Another lame attempt to wriggle out of the Race/IQ correlation

It's not much of a guess to say that stupid people are not very good at looking after their health and -- though lack of precautions -- may get a lot more disease than smarter people. And when you have got a whole nation of dumb people, the chances of them having good public health measures -- such as providing reticulated sewerage and clean drinking water -- must also be rated as low. So a finding that stupid people get a lot more illness is not remotely surprising.

And that is what the authors of Parasite prevalence and the worldwide distribution of cognitive ability by Eppig, Fincher and Thornhill found. Rather bizarrely, however, they reverse the causal link. They say that poor health causes low IQ! They do end up admitting that they have no proof for their "reversed" chain of causation so their work proves nothing but it is nonetheless amusing to note a few things about their study.

The whole point of the paper is of course to show that Africans have low average IQs not from genetic inheritance but because they are worm infested. And there is no doubt that Africans in Africa do carry a heavy burden of worm infestation -- mainly due to the great lack of public health measures there.

Where it gets amusing is that Eppig et al. did their study in various regions of the world and in 5 out of 6 regions, the correlation held. The exception was South America. The correlation collapsed completely there. Why? Because the South American region included several Caribbean nations almost wholly inhabited by Africans! So why were the results there different from the rest of South America? Could it be a racial difference?

Oh no! Eppig et al say: "It is possible that local parasites ... are causing these outliers". In other words, they abandon the obvious in favour of a totally vague and unfounded speculation!

Two other reasons why the perverse theory of Eppig et al is wrong: They pinpoint nutritional deficit as the mechanism by which parasite load inhibits brain development. But if poor nutition lowers IQ, how do we explain the famous Dutch famine study? In the closing phases of WWII, Nederland experienced a severe famine. So all the Dutch kids born during the famine should be real dummies, right? The reverse happened. They were of higher average IQ than other Dutch cohorts. Only the very healthy survived and, as we have seen, good health and high IQ correlate.

And a second very obvious disproof of the perverse Eppig et al. theory is that black Americans have very similar health environments to white Americans but are still a whole standard deviation lower in average IQ. The Eppig et al theory is, in other words, arrant and transparent nonsense

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President Reagan, Our British Friends, and the 4th of July

In 2001, Kiron Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson edited a superb book that all friends of freedom, and of President Ronald Reagan, should read. Titled Reagan in His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America, it published a selection of Reagan’s daily radio broadcasts between 1975 and 1979.

Reagan composed and wrote these broadcasts himself, and the book reproduces them just as he wrote them. They provide indisputable proof that Reagan gave lengthy, serious thought to the major issues of the day, that he had a clear and consistent vision for America and the world, and that he was a wide reader and a hard worker. Anyone who doubts this should try writing over a thousand radio scripts – and much else – in four years.

All of Reagan’s scripts are worth reading. But this 4th of July, one is particularly appropriate. In a broadcast on September 21, 1976, “The Hope of Mankind,” Reagan returned to one of his favorite themes. As the editors put it, “Reagan believed . . . that America is unique among nations – ‘the hope of mankind.’ He felt we had a duty to protect what we had inherited. . . . In these essays, . . . the guiding star is always individual liberty, how lucky we are to have it, and how to preserve and protect it.”

To that end, Reagan quoted Ferdinand Mount. Mount later ran the Policy Unit in Number 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher in 1982-83, and wrote the tremendously successful Conservative manifesto for the 1983 general election, when Lady Thatcher won her most smashing victory. On July 5, 1976, Mount wrote a memorable column for the Daily Mail. Here, as quoted by Reagan, is what Mount thought it important to say, that day after the 200th 4th of July:

What the world needs now is more Americans. The U.S. is the first nation on earth deliberately dedicated to letting people choose what they want and giving them a chance to get it. For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness which most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want. We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes. For it is the only nation founded solely on a moral dream. A part of our own future is tied up in it and the greatest of all the gifts the Americans have given us is hope.

Reagan closed with three sentences of his own: “Thank you Mr. Mount – we needed that. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.” Thanks indeed – to Mount, to our friends around the world, and to President Reagan for recalling their faith, and the faith of the Founding Fathers that inspired us all.

SOURCE

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The Founders’ Most Important Idea

Some opinions:

Jamie Radtke, Chairman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation:

In my opinion, one of their most significant achievements was the idea of a written constitution. Our U.S. Constitution was designed to serve as a limitation on federal powers, which is what makes it unique and powerful. It provides for a federal separation of power among three branches of government as was advocated by the French philosopher Montesquieu in his work, The Spirit of the Laws. Thus, unlike a parliamentary form of government, power is divided among an independent legislature, a chief executive and an independent judiciary. Additionally, the Bill of Rights guarantees the fundamental rights of the people and the states and further defines the boundaries of power of the federal government. This brilliantly composed document struck a remarkable balance of affirming our natural rights while establishing justice, safety, and a well-ordered society.

The Founders were sensitive to government’s proclivity to usurp the power of the people and therefore were very intentional in how they crafted these constitutions to safeguard our individual liberties. It is now our responsibility to preserve the original intent of the Constitution, restore federalism, and protect the unique treasure that was given to us by our Founding Fathers.

Matthew Mayer: President of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions:

Without a doubt, the single greatest idea of the Founders is the system of checks and balances established in the Constitution. From 1787 to 1913, this amazing system allowed America to rise from a largely agrarian country to one of the world’s powers on the eve of World War I. During those 126 years, the federal government really was largely constrained and the states played dominant roles in the lives of their citizens. All of that changed in 1913 when Americans unwisely passed the 17th Amendment that fundamentally changed the balance of power between the states and the federal government. With the direct election of U.S. Senators, states lost the only real check they had on the growth and usurpation of power by the federal government. That seemingly insignificant change made to reduce corruption at the height of the Progressive Movement, ironically has resulted in an unchecked federal government with almost limitless powers and the attendant corruption that comes with great power.

ObamaCare illustrates this reality perfectly as states are left to try to undo what their own senators voted for/rammed through despite the costs ObamaCare will pose on states. Now, states desperately cling to the pre-1937 interpretation of the Commerce Clause—it only took 20 years or so for the federal government to realize the power it gained in 1913—and senators ignore the wishes of their constituents—the states, not the people in the states—knowing that the diffusion of the cost is outweighed by the concentration of the benefit. If we want to get America back on course, we should repeal the 17th Amendment, thereby making state legislative races far more important than they are today.

Matthew J. Brouillette, President of the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives:

America’s founding was shaped by the radical declaration that our right to private property was and is inherent and inalienable. This hostile idea, embodied in our Founding documents, challenged the historical practice of man’s rights being determined, limited, and granted by the state. This reorientation of the grantor of rights—from our Creator rather than those in authority—dramatically redefined who was sovereign while simultaneously placing chains on the powers of government. The state would now be the protector—rather than the arbiter—of man’s inherent and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the fruits of his labors.

Ginni Thomas, President of LibertyCentral.org:

While the Founders understood that men were not angels, they also recognized the inherent danger of powerful, centralized government. The simultaneous recognition of both of these principles is remarkable and formed the philosophical foundation for our system of limited Constitutional government. This foundation provided for the greatest degree of individual liberty within a robust independent civil society that could form, naturally, a just and successful society.

Thomas J. Gaitens, Florida Tea Party Leader:

The phrase “Endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights” has to be the most significant idea, revolutionary idea. This simple yet profound idea is the seed by which LIFE, LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS spring. Furthermore, it is this principle that brings us the irreplaceable conclusion that “Governments are instituted among men …” This concept of unalienable rights, known as the rights of man is the building block of Liberty. Our Hale rallying cry, of “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” embodies this and has been our chief export for 233 years. Failure to understand this byproduct of our Founding is failure to understand American Exceptionalism.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

The 4th of July: "The 4th of July is a dedicated day of remembrance. A day not only to remember the sacrifices our forefathers endured to free us from the yoke of tyranny, but also for us to recall how significant our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were for all of humanity. These documents, even with all the flaws of human nature self evident, were the strongest declaration of individual freedom ever created. Because of the freedom these documents provided, America became the wealthiest nation in the world.”

Celebrate race relations? "On my first Fox News Special, What’s Great About America, which airs this weekend, I argue that one of the things we should celebrate about America is American race relations. Yes, America has a history of slavery, then Jim Crow, then segregation and today, there’s still some racial hatred. But for a country that one generation ago had a presidential candidate (George Wallace) declaring ’segregation forever,’ race relations in this country are remarkably good. According to one poll, 81% of Americans have a ‘fairly close personal friend’ of another race. This kind of tolerance is rare in the world.”

Why is the Gulf cleanup so slow?: "As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.”

If the US won’t drill oil offshore, other nations will: "If the United States commits to bypassing offshore drilling at depths greater than 500 feet, we will be cutting off our collective noses to spite our collective face. Spain, China, Venezuela and other nations will continue to exploit potential reserves of fossil fuels, wherever they may be found. As a result, more of the world’s supply of crude oil and natural gas will fall into the hands of unfriendly nations.”

Crude oil falls as US payrolls slip, factor orders decrease: "Crude oil dropped for a fifth day after a U.S. government report showed that employment slipped in June for the first time this year and factory orders declined more than forecast. … Crude oil for August delivery fell 81 cents to $72.14 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement since June 8. Prices slipped 8.5 percent in five days, the biggest weekly drop since the week ended May 7.”

US economy stuck in misery: "The middle class is dead. The US has produced a self-sustaining two-class society. Most Lower Class Americans are in bad or uncertain economic shape but the rich and powerful Upper Class crowd keeps making and spending money as if there has been no recession. Talk about a possible double-dip recession misses the larger reality: For many millions of Americans the first recession is still here; there has been no recovery for them.”

CA: Court okays Governator’s cuts to state employees’ pay: "The governor has the authority to lower most state workers’ pay to the federal minimum wage if a state budget isn’t in place, a state appeals court ruled Friday, the second day of California’s 2010-11 fiscal year. The ruling came one day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the state controller to cut pay for about 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The court case began in 2008, when Schwarzenegger made a similar order. Controller John Chiang, a Democrat, defied the demand and was sued by the Republican governor, but a budget was approved before the case was resolved.”

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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The USA: A country for the little guy

An Independence Day reflection

I was born and bred in the Australian working class and, despite my success in academe and business, I still feel most at home among working class people. They seem to me to have a realism that the bourgeoisie lack. And I notice the same good-humoured realism among small-town Americans too. Big cities and grand theorizing seem to undermine common sense.

And there is no doubt that people from humble beginnings can rise to the top in both Australia and the USA -- from a B grade actor like Ronald Reagan to a parasite like Barack Obama.

But I think that a major factor in making America great is an extraordinarily simple one and one that is often overlooked: America has Congressional elections every two years. That puts the politicians in mortal fear of the little guy -- of ordinary Americans.

The politicians have got very little room to maneuver. If they run off the rails they will very rapidly be out on their ear. And that fear does mostly restrain them from grand follies. So America is in a very real sense the country where the little guy rules -- and that has made it great. And there is no doubt that the grand folly of Obamacare will deliver many a well-deserved boot up the backside to Democrat politicians this November.

And one of the wonderful things about ordinary Americans and Australians is that they are benevolent. They are kindly people who are ready to help others if they can. And that has made the USA into an incredibly generous nation.

What leaves me in awe is that America has repeatedly shown its readiness to risk the lives of its finest young men in order to rescue people in other countries from tyranny and brutality. America itself has not been seriously threatened for around 200 years so most of America's many wars have simply been efforts to help others.

And I think therefore that it is very right to remind ourselves of that awesome sacrifice on this day. I think the video below does that:



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Barack Obama's 'politics as usual' revealed by Rod Blagojevich trial

Obama's action in trying to ease his friend Valerie Jarrett into his old Senate seat will fuel cynicism about politics, argues Toby Harnden

In a year when Americans are arguably more cynical and disillusioned about politics than at any time since Watergate, the corruption trial of Rod Blagojevich is a sobering reminder of how its practitioners operate.

Although "Blago", the foul-mouthed bouffant buffoon, is the main attraction of the Chicago production, the former Illinois governor's reluctant co-star is Barack Obama. The President forms part of the proceedings each day even though the judge has spared him a personal experience.


Reports of the Blago trial cannot make comfortable reading for the White House for they provide what Mary Mitchell, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist, described as "an unfiltered look at how the sausage is made in Illinois"

Illinois, of course, is the state that gave us President Obama. It is where he cut his teeth as a community organiser and where he first began to ascend the greasy pole of politics by taking his seat in the state senate.

At issue in the Blago trial is whether the then governor was trying to sell the United States Senate seat that Obama ascended to in 2004 after his initial Republican opponent imploded.

Blago had the power to appoint a new Senator when the seat was vacated because of Obama's presidential election victory in November 2008. Clearly, he thought the seat was a valuable prize.

"I got this thing and it's f------ golden and I'm not just giving it up for f------ nothing," he said in a conversation recorded by a federal wiretap. Blago's instinct was that Obama – who he mockingly described as "this historic, f------ demi-god" – would be willing to pay to have his preferred choice be duly appointed.

That choice, the trial has confirmed, was Valerie Jarrett, who now rejoices in the title of senior White House adviser and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.

Her qualification to be a Senator? Jarrett had worked for Mayor Richard Daley and chaired the Chicago Transit Board. She had been a successful businesswoman in Chicago. But she had never held elected office and her name would not even have been mentioned had it not been for her closeness to the President-elect.

Jarrett was a long-time personal friend of Obama and his wife Michelle and that seemed to be qualification enough for the man about to enter the White House.

Tom Balanoff, president of the Service Employees International Union's powerful Local 1 branch, took on the role as "emissary" for Jarrett, who initially wanted the Senate seat, and testified that Obama telephoned him personally to speak about it.

Next, Obama's incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel spoke to John Wyma, a lobbyist, who then telephoned Blago's right-hand man John Harris to communicate that "the president-elect would be very pleased if you appointed Valerie and he would be, uh, thankful and appreciative".

Blago's problem seems to have been that he wanted something a little bit more concrete than appreciation. To be precise, his response was: "F--- them."

The gratitude of a President, however, is no small thing and who knows what favour Blago might have found coming his way in due course had he duly appointed Jarrett.

That, of course, is how Chicago politics works – mutual back-scratching, a nudge and a wink. Blago's problem, if the allegations prove to be founded, is that he took a much cruder and more literal approach to such matters.

It has also become clear from the trial that Obama wanted to make sure that Emil Jones, then President of the Illinois State Senate and the man Obama referred to as his "political godfather", out of the seat.

The former sewer inspector had taken Obama under his wing when he was a callow state senator but he had apparently now outlived his usefulness. Perhaps Obama did not want such a reminder of his past in Washington.

Team Obama soon concluded that Blago was out of control and that the way he was dealing with the Senate vacancy could be extremely damaging to the President if he was too closely associated with it. So they pulled back and Jarrett took her White House job instead.

Quite why the President who promised hope, change and transparency thought it proper to have been trying to ease his friend into his old Senate seat just days after he had won the White House has not been answered.

There is no suggestion that what Obama was doing was anything illegal, improper or even out of the ordinary, at least in Illinois. He was simply engaging in politics as usual. Unfortunately, politics as usual is what Candidate Obama promised to bring to an end.

SOURCE

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Unprecedented Arrogance

David Limbaugh

The Obama administration grows more arrogant, cavalier and fundamentally dishonest every day. Just in the past few days, we've seen a number of troubling examples. Frankly, sometimes it's hard to keep up.

In a speech in Wisconsin, Obama was bragging about how wonderful the terrible economy is. You'll recall that during both of President George W. Bush's terms, Democrats, including Obama, castigated him for destroying the economy, despite the existence of empirically verifiable robust growth during some seven of those eight years.

Now that Obama has been in office for a year and a half and his economy is failing by all objective measures, he and his Democrats demand, once again, that we ignore the empirical evidence in front of our faces and bow down to them in reverent gratitude for ensuring that things are not worse than they are.

Everyone knows Obama promised -- he was hardly tentative about his prediction -- that if the nation followed him over the cliff with his harebrained "stimulus" scheme, unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. When unemployment soared above 10 percent, he insisted we be patient to allow his plan to work. Now that it stubbornly remains in the high 9s, he tells us that if he hadn't implemented his stimulus bill, the economy would be much worse (12 or 13 or 15 percent), so we not only are forbidden from criticizing him for this disaster but also must genuflect because only three of the four wheels of the economy are teetering over the edge of the cliff.

He said, "There may be some roads that not only were repaired but also were ... linked up to create a new industrial park that would facilitate long-term economic development beyond this immediate crisis."

Can you imagine the reaction of the liberal media had a Republican president uttered such gibberish? There "may be some roads"? How's that for a non-statement? That were linked up to a new industrial park to facilitate long-term growth? How about some facts here, Mr. Intellectual? Then again, how can you blame him for citing nebulous "facts" and failed economic theory when neither the real facts nor the economic evidence substantiates his claims.

He also said that every economist who's looked at it has said that the recovery did its job. Would someone please get this man a link to The Heritage Foundation's website or any other credible conservative think tank or economist? Time and time again, Heritage scholars have not only argued but also demonstrated why Obama's economic policies don't work in theory and haven't worked in practice. As noted many times before, they have not helped avert a crisis, but have exacerbated already bleak conditions. Sure, all economists agree with him, just as all Americans agree with his socialistic policies.

Moving on, in the past few days, we've also heard from former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams, who has confirmed -- from the belly of the beast -- our worst suspicions about Obama and Eric Holder's Justice Department's dismissing a slam-dunk case for voter intimidation against New Black Panther Party members for racial reasons. This is an egregious trampling on the rule of law, an outrage that would subject any Republican president to charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, a scandal of the first order for which this administration isn't even bothering to develop "plausible deniability."

Next, we read about Obama's reaction to Sen. Lamar Alexander's reasonable suggestion that any energy discussion between the president and a "bipartisan" group of senators should include a focus on the oil spill and BP. Obama said, "That's just your talking point," and flat-out refused to discuss the subject. Is he king or what?

Finally, we've also witnessed this week another outburst from that paragon of smugness, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, whom I criticized earlier for mocking members of the press corps for their legitimate questions in lieu of attempting to answer them in good faith.

This time, this little smarmy nerd-thug mocked Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona for claiming Obama told him in a private meeting he would not secure our borders because it would disincentivize Republicans from supporting his effort to pass "comprehensive immigration reform" (read: amnesty). Gibbs accused Kyl of changing his story and basically arguing with himself on the matter, even though Kyl has not retreated an iota from the only relevant assertion: that Obama made the statement in question. Watch the video in which Gibbs clearly intends to create the false impression Kyl had vacillated on his charge, and tell me with a straight face we're not dealing with an entirely unprecedented level of arrogance in this White House.

SOURCE

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BrookesNews Update

Obamanomics hits a reef : Borrowing and taxation amount to a transfer of purchasing power. We measure aggregate spending in terms of dollars. How in heavens name does this process increase the quantity of dollars? What we get is not an increase in demand but a change in the composition of demand, the pattern of spending. Aggregate spending must remain unchanged
Did outsourcing hollow out the US economy? : The effect of an overvalued currency is to make imports cheap relative to domestic goods and services. The longer the longer the currency remains overvalued the greater will be the distortions, i.e., malinvestments. This is where an apparent hollowing out process could possibly make its appearance
A leftwing intellectual spews anti-market nonsense : The left's rage against capitalism is relentless. What is striking about these intellectuals is their total ignorance of how markets actually work and of the true history of capitalism. Another striking feature is their utter contempt for the truth
Paul Krugman's depressing krugnorance : A devastating critique of Paul Krugman's economics and his absurd belief that printing money cures recessions. He finds it impossible to entertain the thought that printing money may actually be the cause of booms and busts
Fidel's Castro's terrorist trade : Castro Incorporated has three lines of business: drugs, people smuggling and terrorism. So why isn't the media exposing this vicious political gangster? Because as he himself said: 'I belong to a species which is above arrest', ie, I'm a leftist. Castro's secret police are now working with Mexican drug lords and smuggling terrorists across the border
A Dog in the Manger Presidency: Obama's character described 2,500 years ago by Aesop : If you run a campaign on the argument you are an unprecedented natural-born leader, despite utter inexperience — can you afford to let anyone else outshine you? The notion that an exemplar, par excellence, will fall full-born, like Athena from the head of Zeus is appealing. This concept is seductive probably for the same reason Jesus has unmitigated attraction to this day
Lenin Lives! But will he get his own spot on Larry King? : The Larry King interview with Oliver Stone and Jesse Ventura displayed a carefully crafted use of disinformation and half truths which have been the hallmark of Communist propaganda within the United States since Lenin unleashed his campaign against America not long after the Bolshevik revolution

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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Poland: A Shot of Free Market Capitalism Proves the Best Remedy

People emigrating TO Poland for job opportunities? Dell Computer shifting production to Poland? Positive GDP growth in 2009 -- at the height of a worldwide recession and financial crisis?

For most of the world, 2009 was a year to forget. Not for Poland. It was the only country in the European Union not to fall into a recession during the global economic crisis. Poland's GDP increased in 2009: no other European country was above water. By comparison, GDP fell in the US (-2.4%), in Germany (-5%), in the United Kingdom (-4.3%), in Italy (-6.5%). . . . well, you get the picture. The year 2010 promises to be similarly outstanding for Poland as it is expected to realize the fastest growth in Europe.

During this period, Poland's unemployment rate edged up only slightly, as did its budget deficit and total government debt. In the meantime, the US unemployment rate nearly doubled, while its government racked up record deficits and debt as far as the eye can see.

Why was Poland's experience different?

Simple. Poland's leaders, in particular, Finance Minister Rostowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, have an unyielding belief in the free markets, having been trained in Austrian economics as espoused by Mises and Hayek, a school of economic theory barely taught at most US universities and not ever mentioned at the high school level. And, therefore, it is unfortunately a school of thought completely foreign to the current U.S. Administration and so many in its government.

So what was their spot-on prescription to the global economic crisis?

When the financial crisis struck in September 2008, Poland's government immediately held emergency meetings. First, they suspended all new planned regulations. This worked so well that Poland is now in the midst of a multi-year program of deregulation that has been a boon for small businesses and entrepreneurs, somewhat similar to the experience of the US in the 1980s.

Next they cut taxes. The three-tiered income tax rate of 19%, 30%, and 40%, was reduced to two tiers: 18% and 32%. And they continued to privatize industry. In October 2009, an IPO for the state-owned power utility, Polska Grupa Energetyczna, raised over two billion dollars which the government has used to fund its budget and keep taxes in check.

What has the United States done in response to the economic crisis?

We greatly increased regulations and government control over our health care, automobile, mortgage, financial, energy, and insurance industries. We increased government spending to record levels and are planning tax increases to pay for stimulus packages and health reform.

It is not surprising that our results have been different.

QUESTION: Is it possible to learn from the lessons of Poland if the media doesn't report it, our leaders do not inform themselves of it, AND IT IS NOT TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS?

Poland is transforming itself into a laissez-faire paradise. Free markets and the Austrian economic theories of Mises and Hayek have wide support in the government and the general population. They are intimately familiar with the hazards of central economic planning and are understandably reluctant to travel that road again.

SOURCE

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"Obama is a menace to Israel, to Western Europe, . . . and to the whole of the Western World."

An interview at the New English Review with Dr. Richard L. Rubinstein, Yale fellow, "Distinguished Professor of the Year", and Harvard Ph.D.

"Obama is really a revolutionary. That doesn't mean he's looking to stir up violent trouble but I believe he is trying to transform both the American political system and economic system and America's relationship to the world. I also believe that he has decided that America must make its peace with Iran. I believe that he is a man who is highly intelligent, knows what he's doing and in spite of the fact that he has attracted liberal Jewish supporters, some with great wealth. His intention is to correct the historical mistake of the creation of the state of Israel.

Given Obama's background, the fact that his family was, on his father's side was Muslim, that his sister is a Muslim, that his half brother is a Muslim, there is no doubt that he heard a great deal about Islam and Israel from them before he took office and though he was not candid about it at first, he has by his decisions and his symbolic actions made it clear where his sympathies are.

... In addition to that, he has a hostility towards Western Europe, especially to England as characterized by the symbolic action of returning the bust of Winston Churchill to the English, one of his first acts.

And he has made some interesting symbolic moves with, for example, bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia since King Abdullah is the keeper of the two holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, one wonders why he did this.

But when a head of state, which is what Obama is, makes a symbolic statement like that you know he is trying to convey a message, and it’s not one which we in western civilization are willing to accept.

Finally, he has talked of a nuclear-free Middle East and a nuclear-free world, and what he intends to do, of course, if he can, is to disarm Israel’s great equalizer. It has been able to defend itself against the far more numerous Arabs by virtue of the fact that it has nuclear weapons and Obama will, and he’s indicated he will apply every pressure to Israel to take that equalizer away from them.

So the way I see it, is that this man is a menace to Israel, to Western Europe, and I might add that Western Europe is beginning to have sanctions against Iran that are far greater and more effective than anything Obama was willing to tolerate, and to the whole of the Western World. He aims for a radical transformation, he is the most radical president that America has ever had!"

SOURCE

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Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in American History

In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:

Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

Second Wave: Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The “Special Needs Kids Tax” This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Sad to see that Wendy McElroy's sites are "down" -- apparently due to a DDOS attack. Both http://www.wendymcelroy.com and http://www.ifeminists.com/ are affected. She is a fierce libertarian so some Leftists must have decided that she is to be silenced. She is a old campaigner, however, so will survive. She appears on other sites at times -- Liberty & Power and Lew Rockwell, for instance -- so her thoughts will still be circulated. I would advise her to set up a blogspot blog. Attacking a blogspot blog means you are attacking Google and they are big boys.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, Friday, July 02, 2010: "The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20. Just 29% believe the president’s economic stimulus package has helped the economy while 43% believe it has hurt. Voters say that decisions made by business owners following their own self-interest will create more jobs than decisions made by government officials."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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ObamaCare is Bad for Business

ObamaCare will cost our nation more than $1 trillion. However, as Obama’s health care plan begins to unfold, it is clear it is going to cost our nation more than just red ink. If the mandates and taxes in ObamaCare are left as is, it will cost America growth, innovation and jobs.

Victoria Braden and her team of experts work with small businesses as a human relations/employee benefits consulting firm. She is the CEO and President of Braden Benefit Strategies in Georgia. Braden is well versed in what is to come for her clients as they face benefit changes beginning Jan. 1, 2011 — when new mandates of ObamaCare kick in.

Tucked inside the 2,000-page law are new mandates that will affect business owners. ObamaCare has many of these businesses worried, confused and afraid. Some of her clients have already closed their doors for good. “They are afraid,” Braden says. “They are not sure what’s coming. They hear all these things and they want to know what’s happening.”

Most of Braden’s clients are companies with 300 or fewer employees. Many of the new regulations in ObamaCare affect them. She is taking the changes one year at a time. “I am just taking it one step at a time. My clients are doing all they can to survive now,” she says.

With many of the new taxes and mandates in ObamaCare being rather vague, it will be hard to know what kind of damage they will do to small businesses until they are enforced.

Braden says one big change in 2011 that will hit small businesses hard is employers will be forced to give the same benefits to everyone in the company. She gave this example: If a restaurant owner covers 90 percent of the health care costs for his managers, but only 50 percent of the costs for the rest of his staff, he will be forced to cover everyone at 90 percent or 50 percent. Every employee has to receive the same coverage and their W2 forms next year have to reflect how much their employer contributed to their health care plan.

“I’ve had several companies say that they are just going to drop employee’s insurance altogether because they can’t afford it,” Braden says. The problem is, ObamaCare coverage doesn’t kick in until 2014. Individuals who need health insurance and can’t get covered elsewhere have to be uninsured for at least six months before they can apply to receive the high-risk pool insurance coverage, which provides a buffer for the uninsured until ObamaCare coverage starts. However, even the high-risk pool insurance is underfunded and won’t cover everyone that needs insurance, including people with pre-existing conditions.

Regardless, starting in 2011, employers have to obey this mandate, which includes all full-time employees defined as those who work 30 hours or more.

“As a business owner, when you can’t make payroll, yours is the first to go,” Braden says. “We will see a whole bunch of 29-hour employees — especially in the fast food and retail environments — and an increase in seasonal workers.”

There are many more taxes and mandates that are harmful to the small business environment.
“Small business owners are on the front lines,” says Chief Economist Raymond Keating of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council). “They are skeptical and they should be that way.”

Does any part of ObamaCare help small business owners?

ObamaCare does offer a small business tax credit. But don’t be deceived. It is touted as a good and helpful tool for small businesses, but is rendered useless for many of them. There are a series of four tests a business has to go through before they can even qualify for a tax credit. It comes down to the size of your business —t he amount of health care costs you pay per employee and how many employees you have.

Dan Danner, president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), comments on this tax credit in a Wall Street Journal article.

“The credit, which is only available for a maximum of six years, puts small business owners through a series of complicated ‘tests’ to determine if they qualify and how much they will receive. Fewer than one-third of small businesses even pass the first three (of four) tests to qualify… More importantly, the credit is temporary, but health-care cost increases are permanent. When the credit ends, small businesses will be left paying full price.”

This doesn’t provide much incentive for a small business who receives a tax credit for only two years to increase its capital and hire new employees when it knows the growth will be short lived.

“ObamaCare is all negative for the small business economy,” says Keating. “Two-thirds of new jobs every year are created by small businesses.”

In this economy, there is nothing needed more than new jobs. The taxes and mandates in ObamaCare are on their way to further damaging our economy and job market.

Many of the mandates in ObamaCare are folded into the health care system over time.
One such mandates is an insurance fee. Overall it is an $8 billion tax — that escalates to $14.3 billion by 2018. This is a tax on insurance companies based on their market share with small businesses paying the bulk of the tax. This law excludes self-insured plans — plans most big businesses and labor unions offer. Therefore this tax will be passed onto plans that a majority of small businesses and individuals buy.

“This is just another tax on small businesses,” Braden says. With so much uncertainty of what 2011 holds for small businesses in regards to ObamaCare, she isn’t even telling her clients about this mandate yet — hoping things will change before it is enforced.

Why is this Administration killing the very engine that drives America?

“I feel like yelling, STOP!” Keating says. “So much damage has been done we need to go back and undo what’s been done. Stop the madness.”

Braden is equally as frustrated. “There are some really good ways to get out of it,” she says about the current situation of the economy and the negative effects of ObamaCare. “There are some great minds out there if we listened. They could figure it out if they’d get out of Washington and listen to the people,” she goes on to say about the leaders of our nation.

“Obama gives lip service to job creation, but his policies are destroying the American dream and the jobs created by small businesses,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG).

Entrepreneurs are smart. Those small businesses waiting to see what will happen when more ObamaCare mandates go into effect will adjust to the changes — even if that means less growth and more Americans unemployed and unable to support their families. That would indeed be a new face of America — and not a pretty one.

SOURCE

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An email to Ms. Marlan S. Maralit, Organizing Department, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees

From economist Don Boudreaux

Thanks for your mass e-mail this morning inviting me to recommend students for AFSCME’s Alternative Union Break: Summer Session. I understand that students who attend this four-day program are taught how to “fight for a better country,” and to promote “social and economic justice,” by becoming union organizers.

Alas, I know no student who’d be interested in your program. The young men and women who study economics at George Mason University learn, above all, to think rather than to emote. So our students are rightly suspicious of vague terms such as “social and economic justice.”

Our students learn also that an economy most beneficial to the poorest amongst us is one that is free and competitive – an economy governed by the laws of property, contract, and tort instead of by the arbitrary government diktats that are the fetish of labor unions.

Our students understand that widespread prosperity comes only from entrepreneurial creativity, market-driven investment, risk-taking, and hard work – all in response to the demands of consumers free to spend their money as they choose. Our students know that granting monopoly privileges to politically boisterous groups such as yours reduces, rather than produces, prosperity.

Our students understand that entrepreneurs and firms in market economies gain, not by taking wealth from others, but only by creating wealth and sharing that creation with others on terms that are mutually and voluntarily agreed to.

Oh, here’s one more important fact that our students understand: labor unions routinely promote injustice by lobbying for regulations (such as minimum-wage legislation and the Davis-Bacon Act) that price low-skilled workers out of jobs; by endorsing protectionist policies that deny consumers opportunities to get the most value for their dollars; and by supporting many bailouts and other forms of corporate welfare.

So I invite you to recommend to the young people who go through your program that they attend some of the many programs we have at GMU Economics (and affiliated organizations such as the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center) in order to learn how they can truly best promote a society that is prosperous and peaceful.

SOURCE

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Young smart-ass Leftist journalist takes a tumble

Blatant bias is still sometimes unacceptable to major news outlets

The resignation of Dave Weigel from The Washington Post’s high-profile blog roll sent a shock wave through the ranks of the DC blogworld. But perhaps his downfall, in so short a time, wasn’t that surprising.

Many of us who have followed Mr. Weigel’s reported posts about conservatives and the Tea Party movement found ourselves buffeted by his often blunt, boyish observations on Twitter. In many ways, he crossed the line of what is considered objective journalism but, in many ways, the Post encouraged opinion and attitude from its flock of young bloggers.

The whole episode seems to point out that while established media organizations want to compete in the blogosphere, they still don’t know quite how to deal with the combination of voice and politics that fuels online debate.

Back when he was writing for The Washington Independent, Mr. Weigel was one of the few bloggers covering the first Tea Party convention step-by-step. He followed real people attending the conference, mining their visions and their reasons for showing up long before Sarah Palin took the stage at the end of the convention.

He was, at that point, someone to watch, whose diligent reporting brought him wider attention, including at the Post. And his straight-laced coverage also seemed to fill a huge gap for the mainstream media — a young engaged reporter who could cover the conservative movement, thus helping offset the criticism of the media as a bastion of the old left.

But in the 24/7 online world, every word is mined for bias — from the right, from the left and everything in between. Watchdogs on the right looked to Mr. Weigel’s intemperate bursts on Twitter and elsewhere for clues to his politics. But it was his acerbic comments on Journolist — the off-the-record water cooler for young, mainly left-leaning writers created by Ezra Klein, another Post blogger — that got him in trouble.

SOURCE

In his public writing he did not appear overly biased but on Journolist, the "private" listserv for Leftist journalists, he was scatological. When Rush Limbaugh went to the hospital with chest pain, Weigel said, “I hope he fails.” Matt Drudge is an “amoral shut-in” who should “set himself on fire.” Opponents are referred to as expletives

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ELSEWHERE

Virginia, feds square off over ObamaCare: "The state of Virginia and the [US federal] government were pitched in a legal battle in a federal courtroom on Thursday that could lead to the undoing of the massive healthcare reform [sic] law passed three months ago. Judge Henry Hudson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Richmond heard the federal government’s arguments to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Virginia that contends the healthcare law’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance is unconstitutional. … While the judge will only decide if the suit can proceed — a decision Hudson said he would render within 30 days — the court heard the first airing of arguments that could make their way to the Supreme Court as some states resist implementing the law.”

Subsidies and bailouts: The Department of Prolonged Childhood: "Adults understand that they must pay a price for the mistakes they make. Children, on the other hand, want constantly to be bailed out … and deserve to be … by their parents. Here’s the mistake you politicians make … We are not a nation of children, and you are not our parents. Turning us all into weak dependent children may be good for the business of politics, but its bad for a culture, and completely unworthy of a country that once referred to itself as the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Prison sentencing reform and the cost of drug prohibition: "A sizeable percentage of those incarcerated in England and Wales are drug offenders; a 2009 report by the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London revealed that 15.5% of those incarcerated are convicted on such charges. At more than £35,000 per inmate year, the cost of simply holding these offenders in prison costs taxpayers nearly £500 million per year. This cost, along with those associated with enforcement of drug laws, should be examined seriously as the government proceeds with its review. The Adam Smith Institute has advocated a more sensible policy, involving the medicalisation of addictive and damaging drugs, and the legalisation of recreational drugs.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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"My Brain Made Me Do It"

I am not as bothered by this as the blogger below. The logical outcome from biological determinism is that criminals have to be locked up permanently, which would be no bad thing -- JR

It is always rewarding, and sometimes remarkably difficult, to have a very smart patient in Psychoanalysis. Some patients have a talent for introspection and reflection; others use their intellectual abilities to set up all sorts of impediments to the treatment with an unconscious goal of defeating the Analyst and insuring that they do not change. Complex and sophisticated rationalizations comprise some of the most intractable defenses. From time to time a more simple defense appears, which by virtue of its simplicity, allows the patient to refute all interpretative efforts and deny responsibility for their difficulties. Among such simplistic rationalizations is the cry, of a particular behavior, "my brain made me do it." Among other things, this defense has the virtue of being (apparently) supported by modern neuroscience and the legal profession, which takes every opportunity to find ways to mitigate the responsibility for misbehavior of their clients.

This morning, NPR discussed the results of MRI scans of the brains of criminals and how such scans may be changing our conception of guilt and innocence in the courtroom:

A Psychopath's Brain In The Courtroom

Kent Kiehl has studied hundreds of psychopaths. Kiehl is one of the world's leading investigators of psychopathy and a professor at the University of New Mexico. He says he can often see it in their eyes: There's an intensity in their stare, as if they're trying to pick up signals on how to respond. But the eyes are not an element of psychopathy, just a clue.

Officially, Kiehl scores their pathology on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which measures traits such as the inability to feel empathy or remorse, pathological lying, or impulsivity.

"The scores range from zero to 40," Kiehl explains in his sunny office overlooking a golf course. "The average person in the community, a male, will score about 4 or 5. Your average inmate will score about 22. An individual with psychopathy is typically described as 30 or above. Brian scored 38.5 basically. He was in the 99th percentile."

"Brian" is Brian Dugan, a man who is serving two life sentences for rape and murder in Chicago. Last July, Dugan pleaded guilty to raping and murdering 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in 1983, and he was put on trial to determine whether he should be executed. Kiehl was hired by the defense to do a psychiatric evaluation.

I don't think I am spoiling the story to mention that Psychopaths show different patterns on fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) of their brains than normal people do:

For ethical reasons, Kiehl could not allow me to watch an inmate's brain being scanned, so he asked his researchers to demonstrate.

After a few minutes of preparation, researcher Kevin Bache settles into the brain scanner, where he can look up and see a screen. On the screen flashes three types of pictures. One kind depicts a moral violation: He sees several hooded Klansmen setting a cross on fire. Another type is emotional but morally ambiguous: a car that is on fire but you don't know why. Another type of photo is neutral: for example, students standing around a Bunsen burner.

The subjects rate whether the picture is a moral violation on a scale of 1 to 5. Kiehl says most psychopaths do not differ from normal subjects in the way they rate the photos: Both psychopaths and the average person rank the KKK with a burning cross as a moral violation. But there's a key difference: Psychopaths' brains behave differently from that of a nonpsychopathic person. When a normal person sees a morally objectionable photo, his limbic system lights up. This is what Kiehl calls the "emotional circuit," involving the orbital cortex above the eyes and the amygdala deep in the brain. But Kiehl says when psychopaths like Dugan see the KKK picture, their emotional circuit does not engage in the same way.

Kiehl's response then encapsulates an argument that has already begun to be made in the Ivory Towers of Harvard and Yale Law Schools:

"We have a lot of data that shows psychopaths do tend to process this information differently," Kiehl says. "And Brian looked like he was processing it like the other individuals we've studied with psychopathy."

Kiehl says the emotional circuit may be what stops a person from breaking into that house or killing that girl. But in psychopaths like Dugan, the brakes don't work. Kiehl says psychopaths are a little like people with very low IQs who are not fully responsible for their actions. The courts treat people with low IQs differently. For example, they can't get the death penalty.

"What if I told you that a psychopath has an emotional IQ that's like a 5-year-old?" Kiehl asks. "Well, if that was the case, we'd make the same argument for individuals with low emotional IQ - that maybe they're not as deserving of punishment, not as deserving of culpability, etc."

And that's exactly what Dugan's lawyers argued at trial last November. Attorney Steven Greenberg said that Dugan was not criminally insane. He knew right from wrong. But he was incapable of making the right choices.

"Someone shouldn't be executed for a condition that they were born with, because it's not their fault," Greenberg says. "The crime is their fault, and he wasn't saying it wasn't his fault, and he wasn't saying, give [me] a free pass. But he was saying, don't kill me because it's not my fault that I was born this way."

[I won't even bother pointing out that brain structure does not predict behavior in any individual case. There are people who have "psychopathic brain scans" who have never been involved in criminal behavior. There are a multitude of criminals who have "normal" brain scans. In reality, low IQ is highly correlated with criminality, though most people with low IQ's are not criminals. Of course, many of the same behavioral scientists who insist that Psychopathy is hard wired and therefor mitigates or excuses criminal behavior will also argue there is no such thing as a meaningful neurological substrate for IQ.]

This is an argument that is without end. If you believe in free will and responsibility then we must all accept responsibility for our actions. The only reasonable exception should be the McNaughton Defense, where the perpetrator literally does not appreciate the difference between right and wrong. Lenny, in Mice and Men, would have to be judged innocent under this standard.

If all behavior is not just psychically determined but structurally determined, then no one is responsible for anything. The BP executives could no more avoid taking short cuts in the Gulf and their Regulators could no more avoid neglecting their duties than poor "Brian" could avoid raping and killing that 10 year old child. That way lies nihilism. At the same time, while smart lawyers work out ways to free people like Brian from the consequences of their actions, they are also setting the table for a form of institutionalized neurologically based totalitarianism.

Once we have dispensed with free will and responsibility, then those who have "incorrect" or "dangerous" brain structures can only be locked up or otherwise removed from the body politic. We do not know how to "fix" such brain structures (and such fixes are a long way off, perhaps an infinite distance off, considering the implications of complexity involved) and once we accept that no one can ever help doing what their brain "makes" them do, then the only way to protect a functioning society is to remove those whose brains are inimical to the demands of those who by virtue of their "correct" brain structures have no choice but to rule over the rest of us who are not so lucky. A society based on "Neurological Determinism" will truly be mindless.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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Kagan's Top Ten -- which rather speak for themselves

Here are the top ten quotes from Solicitor General Elena Kagan as she goes into her fourth day of Senate hearings.

1. "Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant." — Responding to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who asked Kagan was she was doing on Christmas Day of last year, when a an terrorist was caught trying to blow up a plane.

2. "Lets just throw that piece of work in the trash, why don't we?" she said. "That's before I went to law school, and didn't understand much about the way judges should work." — Speaking about her thesis to the Judiciary Committee, which defended both judicial activism and bemoaned the demise of the Communist Party in the United States.

3. "The 'disaster' would be if the statement did not accurately reflect all of what ACOG thought." — Trying to wiggle out of her previous reflection that the it would be a “disaster” if the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists could not identify any circumstances under which that partial-birth abortion “would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”

4. “Senator, the military at all times during my deanship had full and good access.”— Speaking on her decision to exclude military recruiters from availing themselves of Harvard’s career services office, and instead force them to work through a student group with limited access to the student body.

5. A "loosey-goosey style of interpretation in which anything goes." — Describing her opinion of a “living” Constitution.

6. “A vapid and hollow charade,” serving “little educative function, except perhaps to reinforce lessons of cynicism that citizens often glean from government.” — From 1995 Law Review article, expressing her opinions of Supreme Court hearings. Ironically, she ensured her very own hearings embodied that sentiment perfectly.

7. "Sounds like a dumb law. But I think that the question of whether it’s a dumb law is different from whether the question of whether it’s constitutional and I think that courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless just because they’re senseless." — Responding to a question from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who asked Kagan if she thought a bill that required Americans to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day would violate the Commerce Clause.

8. “My political views are generally progressive.” — Responding to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who brought up the fact that a former chief counsel to President Obama characterized Kagan as "largely a progressive in the mold of Obama himself."

9. “I’m not quite sure how I would characterize my politics.” Responding to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)

10. “I wish you wouldn’t [ask].” Responding to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, (D-Minn.), who jokingly asked Kagan to give her opinion on the "the vampire versus the werewolf" in the television series Twilight. Klobuchar’s teenage daughter had seen the midnight showing on the morning before the hearings.

SOURCE

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VA hospital may have infected 1,800 veterans with HIV

Aint that govt. healthcare wonderful? Are you looking forward to it? It's coming your way! Disasters like this are routine in Britain. See any day's postings on EYE ON BRITAIN

A Missouri VA hospital is under fire because it may have exposed more than 1,800 veterans to life-threatening diseases such as hepatitis and HIV.

John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis has recently mailed letters to 1,812 veterans telling them they could contract hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) after visiting the medical center for dental work, said Rep. Russ Carnahan.

Carnahan said Tuesday he is calling for a investigation into the issue and has sent a letter to President Obama about it.

"This is absolutely unacceptable," said Carnahan, a Democrat from Missouri. "No veteran who has served and risked their life for this great nation should have to worry about their personal safety when receiving much needed healthcare services from a Veterans Administration hospital."

The issue stems from a failure to clean dental instruments properly, the hospital told CNN affiliate KSDK. Dr. Gina Michael, the association chief of staff at the hospital, told the affiliate that some dental technicians broke protocol by handwashing tools before putting them in cleaning machines. The instruments were supposed to only be put in the cleaning machines, Michael said.

The handwashing started in February 2009 and went on until March of this year, the hospital told KSDK.

The hospital has set up a special clinic and education centers to help patients who may have been infected. However, Carnahan said he feels more should be done and those responsible should be disciplined. "I can only imagine the horror and anger our veterans must be feeling after receiving this letter," Carnahan said. "They have every right to be angry. So am I."

This is not the first time this year a hospital has been in hot water for not following proper procedures.

SOURCE

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Medical-Homes Model Pushed By Health Bill Is Still Unproven

ObamaCare contains incentives for "patient-centered medical homes," an HMO-like model without most of the restrictions. Yet recent evidence suggests their effectiveness is mixed at best.

A medical home emphasizes teamwork among physicians. Primary care doctors coordinate patient care among specialists, but they don't act as gatekeepers. Patients have relatively unrestricted access to care.....

"Whether it is a good idea or not, the question is, is there any evidence that it works?" asked Dr. Richard "Buz" Cooper, a professor of medicine and senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. "Before we rush headlong into a new care model, with too few physicians to do it, we'd better look carefully at what has occurred elsewhere and think about how we might build homes for all of our citizens."

Cooper points to recent articles in the Annals of Family Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. The AFM article examined several U.S. demonstration projects and found that medical homes were "associated with small improvements in condition-specific quality of care but not patient experience. (Medical home) models that call for practice change without altering the broader delivery system may not achieve their intended results, at least in the short term."

The JAMA article was more discouraging, studying the experience of Ontario, Canada, where about 10,000 primary care physicians and 9 million residents joined medical homes from 2002 to 2010. The study found the incentives encouraged doctors to see healthier patients and avoid the sick. "Major cities with urban poor and recent immigrants were much less likely to be served by primary care physicians" in a medical home, the article said.

More HERE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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Problems with Elena Kagan

I think the US Constitution, and its sources in European thought, still constitute the most enlightened political philosophy to date. The reason is simple: Human beings have not changed one little bit in the last few centuries.

The popular cant of the media today is that we're now all different and (needless to say) that we are better than people used to be. It's not true.

That means we are just as vulnerable to power-hungry maniacs as Europe was in the face of Napoleon, the various Kaisers, the new Czars in the USSR, Hitler, and all the rest. Human beings are all vulnerable.

I have never felt this more than I do today. Iran now has enough enriched uranium for two nuclear weapons. For the last three decades they have taught a suicide ideology to millions of their people, almost exactly like the Bushido philosophy of Imperial Japan. But no suicidal empire before this ever had nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Domestically we are seeing astonishing historical amnesia, as if people really believe that all the horrors of human history are in the past. We've somehow gone beyond all that. That is a self-serving fantasy.

The current administration is the greatest example of historical amnesia in American history. I'm afraid that its current Supreme Court Nominee, Prof. Elena Kagan, is a supreme example of historical amnesia in her own life. It's sad, especially because she is Jewish by heritage and a woman, who should understand in her very bones what oppression is all about. She does not.

As Dean of Harvard Law School Dr. Kagan was part of the Harvard establishment that expelled the President of Harvard for making a public slip of the tongue. Dr. Larry Summers is currently an economics star in this administration. He is a lifelong liberal. But he was unceremoniously tossed out as President of Harvard for saying the wrong thing.

Harvard and American academia have fallen victim to a new anti-freedom ideology. Even in the 19th century, when Harvard was a religious institution, there was never a case where the president was unceremoniously tossed into the street for saying the wrong thing. This is such a profound violation of free speech and academic values that if you are not shocked by it, you've simply lost track of constitutional values.

Dr. Kagan has supported book banning by the government. She has endorsed and enforced speech codes on campus. She has written extensive legalistic but anti-constitutional arguments for the White House in the Clinton Administration.

If she becomes a Supreme Court justice she will therefore almost certainly support government-imposed censorship. Remember that if you have a Gmail account, Google reads every word you type in, to match to its giant dictionary. In the United Kingdom the police have complete access to all internet traffic. The technology of censorship is here. All we have are legal protections, which are fragile enough.

For all these reasons I am opposed to Dr. Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Above comments received by email from Bernard Baars [baars@gmail.com]. He offers a petition for you to sign here

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Ditherer-in-chief makes a decision on international assistance...

And it only took him two months, one week and three days to do it!

The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The State Department said in a statement Tuesday that the U.S. is working out the particulars of the help that's been accepted.

The identities of all 12 countries and international organizations were not immediately announced. One country was cited in the State Department statement -- Japan, which is providing two high-speed skimmers and fire containment boom.

More than 30 countries and international organizations have offered to help with the spill. The State Department hasn't indicated why some offers have been accepted and others have not.

You'd think that accepting assistance would be a skill gleaned from all those years of community organizing. You'd be wrong.

SOURCE

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Counting Foreigners in the U.S. Census

It in effect gives votes to illegals

By Jon Hall

The number of seats in the U.S. House is set at 435. In Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), the Court required that those 435 seats represent congressional districts approximately equal in population. So the inclusion of foreigners in the U.S. census distorts representation in Congress: After the 1990 census Montana lost a congressional seat, and after the 2000 census California gained six congressional seats. This intolerable state of affairs exists because illegal aliens are counted in the census. But there are movements afoot to change the way the census is done. (Read the section on apportionment here.)

According to John S. Baker, a constitutional law professor writing in The Wall Street Journal, the way we're doing the census is unconstitutional:

Of course, other states lose out when noncitizens are counted for reapportionment. According to projections of the 2010 Census by Election Data Services, states certain to lose one seat in the 2010 reapportionment are Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania; states likely (though not certain) to lose a seat are Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio could lose a second seat. But under a proper census enumeration that excluded illegal residents, some of the states projected to lose a representative ... would not do so.

The census has drifted far from its constitutional roots, and the 2010 enumeration will result in a malapportionment of Congress.

In the 1964 case of Wesberry v. Sanders, the Supreme Court said, "The House of Representatives ... was to represent the people as individuals and on a basis of complete equality for each voter." It ruled that Georgia had violated the equal-vote principle because House districts within the state did not contain roughly the same number of voting citizens. [Emphasis added.] ... The same principle is being violated now on a national basis because of our faulty census.

Since citizens (and legal aliens) are all on file with the feds and their numbers are already know, it would seem that the $14 billion we're spending on the 2010 census is entirely to enumerate illegal aliens. The feds are spending money they don't have to ascertain information they already do have -- except for illegal aliens. So the feds dispatch armies of unarmed census takers into the slums, barrios and seamy underworld of America to gather data from folks loath to divulge it, having a reasonable fear of deportation.

The 2010 census aggravates because it asks a bunch of new questions the feds shouldn't ask. The reason the central government still does the census the "old fashioned" way is because it serves the ends of career politicians:

The census is a jobs program; it tamps down the unemployment rate, albeit temporarily, making career politicians look less bad.

The census is used in handing out hundreds of billions in federal aid. This is paid for with money the feds must either borrow or print.

The census, when done the old fashioned way, can be easily corrupted. So allowing organizations like ACORN to conduct the census can be tempting. The Community Organizer in Chief even directed the Director of the Census Bureau to report directly to the White House rather than the Commerce Secretary.

The census is used to gerrymander. George Will writes: "After the 1990 Census determined that North Carolina was 22 percent black, the state's redistricting created a black-majority congressional district. ... Hence the creation of North Carolina's 12th District, which slithers 160 miles down Interstate 85. This was racial gerrymandering applauded by liberals."

It used to be that voters chose candidates, but now candidates choose voters. To create congressional districts likely to vote their way (such as North Carolina's 12th), career politicians need to know the voter's race, etc. Hence: those objectionable questions on the census. Question 8 even asks if one is Hispanic.

Like so much else in the federal government nowadays, the census is an exercise in abuse.

More HERE (See the original for links)

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Roundup from ICJS

British Methodists Prepare to Throw Israel Under the Bus
A Study in Hate
Ghost Zionism haunts the world
Leonard vs. Elvis: Who's our man?
French broadcast watchdog to pull Al-Aqsa off air
Random musings to ponder
Obama doctrine failing
West silent on Muslim atrocities
Flotilla sickness and the `progressive' mind
The perfidious UN
Israel and its liberal friends
The plain truth about Israel
Beware the words of a wolf dressed in sheikh's clothing
The media war on Israel
A huge win for Hamas and a blow to Israel
The Zionist entity: mad as a bag of cats
Erdogan and the decline of the Turks
Israel troops take over 'Rachel Corrie'
Those troublesome Jews
Does Gaza signal Turkey's defection
Israel's critical security needs
Grotesque theatre succeeded brilliantly
Ending Israel's losing streak
Time to get our act together
Predictable Israeli fiasco
Jenin on the high seas

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ELSEWHERE

Who says Americans cherish fairness?: "In a recent talk, responding to the Arizona immigration law, President Barack Obama stated that this act ‘threatens to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.’ I am not enough of a student of the Arizona law to pass judgment on it now but I am definitely skeptical about the claim that Americans as such cherish ‘basic notions of fairness.’ There is nothing in any basic American political document that mandates fairness across the land. Neither the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights nor the Constitution insists that Americans be fair. Good thing, since such a demand cannot be met.”

Obama’s crusade against profits: "You can never be sure when or why one industry or another will draw the attention of the Mr. Fixits of our federal government. Just imagine: There you are, Mr. or Ms. Businessperson, walking along, making money, minding your own business, and then wham: They pop up out of nowhere, wheeling around like a gun turret and fixing their gaze on you and your company, insisting that they’re going to make you fairer and more rational and fix problems you didn’t know you had. It must be terrifying.”

Abandon the “Ginsburg Rule” for Supreme Court candidates: "The Ginsburg Rule is closely tied to judicial independence. The argument runs something like this: It is unseemly for a person nominated to be a neutral arbiter to condition his or her appointment on a promise to rule a certain way. While elected policymakers should declare their views and predilections before asking the people to cast a ballot, judges are in a different category. Thus, the senators should never ask a nominee to divulge his or her views of matters that could be heard by the court. Before the judicial activism of the past half century, this might have passed the smell test. Today, the Supreme Court makes the ultimate decision on diverse matters such as affirmative action in awarding contracts or in school admissions, restrictions on abortion, the medicinal use of marijuana and capital punishment. The court has no claim to being an independent tribunal above the fray of politics and policymaking.”

Why Friedrich Hayek is making a comeback: "Hayek understood that the … free modern society is all about cooperation. We join with others to produce the goods and services we enjoy, all without top-down direction. The same is true in every sphere of activity that makes life meaningful — when we sing and when we dance, when we play and when we pray. Leaving us free to join with others as we see fit — in our work and in our play — is the road to true and lasting prosperity. Hayek gave us that map. … I don’t know if we’re on the road to serfdom, but wherever we’re headed, Hayek would certainly counsel us to turn around.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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)

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

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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