The dangerous Dr. Lee



The Soviets used psychiatry to oppress those who disagreed with them so it is no wonder that American Leftists are marching in their footsteps.  The American Left always did like the Soviets

A PSYCHIATRIST has called for Donald Trump to be physically detained for an “emergency” mental health evaluation, sparking a debate about the professional ethics of “armchair” diagnosis.

Dr Bandy Lee, assistant professor in forensic psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, met with a dozen Democratic politicians last month to “brief” them on Mr Trump’s fitness for office — despite never having met or evaluated the US President.

“Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President’s dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation,” Dr Lee told CNN last week.

It came as Mr Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing the media of “taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence,” branding himself a “very stable genius”.

In October, Dr Lee co-authored a book called The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump, a compilation of 27 essays by psychiatrists and mental health experts offering the view that Mr Trump “presents a clear and present danger to our nation”.

Dr Lee joins a chorus of left-wing media outlets and commentators calling for Mr Trump to be removed under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution, which allows for the Vice President to take over if he and a majority of Cabinet secretaries decide the President is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, it is “unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion” on a public figure “unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorisation for such a statement”.

It’s known as the Goldwater Rule, after former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. In 1964, Fact magazine published an article titled “The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater”, featuring a poll of psychiatrists in which almost half said Mr Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president.

Mr Goldwater lost the election but several years later successfully sued the magazine’s publisher for defamation. Current APA president Maria Oquendo has described it as a “large, very public ethical misstep by a significant number of psychiatrists”.

Dr Lee claims she has not broken the Goldwater Rule because “we are not diagnosing him ... we are mainly concerned that an emergency evaluation be done”.

Her comments have been criticised by some of her peers, however. In a letter published in The New England Journal Of Medicine, Columbia University Department of Psychiatry chairman Dr Jeffrey Lieberman accused Dr Lee and her colleagues of “a misguided and dangerous morality”.

“Although moral and civic imperatives justify citizens speaking out against injustices of government and its leaders, that does not mean that psychiatrists can use their medical credentials to brand elected officials with neuropsychiatric diagnoses without sufficient evidence and appropriate circumstances,” he wrote.

“To do so undermines the profession’s integrity and credibility.  “More than any other medical specialty, psychiatry is vulnerable to being exploited for partisan political purposes and for bypassing due process for establishing guilt, fault and fact.”

Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz has also described the push by left-wing psychiatrists to remove Mr Trump as “very dangerous”.

“That’s what they did in Russia. That’s what they did in China. That’s what they did in apartheid South Africa,” he told Fox News. “How dare liberals, people on the left, try to undo democracy by accusing a president of being mentally ill without any basis.

“The 25th Amendment doesn’t apply. Everybody knew who Donald Trump was when they elected him ... he hasn’t changed in office and this idea of diagnosing him instead of opposing him politically poses an enormous danger to our democracy.”

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Instead of 'Infrastructure Investment,' How About Killing Davis-Bacon?
   
Is there a difference between President Barack Obama’s “stimulus” and President Donald Trump’s “infrastructure investment”? Despite costing $800 billion, most economists do not believe Obama’s “stimulus” program did much stimulating. During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of Treasury wrote in his diary that the New Deal spending, designed to rescue the economy, was not working. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau wrote:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot!”

Trump, in announcing his upcoming plans for 2018, said: “Infrastructure is, by far, the easiest. People want it, Republicans and Democrats. We’re going to have tremendous Democrat support on infrastructure, as you know. I could’ve started with infrastructure. I actually wanted to save the easy one for the one down the road. We’ll be having that done pretty quickly.”

What if, instead of spending more on infrastructure, the government began paying nearly 20 percent less for projects? And how about pushing privatization, where possible, over the inevitably more costly government spending?

The Davis-Bacon Act, a Depression-era measure, was designed to thwart black workers from competing against white workers. It requires federal contractors to pay “prevailing union wages.” This act sought to shut out black workers from competing for construction jobs after white workers protested that Southern blacks were hired to build a Veterans Bureau hospital in Long Island, New York — the district of Rep. Robert Bacon, one of the bill’s sponsors. It is remarkable the Davis-Bacon still lives despite its racist intent and its discriminatory effect — to this day — on black workers. Passed in 1931, two Republicans teamed up to sponsor it.

In a labor market dominated by exclusionary unions that demanded above-market wages, blacks, at the time, competed by working for less money than the unionists. Davis-Bacon stopped this by requiring federal contractors to pay prevailing local union wages, causing massive black unemployment. Lawmakers made no secret of the law’s goal.

In the House of Representatives, Congressman William Upshaw (D-GA) said: “You will not think that a Southern man is more than human if he smiles over the fact of your reaction to that real problem you are confronted with in any community with a superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.” Rep. Miles Clayton Allgood (D-AL) supported the bill and complained of “cheap colored labor” that “is in competition with white labor throughout the country.” Rep. John J. Cochran (D-MO) stated that he had “received numerous complaints in recent months about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South.”

Davis-Bacon adds as much as 20 percent more to the cost of any federal project. And most states have enacted local Davis-Bacon laws that similarly jack up the price of those government construction projects.

This brings us to privatization. Why not encourage more projects to be built and run by the private market?

In California, for example, the Democratic governor pushes a “bullet train” that promises to benefit Los Angeles-to-San Francisco travelers. Yet the governor expects taxpayers to pay for at least part of this supposedly wonderful project. If it is predicted to be so profitable, why should taxpayers finance it?

Finally, it is not true that our gas tax has not kept pace with federal highway route expenses. From 1982 through 2014, federal gas tax revenues increased nearly 6 percent a year, according to the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards. He also points out that, beyond transportation and water, “most of America’s infrastructure is provided by the private sector, not governments.” “In fact,” says Edwards, “private infrastructure spending — on factories, freight rail, cell towers, pipelines, refineries, and other items — is four times larger than federal, state, and local government infrastructure spending combined.”

Businessman Trump is uniquely positioned to make the case not for more government spending but for less — but more efficient — spending. Obama’s failed “stimulus” should serve as Exhibit A for what we ought not do. Trump should make the case to abolish Davis-Bacon and for the privatization of as much infrastructure as possible.

So what’s the difference between Obama’s “stimulus” and Trump’s “infrastructure investment”? Obama spent $830 billion in four years, while Trump says he wants to spend as much as $1 trillion in 10 years. Unless we kill Davis-Bacon and move toward more privatization, the answer may be no difference at all.

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Tax Reform Delivers Another Blow to Union-Funded 'Fight for $15'

The failing “Fight for $15” movement just suffered another blow. It appears that tax reform has produced results that have largely eluded the union-funded movement to raise the wages of workers across the country.

Americans for Tax Reform has a handy list of all the companies that are hiking wages, handing out millions in bonuses, and making charitable donations. And it is lengthy. In a very short time frame, tax reform has made good on what the Fight for $15 movement promised—provide a direct, positive impact on the well-being of thousands of workers.

Who would have guessed that lessening the tax burden on employers would have positive impact on wages and economic growth?

In contrast, the Fight for $15 has failed to deliver, despite the millions of dues dollars that the Service Employee International Union, along with other unions, have spent on the effort.

Part of the organizations’ failure stems from the fact that artificially raising wages to $15 per hour is a bad idea. Even the liberal-leaning Washington Post editorial board recently published an editorial imploring Montgomery County, Maryland, to not raise the minimum wage to $15.

Further, in real world test cases, the outcome of $15 minimum wage has not been pretty. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that in Seattle, which recently raised the minimum wage to $15, “some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They’ve cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go.”

Additionally, a study commissioned by the City of Seattle to monitor the impact of the $15, found the wage increase cost jobs and hours for workers.

While raising minimum wages to $15 is not economically wise, the Fight for $15, a thinly veiled union front group, has had to deal with other setbacks. Despite organizing protests and lobbying efforts, Michael Saltsman, managing director at the Employment Policies Institute, documents the Fight for $15’s losses in trying to raise the minimum wage:

New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez vetoed a state wage hike, pointing to its consequences for small businesses. And in Maine, legislators — at the urging of restaurant servers — are poised to roll-back harmful minimum wage provisions passed by ballot measure on Election Day.

Last month, Baltimore Democratic Mayor Catherine Pugh vetoed a $15 minimum wage. She justified her decision by pointing to the impact it would have on city finances and city businesses. City analyses predicted the wage hike would have raised city payroll costs by $115 million over four years. Employers in the city told her they would be forced to reduce job opportunities and move outside city limits if the law took effect.

Also last month, the City of Flagstaff voted to roll back its forthcoming $12 minimum wage after numerous municipal small businesses like Cultured Yogurt dessert shop and Country Host restaurant were forced to close as a result.

In Iowa, state legislators recently voted to set one minimum wage at the state level and eliminate the patchwork of local minimum wage increases around the state. Missouri legislators are working to do the same. Last summer, Cleveland’s Democratic City Council voted against a $15 minimum wage then worked with state legislators to set state preemption on this issue.

Numerous Chicago suburbs, including Barrington, Oak Forest, Rosemont, and Tinley Park, have opted out of Cook County’s $13 minimum wage. Some cities in Santa Clara County in California have also chosen to do the same.

Ultimately, a strong economy is the best path to higher wages. Unions should recognize this and stop wasting member dues on the Fight for $15 movement, which even if it succeeds in raising minimum wage laws is bad news for workers at-large.

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