Monday, April 30, 2012


Where has that inflation gone?

Something of a puzzle to many commentators is that Obama's vast money printing binge has not produced rapid inflation. A greenback buys less than it used to -- particularly overseas -- but not spectacularly less.

Jerry Bowyer wisely remarks that it often takes a long time for an influence to work its way through the system and he is undoubtedly right so that is clearly part of the story.

But I think the major factor is a straightforward example of what economists call the "velocity of circulation" effect.  Price inflation is a product of the amount of money on issue multiplied by its velocity of circulation and the velocity of circulation has fallen  precipitously just as the money supply has increased  -- the one influence largely cancelling out the other.

My apologies for introuducing a bit of economic jargon into a general political blog but I have been puzzled that none of the discussions of the matter that I have seen have mentioned the role of the velocity of circulation.  Perhaps it is just that other writers have better manners than I do.

To make amends, let me put it less technically:  Most of the money Obama has issued is just sitting still in the reserves of banks, other financial institutions and  major companies.  It is not being spent or lent out.  Its velocity of circulation is nil.  It might as well not exist as far as the economy as a whole is concerned.

And because of general nervousness that is not going to change soon.  But if and when it does change the party will  really be on -- a party for everyone except people who have savings.

Let me suggest a scenario.  Suppose Romney is elected and fires all the Obama cronies running the EPA and other business-obstructing agencies.  That suddenly gives everybody more confidence in doing business.  So the banks start lending again and businesses with reserves start using their reserves to expand.  The money starts flowing again.  The velocity of circulation rises.  There is now a greater demand for resources:  both labour and capital goods.  People might even start building new houses again.   For a   little while that greater  demand for resources will be met from presently idled resources:  Unemployed people  will get employed and shuttered mines and manufacturing facilities will reopen.  So everyone will be having a party.

But parties like that tend to feed on themselves and breed yet more optimism -- and so the demand for resources will soon go beyond what can be met by reactivating idled resources.  With the money now flowing again, prices will be bid up as everybody wants a piece of the action.  And an expanded volume of money chasing a relatively fixed resource base can only lead in one direction  -- to price rises.  Inflation will be underway.  How far it will go is anybody's guess but with everybody now using the extra money  that Obama has created, it could be a whopper of an inflationary process.  What a greenback will buy  could easily drop to (say) half of what it will buy today.

So Romney will inherit Obama's inflation and will probably be blamed for it.  And savers will rightly feel utterly betrayed by the political system that has cut the value of their savings in half.  "Spend it while you can" will  become the new wisdom.  My personal  hint:  Put  most of your savings  into blue-chip company shares NOW.  I did so long ago.

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The news from Havana:  The logic of capitalism is evil

Or so says a defrocked Nicaraguan priest who, funnily enough, is also the  UN General Assembly president

UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said on Wednesday that the current global economic and financial crisis proves that the logic of capitalism is evil and suicidal.

During a ministerial meeting of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Countries (NAM) hosted in Havana, d'Escoto said that the current world order promotes selfishness, usury as well as social and environmental irresponsibility.

"Those are the values of the capitalist culture, so bad is the situation that we take seriously our universal brotherhood and its consequences or we all die," d'Escoto said.

D'Escoto said the UN world conference in June is supposed to decide the design of a new global economic and financial architecture.

SOURCE

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Anti-Bullying Crusader Bullies  Christian Teens

If you are aware  that "bullying" is the latest Leftist word for expressing views they disagree with, this begins to make sense

Dan Savage, the founder of an anti-bullying campaign that has reportedly reached more than 40 million viewers, and has contributors that include President Obama to Hollywood stars, dove into unexpected territory while giving a speech at a high school journalism conference Friday.

There, instead the planned discussion on the dangers of bullying, Savage seemingly turned into a “bully” himself, albeit a powerful, adult one.

Reports say Savage’s speech quickly turned from the subject of anti-bullying into an event in “Christian-bashing,” causing as many as 100 students to simply walk out of the event.

Savage noted that Americans disregard much of the “bulls*it” in the Bible, from laws about shellfish to those about slavery, and we just need to clear one more “hurdle” in disregarding writings about homosexuality.

“The Bible says that if your daughter’s not a virgin on her wedding night– if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night– she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death,” he says, yet “Callista Gingrich lives.”

One student in the audience, Rick Tuttle, remarked, “I thought this would be about anti-bullying…It turned into a pointed attack on Christian beliefs.”

He also reportedly told the students about how good his partner looks in a speedo, and called the students who walked out “pansy a*ses.”

The National Scholastic Press Association and Journalism Education Association, who co-sponsored the event, responded in a statement that they did not have a prior transcript of the speech, and wished he had stayed more “on target.”  However, they wrote optimistically: “We have already heard from some advisers who have turned this into a teachable moment for their students.”

One teacher was more condemnatory, saying the language and material was inappropriate for high school students, and if anything, Dan Savage was bully in this regard.

“If he was doing this with a bunch of college journalism kids, that would be a different story — that’s more rough and tumble. How many of the kids who didn’t walk out felt backed into a corner?  To me, that’s bullying behavior. It has all the symptoms, as far as I’m concerned.”

Candi Cushman, a CitizenLink blogger, concluded:  “Using profanity to deride the bible – and then mocking the Christian students after they left the room — is obviously a form of bullying and name-calling,” she wrote.  “This illustrates perfectly what we’ve been saying all along: Too many times in the name of ‘tolerance,’ Christian students find their faith being openly mocked and belittled in educational environments.”

More HERE

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Barack Obama attempts to intimidate contributors to Mitt Romney's campaign

Psychopathic amorality again:  "Free and fair" means nothing to Obama.  

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for "betting against America," and accuses you of having a "less-than-reputable" record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Are you worried?

Richard Nixon's "enemies list" appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust. Unlike senators or congressmen, presidents alone represent all Americans. Their powers—to jail, to fine, to bankrupt—are also so vast as to require restraint. Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.

Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled "Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney's donors." In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having "less-than-reputable records," the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that "quite a few" have also been "on the wrong side of the law" and profiting at "the expense of so many Americans."

These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having "outsourced" jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a "lobbyist") and Thomas O'Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a "bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

These are wealthy individuals, to be sure, but private citizens nonetheless. Not one holds elected office. Not one is a criminal. Not one has the barest fraction of the position or the power of the U.S. leader who is publicly assaulting them.

"We don't tolerate presidents or people of high power to do these things," says Theodore Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general. "When you have the power of the presidency—the power of the IRS, the INS, the Justice Department, the DEA, the SEC—what you have effectively done is put these guys' names up on 'Wanted' posters in government offices." Mr. Olson knows these tactics, having demanded that the 44th president cease publicly targeting Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, which he represents. He's been ignored.

The real crime of the men, as the website tacitly acknowledges, is that they have given money to Mr. Romney. This fundraiser of a president has shown an acute appreciation for the power of money to win elections, and a cutthroat approach to intimidating those who might give to his opponents.

He's targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama's real aim.

The White House has couched its attacks in the language of "disclosure" and the argument that corporations should not have the same speech rights as individuals. But now, says Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, "he's doing the same at the individual level, for anyone who opposes his policies." Any giver, at any level, risks reprisal from the president of the United States.

It's getting worse because the money game is not going as Team Obama wants. Super PACs are helping the GOP to level the playing field against Democratic super-spenders. Prominent financial players are backing Mr. Romney. The White House's new strategy is thus to delegitimize Mr. Romney (by attacking his donors) as it seeks to frighten others out of giving.

The Obama campaign has justified any action on the grounds that it has a right to "hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable," but this is a dodge. Politics is rough, but a president has obligations that transcend those of a candidate. He swore an oath to protect and defend a Constitution that gives every American the right to partake in democracy, free of fear of government intimidation or disfavored treatment. If Mr. Obama isn't going to act like a president, he bolsters the argument that he doesn't deserve to be one.

SOURCE

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Another return to Zion

During the 1990s, Israel's elite took a vacation from reality and history and they brought much of the public with them.

Then-foreign minister Shimon Peres said that history was overrated. The so-called "New Historians," who rummaged through David Ben-Gurion's closet looking for skeletons, were the toast of the academic world. Radicals like Yossi Beilin, Shulamit Aloni and Avrum Burg were dictating government policy.

The media, the entertainment establishment, and the Education Ministry embraced and massively promoted plays, movies, television shows, songs, dances, art and books that "slayed sacred cows." Everywhere you turned, post-Zionism was in. Post-Judaism was in. And Zionism and Judaism were both decidedly out.

To understand the distance Israel has traveled since then, consider Tuesday night's Memorial Day ceremony at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. None of the performers attacked their fellow Israelis. And the best-received artist and song was Mosh Ben-Ari and his rendition of Psalm 121 - A Song of Ascent.

The psalm, which praises God as the eternal guardian of Israel, became the unofficial anthem of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009. And Ben-Ari's rendition of the song propelled the dreadlock bedecked, hoop earring wearing world music artist into super-stardom in Israel.

IT WAS impossible to imagine Pslam 121 or any other traditional Jewish poem or prayer being performed as anything other than an object of scorn in 1998. Back then, it would have been impossible to contemplate a crowd of tens of thousands of non-religious Israelis reverently singing along as Ben-Ari crooned, "My help is from God/ Maker of Heaven and Earth/ He will not allow your foot to falter/ Your Guardian will not slumber/ Behold he neither slumbers nor sleeps - the Guardian of Israel."

Israel's return to its Zionist roots is the greatest cultural event of the past decade. It is also an event that occurred under the radar screen of the rest of the world. No one outside the country seems to have noticed at all.

The outside world's failure to take note of Israel's cultural shift owes to its failure to recognize the significance of the failure of the peace process with the Palestinians on the one hand and the failure of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza on the other hand. The demise of the peace process at Camp David in July 2000 and the terror war that followed launched the Israeli public on its path away from its radical post-Zionist rebellion and back to its Zionist roots. The failure of the withdrawal from Gaza, and the international community's response to Operation Cast Lead, marked the conclusion of the journey.

More HERE

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH,  FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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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)

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Sunday, April 29, 2012



BOOK REVIEW of Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins, by Robert Spencer

Spencer performs a super detective service for the West in this book.   He examines virtually every aspect of the composition and history of Islam and its purported founder, Mohammad.  Let us begin with one of his summations:

A careful investigation makes at least one thing clear: The details of Muhammad's life that have been handed down as canonical - that he unified Arabs by the force of arms, concluded alliances, married wives, legislated for his community, and did so much else - are a creation of political ferments dating from long after the time he is supposed to have lived. Similarly, the records strongly indicate that the Qur'an did not exist until long after it was supposed to have been delivered to the prophet of Islam. [pp. 214-215]

The Qur'an, the Islamic canon alleges, was the eternal "perfect book," coexisting with Allah, who sent it to earth via the Angel Gabriel to whisper into Mohammad's ear on Mount Hira, and which he, an illiterate, was able to communicate to the world in its entirety, unalterable, unchanged, and untouchable.

Well, because he couldn't write, he had secretaries to whom he dictated the Qur'an. No, wait. Those secretaries began recording the good book after he had died. No, wait

As Spencer demonstrates, it did not come into existence until long after Mohammad's death (presuming he even existed) in 632. (Gabriel was the "Prophet Whisperer.") The Hadith, the companion to the Qur'an purportedly a collection of Mohammad's sayings and doings, did not begin to accumulate until a century after his death. As Spencer shows, the Hadith became a kind of cottage industry for caliphs, Islamic clerics, scholars and anonymous scribes to invent its contents over the centuries for reasons that can partly be explained, and that partly remain conjectural.

Islam, Mohammad, and even Muslims did not begin to enter anyone's consciousness until early in the 8th century following Arab conquests of the Mideast and North Africa. Spencer emphasizes, and demonstrates, that it was Arabs, and not necessarily Muslims, or Moslems, or Mohammadans who waged jihad on that part of the Dark Age world. And those Arabs, while they were monotheists, were not necessarily Muslims.

Spencer demonstrates that possibly it was the biblical and Judaic Abraham who was the "prophet," not the person Mohammad. Surviving commentaries by chroniclers were ambiguous on the point. Moreover, that monotheist creed regarded Christians and Jews in a far more tolerant light of fellowship than would the Islam that finally emerged centuries later. It would explain many of the contradictory verses in the Qur'an, especially the earlier, abrogated ones.

Up until the time the Qur'an was being diligently assembled by a succession of clerics, politicians, and charlatans, no mention is made in the earliest documents that can be linked to Islam of the Qur'an or to Mohammad.  What chroniclers referred to when writing about those events and those Arabs - which include fictive battles that Mohammad fought - were Hagarians, Saracens, or Taiyaye.

The invaders referred to themselves as Muhajirun, "emigrants" - a term that would eventually take on a particular significance within Islam but that at this time preceded any clear mention of Islam as such. Greek-speaking writers would sometimes term the invaders "Magaritai," which appears to be derived from Muhajirun. But conspicuously absent from the stock of terms that invaded and conquered people used to name the conquering Arabians was "Muslims." [p. 33]

"Allah," Spencer points out, was not the exclusive name for God of Muslims in this period, but a common term shared by Christians and Jews. "Muhammad" was not necessarily a proper name, but often an honorific title meaning "praised one," which could be appended to any random "prophet" or religious preacher.

As Spencer shows with meticulous attention to detail, Islam and the iconic Mohammad were too likely a consequence between feuding tribes, „ la the Hatfields and McCoys, in the prophet's alleged home base, Mecca, in this instance, the Quraysh and the Umayyads.

Spencer also points to the dubious role of Mecca itself in the history of Islam, and of the Kaaba, which was originally a shrine for a host of pagan and polytheistic deities, and not the sole spiritual property of Islam as is the common belief. It shared the fate of many churches in lands conquered by the invaders, which were turned into mosques. It was appropriated by Islam. That is, stolen by conquering Arabs of questionable religious color.

The original Qur'an, writes Spencer, had to have been in Syriac, not Arabic, as the Islamic canon asserts it was. Allah commanded it to appear in Arabic, and not in any other language. Spencer bursts that balloon, too. And every fifth verse in the Qur'an is literally incomprehensible, having no intelligible reference to what precedes or follows it.

Spencer devotes important attention to the likelihood that the Qur'an is founded on a substratum of early Christian and Judaic texts. The Qur'an possibly was based on an early Christian lectionary.

My first introduction to Islam was the epic Lawrence of Arabia in 1963. I was in high school when I first saw it on a big theater screen. From a directorial and cinematography standpoint, it is still one of my favorite films. Spencer's book clears up some of the dialogue and scenes in that film. For example, when Lawrence and his Bedouin army are nearing Damascus, an Arab rider offers Lawrence a stem of grapes. Lawrence tastes one and grimaces. "They are not ripe!" laughs the rider.

Spencer discusses the actual meaning of those grapes and their relationship to the seventy-two renewable virgins promised martyrs in Paradise. Citing the researches of Christoph Luxenberg, a contemporary investigator of Islam's origins, he notes:

"A closer philological analysis indicates that the Qur'an does not offer such a promise. After examining the rasm, the other contexts in which hur appears in the Qur'an, and the contemporary usage of the word houris, Luxenberg concludes that the famous passages refer not to virgins but instead to white raisins, or grapes."

Yes, fruit. Strange as that may seem, given all the attention paid to the Qur'an's supposed promises of virgins in Paradise, white raisins were a prized delicacy in that region. As such, Luxenberg suggests, they actually make a more fitting symbol of the reward of Paradise than the promise of sexual favors from virgins.

Luxenberg shows that the Arabic word for "Paradise" can be traced to the Syriac word for "garden," which stands to reason, given the common identification of the garden of Adam and Eve with Paradise. Luxenberg further demonstrates that metaphorical references to bunches of grapes are consonant with Christian homiletics expatiating on the refreshments that greeted the blessed in Heaven.

The fact that the Syriac word Ephraem used for "grapevine" was feminine, Luxenberg explains, "led the Arabic exegetes of the Koran to this fateful assumption" that the Qur'an text referred to sexual playthings in Paradise. [p. 169]

Luxenberg is one of the many pioneer investigators and examiners of Islam's origins to whom Spencer gives ample credit throughout his book. Luxenberg focused on the philological quirks and inconsistencies found in Islam's holy book in his 2000 The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Qur'an.

A chief inconsistency of Islam for me is that the Qur'an is claimed to have been the "perfect book" that coexisted with Allah. Yet, no sooner had Mohammad died than his successors began to fiddle with its contents to conform to the expediency of the moment - surely a punishable offence in Islam. When this is pointed out to the faithful defenders of the Qur'an's inalterability, the pat answer is that Allah planned it that way, that is, implying that Allah had the Angel Gabriel whisper an incomplete and imperfect Qur'an into a delirious Mohammad's ear.

So, it's an either/or conundrum for which Islamists have no credible solution and no rationally comprehensible answer.

The Qur'an especially winds up being a kind of Rube Goldberg-like literary contraption that contains explanations for every unnecessary and obvious contradiction, and its defenders hardly blush.

Islam has swindled its faithful, its communicants, its followers, its believers. All the possible evidence points to the fact that Islam's substance and veracity comprise a theological and historical fraud. The walls of Allah's gold mine of salvation and his blessings were salted with glittering silicate from a shotgun, meant to dazzle and stun the gullible and irrational into buying into what is, at root and in purpose, a totalitarian ideology. Unfortunately, about a billion people are comfortable with being the playthings of that ideology. Which is why Islam is, root and branch, incompatible with America.

Spencer leaves few rocks unturned in his search for the truth about Islam and Mohammad. Beneath them he has found either nothing concrete, or another hand-buzzer of Islamic practical jokers. He posits at the end that Islam was knocked together as a political faith to anchor the Arab empire in the 8th century, and then began to acquire its contemporary character as sheer political circumstances demanded.

In this relatively short book, Spencer adds an invaluable resource to the growing and much needed corpus of literature that exposes, if not the peril posed by Islam, then its maleficent and felonious origins.

SOURCE

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Will the young realize that their Messiah has shafted them?

They should

Anyone with a functioning brain and a TV knows the economy is disintegrating faster than a newspaper in the rain, and this counts double for those out scouting for a new job.

The recent college graduates, that sparkling, eager group of new additions to the workforce are finding it harder and harder to procure employment now that they have received their diplomas. And if by chance they do find someone to hire them, it is usually a job that falls far below their qualifications.

In fact, according to Associated Press, 50 percent of recent graduates are under- or unemployed.

Unfortunately, this statistic isn't very surprising. As a recent college graduate myself, I know that a lot of my friends have struggled to find jobs, and many are still searching.

It's quite disheartening to come out of the secluded world of college and fight tooth and nail trying to find a way to support yourself, and the times are only getting worse.

An astonishing amount of recent grads have even had to move back in with their parents because of the fact that they are unable to afford their own place without a stable job.

The majority of available jobs that are above the "Do you want fries with that?" category are being fought over by not just recent college graduates but masters and doctoral graduates who were fired or are looking to make more money, and so the pool of available work is getting smaller by the day.

The most interesting part of this situation is that the very people who were Obama's biggest supporters are the ones who are suffering the most from his mistakes.

The young adult demographic, who once held up our illustrious president in the highest of regards, now have started to lower their standards as their hearts, wallets and gas tanks are running on empty.

Maybe in the coming months, with the election hot on our heels, Americans can stand up for what we need and demand results. Hopefully they can find enough change to take the bus to the polling place on election day.

SOURCE

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It looks like  the young may realize that their Messiah has shafted them

Looks like President Obama's college tour was all for naught: a new poll reveals that young people are unlikely to bother voting in 2012, despite the fact that they may prefer Obama to Mitt Romney.

A Gallup poll conducted earlier this week surveyed voter registration and likelihood to vote, broken down by age groups. Among the 18-29 set, 60 percent indicated that they are registered to vote. Obama enjoys a wide lead over Romney in this age group: 64 percent support Obama while only 29 percent support Romney. However, when asked if they definitely will vote in the general election, only 56 percent replied yes.

Comparatively, every other age group surveyed-30 to 49, 50 to 64 and 65 and over- had a yes response rate of 80 percent or more.

Obama ran away with the youth vote in 2008: Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 chose him over McCain 66 percent to 32 percent, exit polls showed.

The actual percentage of young voters who turned out in 2008 was not much higher than in previous years: In 2008, 18 percent of the electorate was comprised of voters between 18 and 29. In 2004 that age set made up 17 percent of the electorate. The same was true for 2000. John Kerry and Al Gore won the youth vote in those years as well, but their margins were nowhere near Obama's.

Still, as ABC's Amy Walter noted earlier this week, Obama's percentage of the youth vote in key swing states like North Carolina, Virginia and Florida grew substantially from that of John Kerry in 2004, no doubt helping him carry these important states and ultimately claim victory. If that group doesn't come out to support him this time around, that is definitely a concern.

Despite the fact that the president is doing his utmost to appeal to young voters, it looks like they're just not that excited. Obama said it himself, supporting him just isn't that hip anymore. Looks like the honeymoon is over, and the youth is heading back into its politically apathetic cave.

SOURCE

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Oklahoma Democratic chairman says Timothy McVeigh would be member of tea party were he alive today

He overlooks the fact that conservatives generally and the Tea Partiers in particular are in fact IN FAVOR of government:  Constitutional government.  Unlike Obama and his ilk, conservatives have great reverence for the Constitution.  But there are  lawless murderers and terrorists by the millions on the Left.  Just look back on the regimes of some of the self-described "socialists" of the 20th century:  Stalin, Hitler, Mao etc.  


A more extensive comment on the identity of McVeigh here

The chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party is refusing to back down from comments he made that likened convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to tea party activists.

"I certainly stand by my remarks, because it's widely known that McVeigh was anti-government. I think that he was a right-winger, and I think the current tea party people, while I'm not saying that they're proposing violence, they're anti-government," Collins said Tuesday. "They dislike the government. I don't know if you'd call them a government hater, but I certainly see them in a similar vein. Maybe they're an offshoot or offspring or next generation."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Let's not worry about fake online drugs:  "Roger Bate has a curious op-ed in the NYT today. He's the lead author on a study which bought 370 drug samples from 41 online pharmacies around the world, and then tested their authenticity. The results? With the exception of Viagra bought from non-verified websites, every single drug was 100% authentic. But you'd never guess that from his op-ed."

Rick Perry was correct:  "When Texas Gov. Rick Perry, then in the early stages of his short-lived quest for the Republican presidential nomination, referred to Social Security as 'a Ponzi scheme,' he was excoriated by the press, left and right, and by his fellow Republicans, as well. Earlier this week, government actuaries revealed that Perry was correct."

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH,  FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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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)

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Saturday, April 28, 2012



Europe's Phony Growth Debate

The austerity vs. spending fight ignores essential reforms

Growth or austerity? That's the choice facing Europe these days—or so the Keynesian consensus keeps saying. According to this view, which has dominated world economic councils since the 2008 crisis began, "growth" is mainly a function of government spending.

Spend more and you're for growth, even if a country raises taxes to pay for the spending. But dare to cut spending as the Germans suggest, and you're for austerity and thus opposed to growth.

This is a nonsense debate that misconstrues the real sources of economic prosperity and helps explain Europe's current mess. The real debate ought to be over which policies best produce growth.

In the 1980s, the world learned (or so we thought) that the way out of the malaise of the 1970s were reforms that encourage private investment and risk-taking, labor mobility and flexibility, an end to price controls, tax rates that encouraged capital formation, and what the World Bank now broadly calls "the ease of doing business." Amid this crisis, Europe has tried everything except these policies.

If Reagan or Margaret Thatcher are too déclassé for Europeans to invoke, how about Germany? Throughout the 1990s and the first years of the last decade, Germany was Europe's hobbled giant, with consistently subpar growth rates and unemployment that in 2005 hit 11.3%, nearly at the top of the OECD chart.

Then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, surprised the world, to say nothing of his own voters, by pushing through the labor-market reforms that paved the way for the current relative prosperity. The changes cut welfare benefits and gave employers more flexibility in reaching agreement with their employees on working time and pay.

The Schröder government, and later the coalition under Angela Merkel, also cut federal corporate income taxes to 15% from 45% in 1998. Include state taxes, and the effective corporate rate today is close to 30%, down from 50% or more in the 1990s. These reforms made Germany more competitive, attracted investment and jobs, and paved the way for the country's economic resurgence and an unemployment rate currently at 5.7%.

Mrs. Merkel's government did the world an additional favor in 2009, amid the financial crisis, by rejecting calls from the International Monetary Fund, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Obama, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the same dominant Keynesian consensus to join the global spending party.

"They've already pumped endless amounts of money into the economy," said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in 2010 about U.S. policy. "The results are dismal." (See our March 12, 2009 editorial, "Old Europe Is Right on Stimulus.")

Germany's resurgence might have been even stronger if Mrs. Merkel and her coalition partners hadn't reneged on their tax-cutting campaign promises and raised VAT and other taxes in a bid to stay close to budget balance. Still, Europe is lucky that its largest economy remains strong and creditworthy.

Yet now Mrs. Merkel is widely berated for avoiding the policy errors that led to the debt crisis and for having the nerve to encourage other countries to emulate the reforms that worked in Germany. The Keynesians will never forgive the Germans for being right.

Another European spending spree is unsustainable in any case. As the nearby chart shows, debt levels have climbed dramatically across the developed world since the crisis began in 2008, and that debt and the current dreary recovery (or double-dip recessions) are all there is to show for the great Keynesian spending blowout.

Now bond yields are ticking back up in the euro zone's periphery economies, European stock indexes are stumbling, and much of the Continent is in recession. Adam Smith's bond vigilantes are telling European governments that without reforms that reduce spending and encourage more growth in the private economy, their countries are increasingly risky bets. As the smarter Germans understand, the bond markets may be the only lobby for genuine pro-growth reform that exists in most of Europe.

Other than an inflation that will create new problems and bring its own crisis, economic growth is the only way out of Europe's debt morass. But it has to be private growth driven by reforms in taxes, labor markets, regulation, pensions and more.

Europe's voters have already swept several governments from office, and they seem ready to sweep out more. But what really needs to be swept away is the dominant and debilitating consensus that government spending can conjure prosperity.

SOURCE

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Spineless Texas??

As you may have guessed, I'm speaking of the new fascist program the TSA is carrying out in Houston, goose-stepping about on busses, randomly stopping and interrogating people, and searching bags without a warrant or probable cause. Come on, Texas! What happened to you? When did you become the land of the pansies and the home of the blindly obedient?

 At the very least, every time one of those jackbooted, fascist dumbasses searches a bag without a warrant, without probably cause, and without the consent of the owner, the victim should get the name of the state mercenary, make public that that person is an unthinking fascist thug, and immediately file a Bivens action against him, for the obvious, intentional violation of the victim's Fourth Amendment rights. Maybe if the federal parasites had to spend lots of time, effort and money defending against a Bivens action every time they do this, they might think twice. (And I really hope whoever already had his bags searched does this.)

Personally, I think relying on "lawsuits" is far too nice. Putting up with blatant injustice, and then begging "government" puppets--the dress-wearing megalomaniacs who call themselves "the courts"--generally sickens me. If you need some "court" to tell you whether randomly searching people's bags is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, then you might as well drive yourself to the nearest prison, and volunteer yourself into custody.

If the jackboots can get away with this in Texas, what hope is there for the rest of the country? Just how blatant does this police state garbage have to get, before the people stop echoing the blatant lie that this is a free country? Remember seeing those old movies about Nazi Germany, where the thugs randomly stop and interrogate people, and search through their stuff? Well, now you can see it in full color and 3D! Just go to Houston!

SOURCE

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Leftist hate set to be hugely destructive

Fortunately, there is no chance of the proposal being enacted

US REPRESENTATIVE JIM MCGOVERN, a Worcester Democrat, generated some unwanted controversy two years ago when he publicly declared: "The Constitution is wrong."

The context was a discussion of campaign finance during a debate between McGovern and his Republican challenger, Marty Lamb. "A lot of the campaign-finance laws we've passed have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court," McGovern said. "I think the Constitution is wrong. I don't think money … equals free speech. I don't think corporations should have the same equality as a regular voter."

Critics pounced, a minor storm erupted, and a day later McGovern took his words back. A slip of the tongue, he explained -- he'd meant to say "court decision," not "Constitution." His problem wasn't with the Bill of Rights, it was with the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which restored the right of corporations to engage in political free speech.

But McGovern's problem, it turns out, is with the Bill of Rights. He objects to the way it safeguards fundamental rights -- such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances -- not only when citizens act as lone individuals, but also when they unite as corporations in order to pool their assets and act more efficiently.

Like many on the left, McGovern has gone batty on the subject of "corporate personhood." This is a perfectly commonplace, centuries-old legal construct that makes it possible for individuals organized as a group to carry out their affairs effectively. Because corporations are legal "persons," for example, they can rent property without requiring the signature of every shareholder on every lease. They can be sued in court as single entities, without obliging plaintiffs to go after tens of thousands of individual defendants. They can be taxed. They can enter into contracts. They can register patents.

What infuriates many liberals is that corporations can also express political views, spending money to take sides in contested elections. "Corporations are not people," scowled McGovern at a Democratic forum last week. "They do not breathe. They do not have children. They do not die in war. They are artificial entities which we the people create and, as such, we govern them, not the other way around."

So the congressman proposes to strip corporations of all constitutional liberties and guarantees.

McGovern has introduced a "People's Rights Amendment," which would explicitly limit all rights protected by the Constitution to "natural persons." All "corporate entities," on the other hand, would be subject to any laws and regulations that lawmakers "deem reasonable." At last week's forum House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed the crusade to exclude corporations from the Constitution's safeguards.

It is hard to overstate how radical and dangerous the People's Rights Amendment would be. It would overturn Citizens United, all right -- along with much of the freedom Americans have always taken for granted.

Under McGovern's proposal, corporations -- for-profit and nonprofit alike -- would have no more rights than legislators chose to give them. Congress could ban ExxonMobil and R.J. Reynolds from commenting on any public issue, and they would have no recourse to the First Amendment. But it isn't only Big Oil and Big Tobacco that could be censored with impunity. So could Planned Parenthood and the National Rifle Association. So could the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and the Museum of Fine Arts. So could innumerable universities, charities, churches, small businesses, and government watchdogs. And so, of course, could most newspapers, magazines, TV networks, and book publishers. Corporations of every kind would lose their constitutional defenses. Vast swaths of American life would be permanently vulnerable to the whims and vendettas of politicians.

And what is true of First Amendment rights would be true of all the others: Protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, due process under law, the right to trial by jury -- corporations could be stripped of them all.

McGovern and Pelosi may honestly imagine that mutilating the Constitution in this way will make American democracy more wholesome and less corrupt. What it would really do is empower the political class to a degree never before seen in our history. Far from reinvigorating the dream of the Founding Fathers, the People's Rights Amendment would transform it into a nightmare.

SOURCE

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Son of SOPA

I think the comments below do rightly point out a decline in privacy but it is only that.  And there's not much privacy in the internet age anyway. 


The information sharing will be voluntary so nobody would be obliged to hand over information to the government if they thought a refusal  would make them more trusted by their users.  


It has passed through the House anyway and is unlikely to be derailed in the Senate

Having failed earlier this year to foist an Orwellian kill switch on Internet free speech, Congress is now peddling a kinder, gentler piece of “cybersecurity legislation.” However, Washington’s latest attempt to play Big Brother on the Internet poses an equally clear and present danger to our fundamental liberties.

With the furor over the Stop Online Piracy Act having subsided, congressional leaders apparently are hoping that the ire of America’s burgeoning information freedom movement has been exhausted. They’re also hoping that the same coalition that successfully shot down the Piracy Act won’t notice the sinister outlines of its latest alphabet soup invasion - the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). In fact, they’ve enlisted the help of heavy hitters such as Facebook and Microsoft in an effort to convince us that the Web is somehow on-board with this latest example of unchecked government intrusion into our private lives.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The stated purpose of CISPA is to “allow elements of the intelligence community to share cyberthreat intelligence with private-sector entities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence.” While the first part of that equation isn’t particularly problematic (law enforcement is a core function of government and should alert providers to criminal activity allegedly occurring within their networks), the “sharing” component of this legislation represents an insidiously expansive assault on liberty.

How expansive?

“CISPA would allow [Internet Service Providers], social networking sites, and anyone else handling Internet communications to monitor users and pass information to the government without any judicial oversight,” writes Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In other words, concepts such as “probable cause” or even “reasonable suspicion” would no longer apply.

What sort of information are we talking about, though? And who would be reviewing it?

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, this legislation “would give the government, including military spy agencies, unprecedented powers to snoop through people’s personal information - medical records, private emails, financial information - all without a warrant, proper oversight or limits.”

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Christie the prophet:  "New Jersey governor Chris Christie recently warned that America is in danger of becoming a country of 'people sitting on the couch waiting for their next government check.' Predictably, the Left was outraged, but Governor Christie wasn’t far off the mark."

A rare check on the ever-growing powers of law enforcement:  "
The Michigan Supreme Court says people can resist police officers who unlawfully enter their homes.  In a 5-2 decision, the court ordered that charges be dropped against Angel Moreno Junior, a western Michigan man who was accused of obstructing officers at his home in Holland. The officers were looking for someone and tried to enter the home without a warrant.  Lower courts had upheld charges of resisting police, based on a 2004 Supreme Court decision, but justices on Friday said that case was wrongly decided.  The opinion was written by Justice Diane Hathaway. She and two other Democrats on the court were joined by two Republican justices, a rare alliance."

Another triumph against bureaucracy:  "Labor Department withdraws farm child labor rule:  "Under pressure from farming advocates in rural communities, and following a report by The Daily Caller, the Obama administration withdrew a proposed rule Thursday that would have applied child labor laws to family farms. Critics complained that the regulation would have drastically changed the extent to which children could work on farms owned by family members. The U.S. Department of Labor cited public outcry as the reason for withdrawing the rule."

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH,  FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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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)

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Friday, April 27, 2012


Fooling the elderly to get past November

"Re-electing President Obama is really important to President Obama, which isn't news. What is news are the out-of-liberal-character acts that his Administration is committing to serve this political goal. ... 

ObamaCare slashes about $145 billion from Medicare Advantage, the program that allows one of four seniors to escape the traditional entitlement and choose commercial plans. ... 

Medicare's budget counters estimate that ObamaCare's cuts in the Advantage program will result in enrollment falling by half. The cuts were scheduled to begin this year. ... 

So in November 2010 Mr. Obama's Medicare team announced a nationwide Medicare Advantage 'demonstration project' that would test if paying insurers bonus subsidies would improve quality over the next two years. Lo and behold, according to a new investigation by the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, the $8.35 billion pilot program is just enough to reverse 71% of the Advantage cuts that would have hit seniors in the run-up to November. And behold again, the demonstration project turns into a pumpkin in 2013. ... 

Obama's Health and Human Services Department is allowed to spend unlimited taxpayer dollars as long it claims the money is going to 'demonstration projects' to fine-tune Medicare Advantage. The real game here is purely political -- to give a program that is popular with seniors a temporary reprieve past Election Day. ... 

Given the pre-election timing of this short-term Medicare Advantage pardon, the Federal Election Commission should bill HHS for giving Mr. Obama's campaign what amounts to an $8.35 billion re-election contribution."

More HERE

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The  racist media

 Thomas Sowell 

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice.

An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking -- and lack of thinking -- that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated.

One of the first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher. The last line in most of the transcripts shown on TV was that of the police dispatcher telling Zimmerman not to continue following Trayvon Martin.

That became the basis of many media criticisms of Zimmerman for continuing to follow him. Only later did I see a transcript of that conversation on the Sean Hannity program that included Zimmerman's reply to the police dispatcher: "O.K."

That reply removed the only basis for assuming that Zimmerman did in fact continue to follow Trayvon Martin. At this point, neither I nor the people who assumed that he continued to follow the teenager have any basis in fact for believing that he did or didn't.

Why was that reply edited out by so many in the media? Because too many people in the media see their role as filtering and slanting the news to fit their own vision of the world. The issue is not one of being "fair" to "both sides" but, more fundamentally, of being honest with their audience.

NBC News carried the editing even further, removing one of the police dispatcher's questions, to which Zimmerman was responding, in order to feed the vision of Zimmerman as a racist.

In the same vein were the repeated references to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic." Zimmerman is half-white. So is Barack Obama. But does anyone refer to Obama as a "white African"?

All these verbal games grow out of the notion that complexion tells you who is to be blamed and who is not. It is a dangerous game because race is no game. If the tragic history of the old Jim Crow South in this country is not enough to show that, the history of racial and ethnic tragedies is written in blood in countries around the world. Millions have lost their lives because they looked different, talked differently or belonged to a different religion.

In the midst of the Florida tragedy, there was a book published with the unwieldy title, "No Matter What ... They'll Call This Book Racist." Obviously it was written well before the shooting in Florida, but its message -- that there is rampant hypocrisy and irrationality in public discussions of race -- could not have been better timed.

Author Harry Stein, a self-described "reformed white liberal," raised by parents who were even further left, exposes the illogic and outright fraudulence that lies behind so much of what is said about race in the media, in politics and in our educational institutions.

He asks a very fundamental question: "Why, even after the Duke University rape fiasco, does the media continue to give credence to every charge of racism?"

Harry Stein credits Shelby Steele's book "White Guilt" with opening his eyes to one of the sources of many counterproductive things said and done about race today -- namely, guilt about what was done to blacks and other minorities in the past.

Let us talk sense, like adults. Nothing that is done to George Zimmerman -- justly or unjustly -- will unlynch a single black man who was tortured and killed in the Jim Crow South for a crime he didn't commit.

Letting hoodlums get away with hoodlumism today does not undo a single injustice of the past. It is not even a favor to the hoodlums, for many of whom hoodlumism is just the first step on a path that leads to the penitentiary, and maybe to the execution chamber.

Winston Churchill said, "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." He wasn't talking about racial issues, but what he said applies especially where race is involved.


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If I wanted America to fail...

I’d cut off America’s supply of cheap, abundant energy.  Of course, I couldn’t take it by force.  So, I’d make Americans feel guilty for using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses, and powers their economy.

I’d make cheap energy expensive, so that expensive energy would seem cheap.

I would empower unelected bureaucrats to all-but-outlaw America’s most abundant sources of energy.  And after banning its use in America, I’d make it illegal for American companies to ship it overseas.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d use our schools to teach one generation of Americans that our factories and our cars will cause a new Ice Age, and I’d muster a straight face so I could teach the next generation that they’re causing Global Warming.

And when it’s cold out, I’d call it Climate Change instead.

I’d imply that America’s cities and factories could run on wind power and wishes.  I’d teach children how to ignore the hypocrisy of condemning logging, mining and farming — while having roofs over their heads, heat in their homes and food on their tables.

I would never teach children that the free market is the only force in human history to uplift the poor, establish the middle class and create lasting prosperity. Instead, I’d demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would create countless new regulations and seldom cancel old ones. They would be so complicated that only bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists could understand them.  That way small businesses with big ideas wouldn’t stand a chance — and I would never have to worry about another Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or Steve Jobs.

I would ridicule as “Flat Earthers” those who urge us to lower energy costs by increasing supply.  And when the evangelists of commonsense try to remind people about the law of supply and demand, I’d enlist a sympathetic media to drown them out.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would empower unaccountable bureaucracies seated in a distant capitol to bully Americans out of their dreams and their property rights.  I’d send federal agents to raid guitar factories for using the wrong kind of wood; I’d force homeowners to tear down the homes they built on their own land.

I’d make it almost impossible for farmers to farm, miners to mine, loggers to log, and builders to build.  And because I don’t believe in free markets, I’d invent false ones.  I’d devise fictitious products — like carbon credits — and trade them in imaginary markets.  I’d convince people that this would create jobs and be good for the economy.

If I wanted America to fail …

For every concern, I’d invent a crisis; and for every crisis, I’d invent the cause.

Like shutting down entire industries and killing tens of thousands of jobs in the name of saving spotted owls.  When everyone learned the stunning irony that the owls were victims of their larger cousins — and not people — it would already be decades too late.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d make it easier to stop commerce than start it — easier to kill jobs than create them — more fashionable to resent success than to seek it.  When industries seek to create jobs, I’d file lawsuits to stop them.  And then I’d make taxpayers pay for my lawyers.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would transform the environmental agenda from a document of conservation to an economic suicide pact.  I would concede entire industries to our economic rivals by imposing regulations that cost trillions.

I would celebrate those who preach environmental austerity in public while indulging a lavish lifestyle in private.  I’d convince Americans that Europe has it right, and America has it wrong.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would prey on the goodness and decency of ordinary Americans.  I would only need to convince them … that all of this is for the greater good.

If I wanted America to fail, I suppose I wouldn’t change a thing.


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Conservative Consumers: Stand Your Ground

Who is Rashad Robinson? And why has his fringe, race-baiting organization been able to pressure several major corporations into abandoning a pro-limited-government legislative association -- all for a few cheap social-justice brownie points?

Conservative consumers need to get informed, get active and stand their ground against free speech-squelching progressive activists who have demonized the American Legislative Exchange Council. This isn't just a battle over ALEC. It's a war against the left's shakedown artists taking aim at our freedoms of speech and association.

ALEC, as I reported last week, is the four-decade-old policy organization of state legislators and like-minded business people who believe in "the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty." They are under fire from a longstanding network of liberal groups -- tied to the Democratic Party -- that are unhappy with effective conservative opposition at the state and federal legislative levels.

Anti-ALEC hypocrites seized on the Trayvon Martin shooting case in Florida to blame ALEC and Republican lawmakers for their advocacy of Stand Your Ground self-defense legislation - even though the case does not implicate the policy and ALEC followed Florida's lead on the legislation. Moreover, eight of the 15 states that have adopted such polices were helmed by Democratic governors at the time of passage.

Robinson is spearheading the anti-ALEC campaign, along with Soros-backed Progress Now and a MoveOn.org/Big Labor political action committee, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). While they claim to oppose black "voter suppression" by working to undermine anti-voter fraud bills backed by ALEC, Color of Change's true agenda is to chill and suppress pro-capitalist, pro-Second Amendment, pro-low taxes and pro-law enforcement lobbying and legislating in the political marketplace.

Robinson is in charge of "Color of Change," a radical activist group founded by disgraced 9/11 Truther, anti-police agitator, Occupy movement promoter and former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones. The group used Hurricane Katrina to condemn America as institutionally racist. Most shamefully, Jones and his fledgling group helped perpetuate director Spike Lee and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's wild conspiracy theories about government-engineered black genocide in New Orleans.

Before taking over Jones' demagogue duties, Robinson previously lobbied for felon voting rights at the left-wing Soros family-backed Fair Vote. The group has repeatedly fought common-sense efforts to rein in voter fraud. Unsurprisingly, Robinson is close to the community organizer in chief's administration. While media director at gay rights group GLAAD, Robinson traveled to Serbia in 2010 to officially represent the U.S. at a gay pride festival. He was invited by the Obama State Department, which sponsored the trip.

Robinson claims that his group has "more than 800,000 members" and "is the nation's largest online civil rights group." The numbers, however, don't add up. The Color of Change Twitter account has fewer than 14,600 followers. Robinson himself, acclaimed by leftists as a new media guru, has a measly 1,400 followers after three years on the premiere social networking platform.

But the foot soldiers of radical organizer Saul Alinsky know how to conjure up facades and false narratives. Over the past several weeks, Robinson has released a series of press releases claiming mass victories in the Color of Change campaign to boycott ALEC. The bulletins are being dutifully regurgitated by sympathetic journalists such as National Public Radio's Peter Overby -- a former staffer at the anti-ALEC group Common Cause, a fact that he failed to disclose to radio listeners in at least two recent hit pieces on ALEC.

Color of Change's corporate appeasers include McDonald's, Wendy's, Mars Inc., Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Intuit, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Reed Elsevier (owner of LexisNexis), American Traffic Solutions and Arizona Public Service. This week, Robinson also claimed that Yum Brands and Procter and Gamble had dropped their memberships as a result of "hundreds" of Color of Change phone calls.

On Tuesday, I called Procter and Gamble and asked them how many phone calls they received. Company spokeswoman Christine Wever refused to answer. I asked whether the company had met at any time over the past year with Color of Change or any other protest group regarding their specific complaints about ALEC. Wever refused to answer.

I also called the media office at Yum Brands several times with the same questions. No response by end of business Tuesday.

It's not enough for conservative consumers to avoid cowardly businesses that cave to Van Jones and company. Beating back the anti-ALEC mob means getting ahead of them. Color of Change and its "hundreds" of callers are now pressuring State Farm and Johnson and Johnson to join the spineless herd and cut ties to ALEC.

I'll say it again: Silence is complicity. Speak now or surrender your ground.


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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH,  FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena  

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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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

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Mooney the spinner

Chris Mooney is a journalist who has popularized some hoary old Leftist theories about the psychology of politics. I was researching and writing about those theories when they were still "hot" so I know a bit about them. My most relevant academic journal articles on the subject are listed here. Needless to say, I found that the theories concerned did not stand up under rigorous testing.

Mooney's recent article "Liberals and conservatives don't just vote differently. They think differently" has attracted some attention so, although I have had a few laughs at Mooney's work before (See here and here), I thought I might add just a few more comments.

For a start, Mooney's work is actually more balanced than what Leftist psychologists themselves have usually said. Mooney can see that a trait ascribed to conservatives can be both a good and a bad thing, which many Leftist psychologists routinely ignored. So what Mooney does is to take a finding which could be read either way and "spin" it so that it makes Leftists look better than conservatives. So one of the things I do is to "unspin" such judgments.

But first a few excerpts from Mooney:


There's now a large body of evidence showing that those who opt for the political left and those who opt for the political right tend to process information in divergent ways and to differ on any number of psychological traits.

Perhaps most important, liberals consistently score higher on a personality measure called "openness to experience," one of the "Big Five" personality traits, which are easily assessed through standard questionnaires. That means liberals tend to be the kind of people who want to try new things, including new music, books, restaurants and vacation spots - and new ideas.

Conservatives, in contrast, tend to be less open - less exploratory, less in need of change - and more "conscientious," a trait that indicates they appreciate order and structure in their lives. This gels nicely with the standard definition of conservatism as resistance to change - in the famous words of William F. Buckley Jr., a desire to stand "athwart history, yelling `Stop!'?"

Now consider another related trait implicated in our divide over reality: the "need for cognitive closure." This describes discomfort with uncertainty and a desire to resolve it into a firm belief. Someone with a high need for closure tends to seize on a piece of information that dispels doubt or ambiguity, and then freeze, refusing to consider new information. Those who have this trait can also be expected to spend less time processing information than those who are driven by different motivations, such as achieving accuracy.

A number of studies show that conservatives tend to have a greater need for closure than do liberals, which is precisely what you would expect in light of the strong relationship between liberalism and openness. "The finding is very robust," explained Arie Kruglanski, a University of Maryland psychologist who has pioneered research in this area and worked to develop a scale for measuring the need for closure.

More here


I can't help laughing at Mooney's acceptance of the absurd Kruglanski work. You can read my close look at it here. I think I show pretty clearly that the Kruglanski questionnaire measures infantilism rather than need for closure, with Leftists being the infantile ones. And in the same paper I refer to the work of Van Hiel, one of the believers in "Openness". Van Hiel actually put some hard work into testing the theory that Leftists are more open. Rather embarrassingly, his findings were mostly the opposite of what his theory said. So the claim that Leftists are more "open" rests on sand.

And yet there may be something in it. I did some reseach using proper random sampling (a rarity among psychologists) that found Leftists to be "sensation seekers". That's not too different a concept from "openness" but just spins the opposite way. It makes Leftists look shallow rather than conservatives.

So the Mooney writings should not disturb conservatives in any way. The underlying facts are no discredit to conservatives at all.

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America's REAL Inequalities

Increasingly, ordinary people get prosecuted for trifles, while politically connected people get a pass for the exact same crime, or far worse behavior.

A whale-watcher is being criminally prosecuted merely for lying about whistling at a whale. But former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, a big Obama booster who "stole" $1.2 billion, is not being prosecuted, despite his investment firm's massive diversion of funds from client trust accounts, a crime that Corzine "personally" ordered.

Meanwhile, a dairy-farming family in Maryland is getting prosecuted by the federal government for "structuring" - breaking up bank deposits into deposits of less than $10,000 at a time to avoid scrutiny. But former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer got a free pass for the very same offense, even though he (unlike the hapless dairy farmers) used the practice in order to hide criminal activity, making his actions much worse.

As Walter Olson notes, "structuring" is "the federal criminal offense of splitting up bank deposits so as to keep them under a threshold such as $10,000 above which banks have to report transactions to the government. Structuring is unlawful whether or not it occurs in conjunction with any other legal offense . . . Nor is there any requirement that the person be aware that there is a law banning structuring; someone who gets wind that transactions over $10,000 are reportable, and decides `What's up with that? I'll just make $9,000 deposits', has broken the Bank Secrecy Act."

Increasingly, the federal government persecutes the innocent and punishes whistleblowers, while turning a blind eye to the guilty.

In the auto bailouts, non-union retirees, pension funds, and bondholders got ripped off, while the powerful UAW union, which endorsed Obama, got special, preferential treatment and a big chunk of the automakers' stock.

SOURCE

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NO END IN SIGHT TO UNEMPLOYMENT

We are stuck with an unemployment rate three points higher than the postwar average, and the percentage of working adult Americans is as low as it's been in almost thirty years. What's most troubling is that so much of this unemployment is long-term. Forty per cent of the unemployed have been without a job for six months or more-a much higher rate than in any recession since the Second World War-and the average length of unemployment is about forty weeks, a number that has changed very little since 2010. The economic recovery has now lasted nearly three years, but for millions of Americans it hasn't yet begun.

Unemployment doesn't hurt just the unemployed, though. It's bad for all of us. Jobless workers, having no income, aren't paying taxes, which adds to the budget deficit. More important, when a substantial portion of the workforce is sitting on its hands, the economy is going to grow more slowly than it could. After all, people doing something to create value, rather than nothing, is the fundamental driver of growth in any economy.

Most worrying, if high unemployment persists it could start to feed upon itself. Right now, unemployment is mainly the result of what economists call cyclical factors: during the recession, demand plummeted, and during the recovery consumer spending, government stimulus, and exports haven't been sufficient to make up the difference. But if high long-term unemployment continues there's a danger that, sooner or later, cyclical unemployment could become structural unemployment-that is, unemployment that won't go away once the good times return.

The longer people are unemployed, the harder it is for them to find a job (even after you control for skills, education, and so on). Being out of a job can erode people's confidence and their sense of possibility; and employers, often unfairly, tend to take long-term unemployment as a signal that something is wrong. A more insidious factor is that long-term unemployment can start to erode job skills, making people less employable. One extraordinary study of Swedish workers, for instance, found that there was a strong correlation between time out of work and declining skills: workers who had been out of work for a year saw their relative ability to do something as simple as process and use printed information drop by five percentile points.

The phenomenon in which a sizable chunk of the workforce gets stuck in place, and in effect becomes permanently unemployed, is known by economists as hysteresis in the job market. This is, arguably, what happened to many European countries in the nineteen-eighties-policymakers did little when joblessness soared, and their economies got stuck, leaving them with seemingly permanent unemployment rates of eight or nine per cent.

The good news is that there's not much evidence that hysteresis has set in here yet. The bad news is that we can ride our luck only for so long. If the ranks of America's long-term jobless don't start shrinking soon, it's less likely that they ever will, and we'll be looking at a new "natural" unemployment rate for the U.S. economy. This economy would be less productive as a whole (since there would be fewer workers), meaning that everyone would be less well off.

But the bigger obstacle may be psychological: the longer unemployment stays high, the likelier people are to get used to it. Five years ago, an unemployment rate of seven and a half per cent would have seemed outrageous, but it's possible that five years from now it will seem not so bad. A long-term crisis, after a certain point, no longer seems like a crisis. It seems like the way things are.

More here

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Violence Against Women Act As a Political Talking Point

Left wingers need to preserve the talking point that the Right hates women. The Violence Against Women Act (WAWA), now pending reauthorization in the U.S. Senate, offers a great example of how liberals use political kabuki to keep the myth alive. The bill is fundamentally flawed and fully deserving of rejection. But senators who oppose it will be painted as women-haters.

As the Washington Post reports, "Democrats see the debate over the bill and potential amendments as an opening to continue accusing Republicans of `waging war' on women's rights. In recent weeks, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has used the issue - and the 11 Democratic women running in Senate races this year - to raise money from supporters."

Even some Republicans have fallen for the talking point. According to The New York Times, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has urged Republicans to surrender on the issue.

No one disputes that violence against women is a problem and one that needs to be addressed by law enforcement. But crimes of violence-against any person-are meat-and-potato issues for state and local law enforcement.

That's because state and local governments-not the feds-are the traditional reservoir of police power in the U.S. Our Founders set up the Republic with that idea in mind.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 45 that the powers of the federal government are limited and the powers remaining in the states are numerous.


The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.


According to the Cato Handbook for Congress, "the Constitution specifically authorizes federal enforcement of only three types of laws, all of which involve uniquely federal concerns." Those three types of criminal laws are laws to prevent counterfeiting, piracy and treason. Combating violent crime of any kind is the purview of the many states and other territories.

The Heritage Foundation's David Muhlhausen and Christina Villegas note that "despite the fact that each state has statutes that punish domestic violence, the federal government intervened in 1994 with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)." Members of Congress and the President may feel better when they pass a law that goes after the perpetrators of violence against women, yet the federal government is not supposed to waste resources on issues more properly dealt with on the state and local level of governance.

The legislation pending before the Senate, S.1925, infringes on the rights of states and squanders federal resources. Moreover, it vastly expands the original VAWA and the power of the federal government in the domain of violence against women. And then, there's the politics. Liberals have loaded the bill with poison pill provisions meant to bait conservative politicians into a divisive fight.

Muhlhausen and Villegas note three major problems with the bill:

* It expands VAWA to men and prisoners, despite the lack of scientifically rigorous evaluations to determine the effectiveness of existing VAWA programs;

* It expands the already duplicative VAWA grant programs and

* Without precedent, it surrenders the rights of non-native Americans to racially exclusive tribal courts.



Another interesting twist: the pending legislation would offer VAWA protection and aid to victims of violence in same-sex couples. In other words, the Violence Against Women Act would protect a man harmed by another man, but only if they are in a sexual relationship.

This is classic special interest politics. Much like federal "Hate Crimes" laws, this legislation is designed to be used as political wedge issue. The aim is to make it appear as though liberals care about "women's issues," while conservatives couldn't care less. But all lawmakers are sworn to uphold the Constitution. What they should care about is upholding the will of our Founding Fathers-and pushing back against this ill conceived idea.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

The Violence Against Women Act and the war on men: "Conceptually, VAWA is based on the false Duluth Power and Control Wheel model. VAWA falsely presumes that all Domestic Violence (DV) is perpetrated by evil patriarchal males against virtuously innocent female victims. This false gender ideology has no research support. By contrast, social science research, replicated across hundreds of studies, shows that: DV is initiated about equally by men and women; slightly more women than men are physically harmed by DV but men nonetheless still represent more than 40% of the physically harmed victims; the DV initiation rates for women, and especially young women, have been rising; and DV has nothing to do with an evil patriarchy because the DV rates for bisexuals, gays, and lesbians all are higher than for heterosexual couples."

California to vote on abolishing death penalty: "Voters in California are to be asked whether they want to abolish the state's death penalty law. The measure will appear on November's ballot after more than 500,000 people signed up to back the proposal. The measure would see death row inmates have their sentences commuted to life."

The week in regulation: "84 new final rules were published last week, up from 77 the previous week. That's the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every 2 hours -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All in all, 1,114 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year. If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,674 new rules"

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Tweede Kamer

For the whole of my adult life I   have had Dutch people around me in some way and  without exception I have thought highly of them.  A Dutchman once told me that I would make a good Dutchman and I regarded that as a high compliment

But I must admit that  for  no good reason I find the name of the Dutch parliament amusing.  "Tweede Kamer" sounds  like "the tweedy chamber".  "Tweedy" is most often used in a derisory way in English (with apologies to the good people of Harris and Lewis).

But  it is of course just  a routine example of low German:  "Zweite Kammer " (second chamber) would be the Hoch Deutsch  version of it

It just means the  "lower house" of the Dutch parliament.  And bicameral  parliaments  are  after all common in the Anglosphere too (though we don't have one in  Queensland, where I happily reside)

We hardly ever hear anything about the "Eerste Kamerlid" (the Dutch Senate or "first chamber") and I don't know enough Dutch to read easily what information about it that is available online.  I gather, however,  that a member of that august body is called a "volksvertegenwoordiger", which would blow anybody's mind.  I think it means something like "Worthy people's representative".

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The French road to perdition?

by Martin Hutchinson

The French presidential election on April 22 and May 6 is important not only to France; on it rests the future of the euro. Spain, about which the markets have been agonizing for the last few weeks, is merely a sideshow; it has only moderate levels of international debt and could at a pinch be bailed out by its European partners if necessary. France is however both considerably larger and when looked at closely, in poorer shape. If it gets in trouble, it also leaves a rather small group of nations with the "duty" of supporting it. If Nicolas Sarkozy is re-elected, France will probably muddle through, but his opponents' policies are sufficiently bad that if one of them is elected the collapse of both French public finances and the euro system are very likely.

Historically, France has been even modestly committed to the free market only for brief periods. Even the U.S. Declaration of Independence, with its ringing but philosophically notorious "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was polluted by foolish French ideas. John Locke, in his 1693 "Essay on Human Understanding" wrote "all mankind ... being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty and possessions." He also wrote, very sensibly "Government has no other end, but the preservation of property." The man may have chosen his political associations unwisely in the vile Earl of Shaftesbury and the quasi-treasonous embryonic Whigs, but he knew what to fight for.

"Pursuit of happiness" was an amendment to Locke injected by the young and radical Thomas Jefferson, heavily influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Contrat Social" (1762). This fatal amendment removed the protection to property given in Locke's admirable formulation and led to innumerable encroachments on property rights in the centuries ahead. Dislike for property rights was not universal among the Founding Fathers; James Madison's Bill of Rights, in the Fifth Amendment, prevents government from taking "life liberty or property, without due process of law." Eighty years later, the Radical Republicans' Fourteenth Amendment included the same protection.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in essence an extreme leftist (and a very unpleasant man) merely flawed the U.S. constitutional system through his misguided ideas. In France, where intellectuals are taken altogether too seriously, his ideas were far more powerful than those of John Locke, and hence once the Ancien Regime was overthrown in 1789 the moderates such as Mirabeau and Lafayette were helpless against the Rousseauesque force of the Jacobins. The result has been a political system in which, through two Empires, five Republics and a Directory, property rights have never been adequately safeguarded. Only under the two restored monarchies, of Louis XVIII/Charles X (1815-1830) and Louis-Philippe (1830-1848) were property rights largely secure. However the sensible admonition of Louis-Philippe's minister, the benign Adolphe Thiers: "Enrichissez-vous" proved helpless against the forces of renewed revolution in 1848.

France's civilization is among the great glories of mankind, its scientific advances are immense and its cuisine is superb, but economically even these great virtues have failed to make the place truly prosperous. The problem is the innate philosophical belief that free markets are an Anglo-Saxon abomination, to be regarded with deep suspicion and circumvented wherever possible by government intervention. Government spending of 56% of GDP (compared to Spain's 45%) leaves little room for the private sector to flourish, while budget deficits every year since 1974 have caused France's public debt to soar to 89% of GDP in 2012, substantially larger in relation to GDP than Spain's. The Ecole Nationale d'Administration has produced generations of superbly trained technocrats, far ahead of Britain's late-blooming business schools, but very few entrepreneurs.

According to Angus Maddison's data, France's GDP per capita, 64% of Britain's in 1900 and 76% of Britain's in 1950, had risen to 113% of Britain's GDP by 1974, its last year of budget surplus (and the year the capable rule of Georges Pompidou ended). That's not a surprise - Britain's economy in 1945-74 was very badly run while France's under the early Fifth Republic worked rather well. However by 2010 France's GDP was only 96% of Britain's; in the 1974-2010 period it also sank from 81% to 72% of US GDP per capita. That's a fairly modest relative decline, but against two countries that were also sub-optimally managed during the period; it thus suggests that there are deep flaws in the French economic system.

Those flaws have been demonstrated by French politicians' reaction to the euro crisis. Even a nominally center-right government, when austerity measures became unavoidable late last year,  proposed budget balancing measures of which in the first year 76% were represented by tax increases and 24% by spending cuts. As will be well known to readers of this column, while spending cuts, especially in a bloated public sector such as France's, can be economically stimulative, tax increases, by sucking money from the productive, inevitably deepen recessions. Naturally therefore, France's tax-centered austerity has resulted in a sharp decline in already anemic economic growth, with the Economist panel's growth forecast for 2012 declining from 1.1% to 0.1% since October, with growth forecast to continue below 1% in 2013. Meanwhile, the budget deficit continues to overshoot forecasts. To a lesser degree (so far) France has chosen the tax-raising-in-a-recession solution of Herbert Hoover in 1932, and it appears likely to be equally successful.

If Nicolas Sarkozy wins the presidency May 6, France will doubtless continue to muddle through. Sarkozy is committed to the European stabilization plan he has worked out with Angela Merkel, and while trader attention remains on Spain, France's deficits should continue to be financeable. However, Sarkozy's chance of winning is reckoned at below 50%

Francois Hollande, the most likely successor to Sarkozy, favors a 75% top rate of income tax, the reversal of Sarkozy's pension reforms, and a substantial increase in public spending. He also enthuses his followers by calling for the "Spirit of `81" referring to the first election of Francois Mitterrand. The policy of Mitterrand's first two years, socialism in a fairly pure form, resulted in three devaluations of the franc and a sharp increase in unemployment.  It also led to bank nationalization, after which Guy de Rothschild uttered the immortal line: "To be a Jew under Petain (the French Vichy Republic wartime leader) was bad enough, but to be a banker under Mitterrand, c'est insupportable."

If markets had full confidence in French credit, a Hollande victory would doubtless be manageable. However they don't, and nor should they. A run on French government debt would be inevitable, and would be accompanied by further attacks on Italian and Spanish debt.

At that point, the destruction of the euro would appear certain - there is simply not enough of a base of soundly run countries to bail out France, Italy and Spain simultaneously.  Once the euro had disappeared (or had become a "strong currency" bloc led by Germany) French debt default would not be inevitable - the country would simply suffer a moderate collapse in the currency, as it did initially under Mitterrand. Italy in that event would probably be closest to default, since the Monti government, imposed by the EU, would collapse and the Italian unions would then force policy leftwards. Spain, on the other hand, might well survive, since its current government is competent, its public debt is moderate and its problem is mainly one of the latter stages of a property collapse, concentrated in the banking sector.
 
All depends on France. But if French political developments cause the collapse of the euro and a major global recession, we will be able to blame the misguided eighteenth century philosophers whose teachings prevented France from ever truly adopting a free market economy.

More HERE

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Minorities a problem for conservatives in Britain too

The Prime Minister will today launch a major campaign to target ‘aspirational’ ethnic minority voters in the suburbs after warnings that he can’t win at the next election without them.

Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi has revealed the party aims to woo female and older Asian voters who share the party’s views but who have traditionally voted Labour.

She has told Conservative Cabinet ministers and MPs that they need to do more to win over non-white voters in key marginal constituencies.

They will be ordered to discuss core Tory values – hard work, good schools, the perils of welfare dependency – rather than ‘pandering’ to received Left-wing wisdom that Asian voters are only concerned with state handouts and foreign policy issues such as Afghanistan.

The PR drive comes after Tory pollsters warned that the party could fail to win a majority in 2015 unless they do better with ethnic minority voters.  The Tories won just 16 per cent of the non-white vote in 2010, and did just as badly among wealthy and poor ethnic minority communities.

Polls show that these groups predominantly share Tory values but 68 per cent of them vote for Labour.

Baroness Warsi said: ‘There are at least ten constituencies that we should have won at the last election, on the basis of the overall swing we achieved, but which we didn’t win purely because they were seats with a much larger than average black and minority ethnic population.  'The battleground for the next election is predominantly urban.’

Lady Warsi admitted that many of her colleagues have been surprised to discover that they have far larger migrant populations in their constituencies than they previously realised.

She added: ‘Somewhere like Solihull now has more than 5,000 British Muslims. These are upwardly mobile people.’

David Cameron will unveil a Conservative Friends of India group to woo Asian voters.  He will also launch a Conservative Friends of Pakistan and a third group for Bangladesh later in the year.

Tory supporters have recently written in the ethnic minority media stressing that welfare dependency runs in the face of their community’s values.

Baroness Warsi said: ‘My father came to Britain and he was hugely aspirational. He wanted to work hard and do the right thing.

'People from his generation wonder how being on benefits has become a lifestyle choice. Labour go round saying to these voters that the Tories will cut your benefits. But that’s the worst sort of patronising approach.’

Following the trouncing of Labour in the Bradford West by-election, Baroness Warsi said the party would capitalise on the malaise among young Asians with the way Labour used their elders to dictate how they should vote.

‘You can see in Bradford that a generation of younger Asian women are standing up and demanding to be heard,’ she said.

SOURCE

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Unelected Bureaucrats Confiscate Your Property and Your Private Medical Records Without Your Consent

October 2011 brought an overlooked but devastating ruling by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), an unelected bureaucrat, to further damage your Constitutional rights. Kathleen Sebelius decreed that all private health insurance companies must turn over to the federal government their medical records on all patients insured by them to be included in the federal health information database without patients’ consent.

The traditional American view is that you, the patient, are the owner of the information in your medical records that reside with your personal physician. You control to whom your information is released. Under the new Sebelius ruling, the government will control your medical information on federal computers in a federal database. Thus, your personal medical information is open to anyone with access to the system.

Traditionally, doctors released information only with the patient’s specific consent, which was often given as a condition for getting an insurer to pay. Americans have always had the right to pay for medical care themselves and not allow the doctor to release their medical records and personal information to an insurance company.

The October ruling has not gotten the press attention that it deserves. Besides violating other fundamental liberty rights, it violates the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that “No person…shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process…nor shall private property, be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

With the HHS new rules for medical records, your personal property of your medical information is simply being taken by the government to be used for “the collective, or public, good” without compensation to you for the use of your data.

Worse, your own data may be used to keep you from getting treatments you and your doctor think you need! The federally run Comparative Effectiveness Research bureaucracy and Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will use this data to decide how to allocate finite medical resources. The Progressive view is that medical decisions should be made by elite, unelected, politically-appointed “experts” whose focus is on “population health,” not your health or your life.

These bureaucrats’ job is to ration medical care, not based on individual needs, but on government criteria, such as: cost of treatment effectiveness as determined by government experts, not necessarily medical specialists, and your “quality life years” remaining, based on your age or your "value" to society.

Beyond privacy issues, there is major concern about the safety of your medical information. An expanded federal medical database makes millions more people vulnerable to loss of health information and medical identity. Hackers stole millions of medical records from the Veterans Administration and patients were at risk for identity theft. David Blumenthal, M.D., the former “health information czar,” admitted “No infrastructure exists in most areas of the country for secure exchange of health information exchange among providers and between providers and consumers.”

The federal government has now expanded beyond the capability of its employees to manage their responsibilities properly. Our Founders knew that if we allowed such vast expansion of federal authority, it would make eunuchs of state and local governments… which actually better met the needs of local communities. People would wait for Washington to satisfy our every need. We are already learning the wisdom of their concerns, for example, in the failure of the federal government

  *  to properly regulate our financial institutions,
 
*  to efficiently run the Postal Service without hemorrhaging red ink,

 *   to effectively administer programs such as veteran’s health care, Medicare, and Medicaid to keep costs under control,
 
* to improve quality and improve access to medical care, and
    to control Medicare and Medicaid fraud.

It is particularly dangerous to have government bureaucrats control our health information and treatment options. Do we really need to suffer more lives lost just to gain more proof that big government control and central planning does not work?

We have no voice in the regulation of our medical care by unelected bureaucrats. Instead of taxation without representation, wenow have medication without representation.

Confiscation of your medical records property is another example that when something is “free,” the real cost to you is staggering.

SOURCE

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH,  FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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