Nihilist Left brings progressives into disrepute
Comment from an Australian Leftist who still believes in something
LAST week the world learned of the death of a misogynistic, homophobic, racist mass murderer who supported a theocratic, neo-fascist ideology posing as a liberation movement. In Washington and at New York's September 11 Ground Zero, spontaneous crowds cheered in the streets upon the announcement of Osama bin Laden's long-overdue demise.
Most of the world's population, Muslim and non-Muslim, greeted the news in a more sober fashion. But the overwhelming majority must surely have agreed with the man who authorised bin Laden's death, US President Barack Obama: justice had been done.
To be sure, bin Laden was opposed to every tenet of modern progressive politics; secular democracy, representative government, a hatred of feudal or class-based inequity, equality of the sexes, anti-racism and the core values of the Enlightenment itself.
No self-respecting social democrat mourned his death. And yet, had one's daily reading habits been confined to sections of so-called "progressive" opinion, bin Laden's death was a matter of profound regret. The extra-judicial killing was a denial of due process, celebrity lawyer Geoffrey Robertson protested, oblivious to the impossibility of capturing or trying bin Laden. "[It's] hard to celebrate one more corpse," opined Jeff Sparrow, a devotee of the violent Bolshevik thug, Leon Trotsky, on ABC's The Drum. Not to be outdone, Crikey's Hunter S Thompson-wannabe, Guy Rundle, downplayed bin Laden's crimes claiming that: "Morally speaking, 9/11 was no worse than a B-52 run over Vietnam."
You don't have to believe that American engagement in Indochina during the 1960s and 70s was foolhardy or that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was likewise ill-judged, as the present writer does, to find Rundle's commentary nonsensical. Then again this is a man who has penned such thoughtful treatises as "Zionists and Nazis Connected. Discuss."
Perhaps the most disturbing local contribution came from another Drum regular, anti-Israel activist Antony Loewenstein, who announced that "the West has much to learn". Bin Laden's "[terrorist] tactics were abhorrent and failed to attract huge numbers of followers" Loewenstein surmised, nonetheless the West's subjugation of Muslims meant that the "arguments for his organisation's force have only strengthened since 9/11".
In other words, Osama was a nasty piece of work but fighting the good fight against imperialist crusaders. (Never mind that the majority of al-Qa'ida's victims have been Muslim.) Loewenstein concluded by offering a paean of praise: "Bin Laden died a man who profoundly changed the landscape of the world."
Well, yes, he certainly changed Lower Manhattan's landscape.
If any further evidence were required to show that a segment of the 21st century Western Left has completely lost the plot and plumbed the deepest, darkest depths of moral nihilism and cultural relativism, the contributions of these so-called "progressive" thinkers is conclusive proof. As British academic-cum-blogger Norman Geras put it this week: "In the demise of a reactionary murdering theocrat they are unable to see and plainly articulate the sense of anything good".
As has been well-documented, social democratic parties are in serious decline across the West.
In part, their woes are the perverse result, as the late Tony Judt put it, of their success in conquering mass poverty and material deprivation, and other epic 20th century struggles against inequality and discrimination.
Indeed, the survival of liberal democracy in the face of the twin totalitarian threats of fascism and communism owed much to the efforts of social democrats.
Today, however, noisy elements on the far Left - think Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and our local scribblers - seem to believe that Western-style democracy is in fact the real enemy.
With monotonous regularity they excuse bin Laden and his fellow Jihadis' death-cult or rationalise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vile anti-Semitism, instead preferring to blame the US and Israel for all the woes of the world, including partial responsibility for the September 11 atrocities.
There are of course brave souls on the Left who have challenged the ostensible status quo. One thinks here of Geras and his fellow Euston Manifesto signatories. Recently a local player emerged to put a similar case.
In his maiden speech to NSW parliament last year Labor MLC Luke Foley, from the party's Left, argued that social democrats must confront the newest "totalitarian movement of the far Right" just as they successfully opposed fascism. "This global Islamist movement is misogynist, racist and homophobic [and] based on an utter perversion of the Islamic faith.
"Too many progressives are silent about this," Foley insisted, "or worse, deny this."
It is hard to disagree with the crux of Foley's argument. And yet if I must quibble with his analysis and that of Geras et al, it is their designation of the apologists for radical Islam, as "Left", an association that is arguably harming the electoral viability of centre-left parties across the globe. For they are no such thing.
It is high time these values-free misfits received a new appellation.
Practically speaking, they oppose mainstream Left thinking on virtually every subject. Amazingly they can see no tangible difference between a theocracy and a democracy nor denounce Islamic fundamentalism in unequivocal terms. To my mind, they should be known for what they are: nihilists.
So let them rail against liberal democracy and chant: "We are all Hezbollah" from the rooftops but do not besmirch the good name of others by deeming themselves Left. No, let them stand with like-minded nihilists, Jew-haters and other enemies of social democracy, including a recently deceased jihadist unlikely to be enjoying a judenrein paradise of virgins. On behalf of the sane Left, good riddance to the lot of them.
SOURCE
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Only nationalism can justify a welfare state
The standard consequentialist argument in favour of the welfare state essentially says that the harm caused to rich people by taxation is outweighed by the benefit to poor people from government services. That’s probably wrong, but for the sake of argument let’s say it’s not and concede the idea that governments should redistribute resources. The question that redistributionists have failed to answer satisfyingly is, to whom should the resources be distributed?
The redistributionist argument may seem defensible if we look at one country alone – taking from the rich in Britain to give to the poor in Britain sounds good to a lot of people. But why do we only look at the poor in Britain? Compared to, say, the poor in Peru, they don’t seem to be so badly-off. The redistributionist logic would imply that money should be given to the worst-off, wherever they are. So, why give money to the poor in Britain rather than the very poor in Peru?
A redistributionist might say that a government’s job is to look after its own citizens. That argument, frequently made, has no real ethical basis. Unless the redistributionist believes that the value of, say, a Mancunian’s welfare is of greater importance than a Peruvian’s welfare, there is no outcomes-based argument for favouring the Mancunian over the Peruvian. Taking the redistributionist premise that governments can improve outcomes by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, the only moral argument for spending tax money in Manchester rather than relatively-poorer Peru is based on implicit nationalism. How many redistributionists would admit to that? Yet it is the only logical justification for preferring a big welfare state in Britain to a lot of money being spent around the world.
Some would say that it would be politically impossible to implement this kind of redistributionism. Yes, it would, but that isn’t a convincing argument. Even the argument that overseas spending delivers less bang for the buck than domestic spending is highly dubious, and returns to the question of why redistribution supposedly works inside a country’s borders and not outside them.
This is a fundamental flaw in the redistributionist manifesto. The only intellectual justification for favouring people in Britain over people in Peru for government spending would be that British people are more deserving. This is implied by arguments for a welfare state. The libertarian alternative, on the other hand, doesn’t suffer from this implicit nationalism. The outcomes we argue for treat people as equals: Free markets benefit everybody, wherever they are. I’ll choose that kind of egalitarianism over the narrowly nationalistic redistributionist egalitarianism any day.
SOURCE
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Funny money on the loose worldwide now
We humans are a slow-learning species. In the 1980s we blew up what was then the world's second-biggest economy, Japan, with loose money. In the 2000s, we blew up the biggest economy, the US, with loose money.
Not content with that, in 2008 we went on to blow up the economy of most of the world. How? With loose money. Any intelligent species would learn from this experience. But look around.
The economies that account for 96 per cent of the world economy are today running loose money policies. Most are happily handing out free money. Some are supplying money at rates so low that it's actually cheaper than free.
It's done for good cause. When money is cheap, people are more inclined to invest or spend. So it aids economic recovery. The former chief of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, was named as Time magazine's person of the year in 1999 for his ready resort to loose money.
But if there is too much for too long, it ends badly. Exactly a decade later, Time named Greenspan as No. 3 on its list of "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis". And I think they let him off lightly.
The evidence of the past three decades should be enough, but you can go back further. In fact, every major financial crisis in the four centuries of capitalism has had its origins in loose money.
How does it work? It's simple commonsense. The basis for value is scarcity. If scarcity is destroyed, so is value. And when money loses its value, it is abused.
Human societies have always abused commodities when they're provided too cheaply or free - free fresh water, for example - and money is no different. The loose money creates a "bubble" in asset prices, which ultimately collapses, dragging the economy into a recession, or worse.
The lyrics change from one episode to the next, but the song remains the same.
This time, it's happening in so many countries that it's much easier to list the countries where it's not happening. Brazil and Australia are the only economies of any reasonable size where money is not loose.
The standout champion of loose money in the world today is the US. For 2½ years now, the US Federal Reserve has been supplying money to America's banks at an official interest rate of 0-0.25 per cent a year.
Inflation in America is running at 2 to 3 per cent. So, in real terms, the American central bank is lending at an interest rate of minus 2-3 per cent. It is, in effect, subsidising the banks to borrow money.
The US is debasing its currency so effectively that the US dollar has fallen by 14 per cent in the past year, as measured by the Fed's major currencies index. But China doesn't want to lose export competitiveness to the US, so it has maintained its peg to the dollar. This means that China's renminbi is also depreciating in real terms against its other trading partners. So the US and Chinese currencies are debasing in tandem.
In the meantime, the central banks of the EU and Japan are handing out money cheaper than free. In sum, almost the entire world has gone monetarily mad. And the cheap money is forming a bubble in the price of commodities.
Central bankers in many countries are quietly worried about this. Each thinks that his bank alone cannot make any difference. So they leave their interest rates low. Yet their collective inaction guarantees that they are all facing a problem of growing inflation and a dangerous bubble in commodity prices. This is the same problem, the "prisoner's dilemma", that we see in the case of carbon emissions.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Iran: A-jad allies charged with black magic, summoning genies: "Iran's powerful clerics have accused associates of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of witchcraft, including summoning genies, amid an increasingly bitter rift between Ahmadinejad and the country's supreme religious leader. In recent days, some 25 confidants of Ahmadinejad and his controversial but loyal chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei have been arrested and charged with being 'magicians.' ... The arrests are the latest window into the growing rift between Ahmadinejad, Iran's elected secular president, and Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the country's appointed religious supreme leader."
Navy plan for homosexual marriages on bases draws opposition: "A preliminary U.S. Navy plan to allow its chaplains to perform same-sex marriages in military chapels after the end of 'don't ask, don't tell' has fired up congressional opposition. All services are moving forward with the transition from the present ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in uniform. Top Pentagon officials are expected to sign off on the new rules and the progress of training in coming weeks"
US Senate blocks Obama DoJ appointee: "Senate Republicans on Monday blocked President Barack Obama's choice for the No. 2 job in the Justice Department and dampened talk that Osama bin Laden's death might usher in bipartisan cooperation on terrorism matters. The 50-40 vote, short of the Senate's required 60-vote threshold, sidelined Obama's monthslong drive to make official James M. Cole's position as deputy attorney general."
Democrats trying to increase gasoline prices: "Senate Democrats said they will move forward this week with a plan that would eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies and divert the savings to offset the deficit. Senior Democrats believe that tying the two together will put pressure on Senate Republicans to support the measure or face a difficult time explaining their opposition to voters whose family budgets are being strained by fuel prices."
Egypt: Mobs set fire to two churches in capital: "Egypt's prime minister called an emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday after 12 people died in bloody clashes in a Cairo suburb over the conversion of a Christian woman to Islam. About 500 conservative Islamists known as Salafists massed outside the Saint Mina Church in the Cairo suburb of Imbaba on Saturday demanding Christians there hand over a woman they said had converted to Islam and was being held against her will."
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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Monday, May 09, 2011
Misunderstandings about the military
Led by the United States, the English-speaking countries seem to be almost continuously at war -- fighting for their own long-term safety and trying to rescue others from tyranny. In the USA, the wars are mostly initiated by Democrat administrations -- WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Serbia and now Libya -- but usually start out with widespread support among Americans generally.
There has however been no mass mobilization since WWII. The wars these days tend to be fought as just another budget item with only the professional military involved. The population generally have no experience of war and little acquaintance with military men. The countries concerned just live on in peace and prosperity. This has produced something of a paradox. The people at large of the world's most "warlike" countries know little of war or of military matters.
In the circumstances, there seems to have developed -- particularly on the political Left -- a quite warped view of the military and often a real contempt for the military. In a patriotic country like America, that contempt has to be mostly veiled but observers of the Left will be familiar with such attitudes anyway. Because of the British tradition of emotional restraint, however, overt expressions of patriotism are rare in Britain and Australia so the Left there are more vocal in making known their attitude to the military.
So the combination of no experience with the military and Leftist contempt for military men does seem to have led to a fairly widespread lack of understanding of what military men are like and how the military functions. And as a former army psychologist, I think I might be in a position to make a few points that may dispel some of those misunderstandings.
* A very common misunderstanding is that military men are dumb. That is far from the case. The military handle some very dangerous gear so a dummy would be more of a danger to his buddies than to the enemy. For that reason all Western armies select on intellectual grounds: You have to have an above average IQ to be a soldier. And in the more specialist jobs (officers generally, special forces, etc.), the intellectual requirement is quite high. So it is quite right to refer to the "profession" of arms. It needs training, knowledge, dedication and ability comparable to many other professions.
* Another incomprehension that seems particularly common on the left is why on earth would anybody take a job where he might get shot at? That seems like a very bad deal to most Leftists and may be part of the reason why military men are overwhelmingly conservative. Guerilla war where they can shoot others from cover (as in various "revolutions" -- such as Castro's) seems OK to Leftists but they generally haven't got the stomach for regular military service.
So why DO military men put themselves in harm's way? The answer quite simply is that they are real men. They have inherited a strong dose of the characteristics that enabled men to survive in "caveman" times. Life was a very risky business for us for most of our evolutionary past and men who did not enjoy risks and challenges just did not survive. Military men actually ENJOY putting themselves to the test. They LIKE doing difficult and dangerous things. Sadly, the army often disappoints them. Even if there is a war on, most of your time is spent waiting around. But the army does a lot of training and sport and there is always the prospect of action. So in every army, the men are always keen to get to "the front" -- where the action is and where they might get shot at! I was one of them many years ago. The Vietnam war was on at the time and I volunteered for a posting there.
A little story might help illustrate all that. During the Vietnam war, Australia had conscription and it was largely conscripts who were sent to the front. What is not generally known however is that conscripts were not usually sent to the front unwillingly. Anybody who did not want to go was discharged as "medically" unfit or was given the chance of volunteering for work in (say) a BOD (Base Ordnance Depot -- a military warehouse). But given the option of spending two boring years in a BOD back in Australia and going to Vietnam, close to 100% of the conscripts chose Vietnam. Men like excitement and Vietnam offered that, even if it was dangerous.
* Another myth much beloved of Leftist psychologists is that army men are some sort of "robot". They are all the same and just obey orders like machines. The old Prussian expression that a soldier should be "Kadaver gehorsam" (show corpselike obedience) helped establish that myth. And it does have a germ of truth. Take a look at the picture below. It is easy to see a march of robots there, is it not?
It is in fact a parade of cadets at Sandhurst, Britain's equivalent of West Point. So all the men there are in fact highly skilled soldiers with the equivalent of a university degree who will go on to positions of leadershiop throughout the British army and later on lead in British life generally. Far from being robots they are an elite.
So learning to work together and take orders is certainly a part of military life but it says nothing about the character of the men involved. The fact that the army has to train its men very heavily in order to get them to that state of readiness should speak for itself. It does not come naturally. Military men are very much individuals. And when you are in the army, you get to know what individuals your fellow unit members are and come to value them accordingly. For that reason, military men feel great grief at the loss of anyone in their unit -- as you will hear any time you ask them about their wartime experiences -- and in later life you never walk past a member of your old army unit in the street without stopping to chat. Fellow members of your unit become very special friends. You don't of course get on equally well with them all but you usually respect them all.
So I hope that goes a little way towards showing how wrong are simplistic judgments of the military and of military men.
Perhaps I should close on a rather provocative note: You could think that women would not be attracted to military men. The men are often away on deployment and may come home in a body bag. What sort of a deal is that for a woman? Yet as you always see, when the men come home from deployment, most have wives and girlfriends waiting eagerly to see their men again. How come? Easy: As I have pointed out above, military men are real men and real women like real men.
Take as an example the Australian soldier below. He is clearly a family man and may look undistinguished to some. But Ben Roberts-Smith is a man of exceptional intelligence, daring and courage. For his actions in Afghanistan he was recently awarded the Victoria Cross, which is as high an award for valour as there is. It is very rarely awarded. You can read his story here and here. He could join the officer corps any time he applied but he chooses to serve as a corporal leading a small detachment of Special Forces. Why? Because that is where the action is. We can be proud that the English-speaking nations still produce men like him -- JR
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What the GOP Can Learn From Canada's Conservatives
Some years ago, the columnist and editor Michael Kinsley sponsored a contest to come up with the most boring headline. The winner was, "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."
Well, Canada held an election last Monday, and the result was anything but boring. It amounts to something like a revolution in Canadian politics and has lessons, I think, for those of us south of the border.
The headline story is that the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has headed minority governments since 2006, won an absolute majority of seats, 167 of 308, in the House of Commons. It was a result practically no Canadian pundit or psephologist predicted.
Going into this election, center-right parties in the four major Anglosphere democracies were at the brink of but not quite fully in power. The British Conservatives formed a government with the leftish Liberal Democrats in May 2010, the Australian Liberals are in opposition by virtue of the votes of a couple of Outback independents, and American Republicans won the House of Representatives in November 2010 and are now forcing significant cuts in public spending.
In Canada, Harper's Conservatives have already cut taxes and modified spending programs, but always with the tacit consent of the separatist Bloc Quebecois, or the left-wing New Democrats, or the long-dominant Liberal Party. Now they're on their own, and we'll see the results.
But the installation of a majority government by itself is not a political revolution. The biggest changes in Canada were indicated by the devastating defeats of two of the opposition parties.
The Bloc Quebecois was reduced from 50 seats to only four. Formerly it represented most of Canada's second largest province. Now it represents a tiny rump.
French Canadian separatism has been a major force in Canada since Charles de Gaulle came to Montreal in 1967 and spoke the deliberately provocative words, "Vive le Quebec libre!" There have been two referenda in which the voters of Quebec rejected separatism by only narrow majorities.
Now it looks like separatism is as dead as de Gaulle. The vast majority of Quebec's ridings (the Canadian word for districts) elected New Democrats, some of whom didn't campaign and don't speak much French.
Quebec's Francophone voters seem to have decided to vote for a party that favors a European-style welfare state rather than one that favors a separate Quebec. The New Democrats won 58 seats in Quebec, enough to give them 102 seats in Parliament, enough to make them the official opposition party.
The third huge development is the humiliating third-place finish of the Liberal Party, the pre-eminent party in Canada since its first election in 1867. Liberals headed governments for 70 years in the 20th century and have provided most of Canada's well known prime ministers -- Wilfrid Laurier, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
They have been more of a nationalist, opportunistic party than a left-wing one. Public spending ballooned during Trudeau's nearly 20 years in power, but the Liberals cut back spending sharply in the 1990s, when Canada faced a fiscal crisis very much like the one the United States faces today.
Liberals long boasted that they were the only party with backing in both English- and French-speaking Canada. Now they have little backing in either one.
They elected only 34 members of Parliament, and their leader, Michael Ignatieff, lost his own seat. Liberals hold sway now only in central Toronto, where Canadian media are concentrated, in Anglophone Montreal and in the economically lagging Atlantic provinces.
The Conservatives' triumph offers a couple of lessons that may be relevant to U.S. Republicans. One is that smaller government policies, far from being political poison, are actually vote-winners.
The second is that a center-right party can win immigrant votes. Conservatives won 35 of 54 seats in metro Toronto, many heavy with immigrants. One tactic that seems to have worked was to circulate videos of Indian- and Chinese-Canadian Conservative candidates appealing for votes in their native tongues.
The simple message is that this is a party that likes and respects you. Republicans could do something similar, with Sen. Marco Rubio, Govs. Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval, and Reps. Allen West, Tim Scott and Quico Canseco, all elected in 2010.
So Canada has moved from a four-party politics rooted in its own special history to a two-party politics more similar to ours. Nothing boring about that.
SOURCE
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$200,000 Lifeguards to Receive Millions in Retirement
Public outrage over lavish government employee compensation and pensions is becoming more heated as new revelations about excesses seem to crop up every week. The latest: Newport Beach, California, where some lifeguards have compensation packages that exceed $200,000 and where these "civil servants" can retire with lucrative government pensions at age 50.
Newport Beach has two groups of lifeguards. Seasonal tower lifeguards cover Newport’s seven miles of beach during the busy summer months. Part-time seasonal guards make $16 to $22 per hour with no benefits. They are the young people who man the towers and do the lion’s share of the rescues. Another group of highly compensated full-time staff work year-round and seldom, if ever, climb into a tower. According to the City Manager, the typical Daily Deployment Model in the winter for these lifeguards is 10 hours per day for four days each week, mainly spent driving trucks around, painting towers, ordering uniforms and doing basic office work—none are actually manning lifeguard towers.
Like many communities across California, the city of Newport Beach is facing the harsh realities of budgeting with less revenue after housing values and the stock market plummeted. Now the city’s full-time lifeguard force has finally come under scrutiny. Next week the city council will decide if cuts are needed to the full-time lifeguard force where last year the top earner received $211,000 in pay and benefits, including a $400 sun protection allowance. In 2010 all but one of the city’s full-time lifeguard staff had annual compensation packages worth over $120,000.
Not bad pay for a lifeguard - but what makes these jobs most attractive is the generous retirements. These lifeguards can retire at age 50 with full medical benefits for life. One recently retired lifeguard, age 51, receives a government retirement of over $108,000 per year—for the rest of his life. He will make well over $3 million in retirement if he lives to age 80. According to the City Manager, a new full-time guard costs less to hire than what is spent on this one retiree. The city now spends more taxpayer dollars on retired lifeguards than it does on those who are working.
Reports of excessive pay and generous pensions have fueled a debate across the nation over union influence on government spending. Government unions were able to take full advantage of the good old days when surpluses were plentiful and the economic future was bright. They effectively demanded politicians agree to contracts for higher union wages and benefits. Creating a situation that was simply not sustainable over the long-term.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Libya: Bombing of Gaddafi won’t let up, Clinton warns: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meeting with allies, kept up pressure on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi Thursday, demanding that he 'cease attacks and the threat of attacks' against rebels who oppose his rule. Gadhafi must withdraw all forces from rebel cities they have entered, restore services to those cities, and allow humanitarian aid in, Clinton insisted."
Pakistan’s complicity: "That Osama bin Laden chose as a refuge a scenic summer resort in Pakistan, a country where he knew the United States had pretty much a free hand against al-Qaeda, says it all. We need not question the Pentagon or any other Western military establishment when they tell us that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate is in cahoots with terrorism: All we need to do is understand that the most wanted man in the world trusted Pakistan enough to stay there in a highly visible compound, near a military academy, 35 miles from Islamabad."
Schumer proposes “no-ride list” for Amtrak trains: "A senator on Sunday called for a 'no-ride list' for Amtrak trains after intelligence gleaned from the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound pointed to potential attacks on the nation's train system. Sen. Charles Schumer said he would push as well for added funding for rail security and commuter and passenger train track inspections and more monitoring of stations nationwide." [Will you soon need to get groped to get on a train?]
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)
****************************
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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Led by the United States, the English-speaking countries seem to be almost continuously at war -- fighting for their own long-term safety and trying to rescue others from tyranny. In the USA, the wars are mostly initiated by Democrat administrations -- WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Serbia and now Libya -- but usually start out with widespread support among Americans generally.
There has however been no mass mobilization since WWII. The wars these days tend to be fought as just another budget item with only the professional military involved. The population generally have no experience of war and little acquaintance with military men. The countries concerned just live on in peace and prosperity. This has produced something of a paradox. The people at large of the world's most "warlike" countries know little of war or of military matters.
In the circumstances, there seems to have developed -- particularly on the political Left -- a quite warped view of the military and often a real contempt for the military. In a patriotic country like America, that contempt has to be mostly veiled but observers of the Left will be familiar with such attitudes anyway. Because of the British tradition of emotional restraint, however, overt expressions of patriotism are rare in Britain and Australia so the Left there are more vocal in making known their attitude to the military.
So the combination of no experience with the military and Leftist contempt for military men does seem to have led to a fairly widespread lack of understanding of what military men are like and how the military functions. And as a former army psychologist, I think I might be in a position to make a few points that may dispel some of those misunderstandings.
* A very common misunderstanding is that military men are dumb. That is far from the case. The military handle some very dangerous gear so a dummy would be more of a danger to his buddies than to the enemy. For that reason all Western armies select on intellectual grounds: You have to have an above average IQ to be a soldier. And in the more specialist jobs (officers generally, special forces, etc.), the intellectual requirement is quite high. So it is quite right to refer to the "profession" of arms. It needs training, knowledge, dedication and ability comparable to many other professions.
* Another incomprehension that seems particularly common on the left is why on earth would anybody take a job where he might get shot at? That seems like a very bad deal to most Leftists and may be part of the reason why military men are overwhelmingly conservative. Guerilla war where they can shoot others from cover (as in various "revolutions" -- such as Castro's) seems OK to Leftists but they generally haven't got the stomach for regular military service.
So why DO military men put themselves in harm's way? The answer quite simply is that they are real men. They have inherited a strong dose of the characteristics that enabled men to survive in "caveman" times. Life was a very risky business for us for most of our evolutionary past and men who did not enjoy risks and challenges just did not survive. Military men actually ENJOY putting themselves to the test. They LIKE doing difficult and dangerous things. Sadly, the army often disappoints them. Even if there is a war on, most of your time is spent waiting around. But the army does a lot of training and sport and there is always the prospect of action. So in every army, the men are always keen to get to "the front" -- where the action is and where they might get shot at! I was one of them many years ago. The Vietnam war was on at the time and I volunteered for a posting there.
A little story might help illustrate all that. During the Vietnam war, Australia had conscription and it was largely conscripts who were sent to the front. What is not generally known however is that conscripts were not usually sent to the front unwillingly. Anybody who did not want to go was discharged as "medically" unfit or was given the chance of volunteering for work in (say) a BOD (Base Ordnance Depot -- a military warehouse). But given the option of spending two boring years in a BOD back in Australia and going to Vietnam, close to 100% of the conscripts chose Vietnam. Men like excitement and Vietnam offered that, even if it was dangerous.
* Another myth much beloved of Leftist psychologists is that army men are some sort of "robot". They are all the same and just obey orders like machines. The old Prussian expression that a soldier should be "Kadaver gehorsam" (show corpselike obedience) helped establish that myth. And it does have a germ of truth. Take a look at the picture below. It is easy to see a march of robots there, is it not?
It is in fact a parade of cadets at Sandhurst, Britain's equivalent of West Point. So all the men there are in fact highly skilled soldiers with the equivalent of a university degree who will go on to positions of leadershiop throughout the British army and later on lead in British life generally. Far from being robots they are an elite.
So learning to work together and take orders is certainly a part of military life but it says nothing about the character of the men involved. The fact that the army has to train its men very heavily in order to get them to that state of readiness should speak for itself. It does not come naturally. Military men are very much individuals. And when you are in the army, you get to know what individuals your fellow unit members are and come to value them accordingly. For that reason, military men feel great grief at the loss of anyone in their unit -- as you will hear any time you ask them about their wartime experiences -- and in later life you never walk past a member of your old army unit in the street without stopping to chat. Fellow members of your unit become very special friends. You don't of course get on equally well with them all but you usually respect them all.
So I hope that goes a little way towards showing how wrong are simplistic judgments of the military and of military men.
Perhaps I should close on a rather provocative note: You could think that women would not be attracted to military men. The men are often away on deployment and may come home in a body bag. What sort of a deal is that for a woman? Yet as you always see, when the men come home from deployment, most have wives and girlfriends waiting eagerly to see their men again. How come? Easy: As I have pointed out above, military men are real men and real women like real men.
Take as an example the Australian soldier below. He is clearly a family man and may look undistinguished to some. But Ben Roberts-Smith is a man of exceptional intelligence, daring and courage. For his actions in Afghanistan he was recently awarded the Victoria Cross, which is as high an award for valour as there is. It is very rarely awarded. You can read his story here and here. He could join the officer corps any time he applied but he chooses to serve as a corporal leading a small detachment of Special Forces. Why? Because that is where the action is. We can be proud that the English-speaking nations still produce men like him -- JR
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What the GOP Can Learn From Canada's Conservatives
Some years ago, the columnist and editor Michael Kinsley sponsored a contest to come up with the most boring headline. The winner was, "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."
Well, Canada held an election last Monday, and the result was anything but boring. It amounts to something like a revolution in Canadian politics and has lessons, I think, for those of us south of the border.
The headline story is that the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has headed minority governments since 2006, won an absolute majority of seats, 167 of 308, in the House of Commons. It was a result practically no Canadian pundit or psephologist predicted.
Going into this election, center-right parties in the four major Anglosphere democracies were at the brink of but not quite fully in power. The British Conservatives formed a government with the leftish Liberal Democrats in May 2010, the Australian Liberals are in opposition by virtue of the votes of a couple of Outback independents, and American Republicans won the House of Representatives in November 2010 and are now forcing significant cuts in public spending.
In Canada, Harper's Conservatives have already cut taxes and modified spending programs, but always with the tacit consent of the separatist Bloc Quebecois, or the left-wing New Democrats, or the long-dominant Liberal Party. Now they're on their own, and we'll see the results.
But the installation of a majority government by itself is not a political revolution. The biggest changes in Canada were indicated by the devastating defeats of two of the opposition parties.
The Bloc Quebecois was reduced from 50 seats to only four. Formerly it represented most of Canada's second largest province. Now it represents a tiny rump.
French Canadian separatism has been a major force in Canada since Charles de Gaulle came to Montreal in 1967 and spoke the deliberately provocative words, "Vive le Quebec libre!" There have been two referenda in which the voters of Quebec rejected separatism by only narrow majorities.
Now it looks like separatism is as dead as de Gaulle. The vast majority of Quebec's ridings (the Canadian word for districts) elected New Democrats, some of whom didn't campaign and don't speak much French.
Quebec's Francophone voters seem to have decided to vote for a party that favors a European-style welfare state rather than one that favors a separate Quebec. The New Democrats won 58 seats in Quebec, enough to give them 102 seats in Parliament, enough to make them the official opposition party.
The third huge development is the humiliating third-place finish of the Liberal Party, the pre-eminent party in Canada since its first election in 1867. Liberals headed governments for 70 years in the 20th century and have provided most of Canada's well known prime ministers -- Wilfrid Laurier, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
They have been more of a nationalist, opportunistic party than a left-wing one. Public spending ballooned during Trudeau's nearly 20 years in power, but the Liberals cut back spending sharply in the 1990s, when Canada faced a fiscal crisis very much like the one the United States faces today.
Liberals long boasted that they were the only party with backing in both English- and French-speaking Canada. Now they have little backing in either one.
They elected only 34 members of Parliament, and their leader, Michael Ignatieff, lost his own seat. Liberals hold sway now only in central Toronto, where Canadian media are concentrated, in Anglophone Montreal and in the economically lagging Atlantic provinces.
The Conservatives' triumph offers a couple of lessons that may be relevant to U.S. Republicans. One is that smaller government policies, far from being political poison, are actually vote-winners.
The second is that a center-right party can win immigrant votes. Conservatives won 35 of 54 seats in metro Toronto, many heavy with immigrants. One tactic that seems to have worked was to circulate videos of Indian- and Chinese-Canadian Conservative candidates appealing for votes in their native tongues.
The simple message is that this is a party that likes and respects you. Republicans could do something similar, with Sen. Marco Rubio, Govs. Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval, and Reps. Allen West, Tim Scott and Quico Canseco, all elected in 2010.
So Canada has moved from a four-party politics rooted in its own special history to a two-party politics more similar to ours. Nothing boring about that.
SOURCE
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$200,000 Lifeguards to Receive Millions in Retirement
Public outrage over lavish government employee compensation and pensions is becoming more heated as new revelations about excesses seem to crop up every week. The latest: Newport Beach, California, where some lifeguards have compensation packages that exceed $200,000 and where these "civil servants" can retire with lucrative government pensions at age 50.
Newport Beach has two groups of lifeguards. Seasonal tower lifeguards cover Newport’s seven miles of beach during the busy summer months. Part-time seasonal guards make $16 to $22 per hour with no benefits. They are the young people who man the towers and do the lion’s share of the rescues. Another group of highly compensated full-time staff work year-round and seldom, if ever, climb into a tower. According to the City Manager, the typical Daily Deployment Model in the winter for these lifeguards is 10 hours per day for four days each week, mainly spent driving trucks around, painting towers, ordering uniforms and doing basic office work—none are actually manning lifeguard towers.
Like many communities across California, the city of Newport Beach is facing the harsh realities of budgeting with less revenue after housing values and the stock market plummeted. Now the city’s full-time lifeguard force has finally come under scrutiny. Next week the city council will decide if cuts are needed to the full-time lifeguard force where last year the top earner received $211,000 in pay and benefits, including a $400 sun protection allowance. In 2010 all but one of the city’s full-time lifeguard staff had annual compensation packages worth over $120,000.
Not bad pay for a lifeguard - but what makes these jobs most attractive is the generous retirements. These lifeguards can retire at age 50 with full medical benefits for life. One recently retired lifeguard, age 51, receives a government retirement of over $108,000 per year—for the rest of his life. He will make well over $3 million in retirement if he lives to age 80. According to the City Manager, a new full-time guard costs less to hire than what is spent on this one retiree. The city now spends more taxpayer dollars on retired lifeguards than it does on those who are working.
Reports of excessive pay and generous pensions have fueled a debate across the nation over union influence on government spending. Government unions were able to take full advantage of the good old days when surpluses were plentiful and the economic future was bright. They effectively demanded politicians agree to contracts for higher union wages and benefits. Creating a situation that was simply not sustainable over the long-term.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Libya: Bombing of Gaddafi won’t let up, Clinton warns: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meeting with allies, kept up pressure on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi Thursday, demanding that he 'cease attacks and the threat of attacks' against rebels who oppose his rule. Gadhafi must withdraw all forces from rebel cities they have entered, restore services to those cities, and allow humanitarian aid in, Clinton insisted."
Pakistan’s complicity: "That Osama bin Laden chose as a refuge a scenic summer resort in Pakistan, a country where he knew the United States had pretty much a free hand against al-Qaeda, says it all. We need not question the Pentagon or any other Western military establishment when they tell us that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate is in cahoots with terrorism: All we need to do is understand that the most wanted man in the world trusted Pakistan enough to stay there in a highly visible compound, near a military academy, 35 miles from Islamabad."
Schumer proposes “no-ride list” for Amtrak trains: "A senator on Sunday called for a 'no-ride list' for Amtrak trains after intelligence gleaned from the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound pointed to potential attacks on the nation's train system. Sen. Charles Schumer said he would push as well for added funding for rail security and commuter and passenger train track inspections and more monitoring of stations nationwide." [Will you soon need to get groped to get on a train?]
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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U.S. Tipping Point: 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes
The portion of U.S. households paying zero federal income taxes has been steadily climbing, and has reached the 51% tipping point.
Let’s see… Promises of ever-increasing benefits from the public treasury, loose fiscal policy, increasingly dictatorial central government... Beginning to sound familiar?
The preceding wisdom has been variously attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville and Alexander Tytler through the years, but debate and uncertainty continue. Regardless of its source, however, the observation gained even greater immediacy this week, some 35 years since America’s own two-hundred-year milestone.
Namely, the portion of U.S. households paying zero federal income taxes has been steadily climbing, and has reached the 51% tipping point.
That alarming number formed the centerpiece of this week’s U.S. Senate Finance Committee official “Is the Distribution of Tax Burdens and Tax Benefits Equitable?” hearing. Although the news of Navy SEALs heroically raiding Osama bin Laden’s lair naturally dominated the news cycle, our increasingly lopsided tax burden will likely prove the more consequential civic dilemma for 2012 and onward.
Senate Finance Committee member Orrin Hatch (R – Utah) wisely noted, “Most taxpayers are skeptical that the answer to our fiscal problems is for them to sacrifice more, when more than half of all households are not paying any income taxes and an increasingly smaller group of Americans is shouldering the burden for an increasingly larger group of Americans.”
Yet that is the answer that liberals continue to offer. As the federal government once again approaches its debt limit and the presidential campaign begins, Barack Obama hypocritically maintains his soak-the-rich prescription of higher taxes for “millionaires and billionaires.” We say “hypocritically” because Obama himself paid taxes under the existing 35% top rate, rather than the 39.6% rate he claims to support. That decreased his overall tax payment by $74,000. Obama also opted to itemize rather than take the standard deduction, further reducing his tax liability by $127,000.
If Obama and other liberals believe that “the rich” don’t pay enough taxes, why don’t their actions ever seem to match their words?
Moreover, Obama’s talking point is glaringly dishonest, since the “millionaires and billionaires” population he claims to target actually includes families earning $250,000 or individuals earning $200,000. Shouldn’t the man who raised deficits into the trillion-dollar stratosphere possess a clearer concept of numerical definitions?
Additionally, many of “the rich” Obama and liberals continue to scapegoat are actually small businesses that create most new jobs in America. As the nation’s economy continues to struggle, if small businesses are forced to pay even more to the federal government they’ll by definition have less to invest or hire.
Another metric to consider: In 1980, the top income tax rate was 70%. The top rate is now half that, at 35%, yet the portion of the nation’s income taxes paid by the top 1% has more than doubled from 19% to 38%.
In fact, that 38% portion of income taxes paid by the top 1% is nearly double its 20% share of the nation’s income. Similarly, the top 5% earned 35% of the nation’s income for the most recent year available, but paid 59% of the nation’s total income taxes (up from 37% in 1980). That means the top 5% pay more in taxes than the entire remaining 95% of taxpayers combined. For its part, the top 10% earned 46% of the nation’s income but paid 70% of income taxes (up from 49% in 1980), while the top 25% earned 67% of the nation’s income but shouldered 86% of the nation’s income taxes (up from 73% in 1980).
Simply put, the rich pay a higher portion of the nation’s income taxes today than ever. And now that 51% of American households pay no income tax at all, we face the ominous tipping point decline envisioned above.
“Soak the rich” may sound appealing as a short-term electoral slogan, but it’s a path to national decay. Fortunately, Congressman Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin) and other conservatives offer greater long-term prosperity via lower tax rates and a broader base. The time for choosing is nearly upon us, America.
SOURCE
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Truth vs. Ideology
Frustrating! That's the appropriate word for what is happening in the wake of the Osama bin Laden raid. Besides the precision of the Navy SEALs, the big story to emerge from the action is that coerced interrogation gave the CIA vital information used to track bin Laden to his lair. Current CIA Chief Leon Panetta has confirmed that.
Of course, that exposition is embarrassing to the left, including President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton, who are all on record as saying coerced interrogation does not work. Apparently, they were wrong in a big way.
The nails-on-the-blackboard part of this story is that some liberal pundits are trying to deny the undeniable. The spin they are using is that a "mosaic" of intelligence led the CIA to bin Laden. It was not just waterboarding or whatever. To paraphrase Panetta: We'll never know if we could have gotten the same intel without the water.
That's true, but who cares? It is the duty of the federal government to protect Americans from harm. And that's what the Bush administration did when it signed off on coercive questioning.
The record shows that just three men were waterboarded: Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Rahim al-Nashiri, all al-Qaida big shots. Under duress, KSM gave up vital information that crippled his terror group and ultimately led U.S. authorities to watch bin Laden's top Pakistani courier. Eventually, that man led the CIA to the compound outside Islamabad.
But still, the far left won't budge. No matter what the facts are about the effectiveness of coerced interrogation, they will deny them. Infuriating.
The sane policy going forward is this: The president and only the president should have the power to order coerced interrogation, including waterboarding, if national security is endangered or American lives are on the line. One man makes the decision, and his orders are carried out by an elite intelligence team answerable directly to him.
So if Obama doesn't want to order waterboarding, fine. That's on him. But the elected leader of the nation should have the power to make the decision.
It is ironic that many on the far left openly celebrated the death of bin Laden. So, guys, let me get this straight: It's OK for U.S. forces to shoot a terrorist in the head, but it's not OK to waterboard him if lives are in danger? Good grief.
It is long past time for Americans to reject ideology that endangers human beings. We live in a dangerous world chock full of doomsday weapons. Common sense should dictate how the federal government defines strategies to protect us. How many times have you heard ideologues say that coerced interrogation does not work?
Well, it does. Ask bin Laden. Wait, we can't.
SOURCE
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Evidence at bin Laden’s home raises nuclear concerns
Pakistani government links suspected
Intelligence analysts are sifting through phone numbers and email addresses found at Osama bin Laden’s compound to determine potential links to Pakistani government and military officials while U.S. officials and analysts raise concerns about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear materials.
According to three U.S. intelligence officials, the race is on to identify what President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, has called bin Laden’s “support system” inside Pakistan. These sources sought anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to reporters.
“My concern now is that we cannot exclude the possibility that officers in the Pakistani military and the intelligence service were helping to harbor or aware of the location of bin Laden,” said Olli Heinonen, who served as the deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2005 to 2010.
“What is to say they would not help al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to gain access to sensitive nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium?”
The U.S. has worried quietly about the infiltration of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and military for years. Those concerns heightened in recent months when the CIA learned that bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad was a stone’s throw from Pakistan's military academy.
Politico first reported this week that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told members of Congress that bin Laden’s clothing had two phone numbers sewn into it at the time of the raid. Those numbers and other contacts found at the compound are key clues in an effort to determine what elements of Pakistan’s national security establishment provided support to bin Laden and al Qaeda.
More HERE
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“No Nation Was Ever Ruined By Trade”
More trade means more jobs
The headline is a quotation from Benjamin Franklin, who added, “Even seemingly the most disadvantageous.” Franklin believed that free trade was good for everybody. In the 21st century lots of Americans and their politicians believe the opposite: Being open to trade allows rapacious corporations to “ship jobs overseas.”
In the 2010 mid-term elections, the Democratic National Committee rolled out a television ad campaign accusing various Republican candidates of favoring policies that shipped jobs overseas. More recently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declared, “I think we should do a lot more to stop shipping jobs overseas.” In the meantime, the Doha Round of international trade negotiations has been on the brink of collapse for a while, sparking fears the freer trade system painstakingly built over the last 50 years might begin to unravel.
A new study, Trade and Unemployment: What Do the Data Say?, by three European economists published in the journal, European Economic Review in March, forthrightly asks the question: Does exposure to international trade create or destroy jobs? Their answer strongly backs the observation made by Franklin more than 230 years ago. “A 10 percent increase in total trade openness reduces aggregate unemployment by about three quarters of one percentage point,” they conclude. To be a bit more precise, they find, “A 10 percentage point increase lowers the equilibrium rate of unemployment by about 0.76 percentage points.” Trade creates jobs.
In general, the higher a country’s volume of international trade, the higher is its degree of openness. Trade openness is generally measured by adding together the value of both exports and imports and dividing that sum by total gross domestic product (GDP). Crudely, let’s say an economy imports $10 billion annually and exports $10 billion annually and has a total GDP of $100 billion. That would yield a trade openness index figure of 20 percent. Another country with a GDP of $100 billion exports $15 billion and imports $15 billion, yielding a trade openness index of 30 percent.
Roughly speaking, U.S. GDP was $15 trillion in 2010, and exports and imports combined totaled just over $4 trillion, yielding a trade openness index figure of 27 percent. Without going into detail, the European economists derive a real trade openness index by taking differing price levels among countries into account.
The researchers then compare the relative trade openness of 20 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with their unemployment rates over time. They take into account other factors such as union membership, national employment protection policies, tax rates on wages, and the generosity of unemployment insurance.
The researchers report that generous unemployment benefits correlate slightly with higher unemployment, suggesting that workers have less incentive to look hard for work. Also, high unemployment correlates with the size of the tax wedge, that is, the difference between what employees take home in earnings and what it costs to employ them. Basically, this means the higher the income tax rate, the higher the level of unemployment.
The researchers go on to analyze the effect of freer trade on a selection of 62 developing countries. They take into account features like the size of the black market economy and whether a country is landlocked or not. Again, they find that openness to trade boosts employment, concluding that “the effect of a 10 percentage point increase in openness lowers unemployment by about 1 percentage point.”
So why does free trade create more jobs? The study suggests that freer trade boosts overall productivity, enabling companies to hire more workers. Trade enhances competition which weeds out inefficient firms and allows more productive ones to expand. As the average efficiency of firms in a country increases, they can earn more revenues by boosting production. And that leads to hiring additional workers.
To get some idea of how much opening international trade further would benefit people, economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., calculate that concluding the Doha Round of free trade negotiations could boost global GDP between $165 billion and $283 billion per year.
So why do people, especially politicians, believe the opposite? The 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat explained this sort of disheartening policy myopia his brilliant essay, “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.” People tend to focus on the seen consequences of a policy, in this case, competition from trade eliminating some jobs at relatively inefficient companies.
But they miss the unseen benefits, such as new jobs that result from increased average productivity. Naturally, the people who lose their jobs are worried and angry, so they call their member of Congress to complain about “unfair” trade. Fearing that they may lose their jobs, the denizens of Capitol Hill seek to enact legislation to block imports or mandate “Buy American” to protect their complaining constituents against “unfair” trade. In politics, as in much of life, the squeaky wheels get oiled.
The seen result of this political dynamic is that a few workers get to keep their jobs while the unseen outcome is that more people are out of work than would otherwise have been. In addition, protectionist legislation makes other Americans worse off by forcing them to spend more because they are denied access to cheaper and better exports. Our politicians get it backwards: Trade creates jobs for Americans and everyone else.
SOURCE
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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The portion of U.S. households paying zero federal income taxes has been steadily climbing, and has reached the 51% tipping point.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years.”
Let’s see… Promises of ever-increasing benefits from the public treasury, loose fiscal policy, increasingly dictatorial central government... Beginning to sound familiar?
The preceding wisdom has been variously attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville and Alexander Tytler through the years, but debate and uncertainty continue. Regardless of its source, however, the observation gained even greater immediacy this week, some 35 years since America’s own two-hundred-year milestone.
Namely, the portion of U.S. households paying zero federal income taxes has been steadily climbing, and has reached the 51% tipping point.
That alarming number formed the centerpiece of this week’s U.S. Senate Finance Committee official “Is the Distribution of Tax Burdens and Tax Benefits Equitable?” hearing. Although the news of Navy SEALs heroically raiding Osama bin Laden’s lair naturally dominated the news cycle, our increasingly lopsided tax burden will likely prove the more consequential civic dilemma for 2012 and onward.
Senate Finance Committee member Orrin Hatch (R – Utah) wisely noted, “Most taxpayers are skeptical that the answer to our fiscal problems is for them to sacrifice more, when more than half of all households are not paying any income taxes and an increasingly smaller group of Americans is shouldering the burden for an increasingly larger group of Americans.”
Yet that is the answer that liberals continue to offer. As the federal government once again approaches its debt limit and the presidential campaign begins, Barack Obama hypocritically maintains his soak-the-rich prescription of higher taxes for “millionaires and billionaires.” We say “hypocritically” because Obama himself paid taxes under the existing 35% top rate, rather than the 39.6% rate he claims to support. That decreased his overall tax payment by $74,000. Obama also opted to itemize rather than take the standard deduction, further reducing his tax liability by $127,000.
If Obama and other liberals believe that “the rich” don’t pay enough taxes, why don’t their actions ever seem to match their words?
Moreover, Obama’s talking point is glaringly dishonest, since the “millionaires and billionaires” population he claims to target actually includes families earning $250,000 or individuals earning $200,000. Shouldn’t the man who raised deficits into the trillion-dollar stratosphere possess a clearer concept of numerical definitions?
Additionally, many of “the rich” Obama and liberals continue to scapegoat are actually small businesses that create most new jobs in America. As the nation’s economy continues to struggle, if small businesses are forced to pay even more to the federal government they’ll by definition have less to invest or hire.
Another metric to consider: In 1980, the top income tax rate was 70%. The top rate is now half that, at 35%, yet the portion of the nation’s income taxes paid by the top 1% has more than doubled from 19% to 38%.
In fact, that 38% portion of income taxes paid by the top 1% is nearly double its 20% share of the nation’s income. Similarly, the top 5% earned 35% of the nation’s income for the most recent year available, but paid 59% of the nation’s total income taxes (up from 37% in 1980). That means the top 5% pay more in taxes than the entire remaining 95% of taxpayers combined. For its part, the top 10% earned 46% of the nation’s income but paid 70% of income taxes (up from 49% in 1980), while the top 25% earned 67% of the nation’s income but shouldered 86% of the nation’s income taxes (up from 73% in 1980).
Simply put, the rich pay a higher portion of the nation’s income taxes today than ever. And now that 51% of American households pay no income tax at all, we face the ominous tipping point decline envisioned above.
“Soak the rich” may sound appealing as a short-term electoral slogan, but it’s a path to national decay. Fortunately, Congressman Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin) and other conservatives offer greater long-term prosperity via lower tax rates and a broader base. The time for choosing is nearly upon us, America.
SOURCE
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Truth vs. Ideology
Frustrating! That's the appropriate word for what is happening in the wake of the Osama bin Laden raid. Besides the precision of the Navy SEALs, the big story to emerge from the action is that coerced interrogation gave the CIA vital information used to track bin Laden to his lair. Current CIA Chief Leon Panetta has confirmed that.
Of course, that exposition is embarrassing to the left, including President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton, who are all on record as saying coerced interrogation does not work. Apparently, they were wrong in a big way.
The nails-on-the-blackboard part of this story is that some liberal pundits are trying to deny the undeniable. The spin they are using is that a "mosaic" of intelligence led the CIA to bin Laden. It was not just waterboarding or whatever. To paraphrase Panetta: We'll never know if we could have gotten the same intel without the water.
That's true, but who cares? It is the duty of the federal government to protect Americans from harm. And that's what the Bush administration did when it signed off on coercive questioning.
The record shows that just three men were waterboarded: Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Rahim al-Nashiri, all al-Qaida big shots. Under duress, KSM gave up vital information that crippled his terror group and ultimately led U.S. authorities to watch bin Laden's top Pakistani courier. Eventually, that man led the CIA to the compound outside Islamabad.
But still, the far left won't budge. No matter what the facts are about the effectiveness of coerced interrogation, they will deny them. Infuriating.
The sane policy going forward is this: The president and only the president should have the power to order coerced interrogation, including waterboarding, if national security is endangered or American lives are on the line. One man makes the decision, and his orders are carried out by an elite intelligence team answerable directly to him.
So if Obama doesn't want to order waterboarding, fine. That's on him. But the elected leader of the nation should have the power to make the decision.
It is ironic that many on the far left openly celebrated the death of bin Laden. So, guys, let me get this straight: It's OK for U.S. forces to shoot a terrorist in the head, but it's not OK to waterboard him if lives are in danger? Good grief.
It is long past time for Americans to reject ideology that endangers human beings. We live in a dangerous world chock full of doomsday weapons. Common sense should dictate how the federal government defines strategies to protect us. How many times have you heard ideologues say that coerced interrogation does not work?
Well, it does. Ask bin Laden. Wait, we can't.
SOURCE
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Evidence at bin Laden’s home raises nuclear concerns
Pakistani government links suspected
Intelligence analysts are sifting through phone numbers and email addresses found at Osama bin Laden’s compound to determine potential links to Pakistani government and military officials while U.S. officials and analysts raise concerns about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear materials.
According to three U.S. intelligence officials, the race is on to identify what President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, has called bin Laden’s “support system” inside Pakistan. These sources sought anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to reporters.
“My concern now is that we cannot exclude the possibility that officers in the Pakistani military and the intelligence service were helping to harbor or aware of the location of bin Laden,” said Olli Heinonen, who served as the deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2005 to 2010.
“What is to say they would not help al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to gain access to sensitive nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium?”
The U.S. has worried quietly about the infiltration of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and military for years. Those concerns heightened in recent months when the CIA learned that bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad was a stone’s throw from Pakistan's military academy.
Politico first reported this week that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told members of Congress that bin Laden’s clothing had two phone numbers sewn into it at the time of the raid. Those numbers and other contacts found at the compound are key clues in an effort to determine what elements of Pakistan’s national security establishment provided support to bin Laden and al Qaeda.
More HERE
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“No Nation Was Ever Ruined By Trade”
More trade means more jobs
The headline is a quotation from Benjamin Franklin, who added, “Even seemingly the most disadvantageous.” Franklin believed that free trade was good for everybody. In the 21st century lots of Americans and their politicians believe the opposite: Being open to trade allows rapacious corporations to “ship jobs overseas.”
In the 2010 mid-term elections, the Democratic National Committee rolled out a television ad campaign accusing various Republican candidates of favoring policies that shipped jobs overseas. More recently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declared, “I think we should do a lot more to stop shipping jobs overseas.” In the meantime, the Doha Round of international trade negotiations has been on the brink of collapse for a while, sparking fears the freer trade system painstakingly built over the last 50 years might begin to unravel.
A new study, Trade and Unemployment: What Do the Data Say?, by three European economists published in the journal, European Economic Review in March, forthrightly asks the question: Does exposure to international trade create or destroy jobs? Their answer strongly backs the observation made by Franklin more than 230 years ago. “A 10 percent increase in total trade openness reduces aggregate unemployment by about three quarters of one percentage point,” they conclude. To be a bit more precise, they find, “A 10 percentage point increase lowers the equilibrium rate of unemployment by about 0.76 percentage points.” Trade creates jobs.
In general, the higher a country’s volume of international trade, the higher is its degree of openness. Trade openness is generally measured by adding together the value of both exports and imports and dividing that sum by total gross domestic product (GDP). Crudely, let’s say an economy imports $10 billion annually and exports $10 billion annually and has a total GDP of $100 billion. That would yield a trade openness index figure of 20 percent. Another country with a GDP of $100 billion exports $15 billion and imports $15 billion, yielding a trade openness index of 30 percent.
Roughly speaking, U.S. GDP was $15 trillion in 2010, and exports and imports combined totaled just over $4 trillion, yielding a trade openness index figure of 27 percent. Without going into detail, the European economists derive a real trade openness index by taking differing price levels among countries into account.
The researchers then compare the relative trade openness of 20 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with their unemployment rates over time. They take into account other factors such as union membership, national employment protection policies, tax rates on wages, and the generosity of unemployment insurance.
The researchers report that generous unemployment benefits correlate slightly with higher unemployment, suggesting that workers have less incentive to look hard for work. Also, high unemployment correlates with the size of the tax wedge, that is, the difference between what employees take home in earnings and what it costs to employ them. Basically, this means the higher the income tax rate, the higher the level of unemployment.
The researchers go on to analyze the effect of freer trade on a selection of 62 developing countries. They take into account features like the size of the black market economy and whether a country is landlocked or not. Again, they find that openness to trade boosts employment, concluding that “the effect of a 10 percentage point increase in openness lowers unemployment by about 1 percentage point.”
So why does free trade create more jobs? The study suggests that freer trade boosts overall productivity, enabling companies to hire more workers. Trade enhances competition which weeds out inefficient firms and allows more productive ones to expand. As the average efficiency of firms in a country increases, they can earn more revenues by boosting production. And that leads to hiring additional workers.
To get some idea of how much opening international trade further would benefit people, economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., calculate that concluding the Doha Round of free trade negotiations could boost global GDP between $165 billion and $283 billion per year.
So why do people, especially politicians, believe the opposite? The 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat explained this sort of disheartening policy myopia his brilliant essay, “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.” People tend to focus on the seen consequences of a policy, in this case, competition from trade eliminating some jobs at relatively inefficient companies.
But they miss the unseen benefits, such as new jobs that result from increased average productivity. Naturally, the people who lose their jobs are worried and angry, so they call their member of Congress to complain about “unfair” trade. Fearing that they may lose their jobs, the denizens of Capitol Hill seek to enact legislation to block imports or mandate “Buy American” to protect their complaining constituents against “unfair” trade. In politics, as in much of life, the squeaky wheels get oiled.
The seen result of this political dynamic is that a few workers get to keep their jobs while the unseen outcome is that more people are out of work than would otherwise have been. In addition, protectionist legislation makes other Americans worse off by forcing them to spend more because they are denied access to cheaper and better exports. Our politicians get it backwards: Trade creates jobs for Americans and everyone else.
SOURCE
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)
****************************
Sunday, May 08, 2011
A very "incorrect" article
The article below says what many academic psychometricans have been saying for a long time -- that brain size is related to IQ and that IQ varies with climate, with people from Northern climes being smarter than people from the tropics.
Do the pinheads of East Africa and the markedly lower IQ of Africans generally spring to mind in that connection? They should, because that is the strongest evidence for the thesis concerned.
But nobody is supposed to mention that in respectable circles. So how come it got mentioned in a major scientific communication medium? It got a mention because of a quite absurd stratagem. The authors hung their story on the hook of global warming. Global warming will make us dumber, you see.
The fact that evolution moves at a pace that makes glaciers look fast means that any such effect of global warming would take maybe hundreds of thousands of years to manifest itself. But that was no bother, apparently.
The fact that people of European and British origin move to warmer climates without any known loss of intelligence is also overlooked. I come from a population of British origin that has lived in the tropics for generations (in N. Queensland, Australia) and I would back their intelligence against that of any other British-origin population
The study, to be published by Jessica Ash, a graduate student in psychology, and professor of evolutionary psychology Gordon G. Gallup Jr. in the spring edition of Human Nature (Vol. 18, Issue 2, 2007: Transaction Publishers), suggests that human cranial capacity as an indicator of brain size grew dramatically during our evolution, and that variations in global temperature as well as progressive shifts toward global cooling account for as much as 50 percent of the variation in cranial capacity. The research utilized several measures of paleotemperatures and a sample of 109 fossilized hominid skulls collected over the past 2 million years.
In addition to the impact of global cooling, "By paying close attention to the geographic origin of each of the fossilized skulls," said Gallup, "it became clear that seasonal variation in climate may also have been an important selective force behind the evolution of human cranial capacity. Specifically, we found that as the distance from the equator increased, north or south, so did brain size."
The authors suggest that a key environmental trigger to the evolution of larger brains was the need to devise ways to keep warm and manage the fluctuations in food availability that resulted from cold weather.
In species other than humans, problems posed by cooler climates were solved by adaptations such as hibernation and migration, and by metabolic adaptations including fur and the development of fat deposits. During human evolution, however, the authors surmise that solutions to the problems of cold weather and a scarce food supply featured detailed and progressively more refined cognitive and intellectual strategies, such as the development of cooperative hunting techniques and more sophisticated tools and weapons. Increased brain capacity also brought with it the use of fire as a means to keep warm and cook, adaptations in clothing and shelter, and the development of more refined social skills.
Gallup and Ash suggest that while our understanding of brain evolution remains incomplete, the study provides evidence of the role of climate and migration away from the equator as selective forces in promoting human intelligence, and that the recent trend toward global warming may be reversing a trend that led to brain expansion in humans.
SOURCE
****************************
More bumptious psychologizing from the Left
They JUST KNOW what the truth is so people who disagree with them must be "denialists". Lumping together different belief systems the way it is done below can only spring from arrogance. Scientific caution would treat each belief as "sui generis" (of its own kind) until it could be shown that each is false.
Given the rapid and substantial changes in the account coming from the White House about the bin Laden raid, skepticism about the whole thing is highly reasonable. And that Obama's birth certificate copy could be just another bit of photoshopping would occur to anybody with experience of photoshopping
And there are NO facts at all to support the prophecies of global climate doom. It's just scientists speculating.
So just an excerpt below from the latest Leftist pretence at science. It is just another version of Obama's "bitter clingy" remarks -- a persistent Leftist claim going back at least as far as 1950 to the effect that they are sane and everybody else is deranged
Climate change skeptics, 9/11 truthers and “birthers,” those who deny President Obama’s American citizenship, have provided us with an extensive record of denialism within American culture that is worth studying. Indeed, entire disciplines have been established to understand and explain these behaviors.
Chris Mooney and others have begun to put the pieces together in a way that allows us to formulate communications protocols that effectively counteract the drivers of “motivated reasoning.”
However, because the above mentioned examples of motivated cognition arose simultaneously with this field of study, we have lacked the benefit of observing the transmogrification of the denialist mentality as it happens.
We are currently witnessing the de novo formulation of a new denialism in regards to the death of Osama bin Laden. As I was listening to C-SPAN radio, just yesterday, two callers a Democrat and a Republican agreed that bin Laden was not dead and the entire hullabaloo was orchestrated for political gain.
Because we are now armed with at least a superficial understanding of the mechanisms behind this type of thinking, we can ask questions and test hypotheses while observing the development of this particular case of motivated thought.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call them “deathers.” Of particular interest when studying the deathers is what exactly are the competing interests between which they must make a satisfactory choice and what are the ends or goals to which they strive.
One would expect that there are at least two competing interests in the minds of the deathers. The first could be a desire to believe that an existing threat, that of a terrorist mastermind, has been eliminated. The second interest appears to be a desire to find fault with President Obama, regardless of the benefits that might come from his service.
According to Dan Kahan, one of the thought leaders in this field, this all happens subconsciously. Therefore, the deather must undergo a series of mental operations that lead him to choose the latter in order to satisfy a desired endpoint.
So, how do we convince the deathers that Osama bin Laden is actually dead? I will venture to suggest that we must resolve the conflict between the deather’s two competing interests, the desire for the removal of a threat vs. finding fault with Obama, while allowing the deather to achieve his desired outcome (let’s say that he can still be a loyal Republican). This must be done without forcing him to accept that which causes him conflict (in this case that President Obama was responsible for a positive outcome).
More HERE
*************************
‘Happiness gene’ in brain determines basic levels of contentment
This is quite a strong piece of research. The strong influence of genetics on happiness was known but to pick out one of the actual genes involved is a good advance. Sadly, the measure of happiness used was unsophisticated. A more comprehensive and reliable measure of happiness could well show the gene as even more influential than the researchers below calculate.
The political importance of the finding goes back to several findings in recent years that money doesn't make you happy. Leftists have reasoned from that that they are therefore doing you no harm by taking more of your money in tax.
But in a typically incurious Leftist way, they fail to ask WHY money doesn't generally make you happy. And a large part of the answer is the finding reiterated below: That happiness is a stable, inborn personality trait that varies little no matter WHAT happens to you. In fact, even people who have become paraplegic or quadriplegic through some unfortunate accident usually regain their previous level of happiness after a couple of years
So by Leftist reasoning, they would do us no harm by making us all paraplegics. In other words, the invariability of happiness makes it an inappropriate criterion by which to judge public policy. What people WANT is a far more justifiable and ascertainable criterion
And in any case we have to ask where Leftists get the right to make our decisions for us? It is far more justifiable and humane to say that each person should as far as possible make his own decisions for himself. But Leftist arrogance has no time for that of course. The individual hardly matters to them at all. They know better. They seem to think that their sh*t doesn't stink.
I examine the earlier research and writing in this field at more length here. The final version of the scientific journal article presently being disussed is supposed to be available here but does not yet appear to be online. I therefore follow the popular summary below with the abstract from a working version of the paper. An alternative summary of the paper can be found here
The study of more than 2,500 Americans revealed two variants of a gene that influenced how satisfied – or dissatisfied – people were with their lot. Those born with two long versions of the gene (one is passed down from each parent) were more likely to declare themselves "very satisfied" with life than those who inherited two short versions.
The study marks a tentative step towards explaining the mystery of why some people seem naturally happier than others. "This gives us more insight into the biological mechanisms that influence life satisfaction," said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "If you're feeling down, you can say it's your biology telling you life is less rosy that it is," he added.
A greater understanding of happiness genes might in future allow would-be parents to create a child who will be more satisfied with their life.
Happiness is only partly influenced by genetic makeup. Studies in twins suggest that genes account for roughly a third to a half of the variation in happiness between people. It is not yet known how many genes affect how cheerful we are.
De Neve looked at the genetic makeup of 2,574 people selected to be representative of the general population, whose medical histories were recorded for the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Among the records were answers to a question participants were asked in their early 20s about life satisfaction. In response to the question, "How satisfied are you with your life as a whole", they answered either "very satisfied", "satisfied", "neither satisfied or dissatisfied", "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied".
Writing in the Journal of Human Genetics, De Neve describes how roughly 40% said they were "very satisfied" with life, and among these, 35.4% had two long variants of the gene and only 19.1% had two short versions. Of those who were "dissatisfied" with life, 26.2% had two long variants of the gene, while 20% had two short versions. That indicates a slight over-representation of the long variants in happier people.
The gene, known as 5-HTT, is involved with the transport of serotonin, a feelgood chemical, in the brain. The longer variant leads to more efficient release and recycling of the neurotransmitter....
A 2009 study by Elaine Fox at the University of Essex suggested that people who carried long versions of the 5-HTT gene had a greater tendency to focus on the positives in life. The "bright side" version of the gene might bolster people's resilience to stressful events, and protect against anxiety, depression and other mental health problems.
Ed Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of the 2008 book, Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, said: "We are just beginning to understand the actual genetics of happiness, and how genes might influence brain hormones and other physiology that influence our well-being.
"This exciting work offers insights that one day may help us counter disorders such as depression. Parents one day might have the choice of whether to choose genes that will create a child who is more satisfied with his or her life."
SOURCE
*********************
Nationalism as a Political Religion
Since I am being all academic today, I will say just a few words about an article titled: "Nationalism as a Political Religion: Review-Essay on Emilio Gentile by Richard A. Koenigsberg.
What the reviewer says is all well and good but he fails to make what is generally held to be an important distinction: The distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is a normal human feeling which would appear to originate in part from our tribal past. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a creed rather than a feeling that may build on patriotism but goes far beyond it. The best known example of nationalism is of course Hitler's Nazi creed and Hitler's socialism gives us the clue we need to see what nationalism really is. It is a Leftist perversion of patriotism, created to further the usual Leftist search for power.
So the authors above are right to see nationalism as a religion, just as it is right to see Leftism generally as a religion. See Dennis Prager (among others) on that.
Update:
My comments above might seem a bit wrong-headed in view of the fact that Leftists these days tend to be ANTI-patriotic. That is a recent development however. We all know the famous quote from Pericles by JFK: "Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what you can do for your country". And JFK was a DEMOCRAT president. And the very popular patriotic song "This Land Is Your Land" was written by Woody Guthrie, a Communist.
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)
****************************
The article below says what many academic psychometricans have been saying for a long time -- that brain size is related to IQ and that IQ varies with climate, with people from Northern climes being smarter than people from the tropics.
Do the pinheads of East Africa and the markedly lower IQ of Africans generally spring to mind in that connection? They should, because that is the strongest evidence for the thesis concerned.
But nobody is supposed to mention that in respectable circles. So how come it got mentioned in a major scientific communication medium? It got a mention because of a quite absurd stratagem. The authors hung their story on the hook of global warming. Global warming will make us dumber, you see.
The fact that evolution moves at a pace that makes glaciers look fast means that any such effect of global warming would take maybe hundreds of thousands of years to manifest itself. But that was no bother, apparently.
The fact that people of European and British origin move to warmer climates without any known loss of intelligence is also overlooked. I come from a population of British origin that has lived in the tropics for generations (in N. Queensland, Australia) and I would back their intelligence against that of any other British-origin population
The study, to be published by Jessica Ash, a graduate student in psychology, and professor of evolutionary psychology Gordon G. Gallup Jr. in the spring edition of Human Nature (Vol. 18, Issue 2, 2007: Transaction Publishers), suggests that human cranial capacity as an indicator of brain size grew dramatically during our evolution, and that variations in global temperature as well as progressive shifts toward global cooling account for as much as 50 percent of the variation in cranial capacity. The research utilized several measures of paleotemperatures and a sample of 109 fossilized hominid skulls collected over the past 2 million years.
In addition to the impact of global cooling, "By paying close attention to the geographic origin of each of the fossilized skulls," said Gallup, "it became clear that seasonal variation in climate may also have been an important selective force behind the evolution of human cranial capacity. Specifically, we found that as the distance from the equator increased, north or south, so did brain size."
The authors suggest that a key environmental trigger to the evolution of larger brains was the need to devise ways to keep warm and manage the fluctuations in food availability that resulted from cold weather.
In species other than humans, problems posed by cooler climates were solved by adaptations such as hibernation and migration, and by metabolic adaptations including fur and the development of fat deposits. During human evolution, however, the authors surmise that solutions to the problems of cold weather and a scarce food supply featured detailed and progressively more refined cognitive and intellectual strategies, such as the development of cooperative hunting techniques and more sophisticated tools and weapons. Increased brain capacity also brought with it the use of fire as a means to keep warm and cook, adaptations in clothing and shelter, and the development of more refined social skills.
Gallup and Ash suggest that while our understanding of brain evolution remains incomplete, the study provides evidence of the role of climate and migration away from the equator as selective forces in promoting human intelligence, and that the recent trend toward global warming may be reversing a trend that led to brain expansion in humans.
SOURCE
****************************
More bumptious psychologizing from the Left
They JUST KNOW what the truth is so people who disagree with them must be "denialists". Lumping together different belief systems the way it is done below can only spring from arrogance. Scientific caution would treat each belief as "sui generis" (of its own kind) until it could be shown that each is false.
Given the rapid and substantial changes in the account coming from the White House about the bin Laden raid, skepticism about the whole thing is highly reasonable. And that Obama's birth certificate copy could be just another bit of photoshopping would occur to anybody with experience of photoshopping
And there are NO facts at all to support the prophecies of global climate doom. It's just scientists speculating.
So just an excerpt below from the latest Leftist pretence at science. It is just another version of Obama's "bitter clingy" remarks -- a persistent Leftist claim going back at least as far as 1950 to the effect that they are sane and everybody else is deranged
Climate change skeptics, 9/11 truthers and “birthers,” those who deny President Obama’s American citizenship, have provided us with an extensive record of denialism within American culture that is worth studying. Indeed, entire disciplines have been established to understand and explain these behaviors.
Chris Mooney and others have begun to put the pieces together in a way that allows us to formulate communications protocols that effectively counteract the drivers of “motivated reasoning.”
However, because the above mentioned examples of motivated cognition arose simultaneously with this field of study, we have lacked the benefit of observing the transmogrification of the denialist mentality as it happens.
We are currently witnessing the de novo formulation of a new denialism in regards to the death of Osama bin Laden. As I was listening to C-SPAN radio, just yesterday, two callers a Democrat and a Republican agreed that bin Laden was not dead and the entire hullabaloo was orchestrated for political gain.
Because we are now armed with at least a superficial understanding of the mechanisms behind this type of thinking, we can ask questions and test hypotheses while observing the development of this particular case of motivated thought.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call them “deathers.” Of particular interest when studying the deathers is what exactly are the competing interests between which they must make a satisfactory choice and what are the ends or goals to which they strive.
One would expect that there are at least two competing interests in the minds of the deathers. The first could be a desire to believe that an existing threat, that of a terrorist mastermind, has been eliminated. The second interest appears to be a desire to find fault with President Obama, regardless of the benefits that might come from his service.
According to Dan Kahan, one of the thought leaders in this field, this all happens subconsciously. Therefore, the deather must undergo a series of mental operations that lead him to choose the latter in order to satisfy a desired endpoint.
So, how do we convince the deathers that Osama bin Laden is actually dead? I will venture to suggest that we must resolve the conflict between the deather’s two competing interests, the desire for the removal of a threat vs. finding fault with Obama, while allowing the deather to achieve his desired outcome (let’s say that he can still be a loyal Republican). This must be done without forcing him to accept that which causes him conflict (in this case that President Obama was responsible for a positive outcome).
More HERE
*************************
‘Happiness gene’ in brain determines basic levels of contentment
This is quite a strong piece of research. The strong influence of genetics on happiness was known but to pick out one of the actual genes involved is a good advance. Sadly, the measure of happiness used was unsophisticated. A more comprehensive and reliable measure of happiness could well show the gene as even more influential than the researchers below calculate.
The political importance of the finding goes back to several findings in recent years that money doesn't make you happy. Leftists have reasoned from that that they are therefore doing you no harm by taking more of your money in tax.
But in a typically incurious Leftist way, they fail to ask WHY money doesn't generally make you happy. And a large part of the answer is the finding reiterated below: That happiness is a stable, inborn personality trait that varies little no matter WHAT happens to you. In fact, even people who have become paraplegic or quadriplegic through some unfortunate accident usually regain their previous level of happiness after a couple of years
So by Leftist reasoning, they would do us no harm by making us all paraplegics. In other words, the invariability of happiness makes it an inappropriate criterion by which to judge public policy. What people WANT is a far more justifiable and ascertainable criterion
And in any case we have to ask where Leftists get the right to make our decisions for us? It is far more justifiable and humane to say that each person should as far as possible make his own decisions for himself. But Leftist arrogance has no time for that of course. The individual hardly matters to them at all. They know better. They seem to think that their sh*t doesn't stink.
I examine the earlier research and writing in this field at more length here. The final version of the scientific journal article presently being disussed is supposed to be available here but does not yet appear to be online. I therefore follow the popular summary below with the abstract from a working version of the paper. An alternative summary of the paper can be found here
The study of more than 2,500 Americans revealed two variants of a gene that influenced how satisfied – or dissatisfied – people were with their lot. Those born with two long versions of the gene (one is passed down from each parent) were more likely to declare themselves "very satisfied" with life than those who inherited two short versions.
The study marks a tentative step towards explaining the mystery of why some people seem naturally happier than others. "This gives us more insight into the biological mechanisms that influence life satisfaction," said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "If you're feeling down, you can say it's your biology telling you life is less rosy that it is," he added.
A greater understanding of happiness genes might in future allow would-be parents to create a child who will be more satisfied with their life.
Happiness is only partly influenced by genetic makeup. Studies in twins suggest that genes account for roughly a third to a half of the variation in happiness between people. It is not yet known how many genes affect how cheerful we are.
De Neve looked at the genetic makeup of 2,574 people selected to be representative of the general population, whose medical histories were recorded for the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Among the records were answers to a question participants were asked in their early 20s about life satisfaction. In response to the question, "How satisfied are you with your life as a whole", they answered either "very satisfied", "satisfied", "neither satisfied or dissatisfied", "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied".
Writing in the Journal of Human Genetics, De Neve describes how roughly 40% said they were "very satisfied" with life, and among these, 35.4% had two long variants of the gene and only 19.1% had two short versions. Of those who were "dissatisfied" with life, 26.2% had two long variants of the gene, while 20% had two short versions. That indicates a slight over-representation of the long variants in happier people.
The gene, known as 5-HTT, is involved with the transport of serotonin, a feelgood chemical, in the brain. The longer variant leads to more efficient release and recycling of the neurotransmitter....
A 2009 study by Elaine Fox at the University of Essex suggested that people who carried long versions of the 5-HTT gene had a greater tendency to focus on the positives in life. The "bright side" version of the gene might bolster people's resilience to stressful events, and protect against anxiety, depression and other mental health problems.
Ed Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of the 2008 book, Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, said: "We are just beginning to understand the actual genetics of happiness, and how genes might influence brain hormones and other physiology that influence our well-being.
"This exciting work offers insights that one day may help us counter disorders such as depression. Parents one day might have the choice of whether to choose genes that will create a child who is more satisfied with his or her life."
SOURCE
Genes, Economics, and Happiness
By Jan-Emmanuel De Neve et al.
Abstract:
A major finding from research into the sources of subjective well-being is that individuals exhibit a "baseline" level of happiness. We explore the influence of genetic variation by employing a twin design and genetic association study.
We first show that about 33% of the variation in happiness is explained by genes. Next, using two independent data sources, we present evidence that individuals with a transcriptionally more efficient version of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction.
These results are the first to identify a specific gene that is associated with happiness and suggest that behavioral models benefit from integrating genetic variation.
SOURCE
*********************
Nationalism as a Political Religion
Since I am being all academic today, I will say just a few words about an article titled: "Nationalism as a Political Religion: Review-Essay on Emilio Gentile by Richard A. Koenigsberg.
What the reviewer says is all well and good but he fails to make what is generally held to be an important distinction: The distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is a normal human feeling which would appear to originate in part from our tribal past. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a creed rather than a feeling that may build on patriotism but goes far beyond it. The best known example of nationalism is of course Hitler's Nazi creed and Hitler's socialism gives us the clue we need to see what nationalism really is. It is a Leftist perversion of patriotism, created to further the usual Leftist search for power.
So the authors above are right to see nationalism as a religion, just as it is right to see Leftism generally as a religion. See Dennis Prager (among others) on that.
Update:
My comments above might seem a bit wrong-headed in view of the fact that Leftists these days tend to be ANTI-patriotic. That is a recent development however. We all know the famous quote from Pericles by JFK: "Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what you can do for your country". And JFK was a DEMOCRAT president. And the very popular patriotic song "This Land Is Your Land" was written by Woody Guthrie, a Communist.
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)
****************************
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Vindication: Three Controversial Bush Policies Help Take Down bin Laden
The mission was undeniably carried out on Obama’s watch, but evidence continues to mount that it could not have occurred without crucial intelligence gleaned through policies enacted by the Bush administration after September 11, 2001. Specifically, Osama bin Laden was found because the United States military exploited actionable intelligence extracted by subjecting terrorists to enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) in secret CIA prisons, by questioning enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, and by capturing a top al Qaeda source in Iraq.
As long as some liberals remain intent on keeping political score, it must be pointed out that all three sources of these indispensible data points were direct or indirect results of Bush policies – EITs, Gitmo, and the Iraq war – that much of the American Left, including Barack Obama, fought tooth and nail.
We now know the critical key to unlocking the frustrating secret of bin Laden’s whereabouts was identifying and tracking one of his must trusted couriers and confidants. US intelligence and military officials learned of his existence and pseudonym in the years after 9/11 from a terrorist detained at Guantanamo Bay, Muhammad Mani al-Qahtani. Equipped with this information, interrogators were able to wring supplemental information from two high-value prisoners being held at the time in black site CIA prisons: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of the 9/11 plot, and his radical colleague, Abu Faraj al-Libi. This single piece of information, after years of scrutiny and investigation, would be bin Laden’s undoing.
When the American media revealed that the CIA was operating secret prisons during the Bush administration, the Left professed shock and indignation. They spent years demonizing and persecuting American intelligence operatives for engaging in “torture,” insisting that harsh interrogation techniques were an affront to “our values,” and – besides – they didn’t even work. Multiple public opinion polls taken over the last decade have shown, despite the Left’s protestations, the American people aren’t scandalized. US voters overwhelmingly support the limited use of harsh questioning tactics to prevent terrorist attacks on US soil – even when the loaded term “torture” is included in the question.
One such technique is waterboarding, a process employed against exactly three terrorists, and halted altogether in 2003. Waterboarding is widely acknowledged to have broken KSM, who had shown himself to be a hardened and skilled resistor of traditional interrogation methods. Information extracted from KSM disrupted active terror plots, saved innocent lives, and led to the capture or killing of other al Qaeda leaders.
In other words, waterboarding KSM and others may or may not have produced direct information about the identity bin Laden’s courier, but the use of coercive interrogation methods were instrumental in gathering additional strands of intelligence from certain detainees. That waterboarding cracked KSM’s resistance cannot be ignored in this context.
But the mere knowledge that an unidentified bin Laden lackey was roaming the planet under an assumed name was not nearly enough to nail him down or monitor his communication. That imperative piece of the puzzle fell into place after 2004, when the US captured a terrorist operative named Hassan Ghul. Ghul was a key member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, an entity whose very existence many liberals were reluctant to even acknowledge, based on a zealous adherence to the faulty premise that the Iraq war was untethered to our fight against al Qaeda. Ghul was detained in Iraq and shipped off to Pakistan for intense CIA questioning; he eventually provided the true name of bin Laden’s elusive courier: Sheik Abu Ahmed, a.k.a. Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Officials have described this morsel of intelligence as the “linchpin” of the bin Laden mission. US spies monitored al-Kuwaiti for several years. A lone phone call in 2010 eventually led them to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.
This web of intelligence – as sketchy, painstaking, and complex as it may be – is extraordinary: Al-Kuwaiti’s existence was flagged by at least one Guantanamo Bay detainee, his role and pseudonym were confirmed by KSM and al-Libi, and his true identity was spilled by an Al Qaeda terrorist operating in Iraq.
More HERE
***************************
Obama's Scandalous War Against Domestic Oil
Do you remember the terrible things the left was saying about President George W. Bush when gas prices soared under his watch? Yet President Obama, whose policies and actions are actually contributing to rocketing gas prices today, gets the usual mainstream media pass.
Is it that the liberal media exempt Obama from accountability because they're on his team in general? Is it because they think he's blameless in the equation even though they sprang to the unfounded conclusion that Bush was culpable? Or could it be that they aren't critical because they share his bias against conventional energy and believe the pain caused by his policies is necessary to move us toward alternative energy sources?
During Bush's term, gas prices went down 9 percent, adjusted for inflation. Yet, preposterously, he was excoriated for allegedly colluding with "big oil" to drive up prices. When prices spiked later in his term, he took proactive steps to increase our supply and reduce prices, and they worked. But Obama has taken action to impede conventional energy sources and shove us into alternative ones. Even so, liberals ignore any possible causal links.
Obama told us he would bankrupt the coal industry. He's pushing high-speed rail down our throats despite the lack of public demand for it and our inability to finance it. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the administration intended to coerce us out of our cars. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."
In view of exploding gas prices, why aren't these statements seen as scandalous? Where are the calls for investigations?
Obama demeans "big oil," pushes alternative energy every time he gets a chance and does everything in his power to suppress domestic oil production, then looks us in the face and tells us he's increasing domestic production -- kind of like how he says his budget won't add a penny to the national debt. The audacity is of Hollywood magnitude, and so is the lack of scrutiny that enables it.
Behind the smoke and mirrors of his rhetoric, it's hard not to conclude that Obama's on a mission to suppress or shut down the existing oil infrastructure in the United States in pursuit of his stated alternative priorities.
The Heritage Foundation's Rory Cooper reports that, as of February 2011, at least 103 permits were awaiting review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. And since February, the administration has issued on average only 1.3 permits a month, a 78 percent reduction in the monthly average according to the latest Gulf Permit Index.
Obama even reversed an earlier decision to open access to coastal waters for exploration, placing a seven-year ban on drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Oil production in the Gulf is expected to drop by 220 thousand barrels per day in 2011, which is going to cost the U.S. some $1.35 billion in revenues in 2011.
Not only are we losing oil production and revenues, the administration's actions are destroying jobs in the oil industry and elsewhere. Many companies are going out of business. The Heritage Foundation reports that Seahawk Drilling, of Houston, laid off 632 employees before recently filing for bankruptcy as a direct result of Obama's moratorium and subsequent "permitorium." Seahawk owned and operated 20 shallow-water rigs in the Gulf. Randall Stilley, president and CEO of Seahawk, said, "As an American, you never want to look at your own government and say they're hurting you personally, they're hurting your business and they're doing it in a way that's irresponsible. I'm not very proud of our government right now and the way they handled this."
Cooper explains that these crippling policies are having a negative rippling effect throughout the economy. Many vendors, suppliers, restaurants and retailers are losing revenues or going out of business. More than 30 deepwater rigs, which each employ around 200 people, have moved from the Gulf to other markets. While the industry is on "life support," Obama is at war with it, brazenly spending billions to support foreign oil and jobs in Brazil.
Making matters worse, the administration and congressional Democrats are considering legislation that would further damage energy businesses by significantly increasing taxes on domestic oil and gas concerns. And just in the past few days, we've been reading that the administration is floating a plan to tax cars by the mile.
Can you imagine the insanity and insensitivity of raising taxes on this ailing industry and its consumers (drivers) at a time when both need all the relief they can get?
Obama is no less determined to cram his preferred energy alternatives down Americans' throats than he was to force feed us socialized medicine. Again, where is the outrage?
SOURCE
**************************
Obama Economy Will Make You Poor
While Barack Obama spends his time running victory laps around the country over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the American economy is careening toward a dangerous cliff. Royal Weddings, Obama's multiple birth certificates, and absurd arguments about the NFL lockout dominate the news while daily Americans get poorer.
Obamanomics is a disaster. A greater disaster hasn't been visited on the United States in our economic history because we are taking no substantial steps toward recovery. The real news, which should be screaming from every television and newspaper isn't pro Obama, therefore, it is ignored.
Here are the stories on which we should be focusing. The US dollar has slumped to a record low against major currencies. Since we have devastated our manufacturing base over the last two decades, this will result in Americans paying substantially more for goods on the store shelves in retailers from Walmart to Costco.
The outlook for the recovery has diminished to almost zero. If you subtract the impact of inflation, many economists believe we are actually still in a recession. When I talk to my friends and neighbors outside of Washington DC, we unanimously agree we are still in recession.
Here are some statistics which will help you understand the pain. More Americans are on food stamps today than at any other time in history. That's right-the most in history. The number of persons on food stamps is 44.2 million according a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Those not on food stamps feel a different pain when they buy groceries. We see unbelievably high prices at the grocery store. The cost of living in the U.S. rose at its fastest pace since December 2009 in the 12 months ended in March. Wheat, meat, vegetables and other grains are all surging in price. But if you don't have a job, it is hard to shop for groceries.
Bloomberg reported this week, "Applications for jobless benefits jumped by 43,000 to 474,000 in the week ended April 30, the most since August, Labor Department figures showed today." This is a serious darkening in the employment clouds just as the recovery was supposed to be broadening.
The unprecedented easy money policies from the Federal Reserve haven't helped the real economy. Sure, they did pump enough billions of dollars into Wall Street Banks and Government Agencies to make sure the leather loafer wearing crowds in New York City and Washington DC are still swimming in cash. But for the majority of Americans, they have felt only the pain of higher food and energy prices from the misallocation of dollars.
This week, as we fueled a rental car near the San Diego airport, we paid fifteen dollars for three gallons of gasoline. At these prices, Americans are spending as much as $100 a week just to fuel the car to commute to work. Why hasn't the president cleared the decks to deal with this energy crisis? It is a crisis when it costs as much to commute to work as you make in take home pay. Many Americans are already at this tipping point. Obama mutters on about windmills and electric cars. We need off shore drilling and increased production to ease this pain.
At least open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down prices in the short term.
While the nation shudders under unmanageable regulatory and monetary burdens, Obama is oblivious. Obama is flying from city to city collecting cash for his re-election drive. And don't let us forget he is spending over a hundred thousand dollars to a teleprompter coach.
And we thought standing and delivering a prepared text in front of a teleprompter was a skill he had already mastered. How about a coach on how to manage the American economy? Obama's priorities are obvious, and they aren't on helping everyday Americans, but his buddies and himself.
SOURCE
***************************
Walmart Benefits Everyone
When a store opens, there is an immediate need for hundreds of jobs. There are also many more jobs created because of all the businesses that try to locate near the Walmart development. Simply put, it is easy to imagine over a thousand jobs being created in a community where Walmart locates itself. Even though mom-and-pop type shops might be forced to close because they couldn’t compete, everyone still wins. The people that lost their job at the mom-and-pop operation can simply try to work for Walmart or the plethora of businesses that open around it.
Progressives bemoan Walmart because they see it as a greedy capitalist industrialist that preys on the poor and exploits them. Quite the opposite is the truth. Indeed many people of lesser means are drawn to Walmart exactly because of the lower prices, and as I mentioned earlier, that can only benefit them. They are able to save their few precious dollars. Can anything be wrong with that?
I asked the group Respect D.C., an organization that opposes the development of Walmart in Washington D.C., why they thought Walmart was bad for a community where unemployment hangs around 9.5 percent. They tweeted back with five responses to that question, (which you can read by clicking 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). One response from them did stand out though, and it was their claim that Walmart pays a “slave” wage.
Such a silly argument has long been shouted at Walmart. Of course, it isn’t true. A slave’s wage is $0, and clearly the employees of Walmart make much more than that. As George Mason University economics professor Dr. Don Boudreaux puts it, “the plausibility of slaves producing manufactured goods for sale by Wal-Mart is just as implausible as the wackiest alien-abduction allegation.”
Walmart will always be under attack from progressives that worry that anything that makes a profit must somehow be up to no good at the expense of defenseless humans who know nothing of the con that is being pulled on them. But it appears that the con is completely created by the progressive worrywarts who conjure up notions of slavery when they have no evidence to back up such claims.
Fortunately for Walmart and consumers all over the world, we are able to enjoy low prices and dollars saved. This benefits each and every consumer, each and every community, and countless other businesses worldwide. It is because of businesses like Walmart that we enjoy the relatively high amount of wealth that we have in America. So you better not fall for the slick arguments from groups like Respect D.C. and other community organizers, because the benefits that we all reap from Walmart’s success could quickly disappear.
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)
****************************
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)
****************************
The mission was undeniably carried out on Obama’s watch, but evidence continues to mount that it could not have occurred without crucial intelligence gleaned through policies enacted by the Bush administration after September 11, 2001. Specifically, Osama bin Laden was found because the United States military exploited actionable intelligence extracted by subjecting terrorists to enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) in secret CIA prisons, by questioning enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, and by capturing a top al Qaeda source in Iraq.
As long as some liberals remain intent on keeping political score, it must be pointed out that all three sources of these indispensible data points were direct or indirect results of Bush policies – EITs, Gitmo, and the Iraq war – that much of the American Left, including Barack Obama, fought tooth and nail.
We now know the critical key to unlocking the frustrating secret of bin Laden’s whereabouts was identifying and tracking one of his must trusted couriers and confidants. US intelligence and military officials learned of his existence and pseudonym in the years after 9/11 from a terrorist detained at Guantanamo Bay, Muhammad Mani al-Qahtani. Equipped with this information, interrogators were able to wring supplemental information from two high-value prisoners being held at the time in black site CIA prisons: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of the 9/11 plot, and his radical colleague, Abu Faraj al-Libi. This single piece of information, after years of scrutiny and investigation, would be bin Laden’s undoing.
When the American media revealed that the CIA was operating secret prisons during the Bush administration, the Left professed shock and indignation. They spent years demonizing and persecuting American intelligence operatives for engaging in “torture,” insisting that harsh interrogation techniques were an affront to “our values,” and – besides – they didn’t even work. Multiple public opinion polls taken over the last decade have shown, despite the Left’s protestations, the American people aren’t scandalized. US voters overwhelmingly support the limited use of harsh questioning tactics to prevent terrorist attacks on US soil – even when the loaded term “torture” is included in the question.
One such technique is waterboarding, a process employed against exactly three terrorists, and halted altogether in 2003. Waterboarding is widely acknowledged to have broken KSM, who had shown himself to be a hardened and skilled resistor of traditional interrogation methods. Information extracted from KSM disrupted active terror plots, saved innocent lives, and led to the capture or killing of other al Qaeda leaders.
In other words, waterboarding KSM and others may or may not have produced direct information about the identity bin Laden’s courier, but the use of coercive interrogation methods were instrumental in gathering additional strands of intelligence from certain detainees. That waterboarding cracked KSM’s resistance cannot be ignored in this context.
But the mere knowledge that an unidentified bin Laden lackey was roaming the planet under an assumed name was not nearly enough to nail him down or monitor his communication. That imperative piece of the puzzle fell into place after 2004, when the US captured a terrorist operative named Hassan Ghul. Ghul was a key member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, an entity whose very existence many liberals were reluctant to even acknowledge, based on a zealous adherence to the faulty premise that the Iraq war was untethered to our fight against al Qaeda. Ghul was detained in Iraq and shipped off to Pakistan for intense CIA questioning; he eventually provided the true name of bin Laden’s elusive courier: Sheik Abu Ahmed, a.k.a. Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Officials have described this morsel of intelligence as the “linchpin” of the bin Laden mission. US spies monitored al-Kuwaiti for several years. A lone phone call in 2010 eventually led them to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.
This web of intelligence – as sketchy, painstaking, and complex as it may be – is extraordinary: Al-Kuwaiti’s existence was flagged by at least one Guantanamo Bay detainee, his role and pseudonym were confirmed by KSM and al-Libi, and his true identity was spilled by an Al Qaeda terrorist operating in Iraq.
More HERE
***************************
Obama's Scandalous War Against Domestic Oil
Do you remember the terrible things the left was saying about President George W. Bush when gas prices soared under his watch? Yet President Obama, whose policies and actions are actually contributing to rocketing gas prices today, gets the usual mainstream media pass.
Is it that the liberal media exempt Obama from accountability because they're on his team in general? Is it because they think he's blameless in the equation even though they sprang to the unfounded conclusion that Bush was culpable? Or could it be that they aren't critical because they share his bias against conventional energy and believe the pain caused by his policies is necessary to move us toward alternative energy sources?
During Bush's term, gas prices went down 9 percent, adjusted for inflation. Yet, preposterously, he was excoriated for allegedly colluding with "big oil" to drive up prices. When prices spiked later in his term, he took proactive steps to increase our supply and reduce prices, and they worked. But Obama has taken action to impede conventional energy sources and shove us into alternative ones. Even so, liberals ignore any possible causal links.
Obama told us he would bankrupt the coal industry. He's pushing high-speed rail down our throats despite the lack of public demand for it and our inability to finance it. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the administration intended to coerce us out of our cars. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."
In view of exploding gas prices, why aren't these statements seen as scandalous? Where are the calls for investigations?
Obama demeans "big oil," pushes alternative energy every time he gets a chance and does everything in his power to suppress domestic oil production, then looks us in the face and tells us he's increasing domestic production -- kind of like how he says his budget won't add a penny to the national debt. The audacity is of Hollywood magnitude, and so is the lack of scrutiny that enables it.
Behind the smoke and mirrors of his rhetoric, it's hard not to conclude that Obama's on a mission to suppress or shut down the existing oil infrastructure in the United States in pursuit of his stated alternative priorities.
The Heritage Foundation's Rory Cooper reports that, as of February 2011, at least 103 permits were awaiting review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. And since February, the administration has issued on average only 1.3 permits a month, a 78 percent reduction in the monthly average according to the latest Gulf Permit Index.
Obama even reversed an earlier decision to open access to coastal waters for exploration, placing a seven-year ban on drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Oil production in the Gulf is expected to drop by 220 thousand barrels per day in 2011, which is going to cost the U.S. some $1.35 billion in revenues in 2011.
Not only are we losing oil production and revenues, the administration's actions are destroying jobs in the oil industry and elsewhere. Many companies are going out of business. The Heritage Foundation reports that Seahawk Drilling, of Houston, laid off 632 employees before recently filing for bankruptcy as a direct result of Obama's moratorium and subsequent "permitorium." Seahawk owned and operated 20 shallow-water rigs in the Gulf. Randall Stilley, president and CEO of Seahawk, said, "As an American, you never want to look at your own government and say they're hurting you personally, they're hurting your business and they're doing it in a way that's irresponsible. I'm not very proud of our government right now and the way they handled this."
Cooper explains that these crippling policies are having a negative rippling effect throughout the economy. Many vendors, suppliers, restaurants and retailers are losing revenues or going out of business. More than 30 deepwater rigs, which each employ around 200 people, have moved from the Gulf to other markets. While the industry is on "life support," Obama is at war with it, brazenly spending billions to support foreign oil and jobs in Brazil.
Making matters worse, the administration and congressional Democrats are considering legislation that would further damage energy businesses by significantly increasing taxes on domestic oil and gas concerns. And just in the past few days, we've been reading that the administration is floating a plan to tax cars by the mile.
Can you imagine the insanity and insensitivity of raising taxes on this ailing industry and its consumers (drivers) at a time when both need all the relief they can get?
Obama is no less determined to cram his preferred energy alternatives down Americans' throats than he was to force feed us socialized medicine. Again, where is the outrage?
SOURCE
**************************
Obama Economy Will Make You Poor
While Barack Obama spends his time running victory laps around the country over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the American economy is careening toward a dangerous cliff. Royal Weddings, Obama's multiple birth certificates, and absurd arguments about the NFL lockout dominate the news while daily Americans get poorer.
Obamanomics is a disaster. A greater disaster hasn't been visited on the United States in our economic history because we are taking no substantial steps toward recovery. The real news, which should be screaming from every television and newspaper isn't pro Obama, therefore, it is ignored.
Here are the stories on which we should be focusing. The US dollar has slumped to a record low against major currencies. Since we have devastated our manufacturing base over the last two decades, this will result in Americans paying substantially more for goods on the store shelves in retailers from Walmart to Costco.
The outlook for the recovery has diminished to almost zero. If you subtract the impact of inflation, many economists believe we are actually still in a recession. When I talk to my friends and neighbors outside of Washington DC, we unanimously agree we are still in recession.
Here are some statistics which will help you understand the pain. More Americans are on food stamps today than at any other time in history. That's right-the most in history. The number of persons on food stamps is 44.2 million according a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Those not on food stamps feel a different pain when they buy groceries. We see unbelievably high prices at the grocery store. The cost of living in the U.S. rose at its fastest pace since December 2009 in the 12 months ended in March. Wheat, meat, vegetables and other grains are all surging in price. But if you don't have a job, it is hard to shop for groceries.
Bloomberg reported this week, "Applications for jobless benefits jumped by 43,000 to 474,000 in the week ended April 30, the most since August, Labor Department figures showed today." This is a serious darkening in the employment clouds just as the recovery was supposed to be broadening.
The unprecedented easy money policies from the Federal Reserve haven't helped the real economy. Sure, they did pump enough billions of dollars into Wall Street Banks and Government Agencies to make sure the leather loafer wearing crowds in New York City and Washington DC are still swimming in cash. But for the majority of Americans, they have felt only the pain of higher food and energy prices from the misallocation of dollars.
This week, as we fueled a rental car near the San Diego airport, we paid fifteen dollars for three gallons of gasoline. At these prices, Americans are spending as much as $100 a week just to fuel the car to commute to work. Why hasn't the president cleared the decks to deal with this energy crisis? It is a crisis when it costs as much to commute to work as you make in take home pay. Many Americans are already at this tipping point. Obama mutters on about windmills and electric cars. We need off shore drilling and increased production to ease this pain.
At least open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down prices in the short term.
While the nation shudders under unmanageable regulatory and monetary burdens, Obama is oblivious. Obama is flying from city to city collecting cash for his re-election drive. And don't let us forget he is spending over a hundred thousand dollars to a teleprompter coach.
And we thought standing and delivering a prepared text in front of a teleprompter was a skill he had already mastered. How about a coach on how to manage the American economy? Obama's priorities are obvious, and they aren't on helping everyday Americans, but his buddies and himself.
SOURCE
***************************
Walmart Benefits Everyone
When a store opens, there is an immediate need for hundreds of jobs. There are also many more jobs created because of all the businesses that try to locate near the Walmart development. Simply put, it is easy to imagine over a thousand jobs being created in a community where Walmart locates itself. Even though mom-and-pop type shops might be forced to close because they couldn’t compete, everyone still wins. The people that lost their job at the mom-and-pop operation can simply try to work for Walmart or the plethora of businesses that open around it.
Progressives bemoan Walmart because they see it as a greedy capitalist industrialist that preys on the poor and exploits them. Quite the opposite is the truth. Indeed many people of lesser means are drawn to Walmart exactly because of the lower prices, and as I mentioned earlier, that can only benefit them. They are able to save their few precious dollars. Can anything be wrong with that?
I asked the group Respect D.C., an organization that opposes the development of Walmart in Washington D.C., why they thought Walmart was bad for a community where unemployment hangs around 9.5 percent. They tweeted back with five responses to that question, (which you can read by clicking 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). One response from them did stand out though, and it was their claim that Walmart pays a “slave” wage.
Such a silly argument has long been shouted at Walmart. Of course, it isn’t true. A slave’s wage is $0, and clearly the employees of Walmart make much more than that. As George Mason University economics professor Dr. Don Boudreaux puts it, “the plausibility of slaves producing manufactured goods for sale by Wal-Mart is just as implausible as the wackiest alien-abduction allegation.”
Walmart will always be under attack from progressives that worry that anything that makes a profit must somehow be up to no good at the expense of defenseless humans who know nothing of the con that is being pulled on them. But it appears that the con is completely created by the progressive worrywarts who conjure up notions of slavery when they have no evidence to back up such claims.
Fortunately for Walmart and consumers all over the world, we are able to enjoy low prices and dollars saved. This benefits each and every consumer, each and every community, and countless other businesses worldwide. It is because of businesses like Walmart that we enjoy the relatively high amount of wealth that we have in America. So you better not fall for the slick arguments from groups like Respect D.C. and other community organizers, because the benefits that we all reap from Walmart’s success could quickly disappear.
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)
****************************
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)
****************************
Thursday, May 05, 2011
The War on WalMart—D.C. labor bosses and community organizers dislike the big jobs provider
No one needs to tell you how big an issue unemployment is in America, and especially in Washington, D.C. As of March 2011, the District of Columbia posted an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent.
Knowing that the unemployment rate is that high might surprise you when you learn that D.C. politicians, labor unions, and community organizers are trying everything they can to block one of the largest job providers and retailers in the world from coming to Washington. These supposed "leaders" want to prevent Walmart from setting up shop, which would prevent the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs for D.C. residents.
The grocery industry is one of the few remaining industries where labor unions thrive. While most sectors are seeing a decline in unions, grocery stores have remained a powerhouse for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). A threat to this labor-organizing stronghold is Walmart, a company that is not unionized and has taken drastic measures to prevent their shops from falling under the labor union's heavy hand.
Because Walmart is able to price their products lower than their competitors, they are able to force their competitors to change business practices or close-up altogether, which has been a blow to the grocery store labor unions. The UFCW is not concerned about whether or not people have jobs in a city where unemployment is hovering around double digits, rather, they are concerned that they are able to corner the market on the grocery stores to keep their political power intact.
More HERE
***************************
Public servants – more money, less accountability
Union arguments in favor of their members' lush pensions are falling by the wayside as the public examines the facts. For instance, union officials argue that the average public-sector pension benefit in California is "only" $30,000 a year, while neglecting to mention that the number, according to the state's watchdog Little Hoover Commission, rises to $66,000 a year for recent retirees – a reflection of the widespread pension boosting of the past decade.
Virtually no one in the workaday private sector gets that level of guaranteed benefit, and the number of retired government employees grabbing $100,000 a year is growing by at least 40 percent a year. No wonder the public is angry. But the public is angry at more than the unsustainable pension debt and the unfair imbalance between the amounts received in the public vs. the private sector. People are getting angry at the abuses by public employees and at the lack of accountability even when miscreants are caught red-handed.
The Sacramento Bee reported recently on state employees who walk away at retirement with as much as $800,000 in unused sick time – a clear violation of the rules. Now the newspaper is reporting that a "top NATO general who formerly led the California National Guard enhanced his salary during his state tenure by collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in dual pay." Maj. Gen. William Wade padded his pay by about $155,000 – "beyond the legal limits" as the Bee put it.
There are hasty legislative proposals to stop such greedy enrichments in the future, but there's no apparent push to put Wade – since promoted to a top NATO position in Italy – where he belongs, in the hoosegow. Somehow, when government officials commit offenses we get euphemisms about conduct being beyond legal limits and improper behavior.
Try to find any effort to deal with massive disability fraud that goes on at police and fire stations, as majorities of public safety union members discover a back injury or knee injury just in time to protect half their retirement pay from taxes.
Union officials such as the Orange County Employees Association's Nick Berardino argue that the public is demonizing public employees. In reality, the public is waking up to the scams perpetrated on us for years. A statewide union official, Art Pulaski, claims that the public is simply envious of public employees. There's some truth to that – and why not be envious when the people who are supposed to work for us live far better than most of us, courtesy of our tax dollars? – but what these union leaders miss is the brewing anger over the accountability issue.
The private sector doesn't work perfectly. No human endeavor does. But in my lifetime there, I have never seen managers cover up for and defend miscreants. If you don't produce enough to justify your salary, you are gone. If you commit crimes or do things "beyond the legal limits," corporate managers are all too happy to turn the case over to the authorities. There is too much downside in keeping around lazy, misbehaving and lawbreaking employees. It can put you out of business or can prompt prosecutors to look for fraud and other crimes.
In government, officials typically circle the wagons. The unions stand up to protect the worst of the worst. The disciplinary rules are so cumbersome that it's generally not worth trying to do anything about misbehavior. That's why the public schools have "rubber rooms" – places where allegedly bad teachers wile away the years receiving full pay and benefits as their cases are adjudicated at a glacial pace. That's why police officers accused of wrongdoing and misjudgment – even misjudgments that lead to unjustified killings and violations of individual rights – end up with months of paid leave (i.e., additional vacation time), before eventually being returned to the streets after a closed process that tilts heavily in the officers' favor.
Notice how only a handful of sleeping air traffic controllers – union members who endangered lives by neglecting their responsibilities – received suspensions and other minor punishments. There's rarely any accountability. The California Supreme Court ruled recently in a case involving two Orange County social workers who were found by a jury to have filed false reports and held back evidence so that they could unjustly take away a woman's two children. This is almost hard to fathom, but I've reported on Child Protective Services and find it easy to believe in the context of my research. Social workers have immense power and few checks and balances, and some of these workers are on power trips – "Obey or we take your kids!"
In this case, the state's highest court upheld a verdict of nearly $5 million plus millions more in legal fees and noted that this was no isolated incident. So what happens to these people who were admonished by the courts and who put a family through more than six years of living hell?
Marcie Vreeken and Helen Dwojak were not even disciplined. As the Register's Kimberly Edds reported, Dwojak retired in 2006, and Vreeken was promoted. Get this – Vreeken now trains other social workers. Let's hope it doesn't include the class, "Creative methods in snatching people's kids."
Orange County officials actually argued that social workers should be afforded immunity, even for wrongdoing. I recall a bill that would have done the same thing for firefighters after a D.A. had the audacity to try to prosecute a firefighter for alleged misbehavior that killed someone.
Do we really want to provide powerful government agents with full immunity even when they break the law and misuse their power? Isn't that situation the opposite of what our nation's founders had in mind? It's in totalitarian nations where officials are untouchable, and lowly citizens had better obey or else.
My prediction is that the public employee issue is not going away – not simply because the pension debts are depleting budgets, but because we are only scratching the surface of the accountability issue, which touches on the foundation of what we are as a society. It's about time that we bring on this necessary debate.
SOURCE
*************************
Where are the doctors going to come from?
The United States already faces a growing physician shortage. As our population ages, we require more and more intensive health care. At the same time, enrollment in medical schools has been essentially flat, meaning we are not producing new physicians at anywhere near the rate we need to. In fact, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, we face a shortfall of more than 150,000 doctors over the next 15 years.
And it could get a whole lot worse. The health reform bill signed into law last year is expected to significantly increase the number of Americans with health insurance or participating in the Medicaid program. Meanwhile, an aging population will increase participation in Medicare. This means a greater demand for physician services.
Promising universal health coverage is easy. But what does universal coverage mean if you can't actually see a doctor?
But at the same, the bill may drive physicians out of practice.
Existing government programs already reimburse physicians at rates that are often less than the actual cost of treating a patient. Estimates suggest that on average physicians are reimbursed at roughly 78% of costs under Medicare, and just 70% of costs under Medicaid. Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.
As a result, more and more physicians are choosing to opt-out of the system altogether. Roughly 13% of physicians will not accept Medicare patients today. Another 17% limit the number of Medicare patients they will see, a figure that rises to 31% among primary care physicians. The story is even worse in Medicaid, where as many as a third of doctors will not participate in the program.
Traditionally, most doctors have been willing to take some Medicare patients either out of altruism or as a "loss leader," to reach other family members outside the Medicare program. Others try to get around Medicare's low reimbursement rates by unbundling services or providing care not covered through the program. (Nearly 85% of seniors carry supplemental policies to cover these additional services). With many office and equipment costs fixed, even a low reimbursement patient may be better than no patient at all for some doctors. This is even more true for hospitals where Medicare patients may account for the majority of people they serve. And doctors can take some comfort in the fact that Medicare is pretty much guaranteed to pay and pay promptly. The same is not always true of private insurance.
But if reimbursements fall much more, the balance could be tipped. The government's own chief actuary says that reimbursement cuts could mean "reductions in access to care and/or the quality of care." Once the cuts hit hospitals, they too will be in trouble. Medicare's actuaries estimate that 15% of hospitals could close. Inner-city and rural hospitals would be hardest hit.
Nor is the pressure on reimbursement rates likely to be felt solely in government programs. The health care law contains a number of new regulations that are already driving up insurance premiums. The government is responding by cajoling and threatening insurers. If insurers find their ability to pass on cost increases limited, they too may begin to cut costs by cutting reimbursements.
For a lot of older physicians, retirement in Florida may begin to look like a very good option. Roughly 40% of doctors are age 55 or over. Are they really going to want to stick it out for a few more years if all they have to look forward to is more red tape (both government and insurance company) for less money? Those that remain are increasingly likely to join "concierge practices," limiting the number of patients they see and refusing both government and private insurance.
And, at the same time, fewer young people are likely to decide that medicine is a good career. Remember, the average medical school graduate begins their career with more than $295,000 in debt.
A 2010 IBD/TPP Poll found that 45% of doctors would at least consider leaving their practices or taking early retirement as a result of the new health care law. And, an online survey by Sermo.com, a sort of Facebook for physicians, found that 26% of physicians in solo practices were considering closing. Of course, not every doctor who told these polls that he or she would consider leaving the field will actually do so. But if even a small portion depart, our access to medical care will suffer.
In fact, we have already seen the start of this process in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney's health care reforms were nearly identical to President Obama's. Romney's reforms increased the demand for health care but did nothing to expand the supply of physicians. In fact, by cracking down on insurance premiums, Massachusetts pushed insurers to reduce their payments to providers, making it less worthwhile for doctors to expand their practices. As a result, the average wait to get an appointment with a doctor grew from 33 days to over 55 days.
Promising universal health coverage is easy. But what does universal coverage mean if you can't actually see a doctor?
SOURCE
***************************
ELSEWHERE
Leftist mourns the death of bin Laden: "And the killing of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role in al-Qaida—that’s clear—he’s kind of a spiritual mentor, a kind of guide … he functions in many of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi Party. We were just talking with Warren [Beatty] about [Ian] Kershaw’s great biography of Hitler, which I read a few months ago, where you hold up a particular ideological ideal and strive for it. That was bin Laden’s role. But all actual acts of terror, which he may have signed off on, he no way planned."
Philosophy and politics: "Many political philosophers overestimate the importance of abstract principles for the design of institutions. Most issues of the day cannot be resolved by a sole appeal to basic principles. Whether we talk about healthcare, the economy, poverty alleviation, crime control, and even foreign policy, philosophical principles at best underdetermine results, and at worst are irrelevant. Yet many philosophers think that if they can just make the right conceptual distinctions and identify the right political principles they can select the best institutions, laws, and policies."
The NLRB overreaches — once again: "The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has gone lawsuit crazy. With the U.S. House of Representatives now under Republican control, the Board is now a key vehicle that the Obama administration is using to push policies favorable to its Big Labor allies. And it seems willing to stretch the law beyond recognition. Now the NLRB is trying to tell companies where to locate factories and dictate to states how they may amend their constitutions."
A tale of two situations: "Once upon a time selling a chicken was fraught with few if any legal implications. Remodeling a shed was equally simple from a regulatory standpoint. Today, however, we live in more enlightened times. Protected from our wayward desires by an empowered bureaucracy, we can rest easier knowing that decisions like what we eat and where we build is being carefully managed by authorities."
Free trade agreements don’t kill jobs: "Trade is going to be a hot issue this summer. Pending agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea might finally pass. Opponents of liberalization are already on the attack. My colleague Jacque Otto already covered the creative destruction defense of trade today. Over at the Daily Caller, I look at employment data and find out that the labor force has grown by 23 million people since NAFTA passed. Doesn’t sound like a job-killer, does it?"
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)
****************************
No one needs to tell you how big an issue unemployment is in America, and especially in Washington, D.C. As of March 2011, the District of Columbia posted an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent.
Knowing that the unemployment rate is that high might surprise you when you learn that D.C. politicians, labor unions, and community organizers are trying everything they can to block one of the largest job providers and retailers in the world from coming to Washington. These supposed "leaders" want to prevent Walmart from setting up shop, which would prevent the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs for D.C. residents.
The grocery industry is one of the few remaining industries where labor unions thrive. While most sectors are seeing a decline in unions, grocery stores have remained a powerhouse for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). A threat to this labor-organizing stronghold is Walmart, a company that is not unionized and has taken drastic measures to prevent their shops from falling under the labor union's heavy hand.
Because Walmart is able to price their products lower than their competitors, they are able to force their competitors to change business practices or close-up altogether, which has been a blow to the grocery store labor unions. The UFCW is not concerned about whether or not people have jobs in a city where unemployment is hovering around double digits, rather, they are concerned that they are able to corner the market on the grocery stores to keep their political power intact.
More HERE
***************************
Public servants – more money, less accountability
Union arguments in favor of their members' lush pensions are falling by the wayside as the public examines the facts. For instance, union officials argue that the average public-sector pension benefit in California is "only" $30,000 a year, while neglecting to mention that the number, according to the state's watchdog Little Hoover Commission, rises to $66,000 a year for recent retirees – a reflection of the widespread pension boosting of the past decade.
Virtually no one in the workaday private sector gets that level of guaranteed benefit, and the number of retired government employees grabbing $100,000 a year is growing by at least 40 percent a year. No wonder the public is angry. But the public is angry at more than the unsustainable pension debt and the unfair imbalance between the amounts received in the public vs. the private sector. People are getting angry at the abuses by public employees and at the lack of accountability even when miscreants are caught red-handed.
The Sacramento Bee reported recently on state employees who walk away at retirement with as much as $800,000 in unused sick time – a clear violation of the rules. Now the newspaper is reporting that a "top NATO general who formerly led the California National Guard enhanced his salary during his state tenure by collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in dual pay." Maj. Gen. William Wade padded his pay by about $155,000 – "beyond the legal limits" as the Bee put it.
There are hasty legislative proposals to stop such greedy enrichments in the future, but there's no apparent push to put Wade – since promoted to a top NATO position in Italy – where he belongs, in the hoosegow. Somehow, when government officials commit offenses we get euphemisms about conduct being beyond legal limits and improper behavior.
Try to find any effort to deal with massive disability fraud that goes on at police and fire stations, as majorities of public safety union members discover a back injury or knee injury just in time to protect half their retirement pay from taxes.
Union officials such as the Orange County Employees Association's Nick Berardino argue that the public is demonizing public employees. In reality, the public is waking up to the scams perpetrated on us for years. A statewide union official, Art Pulaski, claims that the public is simply envious of public employees. There's some truth to that – and why not be envious when the people who are supposed to work for us live far better than most of us, courtesy of our tax dollars? – but what these union leaders miss is the brewing anger over the accountability issue.
The private sector doesn't work perfectly. No human endeavor does. But in my lifetime there, I have never seen managers cover up for and defend miscreants. If you don't produce enough to justify your salary, you are gone. If you commit crimes or do things "beyond the legal limits," corporate managers are all too happy to turn the case over to the authorities. There is too much downside in keeping around lazy, misbehaving and lawbreaking employees. It can put you out of business or can prompt prosecutors to look for fraud and other crimes.
In government, officials typically circle the wagons. The unions stand up to protect the worst of the worst. The disciplinary rules are so cumbersome that it's generally not worth trying to do anything about misbehavior. That's why the public schools have "rubber rooms" – places where allegedly bad teachers wile away the years receiving full pay and benefits as their cases are adjudicated at a glacial pace. That's why police officers accused of wrongdoing and misjudgment – even misjudgments that lead to unjustified killings and violations of individual rights – end up with months of paid leave (i.e., additional vacation time), before eventually being returned to the streets after a closed process that tilts heavily in the officers' favor.
Notice how only a handful of sleeping air traffic controllers – union members who endangered lives by neglecting their responsibilities – received suspensions and other minor punishments. There's rarely any accountability. The California Supreme Court ruled recently in a case involving two Orange County social workers who were found by a jury to have filed false reports and held back evidence so that they could unjustly take away a woman's two children. This is almost hard to fathom, but I've reported on Child Protective Services and find it easy to believe in the context of my research. Social workers have immense power and few checks and balances, and some of these workers are on power trips – "Obey or we take your kids!"
In this case, the state's highest court upheld a verdict of nearly $5 million plus millions more in legal fees and noted that this was no isolated incident. So what happens to these people who were admonished by the courts and who put a family through more than six years of living hell?
Marcie Vreeken and Helen Dwojak were not even disciplined. As the Register's Kimberly Edds reported, Dwojak retired in 2006, and Vreeken was promoted. Get this – Vreeken now trains other social workers. Let's hope it doesn't include the class, "Creative methods in snatching people's kids."
Orange County officials actually argued that social workers should be afforded immunity, even for wrongdoing. I recall a bill that would have done the same thing for firefighters after a D.A. had the audacity to try to prosecute a firefighter for alleged misbehavior that killed someone.
Do we really want to provide powerful government agents with full immunity even when they break the law and misuse their power? Isn't that situation the opposite of what our nation's founders had in mind? It's in totalitarian nations where officials are untouchable, and lowly citizens had better obey or else.
My prediction is that the public employee issue is not going away – not simply because the pension debts are depleting budgets, but because we are only scratching the surface of the accountability issue, which touches on the foundation of what we are as a society. It's about time that we bring on this necessary debate.
SOURCE
*************************
Where are the doctors going to come from?
The United States already faces a growing physician shortage. As our population ages, we require more and more intensive health care. At the same time, enrollment in medical schools has been essentially flat, meaning we are not producing new physicians at anywhere near the rate we need to. In fact, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, we face a shortfall of more than 150,000 doctors over the next 15 years.
And it could get a whole lot worse. The health reform bill signed into law last year is expected to significantly increase the number of Americans with health insurance or participating in the Medicaid program. Meanwhile, an aging population will increase participation in Medicare. This means a greater demand for physician services.
Promising universal health coverage is easy. But what does universal coverage mean if you can't actually see a doctor?
But at the same, the bill may drive physicians out of practice.
Existing government programs already reimburse physicians at rates that are often less than the actual cost of treating a patient. Estimates suggest that on average physicians are reimbursed at roughly 78% of costs under Medicare, and just 70% of costs under Medicaid. Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.
As a result, more and more physicians are choosing to opt-out of the system altogether. Roughly 13% of physicians will not accept Medicare patients today. Another 17% limit the number of Medicare patients they will see, a figure that rises to 31% among primary care physicians. The story is even worse in Medicaid, where as many as a third of doctors will not participate in the program.
Traditionally, most doctors have been willing to take some Medicare patients either out of altruism or as a "loss leader," to reach other family members outside the Medicare program. Others try to get around Medicare's low reimbursement rates by unbundling services or providing care not covered through the program. (Nearly 85% of seniors carry supplemental policies to cover these additional services). With many office and equipment costs fixed, even a low reimbursement patient may be better than no patient at all for some doctors. This is even more true for hospitals where Medicare patients may account for the majority of people they serve. And doctors can take some comfort in the fact that Medicare is pretty much guaranteed to pay and pay promptly. The same is not always true of private insurance.
But if reimbursements fall much more, the balance could be tipped. The government's own chief actuary says that reimbursement cuts could mean "reductions in access to care and/or the quality of care." Once the cuts hit hospitals, they too will be in trouble. Medicare's actuaries estimate that 15% of hospitals could close. Inner-city and rural hospitals would be hardest hit.
Nor is the pressure on reimbursement rates likely to be felt solely in government programs. The health care law contains a number of new regulations that are already driving up insurance premiums. The government is responding by cajoling and threatening insurers. If insurers find their ability to pass on cost increases limited, they too may begin to cut costs by cutting reimbursements.
For a lot of older physicians, retirement in Florida may begin to look like a very good option. Roughly 40% of doctors are age 55 or over. Are they really going to want to stick it out for a few more years if all they have to look forward to is more red tape (both government and insurance company) for less money? Those that remain are increasingly likely to join "concierge practices," limiting the number of patients they see and refusing both government and private insurance.
And, at the same time, fewer young people are likely to decide that medicine is a good career. Remember, the average medical school graduate begins their career with more than $295,000 in debt.
A 2010 IBD/TPP Poll found that 45% of doctors would at least consider leaving their practices or taking early retirement as a result of the new health care law. And, an online survey by Sermo.com, a sort of Facebook for physicians, found that 26% of physicians in solo practices were considering closing. Of course, not every doctor who told these polls that he or she would consider leaving the field will actually do so. But if even a small portion depart, our access to medical care will suffer.
In fact, we have already seen the start of this process in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney's health care reforms were nearly identical to President Obama's. Romney's reforms increased the demand for health care but did nothing to expand the supply of physicians. In fact, by cracking down on insurance premiums, Massachusetts pushed insurers to reduce their payments to providers, making it less worthwhile for doctors to expand their practices. As a result, the average wait to get an appointment with a doctor grew from 33 days to over 55 days.
Promising universal health coverage is easy. But what does universal coverage mean if you can't actually see a doctor?
SOURCE
***************************
ELSEWHERE
Leftist mourns the death of bin Laden: "And the killing of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role in al-Qaida—that’s clear—he’s kind of a spiritual mentor, a kind of guide … he functions in many of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi Party. We were just talking with Warren [Beatty] about [Ian] Kershaw’s great biography of Hitler, which I read a few months ago, where you hold up a particular ideological ideal and strive for it. That was bin Laden’s role. But all actual acts of terror, which he may have signed off on, he no way planned."
Philosophy and politics: "Many political philosophers overestimate the importance of abstract principles for the design of institutions. Most issues of the day cannot be resolved by a sole appeal to basic principles. Whether we talk about healthcare, the economy, poverty alleviation, crime control, and even foreign policy, philosophical principles at best underdetermine results, and at worst are irrelevant. Yet many philosophers think that if they can just make the right conceptual distinctions and identify the right political principles they can select the best institutions, laws, and policies."
The NLRB overreaches — once again: "The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has gone lawsuit crazy. With the U.S. House of Representatives now under Republican control, the Board is now a key vehicle that the Obama administration is using to push policies favorable to its Big Labor allies. And it seems willing to stretch the law beyond recognition. Now the NLRB is trying to tell companies where to locate factories and dictate to states how they may amend their constitutions."
A tale of two situations: "Once upon a time selling a chicken was fraught with few if any legal implications. Remodeling a shed was equally simple from a regulatory standpoint. Today, however, we live in more enlightened times. Protected from our wayward desires by an empowered bureaucracy, we can rest easier knowing that decisions like what we eat and where we build is being carefully managed by authorities."
Free trade agreements don’t kill jobs: "Trade is going to be a hot issue this summer. Pending agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea might finally pass. Opponents of liberalization are already on the attack. My colleague Jacque Otto already covered the creative destruction defense of trade today. Over at the Daily Caller, I look at employment data and find out that the labor force has grown by 23 million people since NAFTA passed. Doesn’t sound like a job-killer, does it?"
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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