The qualities of independence and self-reliance that made America great have slowly leaked away

Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1962, America was a far different place from what it is today. President John Kennedy was presiding over Camelot, and despite fouling up the invasion of Cuba, his approval rating hovered at around 80 percent. Unemployment was 5.2 percent with the average family income at $6,000 a year.

Most Americans did not have much money but made do. Millions bought Elvis Presley's record "Return to Sender" and went to see "Lawrence of Arabia" in movie theaters. At home, "Wagon Train" was the top TV show.

Years later, the film "American Graffiti" featured the ad campaign "Where were you in '62?" Well, I was on Long Island, hanging around. During the day, we swam at the Levittown pool and played stickball in the street, and in August, my father took us to a lake in Vermont. Also, we went to Jones Beach and baked in the sun without block while secondhand cigarette smoke engulfed us on the blanket.

My folks had little disposable income, certainly not enough for air conditioning or a color television set. But again, there was little whining in my working-class neighborhood. We had fun with what was available. Most everybody worked. Nobody was on welfare.

In fact, just 6 percent of Americans received welfare payments in 1962. Now that number is 35 percent. More than 100 million of us are getting money from the government, and that does not count Social Security and Medicare, programs workers pay into. This is a profound change in the American tradition.

Also, we now have close to nine million workers collecting federal disability checks. In 2001, that number was about five million. Here's my question: Is the workplace that much more hazardous than it was 11 years ago? Is our health that much worse?

The answer is no. What we are seeing is the rise of the Nanny State.

Self-reliance and ambition made the United States the most powerful nation on Earth. But that ethic is now eroding fast. Instead, many Americans are looking to game the system, and the philosophy of "where's mine" has taken deep root. About half of American workers pay no federal income tax, leaving the burden to be shouldered by the achievers. As The Edward Winter Group once sang: "Come on and take a free ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Presiding over and joyously encouraging this societal shift is the purveyor of social justice President Barack Obama. His entire campaign is now built around making the rich "pay their fair share." And where will that money go? To those in need, of course. And those legions are growing larger every single day.

Fair-minded people do not begrudge a safety net for Americans who, through no fault of their own, need help. A compassionate society provides for those battered by life. But what is happening in this country is far beyond a helping hand. We are creating a dual society. In one corner: Americans who work hard to succeed. In the other corner: folks who want what you have.

And the second corner is the growth industry.

SOURCE

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If You Can't Win on the Facts ...

I am normally very understanding of the need for Presidential vacations, Presidential weekends off, or even Presidential naps.

It's a tough job and there is always someone, somewhere doing something illegal, dangerous, and/or stupid somewhere on the planet that demands your attention.

Having written that, I am becoming increasingly irritated with the fact that the total Obama campaign strategy is: Destroy Romney personally.

There is an old saying that goes something like: "If you can't win on the facts, argue the law. If you can't win on the law, call your opponent names."

The Obama campaign can't win on the facts; The economic situation is what it is and it is not good. They can't win on the law; about the only thing they've gotten passed is Health Care and you know how popular that is.

So, they are reduced to the third option: Calling their opponent names: Romney the maybe job outsourcer. Romney the maybe tax evader. Romney the too rich guy. Romney the manipulator of Winter Olympics. Romney the … (pick one). In short, they got nothin'.

The national press corps - which has by no means given Obama a free ride - still buys into the Obama campaign's act. They treat campaign advisor David Axelrod like he is delivering tablets from the Mount each and every Sunday.

They also buy into the "Romney the …" bit. I had a reporter call recently suggesting that the reason Romney won't release 5-10-20 years of tax returns is because there might be some years when he didn't pay any taxes.

I said that was an assumption he was not allowed to make. Or, if he did want to make that assumption he had to assume that Obama won't release his college records because he never actually accumulated enough hours to graduate but was waived through the system into law school. A long silence was followed by, "… well." Sauce for the goose and all that.

There was a small item this week that Obama was meeting with his Cabinet. Not a big deal, except this was only the second time in 2012 he felt the need to have a Cabinet meeting.

Before you get all huffy about how many Cabinet Meetings did George W. hold in his re-election year, I checked with people who worked in the White House back then. The answer is six, which was about average over the course of his Presidency.

I understand this is only the end of July, so Obama might hold four more Cabinet meetings before the end of the year, but to misquote Grantland Rice, that's not the way to bet.

The Obama campaign has had its collective knickers in such a twist over Obama's "you didn't build that" line that we have to believe it hurt even as the campaign claims it was taken out of context.

The Republican National Committee has a YouTube video titled, "The More Context You Get, the Worse it Sounds." Ok, doesn't exactly trip off the tongue but it's on YouTube.

The reason the Obama is reacting so strongly can be found in Gallup data released yesterday that show Obama's standing among business owners is 35 percent approve while 59 percent disapprove. The highest approval group for Obama are professionals who approve by a 52-43 margin. Not exactly a landslide, but way better than -24.

As to Mitt Romney's opening day as an international traveler; he did say that the threats of strikes by immigration agents and customs officials were "disconcerting" but I don't believe Romney's Salt Lake City Olympics ever confused the flag of South Korea with that of North Korea as the Brits did before a soccer match Wednesday in Scotland.

Nevertheless it might have been better for him to have said, "I know a little about organizing an Olympics. A million things CAN go wrong; some things DO go wrong; but I have complete confidence that the London Games will be terrific." He didn't, and we'll have to wait to find out how (or whether) Romney was briefed for his meetings in London.

As for Obama, he still won't have the facts or the law on his side so he's reduced to calling his opponent names.

The most famous stanza of one of Grantland Rice's poems should be hung on the walls of the White House and the campaign headquarters in Chicago:

"For when the One Great Scorer comes, To mark against your name,

He writes - not that you won or lost - But how you played the Game."

SOURCE

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It's massive bureaucratization that has made healthcare so expensive



If you thought most of the increased costs in health care were going to the physicians and surgeons and specialists, you would be most definitely wrong. Take a close look at the chart that accompanies this article. The number of doctors in America has roughly doubled, perhaps a little more. Perhaps 125% growth. The population of the US has increased about the same amount over the same period of time.

But take a good look at the number of administrators that have been added to the US health care scene in these past 40 years! Over 3000%!

When something, ANYTHING, increases by 3000%, that means the number has increased exponentially, not linearly or even geometrically. 125% growth over 40 years is about a doubling in number. 3000% growth means 'it has grown in magnificent leaps and bounds'!

If there were 10 doctors in your hometown in 1970, there would be roughly 25 doctors working there today to take care of everyone. If there were 25 administrators in the medical field in your town in 1970, there would be over 750 health care administrators in your town today. Where do you think the increased costs in health care have occurred over that time frame, in doctor's salaries or what is more commonly referred to as 'G&A' expenses ('General Administrative')?

The federal government has made it clear that they think the problem is in doctors' fees since they have repeatedly been lowering the 'Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates' for the past 2 decades at least.

But they don't control the salaries of the CEOs and the administrative staff of these large hospitals and medical practices so they can't 'lower' the reimbursement rates to them directly, at least as they can with the doctors.

Are there more or less support staff nowadays than way back when? Think about the elementary school, junior high school, high school you attended perhaps as far back as the Dark Ages of the 1960's (Triassic Period) or the 1970's (Jurassic Period). Do you remember tons of 'other people' working there other than the great teachers you had and perhaps a principal, assistant principal, some office support staff, coaches and 2-3 driver's ed teachers?

According to a recent Texas education report, every public school had roughly as many support staff and administrators in it as the number of full-time teachers and educators.

In every school. In 2009. That is a 1-to-1 ratio for those of you keeping score at home. So it is not just health care where the number of administrative staff has exploded over the past 35 years, is it? Public education suffers from the same sclerotic bureaucratic diseases as modern American medicine today.

What is driving this surge in administrative staff in the medical world and public education?

You guessed right. More regulation and laws from Washington, the state capitals and the local governments. (see 'Regulations') We have had doctors tell us they spend 50% of their waking, working-day time filling out paperwork, complying with regulations and overall, making darned sure they do not get sued by anyone. 50% of their precious time. Even with all those staff support people.

Weren't doctors trained to 'fix' people and help cure them of what ails them? Why do we tolerate such a clear waste of time and talent when so many people are sick and need their help?

That would be like paying LeBron James $100 million ostensibly to play basketball for the Miami Heat and win championships....'but, oh, by the way, fill out all these attendance and concession forms in triplicate before, during and after the game and make sure you have them on my desk by 9:30 pm every night, win or lose!'

Making our well-trained medical personnel to fill out forms for half the time they are at work is like asking Secretariat to run in The Kentucky Derby with 5000 pounds of weight on his broad back.

We want them to do their jobs which is to heal people and help them get well. Just like we should all want great teachers to 'just teach our kids well' and not be over-worked secretaries, truant officers, psychologists and crowd control police.

We recently read of a large medical center where 42 administrative personnel were making well in excess of $1 million per year in salary. A piece. Per head. Per capita. Generous benefits on top of those generous salaries. The two top executives were pulling down $6.2 million and $4.3 million in annual salary.

That is a lotta tongue depressors and MRIs that have to be sold to pay for those high salaries, doesn't it? Medicare and Medicaid only covers some of those costs so where does the medical industry turn to get the money to pay for these high salaries and other costs of what are typically hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollar enterprises?

You. If you pay 100% of your health care. Which you probably don't. In which case, it comes out of your insurance company's pocket. In which case your health care premium goes up 16% per year as does the cost to your employer.

Before Obamacare kicks in full force in 2014, that is.

Want to take a dizzying look at the number of regulations now underway for Obamacare and 'being promulgated' (we love that word for some reason) as we speak and have been for the past 2 years?

Take a look at this CMMS link NOT on a full stomach and see if you understand a darned thing about what is going to be happening as of January 1, 2014 if Obamacare is not repealed, rolled back or significantly amended and improved (streamlined)

Here's just one footnote from the Federal Register of just one of these hundreds of new regulations:

"7 This language underscores and is not inconsistent with the scope of the disclosure requirement under the existing Department of Labor claims procedure regulation. That is, the Department of Labor interprets 29 USC 1133 and the DOL claims procedure regulation as already requiring that plans provide claimants with new or additional evidence or rationales upon request and an opportunity to respond in certain circumstances. See Brief of amicus curiae Secretary of the United States Department of Labor, Midgett v. Washington Group International Long Term Disability Plan, 561 F.3d 887 (8th Cir. 2009) (No.08-2523) (expressing disagreement with cases holding that there is no such requirement)."

You wanna bet that every hospital and medical facility in America is going to have to hire tons of new administrative people, lawyers and Executive VPs for Compliance in the next several years?

Where do you think health care costs are heading in America then?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Homosexual marriage to be introduced in Scotland: "Scotland could become the first part of the UK to introduce gay marriage after the SNP government announced plans to make the change. Ministers confirmed they would bring forward a bill on the issue, indicating the earliest ceremonies could take place by the start of 2015. Political leaders, equality organizations and some faith groups welcomed introducing same-sex marriage. But it was strongly opposed by the Catholic Church and Church of Scotland."

The ignoramus strikes again: "Barack Obama has said that ‘AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers’, even though the rifle, most associated with terrorism and communism, is not issued to the US military or any of its Western allies. The US military’s primary rifle is the M-16. An AR-15, the civilian variant of the M-16, was allegedly used by James Holmes to killed 12 people and wound 58 people at a screening of the film ‘Dark Right’ in a cinema in Aurora, Colorado this month. Early reports that Holmes had been arrested with an AK-47 proved false. The AK-47 was first produced by the Soviet Union and takes its name from its creator Mikhail Kalashnikov and 1947, the year it was introduced into service. The rifle was subsequently issued to most Warsaw Pact armies and exported to throughout the world."

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

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

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

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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What are the Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Lots of people would like to know the answer to that and many answers have been proposed. Daron Acemoglu dismisses the most popular explanations and proposes a contrast between societies run on extractive and inclusive lines. He says that societies are usually run on extractive lines but it is the inclusive societies that are the runaway successes. Below are his illustrative case-studies. I am not persuaded but will add my doubts at the foot of the extract below:

CASE STUDY: SOUTH AMERICA

There is no better laboratory that demonstrates how extractive institutions emerge and persist than the New World. The Americas provide a brilliant example for understanding how different institutions form, how they become supported within different political frameworks, and how that, in turn, leads to huge economic divergences.

The economic and political institutions in the New World have been largely shaped by their colonization experience starting at the beginning of the 16th century. While the tales of Francisco Pizarro and Hernán Cortés are quite familiar, I'd like to start with Juan Díaz de Solís — a Spaniard who in 1516 initiated the colonization of the southern cone of South America, in what is today Argentina and Uruguay. Under de Solís's leadership, three ships and a crew of 70 men founded the city of Buenos Aires, meaning "good airs." Argentina and Uruguay have very fertile lands, with a climate that would later become the basis of nearly a century of very high income per capita because of the productivity of these areas.

The colonization of these areas itself, however, was a total failure — and the reason was that the Spaniards arrived with a given model of colonization. This model was to find gold and silver and, perhaps most importantly, to capture and enslave the Indians so that they could work for them. Unfortunately, from the colonists' point of view, the native populations of the area, known as the Charrúas and the Querandí, consisted of small bands of mobile huntergatherers.

Their sparse population density made it difficult for the Spaniards to capture them. They also did not have an established hierarchy, which made it difficult to coerce them into working. Instead, the Indians fought back — capturing de Solís and clubbing him to death before he could make it into the history books as one of the famous conquistadors. For those that remained, there were not enough Indians to act as workhorses, and one by one the Spaniards began to die as starvation set in.

The rest of the crew moved up the perimeter to what is now known as Asunción, Paraguay. There the conquistadors encountered another band of Indians, who on the surface looked similar to the Charrúas and the Querandí. The Guaraní, however, were a little different. They were more densely settled and already sedentary. They had also established a hierarchical society with an elite class of princes and princesses, while the rest of the population worked for the benefit of the elite.

The conquistadors immediately took over this hierarchy, setting themselves up as the elite. Some of them married the princesses. They put the Guaraní to work producing food, and ultimately the remainder of de Solís's original crew led a successful colonization effort that survived for many centuries to come.

The institutions established among the Guaraní were the same types of institutions that were established throughout other parts of Latin America: forced labor institutions with land grants for the elite Spaniards. The Indians were forced to work for whatever wages the elites would pay them. They were under constant coercive pressure — forced not only to work but also to buy what the elites offered up for sale. It is no surprise that these economic institutions did not promote economic growth. Yet it's also no surprise that the political institutions underpinning this system persisted — establishing and continuously recreating a ruling class of elites that did not encourage economic development in Latin America.

Yet, the question still remains: Could it have been geography, culture, or enlightened leadership — rather than institutional factors — that played a critical role in the distinct fates of the two teams of explorers?

CASE STUDY: NORTH AMERICA

Roughly a thousand miles north, at the beginning of the 17th century, the model of the Virginia Company — made up of the elite captains and aristocrats who were sent to North America — was actually remarkably similar to the model of the conquistadors. The Virginia Company also wanted gold. They also thought that they would be able to capture the Indians and put them to work. But unfortunately for them, the situation they encountered was also quite similar to what the conquistadors witnessed in Argentina and Uruguay.

The joint stock companies found a sparsely populated, very mobile band of Indians who were, once again, unwilling to work in order to provide food for the settlers. The settlers therefore went through a period of starvation. However, while the Spaniards had the option of moving up north, the captains of the Virginia Company did not have this option. No such civilization existed.

They therefore came up with a second strategy. Without the ability to enslave the Indians and put them to work, they decided to import their own lower strata of society, which they brought to the New World under a system of indentured servitude. To give you a sense of this, let me quote directly from the laws of the Jamestown colony, promulgated by the governor Sir Thomas Gates and his deputy Sir Thomas Dale:

No man or woman shall run away from the colony to the Indians upon pain of death. Anyone who robs a garden, public or private or a vineyard or who steals ears of corn shall be punished with death. No member of the colony will sell or give any commodity of this country to a captain, mariner, master, or sailor to transport out of the colony or for his own private use upon pain of death.
Two things become immediately apparent in reading these laws. First, contrary to the image that English colonies sometimes garner, the Jamestown colony that the Virginia Company was chartered to establish was not a happy, consensual place. Pretty much anything the settlers could do would be punished by death. Second, the company encountered real problems that were cause for concern — namely, that it was extraordinarily difficult to prevent the settlers they brought to form the lower strata of society from running away or engaging in outside trade. The Virginia Company therefore fought to enforce this system for a few more years, but in the end they decided that there was no practical way to inject this lower stratum into their society.

Finally, they devised a third strategy — a very radical one in which the only option left was to offer economic incentives to the settlers. This led to what is known as the headright system, which was established in Jamestown in 1618. In essence, each settler was given a legal grant of land, which they were then required to work in exchange for secure property rights to that plot. But there was still one problem. How could the settlers be sure that they had secure rights to that property, particularly in an environment in which a stolen ear of corn was punishable by death?

The very next year, in order to make these economic incentives credible, the General Assembly offered the settlers political rights as well. This, in effect, allowed them to advance above the lower strata of society, to a position in which they would be making their own decisions through more inclusive political institutions.

SOURCE

The above examples seem to me to offer no insight into the two runaway economic and political successes of the 19th century: Britain and Germany. Britain inherited a system of individual liberty from way back which was emphasized by the governments of the day, notably by both the Liberals under Gladstone and the Conservatives under Disraeli.

Germany, however, was created by Bismarck in 1872 and flourished under his authoritarian rule. And the systems which he set in place survived his term in office and led to continued economic advance in Germany. And by 1914, Germany was arguably more powerful and prosperous than Britain. It was only a tenuous lead in naval strength that gave Britain any headway over Germany. Compared to the German army, the British army was of course laughable. It took the combined might of France, Britain, Russia and the USA to bring Germany to heel.

So how does Germany fit the Acemoglu model? I cannot see that it does. Both Prussia before 1872 and Germany after 1872 had parliaments with varying degrees of influence but both Prussia and Germany remained substantially under the control of political strongmen, first Bismarck and then Kaiser Bill. One of the most famous episodes in his career was when Bismarck ran Prussia for four years in the name of the Kaiser alone -- completely ignoring the Prussian parliament.

So it seems to me that the Acemoglu model gives us no insight into the ORIGIN of powerful and prosperous societies. It does however give a reasonable DESCRIPTION of powerful and prosperous societies -- secure property rights etc. But we already knew that. It is the origin question that we want answered.

And I do have an answer -- but it is so politically incorrect and will initially be seen as so improbable that I hesitate to say much about it. Briefly, I think that a tradition of respecting the individual is the key and that such an orientation was historically basic among Teutonic peoples and is still alive (though gasping) today. I think it is that tradition which led to both British and German eminence in the 19th century. I set out some of the history behind my thinking on the matter here

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No science can explain massacres like Aurora

In his comments below Theodore Dalrymple applies a view that is close to the heart of conservatism: An acceptance that that there will always be a lot that we do not know or understand and that we must always therefore proceed with caution. Only Leftists "know" all the answers

By a strange irony, alleged Aurora mass murderer James Holmes was a doctoral student of neuroscience—the discipline that will, according to its most ardent and enthusiastic advocates, finally explain Man to himself after millennia of mystery and self-questioning.

But what could count as an explanation of what James Holmes did? At what point would we be able to say, “Aha, now I understand why he dyed his hair like the Joker and went down to the local cinema and shot all those people?” When we have sifted through his biography, examined his relationships, listened to what he has to say, and put him through all the neuropsychological and neurological tests, will we really be much wiser?

Like Anders Breivik, the young Norwegian who killed 77 people in Norway by bomb and gun, Holmes is reported to have been a “loner,” a young man without the social skills or perhaps the inclination to mix with his peers in a normal way. But such loners, though a small minority, are numbered in the thousands and tens of thousands; vanishingly few of them act like Breivik or Holmes, and many, indeed, make valuable contributions to society. Preventive detention for loners, or even special surveillance of them, would hardly be justified.

The same is true of any other characteristic that might link Breivik and Holmes to their acts. Even the presence of a recognized mental illness, such as schizophrenia, would not suffice, since most people with that affliction don’t act in this fashion. And the temptation to indulge in a circular argument, where the explanandum becomes the explanans and vice versa, must be resisted, because it offers the illusion of understanding where there is none: “He must have been mad to do this; and he did it because he was mad.”

The multifactorial analyses to which experts are inevitably driven—a bit of genetics here, a bit of parenting there, plus a dash of social pressure, culture, and the legal availability of weaponry thrown into the explanatory soup, as the weird sisters threw eye of newt and wool of bat into their cauldron—will leave us not much better off. The mesh will never be drawn fine enough for us to be able to say: “Now, at last, I understand.”

And yet our nature drives us to seek an explanation and an understanding (the two are related but not quite the same). Even if we felt like it, we cannot say: “Well, such things happen; let us hope, Inshallah, that they never happen again.” We must know the how, but also the why.

An atrocious event like the Aurora massacre brings us up sharply against something that for the most part we ignore: that, for metaphysical reasons, our explanatory reach exceeds our grasp and will do so forever. We seek a final explanation, but cannot reach one because, as Haitian peasants say, “Behind mountains, more mountains.”

SOURCE

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Rich Liberal Hypocrites!

by ALAN CARUBA

I don't know about you, but I am sick of all the Democratic mud-slinging at Mitt Romney because he is rich. The level of hypocrisy tells me that Obama and his trolls are so bereft of anything to offer the voters that they insult them with this class warfare garbage about "millionaires and billionaires."

President Obama, according to a May 15, 2012 USA Today news article, "is a wealthy man with assets of as much as $10 million. Moreover, "he has a hefty stake in JP Morgan Chase, the megabank...with an account worth between 500,000 and $1 million."

Romney is rich. If he is elected, the Forbes list of the ten richest U.S. Presidents noted that in 2010 he reported adjusted gross income of $22 million of which $8 million was interest and dividends." The January 24, 2012 Forbes article by William P. Barrett said that "implies assets in the range of $200 million to $250 million."

Romney, however, would not be tops in presidential wealth. At the top of the list, in adjusted terms, George Washington was one of the wealthiest men in the nation when he became president. Mount Vernon plantation grew to 6,500 acres and Washington was a canny businessman, distilling booze, and even raising mules.

In 2010 dollars, Democrats who held the presidency in the last century included John F. Kennedy whose net worth was $1 billion. Jacqueline Kennedy was an oil heiress and his father was one of the wealthiest men in America. Almost all of JFK's wealth income and property came from a trust shared with other family members.

Clinton's wealth is estimated at $38 million. Twenty years of public service did not make him a rich man, but since leaving office, books and speaking fees earned him big bucks.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was worth $60 million, mostly acquired through inheritance and marriage. He spent most of his adult life in public service and his mother controlled the purse strings.

Lyndon Baines Johnson made a lot of money as a politician. He would accumulate 1,500 acres in Blanco County, Texas, and he and his wife owned a radio and television station in Austin. His net worth was estimated at $98 million.

In 2011, you couldn't swing a dead cat in Congress without hitting a multi-millionaire, many of them Democrats. John Kerry who ran against George Bush has a net worth of $193.07 million, much of it the result of marrying rich wives. Jay Rockefeller whose very name suggests wealth has $81.63 million. The California ladies, Diane Feinstein comes in at $55.07 million and Nancy Pelosi is worth $35.20 million.

The Daily Caller.com recently reported that Rep. Pelosi's 2011 financial disclosure statement included between $1 million and $5 million earned from partnership income with Matthews International Capital Management, a firm that invests exclusively in Asia where much U.S. outsourcing occurs.

Among the Republicans, Rep. Michael McCaul has assets of $294.21 million, much of it is held by his wife, Linda McCaul, the daughter of Clear Channel Communications CEO and founder, Lowry Mays. Rep. Darrell Issa, who earned his wealth in the private sector, is worth $220.40, and, from a celebrated New Jersey family, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen is worth $20.35 million. Neither of the Bush's, father and son, made it into the top, most wealthy Presidents.

Suffice to say if you weren't already wealthy when you got elected to Congress, the odds are you will accumulate wealth while there.

Obama's salary as President is $400,000 a year; he has a $150,000 expense account and a $100,000 tax-free travel account, along with a $20,000 entertainment budget. Not big money compared to the CEOs of major corporations and banking institutions, but the taxpayers pick up the tab for a lot of extras that go with the job.

If the economy will decide Obama's fate in November, then a lot of voters, Republicans, Democrats, and independents are going to be thinking about the past 40-plus months of 8.2% unemployment, billions wasted on "clean energy" companies that have gone bankrupt sticking taxpayers with the losses, the national debt of $17 trillion that robs the future from the next generation and the one after that, and the largest tax increase in history--$494 billion in one year-that will hit on January 1, 2013. I don't even want to think of the costs of Obamacare.

Caterwauling about how wealthy Mitt Romney is and telling lies about his career at Bain Capital may fool some people, but most know where their financial problems came from and have no doubt it has been Barack Hussein Obama's appalling mismanagement of the nation's economy.

Being rich in America never kept anyone from being elected President. Obama and many of his Democratic Party colleagues are the wealthiest hypocrites in public office.

SOURCE


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

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

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Has Ron Unz built his castle on sand?

Among his many worthy attributes, Ron Unz, publisher of The American Conservative, is an expert on the statistics of Hispanic crime. He concludes that Hispanics are not as crime-prone as many people think.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to match his expertise and one reason why is that many of the available statistics that form the fodder for analysis of Hispanic crime are very likely hopelessly wrong. They are sandy ground on which to build anything.

I confess that I have myself used official U.S. census data to look at Hispanic crime but reflection tells me that I was pissing into the wind. Using surveys and censuses to study a group who have a fervent desire to stay beneath official notice is surely a foolish enterprise. A huge slice of the target group will simply be missed by surveys and censuses. It is presumably for that reason that the year 2000 US census showed only 0.7% of Mexican born males aged 18-35 as having a criminal record. And other Hispanic groups are similar. That compares with 3.04% of the male population as a whole in that age group. According to the census, Hispanics in the USA are super-law-abiding. You don't have to be very cynical to conclude from that that the boot is on the other foot: Only unusually law-abiding Hispanics fill out the census.

But Ron Unz does not confine his attention to surveys and censuses. He also uses what prison statistics he can get his hands on. So perhaps he still has something. If he does, Obama is a colossal liar.

Now I don't rule that out. I think Obama is only as honest as it suits him. But his oft-repeated claim that he deports 400,000 illegals a year has never been challenged to my knowledge and it is surely something that could fairly easily be challenged by anyone in touch with such matters if it were grossly inaccurate. It is, moreover, only a small increase over what was recorded in the Bush years. And Obama assures us not only that the deportees are all criminals but that they are SERIOUS criminals. Minor offenders are let off. But 400,000 is 3.3% of the approximately 12 million Hispanics in the USA. And that 3.3% is being repeated EVERY year. So over a 10 year period a THIRD of the Hispanic population would have been deported. So is it 33.3% of the Hispanic population rather than 0.7% who have criminal records?

I put the Obama claims to Ron Unz in correspondence and his reply was: "Relying upon the Obama deportation data as evidence of "serious criminality" is totally absurd: the deportations involve things like traffic tickets, driving without a license (illegals being unable to obtain licenses), or lying about immigration status"

So I guess it's his word against Obama's. Not an easy choice in the circumstances. Given Obama's obvious reluctance to deport, I find it hard to believe that he does so on trivial grounds. I am inclined to think that the Hispanic community would have rumbled him by now were he doing so -- JR

UPDATE:

I posted the article above elsewhere yesterday so already have a reply to it from Ron Unz. He has emailed me the following curiously "ad hominem" reply as follows:

I do agree that if I'm correct then the public speeches of President Obama would be "colossal lies," though probably no more than the political rhetoric of most politicians.

However, perhaps being a psychometrician in Australia you are perhaps unfamiliar with the dynamics of the American criminal justice system. In particular, illegal immigrants who commit "serious crimes" are NOT immediately deported, and never have been. Instead, they are *prosecuted* and sent to prison. Sometimes, after they have finished their lengthy prison sentence (for a "serious crime"), they are then afterward deported.

Think a bit about it. Suppose an illegal immigrant raped or killed someone. If he were just deported instead of being punished, he might very well just sneak back again, and once he turned up in the same neighborhood, having escaped any punishment for his crimes, the public outcry would be enormous and all the responsible politicians would be defeated for reelection.

From what you say, you are a trained psychometrian and have every right to dispute my IQ analysis on technical grounds. If you invest some time and effort, you could certainly familiarize yourself with the detailed evidence on Hispanic crime rates to challenge my article (which, incidentally, has over the last couple of years persuaded pretty much everyone of an open mind).

But you make yourself look extraordinarily foolish when you take a political campaign phrase by President Obama that he has only been deporting illegal immigrants who are "serious criminals" to therefore conclude that at least 10% of all illegal immigrants are "serious criminals."

If you bothered reading any of the hundreds or thousands of major newspaper articles on this contentious subject, you would quickly see it was absurd. I'm not sure that I can think of even a single American-based rightwing blogger or writer---no matter how fanatically anti-immigrant or extreme in views---who has ever made the claim that you make.

I don't claim to be an expert on Australian society, but I'm sure if I'm tried I could take some random phrase by some local politican and use it to draw social conclusions which were utterly absurd and ridiculous, making me look like an idiot. I strongly suggest that you focus on your areas of expertise.

Ron Unz

My reply to the above was as follows:

LOL

So you are telling me that MY castle is built on sand because I live in Australia!

I don't think I was overlooking anything. I actually have a blog called "Gun Watch" that posts daily on American crimes of violence so I think I am pretty aware of what goes on in American courts. I think that does in its way give me some small expertise on the subject. I certainly read a lot of cases.

And a key observation is that most offenders receive only short jail terms, and under plea bargains, may spend no time in jail at all. So some offenders rack up a huge "rap sheet". In other words, there are a lot of "serious criminals" wandering around America.

One thing for certain is that ICE is very picky about whom they deport. They have too few resources to deport everyone who comes to light. And when people like sheriff Joe try to send them illegals they often delay until the offender has to be released.

So I actually support Obama's various edicts that only serious offenders who are presented to them should be deported. And such presentations can come off the street or at the time of jail release

So I see Obama as having a consistent and sensible policy that is the result of a lot of heavily contested political debate and believe what he says in this instance. It is core policy, not some random utterance

I presume that Ron Unz will now turn his data-analytical virtuosity to a dissection of Obama's deportation statistics. He would do us all a great favour if he did that. CIS already have a heap of data on immigration so with their help he should be able to get access to the raw data fairly readily, one imagines -- JR

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The Leftist gospel that "There is no such thing as right and wrong" is now taught in all the schools and throughout society -- and we are surprised that a James Holmes emerges?

It's rather a wonder that Leftist mental poison has not produced more like him



Why is it that in the previous decades, when life was tougher, weapons were widespread, and the ratio of mental disorders was presumably the same, mass shootings were unheard of? Some would say that those people had not yet been corrupted by moral relativism, desensitized by Hollywood's fantasy violence and glorification of crime, or addicted to gory point-and-shoot videogames. All valid points -- yet one major reason hardly gets any notice.

The set of rules for war are different from the set of rules for peace. Wars have always been brutal and soul-sapping; while killing was the norm, there have also been rules to spare innocent civilians. The inhuman murder of a random group of defenseless innocents for no other reason than murder itself was never a part of war -- let alone of peace. What has changed in our 2,000-year-old Western civilization that makes it possible?

Admittedly, the major driving force of cultural change is the education system. Until recently, no generation of young Americans has been exposed to such a massive, centrally planned indoctrination based on the dehumanizing, soul-sapping "progressive" ideology. Accordingly, never before have students dropped out of school in such large numbers, with so confusing and conflicting views of the world and their place and purpose in it, with blurred perceptions of right and wrong, and infected with what I like to call "secondhand envy" and "phantom grievances" (which is similar to the Marxist concept of false consciousness, only not as far-fetched).

The radical "progressive" ideology (a broad term embracing many offshoots of Marxism) dehumanizes people more effectively than any violent point-and-shoot video game ever could. It pits various groups of people against one another by cultivating envy and grievances that are mostly imaginary and secondhand. In the politically correct book of "progress," man is judged no longer by the content of his character, but rather by the color of his skin, class, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other secondary attribute. The trick is that when a secondary attribute becomes the primary one, man loses his unique individuality and becomes a mere social function, a drone in a collective, a peg in the machine, a sacrificial animal on the altar of "progress."

"Progressivism" remains more or less benign as long it feeds off a wealthy nation. But as soon as the wealth is squandered and there are no surpluses left to redistribute, human sacrifice begins. The final argument behind every well-meaning "progressive" scheme is always a gun pointed at those unwilling to be enslaved or give up their property for redistribution. Planned mass murders and incarcerations of "enemies of the people" committed by every communist regime on the planet provide enough evidence of that. "Progressive" ideology denies moral absolutes, yet it assumes the moral authority to give a license to kill in the name of a delirious utopia.

In Russia, shortly after the October revolution, a Leninist newspaper published this, if you will, call for "progress":
We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable... so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood... let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois -- more blood, as much as possible.

According to speculative reports, the Aurora shooter James Holmes's clothing and methods bore some resemblance to the violent "Occupy Wall Street Bloc," and he may have been angered that the new Batman movie was an attack on his movement's noble cause. But whether his political leanings are confirmed or not, there's little doubt that this mentally disturbed student had been exposed to the "social justice" and "class strife" rhetoric in school.

These teachings are a near-mandatory supplement served to most American kids, explicitly or implicitly, courtesy of public education. Once in college, the intake of the "progressive" formula tends only to increase, involving heavy doses of every grievance man, woman, or beast has ever had from the beginning of time, factual or imaginary. All this is served up under the generic label of "social sciences."

So when a young college graduate's budding delusions begin to torment him with phantoms of horrific injustice and fictional causes, prompting him to shoot indiscriminately at the dehumanized mass of moviegoers while donning a comic book costume, is it really the fault of the National Rifle Association?

The ongoing gradual insertion of "progressive" memes into the comic book culture is a matter for another essay and, perhaps, another author. As far as the movies go, Hollywood has been demonizing "rich white America" as the formulaic villain in just about every "who-done-it" flick ever since the censure of Joe McCarthy. A sudden break from that direction in The Dark Knight Rises might well be perceived as treason, causing anger among many on the left. And if one is an anxious sociopath with a deadly weapon, who doesn't know right from wrong, truth from fiction, or a hero from a villain, who has learned all he knows from school, movies, and comic books, such a delirious loser may indeed want to stage a spectacular massacre in a movie theater, killing potential "enemy converts" and sending a warning to all the others.

In another time and place, James Holmes might be hailed as an idealistic revolutionary hero fighting for social causes. Che Guevara, anybody? How many revolutionary "heroes" of the past, now lionized on today's campuses, had been tormented by the same mental disorder that turned James Holmes into a mass murderer?

Che Guevara believed that "a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate." Che had killed many more than James Holmes did -- yet his life is glorified by Hollywood, his writings are published worldwide, and his pictures are plastered over the t-shirts of a new generation of American college kids, whom Che would not have hesitated to shoot given the chance.

Of these two delusional murderers, why does Che get a pass and Holmes doesn't? Because killing 12 strangers at a movie is a crime, while killing thousands of faceless class enemies is a statistic? Mental illness does terrible things to the mind regardless of ideology, turning the individual into a loose cannon. Throw a radical cause into the mix, and it quickly removes the safety lock and points the weapon in a certain direction.

Under Che's brief management, Cuban economy hit an all-time low, quickly declining from one of the wealthiest Latin American countries to one of the poorest. To accomplish that, Che murdered thousands of the bourgeois class standing in the way. If this isn't criminally insane, what is? Yet "progressive" educators in the U.S. continue to decorate classrooms with Che Guevara portraits and arrange "educational" school trips to Cuba. Sounds more like the mind-trip of a madman in an asylum run by the inmates.

Bill Ayers, who launched Barack Obama's political career in Chicago, in his younger days was a leader of a communist terrorist group Weather Underground, whose ideology he summed up as follows: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents." According to DiscoverTheNetworks, their long-term goal was to cause the collapse of the United States, replacing it with a communist society over which they themselves would rule. The resistance would be sent to re-education camps and killed. Ayers and his comrades estimated that it would be necessary to eliminate some 25 million Americans in this fashion, so as to advance the revolution.

Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and of the Pentagon in 1972. In his 2001 memoir Fugitive Days, Ayers writes of the day he bombed the Pentagon: "Everything was absolutely ideal. ... The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them." He remembers his fascination with the fact that "a good bomb" could render even "big buildings and wide streets ... fragile and destructible," leaving behind a "majestic scene" of utter destruction. A comic book villain, anyone?

In his later days, Ayers realized that bombings were nothing compared to the damage he could inflict on the country through education of young, malleable minds. He dedicated his life to what he calls teaching for social justice as a professor of education. Supported by the left-dominated academic establishment, Ayers became a prominent member of and later vice president for curriculum studies at the American Educational Research Association (AERA), exerting great influence over what is taught in America's teacher-training colleges and, through indoctrination of a generation of teachers, its public schools.

While the gradual poisoning of the minds of American students is not as spectacular and doesn't lend itself to the silver screen as well as Joker-style terrorism, the utter destruction it leaves in its wake is beyond the dreams of a comic-book supervillain. With all the guessing and fingerpointing with regard to the Aurora shooting, no one is mentioning that James Holmes's disturbed mind may have been poisoned with the perverted concepts of "social justice" that have erased the value of individual human life through class envy, hatred, and falsely interpreted ideas of social duty. Since the age of five, he has been receiving social justice programming at the hands of California public school teachers and University of California professors.

Besides acting as a catalyst on a depressed mind, "progressive" education is also a cause of depression in itself. Imagine growing up while believing that yours is the worst country on the planet, guilty of death and suffering of millions of poor people worldwide, who are being wantonly killed, robbed, enslaved, raped, and tortured so that your mom can shop at the mall and your dad can fill up the tank. The species are dying, the rainforest is dwindling, the ozone hole is growing, and the globe is warming. If it is frightful enough to turn a sensitive adult into a guilt-ridden neurotic, think about a ten-year-old, who, in addition, has to live with the fear that if he doesn't die of skin cancer by the age of thirty, global warming and rising sea levels will finish everyone off anyway.

Could those educators who impose such insanity on their students please explain if there is anything, in their view, left in this world for our children to live for? Other than, of course, to continue the struggle for "progress"? But that is manifestly not a skill or a trait of character that will help them to become happy, self-sustaining, professional individuals. All it can do is replenish the cancerous growth that is consuming this society, replacing its productive and vibrant cells with mutated dysfunctional neoplasm.

At this point, we can only wonder if the injection of "progressive" hatred had aggravated Holmes's madness, but it surely had given him a frame of reference and the direction to channel his rage. Without it, perhaps, a certain amount of medication could help him to move on and focus on writing some shockingly dark, violent screenplays that demonize Western civilization, Christianity, capitalism, and family -- always a winner in the movie academy circles. Meanwhile, calls to ban firearms continue from the same people in the media, government, and cultural establishment who have themselves, to a varying degree, contributed to the dehumanization of our culture by destroying the traditional notions of right and wrong and, instead, cultivating the "progressive" notions of class strife, division, and envy.

It appears that James Holmes, as well as those before him and those who are yet to follow, are only unwitting tools in the hands of the real villainous Joker. Can you hear Bill Ayers's behind-the-scenes maniacal laughter yet?

SOURCE

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

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

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Alger Hisses Forever

In today’s American Spectator, Jeffrey Lord refreshes our memories regarding the Alger Hiss/Whittaker Chambers controversy that graced the American political scene a few decades ago. At that time, New Deal progressives quickly and vehemently came to the defense of Hiss. That kind of reaction seems not at all unlike the vindictiveness establishment Republicans have recently exhibited by excoriating Congresswoman Michele Bachmann for her straightforward inquiries into the thoroughness of State Department security clearance vetting. As Lord asks in “Is Huma Abedin the New Alger Hiss?“:

Is Huma Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood what Alger Hiss was to the Soviet Union?

Why are Republican Senator John McCain, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rodgers (R-MI) acting in the growing Abedin controversy as Washington Establishment Democrats of the 1940s did in the Hiss episode? Which is to say, writing off the dangers of a foreign enemy whose goal is to infiltrate the U.S. government — because, well, the people in question are part of the Washington Establishment?

And last but certainly not least, why is the Republican Establishment pursuing a losing strategy in the war against Islamic radicalism? Is it returning to the losing strategy it pursued during the Cold War — a strategy that was overturned over Establishment opposition by Ronald Reagan’s victorious “we win, they lose” strategy?

The article is well worth reading in its entirety for both its description of the current brouhaha and as an Alger Hiss controversy primer, including Richard Nixon’s treatment at the hands of the Establishment for his part in the Hiss investigation when he was a young Republican Congressman.

However, left out of the analysis is another major event associated with the Cold War that is not often mentioned nowadays: Nixon’s trip to China. If we consider China’s American-boosted rise as an industrial and military power, the Middle Kingdom’s seemingly incessant hostility towards the U.S. that includes continuing and ubiquitous espionage efforts, and ask ourselves what have the Chinese ever done that’s been to our strategic benefit, another question comes to my mind:

Was Henry Kissinger Richard Nixon’s Alger Hiss? Just wondering.

SOURCE

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Proof! Establishment media is controlled by Democrat operatives

There was a rather low-key confession made in the New York Times last week that deserves to be blared throughout this country so that every American understands what they are reading in the establishment's ultra-controlled, government-managed "press" - and I use that last word loosely indeed.

The admission came in the form of a story by Jeremy Peters on the politics page of the Times July 16. I've been waiting for others to point it out, discuss it, debate it, express shock and exasperation over it. But I've waited for naught.

What this shocking story reveals is that even I - one of the kingpins of the new media and a refugee from the state-controlled spin machine - underestimated the utter and total corruption of the euphemistically called "mainstream press."

It shows that most - not some - members of the print media establishment with access to the White House submit their copy to government officials for review, "correction" and approval before it reaches the American people!

Even "progressive" WND columnist Ellen Ratner agrees - media under a spell! Here are some key excerpts from the piece, if you think I'm exaggerating:

"The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative."

"They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name."

"Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president's top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review. The verdict from the campaign - an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script - is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message."

"Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations."

"Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all mid-level aides in Chicago and at the White House - almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail."

"Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them."

"From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a ‘top Democrat' or a ‘Republican strategist.'"

"Those [reporters] who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. ‘It's not something I'm particularly proud of because there's a part of me that says, Don't do it, don't agree to their terms,' said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal."

"It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms."

I could go on and on. I urge you to read the entire story. This may be the most important story broken by the New York Times in years.

More HERE

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News Versus Propaganda

Since so many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political talking point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the shooting rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the tea party movement, and that (2) some would try to make it a reason to impose more gun control laws.

Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda.

NBC News apparently could not resist doctoring the transcript of the conversation between George Zimmerman and the police after the Trayvon Martin shooting. Now ABC News took the fact that the man arrested for the shooting in Colorado was named James Holmes to broadcast to the world the fact that there is a James Holmes who is a member of the Tea Party in Colorado.

The fact has since come out that these are two different men, one in his 20s and the other in his 50s. But corrections never catch up with irresponsible news broadcasts. The James Holmes who belongs to the Tea Party has been deluged with phone calls. I hope he sues ABC News for every dime they have.

This is not the first time that the mainstream media have tried to create a link between conservatives and violence. Years ago, the Oklahoma City bombing was blamed on Rush Limbaugh, despite the absence of any evidence that the bomber was inspired by Rush Limbaugh.

Similar things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing atmosphere in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the far left fringe.

But, where the shoe is on the other foot -- as when the Unabomber had a much marked-up copy of an environmentalist book by Al Gore -- the media heard no evil, saw no evil and spoke no evil. If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking -- or lack of thinking. New York's Mayor Bloomberg and CNN's Piers Morgan were on the air within hours of the shooting, pushing the case for gun control laws.

You might never know, from what they and other gun control advocates have said, that there is a mountain of evidence that gun control laws not only fail to control guns but are often counterproductive. However, for those other people who still think facts matter, it is worth presenting some of those facts.

Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.

Britain is a country with stronger gun control laws than the United States, and lower murder rates. But Mexico, Russia and Brazil are also countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States -- and their murder rates are much higher than ours. Israel and Switzerland have even higher rates of gun ownership than the United States, and much lower murder rates than ours.

Even the British example does not stand up very well under scrutiny. The murder rate in New York has been several times that in London for more than two centuries -- and, for most of that time, neither place had strong gun control laws. New York had strong gun control laws years before London did, but New York still had several times the murder rate of London.

It was in the later decades of the 20th century that the British government clamped down with severe gun control laws, disarming virtually the entire law-abiding citizenry. Gun crimes, including murder, rose as the public was disarmed.

Meanwhile, murder rates in the United States declined during the same years when murder rates in Britain were rising, which were also years when Americans were buying millions more guns per year.

The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.

Any discussion of facts is futile when directed at such people. All anyone can do is warn others about the propaganda.

SOURCE

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The Implicit Errors in Debts to Society Arguments

Suppose–purely hypothetically–a prominent politician uses the following argument to explain why we should pay more taxes:

"If you are rich, you relied upon background infrastructure, social norms, institutions, the rule of law, and so on, in making your money. In the state of nature, life would be nasty, poor, brutish, and short. But you life is pleasant, rich, civil, and long, thanks to these background institutions, many of which are provided by government. So, pay us more taxes."

These kinds of arguments try to establish that you owe a debt to society, and then try to establish that paying more taxes is the right way to repay this debt.

The problem is that they assume–without argument–that the society to which you owe a debt just happens to be the nation-state. There is no reason to assume that. In fact, it’s more plausible that my debts, if I have any, are both more local and more global than the nation-state.

Consider that I was educated in public schools in Tewksbury, MA, and Hudson, NH. I now drive on roads provided by certain counties in Virginia and by Washington, DC. Etc. If I owe a debt for my education, why think this indebts me to America (or the federal government) rather than Hudson, NH?

I benefit from the positive externalities created by an extended system of trade. Why think this indebts me to America (or the federal government) rather than almost the entire world?

Suppose I were to buy a loaf of bread. If I trace the history of that bread, Leonard Read “I, Pencil”-style, I’ll find that in producing the bread, a wide range of governmental services were used. These services come from local, state-wide, and federal governments, both domestic and foreign. It would be bizarre, then, to assume that in buying the loaf of bread, I acquire some special debt to the US Federal Government.

Another major error is to assume that people must repay their debts through taxes. I don’t know what Thomas Edison paid in taxes. But I can safely assume that he did more to repay his “debt to society” through his inventions than by paying taxes. A similar point will apply more weakly to many of the rest of us.

A final problem with the hypothetical politician’s argument is that it does not establish how much people should pay. The argument above (and the real-life argument to which I allude) do not tell us at all what marginal tax rates should be. Perhaps I owe the government 95% of my income. Perhaps I owe it 5%. The argument does not say. One might try to argue that I owe the government everything, since life would be lousy in the absence of government. But we could just as easily say that the government owes us everything, since it couldn’t function without us.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to list another mistake the argument makes. Consider that my kids probably owe me a debt for raising them. To repay that debt, when they are adults, they should probably at least visit or call once in a while. However, while they owe me this debt, I will not be entitled to force them to pay it. So, another problem with the debts to society argument for increased taxation is that it doesn’t establish that society may force us to pay our debts.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

What’s not forbidden is mandated: "I was headed to the local county building department to try and obtain permission for my client to build a warehouse on a large piece of rural property that he owned. They call this permission a 'building permit,' and unless you are granted one of them by the local bureaucracy, it is a criminal offense to build. Both my client and I had recently jumped on a new fad in architectural design, that is, building out of used shipping containers. Economically speaking, the shipping container is a great architectural tool; it is large, spacious, structurally sound and you can buy them cheap. I had designed a warehouse for him which utilized two shipping containers to act both as main structural elements as well as large storage spaces. It was a design that was simple and economical, integrating an unrelated element into a unified package; in other words, it was innovative. And that's why we couldn't build it." (07/23/12)

Why governor calls shooter “Suspect A”: "Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper had the right idea when he refused to utter the suspected gunman's name in the Aurora multiplex theatre shootings that left 12 dead and 58 wounded. Instead of naming the alleged killer, Hickenlooper referred to him only as 'Suspect A.' At a prayer vigil Sunday, Hickenlooper read the names of each of the 12 people killed in the incident. After each name, the crowd repeated the refrain, 'We will remember.' ... 'We want to focus on the victims, survivors and first responders,' the governor's spokesman Eric Brown explained. 'Not the killer"

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

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

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Because of Obama-era bungling, you can't afford to retire

Unless you are a Federal government employee

Two reports released this week began to make clear the staggering costs to the U.S. economy of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s zero-interest-rate policies. The first, from Standard and Poor’s, outlined the yawning funding gulfs in U.S. private sector pension schemes. The second, from the New York Fed, shows the astronomical growth in student debt. Both problems are likely to lead to huge costs in the future; neither would have occurred without Bernankeism.

The pension fund cost of Bernankeism is huge, and is growing not shrinking. Standard and Poor’s showed that the unfunded pension liability of the S&P 500 companies reached a record level of $354.7 billion in 2011, an increase of over $100 billion from the end of 2010 and $50 billion higher than the figure at the bottom of the bear market in 2008. There’s an additional $223 billion in underfunding in “other post-employment benefits,” some of which is undoubtedly due to rising medical coats, but much of which must also derive from poor investment returns.

Until the last few years, pension fund trustees could assume that the majority of underfunding was due to the sluggish stock market since 2000 and that a stock market recovery, combined with a modest increase in funding by the companies concerned would eliminate the problem. However the problem is much more fundamental than that. With interest rates at current levels, there is no way on God’s green earth that pension funds can earn the 7.5%- 8% returns that most actuaries have built into their calculations. The recent news from the giant California state funds, CALPERS and CALSTRS, that they had earned only 1% and 1.8% respectively in the year ended June 2011, hopelessly beneath their actuarially assumed rates of return of around 7.5%, shows that the problem is not confined to the corporate sector. Indeed, the problem in the public sector, in federal, state and local governments is an order of magnitude greater, with the U.S. social; security system having the biggest actuarial deficit of all.

Stock market returns are over the long term fundamentally related to the cost of money. If money is very cheap, as it has been since 2008 then even in an ultra-sluggish economy corporate profits will be very high, as will stock market levels (in relation to the unattractively performing economy.) That will reduce the level of returns that stock market investments can expect to command in the future. In 1990-2010, bonds yielded around 4.5% on average, while stock market returns averaged around 7.5%. Today, with bond yields below 2% for 10-year Treasuries, stock market returns can be expected to be only around 5%. Moodies recently announced that it would value pension obligations using an assumed rate of return of 5.5%; that still seems a touch too high, since pension funds invest in a mixture of bonds and stocks.

If pension funds put any reasonable proportion of their money in bonds yielding 2% (which to some extent they have to, for liquidity reasons) their chances of making 7-8% returns overall are negligible. Many pension fund trustees have in the last few years sought to hide this unpleasant truth from themselves by investing in “alternative assets” such as private equity, hedge funds and timberlands. As is becoming increasingly clear however, private equity investments and hedge fund investments are unable to achieve superior returns to the public market over the long run; they merely involve their investors in much higher risk, much lower liquidity and hugely higher management charges, which inevitably come out of the pockets of the funds investing in them. As a Harvard man, I instinctively knew the “Yale Model” involving much higher alternative asset investment was rubbish; this is why.

Thus Bernanke’s policy of keeping interest rates far below even the modest current rate of inflation and using “non-traditional means” to drive long-term rates down even further below their natural level, has caused an increasingly desperate if slow-moving crisis in the U.S. pension fund industry, both public and private sector. However the full cost of Bernankeism ranges far beyond the area of defined-benefit pension funds. While these have actuaries, and must report the holes in their funding to the world, the pension changes occurring since the 1990s have simply transferred the massive retirement funding risk to individuals. The inadequate funding of pensions has in those cases become inadequate funding of savings; the stern admonitions from the Pensions Benefit Guaranty Corporation have become gloomy days staring at a 401(K) savings plan that is hopeless to fund a reasonable retirement. What’s more, when the unfortunate plan-holder enquires from his plan provider what the inadequate amount of money will buy him as an annuity, he will be even more shocked, since ultra-low annuity rates mean that even sums of money that appear quite substantial buy annuities that are pathetic in their inadequacy.

A recent survey of Baby Boomers conducted by the builder Pulte Group showed that 61% planned to retire within 10 years, that only 14% said they would be financially unprepared to do so, and that 59% said they would not postpone retirement and might accelerate it. While the survey showed one encouraging trend, that boomers planned to retire at an average age of 67, compared with 63 twenty years ago, the overall trend of the survey was relentlessly positive about Baby Boomer finances. Interestingly the survey also said that Baby Boomers feel on average 15 years younger than they are -- which suggests that Baby Boomers are, on average, delusional.

Baby boomers who are approaching their relatively late retirement at 67 with $500,000 no doubt feel they are in pretty good shape. They will awaken from their reverie when they discover that one typical insurance company quotes that amount as purchasing an annuity of only $2,966 per month ($2,755 for women) with no pension for the surviving spouse or guaranteed minimum payout period. Doubtless most Baby Boomers faced with this shock will opt not to annuitize, hoping that between 67 and 74 or so, when their money runs out, they will graduate from feeling 15 years younger than their actual age to being dead, solving the problem. Delusional, as I said, but one can hardly blame them. The poor souls are victims of Bernanke’s ultra-low interest rates.

I have already discussed the Bernanke policies’ adverse effect on savings, and the consequent de-capitalization of the U.S. economy. By this means, the United States’ immense capital cost advantage against emerging markets has been eroded. Since the superiority of U.S. educational institutions is for the most part questionable at best, there is now little to prevent U.S. living standards being driven inexorably down towards those of China or India. Just as baby boomers may face the problem of a penurious old age thanks to Bernanke’s policies, younger Americans may face diminished earning ability or high unemployment or very probably both. Both the “stickiness” of wages on the downside and the ham-fisted and expensive attempts by politicians to solve the problem are likely to make the inevitable decline in living standards even worse than it needs to be.

More HERE

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The Obama version of "cost cutting"

Barack Obama has made it clear that he is a big believer in big government and has adopted a economic plan to run trillions of dollars in annual deficits for as long as possible. Obama remains steadfast against making any dramatic cuts in government spending and when pressed to announce some half-hearted effort to cut the size and the cost of government, his administration has resisted the cuts, and has transformed even the puniest efforts to cut federal spending into even greater demands upon taxpayer funds. The Obama Administration’s cost cutting efforts within federal agencies are so ineffective, they often cost taxpayers more than the savings originally proposed by the cuts.

Consider, for example, a recent Obama administration plan to consolidate data centers across the federal bureaucracy--an effort that they claim will save millions of dollars. However, close examination, by GAO and the DoD among others, shows that the cost of the implementation of data center consolidation for almost 24 agencies cost is likely to cost billions, that most of the federal agencies consolidating data centers haven't fully evaluated the total costs.

OMB estimated that " 30%-50% savings could be obtained" in operational costs through data consolidation efforts. However, OMB did not consider, on an agency-by-agency basis, the costs in manpower to transfer data and software from the IT servers located in various agencies throughout the country to the one location of the consolidated data center, nor the costs of the displaced IT persons within agencies who no longer provide IT support, nor the costs of the additional backup storage.

In addition to these increases in the operational costs for the agency, there is also the increase in the energy costs for the data centers to be considered. It turns out that a recent Congressional Research Survey (CRS) study shows that data centers consume "as much as 100 times the energy of a typical office building". In 2012, CRS estimates that costs for energy at consolidated data centers will run about $7.4 billion dollars annually. So, it seems that the Obama Administration is advocating spending $7.4 billion dollars annually to save $510 million. Can't they see what's wrong with that math?

Then, there is the complicated case of federal employee early retirement and buyouts which are occurring in several federal agencies. The U.S. Postal service is reporting that buyouts are expected for 7,400 postal employees. A buyout is where the government has deemed that the service level, capacity or task of a particular series of workers is unnecessary and can be eliminated without creating a negative impact on agency performance.

What often occurs, instead, is that federal employees with anywhere from 25 to 40 years of service who, already, were in the process of retiring, sign up for the buyout and are rewarded with an extra $15,000 to 25,000 for doing what they were planning on doing anyway.

Imagine, an entity such as the Postal Service, which is claiming that it can't afford to deliver mail 5 days a week, can afford to spend almost $150 million dollars this year on buyouts. Of course, taxpayers can also expect to pick up the costs of any of the Postal employees who then continue to receive retirement pay, averaging approximately $1.7 million in pay and benefits per retiree. Or, for those who take the buyout but can't find work, then the American taxpayer also face the possibility of paying for 99 weeks of unemployment in addition to the $15,000-$25,000 buyout. These expenditures are claimed as cost savings by the Obama administration.

Then there is the Obama administration's recent knee-jerk, political posturing in which the administration has canceled almost all federal meetings, conferences, and travel in a throw-out-the-baby-with-the-bathwater cost cutting idiocy. In order for the government to cancel conferences at the last minute, many of which have already been issued contracts, the government is required to pay a "termination for the convenience of the government" penalty. These costs can range in the millions for each termination issued.

In addition to a termination penalty fee, the federal government must also pay for any special costs, such as the efforts of the business' contract lawyers, procurement and management professionals, partial goods ordered and severance costs for any persons involved. In fact, the termination costs can equal or exceed the amount of the original contract.

Recently, in the wake of the GSA conference and clown scandal, GSA canceled all travel and conferences, as did many other federal agencies. In addition to the down-the-stream costs to cities, hotels and travel service industries, the government has also paid and continues to pay millions in termination for convenience costs.

The Obama administration's intentions may be well-meaning. Certainly, in the midst of a heated election year, they are trying to avoid political scandal. And, without a doubt the administration is trying to claim that they are doing a good job saving taxpayer money, but this is just not true.

The Obama administration is not saving taxpayer dollars--in fact, their many different “cost cutting” initiative are actually resulting in greater spending.

Americans need to look carefully at the Obama administration's so-called energy-saving, budget-cutting, and efficiency efforts. Whether well-meaning incompetence or poor management, the reform mandates and cost cutting efforts of the Obama administration have not lived up to their hype and are costing the American taxpayer far more than is saved.

The Obama administration will be known as the biggest spender in our nation’s history and even the few half-hearted efforts launched to cut unneeded programs and reduce wasteful spending result in even greater taxpayers costs and a further expansion of government.

SOURCE

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A small businessman answers back

Dear President Obama:

I’m still reeling from your recent remarks about small business owners in America. With one sweeping generalization, you stated that those of us who have had successful businesses did not earn that success. Instead, you insist that someone else made it happen for us. I’ve written to tell you my story in the hopes that you will see the foolishness of your unproven assertions.

Back in 1989, I decided to pursue a PhD in Criminology. I was nearing the end of my Master’s program in Psychology. I had a teaching assistantship that paid a mere $345 per month. I knew that I could not live on $345 per month for the minimum of three years I would need to finish my doctorate. I also knew that my parents would not be able to extend the same financial support they had so graciously extended while I was working on my Master’s degree. So I devised a plan to start a new business with just $1000 of initial investment.

My grandfather had passed away in December of 1988. In the late spring of 1989, my grandmother mailed me a check for $1000 that had been part of a life insurance policy payout issued upon my grandfather’s death. In the late summer of 1989, I met a graduate student by the name of Shannon Ruscoe. He had been playing tennis with my roommate Harry Wilson the day I met him. I was sitting in my living room playing a song by James Taylor when Shannon started singing along. After just a few minutes of listening to Shannon sing, I knew my life would never be the same again.

I called Shannon later that fall and asked if he wanted to get together and rehearse a few songs. We did. Within a few weeks we were hanging out at keg parties in places like Starkville’s College Station apartment complex. After a few beers, I would go to my car and get my 12-string. As our repertoire increased, so did Shannon’s confidence as a singer.

After a few months of getting to know Shannon, I laid out a plan. I found a beautiful Alvarez six-string with a cedar top and black jacaranda back and sides. I realized I could buy the guitar and install a Martin thin-line pickup under the bridge for just $700. With the remaining $300, I told Shannon that, for just $30 per night, we could rent a PA system from our friend Jim Beaty, the owner of Backstage Music in Starkville. The idea was that after playing free ten times we could start to earn a living as musicians.

First, we had to find a place to play. Fortunately, a Kappa Sigma named Mike worked as a manager at J.C. Garcia’s – a Mexican restaurant/bar that featured acoustic acts including the legendary Jeff Cummings and Jeffrey Rupp. We went to see him with an offer, telling Mike we would play at J.C’s free of charge on a Tuesday night, but only on one condition: if they sold $2000 worth of liquor, they would have to hire us the next week for 10% of the liquor sales, or $200.

Mike laughed. J.C.s had never sold $2000 worth of liquor on a Tuesday night, which was generally their slowest night of the week. Naturally, he felt he had nothing to lose. So we book our first gig at a real restaurant in a real college town.

I called all of my old friends at the Sigma Chi house and told them to show up at J.C’s the following Tuesday night. Shannon told all the girls at the Chi Omega house where he worked as a “house boy” in his spare time. As a result of our marketing, we packed the place out. J.C’s sold over $2000 in liquor that night and we were invited to come back the next week.

Playing free at keg parties also paid off. Later, by May of 1990, we were getting hired to play private parties. At one of those parties, we met the manager of the Bully III, a restaurant/bar near downtown Starkville. His name was David Lee Odom. He upped our salary to $250 per night plus free dinner and free beer. By the time I graduated, I would play in that bar over 100 times. It was there that I met other musicians and eventually had a chance to play all over the state and region. As a businessman and friend, Dave Odom changed our lives forever.

After Shannon moved to Nashville in 1991, I decided it was time to rely on the government for financial support. I’m just kidding. I simply went out and found another great singer named Anne Ford. We would play together until 1993. Our act was so successful that in April of 1993, my last full month of college, we played a whopping 22 gigs in just 30 days.

As the result of my business venture I was able to graduate with a PhD without taking out a single student loan. And it was a business venture. I was not just a guitarist. I booked most of our gigs, handled equipment purchases, and did a modest bit of accounting.

The irony is that, back in those days, I was a Democrat with socialist leanings. I voted for Dukakis and Clinton as the “lesser of two evils” – all the while complaining about the lack of a far-left alternative. Shortly thereafter, I would get involved in a two-year relationship with the daughter of the head of the Socialist Party of Ecuador. I simply failed to reconcile the discrepancies between my theoretical view of the world and my real world experiences. Eventually, I grew out of my childish socialist mindset and realized that capitalism had allowed me to utilize my God-given talents to earn a living government could never provide.

Someday, Mr. President, you’ll grow out of it, too.

Sincerely,

Dr. Mike S. Adams

SOURCE

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

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

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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