ELSEWHERE

Antisemitic Catholics still? Marathon Pundit has been following the strange doings at DePaul university, run by the Vincentians, a Catholic charitable organization. They have fired one professor (Klocek) who spoke in up in defence of Israel and now look likely to give tenure to a notorious holocaust denier and Hitler apologist (Finkelstein). And they are of course hosting the notorious Prof. Ward Churchill there too -- the man who thinks ordinary working Americans are like Nazi officials. How any Catholic organization can be permitted by the modern church to engage in such hate-filled antisemitic weirdness completely escapes me. I am sure The Holy Father would be horrified if he heard of it.

I have just posted here some correspondence between Chris Brand and Philip Clarke, Dean, Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University -- regarding the banning of this article by Prof. Fraser about Australian immigration policy. The reply Chris sent would appear to expose the complete dishonesty of Deakin university in the matter. Sadly, Prof. Fraser's predictions already seem to be coming horrifyingly true. See here. I don't suppose many Americans would be surprised, however.

IMAPP have recently put out a study which claims to show that children from families where the parents are married are less likely to be involved in crime. Their study is a meta-analysis and a bad one, with most of the studies surveyed apparently failing to take account of race. They DID however find one study by T.M. Franke which used good sampling and good controls -- including control for race. And that study DID support the expected correlation. You can find the abstract of the Franke study here

There is a fascinating summary here of the Golitsyn predictions. Golitsyn was the only Sovietologist to predict the downfall of the old Soviet system in Russia long before it happened. He even predicted the fall of the Berlin wall years in advance. Golitsyn certainly made monkeys out of all the "intellectuals" who pooh-poohed his predictions at the time he made them. One of his predictions is a little worrying, though: He predicted that the KGB would retain its grip on Russia. And since President Putin is a former KGB chief it looks like he was right about that too. (HT Swimming Against the Red Tide)

Tennessee bureaucratic idiocy: "The state is keeping 120 lawyers on its payroll to hear the appeals of people who claim they have been wrongly cut from TennCare, even though there have been few cases for them to hear -- 16, at last count. The state began hiring the lawyers in July and is paying the temporary legal help more than $519,000 per month, according to figures provided by the state Department of Human Services, which is overseeing the appeals process. One of the lawyers who became disgruntled and left said some co-workers filled their days working crossword puzzles and reading magazines, although they were instructed to 'look busy.' State officials denied this, saying the lawyers are constantly busy training, reviewing policy, and preparing for appeals hearings to come. ... Still, critics of the TennCare cuts say the payments to the lawyers are a huge waste of money that could be better used to help TennCare enrollees."

San Francisco bureaucratic idiocy: "If a big earthquake hits San Francisco and flames spread through the city, firefighters rushing in from elsewhere to help will encounter what could be a major problem -- their hoses will not fit the city's hydrants. It has been 14 years since a similar predicament contributed to the spread of the Oakland hills fire, in which 25 people died and 2,699 homes were lost. After dozens of firefighters from surrounding agencies found that their hoses couldn't be attached to Oakland's hydrants, state lawmakers required that all cities in California adopt a standard connection size by 1994."

Japan: Victory for small government: "Small government proponents just won an overwhelming electoral victory. But it was in Japan rather than the United States. In just-completed elections, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won two-thirds of the seats at stake in the Diet or parliament, running on a platform of cutting government bureaucracy and smaller government and less spending. It was not just talk. For four years, he restrained government spending and even eliminated many large popular public works projects, indexed and increased employee contributions to politically sensitive pensions, and allowed private firms to compete for government functions."

Congress Considers Beer a Luxury--But Not Mink Coats, Private Jets, or Yachts: "President George H.W. Bush and Congress in 1990 raised a host of excise taxes on "luxury" items including expensive cars, fur coats, jewelry, yachts, and private airplanes. Included in the list of luxury items was beer, which at the time saw a doubling of the federal excise tax, from $9 to $18 a barrel. Fifteen years later, the taxes on expensive cars, fur coats, jewelry, yachts, and private airplanes have been rolled back. The beer tax remains, even though the main purchasers of beer are lower- and middle-income consumers. Taxes make up an astounding 44 percent of the retail price of beer, according to the Beer Institute".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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