Is this any way to help the poor?

By Jeff Jacoby

Is welfare corrupt? Of course it is, and in a damning report last week, the Massachusetts state auditor, Suzanne Bump, rounded up some of the scams:

Welfare payments issued to recipients long after they were listed as dead. Multiple recipients using one Social Security number — and multiple Social Security numbers being used by one person. Electronic benefit cards from Massachusetts being used in places like Hawaii, Las Vegas, and the Virgin Islands. Tens of thousands of blank EBT cards missing from state welfare offices. Repeated requests for “lost” benefit cards to be replaced.

In a report that covered only a two-year period, Bump’s investigators identified at least $18 million in illegal or suspicious welfare payments. “It pains all of us,” Bump told reporters, “to think that the program’s integrity is not being maintained.”

If this sounds familiar, it should. Blistering exposés of welfare fraud and abuse, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, have become almost routine.

Over a 22-month period in New Jersey, that state’s comptroller disclosed last week, prison inmates collected almost $24 million in unlawful welfare benefits — including $10.6 million in unemployment checks and $4.2 million in food stamps. TV reporters in Florida documented the use of electronic benefit cards in strip clubs, liquor stores, bowling alleys, and bingo parlors. A 65-year-old cashier in New Hampshire was fired last year for refusing to let a young man use a benefit card to buy cigarettes.

The new Massachusetts audit, meanwhile, followed an earlier report by the state’s inspector general, who estimated that the state is squandering $25 million a year on improper welfare payments. And before that was a national investigation by the US Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program. It uncovered fraud in every state it reviewed.

Is welfare corrupt? Is it ever. And yet the infuriating waste of taxpayer funds is only the beginning of the corruption.

More Americans rely on government assistance today than ever before. Food stamps have become almost a middle-class entitlement. At the end of 2012, a record 47.8 million people were on food stamps. Of the 115 million households in the United States, 23 million — one in five — are on the food dole.

It wasn’t so long ago that such a degree of dependency would have been inconceivable. In 2001, according to federal data, 17.3 million people were receiving food aid. In little more than a decade, the food stamp rolls have almost tripled.

That didn’t happen by accident. Under the last two presidents, increasing food stamp enrollment became an explicit government goal. George W. Bush sharply expanded eligibility, rebranding food stamps as “nutritional assistance” instead of welfare. States were encouraged to sign up more recipients — a ball the Obama administration took and ran with. The Agriculture Department promotes food stamps through radio ads and “public service” announcements; billboard-style ads appear on city buses. To attract even more participants, the department advises local welfare agencies to “host social events where people mix and mingle” — show them a good time, and try to get them on welfare.

Is this any way to help the poor? FDR didn’t think so. In his annual message to Congress in 1935, President Roosevelt warned that “continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.” The father of the New Deal knew that “to dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.”

It is a mark of how far we have declined that a political figure who dared to say such a thing today would be denounced as heartless, a hater of the poor, even a racist — as Newt Gingrich found out when he tried to make an issue of soaring food stamp rates during the presidential campaign. When Massachusetts lawmakers last year tried to prevent electronic benefit cards from being used to pay for tattoos, guns, or jewelry, Governor Deval Patrick vetoed the measure, saying he would not be a part of “humiliating poor people” or making them “beg for their benefits.”

FDR feared the effect of long-term dependence on government. Political leaders today enable it.

Welfare corrupts in so many ways. What it does to taxpayers is bad, and what it does to welfare recipients is worse. But what it is doing to our nation’s character and deepest values may well be worst of all.

SOURCE

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Abolish the Corporate Income Tax!

Sen. Carl Levin was aghast. Before his committee sat, unapologetic and uncontrite, Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose company had paid no U.S. corporate income taxes on the $74 billion it had earned abroad in recent years.

"Apple has sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance," said Levin. "Apple has exploited an absurdity."

Actually, Apple had done nothing wrong, except hire some crack accountants who chose Ireland's County Cork as the headquarters of their international division. Thus Apple paid on profits earned outside the U.S.A. nothing but a 2 percent tax imposed by the Irish government.

Far from being condemned, Apple's CPAs ought to be inducted into the Accountants Hall of Fame.

It is no more immoral for Apple to move its headquarters for foreign sales to Ireland than for Big Apple residents to move to Florida to escape the 12 percent combined state and city income tax.

Among the reasons the Sun Belt is booming at the expense of the Rust Belt is not just the weather. Southern states strive to keep income and estate taxes low or nonexistent. They want companies and families to relocate and live there, and to spend their money there.

The problem here is not with Apple, it is with Sen. Levin & Co.

In a press release, "Avoiding Their Fair Share of Taxes," the AFL-CIO hails Levin and bewails the fact that though the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent, highest in the world, corporate income tax revenue has fallen to well below 10 percent of federal tax revenue.

"Cash tax payments by non-financial companies in the S&P 500 Index fell ... to $222 billion in 2010," moaned the AFL-CIO.

"Another corporate tax avoidance strategy is to move overseas to a corporate tax haven like Bermuda. By reincorporating offshore, companies avoid paying federal income taxes on profits earned outside the United States."

Yes, they do. But instead of bewailing this, perhaps we should start thinking and acting as our forebears did. In the same Wall Street Journal that reported on Cook's defense of Apple, former Sen. Phil Gramm described that earlier America:

"Over the late 19th century, real GDP and employment doubled, annual average real earnings rose by over 60 percent and wholesale prices fell by 75 percent, thanks to marked improvement in productivity."

Astonishing. And what is the difference between that age and ours? A 35 percent income tax rate on individuals and corporations that did not exist then, and would have been regarded by Americans of the Gilded Age as the satanic work of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.

From the Civil War to World War I, our economy grew from one-half the size of Great Britain's to twice Britain's. American companies were capturing markets abroad. Today's U.S. companies are looking for ways to relocate abroad.

Herewith, a modest proposal to turn this around.

Since the U.S. corporate income tax now produces less than 10 percent of federal revenue and less than 2 percent of gross domestic product, abolish it. Get rid of it.

Think of it. A continent-wide nation that doesn't tax business.

Assume this would cost the Treasury $250 billion in lost revenue.

How to make it up? Put a 10 percent tariff on imports entering the United States, which last year added up to $2.7 trillion.

This tax reform would thus be revenue neutral.

And what would a corporate income tax rate of zero, with a 10 percent tariff on goods entering the U.S.A. from abroad, accomplish?

First, every U.S. corporation that had moved abroad in search of lower taxes in recent years would start thinking about coming home and bringing its production and its jobs back to America.

Second, that $2 trillion in income U.S. companies have stashed abroad would come roaring back into U.S. institutions.

Third, foreign companies would begin to relocate and produce here in America, both to get around the tariff and pay no taxes.

Fourth, U.S. producers would see sales soar inside the $17 trillion U.S. market, at the expense of foreigners who would pay a 10-percent admission fee to get into this market, a fraction of what they used to pay in the 19th century.

While this would cause a surge in unemployment among IRS agents and accountants, hundreds of millions of man hours could be redirected away from filling out tax forms and into productive work.

"Since 1980, the U.S. has run trade deficits in every year totaling about $9 trillion," writes columnist Robert Samuelson.

That is 9 thousand billion dollars in trade deficits!

It is what unmade America as a self-reliant republic and made China a manufacturing marvel. And those trade deficits are how America became a dependent nation in hock to the world.

From 1865 to 1914, America had 10 Republican presidents. All believed in financing government by taxing imports, not the incomes of U.S. citizens or the U.S. companies that employed them.

And this was how the miracle Sen. Gramm details came about.

SOURCE

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Now The Gibson Guitar Raids Make Sense

IRS Scandal: The inexplicable raid nearly two years ago on a guitar maker for using allegedly illegal wood that its competitors also used was another targeting by this administration of its political enemies.

On Aug. 24, 2011, federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. One of the top makers of acoustic and electric guitars, including the iconic Les Paul introduced in 1952, Gibson was accused of using wood illegally obtained in violation of the century-old Lacey Act, which outlaws trafficking in flora and fauna the harvesting of which had broken foreign laws.

In one raid, the feds hauled away ebony fingerboards, alleging they violated Madagascar law. Gibson responded by obtaining the sworn word of the African island's government that no law had been broken.

In another raid, the feds found materials imported from India, claiming they too moved across the globe in violation of Indian law. Gibson's response was that the feds had simply misinterpreted Indian law.

Interestingly, one of Gibson's leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Co. According to C.F. Martin's catalog, several of their guitars contain "East Indian Rosewood," which is the exact same wood in at least 10 of Gibson's guitars. So why were they not also raided and their inventory of foreign wood seized?

Grossly underreported at the time was the fact that Gibson's chief executive, Henry Juszkiewicz, contributed to Republican politicians. Recent donations have included $2,000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and $1,500 to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

By contrast, Chris Martin IV, the Martin & Co. CEO, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee over the past couple of election cycles.

"We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted," Juszkiewicz said at the time, adding the matter "could have been addressed with a simple contact (from) a caring human being representing the government. Instead, the government used violent and hostile means."

That includes what Gibson described as "two hostile raids on its factories by agents carrying weapons and attired in SWAT gear where employees were forced out of the premises, production was shut down, goods were seized as contraband and threats were made that would have forced the business to close."

Gibson, fearing a bankrupting legal battle, settled and agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty to the U.S. Government. It also agreed to make a "community service payment" of $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation — to be used on research projects or tree-conservation activities.

The feds in return agreed to let Gibson resume importing wood while they sought "clarification" from India.

The feds say they acted to save the environment from greedy plunderers. America is a trivial importer of rosewood from Madagascar and India. Ninety-five percent of it goes to China, where it is used to make luxury items like $800,000 beds. So putting Gibson out of business wasn't going to do a whole lot to save their forests.

Juszkiewicz' claim that his company was "inappropriately targeted" is eerily similar to the claims by Tea Party, conservative, pro-life and religious groups that they were targeted by the IRS for special scrutiny because they sought to exercise their First Amendment rights to band together in vocal opposition to the administration's policies and the out-of-control growth of government and its power.

The Gibson Guitar raid, the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups and the fraudulently obtained warrant naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as an "aider, abettor, co-conspirator" in stealing government secrets are but a few examples of the abuse of power by the Obama administration to intimidate those on its enemies list.

SOURCE

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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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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 Old Order is Dying

Victor Davis Hanson

Ideas of the 1960s have now grown reactionary in our world that is vastly different from a half-century ago.

Take well-meaning subsidies for those over age 62. Why are there still senior discounts, vast expansions in Social Security and Medicare, and generous public pensions?

Five decades ago all that made sense. There was no such thing as double-dipping. Seniors often were physically worn out from blue-collar jobs. They were usually poorer and frequently sicker than society in general. The aged usually died not long after they retired.

Not now. Seniors often live a quarter-century or longer after a mostly white-collar retirement, drawing subsidies from those least able to pay for them.

Seniors are not like today's strapped youth, scrimping for a down payment on a house. Most are not struggling to find even part-time work. None are paying off crushing student loans. In a calcified economy, why would an affluent couple in their early 60s earn a "senior discount" at a movie, while the struggling young couple with three children in the same line does not?

Affirmative action and enforced "diversity" were originally designed to give a boost to those who were victims of historical bias from the supposedly oppressive white-majority society. Is that still true, a half-century after these assumptions became institutionalized?

Through greater intermarriage and immigration, America has become a multiracial nation. Skin color, general appearance, accent or the sound of one's name cannot so easily identify either "oppressors" or "victims."

So who exactly should receive privileges in job-hiring or college admissions -- the newly arrived Pakistani immigrant, or the third-generation, upper-middle-class Mexican-American who does not speak Spanish? Both, or neither? What about someone of half-Jamaican ancestry? What about the children of Attorney General Eric Holder or self-proclaimed Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren? What about the poor white grandson of the Oklahoma diaspora who is now a minority in California?

Even if the 21st-century state could define who is a minority, on what moral grounds does the targeted beneficiary deserve special consideration? Is his disadvantage defined by being poorer, by lingering trauma from his grandparents' long-ago ordeals, or by yesterday's experience with routine racial prejudice?

If Latinos are underrepresented at the University of California, Berkeley, is it because of the stubborn institutional prejudices that also somehow have been trumped by Asian-Americans enrolling at three times their numbers in the state's general population? Are women so oppressed by men that they graduate from college in higher numbers than their chauvinist male counterparts?

Consider also the calcified assumptions about college education. The expanding 1960s campus was touted as the future gateway to a smarter, fairer, richer and more ethical America. Is that dream still valid?

Today, the college-educated owe a collective $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. Millions of recent graduates cannot find jobs that offer much chance of paying off their crushing student debts.

College itself has become a sort of five- to six-year lifestyle choice. Debt, joblessness or occasional part-time employment and coursework eat up a youth's 20s -- in a way that military service or vocational training does not.

In reaction, private diploma mills are springing up everywhere. But there are no "diversity czars" at DeVry University. There is no time or money for the luxury of classes such as "Gender Oppression" at Phoenix University. Students do not have rock-climbing walls or have Michael Moore address them at Heald College.

The private-sector campus makes other assumptions. One is that the hallowed liberal arts general-education requirement has been corrupted and no longer ensures an employer that his college-graduate hire is any more broadly educated or liberally minded than those who paid far less tuition for job-training courses at for-profit alternative campuses.

Scan the government grandees caught up in the current administration's ballooning IRS, Associated Press and Benghazi scandals. In each case, a blue-chip Ivy League degree was no guarantee that our best and brightest technocrats would prove transparent or act honorably. What difference did it make that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had degrees from prestigious universities when they misled the American people or Congress?

The now-aging idealists of the 1960s long ago promised us that a uniformly degreed citizenry -- shepherded by Ivy League-branded technocrats -- would make America better by sorting us out by differences in age, gender, education and race.  It is now past time to end that ossified dream before it becomes our collective nightmare.

SOURCE

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Inequality

Why has the topic of "inequality" been getting so much attention in recent years? My theory: people on the left don't have solutions to any other problems.

But first things first. What do the writers who are obsessing about it mean by "inequality"? They basically mean inequality of income. That would make sense if we all agree that the most important way in which people are unequal is differences in income. But what if that isn't the case? Almost all of the people who are doing the complaining have chosen professions that earn less income than they could have had. That is, all these professors and editorial writers could have gone to law school or gotten an MBA or done something else that would have earned them more money. Obviously, money isn't the most important thing in their lives.

The list below shows some other ways in which people are unequal. These things basically can't be purchased. But if we were really concerned about life's unfairness, we could compensate those who have less of these attributes and tax those who have more.

    Intelligence

    Physical health

    Mental health

    Happiness

    Leisure time

    Physical attractiveness

    Athletic ability

    Music ability

    Life expectancy

On the last item, there has been a persistent gap between the life expectancies of men and women -- across all racial and ethnic groups. We don't want to lower the life expectancy of women and we don't know how to raise the life expectancy of men. But a general tax on women to be distributed to men would help redress some of nature's injustice (see Dwight Lee.)Plus, with this tax there would be very little of the avoidance and evasion behavior we see with the income tax. (Not many people would get a sex change just to avoid paying it.)

To return to college professors, for a moment, they have an enormous amount of time to do whatever they feel like doing. They only have, say, six to nine hours of required work every week (teaching) and even then they have enormous discretion over what they actually do. Plus they have the whole summer off. The term "leisure time" doesn't really capture what is going on here. Let's just say they have leisurely jobs. Contrast that with people who have no discretion over how they perform their jobs, who work 40 hours a week or more, who hate their work and who can't wait to retire. (College professors rarely want to retire.)

If you care a lot about inequality, an argument could be made for taxing college professors and giving the money to people whose work experience is boring, uninteresting, unfulfilling and has no purpose (for them) other than paying their bills.

If you believe Tom Wolfe, the most important thing on the list above is status. In Wolfe's novels, status is far more important than income ? for almost everybody. What are some indictors of status? Being quoted in major newspapers. Being interviewed on TV. Winning a Nobel Prize. By way of contrast, think of all the people who have never been quoted in any newspaper, who have never been on TV and who have never won any prize. I believe there is far more inequality of status than inequality of income, although I'm not sure how to measure these things.

In any event, if inequality bothers you, think about a special tax on Nobel Prize winners, on TV talk show guests and on people whose names appear in the national news media ? with the proceeds distributed, of course, to people who have no status. Anyone called "counselor" or "esquire" or "doctor" is an obvious candidate for a status tax. Someone called both "professor" and "doctor" ought to be a candidate for double taxation. If the professor/doctor also has an eponymous blog, make that a triple tax!

I definitely would include politicians. In fact, if status is what is most important in life, there should be a special tax on elected officials and a huge tax on whoever is president.

There is a closely related issue. In my line of work I meet an enormous number of people who are frustrated because the world pays no attention to what they think. They have no forum from which to get their ideas in front of everyone else.

But imagine you could be an editorial writer for The New York Times. Better, imagine you could say anything you wanted to say --  ignoring facts and even saying things that are demonstrably untrue. Plus, no matter what you say, you never have to publish a retraction or apologize. Imagine that you could use your column to say mean and nasty things about people you don't like and you could call them any name The NYT regards as "fit to print."

Now imagine auctioning off the right to have this job. How much do you think people would be willing to pay? I'll bet there would be some willing to pay $1 million for the opportunity.

In any event, there should be a special tax on whoever gets this job. A very big tax.

SOURCE

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The suppressed history of how the Left have been betraying America for a very long time

Diana West

A book called "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character" (St. Martin's Press) shouldn't promise uplift and spiritual renewal. I know. I wrote it.

That said, the story of "betrayal" that my new book lays out -- betrayal enabled by a de facto Communist occupation of Washington by American traitors loyal to Stalin, which would solidify in the 1930s under FDR and be covered up by successive U.S. administrations and elites -- is not without inspiration. I am talking about the inspiration of the truth-tellers.

"American Betrayal" presents a rewrite of most of World War II and Cold War history, something I never imagined doing when I first began writing the book. This is simply the story that took shape from my research. And it takes shape in the book in a first-person narrative exactly as I stumbled across the revelations and put them together according to two basic mechanisms.

One relates to revelations from secret archives in Moscow and Washington that opened, briefly and partially, after the USSR dissolved in 1991. I discovered that the treason documented in these archives, treason committed by Americans in government, some in the very highest positions of power, had not been incorporated into our general historical understanding of such defining events as World War II and the Cold War. So I did my best to incorporate them. What emerges makes our history look completely different -- even our near-sacred history of World War II.

The other stream of new information that I was able to reweave into the American story came from those I think of as the truth-tellers. These are the forgotten and/or maligned witnesses and investigators who told and sought the truth about the massive penetration and infiltration by Americans serving a hostile foreign power. (Yes, among them is Sen. Joe McCarthy.)

Their truth-seeking example is inspiring, particularly in an age of routine, serial lying and obfuscation in Washington. If there is one thing I hope my book does, it is to reintroduce us to these great Americans. Because they contradicted the official narrative -- the "court histories" as author and historian M. Stanton Evans calls it -- these Americans were smeared, marginalized and lost to us, their rudderless descendants.

We need them back in our historical and moral consciousness. To that end, I am embarking on an occasional series devoted to truth-tellers highlighted in "American Betrayal."

I will begin with Maj. George Racey Jordan, who in 1949 and 1950 came forward to testify under oath before Congress that one big reason the Soviet Union had recently surprised the world by exploding an atomic bomb was that he, Jordan, the top "expediter" shipping thousands of tons of U.S. war supplies and aircraft through an airfield in Great Falls, Mont., to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease during World War II, had personally overseen the shipment of uranium to Moscow.

Really? Sure enough, as a congressional investigator would testify, two specific shipments of uranium oxide and nitrate were "completely documented to include even the number of the plane that the flew the uranium ... out of Great Falls." This postwar revelation before Congress would shock and anger Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, because he had slapped an embargo on the wartime export of uranium from the U.S. Of course, the shipments in question came from Canadian stocks. How did that happen? Therein lies a tale -- a tale of betrayal.

Meanwhile, it wasn't just uranium that Jordan expedited, as he testified. Heavy water, too.

The congressional committee was able to document the shipment of heavy water, too.

In all, Jordan "expedited" 23 atomic materials through the big airbase in Montana to Moscow during the war, along with nearly 14 million pounds of aluminum tubes, also essential to atomic experimentation.

Findings in Soviet archives would later confirm that possession of the atomic bomb was what emboldened Stalin to trigger the Korean War in 1950. The implications of the theft of U.S. atomic secrets, then, becomes staggering.

After Jordan went public, all manner of witnesses stepped forward to corroborate different aspects of his story. There was the pilot who flew the uranium shipment (and said he handled brown grains of uranium that spilled from a box). There was the GI who recognized in Moscow-bound blueprints the chemical structure of uranium. Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko, celebrated author of "I Chose Freedom," would himself testify before Congress and corroborate specific allegations by Jordan attesting to Lend-Lease as a giant conduit of Soviet espionage.

What even this skeletal synopsis of a tale that unfolds in detail in "American Betrayal" should make clear is that it wasn't just the Rosenberg atomic spy ring that enabled the Soviet theft of U.S. atomic secrets. There was a massive looting effort underway inside the U.S. government overseen by senior Washington officials. Chief among these powers was Harry Hopkins, FDR's very top, very enigmatic, very sinister (I have concluded) adviser. Hopkins was the power behind Lend-Lease -- often the power behind Roosevelt, too -- and a central figure in my book.

I knew none of this "lost" history going into my research more than four years ago. Precious few Americans, I've since learned, do. Hopkins, once famously known as Roosevelt's "co-president," is as absent from our national history lessons as Jordan, a credible eyewitness to what might well have been treason. Why do we have such blanks? Why isn't Jordan's earth-shaking testimony, most of it corroborated by documentation and supporting eyewitness accounts, ever taught? How did Hopkins, once the most powerful man in Washington next to FDR (and maybe more so) slip out of our collective memory? Who stole our history -- and why?

These are the questions I set out to unravel in "American Betrayal." On this quest, I learned there was nothing like seeking out, dusting off and listening to history's truth-tellers.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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 BILDERBERGERS are coming!

Conspiracy theorists of all stripes get their knickers in a knot over the Bilderberg meetings.  They are the cabal that controls the world, according to some.  So expect great explosions of attention-seeking from the usual suspects when this latest meeting takes place.  It seems to occur to none of the demonstrators that the Bilderbergers could crush them like a nut if the Bilderbergers really did have the power that is attributed to them
 
British taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the ‘exceptional costs’ of policing of the clandestine Bilderberg meeting to be held in Watford next week.

The annual meeting of royalty, prime ministers and business chiefs - famous for being shrouded in secrecy - is taking place in Britain for the first time since 1998.

Given the amount of – so far unnamed - prestigious people set to attend the event at the luxury Watford hotel in Hertfordshire, local police have been forced to step up security, which will be part-funded by the government.

The cloak of secrecy surrounding the meetings, which ban journalists from attending, has fuelled various conspiracy theories, including that attendees are plotting world domination.

As a result, there are fears that anti-capitalist protesters will cause ‘violence and disturbance’ at the meeting on 6 June.

Hertfordshire police have refused to release the cost of security for the event, which has previously drawn mass demonstrations in other locations around the world.

However, they are in talks with the Home Office about a grant for ‘unexpected or exceptional costs’ that is only given out if it threatens the stability of the force’s policing budget.

Dorothy Thornhill, the mayor of Watford, told the Watford Observer: 'I have my concerns about it because it does attract people who can and do cause violence and disturbance. ‘But I am confident the police will be able to minimise that and give them their right to protest.

‘I am ambivalent about whether this is a good thing. It’s potentially a positive thing as long as things don’t kick off,’ she said.

The invitation-only Bilderberg meetings, which began in 1954, are attended by around 140 people of influence from North America and Europe.

Previous guests are thought to have included Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Prince Charles, Peter Mandelson, David Cameron and Queen Beatrix of Holland.

SOURCE

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What is driving income inequalities?

Peter Saunders

I was recently asked by a journalist if we should be concerned about widening income inequalities. Here is my reply:

The question is not whether wider material inequalities are a good or bad thing, but what is driving them.

If it were the case, as Wilkinson and Pickett claim, that greater economic inequality creates individual unhappiness and social malaise, I might be worried about recent trends. But the claim is untrue. Their work has been demonstrated to be fundamentally flawed (not just by me); propaganda masquerading as social 'science'.

A number of factors in the last 20 years or so have combined to increase income inequalities in advanced capitalist countries. The main one is a big increase in remuneration for the very top earners - the distribution among the bottom 95% hasn't shifted much - and this reflects the globalisation of the market for corporate leaders.

Is this widening income inequality a bad thing? If it is a result of fraud, deception or outright coercion, yes it is. But if it is a result of freely-taken decisions by people using their own money, no it isn't.

Consider the world's top footballers who nowadays earn $250K or more per week. Why do they get this much? Because top clubs chase scarce talent to improve their team performance. Who pays for these huge salaries? Ultimately, the millions of people who want to watch these players and who are prepared to pay higher ticket prices and/or monthly Pay-TV subscriptions in order to do so. Who gains? Everyone: players, the clubs who employ them, the clubs' customers who want to watch them, and the taxpayer. Who loses? Nobody.

It's the same with corporate high-flyers. Institutions compete for their services and bid up the price, but nobody is forced to pay it. Shareholders benefit from the enhanced profits these guys bring (if they don't, they sack them); customers benefit from the efficiencies they generate; taxpayers benefit from the increased tax revenues. If they break the rules, of course they should be penalised. But if not, they have a right to every dollar they earn.

For a thoroughly reasoned defence of this position, look no further than Robert Nozick's 'Anarchy, State and Utopia.' Nozick provides a compelling argument for assessing the ethics of inequality, not in terms of outcomes (how much do different people get?) but in terms of inputs (why do some people get more than others?).

If your labour creates more value than mine, you have a right to a higher reward. Similarly if as a result of exchanging and trading freely with others, you end up with more than me, you have a right to keep the proceeds. I have no grounds for complaint in either case. If I do still choose to complain (and even worse, combine with other malcontents and mobilise the coercive power of the state to take from you what is rightfully yours), my action is not ethical; it is malicious, driven by nothing but envy and spite.

Equality is a crucial principle, if we mean simply that all individuals should be subject to the same rules, without prejudice or favour. Everyone has equal value in the eyes of the law.

But the morality of equality gets twisted when applied to the results of free individuals operating under a common system of law. Working and freely exchanging goods and services with each other, equal individuals will always generate unequal outcomes between themselves.

Providing a welfare safety net for those who fail is one thing, but deliberately using the state to rob those who succeed is quite another. It is ironic that those who support policies of radical redistribution often believe they are expressing the highest 'moral' principles, when in reality they are peddling envy and greed.

SOURCE

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BOOK REVIEW of Hitler's Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology By Richard A. Koenigsberg

On my reading of Hitler's words and deeds, the analysis below is pretty right.  American Progressives of the time thought similarly.  The human body as a model for a nation seems to have been pretty popular in both Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century  -- JR

Once again available, Hitler’s Ideology identifies and conveys the central images and metaphors contained in the writings and speeches of the leader who defined and articulated Nazi ideology.

Rigorously examining the empirical data, Koenigsberg identifies recurring metaphors in Hitler’s rhetoric in order to reconstruct the central fantasy underlying, defining and supporting Nazism: the idea that Germany was a real body politic in danger of disintegrating—unless radical actions were undertaken.

Hitler’s political role was to maintain the life of the body politic—to prevent Germany from falling apart. To keep Germany from disintegrating, Hitler would bind Germans into a “closely united body.” Hitler’s strategy was to throw his people into the “great melting pot,” the nation, so that they would “weld one to another” into a “single block of steel.”

Hitler was not satisfied with abstract concepts of the nation. He refused to embrace a theory of nations as “imagined communities.” Rather, Hitler conceived of Germany as a “national organism:” an actual “substance of flesh and blood.”

Hitler devoted his life to this German organism—a substance of flesh and blood—and asked his people to do the same. In Hitler’s ideology, the body politic was more important than the bodies of individuals. Hitler mobilized a struggle to “maintain that body—which is the people.”

Nazism conceived of each citizen as a cell of a gigantic organism. Hitler acted to unite these cells to create a single, indestructible body. Out of the “weak will of 60 million individuals,” Hitler would forge a “gigantic mighty compressed will of all.” To prevent national disintegration, the German people had to “hold together as a single block of steel.” If Germany did not succeed in creating a body politic “hard as iron,” then—lacking internal consolidation—the nation would “fall into final ruin.”

The Psychology of Ideology

Hitler’s Ideology is a study in the psychology of ideology and culture. What is the source of an ideology’s power? How may we account for the shape and form of specific cultural ideas or beliefs? Why are certain discourses embraced with such passion? What was the source of Nazism’s appeal?

“Obedience to authority” is not an explanation. Hitler lured the Germany people by presenting a fantasy of omnipotence that they could share and embrace. Each citizen would partake of—become one with—the massive, powerful German body politic.

The Nuremberg rallies (see photo to the left) conveyed the heart of Hitler’s ideology. In these rallies, tens of thousands of people massed together in a stadium. Here at last was the German organism of Hitler’s dreams: the people as cells united to form a single, massive body. Hitler was ecstatic.

The Nuremberg rallies persuaded Hitler that Germany was real—not simply an imagined community. The people at these rallies embodied the nation: Germany had materialized. Hitler saw and experienced the nation with his own eyes: an actual “substance of flesh and blood.”

Fighting for the Resurrection of Germany

Hitler entered politics because he felt that German nation was weak and ill—in danger of succumbing to a fatal disease. He feared the “political disintegration of the body of the people;” believed he was witnessing the “slowly spreading decomposition” of Germany.

Hitler would persuade the German people to undertake a “fight against death.” Either Germany and the German people would sink, or they would enter a “fight against death and rise up against the fate that has been planned for us.”

Hitler’s leadership was based on his belief that the German body politic was in the process of disintegrating. He would reverse the process: make certain that the nation did not disintegrate. Still, the nation was in critical condition. “Drastic measures” were required if Germany was to survive.

Hitler justified the need for political risk by comparing Germany’s plight to that of a “cancer victim whose death is otherwise certain”—who would be willing to attempt an operation even if it promised “only half a percent likelihood of cure.” He compared the nation’s plight to that of a man who “appears to have cancer and is unconditionally doomed to die.” Under these circumstances, it would be senseless to refuse an operation just because the possibility of success was slight.

Would Germany be able to survive? Hitler possessed the “inner assurance” that the people’s fight to live would be brought to a successful conclusion. In spite of Germany’s desperate plight, Hitler remained optimistic, claiming that a national state could sometimes withstand long period of the worst leadership without disintegrating. At such times it seemed as if there were “no more life in such a body”—as though it were dead and done for. But one fine day the supposed corpse suddenly rises and “gives the rest of humanity astonishing indications of its unquenchable vital force.”

Hitler became Fuehrer in order to help Germany recover from her disease. Soon, Hitler believed that he had achieved his goal. Germany had “found herself.” The nation had “risen again.” The people could rejoice in the “renewal of a body that had fallen into senility.” Hitler proudly announced the “mighty miracle of the German resurrection.”

Hitler’s Ideology shows how Nazism grew out of the fantasy of Germany as an actual body—and Hitler’s belief that the purpose of politics was to maintain the life of this body. As a result of actions undertaken by the Nazis, Hitler believed that he had brought the nation back to life: Germany had been resurrected.

Maintaining the Life of the Body Politic

Hitler’s ideology revolved around devotion to this second body—the German body politic. Hitler explained to his people: “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” In Nazism, individual human lives were insignificant compared to the life of the body politic. Why? Because individual bodies pass away, whereas the Reich had the potential to live eternally.

Hitler explained: “The individual is transitory, the people is permanent.” Men come and die, but “this community shall last forever.” Hitler asked the German people to disregard their own lives—to place no value on their actual bodies. Rather, the existence of each person would be devoted to maintaining the life of a second body: the body politic.

Hitler was not content with an abstract idea of national immortality. Rather, the permanent element—what would endure—was “that substance of flesh and blood which we call the German people.” The nation, Hitler believed, was an actual body consisting of the German people as its flesh and blood.

Politics revolves around devotion to entities called nations that human beings imagine possess an existence separate from their own lives. Citizens sacrifice their bodies—die and kill—in order to make certain that national bodies “live on.” In order to maintain the lives of nations—to assure their immortality—anything and everything is deemed permissible. “We may be inhumane,” Hitler said, “But if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world.”

Received by email from Library of Social Science

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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A great story



A Jewish man who gambles on the neddies!  From my ingrained Presbyterian perspective I would have thought Jews had more sense than that.  On the other hand I suppose there are ways in which life is a gamble for Jews.

Anyway, this is no ordinary Jew.  He is Stephen Pollard, Editor of the [British] Jewish Chronicle and a conservative. He spotted some good odds on a horse race and made an "investment", thus earning himself many hours of pleasant anticipation.

BUT: The bookie (gambling firm) he deals with tried to shaft him, reducing his odds from the previously agreed figure, which their small print allows them to do.

Pollard did not cave in.  He sent several polite emails and letters to the bookies concerned (William Hill) -- but got nowhere.  So he took to Twitter and the rest is history.  I found it a very entertaining read.  Find it here.  I think that anybody who has been pushed around by large uncaring organizations (All of us?) will be grateful to Pollard for teaching one of them a condign lesson.

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People with high IQs really DO see the world differently: Researchers find they process sensory information differently

People with high IQ scores aren't just more intelligent - they also process sensory information differently, according to new study.

Scientists discovered that the brains of people with high IQ are automatically more selective when it comes to perceiving moving objects, meaning that they are more likely to suppress larger and less relevant background motion.

‘It is not that people with high IQ are simply better at visual perception,’ said Duje Tadin of the University of Rochester. ‘Instead, their visual perception is more discriminating.'
Scientists discovered that the brains of people with high IQ are automatically more selective when it comes to perceiving objects in motion meaning that they are specifically more likely to suppress larger and less relevant background motion.

Scientists discovered that the brains of people with high IQ are more selective when perceiving objects in motion, meaning that they are more likely to ignore larger and less relevant background motion

'They excel at seeing small, moving objects but struggle in perceiving large, background-like motions.’

The discovery was made by asking people to watch videos showing moving bars on a computer screen.

Their task was to state whether the bars were moving to the left or to the right.

The researchers measured how long the video had to run before the individual could correctly perceive the motion.

The results show that individuals with high IQ can pick up on the movement of small objects faster than low-IQ individuals can.

'That wasn't unexpected, Tadin says.  The surprise came when tests with larger objects showed just the opposite: individuals with high IQ were slower to see what was right there in front of them.

‘There is something about the brains of high-IQ individuals that prevents them from quickly seeing large, background-like motions,’ Tadin added.

In other words, it isn't a conscious strategy but rather something automatic and fundamentally different about the way these people's brains work.

The ability to block out distraction is very useful in a world filled with more information than we can possibly take in. It helps to explain what makes some brains more efficient than others. An efficient brain 'has to be picky' Tadin said.

The findings were reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology.

SOURCE

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More light on Letters of Intimidation to Tea Party Groups from  IRS -- pressure continued into 2012

By Jay Sekulow of ACLJ

We now know that Lois Lerner, the Director of Exempt Organizations for the Internal Revenue Service - who refused to testify before a House committee by invoking the Fifth Amendment - has a paper trail that reveals her direct involvement in sending intrusive and harassing questionnaires to Tea Party groups in 2012.

As you know, we represented 27 Tea Party organizations in 17 states. Of those, 15 received their tax-exempt status after lengthy delays, 10 are still pending, and two clients withdrew their applications because of frustration with the IRS process.

Consider the timeline. We now know through her own testimony and from the Inspector General's report that Lerner was briefed about this unlawful targeting scheme in June 2011. But nine months later, beginning in March 2012, she sent cover letters to many of our clients - demanding additional information and forwarding intrusive questionnaires. In fact, in March and April of 2012, Lerner sent 15 letters to 15 different clients (including those who were approved after lengthy delays and those who are still pending).

This letter dated March 16, 2012 sent to the Ohio Liberty Council is representative of the other letters that Lerner sent to our clients. This letter, posted here, was sent on letterhead out of the IRS office in Cincinnati. The cover letter bears Lerner's signature, who runs the Exempt Organizations division out of the Washington, DC office. It includes more invasive and improper questions about membership of the group and demands information about all public events conducted or planned for the future. And it specifically requested information about the organization's website, Facebook page, and other social media outlets.

In testimony before a House committee yesterday, before invoking the Fifth Amendment, Lerner proclaimed her innocence. “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other committee.”

After making that proclamation, she then refused to answer questions. No questions. Not one. Members of Congress and the American people want to know about her involvement and why this was permitted to continue. Now comes reports that Lerner has been placed on administrative leave and that Representative Issa plans to call her back before the House oversight committee.

It's extremely troubling that it has taken this long for Lerner to be removed from the top exempt position at the IRS. Instead of being placed on administrative leave, she should have been fired.

We're encouraged by Representative Issa's decision to recall her before his committee. There are many questions that Lerner needs to answer - not the least of which is this one: Why did you send letters under your name to Tea Party organizations demanding additional intrusive information in March 2012 - nine months after you were told about this improper scheme and promised to correct it?

The timing of her letters coincide with the appearance of former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman before Congress in March 2012 who testified that no such targeting scheme existed.

It appears Lerner did nothing to stop the abusive conduct. And our evidence suggests she was actively participating in the improper targeting in March 2012. In fact, she appears to have been quite active with her inquisition.

We are now finalizing our lawsuit against the IRS which will be filed next week in federal court in Washington, DC. We continue to add plaintiffs to this complaint. We truly believe that suing the IRS is the only way this unlawful abuse will stop and the only way we will find out the role of Lois Lerner and others in this widening scandal.

SOURCE

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Liberals: Killing with Kindness and Never Having to Say You're Sorry

By ROBERT WEISSBERG

The other day, thanks to PBS, I had an epiphany about today's liberalism. I had long sensed liberalism's pathologies and the brief PBS segment instantly connected dozens of heretofore unconnected dots for an instant Eureka!!

The news story depicted a free food program in down market East Palo Alto, California. Viewers saw people eating free maple syrup-drenched waffles, scrambled eggs and other goodies while the narrator bemoaned that while this free food program had attracted some participants, others remained unaware.

What immediately struck me was, as far as I could tell, every beneficiaries was over-weight, several 350 pounds plus. The voice-over narrative should have continued with how these gourmands would be a tax-burden given the likelihood that these free food recipients would be unable to pay their own medical bills.

Now for the epiphany-this PBS filmed feeding fest is the template for dozens of other liberal "help the poor" schemes. In a nutshell, (1) do something to please recipients; (2) ensure that the generosity makes the donor feel good; and (3) but ignore any harm to the recipient while leaving untouched the donor's sense of righteousness. Everybody now feels good and matters will, guaranteed, deteriorate.

Another example is the liberal quest to granting everybody a high school diploma, if not a college degree. Again, while recipients will love the "gift," achieving it requires lower academic standards, easy courses, occasional teacher cheating, ignoring troublesome behavior (e.g., skipping classes) and otherwise diluting the significance of being "a graduate."

The upshot, of course, is that the recipient only secures a worthless piece of paper. Again, happiness is momentary but the harm is long-term.

Or consider "helping" the poor by forcing potential employers to hire them regardless of criminal background, spotty work history or slovenly appearances (among multiple other deficiencies). Yes, to them  this may seem like a boost up the economic ladder, but employers are more likely to react by moving away from these iffy job applicants, mechanizing the tasks or send the work overseas. After all, you cannot compel businesses to commit suicide in the name of helping the hopelessly unemployable.

Other examples abound but the common element is inflicting harm under the guise of helpfulness.

SOURCE

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Homosexual assaults already rife in the military

More military men than women are sexually abused in the ranks each year, a Pentagon survey shows, highlighting the underreporting of male-on-male assaults.

When the Defense Department released the results of its anonymous sexual abuse survey this month and concluded that 26,000 service members were victims in fiscal 2012, which ended Sept. 30, an automatic assumption was that most were women. But roughly 14,000 of the victims were male and 12,000 female, according to a scientific survey sample produced by the Pentagon.

The statistics show that, as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel begins a campaign to stamp out “unwanted sexual contact,” there are two sets of victims that must be addressed.

“It appears that the DOD has serious problems with male-on-male sexual assaults that men are not reporting and the Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about,” Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness. She noted that only 2 percent of assailants are women.

The assault office “recognizes the challenges male survivors face and has reached out to organizations supporting male survivors for assistance and information to help inform our way ahead,” Ms. Smith said. “A focus of our prevention efforts over the next several months is specifically geared toward male survivors and will include why male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors, and determining the unique support and assistance male survivors need.”

She said the department has included information on male victims on the “DOD Safe Helpline,” which connects them to trained professionals.

“Together, everyone in this department at every level of command will continue to work together every day to establish an environment of dignity and respect, where sexual assault is not tolerated, condoned or ignored, where there is clear accountability placed on all leaders at every level,” Ms. Smith said.

The Pentagon’s 1,400-page annual report came with two basic sets of data: official reports of sex crimes and a scientific survey sample of the 1.4 million active force from which the department extrapolated the number of abuses, regardless of whether they were officially reported.

Data showed 2,949 reports of abuse against a service member last year compared with 1,275 in 2004. The vast majority of victims (88 percent) were female — a statistic that tells the Pentagon that male victims (12 percent) do not come forward at the same rate.

Subjects of investigations are almost always men (90 percent), compared with women (2 percent) — a statistic indicating that male victims are assaulted by other men.

The survey determined that 26,000 service members were victims of sexual assault last year, based on the 6.1 percent of female and 1.2 percent of male respondents who claimed to have suffered such abuse. With an active-duty force of 200,000 women and 1.2 million men, that amounts to roughly 12,000 female victims and 14,000 male victims.

“The [Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office] continues to focus its attention on women who experience abuse but don’t report it, overlooking the far greater numbers of men who, according to the survey, are experiencing abuse but not reporting it,” said Mrs. Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness.

“If the Pentagon considers the survey results a credible reflection of hidden reality, they must also concede that there are more men than women who are being sexually assaulted,” she said.

Mrs. Donnelly fought President Obama’s decision to lift the ban on open gays in the ranks, which took effect in September 2011. She also opposes plans to open direct ground combat jobs to women, saying it will import the sexual abuse problem into the combat ranks.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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Extremism versus stability

We are accustomed in political discussions to describe both ends of the political spectrum as "extremists".  But what are the extremes?  In the case of the Left it is easy:  Communism.  But what is an extreme conservative?  The Left are sure that it is someone like Adolf Hitler but the logic of conservative commitment to individual liberty and suspicion of government makes libertarianism a much likelier extreme form of conservatism.

So which is right?  And why the diametrically opposite interpretations of what extreme conservatism is?  Conservatives presumably know what they believe so why do Leftists persist in attributing  to conservatives something  that conservatives completely disagree with?

It is of course propaganda and the usual Leftist specialty of abuse but even propaganda has to have some element of truth behind it or it will mostly not persuade.  I will look at that grain of truth shortly.

At this point I am going to skip forward a little, however, and say where I think people go wrong.  I don't think there IS any such thing as extreme conservatism. Libertarians believe in a lot of stuff that conservatives reject.  But I do believe that there is such a thing as extreme Leftism.  How come?

I think that the whole polarity of politics is misconceived.  The contest is not between Left and Right but rather between stability and irritability/anger.  Conservatives are the sheet anchor of society. They ensure that there is some continuity and predictability in our lives.  They are the anchor that prevents us all from being blown onto the shoals of arrogant stupidity in the manner of Pol Pot and many others.

For various reasons most people in society have gripes about it.  Even conservatives can usually give you a long list of things that they would wish otherwise in the world about them.

But some of the discontented are REALLY discontented -- discontented to the point of anger -- and among them there is a really dangerous group:  Those who "know" how to fix everything.

So the political contest ranges across a spectrum from valuing stability to various degrees of revolutionary motivation.

But can there be an extreme of valuing stability?  In theory yes but I have yet to hear of ANY conservative-dominated government that lacked an active legislative agenda.  BOTH sides of politics  have changes they want to legislate for.  Conservatives don't want stability at any price any more than they want change that threatens stability.  So as far as I can see, ALL conservatives want change PLUS stability.  And mostly they get that.

Fighting that anchor that keeps society going on a fairly even keel, however, there is the Left  -- who want every conceivable sort of change.  Some just want more social welfare legislation and some want the whole society turned upside down by violent revolution.  And the latter are indeed extremists.

So there is no sharp Left/Right dividing line  -- just a continuum from strong support for stability amid change to a complete disrespect and disregard for stability among extreme advocates of change.

It is possible that there is somebody somewhere in the world who values stability so much that he/she want NO change in the world about them at all.  If so, I have never met such a person.  Everybody has gripes and change is a constant.  The only question is whether we can manage change without great disruptions to our everyday lives.  Conservatives think we can and should.  Leftists basically don't care about that.  For them change is the goal with stability hardly considered.

Now let me skip back to a question I raised earlier.  I think we are now in a better position to answer that question.  The question is why do conservatives and Leftists disagree over what extreme conservatism or extreme Rightism is?  And the answer is now obvious.  If it does not exist, no wonder people disagree over what it is.  The theoretical inference would be that an extreme conservative wants ZERO change: he/she wants stability alone.  But, as I have noted, such people appear not to exist and if they do exist they are surely too few to matter.

But what about the Leftist conviction that society is riddled by people like Hitler:  "Racists" and "Nazis".  Leftists never cease describing those they disagree with that way.  Even a moderate and compromising Christian gentleman such as GWB was constantly accused of being a Nazi.

Again our conception of stability versus extremism helps answer that -- particularly if you add in a dash of history.  Take the "racist" allegation:

Before WWII, everybody was racist in the sense that they believed that racial differences are real and that some of those differences are more desirable than others.  Both conservatives and Leftists agreed on that.  And if they are safe to say it, many conservatives still think that.  I do.

But, exactly as I have pointed out above, Leftists went a lot further than that. They carried their views to an  extreme.  They did not care how many applecarts they upset.  They wanted either to breed out the inferior races (American progressives) or to exterminate them (Hitler).  Where conservatives just accepted a complex reality of long standing, Leftists KNEW what had to be done about it and so hurt a lot of people and did a lot of damage in the process.

When their old friend Hitler lost the war, however, Leftists had a desperate need to disavow all he stood for and so threw their whole rhetoric into reverse gear.  They were still obsessed in their minds by race and racial differences but denied their previous destructive intentions towards other races.  And to accentuate that, they went into paroxysms of rage whenever they discovered that conservatives still had THEIR prewar attitudes.  Leftist attitudes had flipped but since they had opposed Hitler and Leftism generally, conservatives long saw no need to denounce their prewar views.

So in a sense Leftists are right to see that Hitler and conservatives have something in common -- a willingness to admit racial differences -- but are very wrong in their implicit claim that conservatives would carry such views to any kind of extreme.  Extremes are for the Left  -- not just theoretically but as a matter of historical fact.  So they are now as extremely anti-racist as they were once pro-racist.  Conservatives by contrast just jog along trying to keep a firm hold on reality

So Leftists take some generally accepted idea and carry it to extremes, hoping to be seen as great champions by doing so.  Their extremism is a "look at me" phenomenon, a claim on especially great virtue.  Antisemitism is a good example of that.  Before WWII antisemitism was virtually universal.  Nobody liked the Jews and some degree of discrimination against them was normal and accepted.  Not allowing Jews in your club was the commonest form  of that.

So Leftists took antisemitism to extremes and became the leading critics of Jewry, culminating in the holocaust, which was the work of the National Socialist German Worker's Party. Leftists transformed minor discrimination into mass murder.

When Hitler lost the war, however, antisemitism suddenly had bad associations so Leftists abandoned it forthwith and became, for a while, great champions of Israel. Democrat President Truman recognized the state of Israel within minutes of its being proclaimed and the Soviet Union was only three days behind him.  Popular sentiment had changed so Leftists became energetic champions of the new sentiment



The document above signed by Truman gives a vivid contrast to what his Democrat predecessor BEFORE the war did.  FDR is of course well known for sending a shipload of German Jewish refugees  back to Hitler, rather than allowing them to disembark when they arrived at Miami -- JR.

UPDATE:  If you would like more evidence of "how we were", read  the following from the Old Grey Lady (NYT) herself:

 "In so far as Mexican immigration is concerned, it would be idle to deny the economic usefulness of Mexican laborers. But it is essential to face the fact that the great mass of Mexican immigrants is virtually not assimilable. For the most part Indian in blood, their traditions as well as standards of living are very different from ours."[Immigrants From The New World, Jan 16, 1930]

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The race to avoid "Idiocracy"

By Martin Hutchinson

Mike Judge's 2006 movie masterpiece "Idiocracy" painted a future in which differential fertility between the middle classes and the underclass in 500 years produced a U.S. population of knuckle-dragging intelligence, allied to a popular culture whose debasement had reached its ultimate destination. Meanwhile, with the first successful cloning of a human embryo by the Oregon Health and Science University we may have entered the period of philosophical discussion and legal results thereof which determines whether "Idiocracy" is just a playful fantasy or an accurate portrayal of our future.

The effect of differential fertility is arithmetical and has nothing to do with the virtue of the people concerned. If the top half of the population, with an average IQ (or whatever other measure you choose to measure ability) of 115 has half the number of children of the other half, with an average IQ of 85, and reversion to the mean is 50%, then the next generation will have an average IQ of 97.5 rather than 100. That's the "Idiocracy" effect and in modern western societies it's quite strong, as it is between the West and poor countries with high birth rates and, these days, access to modern medicine.

Countering this is the Flynn Effect, whereby IQ test scores in Western countries have been increasing since testing began around 1930, by about 3 points per decade at the upper end of estimates. This makes perfect sense; while the aristocracy had a stimulating environment in the 19th century, poor people had poor nutrition, little stimulation and a high exposure to infectious diseases. In the past half century, on the other hand, adequate nutrition has become universal, many diseases have been conquered and films, radio, TV and the Internet, whatever their vices, have given poor youngsters a wealth of stimulatory experiences unimaginable to their ancestors.  You'd expect the majority's IQs to improve.

However if the Flynn Effect continued today as strong as it was, and extended to the middle classes as well as the poor, at 3 points per decade I should have been unable to cope with my son's college calculus course examples (he is 42 years younger than me) whereas in fact I found them perfectly straightforward. There is indeed considerable evidence that the Flynn effect is now dying out, with IQ scores beginning to decline in Britain since 1980 – suggesting that the temporary Flynn effect is being overwhelmed by the longer-term Idiocracy Effect.

You'd expect this. The propaganda about the Millennial Generation, skulking unemployed in their mothers' basements, being able to console themselves that they are the best educated generation in history, is unfortunately rubbish – they are merely the generation with the most paper qualifications. Both my parents, educated in state schools, studied Milton's "Paradise Lost" in high school; there was none of that in my private school 30 years later, while my son, within the last decade, never progressed in literature beyond the wooly maunderings of randomly-chosen South American communists. The education system has been dumbed down, and the unfortunate Millennials are now finding themselves unemployable in consequence.

There are a number of possible reasons why the human race may not see the year 3,000, but perhaps the most depressing possibility is that they may see it but not be able to count that far.  2.5 or even 1.5 IQ points lost per generation takes you pretty close to zero in a thousand years, and while our descendants, swinging from the few remaining trees, may at last lose the Idiocracy differential, re-establishing civilization will be very difficult for them with natural resources depleted and non-functional electronic clutter all over the place.

Genetic engineering, if entered into carefully, is potentially a solution to this problem. Not that more than a tiny percentage of people will ever be cloned, but those cloned will tend to be the very intelligent, the intelligent and successful, or those with special abilities in other directions. Needless to say, this will improve the human gene pool, especially at the top end where the major scientific, cultural and economic advances can be expected to arise. Adding the potential to tweak the genes before cloning them would merely increase the leavening effect.

There are of course many difficulties both scientific and philosophical in getting from here to there. In particular, two philosophical objections arise when cloning is discussed in the West: that it is itself immoral and that it cannot be undertaken without experimentation, which would inevitably produce imperfectly cloned individuals in the early stages.

Taking the second objection first, this is indeed a serious problem for an individual researcher or laboratory. While many defects of the process may be ironed out at the embryo stage, some will unavoidably slip through and there will thus be produced maybe a few dozen cloned individuals with defects, whether unexpected diseases or mental abnormalities or wretchedly shortened lifespans. For an individual or a private laboratory, this may seem an insuperable obstacle to the necessary work.

It is not however an insuperable obstacle to a government. Governments send people to their deaths all the time in the cause of the "greater good," whether military personnel being sent into battle or firemen, policemen or other "first responders" being sent to deal with perilous situations of all kinds. Governments have also in the past conducted dangerous experiments with inadequate safeguards – the entire Manhattan Project, for example exposed its workers to levels of radiation that would now be considered intolerable. Once the necessary scientific knowledge is available (and we are probably a few years off that stage yet) a government could therefore in good conscience mandate a private laboratory to carry out the work that would bring reproductive cloning into reality.

Given the current state of public opinion and the political forces involved, it's unlikely that a U.S. or European government would sponsor cloning research; indeed they are more likely to attempt to make it illegal. However the overall objection to cloning derives largely from the Judaeo-Christian attitude to human life (which may be shared by Islam.) It does not extend to Asian religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism. Just as Japanese companies have made greater use of fuzzy logic systems than Westerners, because of Western homage to "crisp" philosophers such as Aristotle and Descartes, so the philosophical barriers to cloning, which produce fierce opposition in the West, should produce much less opposition in countries with different philosophical traditions.

China, Japan, South Korea and India all have sufficient technological capability to attempt cloning within a few years of it becoming feasible in the West, and the governments of those countries are well able to lead a program through the initial troublesome research. It thus seems inevitable that by 2050 and quite possibly by 2030 the genie will be out of the bottle; cloning technology will exist and the initial difficulties and unpleasantnesses surrounding it will have been overcome.

Opponents of cloning will produce a litany of phobias from old science fiction movies, stretching from Frankenstein to The Boys from Brazil, in which Dr. Mengele produced 94 clones of Hitler. As with most technologies, there is always the possibility of a James Bond villain misusing them. But in the real world, creating (say) an army of clones would be impossibly expensive, precisely as expensive, time-consuming and pointless as creating a hidden army from ordinary babies.   We can easily imagine in theory evil governments misusing cloning; in practice there seems little advantage to them doing so. Most such nightmares can be avoided altogether by opening the technology fully to the private sector.

Once the initial technical problems of cloning have been solved, the private market will take over if legally permitted to do so. Self-cloning will be extremely attractive for those successful men and women who discover late in life that they have omitted to have children. It won't just be the ultra-rich that undertake it. Just as genetic sequencing can now be purchased for less than $1,000, so genetic reproduction will be available at a cost far below that of a 4-year college degree. For the successful person, it will be a better deal; instead of paying to put a child through college whose intelligence may have regressed to the mean, he or she will be able to create a reproduction that will have their own intelligence, and their own ability to make it into the Ivy League on a full scholarship. If legal restrictions make the technique unavailable in the United States, the world is a small place even for the middle class, and the business opportunity will be too attractive for Asian entrepreneurs to pass up.

The next technique, of tweaking the gene before cloning it to produce even more attractive cloned beings, will cause yet further ethical hand-wringing, but is probably for the next generation to worry about. There are undoubtedly questions here, notably "What is humanity?" that will need to be answered (they don't need to be answered for ordinary cloning which is merely the generation of an identical twin.)

We can now see more clearly than could our ancestors that industrialization, as well as its immense benefits, has had costs, the most important of which has been the explosion in population since 1800, and the consequent proletarianization of global culture. We now have the ability to mitigate some of these costs, through a further scientific advance. We almost certainly cannot avoid this advance altogether, so it's important that we recognize its own costs and benefits, and prevent crass politics from placing too many obstacles to its thoughtful development.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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A pansy President?



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Obama’s Seven Premises About Islamist Terrorism and Revolution

Barry Rubin sets out some strange and destructive Leftist delusions
     
So you want to understand Obama foreign policy? Ok, here is an explanation in clear, simple, and accurate form based on Obama’s recent speech at Fort McNair about terrorism:

* Obama Premise Number One:

If one wanted to come up with a slogan for the Obama Administration regarding the “war on terrorism” it would be this:

To win the war on terrorism one must lose the war on revolutionary Islamism.

because only by showing that America is the Islamists’ friend will it take away the incentive of Muslims, including radical Muslims, to join al-Qaida and attack the United States.

This is NOT the same thing precisely as showing that the United States is the Muslims’ friend. For, after all, the United States is taking sides for some Muslims and against others. And the side it is taking is that of the Islamist Muslims against the moderate, traditionalist, and nationalist ones.

In other words, the administration is largely assuming in practice that the Islamists are the proper representative and leadership of the Muslims. (That is also true, by the way, of domestic preferences.)

Thus, if the Muslim Brotherhood governs Egypt, Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, and Syria, they would have what they wanted and there would be no need for them to attack America and would have every interest in suppressing al-Qaida.

Ironically, though, the Benghazi attack disproved this thesis, which was one of the reasons why the information about it had to be suppressed. The United States “proved” that it was the friend of Islamist rebels, helping them win the war and get rid of the oppressive dictatorship, but they still were ungrateful and attacked Americans. The same thing happened in Iraq where the Sunni Islamists objected to U.S. policy.

It is true that in Syria, Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist radical Islamists are not the same as al-Qaida and might oppose it. But they are not necessarily hostile to its ideas. When the United States tried to isolate the Syrian branch of al-Qaida (Jabhat al-Nusra) in December 2012  by designating it as a terrorist group, even the Free Syrian Army, supposedly the moderates, denounced the move as did more than 30 Syrian Salafist rebel groups.  How would these groups choose sides between the al-Qaida affiliate and the United States? What would the policy of an Islamist Syria be toward the United States and its interests?  While there is no reason to believe the Muslim Brothers or Salafists would attack the World Trade Center, they can be expected to attack U.S. diplomats, facilities, and citizens in Syria and to help Salafists stage revolutions elsewhere that would do the same thing.

At the recent meeting of the Syrian opposition, the State Department spokesman explained:

“We have recognized the coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, and we will work with Prime Minister Hitto. Our assistance will be channeled in large part through him and his team into these towns in liberated parts of Syria.”

Translation: One among several opposition groups–the one controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood–is recognized by the United States as the legitimate representative (even though many groups are boycotting it); the Muslim Brotherhood’s guy is the “prime minister;” and the U.S. government intends to disburse a total of $1 billion raised internationally through the Muslim Brotherhood. How much patronage will that buy for the Brotherhood?

Kerry also announced that $250 million in U.S. taxpayer money is going to go directly to a group directed by the Muslim Brotherhood to spend as it wishes, presumably to go mainly to local Brotherhood groups and militias.

Actually, there was a much better way for the Obama Administration to have explained the Benghazi attack. It could have said that of course the attack was from al-Qaida but that was because the United States was doing a good thing– helping put into power a non- Islamist, democratic, moderate government. That is how other presidents–as with George W. Bush in Iraq–would have managed this issue. Listen to Obama’s words in his Fort McNair speech:

“What’s clear is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. This carried grave consequences for our fight against al-Qaida, our standing in the world, and–to this day–our interests in a vital region.”

Suppose one substituted the words “Libya” or “Syria” for the word Iraq? After all, Bush’s surge defeated al-Qaida, though of course not completely, but in Syria al-Qaida is stronger than ever at this point, and in Libya it also murdered Americans.

And such a stance by Obama would also have required admitting that from the Libyan (and potentially Syrian) Islamist viewpoint the help given them wasn’t enough, that it resulted in Libya in an American “puppet” regime.

And that approach would have forced the Obama Administration to open itself up to the same criticism it keeps making against Bush in Iraq: that U.S. intervention strengthened terrorists.

* Obama Premise Number Two:

Think about the Benghazi attack in this context.

Real cause of attack: The Americans helped Islamists gain power so they could operate freely in Banghazi, a city where al-Qaida patrols the city and controls territory today. Thus, the mistake was that the U.S. government was too pro-Islamist.

Phony cause of attack: The Americans weren’t pro-Islam enough, i.e., they had this nasty video that offended Muslims.

In other words, the attack’s cause was reversed, it was made to seem as if it was the exact opposite of the truth.

Real lesson: Don’t arm radical Islamists. Fight them alongside Muslims who are also anti-Islamist.!

Phony lesson: Fight against Islamophobia.

Much more HERE

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Tony Blair to be in charge of £3billion plan to revitalise Palestine's economy, U.S. secretary of state John Kerry reveals

More delusions -- but great news for Arab corruptocrats

Secretary of State John Kerry has declared he believes a potential £3billion plan is emerging that could boost the Palestinian economy by up to 50 per cent in the next three years.

It could also cut unemployment by almost two-thirds, and average wages could jump 40 per cent, he said. But Kerry said it all depends on parallel progress on peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Kerry has been working with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and global business leaders to devise economic plans to revitalise the Palestinian economy.

He offered few specific details and acknowledged that his vision might easily be taken as fantasy in a part of the world that has suffered through decades of conflict, and where peace prospects remain dim.

'We know it can be done,' he insisted. 'This is a plan for the Palestinian economy that is bigger, bolder and more ambitious than anything proposed' in the last two decades.

Kerry, outlining his hopes at a business conference on the Dead Sea in Jordan, was unsparing in his bold economic predictions:

- Palestinian agriculture production could double or triple

- Tourism could triple

- 100,000 new homes, many of them energy efficient, could be built in the next three years.

The former Massachusetts senator, who has been trying as well to restart direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, was to meet later Sunday in Amman with Blair, American hedge fund investor Tim Collins and the foreign ministers of Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

He said he has been coordinating with leading business experts around the world and that the plan would explore new opportunities in tourism, construction, light manufacturing, agriculture, energy and communications.

'Is this a fantasy?' Kerry asked the crowd. 'I don't think so, because there are already great examples of investment and entrepreneurship that are working in the West Bank.

'We know it can be done, but we've never experienced the kind of concentrated effort that this group is talking about bringing to the table.'

He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas support the plan, but he added that it won't truly take hold unless both sides make headway on restarting peace talks.

Abbas also attended the conference in Jordan, as did Israeli President Shimon Peres, though they offered two starkly different messages on the peace impasse.

The Palestinian leader spent much of the time criticizing Israeli intransigence, while the Israeli Nobel Peace Prize laureate pressed his government's view that negotiations should begin immediately without preconditions.

Kerry allowed that barriers to commerce would have to be removed to spur economic growth. The Palestinians have long complained about limitations on movement and investment that have hampered its economic potential.

Kerry has made four trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories over the last two months in an effort to rejuvenate the peace process. He hasn't made any tangible success so far but insists he is engaged in productive talks with both sides.

SOURCE

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America as we know it is ending and conservatives feel fine

Libertarians should welcome government failure

Now that Obama has won a second term, some conservatives seem ready to admit that the country really has changed. In "Obama's Four Horseman," Human Events editor David Harsanyi writes, "Let's not fool ourselves. There's been a fundamental shift, especially among young people, in how Americans view government's role in society... A Pew Research study conducted after the election found that nearly six in 10 of the voters under 30 supported a more expansive role for government in solving problems."

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Harsanyi then spends most of the book detailing how Obama's agenda (debt, dependence, weakness and devaluing human life) will forever end "this particular iteration" of the United States.

"If you happen to believe, as I do, that government should be strong, but limited... -- guess what? We're screwed. And how." It's safe to say Harsanyi is a bit depressed.

But 2008 Libertarian vice presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root isn't. His book, "The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide," is every bit as critical of Obama's agenda as Harsanyi.

"Our assets are melting away. Our incomes are in decline. Our job prospects are disappearing. Our bills are rising. Our options are shrinking. Our rights are being violated. The middle class is being squeezed out of existence... We are living a never-ending nightmare."

But unlike Harsanyi, Root sees opportunity amidst the destruction. "Did you know that more self-made millionaires were created during the Great Depression than any other epoch in our history," Root writes.

"For most Americans it was a terrible time. But for the smart and savvy few, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It's all about to happen again."

The rest of Root's book is a list of ways you can profit from "the Obama disaster," including investing in oil and gas, shorting profligate state bonds like Illinois and California, and moving to low-tax states like Texas.

"'The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide' is about "empowering and motivating you to higher levels of success than you've ever imagined possible."

National Review's Kevin Williamson takes Root's optimism, and raises it. Like Harsanyi and Root, Williamson's book, "The End is Near and It's Going to Be Awesome," also details how and why America's relationship with government is about to change forever. But for Williamson, this is an opportunity for everyone, not just a smart select few.

Williamson's main insight is that, just as the human body is a product of biological evolution, the institutions that make up human society are a product of evolution as well. The problem is, however, that government is simply incapable of evolving as fast as the rest of human society.

"Politics," Williamson writes, "almost alone among our contemporary institutions, lacks a strong and reliable feedback mechanism to help it learn."

"The model of organizing community life that has prevailed since the late eighteenth century is in the process of disintegrating. That fact is good news," Williamson continues.

"The historic challenge of our time is to anticipate as best we can the coming changes and to begin developing alternative institutions and social practices to ensure the continuation of a society that is humane, secure, free, and prosperous."

Williamson has no master plan as to how we can meet this challenge, but he does look at a number of issue areas (like Social Security, health care and education) and sketches out some possible non-governmental solutions.

It would be wrong to say that all conservatives are happy Obama won a second term, but it appears that some have accepted that Obama has changed the country, and they are eager to make the best of it.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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