad for labor.
SOURCE
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Misleading Statistics
Mark Twain famously said that there were three kinds of lies — “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear plenty of all three kinds.
Even if the statistics themselves are absolutely accurate, the words that describe what they are measuring can be grossly misleading.
Household income statistics are an obvious example. When we hear about how much more income the top 20 percent of households make, compared to the bottom 20 percent of households, one key fact is usually left out. There are millions more people in the top 20 percent of households than in the bottom 20 percent of households.
The number of households is the same but the number of people in those households is very different. In 2002, there were 40 million people in the bottom 20 percent of households and 69 million people in the top 20 percent.
A little over half of the households in the bottom 20 percent have nobody working. You don’t usually get a lot of income for doing nothing. In 2010, there were more people working full-time in the top 5 percent of households than in the bottom 20 percent.
Household income statistics can be very misleading in other ways. The number of people per household is different among different racial or ethnic groups, as well as from one income level to another, and it is different from one time period to another.
The number of people per American household has declined over the years. When you compare household incomes from a year when there were 6 people per household with a later year when there were 4 people per household, you are comparing apples and oranges.
Even if income per person increased 25 percent between those two years, average household income statistics will nevertheless show a decline. When the income of 4 people rises 25 percent, this means that 4 people are now making the same income as 5 people made in an earlier time. But not as much as 6 people made before.
So household income statistics can show an economic decline, even when per capita income has risen.
Why do so many people in the media, in academia and in politics use household income statistics, when the number of people per household can vary so much, while individual income statistics always mean the average income of one person?
Although individual income statistics can give a truer picture, not everyone makes truth their highest priority. Alarming news that household incomes have failed to rise, or have actually fallen, is more exciting news for the media, or for alarmists in academia or in politics.
Such alarming news can attract a larger audience for the media, and can justify an expansion of government programs dear to the heart of academics on the left, or to politicians who just want more power to hand out goodies and collect more votes from the beneficiaries.
Even individual income statistics have pitfalls when they lump together very different kinds of income, as is usually the case. Incomes from salaries are very different from incomes from capital gains.
A salary is usually earned and paid in the same year. Capital gains received in a given year can be paid for value accrued over a number of years. If you paid $100,000 for a home or a business in the past, and then sold it 20 years later for $300,000, have you made $200,000 per year when you sold it or $10,000 a year for 20 years?
In the income statistics, your income will be recorded the same as that of someone on a salary of $200,000 a year.
What difference does that make? It makes a big difference when most low and moderate incomes are from salaries, while incomes in the highest brackets are more likely to be primarily capital gains — whether from the sale of homes or businesses, or receiving an inheritance, cashing in stock options, or some other forms of capital gains.
This means that statistics on income inequalities are often comparing high multi-year earnings with lower single-year earnings — that is, comparing apples and oranges.
Such statistical distortions are discussed more fully in my book “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.” In an election year, it might be worth taking a look.
SOURCE
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Labor Day: A Capitalist Holiday
How Grover Cleveland used the holiday to divide the Left
Almost no one pays tribute to the American labor movement on Labor Day nowadays because America, despite its leftward drift in recent years, is not a nation that exalts brawn over brains or socialism over capitalism.
Americans don't care about President Obama's final Labor Day message, a mixture of facts and well-worn leftist propaganda.
"For generations, every time the economy changed, hardworking Americans marched and organized and joined unions to demand not simply a bigger paycheck for themselves, but better conditions and more security for the folks working next to them, too," Obama said in his weekly address. "Their efforts are why we can enjoy things like the 40-hour workweek, overtime pay, and a minimum wage. Their efforts are why we can depend on health insurance, Social Security, Medicare and retirement plans."
"All of that progress," he added, "is stamped with the union label."
Americans are smart enough to take Obama's socialist claptrap with a grain of salt. This is a man who derides hard work, saying "you didn't built that," and "when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody."
Americans respect hard work but they do not engage in the hateful Marxist tribalism and redistributionism that consumes backwards, kleptoparasitic states like Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.
"I think most people consider Labor Day an end-of-summer three-day weekend," David Ray Papke, a law professor at Marquette University, told the Huffington Post. "Very few Americans stop to reflect on the working man, on labor, on the union movement or any of those things."
And that is a wonderful thing.
In America everyone is equal before and under the law, able to achieve and chase their dreams, unburdened by ancient albatrosses like class and caste. Americans don't care about the labor movement because it hasn't done anything for them. They don't care that the movement is dying, and in most cases aren't even aware it's in rough shape. And that too is a good thing.
American statesmen had the good sense to create Labor Day more than a century ago to help co-opt the always violent labor movement and derail, or at least slow, the frighteningly speedy headway that the radical leftists – communists and anarchists – had been making during the Progressive Era.
Today most of the Left boasts that Labor Day is their holiday. The U.S. Department of Labor's website predictably gushes that:
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership – the American worker.
This fetishizing of workers is what one might expect with a Marxist in the White House. So is the lie that "economic democracy," a socialist concept, is any kind of an American ideal.
Contrary to what many labor historians say, the invention of Labor Day was not a victory for the Left.
Labor Day was created as a reaction to the organized, terroristic violence of the labor movement. It was an attempt to placate the angry bomb-throwing radicals who were trying to destabilize America when parts of the country were ripe for revolt and other parts were actually in revolt.
And it worked. Labor Day defanged the American Left.
According to the Bernie Sanders fan site, Jacobin, potential trouble was brewing in the late 19th century when Labor Day was born. An article by Jonah Walters states:
At the end of the nineteenth century, the American labor movement was among the most militant in the world. From the stockyards of Chicago to the coal mines of Pennsylvania, workplaces all over the country were in open revolt. Strikes were commonplace, often leading to violent confrontations between rebellious workers and private militias like the despised Pinkertons. Even Marx held high hopes for revolution in the US, speculating that the country's long battles over suffrage ripened conditions for revolt. "Nowhere does social inequality obtrude itself more harshly than in the Eastern States of North America," he wrote, "because it is nowhere less glossed over by political inequality."
This social equality that Karl Marx bemoans, is better understood as economic equality, which, of course, is a feature of markets and proof that economic freedom exists. The fact that everyone is not forcibly brought down to the same level by socialist schemers in government is precisely what allows Americans to generate the kind of wealth never before seen in any society.
Returning to the 1890s, there was an economic contraction that cut demand for railway cars. This forced captain of industry George Pullman to reduce his workforce and cut wages. When his employees went on strike in May 1894, other unions refused to handle Pullman cars, a move that disrupted commerce nationwide. In July, President Grover Cleveland deployed U.S. troops to Chicago to preserve property rights and put down the strike. Angry mobs responded by setting railroad cars on fire.
Soon after these ugly confrontations started, Congress rushed through stalled legislation, which Cleveland signed into law making Labor Day a national holiday. Pressed by the similarly named socialist labor activists Matthew Maguire and Peter McGuire, many states had already acted on their own before that. From 1887 to that point, 23 states had created their own Labor Day holidays.
According to the House of Representatives historian, the new national Labor Day was an immediate success.
The response to the new holiday was overwhelmingly positive. Labor unions in cities such as Boston, Nashville, and St. Louis celebrated with parades and picnics. Large turnouts in Chicago (30,000) and Baltimore (10,000) underscored the holiday's popularity.
President Cleveland was no socialist. He was also no fool. Labor Day was placed in September to divide and conquer the Left.
"To disassociate American labor from any connection with socialism, the first Monday of September was chosen to honor American workers rather than 1 May, which in 1889 the Second Socialist International in Paris had designated as International Workers Day." (The Encyclopedia of New York State, by Peter R. Eisenstadt and Laura-Eve Moss, p.853)
Unlike much of the Left, the writers at Jacobin are not in denial about the origins and significance of Labor Day. They see Labor Day as a corporate holiday, or a "boss's holiday." The real day for radical labor agitators is not the first Monday in September, but is in fact May 1, which, as noted above, has been long recognized as the day for working-class solidarity. "Cleveland's choice to establish Labor Day in September deflected attention away from another explosive labor action – the Haymarket massacre of 1886, the origin of international observance of the May 1 holiday."
Jacobin belittles the patriotic labor leader (yes, they used to exist) Samuel Gompers, who was president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which had opposed the Pullman strike.
Gompers immediately endorsed the president's holiday – Cleveland even presented him with the pen used to sign the holiday in law. Gompers later wrote a superlative column in the New York Times praising Labor Day as the harbinger of "a new epoch in the annals of human history." He made the absurd claim that Labor Day "differs essentially from some of the other holidays of the year in that it glorifies no armed conflicts or battles of man's prowess over man," and wrote scathingly about the "dark side of the labor movement" represented by the Pullman strikers.
Labor Day, according to the leftists at Jacobin, "marks our historic defeat, not our triumph."
Which is why every freedom-loving, patriotic American should celebrate Labor Day.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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7 September, 2016
Can racial discrimination be harmless?
The Left clearly think so. Affirmative action is nothing if not racially discriminatory. And even racial pride is fine, as long as it is black pride.
The Left are in fact obsessed by race. It is on their agenda all the time. The destruction aimed at is more subtle but they are just as obsessed with race as Hitler was. New socialists and old socialists are not much different.
But are there other forms of racism that should get a pass? He is all but forgotten now but the leading racial theorist of C20 was Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was admired not only by Hitler but also by Kaiser Bill, the nominal German leader of WWI. Chamberlain was a liberal, a passionate Greenie and a virulent antisemite. So let me make clear at this point that I am not defending him or his doctrines. The only thing we have in common is an admiration for the people of India.
And that is my first point. Chamberlain was in his way positive in what he said about race. His antisemitism, although relentless, was incidental to his main racial theme: That Aryans were a superior people. And he enthusiastically included Hindu Indians among the Aryan race. He even learned Sanskrit to study their early writings. It was probably the writings of Chamberlain that influenced the admiration of Democrat U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for Aryans.
So Chamberlain was primarily concerned not to attack "inferior" races but to build up respect and esteem for Aryans, among whom Germans were the leading lights. He in fact saw the Prussians, the skilled warriors of Northeastern Germany as approaching an ideal type of human being. But he also believed that others could aspire to reach the Prussian ideal. You did not have to be born a Prussian to be an exemplary Aryan.
So the leading theorist from the days of racial theory had primarily positive aims. He was there to praise much more that he was there to condemn.
But in Chamberlain's case, praise for one group went with denigration for another group: Jews. So is that generally so? Can one think well of one's own group without denigrating other groups? There is much evidence that you can.
It was a topic I looked at several times when I was doing survey research among the general population. And I repeatedly found that a person's patriotism and national pride gave no prediction of one's attitude to ethnic outgroups. You could for instance be a proud American and at the same time have no animus against Jews. All combinations were roughly equally probable: Some patriots tended to be favourably disposed to Jews while others tended to be critical of Jews, with neither type of attitude being strongly felt. And there were roughly equal numbers in both "camps".
Examples of my research findings on the matter can be found here, here, here and here. And simliar conclusions have been arrived at by others -- e.g. Cashdan
So I think it is clear that it is not only on the Left that racial sentiment can pass muster. There can be favourable views of other groups with no vicious implications.
I for instance am firmly of the view that the Han Chinese are in many ways a superior group. I think that in most ways they will in time surpass my own Anglo-Saxon group. In some ways they already have. They appreciate Western classical music much more than Westerners do. Classical music has a following in the USA of only about 2% of the population, whereas in China and Japan the figure is about 6%. And the best interpreter of much of Western piano music is in my view Yuja Wang, from Beijing.
Yuja Wang
And the rise of China has already been greatly beneficial to us all. Almost all our electrical goods are now made there very cheaply. And the ubiquitous presence of Chinese names in the author lists of most academic journal articles in all scientific disciplines has to be seen to be believed.
But will the Chinese rise always be benevolent? One might think not if one knows Chinese attitudes. Most Han Chinese see the Han as a superior race. So will that lead to aggression against other races? The whole point of this essay is to argue that it will not. Thinking highly of your own group does NOT automatically imply hostility to other groups.
And there are practical reasons why we do not have to fear war with China. For a start, why would they want to start a war with their biggest customers?
More importantly, however, the People's Liberation Army is now so large, so well-equipped and trained that any war against it would be unthinkable. Any war between China and anyone else would have to go nuclear almost immediately. And the Chinese know as well as anybody that there would be no winners from such a war. Life on earth could in fact be entirely wiped out, something only Greenies would celebrate. So there will be no war with China. Nuclear deterrence kept the Soviets at bay and it will keep China at bay.
But what about current tensions in the East China sea? With its very large population, China has a great need for resources and it is common for nations to seek such resources from under their nearby seas. The USA does it; The UK does it and Israel does it. The difference on this occasion, of course, is that there are other claimants on control of the areas at issue.
But China now has firm control of the places concerned and because of that, I also think that China has now established a clearly superior legal claim on the areas concerned. By building up the various shoals and islets into substantial bases with extensive facilities and a population, China has simply acquired those places by right of conquest. They took over empty territory and thus have an arguably better claim on the territories concerned than the USA has on its territory. The USA acquired already occupied territory by right of conquest. China acquired empty territory by right of conquest.
So for a variety of reasons, I don't think the rise of China is to be feared or denigrated -- JR.
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Conservatism in crisis
The truth is that Trump articulated, if incompletely and inconsistently, the right stances on the right issues—immigration, trade, and war—right from the beginning.
But let us back up. One of the paradoxes—there are so many—of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad. On the one hand, conservatives routinely present a litany of ills plaguing the body politic. Illegitimacy. Crime. Massive, expensive, intrusive, out-of-control government. Politically correct McCarthyism. Ever-higher taxes and ever-deteriorating services and infrastructure. Inability to win wars against tribal, sub-Third-World foes. A disastrously awful educational system that churns out kids who don’t know anything and, at the primary and secondary levels, can’t (or won’t) discipline disruptive punks, and at the higher levels saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. And so on and drearily on. Like that portion of the mass where the priest asks for your private intentions, fill in any dismal fact about American decline that you want and I’ll stipulate it.
Conservatives spend at least several hundred million dollars a year on think-tanks, magazines, conferences, fellowships, and such, complaining about this, that, the other, and everything. And yet these same conservatives are, at root, keepers of the status quo. Oh, sure, they want some things to change. They want their pet ideas adopted—tax deductions for having more babies and the like. Many of them are even good ideas. But are any of them truly fundamental? Do they get to the heart of our problems?
If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.
But it’s quite obvious that conservatives don’t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff. A recent article by Matthew Continetti may be taken as representative—indeed, almost written for the purpose of illustrating the point. Continetti inquires into the “condition of America” and finds it wanting. What does Continetti propose to do about it? The usual litany of “conservative” “solutions,” with the obligatory references to decentralization, federalization, “civic renewal,” and—of course!—Burke. Which is to say, conservatism’s typical combination of the useless and inapt with the utopian and unrealizable. Decentralization and federalism are all well and good, and as a conservative, I endorse them both without reservation. But how are they going to save, or even meaningfully improve, the America that Continetti describes? What can they do against a tidal wave of dysfunction, immorality, and corruption? “Civic renewal” would do a lot of course, but that’s like saying health will save a cancer patient. A step has been skipped in there somewhere. How are we going to achieve “civic renewal”? Wishing for a tautology to enact itself is not a strategy.
Continetti trips over a more promising approach when he writes of “stress[ing] the ‘national interest abroad and national solidarity at home’ through foreign-policy retrenchment, ‘support to workers buffeted by globalization,’ and setting ‘tax rates and immigration levels’ to foster social cohesion." That sounds a lot like Trumpism. But the phrases that Continetti quotes are taken from Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, both of whom, like Continetti, are vociferously—one might even say fanatically—anti-Trump. At least they, unlike Kesler, give Trump credit for having identified the right stance on today’s most salient issues. Yet, paradoxically, they won’t vote for Trump whereas Kesler hints that he will. It’s reasonable, then, to read into Kesler’s esoteric endorsement of Trump an implicit acknowledgment that the crisis is, indeed, pretty dire. I expect a Claremont scholar to be wiser than most other conservative intellectuals, and I am relieved not to be disappointed in this instance.
Yet we may also reasonably ask: What explains the Pollyanna-ish declinism of so many others? That is, the stance that Things-Are-Really-Bad—But-Not-So-Bad-that-We-Have-to-Consider-Anything-Really-Different! The obvious answer is that they don’t really believe the first half of that formulation. If so, like Chicken Little, they should stick a sock in it. Pecuniary reasons also suggest themselves, but let us foreswear recourse to this explanation until we have disproved all the others.
Whatever the reason for the contradiction, there can be no doubt that there is a contradiction. To simultaneously hold conservative cultural, economic, and political beliefs—to insist that our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature and must undermine society—and yet also believe that things can go on more or less the way they are going, ideally but not necessarily with some conservative tinkering here and there, is logically impossible.
Let’s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them, often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as conservatism.
If your answer—Continetti’s, Douthat’s, Salam’s, and so many others’—is for conservatism to keep doing what it’s been doing—another policy journal, another article about welfare reform, another half-day seminar on limited government, another tax credit proposal—even though we’ve been losing ground for at least a century, then you’ve implicitly accepted that your supposed political philosophy doesn’t matter and that civilization will carry on just fine under leftist tenets. Indeed, that leftism is truer than conservatism and superior to it.
More HERE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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6 September, 2016
Taiwan’s Social Safety Net Is the Street Market
Free-marketers are often ridiculed for suggesting the welfare state can be substantially replaced by free enterprise: that we’re smoking funny weed to even suggest that able-bodied adults would be better off with more invigorating freedom instead of a debilitating dole.
The Case of Taiwan
Well, we have a fantastic case study in exactly this: Taiwan. With a GDP per capita about half US levels -- between Spain and Portugal -- Taiwan has a tiny welfare state paired with regulations that are both light and lightly enforced.
Result? An explosion in commerce, and apparently near-zero homelessness. Walk anywhere in a Taiwanese city and the streets are alive, all day and all night, with a rotating cast of pop-up businesses that employ mainly low-skill labor while making life a joy for consumers.
Hundreds of jobs, small rivers of entrepreneurial income all running off one little street.
To give a flavor, take one street near my university, Wenhua St. in Taichung. Starting around 5am, farmers drive in and spread out their produce on folding tables along the street. Shoppers are diverse: elderly who can walk instead of driving out to a megastore, mothers with kids, fathers cooking up breakfast.
Around 7am the farmers pack up and in move the breakfast joints, unloading folding tables and stacking chairs off their pickup trucks. Sandwich places, noodle shops, omelettes and full English breakfast. These go until a bit past noon, when they fold up everything on their trucks and out come the night crew: a different set of restaurants selling fried chicken or dumplings, vendors selling clothes, watches, kids’ toys. As the night wears on the beer joints open, selling hot soup and a cold beer. Families, teens, and singles throng the streets until 3am, when the street cleaners come out in preparation for the farmers coming at 5.
So hundreds of jobs, small rivers of entrepreneurial income all running off one little street. Each patch of street is recycled 3 or more times a day according to what customers want. And none of it would be legal in most US cities.
The Beauty of Laissez-faire
Three interesting results come out of this laissez-faire approach to small commerce. First, streets in Taiwan are full of shoppers all day and all night. There are none of those dangerous urban deserts that abound in American cities like DC and New York. You can safely roam around at 3am any day of the week, and find tons of pop-up bars or restaurants, packed with laughing people enjoying the night.
His friends’ first question was: what kind of shop will you open during your job-hunt?
Second, because laissez-faire allows a robust market to develop, street food in Taiwan is safe, delicious, and ridiculously cheap. We pay between $1.50 and $2 for a full meal, in a country where overall costs are half the US level. So, adjusting for price levels, we pay $3 to $4 for what would cost us easily 3-5 times that in the US. As a result, my family doesn’t eat out once a week like back in the States; we eat out 2 or 3 times a day.
Why so cheap? Because the market is substantially left to self-regulate: if a vendor sells bad or dirty food, word spreads and they’re out of business. Other vendors, indeed, enforce this since the reputation of the whole street is at risk. The result is that vendors scrupulously clean their equipment every day; indeed there are services that go around cleaning your food-stall on hire. It’s like nested deregulation: an unregulated service provided to an unregulated service that is, ultimately, “policed” by customers themselves.
Freedom and opportunity: that is what underpins true welfare and security.
From my perspective as a customer, the end result is fantastic: clean, delicious food that we can afford to eat every single day of the month. By the way, that is apparently what most Taiwanese now do: it’s standard for people to never cook in, but rather to just pick up $2 meals every night for the family, only cooking for special occasions or for a midnight snack.
Third, and possibly most important, is the impact on jobs and self-sufficiency. A Taiwanese friend announced he’d lost his job, and his friends’ first question was: what kind of shop will you open during your job-hunt? Since it’s so easy to start a pocket-business, there’s an entire industry that caters to them. You can lose your job, take the bus, rent a food stand for a month, pay $50 to slap on some signage, have it delivered to some high-traffic spot and get cranking that night on fried twinkies, sausage-buns, whatever you think people want to eat. So sling sausages by night, keep looking for work in the daytime, and when you find a job just take the stand back for your deposit.
Freedom and opportunity: that is what underpins true welfare and security. The results are striking: in 3 years here, in a city bigger and poorer than St. Louis, I have never once seen a homeless person. The closest I've seen is an elderly lady who grows orchids and sells them out of a bag.
So choose one: job-killing regulations and a welfare state, or reduce burdens on small business and set the people free.
SOURCE
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Surge of Migrant Children From Central America Continues Despite Border Apprehensions
A surge of migrant children and families fleeing Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador attempting to enter the U.S. via Mexico is not slowing down in spite of the apprehension of tens of thousands of Central American migrants by the U.S. Border Patrol, according to a report issued by UNICEF.
The massive flow of families and children continues at the same time that the U.S. government has announced it will expand a program allowing refugee minors from the violence-torn region of Central America to enter the U.S. legally.
UNICEF reports that nearly 26,000 unaccompanied children and approximately 29,700 individuals traveling as families were stopped at the U.S. border in the first six months of 2016. The majority were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The report said some 16,000 Central American migrants were apprehended in Mexico before reaching the border in the same period.
The three Central American nations “have some of the world’s highest murder rates,” according to the UNICEF report.
“The flow of refugee and migrant children from Central America making their way to the United States shows no sign of letting up,” it concludes.
The number of Central American families and children stopped at the border beginning in October of last year doubled from a year ago, according to the Pew Research Center.
Meanwhile the U.S. government has announced plans to widen its consideration for legal entry of Central American minors with parents living legally in the U.S.
The Central American Minors (CAM) refugee program is currently restricted to minors – and in some cases to a “parent of the qualifying child” that is also living in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The program will now be opened up to the minors’ caregivers, as well as to a biological parent of a minor with a spouse living in the US, and also to adult children of Central Americans living legally in the U.S., according to the Dept. of Homeland Security website.
The program expansion was announced last month, although a DHS spokesperson could not say when the changes would take effect.
The program was originally restricted to unmarried children under the age of 21 living in the three Central American countries, with a parent 18 years or older legally in the US.
In some cases, a parent of the minor could be considered for U.S. entry.
The expansion will open the program to non-minor children, namely sons and daughters 21 years of age or older, with a parent legally in the U.S.
It will also allow consideration of “caregivers” of minors in the Central American countries where the caregiver is related to the parent living legally in the U.S.
And the expansion will allow a “biological parent” of a qualifying minor where the biological parent is living in one of the three Central American countries, to be considered for entry into the U.S.
According to Salvador Stadthagen, the director of the USAID-sponsored youth program Honduran Youth Alliance, family members living in the U.S. are the “pull factor” behind the surge of migrant children fleeing violent crime in Central America.
“A lot of these kids already have family in the U.S. What we have noticed is that when things get really bad in a community such as the killing of a neighbor or a cousin or brother, then the mother and the father in the U.S. sell whatever they have to sell to get their kids out.”
Many of the Central American minors, Stadthagen said, “have never known their mothers or fathers. Or the fathers left when the mothers were pregnant or when the kids were very young.”
Drug-related gang violence was “fueling” the migrant surge north to Mexico and the U.S., he said.
Outreach workers like Stadthagen, as well a missionary and local pastor in Honduras, told CNSNews.com they have seen significant progress in reducing the violence, with improved policing and by providing alternatives to youths who are either forced to join local gangs or flee the country.
Violence and murder rates have gone down in the community of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, 3.5 miles north of the capital of Tegucigalpa, according to Paul Hutton of the Denver-based Mission’s Door evangelical group.
Local pastor Arnold Linares told CNSNews.com an “entire generation of youth” has been lost to the crime and violence, but that now, “we have seen a change in the community.”
“We are creating a model for the country. We want them to know that the heart of man can be changed by God.”
SOURCE
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“Very Right Wing” People Are Happiest With Their Sex Lives
…they’re often happiest overall, too, according to a five-country YouGov poll
People who describe themselves as “very right wing” are the most likely to be satisfied with their sex lives, according to a survey carried out across five European countries by the polling company YouGov.
The survey of more than 19,000 people in the UK, Germany, France, Denmark and Sweden, shared exclusively with BuzzFeed News, found in most countries sexual satisfaction increased the further right you went along the political spectrum.
In the UK, people with left wing politics were least likely to describe their sex lives as satisfying (with 66% of people saying they were), versus 73% for those saying they were “very right wing”.
In all five countries in the survey, it was the people with very right wing politics who were most likely to be pleased with their sex life, though in every country except Germany, people on the centre-right were less likely to be satisfied than centrists.
The study also showed than in Britain at least, people with right wing and very right wing politics were markedly happier overall than their left wing counterparts – but this trend did not replicate across Europe.
The research was carried out for the new edition of the book Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box, published on Friday.
Joe Twyman, YouGov’s head of political and social research, warned against changing your politics to improve your sex life. “There are obviously numerous factors that might explain an individual’s sexual happiness and this study does not suggest that changing your political views would make you happier in bed (or on the stairs, on the kitchen floor, in the shower and on the backseat of the car),” he told BuzzFeed News, in unexpected detail.
“The old rules about correlation not equalling causation always apply. Being very right wing doesn’t make you sexually satisfied, but nonetheless, these results suggest it is, in contrast to at least some stereotypes popular in the political world, those on the very right of the political spectrum who enjoy their sex life the most – and that this finding is true across a number of different European countries.”
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- mainly about Muslims
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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5 September, 2016
Did Jesus really speak in the mystical manner portrayed in John 14?
I must say initially that I am not challenging Christian faith here. Christians believe that God used men to express divine truths in their own way so the narratives from Apostle John can be seen as just another way of conveying important truths.
But most of John 14 is rather a gabble. Christ constantly speaks of being IN the Father and the Father also being IN him. He is quite repetitious about it. He also however speaks of the disciples being in him and he being in them so an allusion to the Trinity doctrine cannot be read into it. If there were any doubt about that, verse 28 puts it as rest.
As far as we can tell Jesus was a popular preacher so it seems unlikely to me that he spoke in a gabble that would do a French philosopher proud. So it seems unlikely that John was trying to present the actual words of Jesus. My view is that he was trying to present very emphatically something that Jesus taught. And what that is is fairly clear. He was trying to emphasize a unity of belief and purpose between himself and the Father. He felt that he was so close to the Father that to see him was to see the Father.
So the passage is sensible enough if you allow for John's Gnostic way of writing. And from the opening verses of John's Gospel we have it made clear that John likes to present truths in that way.
Jesus also emphasises in the passage the importance of keeping his commandments -- so he was emphasizing the importance of his commandments by saying that they were also the commandments of the Father.
The major puzzle in chapter 14, it seems to me, is what we are to make of the Paraclete (helper) that Jesus will send when he is gone. Again I think we have to look for a figurative meaning rather than accept some sort of "Holy Ghost" story. And I think that the Paraclete must be the whole body of his teaching which will live on in the disciples. That Christian teachings can indeed be very sustaining, we now know. The way the Bible Students (Ernste Bibel Forscher) went to their deaths for refusing to bow the knee to Hitler is just one example of that strength.
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Trumping The Establishment
The Washington Establishment hates Trump, because he promises to put them out of business
By Scot Faulkner
Why does The Washington Establishment hate Donald Trump? It is not because of his positions on immigration or trade. Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot advocated similar stands in 1992, and they did not generate the obsessive hatred being displayed in 2016.
Trump has declared war on The Establishment itself. In his June 16, 2015 Presidential announcement he asserted:
“So I’ve watched the politicians. I’ve dealt with them all my life…. They will never make America great again. They don’t even have a chance. They’re controlled fully by the lobbyists, by the donors, and by the special interests…. It’s destroying our country. We have to stop them, and it has to stop now.”
So in a nutshell, The Washington Establishment has a visceral hatred for Donald Trump, because he promises to put their system out of business.
The Washington Establishment sees Trump as serious about them being the primary impediment to making America “great again.” He sees The Establishment as lining their pockets, and their friends’ pockets – as beneficiaries of the status quo. As long as nothing changes, The Establishment will have their mansions, limousines, VIP tables and ego trips.
There is much at stake.
Think of Washington, DC as a mass of “cookie jars,” each containing delicious treats. There are those who control the cookie jars, those who want the cookie jars, and those who can get the cookie jars. Officially, these treats are distributed based on legislative mandates, open competition, and documented needs.
In fact, the treats are almost always handed out to friends, and friends of friends. Friends can be purchased. Friends help friends get reelected, and gain power, and get treats. It is Washington, DC’s “golden rule” – those with the gold rule.
Welcome to “crony capitalism”. Someone knowing someone who can hand out favors has been around since the first tribes shared the first harvest. The term “lobbyist” came from favor seekers hanging out in the lobby of Washington, DC’s Willard Hotel during the Grant Administration in the 1870s.
In 1905, George Washington Plunkett, a ward boss in the Tammany Hall political machine, coined what could be the motto of Washington, DC: “What is the Constitution among friends?”
Today, things have gotten way out of hand. Spending for Washington lobbyists has tripled since 1998 to over $3.22 billion a year. Favor seekers spend $24 million on lobbyists each day Congress is in session.
Campaign fundraising is another dimension of how The Establishment stays in power. Over $750 million has been raised for House races and $520 million for Senate races this election cycle. Leaders of Political Action Committees (PACs), and individual bundlers who raise funds, dominate this ultimate game of “pay for play.”
Those brokering power become gatekeepers for funding and favors throughout the Federal Government. This power comes from a truism overlooked by everyone in the media: all discretionary federal money is earmarked. The popular myth is that earmarks vanished once the Republicans banned them when they returned to power in 2011.
In fact, they only banned legislative earmarks, and there are still ways to work around that system. The President, and his appointees, earmark funds as standard operating procedure. Even career bureaucrats play favorites.
Favorites can be based on institutional, Administration and ideological biases. Favoritism can also go to the highest bidder. This is federal money flowing out the door as grants, programs, contracts, buildings, leases and employment.
Other “treats” to be dispensed include regulatory relief, tax waivers and subsidies. Favoritism is rarely purchased with money directly changing hands; that kind of corruption occurs more in state and local government. Washington level corruption is true “quid pro quo.”
The Washington Establishment swaps favors more insidiously. How many times does a military officer get a major position with a defense contractor years after he favored them with a multi-million dollar contract? A Reagan aide granted a building height waiver near the White House and quadrupled his salary when hired by the developer.
Grant and contract officers obtain slots at prestigious colleges and prep schools for their children for making the “right” choices or being a little lax on oversight.
Bush era National Park officials refused to prosecute the destruction of park land in exchange for Redskins tickets. Obama era Fish & Wildlife Service officials give wind turbine companies 5- and 30- year exemptions from endangered species and eagle protection, so they can slaughter eagles, hawks, falcons, other birds and bats by the hundreds of thousands year after year – while “commoners” get fined or jailed merely for “possessing” a bald eagle feather.
Hillary Clinton gets exonerated from a host of transgressions, in exchange for who knows what.
Everyone has their price, save for “true public servants.”
Trump promises to smash the cookie jars and end the reign of The Establishment.
Normal Americans are rallying around Trump. They are enraged at the lies and duplicity of those in power. Many see a reason to vote for the first time since Reagan. They want November 8, 2016 to be America’s “Bastille Day,” marking the end of Washington, DC’s arrogant and unaccountable ruling class.
Billions of dollars are at stake. Perks, prestige and power are at stake. The future of representative government is at stake. Is it any wonder that The Establishment is doing everything and anything to stop Trump?
SOURCE
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Trump boosts minority outreach with Philadelphia visit
Donald Trump was met with tears and gratitude as he sat with African-American supporters Friday, including the mother of a slain young woman who was killed by a man living in the United States illegally.
The back-to-back meetings, held in a ballroom in Northwest Philadelphia, underscored the balancing act the Republican nominee is playing as he tries to expand his support in the race against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
While Trump works to broaden his appeal among more moderate and minority voters, he is also working to maintain his popularity with his core GOP base by pressing his hard-line views on immigration.
At the invite-only roundtable discussion, Trump met with a dozen local business, civic, and religious leaders who praised him for coming to the city as part of his outreach efforts.
Trump was warmly received by the group, including Daphne Goggins, a local Republican official, who wiped away tears as she introduced herself to Trump, saying she has been a Republican for years but, ‘‘for the first time in my life, I feel like my vote is going to count.’’
Renee Amoore, a local business leader, assured Trump that he has support in the black community, despite his low standing in public opinion surveys.
‘‘We appreciate you and what you’ve done, coming to the hood, as people call it. That’s a big deal,’’ she said.
In a separate development Friday, the Commission on Pr esidential Debates announced that NBC News chief anchor Lester Holt will moderate the first of three scheduled debates between Clinton and Trump scheduled for Sept. 26.
The first and third debates will be question-and-answer sessions, with a journalist choosing the topics. The third session will be moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox News on Oct. 19.
ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper will team up for the second session on Oct. 9, a town hall-style meeting with half of the questions to be posed by audience members.
Each of the debates is scheduled for 90 minutes, with a 9 p.m. EDT start time.
The commission also said Elaine Quijano of CBS News will lead the vice presidential debate between Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine on Oct 4.
Trump’s meeting in Philadelphia also showed the challenges he faces making inroads with African-Americans and Latinos.
Protesters gathered in front of the building where he appeared, and a coalition of labor leaders met nearby to denounce Trump’s outreach to black voters as disingenuous and insulting.
Ryan Boyer of the Labor District Council said Trump ‘‘has no prescription’’ to help inner-city people. ‘‘He did nothing for African-Americans in 30 years of public life,’’ he said. “We reject his notion that we have nothing to lose by supporting him.’’
The next stop for Trump is Detroit on Saturday, where blacks make up some 83 percent of the population.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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4 September, 2016
Goldman Sach & HSBC Recently Bought 7.1 Tons Of Physical Gold Bullion!
This is a straw in the wind. The banks clearly expect a collapse in the value of the Greenback and want a better store of value. They are probably right. With all the new money Obama has printed, there has got to be a big drop in the purchasing power of the dollar soon. I do have a small amount of gold but I am mainly into blue chip shares and real estate. They should be pretty protective in an economic crisis too
Mind you, being in Australia has extra advantages. Our government has spent beyond its means too but has financed that through borrowing (denominated in U.S. dollars), not running the printing presses hard at the mint. And if the U.S. dollar collapses, Australia will be able to get a heap of U.S. dollars very cheaply and thus retire a big lot of its debts very easily.
A wise American would put a lot of his funds into the banks of any major country with a well managed economy. Canada would be a bad bet there now it is the hands of Pretty Boy. There is no doubt he will manage the Canadian economy badly
On August 6, 2015, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and HSBC (NYSE:HSBC) took delivery of a sum total of 7.1 tons of physical gold. No, I have not made any typographical errors. And no, I am not talking about electronic paper claims. I am talking about shiny yellow metal stuff that you can touch and feel.
The gold bars were not purchased for bank clients. They were purchased for the banks themselves. How do I know this? They are designated by the exchange as being for delivery to the bank's "house" accounts at COMEX, not to client accounts.
Goldman Sachs, alone, took 3.2 tons worth of physical gold bars. Yet, even as the firm builds its stockpile, Goldman tells clients not to do it. According to Goldman's Jeffrey Currie, the long-term outlook for gold is bleak.
They bought 3.9 metric tons at COMEX, no doubt at rock bottom prices, and it was just delivered into the bank's house account. Note that we are NOT talking about paper-gold. Both bought physical gold bars! Apparently, top Goldman and HSBC executives are "gold bugs." They do not, apparently, believe in the promises made by the gold trust (NYSEARCA:GLD), or at least they are not willing to use the trust's shares as a substitute for hard metal bars.
Physical gold is a long-term investment, everywhere and always. They are not particularly hard to sell, especially now, but short-term trading would be much easier with paper-gold products like GLD or gold futures. Remember, vaults cost money, as do big men with big guns and the knowledge of how to use them. The banks are choosing to accumulate and hoard physical gold bars for a reason.
SOURCE
Note. Most new money is created via the banks. Printing it is mainly a metaphor.
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Trump Delivers A Speech For The Ages
The media all called the speech a disaster but that was to be expected
One speech does not a campaign victory make – that is until last night when Donald Trump delivered his much-anticipated speech on immigration. The speech was, in its passion, in its emotional connection with Trump’s audience, and most importantly in its substance, a speech for the ages.
And, we might add, in Trump’s adoption of the very language we here at CHQ have used since his first major speech on economic growth, a renewal of his promise to “forgotten Americans” of all races, creeds and colors Trump Angel Momsthat hope and help are on the way.
While much of the establishment media commentary focused immediately on Trump’s 10-point plan for reestablishing America’s borders and immigration system in a way that serves and protects Americans first, we think one of the most important parts of the speech was Trump’s vision for his Administration beyond immigration enforcement.
It is “We will accomplish all of the steps outlined above, and when we do, peace and law and justice and prosperity will prevail.”
What has Hillary Clinton got to offer to counter that?
The chaos and terror of open borders, the free-falling quality of life of economic stagnation and the cultural disaster of Muslim immigration that has destroyed Sweden and that is despoiling Germany and France even as you read this column.
As important as that theme was to the speech, the most important rhetorical element of the speech was how Donald Trump established the need for his 10-point plan:
"When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following: amnesty, open borders, and lower wages.
Immigration reform should mean something else entirely: it should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens.
But if we are going to make our immigration system work, then we have to be prepared to talk honestly and without fear about these important and sensitive issues.
For instance, we have to listen to the concerns that working people have over the record pace of immigration and its impact on their jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills, and living conditions. These are valid concerns, expressed by decent and patriotic citizens from all backgrounds.
We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. It is our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish here."
In those five short paragraphs Donald Trump threw down the folly and conceit of Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, John McCain, the Gang of Eight, Facebook Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, the US Chamber of Commerce and the rest of the open borders econometric school of immigration policy.
And finally, Donald Trump framed the core debate going into the post-Labor Day campaign as immigration and claimed the mantle of change agent by challenging the Washington establishment and media:
"Instead, the media and my opponent discuss one thing, and only this one thing: the needs of people living here illegally.
The truth is, the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants – or however many there may be.
That has never been the central issue. It will never be the central issue.
Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington.
Only out of touch media elites think the biggest problem facing American society today is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who don’t have legal status.
To all the politicians, donors and special interests, hear these words from me today: there is only one core issue in the immigration debate and it is this: the well-being of the American people. Nothing even comes a close second."
If Hillary Clinton has been looking weak and haggard on the campaign trail she must be positively terrified now, because last night Donald Trump rallied an army fiercely determined to take its country back and reclaim the promise that she and Barack Obama have stolen from them.
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Ann Coulter: Trump's Immigration Policy Address Was "The Greatest"
In an interview with Breitbart News Daily host Raheem Kassam, Ann Coulter described Donald Trump's immigration policy speech yesterday as "the greatest speech ever given."
"I think we can start working on the Trump transition team," she added.
"I’m just going to watch it whenever I’m not on radio or sleeping," she said. "That was the most perfect speech, and Trump – I describe this in In Trump We Trust, he is so brilliant. Every time you think Trump has made a mistake – and I describe these incidents in my book, as with John McCain, and we’ve seen it recently with the claims about Khizr Khan, this snarling Muslim at the Democratic convention, lecturing Trump on how he’s not allowed to venture opinions because his son didn’t die in Iraq. Look, maybe I don’t know America, and maybe Khizr Khan knows it better, but I don’t think that’s going over well."
"In any event, all throughout this campaign, he’d do things that at first I thought, ‘Ah, I wish he hadn’t said that,’ and then I learned to start telling my friends – who’d call me as if they could yell at me for everything Trump does – and I’d say, ‘Just wait a few days. Let’s see how it plays out.’ And look at what he did, with the stuff he said on Hannity last week, on the alleged softening," she continued. "He got every network to cover that speech live, the most magnificent speech in human history."
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Economic Conspiracies
By Walter E. Williams
A general economic principle is that any law or regulation that restricts market entry tends to impose the greatest burden on those who can be described as poor, latecomers, discriminated-against and politically weak.
The president of the NAACP's St. Louis chapter, Adolphus Pruitt, has petitioned a circuit court judge to reject the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission's conspiratorial call to issue a temporary restraining order that would force Uber to shut down. He says the order would negatively impact nearly 2,000 African-Americans who work as Uber partners in black neighborhoods that have long been ignored by taxis and other transportation providers. In a statement, Pruitt said, "The immediate harm of a (temporary restraining order) would strand thousands of African American riders who depend on Uber to travel around a city that has measurable gaps in its transportation system and has failed to serve our neighborhoods for decades."
St. Louis taxicab restrictions are not nearly so onerous as those in some other cities. In New York, the license, called a medallion, to own one taxi costs $704,000. In Chicago, the medallion price in 2015 was $270,000, down from $357,000 in 2013. Boston medallions currently sell for about $200,000, and that's down from $700,000 several years ago. The effect of these licensing restrictions is to close the market to those who do not have hundreds of thousands of dollars or are unable to acquire a loan to purchase a medallion. I'd ask my liberal friends: Who are the people least likely to have those resources?
Entry restrictions are not necessarily a racial issue. Those who are in a monopoly arrangement find it in their interest to keep outsiders out. If they can do so, it means they can charge higher prices and earn higher income. That means blacks who are part of a taxicab monopoly share the same interests as whites in that industry.
There are hundreds of conspiratorial entry restrictions that work against blacks. George Leef has a story in Forbes about a case before the courts, Pritchard v. Board of Cosmetology. The plaintiff is Tammy Pritchard, a policewoman who would like to supplement her income by working in a hair salon owned by a friend. The salon specializes in African hair braiding, and Pritchard wants to shampoo customers' hair. After she had been working a few months, Tennessee Board of Cosmetology officials barred her from washing hair because she lacks a governmental license to do so. Under the board's regulations, an individual must complete "not less than 300 hours" of instruction "in the practice and theory of shampooing" at an approved school. Pritchard cannot afford the time and money costs, so she has lost a source of income.
My colleagues at the Institute for Justice have waged war against economic restrictions since 1991 and have had a number of important successes. Among hair braiders the Institute for Justice has liberated from onerous regulations are those in Arkansas, California, Iowa, Washington and Missouri. The institute has successfully waged war against taxi licensing and other transportation restrictions in Bowling Green, Milwaukee, Chicago, Florida, Cincinnati, Denver, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Minneapolis and elsewhere. Its successes in other areas of liberty can be found on its website.
The most devastating and difficult-to-change economic conspiracy is the minimum wage law. The conspiratorial aspect of the law is that it prices all people out of the job market whose skills do not provide the value of the minimum wage. Put yourself in the place of an employer and ask yourself whether you would hire a person whom the minimum wage law mandates you pay $7.25 an hour if that person were so unfortunate that he could add only $5 worth of value an hour. Most employers would view hiring such a low-skilled person as a losing economic proposition, but they might hire him if he could be paid $5 an hour. Unfortunately, the minimum wage law is seen as sacrosanct, and that conspiracy will continue in perpetuity — robbing youngsters, particularly black youngsters, of a chance to get their feet on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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2 September, 2016
Bush=Nazi? Not so much
Despite the extreme abuse he received from the Left, I have always described GWB as a sentimental Christian gentleman -- and the report below by Taylor Griffin reinforces that
As a young White House staffer in the early years of President George W. Bush’s administration, I was always struck by President Bush’s kindness, warmth and genuine humility. I saw it when he choked back tears as he comforted grieving families after 9/11. Or in the camaraderie he shared with wounded warriors. But, I saw it in small moments too. Here's one of those that meant a great deal to me personally.
As I prepared to leave the White House for a new job opportunity, Ashley Kavanaugh, the President’s secretary at the time, called to tell me that the President wanted to invite my family to come visit in the Oval Office on my last day of work. It was 2003, a few days after the start of the Iraq war, when my brother, sister and father arrived at the White House Northwest gate. This was a busy time for the President. I anticipated a quick photo op. So, as we walked down the drive toward the West Wing, I instructed my family not to linger too long with the President. I knew that he had a great deal weighing on him, more than usual, and had an especially tight schedule that day.
We were ushered into the Oval, introductions were made, and White House photographer Eric Draper snapped a photo for posterity. After a few minutes of pleasantries, I thanked the President and began to usher everyone out.
As we turned for the door, he boomed, “hang on,” and motioned us back, insisting that we stay a little longer. He asked my brother about his career plans, my sister about her studies in college. He took the time to get to know each of them. As we left, everyone was beaming.
Later, I thanked the President for how generously he had welcomed our family. As much as I appreciated it, I asked why he had taken so much time for a junior staffer and his family from a small town in North Carolina? “Well,” he said, “this may be the one time in their lives your family will ever visit with a President in the Oval Office. I wanted to make sure that it was something they could remember.”
Everyone who has worked for President Bush has stories like this, my friend Dana Perino has a book filled with them (here's one and another). Many of these are far more awe-inspiring than mine (here here and here). But, sometimes it's the small things that best illustrate true kindness and real character.
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Another wonderful Reagan story -- perhaps the best yet
Reagan was giving a speech at a school for the blind in the early 80’s. When the speech and the question and answer period were over, Reagan ordered all the journalists and photographers, and even his own staff - including Bennett himself - out of the auditorium so he could spend a few minutes with the children.
Later that day, Bennett was on the phone with the school administrator and asked her about those last few minutes in the auditorium. The administrator recounted how Reagan came down off the stage, sat amongst the children, and allowed them to feel his face.
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In Denouncing Alt-Right, Hillary Treads Where GOP Will Not
Jonah is a bit flustered below. That Hillary condemns the Alt-Right confuses him. He does not seem to see that it is just an update of her "Vast right-wing conspiracy". See sees demons where they are not.
Jonah is broadly right in identifying whom the Alt-Right are -- people who acknowledge racial differences -- but he has fallen for a simplistic explanation for their motives. He cannot see that it is a concern for the safety of themselves and those like them that motivates Alt-Righters.
Black on white crime is a huge problem that is swept under the bed by mainstream politicians because of their refusal to talk about racial realities. Alt-Righters want to get that conversation under way without shrieks about Nazism, Apartheid, Jim Crow etc. The world of the 21st century is different from the 20th century and we need to acknowledge that and not go back to fight old battles that were won long ago.
There is no general agreement among Alt-Righters about how to deal with black criminality, but that it must not be ignored is universally agreed among them. Getting the problems of racial differences out in the open is what is aimed at
Last week delivered one of the most remarkable moments of this most remarkable political season. A major politician defended the conservative movement and the Republican Party from guilt-by-association with a fringe group of racists, anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists who have jumped enthusiastically on the Donald Trump train: the so-called alt-right.
“This is not conservatism as we have known it,” the politician said. “This is not Republicanism as we have known it.”
That politician was Hillary Clinton, and that’s astonishing. Clinton is normally comfortable unjustly condemning conservatism and the GOP for the sins of bigotry and prejudice, not exonerating it. After all, she coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Her husband’s administration tried — unfairly — to pin the Oklahoma City bombing on conservative critics, specifically radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. Less than a decade later, she revived the charge in her book “Living History,” tying the bombing to “right-wing radio talk shows and websites [which] intensified the atmosphere of hostility with their rhetoric of intolerance, anger and anti-government paranoia.”
Just last year, Clinton was comparing the entire GOP presidential field to “terrorist groups” for their views on abortion.
This history suggests that Clinton’s attempt to distinguish the party of Paul Ryan from the alt-right was not the product of high-minded statesmanship, but political calculation. The goal was to demonize Trump so as to make moderate voters feel OK voting for a Democrat.
(Trump is not an alt-righter, but his political inexperience, his anti-establishment persona, and his ignorance of, and hostility to, many basic tenets of conservatism created a golden opportunity for the alt-righters to latch onto his candidacy.)
If I were a down-ballot Democrat, I’d be chagrined. By exonerating the GOP from the stain of the alt-right, Clinton has made it harder for Democratic candidates to tar their opponents with it. What’s truly extraordinary, though, is that Clinton is doing work many conservatives won’t.
There is a diversity of views among the self-described alt-right. But the one unifying sentiment is racism — or what they like to call “racialism” or “race realism.” In the words of one alt-right leader, Jared Taylor, “the races are not equal and equivalent.” On Monday, Taylor asserted on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” that racialism — not religion, economics, etc. — is the one issue that unites alt-righters.
If you read the writings of leading alt-righters, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion. Some are avowed white supremacists. Some eschew talk of supremacy and instead focus on the need for racial separation to protect “white identity.” But one can’t talk about the alt-right knowledgeably without recognizing their racism.
And yet that is exactly what some conservatives seem intent on doing. For example, my friend Hugh Hewitt, the influential talk radio host, has been arguing that there is a “narrow” alt-right made up of a “execrable anti-Semitic, white supremacist fringe” but also a “broad alt-right” made up of frustrated tea partiers and others who are simply hostile to the GOP establishment and any form of immigration reform that falls short of mass deportation.
This isn’t just wrong, it’s madness. The alt-righters are a politically insignificant band. Why claim that a group dedicated to overthrowing conservatism for a white nationalist fantasy is in fact a member of the conservative coalition? Why muddy a distinction the alt-righters are eager to keep clear?
In the 1960s, the fledgling conservative movement was faced with a similar dilemma. The John Birch Society was a paranoid outfit dedicated to the theory that the U.S. government was controlled by communists. It said even Dwight Eisenhower was a Red (to which the conservative political theorist Russell Kirk replied, “Ike’s not a Communist, he’s a golfer”).
William F. Buckley recognized that the Birchers were being used by the liberal media to “anathematize the entire American right wing.” At first, his magazine, National Review (where I often hang my hat), tried to argue that the problem was just a narrow “lunatic fringe” of Birchers, and not the rank and file. But very quickly, the editors recognized that the broader movement needed to be denounced and defenestrated.
Buckley grasped something Hewitt and countless lesser pro-Trump pundits do not: Some lines must not be blurred, but illuminated for all to see. Amazingly, Clinton is doing that when actual conservatives have not.
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We Have Nothing Left Holding Us Together
Ben Shapiro
On Friday, a South Carolina high school stopped students from bringing American flags to a football game against a heavily Hispanic rival school. Why? The principal was presumably worried that waving the flag might offend the Hispanic students. According to the principal, “This decision would be made anytime that the American flag, or any other symbol, sign, cheer, or action on the part of our fans would potentially compromise the safety of all in attendance at a school event.”
This isn’t the first such situation. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that a public school in California could ban students from wearing a shirt emblazoned with an American flag on Cinco de Mayo thanks to fears over racial conflict at the school. The lawyer for the children complained, “This opens the door for a school to suppress any viewpoints that are opposed by a band of vocal and violent bullies.”
Meanwhile, has-been San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been widely praised in the media for refusing to stand for the national anthem during football games. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” explained the man earning an average of $19,000,000 per year for sitting on the bench. He continued: “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
We’re watching the end of America in real time.
That doesn’t mean that the country’s on the verge of actual implosion. But the idea of America required a common definition of being American: a love of country on the basis of its founding philosophy. That has now been undermined by the left.
Love of country doesn’t mean that you have to love everything about America, or that you can’t criticize America. But loving America means understanding that the country was founded on a unique basis — a uniquely good basis. That’s what the flag stands for. Not ethnic superiority or racial solidarity or police brutality but the notion of individual liberty and equal rights before God. But with the destruction of that central principle, the ties that bind us together are fraying. And the left loves that.
In fact, the two defining philosophical iterations of the modern left both make war with the ties that bind us together. In President Obama’s landmark second inaugural address, he openly said, “Being true to our founding documents … does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way.” This is the kind of definition worshipped by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has singlehandedly redefined the Constitution. He said, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
But this means that liberty has no real definition outside of “stuff I want to do.” And we all want to do different stuff, sometimes at the expense of other people’s liberty. Subjective definitions of liberty, rather than a common definition, means a conflict of all against all, or at least a conflict of a government controlled by some who are targeting everyone else. It means that our flag is no longer a common symbol for our shared definition of liberty. It’s just a rag that means different things to different people based on their subjective experiences and definitions of reality.
And that means we have nothing holding us together.
The only way to restore the ties that bind us is to rededicate ourselves to the notion of liberty for which generations of Americans fought and died. But that won’t happen so long as the left insists that their feelings are more important than your rights.
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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1 September, 2016
Clinton Economist Favors Force over Freedom
As Leftists generally do -- JR
Tyler Cowen
Few candidates spell out their policy proposals in as much detail as Hillary Clinton, but there’s still room to wonder about how a President Clinton would set her agenda for 2017 and beyond.
One clue comes in the naming of Heather Boushey to be chief economist of her transition team, giving Boushey an inside track for a major political appointment. She is currently the executive director and chief economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and recently published “Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict.” That book is one good source for which ideas might rise in a Clinton administration.
The central insight is that American institutions do not support a proper balance between work and family life, and that the burdens fall disproportionately upon women. The proposed remedies are an extensive set of government interventions, including paid sick leave, paid parental leave, subsidized child care and better care for the elderly to relieve care burdens on grown children.
Do we trust the legal machinery of government to be making that decision anew over decades of social and economic change?
This is a thoughtful and intelligent book, but for my taste Boushey holds too much faith in mandated and centralized solutions.
It is striking, for instance, that private insurance companies offered prescription drug coverage long before Medicare did, and many business employers offered benefits for same-sex partners before the federal government did. When it comes to innovation, including benefits innovation, the federal government is often a laggard, due to the nature of bureaucracy, political checks and balances and the one-size-fits-all feature of most legislation. I am therefore reluctant to give government a much larger role in managing American family lifestyles.
Boushey portrays her policies as boosting rather than restricting freedom of choice, but usually trade-offs are involved. She does argue that recent state-level experiments show that mandatory paid sick leave doesn’t destroy jobs, but there is not yet a lot of hard evidence on the question. And what works in California may not be well-suited to Mississippi.
The Long-term Effects of Government Intervention
Most likely, there is a big difference between short-run and long-run effects. For instance, employers value the workers they have, and are reluctant to fire them when labor costs go up. A lot of “pro-worker” policies thus seem to be a kind of magical free lunch. Over time, however, as a generation of workers turns over and is replaced, mandatory benefits represent a real added cost, evaluated anew, and employers will respond accordingly. They will cut the paid dollar wage, cut other job benefits, require more hard work, automate more, or cut back on plans for growing the business. The downward-sloping demand curve is the best established empirical regularity in all of economics, and in this context that means some laborers -- maybe most laborers -- will pay a price for their new benefits, one way or another.
So let’s say America’s future means better sick leave and pregnancy leave for employed women, but a narrower choice of jobs, including lower pay, for those same women. Is that better? And do we trust the legal machinery of government to be making that decision anew over decades of social and economic change? Keep in mind that there is an alternative mechanism, which for all its imperfections is far more flexible: Let companies and workers make such decisions through employment bargains.
Unrealistic Optimism
Boushey doesn’t estimate or indicate the expense of her proposed mandatory benefits, although she does suggest on page 1 that the cost would be “very small.” She is developing a new kind of supply-side economics, this time on the left, but like her right-wing counterparts she is running the risk of excess optimism about how much her suggested improvements will boost productivity in the system.
I usually suggest comparing any proposed program for amelioration to the simple alternative of sending people cash or leaving more cash in their hands, whether through tax cuts, tax credits or outright payments. With that cash in hand, individuals could try to create better arrangements for child care, elder care, and other problems of work-life balance. Some might work fewer hours or take lesser-paying but more flexible jobs, relying on their cash transfers to make up the difference. Others would spend the money on better neighborhoods, better health care or better schools, or in some cases the expenditures will be wasted.
Freedom vs Government-Mandated Benefits
Might that freedom be better than receiving a big package of government-mandated benefits? There is already a big distortion in the employment relationship that comes from taxing money wages at higher rates than workplace benefits. Workers, at the margin, actually receive higher workplace benefits than they ideally would desire, relative to being paid more cash. The way to remedy that misallocation is a lower net tax on the cash, not more benefits.
A more left-wing version of the cash transfer query would ask this: If workers can claim more resources from their bosses for free, through the exercise of legal bargaining power, why not focus policy changes on boosting minimum and mandated wages?
“Finding Time” doesn’t find time to address, much less resolve, such questions. The most plausible response to these criticisms is that individual Americans cannot be trusted to make good decisions for themselves, and I am afraid that is the view being swept under the carpet here.
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Obamacare's Economic Assumptions Collapse
Economic reality is making it increasingly obvious that we are in the midst of Obamacare’s long anticipated death spiral. Most recently, Aetna joined UnitedHealthcare and Humana as the third of the "big five" insurance firms to announce major cuts to its Obamacare exchange business.
For insurers, it's simple math: Premiums collected must exceed claims paid. If too few healthy, low risk individuals enroll to offset the costs of insuring unhealthy, high risk individuals, the math doesn’t work. This imbalance forces insurers to raise premiums on the low risk individuals who do enroll to cover the costs of insuring high risk individuals. The rising premiums cause even more healthy individuals to drop coverage – resulting in what has been called a death spiral.
Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini explained that his company was dropping out of the exchanges because "[p]roviding affordable, high-quality healthcare options to consumers is not possible without a balanced risk pool," and that “individuals in need of high-cost care represent” a percentage of the risk pool so large that it “results in substantial upward pressure on premiums and creates significant sustainability concerns.”
The result: Aetna suffered a second-quarter pretax 2016 loss of $200 million and total pretax losses of more than $430 million since January 2014 when the exchanges opened for business. Aetna wasn’t alone.
In April, the nation’s largest health insurer UnitedHealthcare, announced that it was pulling out of nearly all ObamaCare exchanges. In 2017, it will participate in only three exchanges instead of the 34 this year. CEO Stephen Hemsley similarly explained that “[t]he smaller overall market size and shorter-term higher risk profile within this market segment continue to suggest we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis.”
UnitedHealth lost $475 million in the exchanges in 2015 and expects to lose $650 million in 2016.
The problem extends beyond big insurers. ObamaCare established 23 non-profit health insurance companies called Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (co-ops). According to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, they received $2.4 billion in taxpayer dollars because they demonstrated “a high probability of financial viability”. To date, 16 of the 23 co-ops (or 70 percent) have failed due to weak balance sheets. Six of the remaining seven are on the brink of collapse.
As a result, the competition between insurers that ObamaCare counted on to keep the quality of coverage up and the costs down is vanishing.
According to a recent analysis by the consulting company Avalere Health, in 2017 nearly 36% of markets may have only one insurer participating in the exchanges, up from 4% in 2016. Nearly 55% may have two or fewer choices, up from 33%. The reasons: “Lower-than-expected enrollment, a high cost population, and troubled risk mitigation programs have led to decreased plan participation for 2017.”
The all too predictable consequence is daunting rate hikes. In an ongoing analysis, independent analyst Charles Gaba recently crunched the numbers for insurers participating in the exchanges. He concluded that for 2017, the national average increase requested is a whopping 24.3%. For the eight states that have approved rate hikes to date (representing about 10% of the total population) the average approved increase was 25.6%. And that’s with current overall inflation at about 1 percent. So much for President Obama’s promise that the average family would see its premiums decline by $2,500.
Even President Obama knows something must be done. As recently as August 2nd, he proposed a “public option” government run insurance company that would compete against private insurers on the exchanges. This "public-option" insurer could operate at a loss indefinitely with taxpayers footing the bill, driving private insurance companies that actually have to turn a profit, out of the market. The result: A massive taxpayer-funded government bureaucracy supporting a single-payer healthcare system that eliminates consumer choice as well as the competition necessary to keep benefits up and costs down.
Hillary Clinton, who sees more government as the solution to every problem, has endorsed the idea. Perhaps those sceptics who saw ObamaCare as an intentionally flawed plan paving the way for a single payer system had a point after all.
But making ObamaCare more bureaucratic, economically indefensible and politically untouchable is not the answer. Americans deserve quality affordable care, not more bureaucracy. It’s past time to do something that makes sense.
Any meaningful effort to repeal and replace Obamacare will require cooperation between the President and Congress on a plan that incorporates economically rational free market principles while preserving ObamaCare’s most popular provisions. The good news is that both GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan have outlined such plans.
Among other complimentary proposals, they both would encourage much needed competition by allowing insurance sales across state lines while using health savings accounts and tax credits or deductions to reduce insurance costs. They would also increase the role of states to more effectively manage and administer Medicaid (the state-federal program for low income Americans that accounts for the lion’s share of those added to the rolls of the insured under ObamaCare).
Ryan’s more detailed plan would, among other things, implement much needed medical malpractice reforms and allow small businesses and individuals to pool their collective purchasing power. It would also preserve ObamaCare’s more popular provisions such as protecting those with pre-existing conditions and prohibiting sudden cancellations if continuous coverage is maintained.
At this point, it is evident that ObamaCare’s economic assumptions are collapsing. It’s time to elect lawmakers who will offer effective legislation, vet it through congressional committees and learn what’s in it before they pass it. Trump and Ryan are on the right path.
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It Pays to Be a Liberal
Wall Street is accused of many things — some legit, some not — but flying under the radar is its alleged watchdog, the federal government, which is actively utilizing an egregious form of blackmail that makes banks' impropriety look like child’s play. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce adviser Andy Koenig makes a startling revelation of the federal government’s forcing large banks to fund leftist fads in the name of “social justice.” Here’s how Koenig describes it:
“The administration’s multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. The conduit for this funding is the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, a coalition of federal and state regulators and prosecutors created in 2012 to ‘identify, investigate, and prosecute instances of wrongdoing’ in the residential mortgage-backed securities market. In conjunction with the Justice Department, the RMBS Working Group has reached multibillion-dollar settlements with essentially every major bank in America.”
Koenig adds, “Combined, the banks must divert well over $11 billion into ‘consumer relief,’ which is supposed to benefit homeowners harmed during the Great Recession. Yet it is unknown how much, if any, of the banks' settlement money will find its way to individual homeowners. Instead, a substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list.” Some of the groups include La Raza, the National Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition — entities with an obviously leftist bent. The total windfall is unclear, but these and other leftist groups have benefited handsomely off the $11 billion the government has managed to purloin from the nation’s largest banks.
This sounds appalling — and indeed it is — but it’s not without precedent. Consider that something similar happened with Obama’s infamous “stimulus” package. The near-trillion dollar injection of taxpayer funds went almost exclusively toward funding Obama’s leftist cronies. As much flack as banks receive, their indiscretions are nothing compared to what the feds are doing behind the scenes.
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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BACKGROUND NOTES:
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Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.
So the essential feature of Leftism is that they think they have the right to tell other people what to do
The Left have a lot in common with tortoises. They have a thick mental shell that protects them from the reality of the world about them
Leftists are the disgruntled folk. They see things in the world that are not ideal and conclude therefore that they have the right to change those things by force. Conservative explanations of why things are not ideal -- and never can be -- fall on deaf ears
Let's start with some thought-provoking graphics
Israel: A great powerhouse of the human spirit
The difference in practice
The United Nations: A great ideal but a sordid reality
Alfred Dreyfus, a reminder of French antisemitism still relevant today
Eugenio Pacelli, a righteous Gentile, a true man of God and a brilliant Pope
Leftism in one picture:
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.
R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. Allende had just burnt the electoral rolls so it wasn't hard to see what was coming. Pinochet 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
Leftist writers usually seem quite reasonable and persuasive at first glance. The problem is not what they say but what they don't say. Leftist beliefs are so counterfactual ("all men are equal", "all men are brothers" etc.) that to be a Leftist you have to have a talent for blotting out from your mind facts that don't suit you. And that is what you see in Leftist writing: A very selective view of reality. Facts that disrupt a Leftist story are simply ignored. Leftist writing is cherrypicking on a grand scale
So if ever you read something written by a Leftist that sounds totally reasonable, you have an urgent need to find out what other people say on that topic. The Leftist will almost certainly have told only half the story
We conservatives have the facts on our side, which is why Leftists never want to debate us and do their best to shut us up. It's very revealing the way they go to great lengths to suppress conservative speech at universities. Universities should be where the best and brightest Leftists are to be found but even they cannot stand the intellectual challenge that conservatism poses for them. It is clearly a great threat to them. If what we say were ridiculous or wrong, they would grab every opportunity to let us know it.
A conservative does not hanker after the new; He hankers after the good. Leftists hanker after the untested
Just one thing is sufficient to tell all and sundry what an unamerican lamebrain Obama is. He pronounced an army corps as an army "corpse" Link here. Can you imagine any previous American president doing that? Many were men with significant personal experience in the armed forces in their youth.
A favorite Leftist saying sums up the whole of Leftism: "To make an omelette, you've got to break eggs". They want to change some state of affairs and don't care who or what they destroy or damage in the process. They think their alleged good intentions are sufficient to absolve them from all blame for even the most evil deeds
In practical politics, the art of Leftism is to sound good while proposing something destructive
Leftists are the "we know best" people, meaning that they are intrinsically arrogant. Matthew chapter 6 would not be for them. And arrogance leads directly into authoritarianism
Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?
And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama
That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His clever short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"
Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out
Leftists think of themselves as the new nobility
Many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Modern day Leftists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates.
If you understand that Leftism is hate, everything falls into place.
The strongest way of influencing people is to convince them that you will do them some good. Leftists and con-men misuse that
Leftists believe only what they want to believe. So presenting evidence contradicting their beliefs simply enrages them. They do not learn from it
Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves.
Leftists who think that they can conjure up paradise out of their own limited brains are simply fools -- arrogant and dangerous fools. They essentially know nothing. Conservatives learn from the thousands of years of human brains that have preceded us -- including the Bible, the ancient Greeks and much else. The death of Socrates is, for instance, an amazing prefiguration of the intolerant 21st century. Ask any conservative stranded in academe about his freedom of speech
Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Leftists don't understand that -- which is a major factor behind their simplistic thinking. They just never see the trade-offs. But implementing any Leftist idea will hit us all with the trade-offs
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"[go oft astray] is a well known line from a famous poem by the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns. But the next line is even wiser: "And leave us nought but grief and pain for promised joy". Burns was a Leftist of sorts so he knew how often their theories fail badly.
Most Leftist claims are simply propaganda. Those who utter such claims must know that they are not telling the whole story. Hitler described his Marxist adversaries as "lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams". At the risk of ad hominem shrieks, I think that image is too good to remain disused.
Conservatives adapt to the world they live in. Leftists want to change the world to suit themselves
Given their dislike of the world they live in, it would be a surprise if Leftists were patriotic and loved their own people. Prominent English Leftist politician Jack Straw probably said it best: "The English as a race are not worth saving"
In his 1888 book, The Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche argues that we should treat the common man well and kindly because he is the backdrop against which the exceptional man can be seen. So Nietzsche deplores those who agitate the common man: "Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala [outcast] apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker's sense of satisfaction with his small existence—who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of “equal” rights"
Why do conservatives respect tradition and rely on the past in many ways? Because they want to know what works and the past is the chief source of evidence on that. Leftists are more faith-based. They cling to their theories (e.g. global warming) with religious fervour, even though theories are often wrong
Thinking that you "know best" is an intrinsically precarious and foolish stance -- because nobody does. Reality is so complex and unpredictable that it can rarely be predicted far ahead. Conservatives can see that and that is why conservatives always want change to be done gradually, in a step by step way. So the Leftist often finds the things he "knows" to be out of step with reality, which challenges him and his ego. Sadly, rather than abandoning the things he "knows", he usually resorts to psychological defence mechanisms such as denial and projection. He is largely impervious to argument because he has to be. He can't afford to let reality in.
A prize example of the Leftist tendency to projection (seeing your own faults in others) is the absurd Robert "Bob" Altemeyer, an acclaimed psychologist and father of a Canadian Leftist politician. Altemeyer claims that there is no such thing as Leftist authoritarianism and that it is conservatives who are "Enemies of Freedom". That Leftists (e.g. Mrs Obama) are such enemies of freedom that they even want to dictate what people eat has apparently passed Altemeyer by. Even Stalin did not go that far. And there is the little fact that all the great authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Stalin, Hitler and Mao) were socialist. Freud saw reliance on defence mechanisms such as projection as being maladjusted. It is difficult to dispute that. Altemeyer is too illiterate to realize it but he is actually a good Hegelian. Hegel thought that "true" freedom was marching in step with a Left-led herd.
What libertarian said this? “The bureaucracy is a parasite on the body of society, a parasite which ‘chokes’ all its vital pores…The state is a parasitic organism”. It was VI Lenin, in August 1917, before he set up his own vastly bureaucratic state. He could see the problem but had no clue about how to solve it.
It was Democrat John F Kennedy who cut taxes and declared that “a rising tide lifts all boats"
Leftist stupidity is a special class of stupidity. The people concerned are mostly not stupid in general but they have a character defect (mostly arrogance) that makes them impatient with complexity and unwilling to study it. So in their policies they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot; They fail to attain their objectives. The world IS complex so a simplistic approach to it CANNOT work.
Seminal Leftist philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel said something that certainly applies to his fellow Leftists: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history". And he captured the Left in this saying too: "Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives Evil all around itself".
"A man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart; A man who is still a socialist at age 30 has no head". Who said that? Most people attribute it to Winston but as far as I can tell it was first said by Georges Clemenceau, French Premier in WWI -- whose own career approximated the transition concerned. And he in turn was probably updating an earlier saying about monarchy versus Republicanism by Guizot. Other attributions here. There is in fact a normal drift from Left to Right as people get older. Both Reagan and Churchill started out as liberals
Funny how to the Leftist intelligentsia poor blacks are 'oppressed' and poor whites are 'trash'. Racism, anyone?
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)
Just the name of Hitler's political party should be sufficient to reject the claim that Hitler was "Right wing" but Leftists sometimes retort that the name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not informative, in that it is the name of a dismal Stalinist tyranny. But "People's Republic" is a normal name for a Communist country whereas I know of no conservative political party that calls itself a "Socialist Worker's Party". Such parties are in fact usually of the extreme Left (Trotskyite etc.)
Most people find the viciousness of the Nazis to be incomprehensible -- for instance what they did in their concentration camps. But you just have to read a little of the vileness that pours out from modern-day "liberals" in their Twitter and blog comments to understand it all very well. Leftists haven't changed. They are still boiling with hate
Hatred as a motivating force for political strategy leads to misguided decisions. “Hatred is blind,” as Alexandre Dumas warned, “rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.”
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.
Three examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):
Jesse Owens, the African-American hero of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, said "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt never even invited the quadruple gold medal-winner to the White House
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."
The Zimmerman case is an excellent proof that the Left is deep-down racist
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.
Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.
It would be very easy for me to say that I am too much of an individual for the army but I did in fact join the army and enjoy it greatly, as most men do. In my observation, ALL army men are individuals. It is just that they accept discipline in order to be militarily efficient -- which is the whole point of the exercise. But that's too complex for simplistic Leftist thinking, of course
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
FDR appointed a known KKK member, Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court
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!
High Level of Welfare Use by Legal and Illegal Immigrants in the USA. Low skill immigrants receive 4 to 5 dollars of benefits for every dollar in taxes paid
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.
The association between high IQ and long life is overwhelmingly genetic: "In the combined sample the genetic contribution to the covariance was 95%"
The Dark Ages were not dark
Judged by his deeds, Abraham Lincoln was one of the bloodiest villains ever to walk the Earth. See here. And: America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here
Was slavery already washed up by the tides of history before Lincoln took it on? Eric Williams in his book "Capitalism and Slavery" tells us: “The commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the wealth of Europe by means of slavery and monopoly. But in so doing it helped to create the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century, which turned round and destroyed the power of commercial capitalism, slavery, and all its works. Without a grasp of these economic changes the history of the period is meaningless.”
Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?
Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?
Conrad Black on the Declaration of Independence
Malcolm Gladwell: "There is more of reality and wisdom in a Chinese fortune cookie than can be found anywhere in Gladwell’s pages"
Some people are born bad -- confirmed by genetics research
The dark side of American exceptionalism: America could well be seen as the land of folly. It fought two unnecessary civil wars, would have done well to keep out of two world wars, endured the extraordinary folly of Prohibition and twice elected a traitor President -- Barack Obama. That America remains a good place to be is a tribute to the energy and hard work of individual Americans.
“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.” ? Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution Of Liberty
IN BRIEF:
The 10 "cannots" (By William J. H. Boetcker) that Leftist politicians ignore:
*You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
* And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
A good short definition of conservative: "One who wants you to keep your hand out of his pocket."
Beware of good intentions. They mostly lead to coercion
A gargantuan case of hubris, coupled with stunning level of ignorance about how the real world works, is the essence of progressivism.
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
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong - Thomas Sowell
Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal
"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution" -- George Orwell
Was 16th century science pioneer Paracelsus a libertarian? His motto was "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself."
"When using today's model of society as a rule, most of history will be found to be full of oppression, bias, and bigotry." What today's arrogant judges of history fail to realize is that they, too, will be judged. What will Americans of 100 years from now make of, say, speech codes, political correctness, and zero tolerance - to name only three? Assuming, of course, there will still be an America that we, today, would recognize. Given the rogue Federal government spy apparatus, I am not at all sure of that. -- Paul Havemann
Economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973): "The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office."
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
Why are conservatives more at ease with religion? Because it is basic to conservatism that some things are unknowable, and religious people have to accept that too. Leftists think that they know it all and feel threatened by any exceptions to that. Thinking that you know it all is however the pride that comes before a fall.
The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is not envy. It's rage
Leftists are committed to grievance, not truth
The British Left poured out a torrent of hate for Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death. She rescued Britain from chaos and restored Britain's prosperity. What's not to hate about that?
Something you didn't know about Margaret Thatcher
The world's dumbest investor? Without doubt it is Uncle Sam. Nobody anywhere could rival the scale of the losses on "investments" made under the Obama administration
"Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power" -- Murray Rothbard - Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995)
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy
"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them--all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach." -- Solzhenitsyn
"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. -- Thomas Jefferson
"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power" -- Bertrand Russell
Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)
The Republicans are the gracious side of American politics. It is the Democrats who are the nasty party, the haters
Wanting to stay out of the quarrels of other nations is conservative -- but conservatives will fight if attacked or seriously endangered. Anglo/Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), who led the political coalition that defeated Napoleon, was an isolationist, as were traditional American conservatives.
Some wisdom from the past: "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." —George Washington, 1783
Some useful definitions:
If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.
There is better evidence for creation than there is for the Leftist claim that “gender” is a “social construct”. Most Leftist claims seem to be faith-based rather than founded on the facts
Leftists are classic weak characters. They dish out abuse by the bucketload but cannot take it when they get it back. Witness the Loughner hysteria.
Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.
America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course
The Leftist motto: "I love humanity. It's just people I can't stand"
Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts
Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left
Gore Vidal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little". Vidal was of course a Leftist
The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left. Some evidence here showing that envy is not what defines the Left
Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.
The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.
Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.
Was Confucius a conservative? The following saying would seem to reflect good conservative caution: "The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."
The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here
Some Leftist hatred arises from the fact that they blame "society" for their own personal problems and inadequacies
The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.
Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt
A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)
Leftist policies are candy-coated rat poison that may appear appealing at first, but inevitably do a lot of damage to everyone impacted by them.
A tribute and thanks to Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death was reprehensible but she probably did more by her death that she ever would have in life: She spared the world a President Ted Kennedy. That the heap of corruption that was Ted Kennedy died peacefully in his bed is one of the clearest demonstrations that we do not live in a just world. Even Joe Stalin seems to have been smothered to death by Nikita Khrushchev
I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful
The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel
Even in the Old Testament they knew about "Postmodernism": "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)
Was Solomon the first conservative? "The hearts of men are full of evil and madness is in their hearts" -- Ecclesiastes: 9:3 (RSV). He could almost have been talking about Global Warming.
Leftist hatred of Christianity goes back as far as the massacre of the Carmelite nuns during the French revolution. Yancey has written a whole book tabulating modern Leftist hatred of Christians. It is a rival religion to Leftism.
"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises
The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present.
Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses
Among intelligent people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.
A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.
Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.
Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.
Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics. -- C.J. Keyser
Hell is paved with good intentions" -- Boswell's Life of Johnson of 1775
"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus
THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU
"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.
Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.
Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance
Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state -- capitalism frees them.
Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).
The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.
Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.
"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter
Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable
A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.
"Some action that is unconstitutional has much to recommend it" -- Elena Kagan, nominated to SCOTUS by Obama
Frank Sulloway, the anti-scientist
The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload
A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here
Some ancient wisdom for Leftists: "Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise: Why shouldest thou die before thy time?" -- Ecclesiastes 7:16
Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.
Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."
Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable
Big business is not your friend. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary
How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values. -- John Maynard Keynes
Some wisdom from "Bron" Waugh: "The purpose of politics is to help them [politicians] overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power"
"There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible"
The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to Parliament [or Congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever"
"It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled"
Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)
First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean
It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were. Freedom needs a soldier
If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.
3 memoirs of "Supermac", a 20th century Disraeli (Aristocratic British Conservative Prime Minister -- 1957 to 1963 -- Harold Macmillan):
"It breaks my heart to see (I can't interfere or do anything at my age) what is happening in our country today - this terrible strike of the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's army and beat Hitler's army, and never gave in. Pointless, endless. We can't afford that kind of thing. And then this growing division which the noble Lord who has just spoken mentioned, of a comparatively prosperous south, and an ailing north and midlands. That can't go on." -- Mac on the British working class: "the best men in the world" (From his Maiden speech in the House of Lords, 13 November 1984)
"As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism"
During Macmillan's time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." --?Arthur Schopenhauer
JEWS AND ISRAEL
The Bible is an Israeli book
To me, hostility to the Jews is a terrible tragedy. I weep for them at times. And I do literally put my money where my mouth is. I do at times send money to Israeli charities
My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.
"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
"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee" Psalm 122:6.
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)
Israel, like the Jews throughout history, is hated not for her vices but her virtues. Israel is hated, as the United States is hated, because Israel is successful, because Israel is free, and because Israel is good. As Maxim Gorky put it: “Whatever nonsense the anti-Semites may talk, they dislike the Jew only because he is obviously better, more adroit, and more willing and capable of work than they are.” Whether driven by culture or genes—or like most behavior, an inextricable mix—the fact of Jewish genius is demonstrable." -- George Gilder
To Leftist haters, all the basic rules of liberal society — rejection of hate speech, commitment to academic freedom, rooting out racism, the absolute commitment to human dignity — go out the window when the subject is Israel.
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.
Is the Israel Defence Force the most effective military force per capita since Genghis Khan? They probably are but they are also the most ethically advanced military force that the world has ever seen
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
Amid their many virtues, one virtue is often lacking among Jews in general and Israelis in particular: Humility. And that's an antisemitic comment only if Hashem is antisemitic. From Moses on, the Hebrew prophets repeatedy accused the Israelites of being "stiff-necked" and urged them to repent. So it's no wonder that the greatest Jewish prophet of all -- Jesus -- not only urged humility but exemplified it in his life and death
"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.
Karl Marx hated just about everyone. Even his father, the kindly Heinrich Marx, thought Karl was not much of a human being
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.
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!)
The Australian flag with the Union Jack quartered in it
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
A small personal note: I have always been very self-confident. I inherited it from my mother, along with my skeptical nature. So I don't need to feed my self-esteem by claiming that I am wiser than others -- which is what Leftists do.
As with conservatives generally, it bothers me not a bit to admit to large gaps in my knowledge and understanding. For instance, I don't know if the slight global warming of the 20th century will resume in the 21st, though I suspect not. And I don't know what a "healthy" diet is, if there is one. Constantly-changing official advice on the matter suggests that nobody knows
Leftists are usually just anxious little people trying to pretend that they are significant. No doubt there are some Leftists who are genuinely concerned about inequities in our society but their arrogance lies in thinking that they understand it without close enquiry
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" -- and that preference has NOTHING to do with an American soap opera that featured a character who was referred to in that way
DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:
"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism" (Backup here)
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart
BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:
"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral reef compendium.
IQ Compendium
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia
BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED
"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
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)
Mirror for "Dissecting Leftism"
Alt archives
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
Dagmar Schellenberger
General Backup
My alternative Wikipedia
General Backup 2
Selected reading
MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM
CONSERVATISM AS HERESY
Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.
Cautionary blogs about big Australian organizations:
TELSTRA
OPTUS
AGL
Bank of Queensland
Queensland Police
Australian police news
QANTAS, a dying octopus
Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
basic home page
Pictorial Home Page
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/