Have I "radicalised"?

Matt Goodwin describes well below the way a half-mad Leftist elite have taken control of the national discourse in Britain -- to a point where policies and procedures very harmful to the average Briton have been put in place.

A major omisssion from what Matt says below, however, is that he fails to take account of the fact that it is only one half of the elite that is Leftist. At election time, at least half of people in elite occupations vote conservative. As ever, it is minorities and the poor who are the support-base of the Left, not the elite as a whole.

So the deeper question about elite influence is how the LEFTIST elite have gained so much power in the media, in the educational system and to some extent in big business?

An answer is complacency. The destructive Leftist policies all have justifications as being kind and caring. And those who are in a position to see the full picture tend to think that the polices sound good so may well spring from real good intentions and should therefore not be opposed. So we badly need writers such as Matt to alert us to how much damage is being done by the ideas of the Leftist elite

“What happened to you, Matt? When did you change your views? When did you become right-wing? When did you become … radical?”

These are questions I’m asked a lot, usually by disgruntled members of the elite class —an assortment of left-wing academics, journalists, and think-tankers I worked with more than a decade ago.

And while this is deliberate, a concerted strategy to try and discredit anybody who challenges the elite consensus, these questions do need answering for two reasons.

First, because I feel an enormous sense of responsibility and obligation to be as truthful as possible to you, my readers and supporters.

And, second, because as one of my favourite writers, Andrew Sullivan, once wrote, this dynamic should really be the other way round.

It’s not me who has radicalised. It’s the elite class.

Today, we are simply living through the greatest radicalisation of the ruling class in Western democracies since at least the 1960s, if not for more than a century.

What do I mean by this?

Well, let’s start with my own views.

I’ve certainly made no secret of the fact that, over the last fifteen years or so, I’ve become more critical of things like mass, uncontrolled immigration.

Why? Because research shows it creates low-trust societies that are more divided, polarised, segregated, less supportive of welfare, and more violent.

I was recently in Sweden, for example, where I did not meet anybody on the left or right who felt their country’s experiment with mass immigration has been a success.

Let me say that again.

I was in Sweden —notoriously liberal, tolerant Sweden— and I could not find a single soul who thought that mass immigration had made their country a nice place to live.

I’ve also become more critical not of multi-ethnic societies per se but rather the state policy of multiculturalism, which encourages different ethnic and religious groups to live separate ‘parallel lives’, rather than integrate into a wider, shared community.

And I’m not alone in this.

More than a decade ago, leaders from across the spectrum —David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Tony Blair— could all say much the same, and in public.

What else do I think?

I reject anti-Muslim prejudice much like I reject anti-Semitism and racism.

But I do have strong and growing concerns about the capacity and willingness of Islam to integrate into West nations, to respect our rule of law, the rights of women and same-sex couples, and to root out violent Islamism among its ranks.

My critics on the left, who have spent much of the last decade inflating terms like “Islamophobia”, will say this is irrational.

But I would say it’s entirely rational after watching violent Islamists blow up 52 of their fellow citizens on London’s Tube and buses, murder British children at a pop concert, execute British soldier Lee Rigby, police officer Keith Palmer, and Member of Parliament Sir David Amess, attempt to blow up a women’s hospital in Liverpool, and stab and murder dozens of other innocents, like pensioner Terence Carney.

Not to mention my confusion about why so few prominent British Muslims, Imams, and others, for years, failed to call out the industrial-scale rape of young white girls at the hands of Pakistani Muslim gangs in dozens of English cities, and when a few brave souls did call this out much of the left said nothing or dismissed them as ‘racist’.

I also believe passionately in free speech but now worry it’s being undermined by a creeping groupthink, political correctness, and cancel culture —a point The Economist, among many others, has also made in recent years.

I think we’re too soft on criminals and would like to see tougher sentencing, especially for repeat offenders who make the lives of their fellow residents and communities miserable and intolerable because we no longer put them where they belong: prison.

I believe that the family, shaped by my own experience of having been raised by divorced parents, is the most important unit in society, that children who are raised by two parents routinely do better in life than those who are not.

I believe that the nation-state is an incredibly powerful source of belonging, pride, and status for most people, that Western nations got more things right than wrong in their history, and that public institutions, especially schools and universities, should ensure this remarkable cultural inheritance is passed down to our children.

And when it comes to economics, I think capitalism is the most successful economic system we’ve managed to create but also think that global corporations, big business and crony capitalists routinely look for ways to exploit workers.

Like many other members of my generation, Gen-X, I came of age during the 1990s and the 2000s, watching globalisation disproportionately damage the working-class in Western economies and then lived through the Global Financial Crash, with few of those responsible for ruining economies and people’s lives facing any consequences.

These views are not extreme. Nor are they particularly radical.

They basically put me where the average voter is. Across the West, all these views are shared by millions, and usually majorities, of ordinary people.

But now look at the elite class.

Look at the university graduates from the elite institutions, who work in financially secure if not well-paid professional jobs, who live in one of the big cities, the affluent commuter suburbs, and the university towns, whose parents also belong to this class, whose marriages and social networks are likewise filled with people from this class, who share the same backgrounds, values, and political loyalties, and who all lean strongly to the political and cultural left.

They’ve radicalised.

Over the last fifteen years, they’ve swung even more sharply to the left, leaving a large number of people scratching their heads, asking themselves the same question.

What the hell happened to the ruling class, to the people who dominate the most important and influential institutions in my country, who claim to speak on my behalf?

Writing on his deathbed in the early 1990s, the academic Christopher Lasch once said that the revolt that was about to commence in the West would not see the masses revolting against elites but elites revolting against the masses.

And he was right; this is exactly what is now happening around us.

Increasingly, our societies are being radically reshaped around the values, beliefs, tastes, and priorities of a radicalising minority elite, rather than the wider majority.

Just look at where the elite class is today compared to where it was, say, ten or fifteen years ago, and compared to where many ordinary people, like me, still are today.

While large majorities of people in the West, like me, think mass, uncontrolled immigration is unsustainable and damaging Western economies, culture, and ways of life, today’s elite class, as we saw in its reaction to things like Europe’s refugee crisis, Brexit, Trump, and the recent immigration protests in the UK, has now radicalised to such an extent that it views any criticism of this policy, any criticism at all, as tantamount to ‘racism’ and ‘hate’.

Whereas only a few years ago, the likes of Cameron, Merkel, Sarkozy, and Blair could talk openly about the failure of state multiculturalism, triggering a useful debate, today’s elite class, including even Conservatives, could not even handle the likes of Suella Braverman making the very same point without having a complete nervous breakdown and catastrophising about the possible return of fascism.

Similarly, whereas in the aftermath of the terrorist atrocities on 9/11 and 7/7 we could just about have a reasonable debate about how best to integrate newcomers, prevent Islamist terror, and encourage ‘community cohesion’, however flawed those ideas were, today, after things like the murder of children at an Ariana Grande pop concert and the murder of Sir David Amess, the elite class has a total meltdown and insists that we either hold hands and sing ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ or have a completely irrelevant debate about ‘online safety’ and how to ‘be nice’ on social media.

Compare and contrast, too, the reaction to urban disturbances in England’s northern towns, in 2001, with the reaction to the immigration protests this year. Whereas only twenty years ago, the elite class was capable of talking openly about the underlying cause, the fact minority (mainly Muslim) communities were living ‘parallel lives’, and that our model of multiculturalism was very clearly failing, today’s elite class has radicalised to such an extent it is incapable to talking about the cause at all.

So far, weeks on from the rioting and protests, for example, the elite class has still said nothing at all about the root cause of the immigration protests, preferring instead to view them simply and narrowly through the prism of criminality while deriding much of the rest of the country as ‘far-right thugs’ and desperately searching for new ways to curtail free speech and shut down any debate. Today’s elite class, in other words, has radicalised to such an extent it is now completely incapable of even leading a national debate that might give voice to views which challenge the elite consensus.

While many people in the West, meanwhile, like me, used to think that a level of net migration of 150,000 a year was too high —a view, by the way, shared by much of the elite class as recently as fifteen years ago— today’s elite class has radicalised to such an extent that whether on the right or left it now has no problem at all with pushing this number to an eye-watering 700,000 a year while continuously breaking manifesto promises to lower the overall number. The elite class, in short, has morphed from accepting it made mistakes on this issue to now just lying to the British people.

In the 2000s, New Labour politicians could talk openly and honestly about the urgent need to regain control of the borders and swiftly remove illegal migrants from the country; but today, in sharp contrast, the elite class is falling over itself to grant amnesty to nearly 100,000 illegal migrants while branding anybody who talks about ‘stopping the boats’ as ‘far-right’ and blaming them for the outbreak of rioting.

I mean, seriously, am I supposed to be the person who has radicalised here?

While many people in the West, like me, think free speech should be protected and promoted, today’s elite class, as we see through the spread of a chilling cancel culture, an oppressive political correctness, and online mobbings of anybody who dissents on social media, is routinely willing to sacrifice free speech on the altar of ‘social justice’ and protecting minorities from what it calls ‘emotional harm’. Routinely, major surveys now find that the left-leaning elites who dominate universities and other public institutions are the most willing of all to say they’d compromise on free speech and free expression if it means greater protection for minority groups, which helps to explain why they are so eager to shut down voices like mine.

While many people in the West, like me, still think Western liberal societies should be organised around individual rights, today’s elite class has radicalised to such an extent that it actively subordinates individual rights behind people’s fixed group identities. The only thing that really matters to today’s elite class, which is now falling over itself to impose ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ policies on pretty much every institution and government department, is not our individual achievements and character but merely what fixed identity group we belong to. Do we belong to one of the morally superior ‘oppressed’ racial, sexual, or gender minority groups? Or do we belong to the morally inferior ‘oppressor’ majority group, which should be treated with suspicion, if not contempt? Everything, increasingly, flows from these questions.

Even worse, while many people, like me, believe that a child’s early years should be about joy, play, and a politically neutral education, today’s elite class now appears absolutely determined to sexualise and racialise our children, exposing them to radical ideologies that have no serious basis in science and then complaining about the rise of ‘culture wars’ when mums and dads ask entirely legitimate questions about why their child is being taught there are 72 genders, divided into separate ‘racial affinity’ groups in class, or to hate their country, its history, and culture.

While many people in the West, like me, still believe in the critical importance of debating in good faith and ensuring there is a diverse range of opinions in the institutions and national debate, today’s elite class has radicalised to such an extent it can no longer tolerate any dissent at all, which again you see in the authoritarian reaction to people like me. Consistently, the elite class has launched an assault on contrarian thinkers, demanded that alternative television channels like GB News, and social media platforms like Twitter/X be shut down, failed to stop unorthodox gender critical and conservative scholars from being kicked out of universities, and is now increasingly using ‘hate laws’, ‘non-hate crime incidents’ and opposition to ‘legal but harmful’ views to essentially shut down alternative perspectives it does not like.

What happened to me, you ask? No. What the hell happened to you.

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While many people in the West, like me, think we should treat people from different racial, ethnic, and religious groups equally before the law, today’s elite class has radicalised to such an extent that, as we’ve seen in its reaction to the immigration protests, the marches after the hideous attacks on Israel on October 7th attack, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the ongoing failure to address ‘Muslim grooming gangs’, it’s now more than happy to treat minorities more favourably than the majority, or simply remain silent when some people from minority backgrounds flagrantly violate our children, laws, and ways of life.

While many people in the West, like me, still believe in the superiority of Western civilisation and Enlightenment values, and on balance think the West got more right than wrong in its history, today’s elite class, which is supposed to value nuance, evidence, and reason, has now become utterly obsessed with feeding its own sense of moral righteousness and narcissism by trying to convince us that everything from our history to science, from cricket to the countryside, are mere manifestations of ‘white supremacy’ and ‘structural racism’. Increasingly, they hate who we are to try and win more social status, esteem, and prestige for themselves, from other elites.

While many people in the West, like me, still believe in the critical importance of a politically independent and ideologically diverse media that prioritises truth, today’s elite class has radicalised to such an extent that once respected legacy media like the BBC, the New York Times, and Financial Times, have morphed into platforms for hyper-political activists who prioritise ideological dogma over truth and reason.

And in the universities, too, I spent much of the last decade watching things like the Grievance Studies Affair and the shocking harassment and sacking of scholars who challenge the consensus, like Kathleen Stock and Roland Fryer, all of which made it obvious that the academy is now openly corrupt, highly politicised, and much more interested in prioritising left-wing dogma over evidence and reason —shocking cases, by the way, about which my critics said … absolutely nothing at all.

While many people in the West, like me, think we should be led by the kind of evidence and logic that underpinned the UK’s Cass Review into what was happening to children in hospitals, which pointed out there was insufficient evidence to be pushing children onto things like ‘puberty blockers’, the elite class today has become so radical that it’s no longer interested in evidence that challenges its worldview at all. Routinely, as we still see in healthcare and education, the so-called ‘expert class’ still put emotional blackmail, superstition, and dogma before empirical evidence, even when it involves the medical treatment (read: mutilation) of our children.

While many people in the West, like me, certainly think voters can be misled but ultimately see them as rational beings capable of making up their own minds, today’s elite class now trace any political outcome it doesn’t like, whether at elections or referendums, to “misinformation”, all while trying to tell us with a straight face that boys can become girls and girls can become boys, or that things like Brexit and Trump were caused by Russia. Who is spreading “misinformation” here?

And while many people in the West, like me, think that people voting for things we don’t like is a bit annoying but perfectly acceptable in a democracy, today’s elite class, as we’ve seen in its reaction to things like Brexit, Trump, Boris Johnson, and fourteen years of pro-immigration liberal Tory government, has radicalised to such a degree that it now genuinely appears to believe it is living amid a fascist uprising, that the West is on the cusp of morphing into something that resembles the Third Reich.

In some other galaxy, where the elite class is just a fringe group of oddball people who have no influence over society, these views might not matter. But because the elite class dominate the most important and influential institutions, it’s used its immense social and cultural power to impose this narrow, illiberal and radical worldview on the rest of us —on ‘meaning making’ institutions like schools, universities, government departments, healthcare systems, legacy media, and creative and cultural industries.

This is deeply problematic because while the elite class likes to think of itself as representing the beating heart of the nation, the blunt reality, as major surveys show, is that most of its views are only held by a maximum of 10-15% of people in the West.

This is why, today, a much larger number of people are looking at the radicalisation of the elite class with a combination of bemusement, shock, and, increasingly, horror, wondering what the hell happened to the people who are ruling over them, claiming to speak on their behalf.

While my critics certainly don’t like it, the blunt reality is that many of these ordinary people are much closer to my views than the radicalising views of the elite class, and yet writers like me who challenge if not oppose the elite consensus are now framed as radical outliers. But as Andrew Sullivan said, this is the wrong way round. It is the elite class that is now the radical outlier.

The real story here, the story my critics routinely ignore or get wrong, is actually not about me at all. It is about the radicalisation of the elite class, a minority radical elite that is imposing its values on the rest of society while simultaneously expecting ordinary people not to notice and certainly not dare say anything about it.

Mass uncontrolled immigration. Broken borders. Segregation. The rise of violent Islamism. A stifling political correctness. Woke ideology. The dismissal of biology, empirical evidence, and scientific fact. The closing down of free speech and the public square. The repudiation of our history, culture, and ways of life. And the general hatred and class prejudice that’s now hurled at millions of ordinary people when they happen to vote for, or say, the wrong thing.

When did I radicalise, you say?

You must be joking. When the hell did YOU radicalise.

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/have-i-radicalised

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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NOTE

I underwent two lots of minor surgery today so I am not feeling up to blogging. Hope to be back on deck tomorrow

Kamala Harris’ $25,000 first-time homebuyer subsidy and 3 million new homes with building tax credits will fuel housing inflation—just like the housing bubble

By Robert Romano

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has unveiled a new scheme to facilitate home building and home purchases with hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, including a $25,000 first-time homebuyer subsidy, said by the campaign to cost $100 billion to facilitate 1 million first-time home purchases a year over the next four years.

Additionally, Harris wants to expand homebuilder tax credits to facilitate construction of an additional 3 million new units over that time.

Similar incentives are already used by Congress via the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Treasury to facilitate home and apartment construction and renovation, including $3.3 billion of community development block grants, but what Harris is proposing is much larger.

In the 2000s, underwriting standards were reduced to facilitate an expansion of mortgage loans to homebuyers. a massive injection of credit as mortgage debt nearly doubled from $4.9 trillion in 2003 to $9.29 trillion by the end of 2008, according to the New York Federal Reserve data, as home prices jumped a gargantuan 40 percent according to the Freddie Mac Home Price Index. The number of mortgage holders had skyrocketed from 80 million in 2003 to 98 million in 2008. From 2003 to 2007, more than 9 million new privately owned units were put onto the market.

Afterward the financial crisis — which was created by overproducing homes leading to prices to eventually collapse (by more than 26 percent by 2011) and the last homebuyers in the bubble to be left with negative equity that many chose to be foreclosed upon rather than pay because they couldn’t afford to sell — mortgages settled back down to about 80 million mortgages with about $8 trillion of mortgage debt by 2013. Homebuilding also slowed down, with only 4.3 million new homes constructed.

There it remained relatively stable at about 80 million mortgages, but home prices once again appreciated from their bottom in 2011 by about 38.8 percent through the end of 2016, with still 80 million mortgages with mortgage debt reaching $8.5 trillion. And the pace of homebuilding picked up again, totaling 3.3 million from 2014 through 2016.

Further, from 2017 to Jan. 2021, home prices again appreciated another 32 percent, the number of mortgages reached 81 million and mortgage debt increased to $10 trillion. From 2017 to 2021, another 5.1 million new homes were constructed.

Finally, since Jan. 2021, home prices continued accelerating, up another 32.3 percent as the number of mortgages has jumped to 85 million and mortgage debt is now up to a whopping $12.5 trillion as another 6.4 million new homes were constructed, although, new private owned homes built has been dropping each of the past 3 years from its 2021 peak of 1.6 million to 1.4 million in 2023 and averaging 1.35 million in 2024 so far. Usually, home construction slows down leading into recessions, which Harris is desperately hoping to avoid until at least after the election in November.

But now, prices have gotten so high, thanks in no small part to the $7 trillion printed, borrowed and spent into existence during and after Covid, that the rate of existing home sales are plummeting, just like they did in the 2000s. In Jan. 2021, existing home sales were at a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 6.69 million units sold. Whereas, by June 2024, it is all the way down to an annualized 3.89 million units sold, as 41.8 percent decrease.

So, home building is up, but now home buying is down but there’s still a lot more mortgages. That means there is no supply shortage.

The reason is not because of a lack of subsidies, it is because personal incomes have in no way kept up with the rising costs of housing, only up 18.2 percent compared to home prices’ 32.3 percent. Additionally, 30-year mortgage interest rates have more than doubled since 2020, and with it, monthly mortgage payments on the same unit of housing if purchase now has similarly more than doubled.

It is into that mix that Harris wants to pour in hundreds of billions of dollars of more subsidies for both home building and first-time homebuyer downpayments, essentially a mortgage origination subsidy bringing the number of mortgages to about 90 million and beyond, the highest levels seen since the housing bubble popped, at a time when incomes are not keeping up with inflation.

Here’s a hint. A house that was worth $250,000 in Jan. 2021 is now worth $337,000. Harris wants to give the homebuyer for that existing home a $25,000 subsidy, knocking the principal owed down to $312,000. And they’d be paying about 6.8 percent in interest payments. In 2021, with interest just 2.65 percent, that same unit only cost $1,007 a month when it was worth $250,000.

So, instead of the current $2,192 a month owed for the mortgage payment on that same unit, despite hundreds of billions of subsidies in the Harris scheme, even if the prices of homes magically remained frozen which they won’t, the monthly payment drops to $2,096 a month. Wow.

All that to keep the housing expansion going, as home prices keep appreciating, and as interest rates remain high, postponing a recession that will almost certainly come anyway, only with the potential of home prices collapsing like they did in the 2000s, wiping Harris’ Democratic Party out in the 2026 midterms should she win and likely in 2028 when she hopes to get reelected.

Or we could just eat the recession now, unemployment will go up, yes (it already has by 1.47 million since Dec. 2022), but interest rates will also come down all on their own, thereby reducing monthly mortgage payments, facilitating refinancing and making first-time home purchases more attractive, allowing a more virtuous cycle to ensue. Choose your poison.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/08/kamala-harris-25000-first-time-homebuyer-subsidy-and-3-million-new-homes-with-building-tax-credits-will-fuel-housing-inflation-just-like-the-housing-bubble/#google_vignette

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Short reports

Jew-haters converge on DNC in Chicago: “Killer Kamala,” read one sign from an anti-Israel group stationed outside the United Center in Chicago, the site of this week’s Democratic National Convention. “Globalize the intifada,” read another. Clearly, the Democrat Party’s base has its priorities in order. And if, as Marx once said, history repeats itself “first as tragedy, then as farce,” then the authorities who are trying to prevent a repeat of the 1968 DNC have their work cut out for them. “Hundreds of people rallying against the Israel-Hamas war and restrictions on reproductive rights kicked off the first protest of the Democratic National Convention on Sunday,” reports the Chicago Sun-Times, “but they were met by an even larger showing from Chicago police.” Democrat politics make strange bedfellows, though, as embodied in this disjointed quote from one of the belligerents: “Rhetoric does not deliver abortion care from someone in a state that has a six-week abortion ban. What we need is action. We need the end to funding to Israel and the end of delivery of weapons.” Abortion on demand or the eradication of the Jews. Can’t these folks make up their minds?

DNC vasectomies and abortions: Get free vasectomies and abortions just outside the Democratic National Convention today. As The New York Times reports, “This convention is likely to be a head-on display of a new, unbridled abortion politics.” The message is clear: Democrats don’t like children. They are literally celebrating pregnancy prevention and pregnancy elimination. Convention attendants will be greeted by a number of demonstrations, including a giant “inflatable IUD” promoting birth control. Democrats see abortion rights as their leading platform issue, which explains why they are going to extreme and grotesque levels to market it. Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will focus his convention speech on the campaign’s support for abortion and IVF. As Not the Bee’s Joel Abbott sarcastically observes, “Looks like the Democrats are working hard to prove the nickname ‘Party of Death’ is false!”

Lawmakers launch investigation into Walz over “extensive” ties to Communist China (Daily Wire)

House GOP impeachment inquiry report: House Republicans have released their impeachment inquiry report on Joe Biden, and there’s no question it was timed to coincide with the Democrats kicking off their convention in Chicago. The Republicans launched their investigation last September, and according to the 292-page report, they “have accumulated evidence demonstrating that President Biden has engaged in impeachable conduct.” The report notes that Biden engaged in a “conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family.” Republicans also allege that Biden family members raked in more than $27 million, largely from foreigners, by “leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden.” The report details, “As Vice President, President Biden actively participated in his conspiracy by, among other things, attending dinners with his family’s foreign business partners and speaking to them by phone, often when being placed on speakerphone by Hunter Biden.” It adds, “Based on the totality of evidence, it is inconceivable that President Biden did not understand that he was taking part in an effort to enrich his family by abusing his office of public trust.”

Mo Dowd says the quiet part out loud: It was a bloodless coup carried out by the most powerful people in the Not-So-Democratic Party, but the Democrats and their Leftmedia fellow travelers have insisted on trying to portray it as a selfless and heroic choice made by a Rushmore-worthy Joe Biden. Finally, though, someone on the Left has let slip the truth. “The Dems Are Delighted,” reads the headline to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s latest column. “But a Coup Is Still a Coup.” Indeed it is, and Dowd makes no apologies for it. She writes, “Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch.” This week’s DNC will ignore all this intrigue in an effort to present a harmonious house, a unified front, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Biden will take the stage tonight to paper over all the bitterness, but it won’t work. He was kicked to the curb by his own party, and everyone knows it.

Undemocratic Michigan Democrats remove Cornel West from ballot: If the Democrats really think Donald Trump is an “existential threat” to “our democracy,” they sure have a funny way of showing it. Not content to have kicked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off the ballot in New York, the party of Kamala Harris has now succeeded in throwing civil rights activist and third-party candidate Cornel West off the ballot in the crucial swing state of Michigan. The reason for this ouster? According to Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s elections director, “The affidavits of identity submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office in June for West and his vice presidential running mate, Melina Abdullah, were not properly notarized.” Let’s be clear: Cornel West wouldn’t have taken a single vote from Trump. But he most definitely would’ve pulled a few disgruntled progressives away from Harris. And in a purplish state like Michigan, those few votes could make all the difference.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/109413-monday-below-the-fold-2024-08-19

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Busy with medical matters

So no posts today. Should be back tomorrow

Economist Pours Cold Water on Kamala Harris’ Explanation for Inflation

It's sheer ignorance from her. Governments control the money supply so the government has to be to blame for any across-the-board inflation

Vice President Kamala Harris blamed price-gouging for high food prices, though experts say Biden administration policies are to blame for the high cost of living and for inflation.

“I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price-gouging on food,” Harris said Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina. “My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules and get ahead.”

“We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy,” the Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting continued. “More competition means lower prices for you and your families.”

But price-gouging is not the reason prices have gone up, according to EJ Antoni, a public finance economist at The Heritage Foundation.

“The prices that businesses are paying have gone up by the same percentage that our prices have,” Antoni told The Daily Signal. “So, all of the cost increases that businesses have faced, they’re simply just passing them on to consumers, and that’s why we’re all paying more.”

Harris highlighted grocery store price increases since 2020, shortly before the Biden administration took office.

“A lot a loaf bread cost 50% more today than it did before the [COVID-19] pandemic,” she said. “Ground beef is up almost 50%.”

The Biden administration is at fault for the increased prices, not food companies, Antoni said.

“The government spending, borrowing, and printing trillions of dollars that it didn’t have to finance it all, that’s what devalued the dollar,” Antoni said. “That’s what caused these tremendous shocks to interest rates that have so distorted the economy and caused so much havoc in supply chains and created all of these additional costs for businesses.”

The vice president promised, if elected, to lower prices by increasing competition in the food industry.

“We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy,” Harris said. “More competition means lower prices for you and your families.”

Antoni wonders why Harris thinks she has to wait until her first day as president to address high prices, when she has been in office for three-and-a-half years.

Harris boasted economic improvement since the Biden administration took office in January 2021.

“We were facing one of the worst economic crises in modern history, and today, by virtually every measure, our economy is the strongest in the world,” the Democrat said.

The Biden administration did not solve an economic problem, Antoni said. They created a problem, and allowed it to run its course.

“Inflation is down—after they ran it up to 40-year highs,” Antoni said. “It still is more than twice what it was when they took office. The problem is not quite as bad as it was before, but it’s still bad.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/16/kamala-harris-blames-price-gouging-high-cost-living-biden/

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Trump Can’t Allow Kamala to Be the Candidate of Change

Joe Biden made Donald Trump feel fresh and vital.

No matter how commonplace Trump’s tropes and mode of campaigning had become, they seemed compelling compared to the bleached-out president of the United of States who had become a shell of himself.

With the Trump-Biden contrast no longer relevant, the former president is operating in a new, much less forgiving environment. Kamala Harris wants to run a youth-vs.-age and future-vs.-past campaign against Trump, and she has some chance of making it work.

Against Biden, Trump represented the past, but also change. Against Harris, he’s potentially just the past.

It’s not “old” as a matter of age that’s the issue, although all those concerns are now about Trump. Ronald Reagan was old when he took office, but was offering a complete change of direction in policy and exuded a youthful optimism and self-confident patriotism. The problem for Trump is “old” as a matter of feeling familiar, tired and played out.

The Mar-a-Lago press conference last week was a typical, nay, stereotypical, Trump event — Trump looked commanding against a vivid backdrop of American flags, but how many times have we seen that image?

He was a bit of everything — on message and off message, confident and defensive, charming and insulting, and so it went. Again, how many times have we watched it?

Even Trump’s outrages aren’t that surprising. That he went with the “Kamala suddenly became black” line of attack wasn’t exactly predictable, but nor is this kind of thing unexpected.

And, of course, we’ve repeatedly experienced cycles of hope for a new, more disciplined candidate dashed by Trump’s insistence on doing it his way.

Again, none of this mattered so much against a doddering 81-year-old man who a vast majority of the public thought incapable of serving another four years. Biden was the past in everything he said and did.

For her part, Kamala Harris may not really be hip, but she is hipper than Trump. She’s certainly energetic enough for a full slate of campaigning, and she’s presenting herself as a third force: neither Biden nor Trump, a politician with an entirely new “vibe.”

Harris has another advantage. It wasn’t truly possible to cover up Biden’s weakness. Even if Biden wasn’t doing many interviews, he had to be out in public — at international meetings, at White House events and the like. No matter how much the Democrats insisted everything was OK, he could be seen stumbling, wandering and losing his train of thought.

With Harris, Republicans might (for good reason) say that she will lose herself in word-salad incoherence upon her first contact with a challenging interview, but there is no way to establish it without such an interview.

On the teleprompter, she seems just fine. She’s pointed, amusing, determined and lifted by enthusiastic crowds.

Most importantly, Trump was winning a change election against Joe Biden. Now, he’s essentially tied with Harris on who will bring positive change. The new CNBC poll had Harris at 39% on this question and Trump at 38%.

There is plenty for Trump to work with to pull ahead on this metric. People remember his record in office more or less fondly, and Harris has been an integral part of a failed administration and now embraces almost all of Biden’s policies.

This isn’t a case that makes itself, though. It’s not enough simply not to be Kamala Harris, the way it was not to be Joe Biden.

Trump is going to have to make focused attacks that break through and aren’t lost in the haze of pointless controversies. This presents a tactical question: If the choice is between an overly controlled candidate who is relentlessly on message and an ill-disciplined candidate who is off message, is it clear that the former (Harris) is worse than the latter (Trump)?

Trump has a new challenge — his opponent is no longer an aged incumbent president who has worn out his welcome.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/109347-trump-cant-allow-kamala-to-be-the-candidate-of-change-2024-08-14

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How Gold Can Save the Dollar

Can we save the dollar before central banking kills it?

Yes. It’s surprisingly easy. And, as you might expect, it involves gold.

As federal deficits hit 8% of gross domestic product—unprecedented in peacetime—and our national debt hits $35 trillion—unprecedented in the history of man—even the central bankers realize that this isn’t sustainable.

That we are coming to the day our paper money utopia crumbles.

Historically, from Song Dynasty China to Weimar Germany, when paper dies we return to hard money. Because hard money is the only way to finally kill the money printer.

Happily, we can actually do this without the crash.

The other day Fox Business financial journalist Charles Payne sent me a quote by 1970s Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker, who wrote, paraphrasing: It is a sobering fact that central banking has led to more inflation, not less. We did better with the 19th-century gold standard, with passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with “free banking.” The power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money and, ultimately, the power to create is the power to destroy.

This is a fairly striking admission of failure from—by all accounts—the best Fed chair we’ve had since 1913.

A central bank is indeed an extraordinary thing: It’s a privately owned, federally licensed counterfeiter the regime can use to seize literally everything in the world by printing money.

It’s why we have inflation and recessions. It’s why we have Wall Street bailouts and a colossal national debt. It’s why the government has grown to dominate our economy and our lives.

In contrast, under the gold standard we had zero cumulative inflation over 124 years. We had a federal government that was seven times smaller as a percent of GDP. In 1913, we had a national debt of 8% of GDP. Today, it’s 140%—in fact, it’s rising by almost 8% per year.

So how do we get back? Simple: Back the dollar with gold at today’s price—$2,500 per ounce—then mandate that if gold flows out, the Treasury has to buy it back in before the Treasury does anything else—before it pays Ukraine, before it pays interest on the national debt.

Presto.

Why? Because if they keep printing money it creates inflation and gold goes to, say, $2,600 an ounce.

Now, people can make free money by trading $2,500 for an ounce of gold from the Federal Reserve and reselling it for $2,600 on the open market.

Gold flows out, now Treasury has to buy it in at 26.

In other words, they lose money on the money printer.

That means the Fed and Treasury are forced to keep money creation low enough for zero percent inflation—for stable gold.

This means interest rates above inflation—no more paying hedge funds to borrow. It means no more quantitative easing to buy up rich people’s assets, leaving inflation for the poor. It means no more Wall Street bailouts. And, above all, it chokes off the spending cancer of the welfare-warfare industrial complex.

So what’s next? Neither the gold standard, bitcoin standard, or full reserve banking are remotely on the bingo card for the foreseeable future. And, historically, it takes a crisis to put them there.

But it’s important to remember how easy it is to solve our financial catastrophe if and when we get a politician brave enough to try.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/16/how-gold-saves-the-dollar/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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