Why being FAT can be good for you: A controversial book by a top doctor claims being overweight can help you fight disease - and even live longer

The "war on obesity" is a major political theme.  What if its very basis  -- the unhealthiness of obesity  -- is wrong?

Consider the various bits of advice doled out by so-called medical experts in the past 100 years or so and you’ll realise how often there has been a complete about-turn when it comes to the validity of a certain fact, claim, or practice.

At one time or another, scientists deemed it acceptable to use X-rays to measure shoe size, recommended baby formula over breast milk, and even endorsed cigarette smoking.

Looking back, it seems incredible that we were ever misled in this way and yet I believe that we are currently subject to one of the greatest misconceptions of all — the belief that obesity is necessarily bad for us.

Our modern culture has duped us into thinking excess body fat should be burned away at all costs.

But, as a cardiologist who has been in practice for nearly three decades and written more than 800 medical publications, including two text books, I am here to tell you that fatness has been sorely misunderstood.

Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that, just as a glass of wine a day has been proven to impart health benefits, so body fat in the right amount can be exactly what we need to live long and healthy lives.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting that people of ‘normal’ weight start embracing cream buns and piling on the pounds.

But if you are already carrying extra fat, it’s not the end of the world, especially if you maintain a certain level of fitness (and I don’t mean being able to run a six-minute mile or committing to an exercise regimen on a par with an Olympic athlete’s).

For the millions of people categorised as overweight or mildly obese by the most commonly used standard today — the body mass index, or BMI — the good news is that achieving optimal health may mean staying exactly where you are in terms of weight.

That’s right: you don’t have to set your sights on getting your BMI down to ‘normal’, defined by the World Health Organisation as between 18.5 and 25.

You may, in fact, be much better off sustaining a BMI of between 25 and 30 — ‘overweight’ in WHO terms — or even slightly above, venturing into the realm of the mildly ‘obese’ (BMI above 30).

This advice holds true for people who want to prevent chronic illness and those already living with it, but it was those in the latter category who first inspired my research into this subject more than a decade ago.

Day in, day out I care for heart patients in Louisiana, the most obese state in the U.S.. And, like other colleagues in the cardiology profession, I began noticing that patients who are on the chubby side often live longer after diagnosis with heart disease than do their thinner counterparts.

We call this idea that fat can protect you from an early death the ‘obesity paradox’ and to say that it has ruffled a few feathers in my field is an understatement.

As I began to publish research papers on this phenomenon, I faced a tidal wave of ingrained ideology. Even veteran scientists and respected journal reviewers were reluctant to entertain new thinking about fat, but the science has since spoken for itself.

Over the past few years, a multitude of studies around the globe have not only confirmed the existence of the obesity paradox but demonstrated that it also applies to a host of chronic ailments in addition to those related to the heart, including diabetes, cancer and kidney disease.

We often attribute excess weight to an increased likelihood that these conditions will be worsened or aggravated as a result, but the evidence proves otherwise: people who have been diagnosed with any of these ailments fare better in the long run if they are overweight or even mildly obese than if they are normal weight.

One explanation is that when the body is bearing the weight of a chronic disease, it requires more energy than usual so it makes sense that extra fuel in the form of body fat is helpful.

But it’s also well documented that fat tissue and fatty molecules circulating in the blood help reduce some of the harmful effects in serious illnesses — so the more body fat you have, the more ammunition you have in your arsenal.

As if this wasn’t enough of a challenge to conventional medical wisdom, other research has suggested that being fatter can be of benefit not just to those who are chronically ill, but to the population as a whole.

In 2005, the scientific community poured particular scorn on a paper published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by epidemiologist Katherine Flegal.

This involved an analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a long-term study into the health and diet of 33,000 Americans. Ranging from two-month-old babies to people aged 75, the subjects are chosen to give a representative snapshot of health and diet across the USA.

For years, we thought that an optimal BMI for the general population was around 23, but Flegal’s research turned all that on its head. As you would expect, she found that the biggest risks of death lay at the extreme edges of the BMI spectrum — being either underweight (below 18.5) or severely obese (above 35).

But remarkably, those classified as mildly obese were at no greater risk of dying prematurely than their normal-weight counterparts.

And, more extraordinary still, those who were overweight were actually at a slightly reduced risk of dying compared to those in the normal weight range.

Flash forward a few years and Dr Flegal decided to confirm the NHANES results further by reviewing 97 similar studies from across the world, encompassing a staggering 2.9 million people.

Time and again they arrived at the same conclusion, the combined statistics revealing that those who are overweight have a six per cent lower risk of dying than people of normal weight.

Of course, none of this is to deny the well-documented relationship between obesity and myriad illnesses. To be clear about this, being obese or overweight poses a major risk for chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer.

In fact, it’s estimated that every third person born in 2000 will have type 2 diabetes as an adult. And according to the American Heart Association, 70 per cent of diagnosed heart disease cases are linked directly to obesity.

Many argue that, should we fail to stop the obesity epidemic, we will soon lose serious ground on extending our life expectancy.

But there is a difference between being a little fat and being morbidly obese. And faced with evidence that the ideal BMI is somewhere between 25 and 30, the scientific community has been forced to rethink its definitions and try to explain why being ‘plus size’ can be to our benefit in certain circumstances.

One answer is that fat cells are not all created equal and their different characteristics mean that, while some types of fat feed illness and dysfunction, others are harmless and can even prevent disease.

For example, belly fat releases fatty acids and inflammatory compounds into the body, leading to higher bad cholesterol, blood glucose and blood pressure.

But it’s a very different story for fat that’s stored in the lower-body areas. Researchers at Oxford University found that this traps the potentially harmful fatty acids that can travel through the bloodstream (and to the heart).

So, while we might despise our ‘thunder thighs’ and ‘saddlebags’, they could actually be good for us in helping reduce the risk of diabetes and coronary disease.

Such thinking challenges the ideas that prevailed when I started at medical school in the late 1970s.

We believed then that fat cells were primarily biological storage bins for excess calories.

But today we know they are much more than that. Almost every week the scientific literature unveils another function for the humble fat cell. Did you know, for example, that two-thirds of the brain is composed of fat (and, incidentally, one-fifth of it by weight is composed of cholesterol)?

As well as helping us think, fat cells bolster immunity. In the early stages of their development, they devour invading germs and bacteria, which is why people who diet to extremes tend to become sick more often.

Fat cells also generate many important hormones, including those which, if under-produced, can leave us vulnerable to an array of diseases including Alzheimer’s, cancer, major depression and inflammatory bowel disease.

Another important molecule produced by fat cells is nitric oxide, which governs both the growth of our hair and, believe it or not, blood flow to the male organs during arousal.

I could go on about the various molecules pumped out of fat cells but you get the picture: fat tissue is very active in our body and part  of our essential tool kit for health and longevity.

This helps to explain why BMI is a terribly unsophisticated and unreliable measure for evaluating the health of individuals.

Based on a simple formula which involves dividing the square of your weight by the square of your height, it does not distinguish between muscle and bone, let alone between different kinds of fat. Nor can it take account of individuals with what’s known as ‘metabolically healthy obesity’. That expression may seem a contradiction in terms.

It may be common knowledge that a high BMI is associated with a greater risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but more than half of ‘overweight’ and more than a third of ‘obese’ people are perfectly healthy from a metabolic standpoint.

In other words, they don’t have raised blood pressure, high cholesterol, or show any of the typical red flags we attribute to the carrying of extra weight. Yet those same metabolic abnormalities are found in almost a quarter of ‘normal’ weight people.

The obvious explanation is that weight isn’t the issue when it comes to determining whether we have such abnormalities. Far more important are factors like nutrition and fitness.

The importance of what we eat was most recently highlighted by one clinical trial which revealed how adopting a Mediterranean diet reduced cardiovascular risk — regardless of how much weight subjects had lost.

As for fitness, there is substantial evidence that this is so protective that it essentially cancels out the adverse impact of traditional risk factors, including being overweight, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure.

This is borne out by studies which have tracked many physically fit ‘obese’ individuals (those, for example, who’d have no difficulty climbing up several flights of stairs or walking a mile or two at a decent pace) and discovered that they have lower incidence of heart disease and death from any cause than do sedentary people of ‘normal’ weight.

Clearly, the fitter you are, the less your weight matters and I believe the term ‘obesity’ needs to be redefined.

A fit person with a BMI of 28 (‘overweight’) could easily outlive a thinner person who has a BMI of 22 (‘normal weight’) but is unfit. And yet it’s these ‘full figured’ people — who are not necessarily in danger of dying early — who are relentlessly censured by society and penalised by insurers, not to mention being targeted by the multi-billion-pound diet industry.

In a perfect world, BMI would reflect other variables, including fitness levels, genetics and biomarkers of metabolic health such as blood glucose. Until then, I worry about doctors who push weight loss on their patients, based purely on the BMI scale.

They have good intentions but the message people may hear is they should lose weight at whatever cost, via extreme diets and controlling weight through eating habits alone.

This can be downright damaging, leading to people becoming what some experts call TOFI — thin outside, fat inside. While they might look good, their abdominal organs can be coated in visceral fat which puts them at risk for type 2 diabetes.

Rather than tirelessly encourage weight loss and focus on the numbers on the weighing scales or BMI index, we should promote cardio metabolic fitness and urge people of all sizes to think about their health in terms of how well they eat and exercise.

SOURCE

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

Gamers are more educated, more social: study

Admittedly, citing data may not help fight the perception that gamers are nerds. But the results of a new study commissioned by the video game streaming network Twitch and conducted by noted social researcher Neil Howe (aka the man credited with coining the term "millennial") offer an entirely new picture of the gaming community. The study suggests that gamers actually tend to be more social, more successful and more educated than the non-gaming population.

The study, released on Thursday by Mr Howe's LifeCourse Associates consulting firm, surveyed more than 1000 people via the internet about their gaming habits and then pulled some basic demographic information. For purposes of this study, a "gamer" was defined as anyone who has played a game on a digital device in the past 60 days. Approximately 63 per cent of those surveyed fit that definition.

According to the study, gamers are more likely to be living with other people such as family, friends or significant others, and are more likely to agree with the statement, "My friends are the most important thing in my life." About 57 per cent of gamers said they agree with that statement, as compared to 35 per cent.

The study also found that gamers are split more evenly by gender than they have been in the past, with 52 per cent of video game players surveyed identifying as male and 48 per cent as female. A 2004 survey from the Entertainment Software Association estimated that 40 per cent of gamers were female.

Gamers are also slightly more likely to be employed full-time – 42 per cent for gamers, versus 39 per cent for non-gamers – which undoubtedly comes in handy when trying to figure out how to financially support a gaming hobby.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, 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)

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

Conservatives are From Mars, Leftists are From Venus

Below is one version of a plausible theory that pops up every now and again.  Both Left and Right have their versions of it.  The risible Lakoff has the best known Leftist version of it.

Plausible though it is however, it is demonstrably wrong.  If Leftists were feminine in their approach and appeal, then they should surely get a big vote from women.  But they do not.  At most national elections, the female vote splits roughly equally between Left and Right.  Single women tend to vote for a husband substitute (on the Left) while married women resent taxes taking away money that they would rather spend on their families. Overall the two groups of women cancel one-another out.

So WHY is the theory wrong?  Simple.  It takes Leftist claims about themselves at face value.  Leftists claim to be motivated by caring and compassion so the theory takes that as given.  But Leftists are chronic liars and twisters of the truth so to accept their own evaluation of themselves is close to moronic.  The true nature of Leftists is revealed whenever they get untrammelled power  -- as triumphant Communist movements do.  When that happens  they reveal themselves to be hate-filled totalitarians and mass murderers.  Judge them by what they do, not by what they say.  Do you really think that Harry Reid would be kind and motherly if he became leader of the Soviet Socialist States of the USA?  The Koch  brothers would certainly be dead 5 minutes later.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Leftists cannot hide totally their hateful intentions.  Everything they enact tends to be destructive to the larger society -- from Obama's attempt to hike electricity prices via the EPA to the hike in medical costs engendered by Obamacare.  So some people -- including women -- do ignore the fine words and reject the Left because of their destructive deeds

How angels arrange their affairs is unknown. We humans have only two approaches to the puzzles and battles of life: The first is from Mars and the second is from Venus.

It is Martian to confront a problem with blunt speech and unsparing honesty, and yet to welcome unsparing bluntness in return. It is Martian to attack the enemy at the strongest point of the line, and yet to treat a fallen foe with courtesy. It is Martian to command without backtalk, and to obey without complaint. The Mars approach is most useful when confronting problems that require courage, force, majesty, dispassionate intellect. Results matter; intentions don’t.

It is Venusian to negotiate around problems so as not to provoke a clash of wills. Venus seeks compromise, makes sacrifices and expects sympathy in return. Speech is indirect, diplomatic, because feelings are delicate, easily bruised. Venus avoids ultimatums, and uses speech to seek out secret motives. A Venusian does not call adversaries enemies, but patients, meant to be healed of their ignorance and fear.

The Venusian approach is never used between equals. The seductress beguiles and cajoles a man like breaking a horse, because he is too strong for her, and so she is indirect. Contrariwise, the mother does not want to bark commands at the child. She wants him to learn to volunteer without being asked. The mother molds his character as he will one day be child no more. Her thought is long-term. She wants to teach the child to fish, not feed him a fish. Failure is insignificant if the child’s motives were pure. (Because, after all, children do not lose wars when they fail, or cause economic depressions or the downfall of nations.)

Martians rule by formal law, law carved in stone, law enforced by policemen and hangmen. Mars likes Robert’s Rules of Order.

Venusians rule by social cues and peer pressure to establish pecking orders, bestow honors, snub pariahs, sooth social friction, set roles and expectations.

But peer pressure only works in artificial, civilized, non-productive situations, not a factory where someone counts the profits and losses, not a ball game where someone keeps score, not a war where someone pins ribbons on chests and someone else plants red poppies on graves.

The Martian approach is to do your job as agreed and to go home after, and what you do on your own time is no man’s damn business but yours. The Venusian is concerned with hearts and minds not with tasks and results, so Venus follows you home. She embraces the world.

When left to themselves in their own sphere — not interfering with results-oriented work — not only is the Venusians’ approach healthy, it is useful because it is a peacekeeping function.

Now, everyone reading these words knows exactly which sex is the direct one, suited by nature for war and confrontation; everyone knows which sex is the indirect one, suited by nature for domestic matters and diplomacy. It is a sign of our times that this obvious truth known to all is considered something obviously never to be admitted in public. This generation is as delicate of feeling and as prone to hysteria as matrons of the Victorian Age. In both cases, the hysterics faint at the merest mention of sex.

The two sexes I am discussing here are not male and female, but conservative and leftist.

Specifically, a conservative is one who deals with politics as if it were within the sphere of Mars. A leftist is one who deals with all of life, political as well as personal, as if it were within the sphere of Venus.

Consider each point mentioned above. Political Correctness attempts to soften hard truths and spare delicate feelings. Reason is too masculine and confrontational. Instead of overcoming a rational argument, the leftist merely ascribes a vile motive to the person speaking, and making him an unperson, a pariah, someone we pretend not to be able to hear. Leftists don’t expect to be punched in the face when they lie. Their weapon is gossip and slander, rumor and hysteria, smothering your viewpoint rather than refuting it

Likewise, there are no equals in the leftwing universe. The Nanny-state is condescending. Our worries about national debts or Jihadist threats are dismissed with a maternal tongue-cluck, tut-tut, and we are placated with welfare benefits like chocolate cookies.

When the leftist encounters rebuke, the emotional reaction is not one of a defeated knight shaking hands with his honorable vanquisher, but one of a woman scorned or a woman in mourning, of whose like hell hath no fury. It is the hate of a weak and effete inferior, a scalding hatred. Read Marx. He is from Venus. Adam Smith is from Mars.

Because the Venusian approach works through custom, leftists are lawless. They think everything should be an exception.

Because Venusians regard all rivalry as curable cases of ignorance and fear, they don’t argue rival viewpoints (that is too confrontational) they just declare the science to be settled and the debate to be over, and you to be a fearful dunce.

Because motherhood overlooks no detail of a slow-witted child’s upbringing, the leftist regulates the water volume in your toilet. They follow you home. The right pesters your life from sun to sun, but the pestering left is never done.

All these Venusian qualities are admirable (nay, they are adorable!) when kept in their proper orbit. Imagine a wall called civilization, which consists of coolheaded and hardhearted men willing to work terrible evil on evildoers lurking like wolves without the walls. Within is a domestic garden called convention, where the women raising children may be as softhearted and hotheaded as they wish so long as they do not erode the wall.

Both fail at the other’s task. A Martian will fail if he tries to command the garden of convention by force. The garden of convention must be ruled indirectly, voluntarily, because it is a matter of opinion, learning and character. Force destroys opinion, smothers learning and prevents character growth.

Likewise, Venusians will fail most horribly when they try to man the wall of politics, and take up the sword of law or the pike of war in their soft and feminine hands. The battlefield or factory floor is not a place for feelings, but results. Enemies are not spoiled children to be chided or placated, but slain. Compromise and simpering sacrifice are counterproductive here, because business rivals and bloodthirsty foes will merely exploit any sign of weakness and call you a fool.

Both fail at the other’s task, but both do not quit. Martians are results oriented. When they see their results in the garden are counterproductive, they stop their meddling and return to their duties on the wall.

But when Venusians fail, they redouble their efforts. They do not see their results are counterproductive because they act on faith and do not care about results. When their counterproductive efforts create a bigger problem in the realm of Mars, ruining factories, trampling rights or giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime, the Venusians conclude the bigger problem needs more Venus.

To put it charitably, the Venusians are not very analytical. But they are like a sobbing wife of a convict, the wife who never stops believing in him.

So the Venusian continues to negotiate and surrender with deaf and stubborn reality as if with a deaf and stubborn husband, thinking that if she makes just one sacrifice more, reality will relent. Alas, reality is from Mars.

When the world is healthy, Mars rules Venus because reality establishes the bounds and laws of the wall of civilization, within which the garden of convention is free to play.

But when Venus rules Mars, the world is demented.

SOURCE

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

Once again what Obama says is opposed by what he does

Following Tony Blair, he has learned to hijack conservative language while doing liberal deeds



Speaking at a commencement ceremony at West Point military academy last week, President Barack Obama delivered a rousing defence of US ‘exceptionalism.’

Responding to critics who accuse his administration of dithering over the Syrian Civil War and conceding the upper hand in Ukraine to President Vladimir Putin, Obama was unequivocal: ‘America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will.’

Although other administration officials have echoed the president’s clarion call for ongoing US global leadership, the West Point address highlighted the disconnect between Obama’s foreign policy fantasies and the hard facts of Russian and Chinese Realpolitik.

Obama insists that ‘American leadership’ can guarantee peace and security, and yet it has proven largely impotent in the face of Russia’s support for the brutal Assad regime, annexation of Crimea, and destabilisation of eastern Ukraine.

Similarly, in the context of a possible reduction in the size of the US army to pre-World War II levels and more than 10% per annum growth in the Chinese military budget, Obama’s celebration of unrivalled ‘American strength’ rings hollow.

Rhetorically, Washington might remain ready to uphold the liberal world order of international law, democratic norms, and human rights.

However, in Syria, Ukraine, East Asia and elsewhere, America appears unwilling to shoulder the costs of enforcing the rules-based international system.

Instead, the United States is poised to become what Robert Kagan, one of the US secretary of state’s advisors, calls ‘a more normal kind of nation, more attuned to its own needs and less to those of the wider world.’

Of course, a US ‘return to normalcy’ might be a positive development. As Cato Institute Senior Fellow Ted Galen Carpenter has argued, there are potential advantages--fewer foreign entanglements and a reduced fiscal burden--if the United States redefines its national interests in narrower terms.

But if Obama accepts the rationale for more modest statecraft and therefore refuses to expend blood and treasure to protect the liberal world order, then he must also reconcile the American people and Washington’s allies and partners to a less grandiose vision of the US role in global affairs.

At West Point, the president did just the opposite.

SOURCE

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

Poverty Up 30.5% for Americans 18 to 64 Since LBJ Declared War on Poverty

 The percentage of 18- to 64-year olds who live below the poverty level has increased 30.5% since 1966, two years after Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We have declared unconditional war on poverty. Our objective is total victory. I believe that 30 years from now Americans will look back upon these 1960s as the time of the great American Breakthrough toward the victory of prosperity over poverty,” said then-President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

According to a House Budget Committee Report, the federal government spent $799 billion on 92 programs to combat poverty: $100 billion on food aid; $200 billion spent on cash aid; $90 billion on education and job training; $300 billion on health care; and $50 billion on housing, in fiscal year 2012 alone.  (See War on Poverty Report.pdf)

According to the Census, there were 26,497,000, or 13.7% of 18-  to 64-year olds, living below the poverty level in 2012. In 1966, the same age group reported 10.5% -- 11,007,000 people out of 105,241,000 --  living below the poverty level.

This means that since 1966 the percentage of 18- to 64-year olds living in poverty has increased 30.5% -- from 10.5% to 13.7%. The Census did not report data for this age group in years 1965 and 1964.

When looking at all ages, the House Budget Committee Report shows that, since 1965, the poverty rate decreased from 17.3%  to 15%.  (See  War on Poverty Report.pdf)

“The incidence of poverty rates varies widely across the population according to age, education, labor force attachment, family living arrangements, and area of residence, among other factors. Under the official poverty definition, an average family of four was considered poor in 2012 if its pre-tax cash income for the year was below $23,492,” according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entitled, Poverty in the United States: 2012.

“The Census Bureau’s poverty thresholds form the basis for statistical estimates of poverty in the United States,” says the CRS report.  “The thresholds reflect crude estimates of the amount of money individuals or families, of various size and composition, need per year to purchase a basket of goods and services deemed as “minimally adequate,” according to the living standards of the early 1960s.”

“Persons are considered poor, for statistical purposes, if their family’s countable money income is below its corresponding poverty threshold,” CRS states.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, 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)

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

Supreme Court Smacks Down Obama’s Globalist Agenda!

While the Supreme Court tends to lean Conservative, many of its most recent rulings have been split down party/ideological lines. Most contentious cases end up with a 5-4 split, with Justice Kennedy usually providing the swing vote. It isn’t very often that the Court has a unanimous ruling and it is even less likely for a Court to rule unanimously against a sitting-President’s administration.

Then again, the Department of Justice is run by Eric Holder, so I guess anything is possible.

Just this week, the Supreme Court ruled against Holder and Obama 9-0 in the case Bond v. United States. I have covered this case in the past, early on when it was still in the trial phase. The U.S. government charged Carol Anne Bond with violating the 1998 U.N. Chemical Weapons Treaty after she launched an amateurish plan to poison her husband’s mistress. Mrs. Bond covered door knobs with chemicals hoping to kill the woman, but when all was said and done, the attempt did nothing but create a mild burning and itching sensation on her target’s hands.

The Obama administration defended the lower court’s decision to have Mrs. Bond convicted under International Law. Holder and the DOJ argued that using chemicals against an individual violates the Convention on Chemical Weapons. Since Mrs. Bond was convicted in a lower court, this marked the first time that U.N. law was applied to U.S. civilian crimes.

This is exactly what the Obama administration wants. The President wants us to live under international law. Even just yesterday, when Obama faced a firestorm over his most recent illegal prisoner transfer, he justified the transfer using the Geneva Convention, not the Constitution!

For the Supreme Court to rule 9-0 against the Obama’s globalist agenda is excellent, but Congress must ensure that no U.S. citizen is EVER subject to international prosecution for petty domestic crimes!

This case is soap-opera worthy, so let me flesh it out for you… Carol Anne Bond is a Pennsylvania microbiologist who, unfortunately, is sterile and cannot have children. In 2006, Carol learned that her best friend, Myrlinda Haynes, was pregnant by her husband, Clifford.

So, Bond did what any brooding microbiologist would do: she ordered a bunch of chemicals online and tried to kill her husband’s mistress by leaving the chemicals on door knobs, mailboxes, anything she believed that the other woman would touch.

Myrlinda Haynes suffered nothing but a burn and some redness on her fingers. Local prosecutors refused to touch the case. They couldn’t find a charge that would stick. But the Feds charged Carol Ann Bond with violating the 1998 Chemical Weapons Convention.

Mrs. Bond pleaded guilty while simultaneously retaining her right to appeal. Now, all these years later, the Supreme Court has finally ruled in her favor, slapping down the ridiculous arguments made by the Obama administration!

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that if the Obama administration’s arguments were allowed to stand, their definition of “Chemical Weapons” would “sweep in everything from the detergent under the kitchen sink to the stain remover in the laundry room.” These aren’t chemical weapons… they are cleaning supplies!

If the Obama administration had succeeded, owning household cleaning supplies would have put you in the same class as war criminals like Saddam Hussein and Syrian Leader Bashar al-Assad! Not only is Obama trying to lump legal gun owners in with mass shooters, but now the DOJ was LITERALLY arguing that owning cleaning supplies was equivalent to stockpiling mustard gas…

But the Supreme Court, luckily, did not side with the administration. Unfortunately, it took so long for Carol Anne Bond’s case to reach the highest court that she has since served her sentence and has been reunited with her husband. While this ruling has broad implications moving forward, it does nothing to give back the years of her life lost because aggressive Federal prosecutors decided that U.N. laws should trump our own!

While the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s use of a Chemical Weapons Treaty to prosecute a jealous wife was completely ridiculous, it left open the question of whether international law can, philosophically and legally, trump the Constitution. While the Court agreed unanimously that Bond’s crimes didn’t warrant prosecution under the 1998 Chemical Weapons Treaty, six of the nine justices refused to comment on the Constitutionality of international law trumping the Constitution and being used to prosecute domestic crimes.

Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas wanted the Court to go further. They wanted the court to decide the constitutionality of Federal prosecutors charging individuals with international crimes. In their opinion, this is clearly ludicrous. But Chief Justice Roberts, known for skirting larger constitutional issues, refused to comment on that aspect of the case.

And with that, a common sense Supreme Court ruling has actually left the door open for U.S. citizens to still be charged with violating international law!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… This loophole in the Court’s decision poses the most dangerous threat to our Republic that we have seen in years. The idea that a zealous prosecutor could charge a U.S. citizen with violating an international treaty is beyond ridiculous.

This isn’t a hypothetical… Eric Holder’s Justice Department actually argued before the Supreme Court that international law can trump the Constitution! Now you’re starting to get an idea why Obama signed the U.N. Arms Treaty, even though he knew it wouldn’t pass through Congress…

We have enough laws to adequately prosecute criminals. There is absolutely no need to bring international law into the equation. Mass shooters don’t need to be charged with genocide, gun owners shouldn’t be charged with violating the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, and jealous wives definitely shouldn’t be charged with Chemical Weapons Treaty violations!

This is such common sense, that it shouldn’t even be up for debate. But it is!

We live in a country that is bound by the Constitution, not some international treaty. For a President to have his administration defend such an action is unconscionable. But that just goes to show that as far as Obama is concerned, international law trumps the Constitution!

SOURCE  

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

Obama Sprinting to Finish Line to 'Transform' America

It obviously doesn't bother President Obama a whit to usurp congressional power to impose more draconian environmental regulations — and probably not much more to do so in an election year, even when his action will hurt Democrats.

What's he going to do now, you ask?

Well, his Environmental Protection Agency, in deference to and collusion with Obama's war on domestic energy producers, has unveiled a proposed rule to mandate power plants to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2030 from levels 25 years earlier.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the rule would affect hundreds of fossil-fuel power plants and hit America's 600 coal-fired power plants the hardest. The rule, says the Journal, "is a major element of (Obama's) attempt to secure a second-term legacy."

Someone please deliver Obama the memo: He has already secured his second-term, first-term and entire-term legacy by doing more harm to this nation across the board than not only any former president but any other human being in our history. Why can't he just be satisfied with the damage he's already caused?

One of the most insidious techniques Obama has employed to wreak havoc on America and its institutions has been the imposition of laws and rules with delayed effective dates so that the public will not immediately realize the enormity of the hardships and destruction being caused.

Look at the delays he built in to Obamacare, including the thousands of preferential exemptions from the law he extended to buy off opposition and ward off political challenges during the various election years. Look at the trillions of dollars he is spending now to create the illusion that the economy is stronger than it is, with willful disregard for its bankrupting effect on future generations of Americans.

The same is true with his refusal to reform entitlement programs, whose $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities is a ticking time bomb for America's financial stability. The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill was sold as a measure to prevent further consolidation of banking power, and we are already seeing that it is doing just the opposite. But why should Obama care? He got his law passed, and it's having his desired — as opposed to promised — effect.

The same is true of this new EPA emissions rule. The rule would give states and companies as much as 15 years to comply and thus presumably reduce both their opposition and the public's.

Not surprisingly, the White House is deceitfully promising — as it did with Obamacare when no one could prove otherwise in advance — that this rule would lower costs and create jobs. Are you kidding me? No intellectually honest person could believe that. Obama doesn't even want the rule to lower costs and create jobs. This is all part of his pre-announced plan to bankrupt conventional energy producers.

Obama will doubtlessly line up the usual corporate suspects to announce their support for his bill — those he will have bought off through crony capitalism by ensuring the rule somehow would benefit them. Just as he lined up the white-coated physicians and insurance executives to stand with him in passing Obamacare, he'll hail this support as proof that it's in the best interests of American businesses and America itself.

But The Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney notes that corporate lobbyists are divided on Obama's current climate measure because it would benefit some companies and hurt others. He will garner the vocal support of those businesses that would profit from the regulations, a technique used by politicians to advance previous environmental regulations.

It is disturbing to contemplate the sheer power of this federal government, especially its unchecked and constitutionally unauthorized administrative branch, to whimsically issue such far-reaching decrees that negatively impact so many businesses and industries and so many lives — all in the name of helping them. The Competitive Enterprise Institute calculates that the federal regulatory leviathan currently costs the U.S. economy some $1.86 trillion annually, which amounts to a hidden tax of nearly $15,000 per household.

Obama is proceeding apace to consummate his wholesale destruction, er, fundamental transformation of America, and adding insult to injury, he's doing it outside the scope of his constitutional authority. He will not be denied. But he's making sure America will be.

SOURCE  

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

Surprise! Leftist minimum wage policy backfires in Seattle suburb

The Emerald City may witness the economic dangers of hiking the minimum wage to $15/hour sooner rather than later. SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle, hiked the minimum wage for certain service industry employees to $15 at the beginning of the year, and there are already signs that the sudden increase is having a negative impact.

Earlier this month, Seattle voted to raise its minimum wage gradually to $15 by the year 2020. Unlike the SeaTac wage hike, Seattle’s hike will apply to all businesses.

But 15 minutes south near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, employees are already seeing the negative effects of such a hike. A February report from the Seattle Times revealed:

At the Clarion Hotel off International Boulevard, a sit-down restaurant has been shuttered, though it might soon be replaced by a less-labor-intensive cafe…

Other businesses have adjusted in ways that run the gamut from putting more work in the hands of managers, to instituting a small “living-wage surcharge” for a daily parking space near the airport.

That’s not all. According to Assunta Ng, publisher of the Northwest Asian Weekly, some employees are feeling the pinch as employers cut benefits. She recalls a conversation she had with two hotel employees who have been affected by the wage hike:

“Are you happy with the $15 wage?” I asked the full-time cleaning lady.

“It sounds good, but it’s not good,” the woman said.

“Why?” I asked.

“I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation,” she responded. “No more free food,” she added.

The hotel used to feed her. Now, she has to bring her own food. Also, no overtime, she said. She used to work extra hours and received overtime pay.

What else? I asked.

“I have to pay for parking,” she said.

I then asked the part-time waitress, who was part of the catering staff.

“Yes, I’ve got $15 an hour, but all my tips are now much less,” she said. Before the new wage law was implemented, her hourly wage was $7. But her tips added to more than $15 an hour. Yes, she used to receive free food and parking. Now, she has to bring her own food and pay for parking.

The Washington Policy Center, a free market think tank, said the passed-but-not-yet-implemented wage hike is already affecting small businesses in Seattle:

After decades in Seattle, Northwest Caster and Equipment recently made the difficult decision to move the business to unincorporated Lynnwood, according to a report by KOMO news.  The owner of the family business blames Seattle’s increasingly difficult business climate for the move:  “It just seems like increasingly the city’s become a more difficult place to do business.”

The city’s proposed $15 minimum wage was tops on the list of complaints.  “If I’m going to bring someone in on an entry level, I’d prefer to start them out where I’d like to start them out, rather than having that dictated to me.”

A commercial property landlord echoes those concerns about the $15 minimum wage, noting several tenants have signaled they may not renew their leases if it becomes law: “It’s just too expensive to operate in the city.”

And in a story today, KUOW reports that small businesses throughout the city are panicking over the super high minimum wage.  Multiple small business owners told KUOW they are holding off on opening new business or expanding their current business in Seattle, while others said they are delaying plans to hire new workers.

SOURCE  

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, 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)

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

Why income inequality is really very good for us indeed

Written by Tim Worstall

It's much the thing to be talking about these days. How income inequality is rising, wealth inequality is going ballistic and it's all a jolly bad thing. However, let us ponder this point of wisdom from Don Boudreaux:

Would you prefer to live in a society in which people compete for high status by earning lots of money through the creation, production, and sale of better mousetraps, or in a society in which people compete for high status by being indifferent to money but focused intently on conquering foreign territories or accumulating terrifying amounts of political power?

Assume, as we must, that human beings are status seeking animals. Most certainly for the male of the species this has always been true: higher status males have more children which is the point and aim of the entire game. And in various different societies status has been gained in many different ways.

As best we know, from the study of the remnant hunter gatherer groups, for most of our existence status has been gained by being a good hunter: both of prey and of other adult males. Yes, as far as we can tell, in socieities like that of the Yamomani murderers have more children than non-murderers. And in some such societies we've recorded murder as cause of death for as much as 40% of the male population.

We've also assigned status to people in other ways over the millenia of recorded history. Who was your Mum (and presumably there being a connection between that and who was your father) has often been popular. We've never quite done it but plenty of other places (the Fascists and communists come to mind) assigned status according to ideological purity: the Soviets even to the second or third generations.

We in Britain have seen religious fanaticism used as a mark of status: difficult to understand the Commonwealth without that. The feudal period nominally ran on bloodlines but in reality on the male skill at crushing the skulls of the enemy.

And class and status have never, in Britian, been entirely about money. Even today they're not. But given the alternative sets of status markers that have been used over the centuries, aristocracy, theocracy, race (useful in discussing the Saxons, Danes and Celts) wouldn't we all start to prefer that they were?

That one can gain status by having proven that you are producing something that a lot of others would like to have? For that's what this capitalism lark is at root about. You can only accumulate if you're performing a community service. Which sounds like a pretty good method of assigning social status to us.

Of course, we might always hope that humans will stop seeking status. But then at that point we'd not be describing the actions of the same species that we're currently studying, would we?

SOURCE

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

Do Patients Have a “Right to Try” New Medicines Before the FDA Approves Them?

Earlier this month, Colorado governor John Hickenlooper signed the nation’s first “right to try” law. The law allows a patient suffering from a disease, for which no medicine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to try an experimental new medicine before the agency approves it. The law allows, but does not force, drug-makers to provide their experimental drugs to patients. Other states, such as Louisiana and Missouri, are set to follow.

These patients are in dire straits. They suffer from diseases for which there is no other known treatment, and they have short life expectancies. Most of us cannot imagine being in their position: In their search for a cure, they are willing to take far greater risks than most would accept.

Although the FDA has an exemption for “compassionate use,” that exemption requires jumping through too many bureaucratic hoops to be useful. So, scholars at the Goldwater Institute developed the idea of state “right to try” laws that would enable residents to use experimental new drugs without agency approval.

My first reaction when learning about the Goldwater Institute’s successes in moving this legislation through state legislatures was that the FDA would surely assert pre-emption based on the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. The Goldwater Institute is the home of impressive legal thinking and activism, so they have surely developed a legal strategy, if they need one.

However, maybe the federal government will not react. After all, Colorado allows not only the medicinal use of marijuana, but also the purchase and possession of small amounts of marijuana for so-called “recreational” use. The Obama Justice Department does not litigate against state laws liberalizing marijuana use.

It would reflect a very perverse sense of justice for the U.S. government to act against a state law allowing desperately ill patients to try promising, experimental new medicines, while allowing Colorado’s marijuana market to thrive unmolested.

SOURCE

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

Thomas Piketty wants to keep billions of people poor to stop a few from becoming rich

French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an almost 700-page book written by an academic economist, filled with historical statistics and theoretical discussions of “Cobb-Douglas production functions.”

And yet, it somehow was the #1 bestselling book on Amazon. What the heck is going on here?

The answer is the conclusion Piketty draws: He wants the governments of the world to coordinate their efforts, sharing financial information among themselves so that no human being on Earth can hide from confiscatory taxes on both wealth and income. It is because today’s self-described “progressives” share Piketty’s hatred for economic inequality that they celebrate his book. Indeed, even his fans admit that Piketty’s analysis suffers from fundamental problems—I’ll document just a few in this review.

But none of that matters, because the memo has gone out: The progressive interventionists are going to focus hard on “inequality,” and Piketty’s book serves as a useful rallying banner for their agenda.

Destructive Envy

The most obvious problem with Piketty’s book is that he wants to make workers poorer, just so long as it will hurt rich capitalists even more. No economist denies that as the stockpile of “capital”—which Piketty broadly defines to include real estate and all forms of non-human wealth—expands, that the absolute wages of the workers will rise. After all, if workers have more tools, machines, and equipment augmenting their labor, they are going to be more physically productive per hour, and hence will be paid more.

Yet the continual increase in the workers’ standard of living is not enough to placate Piketty and his fans. Indeed, Nobel laureate Robert Solow admits that capital accumulation will make the workers better off in absolute terms, but worries that they might be worse off relative to the capitalists.

If Piketty and Solow saw a vision of the future that looked like The Jetsons, they wouldn’t marvel at the unbelievable convenience and luxury that the family enjoys, all provided by George’s two hours of labor per week. No, instead of thanking capitalism for providing flying cars to the average family, instead Piketty and Solow would be complaining about how unfair it was that a short bald guy got to own Spacely Sprockets all by himself.

Blunders, Both Serious and Petty

According to Paul Krugman, those who oppose Piketty’s call for confiscating the wealth of the super-rich can only resort to name-calling. Yet Krugman is as reliable on this topic as he is on VA health care. Piketty’s book is riddled with so many errors that it was difficult for me to choose which ones to highlight in this review.

For starters, a bombshell report just came out in the FT, where Chris Giles alleged that Piketty’s historical data series on wealth concentration are filled with inaccuracies that upset his whole case. We’ll have to wait for the dust to settle on this particular charge. Yet there are a host of other problems.

This is a book about the rate of return capital generates for its owners—the famous “r” that Piketty claims will persistently exceed “g,” the growth in total output. You would think, then, that Piketty would understand the basics of how modern economic theory explains the determination of interest rates and the earnings of capitalists, and that in his 3-page description of a famous professional debate on the issue, that Piketty would manage to tell his readers the debate’s central issue.

Alas, Piketty’s book is bereft of even the simplest understanding of these issues, as both his ideological foes and friends agree.

Because Piketty doesn’t know what drives interest rates, and because he switches from viewing “capital” as a collection of physical things versus a sum of money (even Piketty’s fan Brad DeLong admits both points), Piketty and his readers will end up drawing the wrong conclusions from history.

For example, Mother Jones loved this chart showing income inequality soaring in the late 1920s and in the mid-2000s: Look everyone, if we let the 1% earn too much, it sets the world up for a giant financial crash! But actually what happened is that loose monetary policy drove down interest rates, thereby fueling asset price booms, which showed up as huge income (in the form of capital gains) accruing disproportionately in the hands of the wealthy. It’s not surprising that these Fed-fueled asset bubbles eventually collapsed, leading to the Great Depression and Great Recession. To prevent a repeat, the government doesn’t need to confiscate property from the super-rich; instead the Fed needs to stop inflating asset bubbles.

Another devastating flaw is that Piketty has misread the empirical literature. Piketty needs a certain parameter—“the elasticity of substitution” between capital and labor—to be greater than one, in order to predict that the capitalists will earn a larger and larger proportion of annual income. Yet as Piketty’s fan Larry Summers points out, Piketty ignored depreciation. Once you correct for this simple mistake, Piketty’s whole case goes out the window: Piketty’s framework predicts that workers will see their incomes rise both in absolute terms and relative to the income of the capitalists.

Putting aside these theoretical issues, Piketty is praised chiefly for his historical work. Beyond the bombshell FT allegations mentioned above, we have more mundane (and boneheaded) mistakes: Piketty can’t even correctly tell his readers the presidential administrations during which tax rates were raised or the minimum wage was hiked.

Further, these two mistakes very coincidentally serve Piketty’s political narrative.

Conclusion

After all of the above, you might be tempted to excuse Piketty’s numerous, fatal errors because after all, his goal is to help poor people. Yet as I document elsewhere, the book is filled with shocking quotations making it perfectly clear that Piketty’s proposed taxes are not designed to raise revenue, but instead are designed to prevent people from creating large wealth and incomes in the first place.

I must admit, I learned a lot from reading Piketty’s book. Specifically, I learned how many self-styled progressives today are willing to sacrifice the standard of living of billions of poor people, in order to prevent a few people from becoming really rich.

SOURCE

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

Guilty of giving

The 2002 McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act, which dictates what and when one may speak about candidates for office, ought to have been struck down by the Supreme Court the moment the first suit about its constitutionality was filed. Instead, the Court has simply crippled it with the Citizens United v. FEC case.

Dinesh D'Souza, a prominent conservative writer and filmmaker, and unabashed critic of Obama and his policies, was charged with violating the Federal Election Commission's rules on donor limits.

Paul Bond, in his Hollywood Reporter article of May 20th, "Dinesh D'Souza Pleads Guilty to Making Illegal Campaign Contribution," wrote:

In exchange for D'Souza's plea, prosecutors are expected to drop the more serious charge of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

D'Souza was indicted in January for asking some friends to donate money to the campaign of Wendy Long, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully against Democratic incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in New York in 2012, and allegedly promising to reimburse them for their donations.

Bond noted:

From the beginning, attorney Benjamin Brafman characterized his client's alleged transgression as "an act of misguided friendship," and he and others have said federal authorities were engaging in payback for D'Souza's movie 2016: Obama's America, a hit documentary that portrayed President Barack Obama in a negative light. "

It's a remarkably selective prosecution, considering Obama raised millions of dollars under similar circumstances and donors merely faced civil fines while D'Souza is charged with felony violation of federal law," Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told The Hollywood Reporter in February.

If D'Souza had not pleaded guilty, a trial would have been necessary, and on the "illegal" contribution charge alone, if found guilty, he could have been sentenced to a maximum of two years in prison.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, 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)

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

The Free Market Ignores the Poor?

It ignores the rich too

Once an activity has been socialized for a spell, nearly everyone will concede that that’s the way it should be.

Without socialized education, how would the poor get their schooling? Without the socialized post office, how would farmers receive their mail except at great expense? Without Social Security, the aged would end their years in poverty! If power and light were not socialized, consider the plight of the poor families in the Tennessee Valley!

Agreement with the idea of state absolutism follows socialization, appallingly. Why? One does not have to dig very deep for the answer.

Once an activity has been socialized, it is impossible to point out, by concrete example, how men in a free market could better conduct it. How, for instance, can one compare a socialized post office with private postal delivery when the latter has been outlawed? It’s something like trying to explain to a people accustomed only to darkness how things would appear were there light. One can only resort to imaginative construction.

To illustrate the dilemma: During recent years, men and women in free and willing exchange (the free market) have discovered how to deliver the human voice around the earth in one twenty-seventh of a second; how to deliver an event, like a ball game, into everyone’s living room, in color and in motion, at the time it is going on; how to deliver 115 people from Los Angeles to Baltimore in three hours and 19 minutes; how to deliver gas from a hole in Texas to a range in New York at low cost and without subsidy; how to deliver 64 ounces of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—more than half-way around the earth—for less money than government will deliver a one-ounce letter across the street in one’s home town. Yet, such commonplace free market phenomena as these, in the field of delivery, fail to convince most people that “the post” could be left to free market delivery without causing people to suffer.

Now, then, resort to imagination: Imagine that our federal government, at its very inception, had issued an edict to the effect that all boys and girls, from birth to adulthood, were to receive shoes and socks from the federal government “for free.” Next, imagine that this practice of “free shoes and socks” had been going on for lo, these 173 years! Lastly, imagine one of our contemporaries—one with a faith in the wonders of what can be wrought when people are free—saying, “I do not believe that shoes and socks for kids should be a government responsibility. Properly, that is a responsibility of the family. This activity should never have been socialized. It is appropriately a free market activity.”

What, under these circumstances, would be the response to such a stated belief? Based on what we hear on every hand, once an activity has been socialized for even a short time, the common chant would go like this, “Ah, but you would let the poor children go unshod!”

However, in this instance, where the activity has not yet been socialized, we are able to point out that the poor children are better shod in countries where shoes and socks are a family responsibility than in countries where they are a government responsibility. We’re able to demonstrate that the poor children are better shod in countries that are more  free than in countries that are less free.

True, the free market ignores the poor precisely as it does not recognize the wealthy—it is “no respecter of persons.” It is an organizational way of doing things featuring openness, which enables millions of people to cooperate and compete without demanding a preliminary clearance of pedigree, nationality, color, race, religion, or wealth. It demands only that each person abide by voluntary principles, that is, by fair play. The free market means willing exchange; it is impersonal justice in the economic sphere and excludes coercion, plunder, theft, protectionism, subsidies, special favors from those wielding power, and other anti-free market methods by which goods and services change hands. It opens the way for mortals to act morally because they are free to act morally.

Admittedly, human nature is defective, and its imperfections will be reflected in the market (though arguably, no more so than in government). But the free market opens the way for men to operate at their moral best, and all observation confirms that the poor fare better under these circumstances than when the way is closed, as it is under socialism.

SOURCE

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

An obsolete Indian car as a model for the U.S. Post Office

Thomas Sowell

At one time, people in India had to get on a waiting list to buy Hindustan Motors' Ambassador automobile, even though it was an obvious copy of Britain's Morris Oxford of some decades earlier. The reason was simple: the Indian government would not allow cars to be imported to compete with it.

The fact that the Ambassador was a copy is hardly an automatic reason for condemnation. The first Nikon camera was an obvious copy of a German camera called the Contax, and the first Canon was an obvious copy of the Leica. The difference is that, over the years, Nikons and Canons rose to become state of the art, during both the era of film and in the new digital age.

Not so the Ambassador car. It was notorious for poor finish and poor handling. But, since it was the only game in town -- and "town" was all of India, people were on waiting lists for it for months, and sometimes even years.

By contrast, Nikon and Canons were good cameras from day one and they just got better as the companies that produced them gained more experience. With a highly competitive international market for cameras, they had no choice if they wanted to survive.

But the Hindustan Ambassador had no such problem. Only those who bought them had problems.

Toward the end of the 20th century, India began to loosen up some of its jungle of rules and regulations that were strangling India's businesses. Though India is still a long way from a free market, just the relaxing of some of its economic restrictions was enough to promote a higher rate of growth and a substantial reduction in poverty.

They even allowed a Japanese car maker to build cars in India. This resulted in a car called the Maruti, which quickly shot to the top as the most popular car in India. Even more remarkable, it led to some improvements in the Ambassador. A British newspaper said that the Ambassador now had "perceptible acceleration."

Now that there was competition, the distinguished British magazine "The Economist" announced, "Marutis too are improving, in anticipation of the next invaders."

Perhaps the last chapter in the story of the Ambassador has now been written. Hindustan Motors recently announced that it was closing -- indefinitely -- the factory where the Ambassador was built.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "The company cited low productivity, 'a critical shortage of funds' and a lack of demand for its core product, the Ambassador."

Doesn't that sound a little like our post office?

Our post office, like the Hindustan Ambassador, has had a long run as a government protected monopoly. But just a partial erosion of that monopoly, with the appearance of United Parcel Service and Federal Express, has threatened the viability of the post office.

As for "a critical shortage of funds," that has truly gotten critical as the post office has seen its $15 billion line of credit at the U.S. Treasury shrink to the vanishing point. For years that line of credit allowed the post office's defenders to tell the big lie that it got no subsidy and was costing the taxpayers nothing.

I don't know who they thought put that money in the Treasury that the post office has been "borrowing" all these years, with no one foolish enough to think that they would ever be either willing or able to pay it back.

We could all use a line of credit from which we could get a few billion dollars, here and there, to cover our losses from time to time. But we are not all the post office.

Ironically, India has partially privatized its post office by letting private companies deliver mail. The government post office's deliveries of mail dropped from 16 billion to less than 8 billion in just six years, even though the population of India was growing.

You can always keep anything old, clunky and inefficient still in business, if you are willing to pour unlimited amounts of the taxpayers' money down a bottomless pit.

Hindustan Motors had to shut their doors when they ran out of money. How long will we continue to keep our own version of the Hindustan Ambassador on life support at the expense of the taxpayers, and of captive customers who are not even allowed by law to decide who can put mail in the boxes that the customers bought?

SOURCE

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

Liberal Austin homeowners surprised to find they have to pay all the taxes they voted for

“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

I’m really just bringing this to your attention for this quote alone. Voting and paying are different endeavors entirely. Often, when one has to pay for the things one has voted to fund, that decision becomes less flippant. This is a comment, less on the specifics of Texas’ or Austin’s tax system than the blaring disconnect between liberals in Austin who are voting for higher taxes and the actual paying of the taxes. Which, as it turns out, is painful, discouraging, and can be a detriment to the fabric of the city.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation offers this on the complexity and salience of Texas property taxes:

In Texas, there are more than 3,900 localities that impose property taxes, including school districts, counties, and special districts. Texas’ property tax burden has grown from approximately 1 percent of value in the early 1980s to nearly 3 percent today.

The rising burden from property tax is worse for the housing-rich but income-poor elderly homeowners. For example, elderly homeowners tend to move more often to reduce their property tax burden, which is an additional cost of owning a home for those who can least afford to move.

Interestingly, another reason voters hate property taxes is because they are more “salient.” A salient tax means that the burden is transparent, easy to understand, and hard to avoid. If paid directly, property taxes are found to be more salient compared with sales taxes applied at checkout or income taxes withheld from a paycheck.

In 2012, the free-market think tank suggested swapping the local property tax for a sales tax:

New research suggests that if Texas eliminates its local property tax system, ranked as the 14th most oppressive in the nation, and instead replaces those lost revenues with an adjusted sales tax, then the ensuing flood of capital investment and business activity could ignite the Texas economy for years to come.

That’s right, just by changing how Texas governments collect public dollars—but not how much they spend—the Legislature can give the economy and people’s wallets a major boost.

By how much, you ask? Our estimates suggest quite a bit.
Either way, I don’t think Gretchen Gardner is ever going to make the connection between her voting pattern and her bill.

SOURCE

*************************
   
The Slow Erosion of the Fourth Amendment

WarrantThe Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unlawful and unreasonable search and seizure. Yet that protection is being slowly eroded away. Thanks to the “War of Drugs” and the “War on Terror” government, at the state and federal level, has worked alongside the courts to gradually diminish the range and force of the protections that were meant to be inviolable rights of all citizens.

This year has seen two serious blows to the constitutionally-protected freedoms of the Fourth Amendment. The first was a ruling by the US Supreme Court in February that makes it easier for police to enter and search private homes without warrants. Previous interpretations by the court had held that in cases of disagreement between residents on whether to admit police to search a residence without a warrant, one resident’s permission was sufficient to prevent the search. Under the new ruling, one resident is sufficient to admit police, even over the protest of another resident.

This ruling inherently dilutes the right of individuals to their own private domicile and to be protected from police searching their property without their permission. This outrageous decision will no doubt further damage the guarantees and protections promised by the Constitution.

The second assault on protections against search and seizure happened in Pennsylvania this month. Pennsylvania has for many years been more resistant than other states to the destruction of Fourth Amendment rights. The constitution of the commonwealth has traditionally been interpreted as going even further than the Fourth Amendment, extending protections to property such as motor vehicles. In fact, police officers had to call a judge in order to obtain permission to search a car.

That protection has now been overturned by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Now police can search cars on their own initiative, as they can in most states. The commonwealth was one of the last hold-outs on this issue. Without it, the norm of searching citizens’ vehicles at police discretion is unchallenged in statutes of the state and federal governments.

These attacks at the federal and state levels on a core constitutional right have angered people across the political spectrum. Even the usually left-leaning Huffington Post has reported angrily on the rulings.

The US Supreme Court ruling in particular is demonstrative of the problems that can arise when the political leadership of both parties holds a convergent view of policy that does not align with the desires of the broader polity. In a duopolistic political system, the political agenda can be almost impossible to challenge when such convergences occur. If the major political agents agree to act in a way that is contrary to that of the people, the system often denies any redress.

The only way to challenge the system, as it stands now, would be to mount primary challenges. The Republican Party is being convulsed by such a process now, but the Democrats remain largely unperturbed. Citizens who value their rights cannot permit the political actors who represent them to ossify policies directly antithetical to their express will. It remains to be seen whether Americans can successfully band together to protect their rights from government encroachment. On this issue, with sufficient anger from both left and right, there is reason to hope.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, 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)

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

Don’t Argue With Liberals – It Only Encourages Them

Non-lawyers often ask me, “What is the best way to argue with a liberal?” This is silly, because there is no best way to argue with a liberal. They're beyond argument. You might as well argue with your terrier. Take it from someone who argues with his hideous terrier all the time.

But if you do choose to argue with a liberal, understand that your purpose should never be to change the liberal’s mind. You're not going to change the liberal’s mind. Instead, if you choose to argue with a liberal, you should do it for one of two reasons – to either win over people who have not yet made up their minds, or to support people who already have begun to understand the truth.

The truth is that conservatism is an ideology that is in accord with natural law and basic human decency, while liberalism is merely the summit of a slippery slope leading down to the hellish depths of collectivist misery.

Liberals aren’t going to like to hear this manifest and demonstrable truth. So you’re going to get called “racist,” “sexist” and “homophobic,” even if you’re a conservative black lesbian.

What you are not going to get is an argument. An argument is a collected series of statements designed to establish a definite proposition. Arguments involve the presentation of facts and evidence from which one draws a conclusion. Implied within the concept of an argument is the potential that one might change his conclusion. But liberals start with the conclusion.

They don’t change their conclusions based on the facts and evidence; they change the facts and evidence based on the conclusion they want. This is why a 105 degree day is irrefutable proof of global warming, while a 60 degree day is irrefutable proof of global warming. As is a -20 degree day.

Liberals are only concerned with argument, or what superficially appears to be argument, as a rhetorical bludgeon designed to beat you into submission. They aren’t trying to change your mind. They don’t expect you to agree with them. They don’t even care whether or not you grow to love Big Brother.

They just want you to shut up and let them run rampant. If you understand that, you'll be fine.

There are two basic tactics to choose from when responding to a liberal pseudo-argument, defense and counterattack. Without getting too detailed and infantry-nerdy on you, think of defense as simply preventing a loss. You're holding your ground. The counterattack, however, lashes out to seize the initiative and defeat your enemy.

Both have their uses. When you defend, you are generally responding to the pseudo-argument the liberal is making. A liberal will start advocating some nonsense and you reply to what he says. You may choose to use examples of liberalism's many failures to illustrate how collectivism is a prescription for disaster. For example, some pinko starts crowing about how eight million suckers signed up for Obamacare. A good defense might involve raising the question of how many of those eight million have actually paid for it.

But the problem with defense is that it treats a liberal "argument” with a respect it doesn't deserve. You dignify liberal silliness with a response when all it deserves is mockery and contempt.

This is why I prefer to counterattack. When you counterattack, you ignore the proposition offered by the liberal and refuse to respond on the liberal’s preferred terms. In fact, you don’t even need to address the same subject the liberal is talking about. Your goal is not to undercut the liberal’s assertion. You're going to counterattack to undercut the liberal himself.

There are many good reasons to choose the approach of treating the liberal like he is a terrible person with terrible ideas who seeks to impose a quasi-fascist police state upon America, including the fact that it's all true.

Let’s try a counterattack battle drill. Some doofus with a “Capitalism Is a Patriarchal, Cisnormative Hate Crime” t-shirt starts babbling about “privilege.” The undecideds start listening, their jaws drooping slightly. Some of the more conservative ones are silent, not wanting to be labeled racist by some geek whose grandfather came from Oslo. You need to act. So you causally inject the question, “Hey, why are you an eager and active member of a political party that made a KKK kleagle a beloved Senate Majority Leader?”

Then you mention that you’re a member of the party that fought slavery and didn’t turn hoses on civil rights marchers. Then you finish by announcing, “Well, I’m going to stand with Dr. King and judge people by the content of their character.” It’s optional whether you then get up, scream that the liberal should have issued you a trigger warning about his racism, and leave.

But be careful – the liberal may totally spit in the next latte he sells you.

Some people might question whether this kind of Alinsky-esque tactic means we are stooping to the liberals’ level. Except the liberals’ level is six feet underground, where the victims of collectivism lie buried. Anyone not willing to take the fight to them simply empowers their liberal fascist fantasies.

If you're trying to win an Oxford Union debate with a liberal, you’ve missed the point. This isn't about the Marquess of Queensberry’s fussy little rules. This isn't about some sort of extended-pinky exchange of ideas over a fine glass of port. This is about fighting for our way of life and our fundamental rights against the intellectual heirs of Stalin, Mao and Hitler.

Attack. This is about winning. First prize is freedom. Second prize is tyranny.

SOURCE

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

Forget About the Fed – Let’s End the Reign of Liberalism Instead

Despite the fact that the Federal Reserve has been pumping trillions of dollars into the economy with their Quantitative Easing program, our nation has seen anemic economic growth. In real dollars, the Fed (mostly under the leadership of Ben “easy money” Bernanke) has injected about $2 trillion into financial markets. This money (according to people who read Keynes as if he penned the economic gospel) was supposed to increase liquidity in the system and multiply, thereby creating jobs and prosperity. According to the theory of that guy who once said “we’re all dead in the long run”, the free Fed cash was supposed to result in massive job creation, and intense credit growth…

Of course, this hasn’t happened. In fact, despite the $2 trillion of “free” Fed monies, our ailing economy only managed to grow about $1.1 trillion in that same time span… So, to be clear: The Fed printed up $2 trillion worth of cash, and handed it to Wall Street. Stocks climbed steadily, and the economy only grew by half as much as the Fed had printed… This is apparently what happens when Liberals run the government.

Which brings us to the main point (I know, I know… “Finally”, right?):

Sure… End the Fed. But before we tackle that challenge, maybe we should end the reign of Obamanomics? After all, it seems that the Federal Reserve has pretty much exhausted every trick in the book to inflate the economy, and the economy still isn’t growing. Go ahead and give Wall Street more Fed dollars, but it’s a pretty big chore to get the economy going when policies from DC are killing jobs, and Eric Holder is making a killing out of suing banks.

Our biggest problems, today, aren’t monetary. They’re fiscal. The real problem with today’s “recovery” isn’t a lack of money or consumer demand… The real problem seems to be the guy living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and most of the 535 “leaders” who help craft fiscal policy at the US Capitol.

All the free Fed money in the world won’t change the fact that Eric Holder is suing banks left and right, while his Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is making mortgages a nightmare for the average lender. Barack Obama’s FDA isn’t exactly making energy any more affordable, and Obamacare is basically giving businesses a very legitimate reason not to hire people. Besides, if we truly live in a consumer-driven economy, it seems like the biggest thing we’re missing in this “recovery” is job creation.

So while the Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars into the markets, the US economy has limped along. The fact that trillions in “free money” has been so ineffective at priming economic growth should tell us something: Lack of capital is not the issue.

Unreasonably loose monetary policy is no substitute for a congressional budget, or an informed fiscal policy. America is ready for an explosion of economic prosperity; but as long as the government continues to tax, regulate (oh good… more carbon regulations are being announced today), and infringe on the sovereignty of business, things are unlikely to get much better.

Whatever possible benefit the Federal Reserve could have had on the economy has been largely offset by the disastrous Obama policies of regulation and micromanagement. The truth is, the economy can only handle so much progressivism before it collapses under the weight of bureaucrats. So while I’m completely in favor of “ending the Fed”, the long run can wait. The real solution to today’s economic woes can be found at the ballot box this November.

 SOURCE

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

Scandal Exhaustion

By Alan Caruba

Listening to President Obama respond on May 21 to the latest scandal regarding something about which he knew and did nothing—the mess at the Veterans Administration—was such a familiar event that I have reached a point of exhaustion trying to keep up with everything that has been so wrong about his six years in office. As he always does, he said was really angry about it.

Writing in the May 20 Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin said, “Forget ideology for a moment. Whether you are liberal or conservative, the Obama presidency’s parade of miscues is jaw-dropping.”

Stacked against the list of Obama scandals and failures, Rubin could only cite the Bush administration’s 2005 handling of Hurricane Katrina, the seventh most intense ever, and, as anyone familiar with that event will tell you, the failure of FEMA’s response was matched by the failures of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and the New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Bush had declared a national emergency two days before it hit the Gulf coast.

Rubin concluded that the Obama administration scandals “reflect the most widespread failure of executive leadership since the Harding administration”, adding “The presidency is an executive job. We hire neophytes at our peril. When there is an atmosphere in which accountability is not stressed you get more scandals and fiascos.”

Obama spent his entire first term blaming all such things on his predecessor, George W. Bush, until it became a joke.

One has to wonder about the effect of the endless succession of scandals and fiascos have had on Americans as individuals and the nation as a whole.

While it is easier to lay all the blame on Obama, the fact is that much of the blame is the result of a federal government that is so big no President could possibly know about the countless programs being undertaken within its departments and agencies, and all the Presidents dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive initiatives have played a role in growing the government.

It is, however, the President who selects the cabinet members responsible to manage the departments as well as those appointed to manage the various agencies. Kathleen Sebelius, the recently resigned former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for the implementation of Obamacare, comes to mind. She had solicited donations—against the law—from the companies HHS regulates to help her sign up uninsured Americans for Obamacare and signed off on the millions spent on HealthCare.gov and other expenses leading up to its start.

There are lists of the Obama scandals you can Google. One that continues to fester is the attack on September 11, 2012—the anniversary of 9/11—that killed an American ambassador and three security personnel in Benghazi, Libya. It has been and continues to be investigated, mostly because of the lies told by Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of “What difference at this point does it make?” fame. Clinton was asked what she had accomplished in her four years as Secretary and was unable to name anything.

Eric Holder, our Attorney General, continues in office despite having been held in contempt of Congress, professing that he knew nothing about “Fast and Furious”, the earliest scandal involving a gun-running scheme to Mexican drug cartels by the ATF presumably to track them, but they lost track and many were used in crimes including the killing of a Border Patrol agent.

Holder also told Congress that he was not associated with the “potential prosecution” of a journalist even though he had signed the affidavit that named Fox News reporter, James Rosen. as a potential criminal. Holder was also in charge when the Justice Department culled the phone records of Associated Press reporters to find out who they deemed was leaking information.

Keeping track of the solar power and other “renewable” and “Green” energy companies like Solyndra that received millions in grants and then rather swiftly went bankrupt became a fulltime effort and, of course, there was the “stimulus” that wasted billions without generating any “shovel ready jobs” qualifies as a fiasco.

In the midst of the recession that was triggered by the 2008 financial crisis various elements of the Obama administration continued to spend money in ways that suggested their indifference. In 2010 the General Services Administration held a $823,000 training conference in Las Vegas, complete with a clown and mind readers.

An Agriculture Department program to compensate black farmers who allegedly had been discriminated against by the agency turned into a gravy train that delivered several billion dollars to thousands of recipients, some of whom probably had not encountered discrimination.

The Veterans Affairs agency made news when it spent more than $6 million on two conferences in Orlando, Florida, and is back in the news for revelations about alleged falsified records concerning the waiting times veterans faced amidst assertions that many died while waiting for treatment surfaced. This was a problem of which the then-Senator Obama was already aware, but six years into his presidency it still existed despite his early promises to fix it.

Obama has been the biggest of Big Government Presidents since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, and Obamacare put the federal government in control of one sixth of the nation’s economy while putting the government in charge of the care Americans expect to receive. Obamacare will dwarf the problems associated with the Veterans agency.

Meanwhile, we have been living with a President who is so indifferent to working with Congress that he has gained fame for his use of executive orders such as the decision to not deport illegal immigrants. His aides have promised more executive orders.

All this over the course of the last six years has left Americans exhausted by the incompetence and wastefulness of an administration that now presides over the highest national debt in the history of the nation and the first ever downgrade of our credit rating.

It has also left them angry if they were conservatives and disillusioned if they were Obama supporters. The Veterans Administration scandal is likely a tipping point for the independent voters and even for longtime Democrats who will want a change.

It is increasingly likely that the November midterm elections give the Republican Party control over the Senate as well as the House and then to hope that it will begin to rein in the spending and save the nation from a financial collapse that will rival the one in 2008.

SOURCE

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

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, 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)

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