A good front page

The arctic weather conditions in the nation’s Midwest may be having some unexpected effects on some politicians.

At least, according to The New York Post which ran a cover on the so-called polar vortex which took a double jab at New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The publication declared on its front page Thursday that the cold snap, which has seen temperatures in the negative double digits, is colder than the Democratic mayor’s “presidential hopes.

But the subtext on the New York Post cover was even more brutal: “So cold, AOC has her hands in her OWN pockets.”

Ocasio-Cortez makes no apologies for her controversial views and policy proposals and has just launched fundraising efforts for her 2020 re-election following reports of “a serious primary challengeby other Democrats in the House,” according to her Facebook post Wednesday.

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'Medicare for All' will fail Democrats

Democratic senator and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris of California gave an outstanding performance in a CNN town hall in Iowa this week. I had never seen her speak on on stage before, but she came across as poised, tough, likable, and knowledgable. As I watched and listened to her, I thought uh oh, Donald Trump may have met his match. Then she suddenly blew herself up with one of the dumbest statements I have heard from a politician in a long time. When asked whether she endorsed “Medicare for All,” she dutifully said yes, as it is now Democratic dogma.

When Anderson Cooper pried further and asked if she favored abolishing private insurance plans, the obvious correct answer should have been, “Hell no.” Instead, Harris restated without hesitation, “I’m for Medicare for All,” which anyone watching would interpret as “for everybody.” Then she explained, “The idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. You don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork.”

Her plan, she said, would “eliminate all that.” It reminded me of a similarly boneheaded response several months ago by Democratic senator and presidential wannabe Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Asked if she would favor abolishing ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, she inexplicably replied that she would. Why do leading Democrats say such politically suicidal things? The obvious answer is that this is where the far left of the party wants the candidates to go in 2020. It is as if these candidates are running for president of MoveOn.org, not of the United States. Except for a few left wing crazies, who in their right minds really wants to abolish our immigration enforcement or border patrol agencies?

Now Harris is blissfully following the same radical forces. My sense is that this was not a gaffe and she was actually coached to say this about “Medicare for All” to fully establish her liberal credentials. Tellingly, the crowd of Democratic primary voters in Iowa burst into applause when she said that she wants to do away with private insurance. It is one thing to endorse allowing young people to buy into Medicare, which is a bad idea, but not crazy. What is crazy is telling over 150 million Americans with employer provided or other private health plans that they will have to give it all up because the politicians in Washington have a better deal for you.

It was not so long ago that Barack Obama reassured voters that, under the Affordable Care Act, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” That statement turned out to be untrue because millions of Americans across the nation lost affordable health plans under the Affordable Care Act. Still, people liked the idea that universal coverage did not mean that families would be forced into a government health plan.

It turns out Harris was only regurgitating the actual intent of “Medicare for All” legislation. Section 801 of the Medicare for All Act specifies that “no employee benefit plan may provide benefits that duplicate payment for any items or services for which payment may be made under Medicare.” This effectively bars employers from covering workers, retirees, and their families. No more health care choice. No more competition. No more forms to fill out. You get sick, go to the doctor, and it is basically free.

To cover the 30 million or so Americans with no health insurance, 150 million Americans would have to give up their current coverage. That is a terrible deal. Meanwhile, polls consistently find that about 70 percent of Americans with employer or union health plans like what they have. But that does not matter. The young bolsheviks will move them out. It also does not seem to matter that Medicare already faces tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities, or that it is soon to be flat out of money. This “Medicare for All” plan is like investing all of our lifetime savings in mortgage backed securities on the eve of the financial crash of 2008.

I share in the disdain that Harris holds for health insurance companies. They often turn out to be the unnecessary middle men driving up medical transactions. The law of economics would tell us that if Americans paid more of the upfront costs themselves, health inflation would fall, as has happened with programs like health savings accounts. Instead, we get the opposite system, as everyone pays for health charges for everyone else.

We have Democrats now touting 70 percent tax rates, wealth taxes, public health care, no border patrol, free college tuition, and $15 minimum wage. Moreover, we are hearing that as many as a dozen more Democrats will soon enter the presidential race, pushing the crowded field even further to the left. Suddenly, Donald Trump is looking like a sure winner in 2020.

SOURCE 

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CNN Labeled KKK Governor A Republican

In their unmoored worldview that's what they would expect him to be.  Must not mention that the KKK *attacked* Republicans

It didn’t take long for the news media to hit another iceberg. This time it was in the Old Dominion. Virginia became the subject of media attention (okay, some media attention) since Democrats tried to push a bill that would’ve permitted abortions up until the moment of birth. It was a ghastly bill that was rejected. Still, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, a medical doctor, decided to weigh in during a radio interview this week, where he was torched for his remarks that pretty much detailed how this bill would permit the murder of babies. The Democrats’ abortion extremism was on full display. He responded to the blowback by saying he doesn’t regret his remarks about the legislation.

Well, his bad week became a total disaster when his 1984 yearbook photo from Eastern Virginia Medical School, where it features two men, one of which is in blackface and the other is in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Northam apologized for the racist costume; though he didn’t specify which person he’s in the photo. The yearbook photo has been verified. It remained in the library on the school’s campus, which has led some to retroactively trash Ed Gillespie and the GOP for missing this during the 2017 gubernatorial election. Northam has apologized for the photo and promised to earn back the trust of the voters. For many, especially those on the Democratic side, scores of Democrats, including former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, have called on Northam to resign, while others have crafted the odd position of ‘he needs to go, but just not right now.’

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CNBC: The Shutdown Didn't Hurt Economy, Jobs Are Booming

The January jobs report is out today, and, despite the longest partial government shutdown in history, things are looking good. Don't take my word for it. CNBC's Sara Eisen explained why the economy is on the uptick Friday morning. Economists projected about 170,000 jobs added last month, but what we got was well over 300,000.

What does it all mean, "Morning Joe" anchor Mika Brzezinski wanted to know.

"They mean that the economy is still going strong and that employers aren't really fazed by the shutdown," Eisen said.  "Companies didn't hesitate to hire," she added. "It did not shake confidence."

She had some more numbers to prove it. It was "a bumper year for job creation," Eisen continued. The average per month for private employment was in the "2s." The new number is higher than the average for every month of last year. Again, she saw "no effect in terms of hiring for private employers" in regards to the shutdown.

Moreover, more people are entering the workforce. The current participation rate is 63.2 percent - the highest since 2013.m  January marked the 100th straight month for job gains.

SOURCE   

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Should taxpayers subsidize sport stadiums?

Politicians aren't likely to talk about what I explain in my latest video—how taxpayers were forced to donate more than $700 million to the owner of Atlanta's football team, billionaire Arthur Blank, to get him to build the stadium.

In addition to the subsidies, the Falcons get all the money from parking, restaurants, and merchandise sales. Sweet deal. But not an unusual one. Some NFL teams collect even more in government subsidies than it cost to build their stadiums.

So taxpayers, most of whom never attend a game, subsidize billionaires. Seems like a scam.

I don't fault Blank for grabbing the money. I like the guy. He made our lives better by founding Home Depot. We're both stutterers who donate money to AIS, a stuttering treatment program. Since politicians give money away, Blank's shareholders would consider him irresponsible not to take it.

The problem is that politicians give away your money in the first place.

I understand why they do it. They like going to games and telling voters, "I brought the team to our town!"

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman and her cronies recently funneled $750 million of taxpayer money to the owners of the Oakland Raiders to get them to move the team to Vegas.

Reporter Jon Ralston asked her, "Why should there be one cent of public money when you have two guys who could pay for this themselves?"

The mayor replied lamely, "I think it really is a benefit to us that really could spill over into something." Spill over into…something. Politicians always claim giving taxpayer money to team owners will "spill over" to the whole community.

They call their handouts investments—a "terrific investment," as the mayor of Atlanta put it. But it's not a good investment. It's a bad one.

Politicians point to that extra business activity that occurs when the football team plays at home, but the Atlanta Falcons, like most NFL teams, play just 10 home games. The stadium is used for some concerts and soccer games, but most days little or nothing happens there.

That's why economists who study stadium subsidies call them a bad deal for taxpayers.

The problem is the seen vs. the unseen, as economist Frederic Bastiat put it. All of us see the people at the games buying beer and hotdogs. But we don't see the larger number of citizens, who had their money taken from them to spend on the stadium, not buying things.

We don't see two fewer customers in a restaurant or the home remodeling that never got done. Those humbler projects lack the political clout and don't get the media attention that politicians and the stadium-builders get.

So when Atlanta politicians brag about their beautiful stadium, and clueless media claim that it created lots of jobs, let's also remember the jobs the subsidies destroyed—and the tax money that was given to rich people.

The problem isn't just Atlanta, and it isn't just sports. Most every time government presumes to tell us where and how our money should be spent rather than leaving it up to free individuals, it creates a loss.

Politicians announce whatever project they fund with great fanfare, implying you should be thankful to them—as if football, or the arts, or whatever is unveiled in the latest ribbon-cutting ceremony, couldn't exist without politicians moving money from your pocket to the pockets of their cronies. But really, government shrinks your ability to make choices every time it steers money away from what you might choose to spend it on.

Football is popular enough to thrive without politicians subsidizing it.

SOURCE 

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Dems' Unmoored State of the Union Responder: Those Covington Kids Behaved Badly, And Trump's Racism is to Blame

Just standing there smiling is REALLY bad behaviour!

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who was defeated in her 2018 gubernatorial campaign, is her party's pick to respond to next week's State of the Union address.  In this interview -- released long after it was crystal clear that the original framing was catastrophically wrong and unfair -- she dismisses the "narrative" about wider context as nearly irrelevant. 

What's important, she explains, is what people saw in the context-free clip.  And what they saw was "inappropriate" language and "disrespect."  And yes, she's absolutely talking about the Covington Catholic students, not the Black Hebrew Israelites screaming slurs and obscenities at teenagers.  And not the Native American serial provocateur who's been caught in multiple lies, who decided it was a good idea to beat a drum inches away from a kid's face, and whose sidekick was busy telling the white students to "go back to Europe."

It doesn't matter what led to the viral moment, Abrams says.  What matters is that those kids behaved badly (which, overwhelmingly, they did not) -- and that it's Donald Trump's fault because they were following his lead on "xenophobia, racism, bigotry, and hatred."  If you're looking for a emotionalist, tendentious, left-wing hot take on Covington, even after the facts are in, it doesn't get more scorching than this:

Following her November defeat, Abrams is reportedly seeking to lean even harder into identity politics, which is a safe political bet, given the creepy zeitgeist of her party.  It's also telling that Democratic leaders are choosing to showcase a woman who refused to concede defeat in her race, instead suggesting that the outcome was tainted or illegitimate because of "suppression."  On this claim, as it apparently her wont, she's not allowing certain facts to stand in the way of her preferred story:

They complain that Kemp ran for governor while he was still secretary of state. Yes, but Georgia’s constitution allows for that, and it’s been done before. In the 2000s, Democrat Cathy Cox ran for her party’s gubernatorial nomination while serving as secretary of state. Kemp ran for re-election twice while simultaneously occupying the office, with no one seriously alleging malfeasance. In any case, localities count the votes, not the secretary of state’s office. They allege that Kemp shut down polling places. It’s true, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that 214 precincts have closed in Georgia since 2012. It’s just not the handiwork of Brian Kemp. Counties make the decisions about whether or not to shutter polling places. It’s usually cash-strapped rural areas that consolidate precincts to eliminate underutilized polling places and locations that don’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

When a controversy exploded over a proposal to close seven of nine precincts in tiny, majority-black Randolph County, Kemp came out publicly and opposed the plan. (As it happens, Randolph voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but Donald Trump won five of the seven precincts slated for closure.) They charge that Kemp kept people in voting limbo over minor registration errors. Under Georgia’s so-called exact-match law, if information on a voter registration doesn’t match a driver’s license, state ID card or Social Security records, the voter has a little over two years to clear up the discrepancy. Until then, the voter is put into the “pending file” (53,000 people were on it). This isn’t a prohibition from voting. If the voter shows up at a polling place with an ID verifying his information (mandatory in Georgia, regardless), there isn’t an issue. Finally, they object to Kemp’s enforcement of Georgia’s “use it or lose it” rule. A similar law in Ohio was upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

She lost fair and square, refused to concede, and is being rewarded with a high-profile platform.  The clip above is a useful example of how knee-jerk partisans will learn the lessons they want to learn, no matter what the evidence may demonstrate.  Part of the problem with the Covington affair, which feels like a distant memory already, was the eagerness of many in the press to extrapolate "larger truths" from a cultural flashpoint that they instantly decided was illustrative of something they fervently believed.  As more information trickled in, the media storyline shifted from "aren't these young Trumpers awful?" to, "look at these conservatives unfairly 'pouncing' on our collective rush to judgment!"  Ross Douthat noted on Twitter yesterday that journalists were happy to storm headfirst into the Covington cultural blaze, yet their treatment of Democrats' radical abortion bills has been exceptionally cautious and tepid by comparison:

In fact, many of the mainstream stories emerging from the late-term abortion controversy are almost-comical manifestations of the "conservatives pounce" template -- to the point of reading like satirical corporate PR for the abortion lobby: 

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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