Scientists predict reading ability from DNA alone

Reading ability is a major component of IQ so this is another step forward towards measuring IQ directly from brain features

Researchers from King's College London have used a genetic scoring technique to predict reading performance throughout school years from DNA alone.

The study, published today in Scientific Studies of Reading, shows that a genetic score comprising around 20,000 of DNA variants explains five per cent of the differences between children's reading performance. Students with the highest and lowest genetic scores differed by a whole two years in their reading performance.

These findings highlight the potential of using genetic scores to predict strengths and weaknesses in children's learning abilities. According to the study authors, these scores could one day be used to identify and tackle reading difficulties early, rather than waiting until children develop these problems at school.

The researchers calculated genetic scores (also called polygenic scores*) for educational achievement in 5,825 individuals from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) based on genetic variants identified to be important for educational attainment. They then mapped these scores against reading ability between the ages of seven and 14.

Genetic scores were found to explain up to five per cent of the differences between children in their reading ability. This association remained significant even after accounting for cognitive ability and family socio-economic status.

The study authors note that although five per cent may seem a relatively small amount, this is substantial compared to other results related to reading. For example, gender differences have been found to explain less than one per cent of the differences between children in reading ability.

Saskia Selzam, first author of the study from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, said: 'The value of polygenic scores is that they make it possible to predict genetic risk and resilience at the level of the individual. This is different to twin studies, which tell us about the overall genetic influence within a large population of people.'

'We think this study provides an important starting point for exploring genetic differences in reading ability, using polygenic scoring. For instance, these scores could enable research on resilience to developing reading difficulties and how children respond individually to different interventions.'

Professor Robert Plomin, senior author from the IoPPN at King's College London, said: 'We hope these findings will contribute to better policy decisions that recognise and respect genetically driven differences between children in their reading ability.'

*Calculating an individual's polygenic score requires information from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) that finds specific genetic variants linked to particular traits, in this case educational attainment. Some of these genetic variants, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), are more strongly associated with the trait, and some are less strongly associated. In a polygenic score, the effects of these SNPs are weighed by the strength of association and then summed to a score, so that people with many SNPs related to academic achievement will have a higher polygenic score and higher academic achievement, whereas people with fewer associated SNPs will have a lower score and lower levels of academic achievement.

SOURCE

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

Is Putin the 'Preeminent Statesman' of Our Times?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

"If we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the preeminent statesman of our time.

"On the world stage, who could vie with him?"

So asks Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard in a remarkable essay in Hillsdale College's March issue of its magazine, Imprimis.

What elevates Putin above all other 21st-century leaders?

"When Putin took power in the winter of 1999-2000, his country was defenseless. It was bankrupt. It was being carved up by its new kleptocratic elites, in collusion with its old imperial rivals, the Americans. Putin changed that.

"In the first decade of this century, he did what Kemal Ataturk had done in Turkey in the 1920s. Out of a crumbling empire, he resurrected a national-state, and gave it coherence and purpose. He disciplined his country's plutocrats. He restored its military strength. And he refused, with ever blunter rhetoric, to accept for Russia a subservient role in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business leaders. His voters credit him with having saved his country."

Putin's approval rating, after 17 years in power, exceeds that of any rival Western leader. But while his impressive strides toward making Russia great again explain why he is revered at home and in the Russian diaspora, what explains Putin's appeal in the West, despite a press that is every bit as savage as President Trump's?

Answer: Putin stands against the Western progressive vision of what mankind's future ought to be. Years ago, he aligned himself with traditionalists, nationalists and populists of the West, and against what they had come to despise in their own decadent civilization.

What they abhorred, Putin abhorred. He is a God-and-country Russian patriot. He rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War's end by the United States. Putin puts Russia first.

And in defying the Americans he speaks for those millions of Europeans who wish to restore their national identities and recapture their lost sovereignty from the supranational European Union. Putin also stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.

The U.S. establishment loathes Putin because, they say, he is an aggressor, a tyrant, a "killer." He invaded and occupies Ukraine. His old KGB comrades assassinate journalists, defectors and dissidents.

Yet while politics under both czars and commissars has often been a blood sport in Russia, what has Putin done to his domestic enemies to rival what our Arab ally Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood he overthrew in a military coup in Egypt?

What has Putin done to rival what our NATO ally President Erdogan has done in Turkey, jailing 40,000 people since last July's coup — or our Philippine ally Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers?

Does anyone think President Xi Jinping would have handled mass demonstrations against his regime in Tiananmen Square more gingerly than did President Putin this last week in Moscow?

Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West, when standing up for Russia's interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.

He not only remains popular in his own country, but has admirers in nations whose political establishments are implacably hostile to him.

In December, one poll found 37 percent of all Republicans had a favorable view of the Russian leader, but only 17 percent were positive on President Barack Obama.

There is another reason Putin is viewed favorably. Millions of ethnonationalists who wish to see their nations secede from the EU see him as an ally. While Putin has openly welcomed many of these movements, America's elite do not take even a neutral stance.

Putin has read the new century better than his rivals. While the 20th century saw the world divided between a Communist East and a free and democratic West, new and different struggles define the 21st.

The new dividing lines are between social conservatism and self-indulgent secularism, between tribalism and transnationalism, between the nation-state and the New World Order.

On the new dividing lines, Putin is on the side of the insurgents. Those who envision de Gaulle's Europe of Nations replacing the vision of One Europe, toward which the EU is heading, see Putin as an ally.

So the old question arises: Who owns the future?

In the new struggles of the new century, it is not impossible that Russia — as was America in the Cold War — may be on the winning side. Secessionist parties across Europe already look to Moscow rather than across the Atlantic.

"Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism," writes Caldwell. "That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that's true even here."

SOURCE

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

Here’s What Happened to Workers After Philadelphia Passed a Soda Tax

Pepsi announced last week that it will lay off around 100 employees at distribution plants that supply the Philadelphia area. This is the latest blow for the city’s new beverage tax, which went into effect in January.

“Unfortunately, after careful consideration of the economic realities created by the recently enacted beverage tax, we have been forced to give notice that we intend to eliminate 80 to 100 positions, including frontline and supervisory roles,” Pepsi spokesman Dave DeCecco said, according to Philly.com.

However, the layoffs could be quickly reversed if the beverage tax is abandoned, according to DeCecco.

“If the tax is struck down or repealed, we plan to bring people back to work,” DeCecco said, according to Reuters.  The tax is currently under appeal in the Commonwealth Court, with arguments anticipated to begin in early April.

Although it is commonly known as the “soda tax,” the law also includes all “non-100 percent-fruit drinks; sports drinks; sweetened water; energy drinks; pre-sweetened coffee or tea; and nonalcoholic beverages intended to be mixed into an alcoholic drink,” according to the city of Philadelphia’s website.

The tax, passed in June 2016 by the Philadelphia City Council, adds 1.5 cents to every ounce of liquid, which amounts to an 18-cent tax for a 12-ounce can of soda and a $2.16 tax for a 12-pack of soda.

The tax was implemented to finance pre-kindergarten programs, increase funding to public parks and facilities, and improve the health of Philadelphians, according to a statement published online by Mayor James Kenney’s office.

Since the law was enacted, some local consumers and businesses say they have suffered.

Bloomberg reported:

Canada Dry Delaware Valley—a local distributor of Canada Dry Ginger Ale, Sunkist, A&W Root Beer, Arizona Iced Tea and Vita Coco—said business fell 45 percent in Philadelphia in the first five weeks of 2017, compared with the same period last year. Total revenue at Brown’s Super Stores, which operates 12 ShopRite and Fresh Grocer supermarkets, fell 15 percent at its six retailers in the city.

According to Bloomberg, the CEO of Brown’s Super Stores, Jeff Brown, said, “In 30 years of business, there’s never been a circumstance in which we’ve ever had a sales decline of any significant amount, I would describe the impact as nothing less than devastating.”

Daren Bakst, a research fellow in agricultural policy at The Heritage Foundation, said:

“The Philadelphia City Council decided it knew what its city residents should eat and drink. Freedom was apparently not important to them,” Bakst told The Daily Signal in an email. “They didn’t care that it would undermine freedom. They didn’t care that it would hurt small businesses in their city. Nor did they care that a tax like this is regressive, hurting the poor the most because a greater share of the poor’s income goes to food purchases.

“The Philadelphia City Council deserves all the blame that is coming their way. For those unfortunate individuals who are losing their jobs, they can thank this to the arrogance of people who think they should socially engineer diets,” Bakst said.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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

Leftists have no principles -- They say only what suits them at the moment

Democrats seem to be currently afflicted with what may be best described as a case of politically convenient amnesia. This sad condition has been most clearly evident through the confirmation process of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and symptoms include acute displays of remarkable levels of hypocrisy. Observe these past statements by leading Democrat leaders contrasted by these same Democrats' most recent statements. Beware, witnessing the total reversal of opinion on attempting to block a nominee's confirmation by these Democrats might temp one to scream out a slew of frustration-induced profanities.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2013: "We much prefer the risk of up or down votes and majority rule [on judicial nominees], than the risk of continued total obstruction. That's the bottom line no matter who's in power."

Schumer now: "The irresistible, immutable logic is, if the nominee doesn't get 60 [votes], you change the nominee, not the rules."

Senator Tim Kaine in October 2016: "If [Republicans] think they're going to stonewall the filling of [the SCOTUS] vacancy or other vacancies, then a Democratic Senate majority will say, 'We're not going to let you thwart the law.' And so we will change the Senate rules to uphold the law."

Kaine now: "The way I look at it is the Supreme Court is the only position that requires you to get to a 60-vote threshold, which means it mandates that there be some bipartisanship and that is appropriate. Life tenure. Highest court in the land. Should have to get to 60 votes." And, "I will oppose his nomination."

Senator Elizabeth Warren in November 2013: "If Republicans continue to filibuster these highly qualified nominees for no reason than to nullify the president's constitutional authority, then senators not only have the right to change the filibuster, senators have a duty to change the filibuster rules." And she also said, "We need to call out these filibusters for what they are — naked attempts to nullify the results of the last presidential election."

Warren now: "I believe Judge Gorsuch's nomination should be blocked."

To be sure, the filibuster is a Senate rule subject to the desires of any Senate majority. Both parties use those rules to political advantage. What's striking is Democrat sanctimony.

SOURCE

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

A Health Care Plan So Simple, Even A Republican Can Understand!

Ann Coulter

Right now, there’s no free market because insurance is insanely regulated not only by Obamacare, but also by the most corrupt organizations in America: state insurance commissions. (I’m talking to you, New York!)

Federal and state laws make it illegal to sell health insurance that doesn’t cover a laughable array of supposedly vital services based on bureaucrats’ medical opinions of which providers have the best lobbyists.

As a result, it’s illegal to sell health insurance that covers any of the medical problems I’d like to insure against. Why can’t the GOP keep Obamacare for the greedy — but make it legal for Ann to buy health insurance?

This is how it works today:

ME: I’m perfectly healthy, but I’d like to buy health insurance for heart disease, broken bones, cancer, and everything else that a normal person would ever need, but no more.

INSURANCE COMPANY: That will be $700 a month, the deductible is $35,000, no decent hospital will take it, and you have to pay for doctor’s visits yourself. But your plan covers shrinks, infertility treatments, sex change operations, autism spectrum disorder treatment, drug rehab and 67 other things you will never need.

INSURANCE COMPANY UNDER ANN’S PLAN: That will be $50 a month, the deductible is $1,000, you can see any doctor you’d like, and you have full coverage for any important medical problems you could conceivably have in a million years.

Mine is a two-step plan (and you don’t have to do the second step, so it’s really a one-step plan).

STEP 1: Congress doesn’t repeal Obamacare! Instead, Congress passes a law, pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, that says: “In America, it shall be legal to sell health insurance on the free market. This law supersedes all other laws, taxes, mandates, coverage requirements, regulations or prohibitions, state or federal.”

The end. Love, Ann.

There will be no whining single mothers storming Congress with their pre-printed placards. People who want to stay on Obamacare can. No one is taking away anything. They can still have health insurance with free pony rides. It just won’t be paid for with Ann’s premiums anymore, because Ann will now be allowed to buy health insurance on the free market.

Americans will be free to choose among a variety of health insurance plans offered by willing sellers, competing with one another to provide the best plans at the lowest price. A nationwide market in health insurance will drive down costs and improve access — just like everything else we buy here in America!

Within a year, most Americans will be buying health insurance on the free market (and half of the rest will be illegal aliens). We’ll have TV ads with cute little geckos hawking amazing plans and young couples bragging about their broad coverage and great prices from this or that insurance company.

The Obamacare plans will still have the “essential benefits” (free pony rides) that are so important to NPR’s Mara Liasson, but the free market plans will have whatever plans consumers agree to buy and insurance companies agree to sell — again, just like every other product we buy here in America.

Some free market plans will offer all the “essential benefits” mandated by Obamacare, but the difference will be: Instead of forcing me to pay a premium that covers Mara Liasson’s special needs, she’ll have to pay for that coverage herself.

I won’t be compelled to buy health insurance that covers everyone else’s gambling addiction, drug rehab, pregnancies, marital counseling, social workers, contact lenses and rotten kids — simply to have insurance for what doctors call “serious medical problems.”

Then, we’ll see how many people really need free health care.

Until the welfare program is decoupled from the insurance market, nothing will work. Otherwise, it’s like forcing grocery stores to pay for everyone to have a house. A carton of milk would suddenly cost $10,000.

That’s what Obamacare did to health insurance. Paul Ryan’s solution was to cut taxes on businesses — and make the milk watery. But he still wouldn’t allow milk to be sold on the free market.

Democrats will be in the position of blocking American companies from selling a product that people want to buy. How will they explain that to voters?

Perhaps Democrats will come out and admit that they need to fund health insurance for the poor by forcing middle-class Americans to pay for it through their insurance premiums — because otherwise, they’d have to raise taxes, and they want to keep their Wall Street buddies’ income taxes low.

Good luck with that!

STEP 2: Next year, Congress formulates a better way of delivering health care to the welfare cases, which will be much easier since there will be a LOT fewer of them.

No actual money-making business is going to survive by taking the welfare cases — the ones that will cover illegal aliens and Mara Liasson’s talk therapy — so the greedy will get government plans.

But by then, only a minority of Americans will be on the “free” plans. (Incidentally, this will be a huge money-saver — if anyone cares about the federal budget.) Eighty percent of Americans will already have good health plans sold to them by insurance companies competing for their business.

With cheap plans available, a lot of the greedy will go ahead and buy a free market plan. Who wants to stand in line at the DMV to see a doctor when your neighbors have great health care plans for $50 a month?

We will have separated the truly unfortunate from the loudmouthed bullies who simply enjoy forcing other people to pay for their shrinks and aromatherapy.

And if the Democrats vote against a sane method of delivering health care to the welfare cases, who cares? We have lots of wasteful government programs — take it out of Lockheed Martin’s contract. But at least the government won’t be depriving the rest of us of a crucial product just because we are middle class and the Democrats hate us.

There’s your health care bill, GOP!

SOURCE

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

The Generational Divide

The young are liberal, the old are conservative. An exception might be coming.

In politics, demographics are key in messaging, for organizational platform development and for policy priorities.

Demographics are pretty consistent with one fact: Age is a major factor in one’s party affiliation. The younger the voter, the greater likelihood said voter is leftist or moderately Democrat in their worldview and philosophy. Logically, the inverse is also often a truism — the older the voter, the greater the likelihood of he or she leans center-Right or far-Right.

An old adage, inaccurately attributed to Winston Churchill (and various others), states: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re old, you have no brain.”

While the fascination is usually on the monikers given for each generation and the corresponding traits, it’s the traits found within these age groups that impact the usefulness of the tiered grouping of our adult population.

Using classifications employed by the Pew Research Center, the Silent Generation would currently be 71-88 years of age. This group generally holds a worldview framed by the hardships of war and economic depression — sacrifice, personal responsibility, loyalty and the call to adulthood during crisis. Some 48% of Silents are politically center-Right.

Baby Boomers range from 52-71 years old and are likewise largely defined as having a strong work ethic, and being goal-centric, self-assured and more disciplined. And 44% of the Boomers vote to the political Right.

The next stratum is Generation X, Americans who are now 36 to 51 years old. This groups tends to be more “me” centric, hence their individualistic approach to social, civic, corporate and political engagement. This is the first generation to live to work, not work to live, and they vote to the Right of center 37% of the time.

Finally, Millennials are 18- to 35-year-olds raised to seek constant communication, input and connection. This group is motivated by meaning, with their productivity linked to a purpose that is well communicated or marketed. Just 33% of Millennials vote Right.

So what?

As our cultural institutions — education, media, family, faith, government, entertainment and business — move to the left, the immersion of individuals into an environment defined by a “progressive” vision has changed American culture. Interestingly, as adults age with the vivid responsibilities of life, such as parenting, debt, investment, business expansion and countless other realities, a great deal of progressive failures are exposed. One’s worldview becomes no longer framed by an academic exercise in social justice, love and tolerance, but by real life.

As we’ve noted, the more recent one’s birth year, the more one’s political affiliations tend to be more to the left end of the spectrum. But that may soon change based on early research into Generation Z. These post-Millennials have never known life without the Internet, Islamic terrorism or the hyper-partisan climate at the local, state and federal levels of government.

Again, so what?

Some of the oldest of Generation Z voted in the 2016 elections. And the question is, will this be yet another group of youth with an entitled and emotion-based approach to life? Or will it be a generation guided by effective role models and adult leaders?

Based on early unscientific data, these first-time voters, raised during times of recession and personal debt, are more fiscally conservative than their Millennial elders.

A survey of 50,000 high school students aged 14 to 18 years old was shocking: Donald Trump won among participants by 46% to Hillary Clinton’s 31%. A majority identified as Republicans in this Presidential Pulse Study’s entire polling audience.

Further, those casting their ballots for the first time acknowledged the economy as the most important issue followed by education, gun rights and health care. Fifty-six percent declared the country is headed in the wrong direction. That’s a stark departure from the “progressive” mantra that Barack Obama was great and the answer was more of the same through Hillary.

An INC.com article notes that Generation Z identifies honesty as the most important trait of a leader. These kids have a greater respect for older generations, and seem to possess the trait of realism instead of excessive optimism.

That presents an opportunity. Conservatives must not only include the soundness of small government and value of fiscal discipline for the older generations who are more conservative, but the “so what” of meaning and purpose to win the hearts and minds of Millennials and Generation Xers. And endeavoring to win over Generation Z will pay immense dividends.

President Donald Trump spoke quite candidly on the campaign trail, absent the politically correct lexicon of the Left. He pulled no punches in his simple, yet direct, message. Perhaps his populist approach also appeals to Generation Z. Perhaps they’ve seen what leftism hath wrought and want no part of it.

As always, time will tell, but time also has a way of making people more conservative. That’s life experience for you.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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

Mitch McConnell has got balls after all

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote to send Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate next Monday, and Gorsuch will be confirmed on Friday – period, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a news conference on Tuesday.

“I repeat, we're going to get Judge Gorsuch confirmed.” McConnell said the vote will give Democrats the “opportunity” to invoke cloture. “We’ll see where that ends,” he added.

McConnell said it will be up to Democrats to determine how the confirmation process goes. (If no Democrat is willing to confirm Gorsuch, Republicans could change Senate rules to allow him to be confirmed with 51 votes instead of 60.)

Judge Gorsuch, as you know, is extraordinarily well qualified. It's almost amusing to watch our Democratic friends try to come up with some rationale for opposition.

SOURCE

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

Trump Reversing Record Number of Regulations

President signs four more Congressional Review Act rollbacks, bringing total number to seven…or six more than all his predecessors combined



President Donald Trump's big moves today on energy/climate policy  are far from his only deregulatory heaves this week. On Monday, for example, the president signed into law four regulatory rollbacks presented to him via the Congressional Review Act (CRA), or three more than were enacted between 1996-2016 combined.

The previously obscure CRA gives Congress 60 working days to reverse any new regulation added to the Federal Register. (That's congressional working days, so in fact the 115th Congress has had the ability to pick off any unwanted Obama-administration reg enacted after mid-June of last year.) The only successful deployment of the CRA prior to Trump came in March 2001, when President George W. Bush signed out of existence a controversial November 2000 Clinton administration rule requiring employers to prevent ergonomic injuries in the workplace. The unified Republican Congress of 2015–2016 presented five CRA rollbacks to President Barack Obama, and he vetoed each one.

President Trump now has seven CRA notches on his belt, and more coming his way. The latest, as summarized by USA Today:

* The "Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces" rule, which barred companies from receiving federal contracts if they had a history of violating wage, labor or workplace safety laws. That regulation, derided by critics as the "blacklisting" rule, was already held up in court. [...]

* A Bureau of Land Management rule known as "Planning 2.0," that gave the federal government a bigger role in land use decisions. The rule was opposed by the energy industry.

* Two regulations on measuring school performance and teacher training under the Every Student Succeeds Act, a law Obama signed in 2015 with bipartisan support.

The other three CRA reversals so far have been a Security and Exchange Commission rule requiring publicly traded resource-extraction companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments, a Department of Interior framework governing stream runoff of coal mining operations, and a Social Security Administration policy (covered by Scott Shackford here) to share the names of people it classifies as having a mental illness with the federal gun database in order to deny them access to weapons.

Other Trump deregulatory activity has included:

* His January 30 executive order requiring agencies to identify two existing regulations to kill each time they promulgate a new one.

* His February 24 executive order instructing each agency to appoint a Regulatory Reform Officer, who will head up a task force that suggests regulations to euthanize.

* His appointment to the Supreme Court of Neil Gorsuch, a judge most famous for his criticism of excessive deference to regulators.

* His appointments to the Cabinet critics of and reformers to the departments they now head, including Education's Betsy DeVos, Energy's Rick Perry, Transportation's Elaine Chao, and Health and Human Service's Tom Price.

* His nomination of drug-approval-process critic Scott Gottlieb to head up the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and his three paragraphs in the State of the Union Address talking up FDA reform.

* His appointment to head up the Federal Communications Commission regulation skeptic Ajit Pai.

There is no doubt that the early Trump presidency has made deregulation a priority. It remains to be seen how much Congress will share that appetite.

SOURCE

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

Free Market Health Care

John Stossel
 
President Trump and Paul Ryan tried to improve Obamacare. They failed.

Trump then tweeted, “ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!”

But I do worry.  Trump is right when he says that Obamacare will explode.  The law mandates benefits and offers subsidies to more people. Insurers must cover things like:

—Birth control.

—Alcohol counseling.

—Depression screening.

—Diet counseling.

—Tobacco use screening.

—Breastfeeding counseling.

Some people want those things, but mandating them for everyone drives up costs. It was folly to pretend it wouldn’t.

Insisting that lots of things be paid for by someone else is a recipe for financial explosion. Medicare works that way, too.

When I first qualified for it, I was amazed to find that no one even mentioned cost. It was just, “Have this test!” “See this doctor!”

I liked it. It’s great not to think about costs. But that’s why Medicare will explode, too. There’s no way that, in its current form, it will be around to fund younger people’s care.

Someone else paying changes our behavior. We don’t shop around. We don’t ask, “Do I really need that test?” “Is there a place where it’s cheaper?”

Hospitals and doctors don’t try very hard to do things cheaply.  Imagine if you had “grocery insurance.” You’d buy expensive foods; supermarkets would never have sales. Everyone would spend more.

Insurance coverage — third-party payment — is revered by the media and socialists (redundant?) but is a terrible way to pay for things.

Today, seven in eight health care dollars are paid by Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance companies. Because there’s no real health care market, costs rose 467 percent over the last three decades.

By contrast, prices fell in the few medical areas not covered by insurance, like plastic surgery and LASIK eye care. Patients shop around, forcing health providers to compete.  The National Center for Policy Analysis found that from 1999 to 2011 the price of traditional LASIK eye surgery dropped from over $2,100 to about $1,700.

Obamacare pretended government controls could accomplish the same thing, but they couldn’t.

The sickest people were quickest to sign up. Insurance companies then raised rates to cover their costs. When regulators objected, many insurers just quit Obamacare. This month Humana announced it’ll leave 11 states. Voters will probably blame Republicans.

Insurance is meant for catastrophic health events, surprises that cost more than most people can afford. That does not include birth control and diet counseling.

The solution is to reduce, not increase, government’s control. We should buy medical care the way we buy cars and computers — with our own money.

Our employers don’t pay for our food, clothing and shelter; they shouldn’t pay for our health care. They certainly shouldn’t get a tax break for buying insurance while individuals don’t.

Give tax deductions to people who buy their own high-deductible insurance. Give tax benefits to medical savings accounts. (Obamacare penalizes them.)

Allow insurers to sell across state lines. Current law forbids that, driving up costs and leaving people with fewer choices.

What about the other “solution” — Bernie Sanders' proposal of single-payer health care for all? Sanders claims other countries “provide universal health care … while saving money.”

But that’s not true. Well, other countries do spend less. But they get less. What modern health care they do get, they get because they freeload off our innovation. Our free market provides most of the world’s new medical devices and medicines.

Also, “single-payer” care leads to rationing.  Here’s a headline from Britain’s Daily Mail: “Another NHS horror story from Wales: Dying elderly cancer patient left ‘screaming in pain’ … for nine hours.”

Britain’s official goal is to treat people four months after diagnosis. Four months! That’s only the “goal.” They don’t even meet that standard.

Bernie Sanders' plan has been tried, and it’s no cure. If it were done to meet American expectations, it would be ludicrously expensive. In 2011, clueless progressives in Bernie’s home state of Vermont voted in “universal care.” But they quickly dumped it when they figured out what it would cost. Didn’t Bernie notice?

It’s time to have government do less.

SOURCE

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

Trump has abolished pro-union rule

President Trump repealed the so-called “blacklisting rule” Monday that required federal contractors to disclose labor violations.  Federal government agencies are now prohibited from issuing a similar regulation. The regulation stems from a 2014 Executive Order that established excessive reporting requirements on federal contractors.

In short, the Blacklisting rule requires contractors who bid on federal contracts over $500,000 to report alleged, as well as actual labor violations over the last three years. Reported violations can be used to block a company’s bid.

The Blacklisting rule does far more harm than good. The government couldn’t produce an official estimate of its benefits (because of a lack of data supplied by agencies), but found more than $400 million in costs to the government and employers in the first two years of the rule. In addition, the rule adds a burden of 2.1 million hours of paperwork on the regulated community.

Besides imposing huge costs with unknown benefits, the regulation forces federal contractors to disclose alleged violations of wrongdoing, not actual labor violations. It is absurd that government regulations would disqualify federal contractors from a bid for allegations and not only real violations.

But it is plainly obvious why the rule was constructed to include alleged violations—to ease union organizing. As noted in a letter of support for the Blacklisting CRA from the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

In turn, this may provide incentive to labor unions, in the midst of organizing campaigns, to file frivolous labor-related charges against companies that bid on federal contractors in order to extract favorable union election conditions, like greater access to the workplace or card-check election.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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

The False Compassion Of Liberalism

STEPHEN MOORE

Last week on CNN I debated a liberal commentator who complained that the problem with President Donald Trump's budget blueprint is that it lacks "compassion" for the poor, for children and for the disabled.

This woman went on to ask me how I could defend a budget that would cut Meals on Wheels, after-school programs and special-education funding, because without the federal dollars, these vital services would go away.

This ideology — that government action is a sign of compassion — is upside-down and contrary to the Christian notion of charity.

We all, as individuals, can and should act compassionately and charitably. We can volunteer our time, energy and dollars to help the underprivileged. We can feed the hungry, house the homeless. Most of us feel a moral and ethical responsibility to do so — to "do unto others."

And we do fulfill that obligation more than the citizens of almost any other nation. International statistics show that Americans are the most charitable people in the world and the most likely to engage in volunteerism.

Whenever there is an international crisis — an earthquake, a flood, a war — Americans provide more assistance than the people of any other nation.

But government, by its nature, is not compassionate. It can't be. It is nothing other than a force. Government can only spend a dollar to help someone when it forcibly takes a dollar from someone else.

At its core, government welfare is predicated on a false compassion. This isn't to say that government should never take collective action to help people. But these actions are based on compulsion, not compassion.

If every so-called "patriotic millionaire" would simply donate half of their wealth to serving others we could solve so many of the social problems in this country without a penny of new debt or taxes.

My friend Arthur Brooks, the president of American Enterprise Institute, has noted in his fabulous book "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" that conservatives donate more than the self-proclaimed compassionate liberals.

The liberal creed seems to be: "We care so much about poor people, climate change, income inequality and protecting the environment (or whatever the cause of the day) that there is no limit to how much money should be taken out of other people's wallets to solve these problems."

Let's take Meals on Wheels. Is this a valuable program to get a nutritious lunch or dinner to infirmed senior citizens? Of course, yes.

Do we need the government to fund it? Of course not. I have participated in Meals on Wheels and other such programs, making sandwiches or delivering hot lunches. And many tens of thousands of others donate their time and money every day for this worthy cause.

Why is there any need for government here? The program works fine on its own. Turning this sort of charitable task over to government only makes people act less charitably on their own. It leads to an "I gave at the office" mentality, which leads to less generosity.

It also subjects these programs to federal rules and regulations that could cripple them. Why must the federal government be funding after-school programs, or any school programs, for that matter?

One of my favorite stories of American history dates back to the 19th century when Col. Davy Crockett, who fought at the Alamo, served in Congress. In a famous incident, Congress wanted to appropriate $100,000 to the widow of a distinguished naval officer.

Crockett took to the House floor and delivered his famous speech, relevant as ever: "We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money. ... I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

Crockett was the only member of Congress who donated personally to the widow, while the members of Congress who pretended to be so caring and compassionate closed their wallets.

It all goes to show that liberal do-gooders were as hypocritical then as they are today.

SOURCE

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

Understanding Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin did not come out of nowhere. Russian people not only tolerate him, they revere him. You can get a better idea of why he has ruled for 17 years if you remember that, within a few years of Communism’s fall, average life expectancy in Russia had fallen below that of Bangladesh. That is an ignominy that falls on Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin’s reckless opportunism made him an indispensable foe of Communism in the late 1980s. But it made him an inadequate founding father for a modern state. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose writings about Communism give him some claim to be considered the greatest man of the twentieth century, believed the post-Communist leaders had made the country even worse. In the year 2000 Solzhenitsyn wrote: “As a result of the Yeltsin era, all the fundamental sectors of our political, economic, cultural, and moral life have been destroyed or looted. Will we continue looting and destroying Russia until nothing is left?” That was the year Putin came to power. He was the answer to Solzhenitsyn’s question.

There are two things Putin did that cemented the loyalty of Solzhenitsyn and other Russians—he restrained the billionaires who were looting the country, and he restored Russia’s standing abroad. Let us take them in turn.

Russia retains elements of a kleptocracy based on oligarchic control of natural resources. But we must remember that Putin inherited that kleptocracy. He did not found it. The transfer of Russia’s natural resources into the hands of KGB-connected Communists, who called themselves businessmen, was a tragic moment for Russia. It was also a shameful one for the West. Western political scientists provided the theft with ideological cover, presenting it as a “transition to capitalism.” Western corporations, including banks, provided the financing.

Let me stress the point. The oligarchs who turned Russia into an armed plutocracy within half a decade of the downfall in 1991 of Communism called themselves capitalists. But they were mostly men who had been groomed as the next generation of Communist nomenklatura­—people like Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. They were the people who understood the scope and nature of state assets, and they controlled the privatization programs. They had access to Western financing and they were willing to use violence and intimidation. So they took power just as they had planned to back when they were in Communist cadre school—but now as owners, not as bureaucrats. Since the state had owned everything under Communism, this was quite a payout. Yeltsin’s reign was built on these billionaires’ fortunes, and vice-versa.

Khodorkovsky has recently become a symbol of Putin’s misrule, because Putin jailed him for ten years. Khodorkovsky’s trial certainly didn’t meet Western standards. But Khodorkovsky’s was among the most obscene privatizations of all. In his recent biography of Putin, Steven Lee Myers, the former Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, calculates that Khodorkovsky and fellow investors paid $150 million in the 1990s for the main production unit of the oil company Yukos, which came to be valued at about $20 billion by 2004. In other words, they acquired a share of the essential commodity of Russia—its oil—for less than one percent of its value. Putin came to call these people “state-appointed billionaires.” He saw them as a conduit for looting Russia, and sought to restore to the country what had been stolen from it. He also saw that Russia needed to reclaim control of its vast reserves of oil and gas, on which much of Europe depended, because that was the only geopolitical lever it had left.

The other thing Putin did was restore the country’s position abroad. He arrived in power a decade after his country had suffered a Vietnam-like defeat in Afghanistan. Following that defeat, it had failed to halt a bloody Islamist uprising in Chechnya. And worst of all, it had been humiliated by the United States and NATO in the Serbian war of 1999, when the Clinton administration backed a nationalist and Islamist independence movement in Kosovo. This was the last war in which the United States would fight on the same side as Osama Bin Laden, and the U.S. used the opportunity to show Russia its lowly place in the international order, treating it as a nuisance and an afterthought. Putin became president a half a year after Yeltsin was maneuvered into allowing the dismemberment of Russia’s ally, Serbia, and as he entered office Putin said: “We will not tolerate any humiliation to the national pride of Russians, or any threat to the integrity of the country.”

The degradation of Russia’s position represented by the Serbian War is what Putin was alluding to when he famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This statement is often misunderstood or mischaracterized: he did not mean by it any desire to return to Communism. But when Putin said he’d restore Russia’s strength, he meant it. He beat back the military advance of Islamist armies in Chechnya and Dagestan, and he took a hard line on terrorism—including a decision not to negotiate with hostage-takers, even in secret.

Much more HERE

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

Sanctuary City Crackdown Begins

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that the Department of Justice would begin fighting against lawless “sanctuary cities” — jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law. Sessions called “sanctuary” policies “dangerous” and promised the DOJ would act against offending local governments by both withholding upwards of $4.1 billion in grants as well as “claw back” federal funds. Sessions warned, “The Department of Justice will require that jurisdictions seeking or applying for DOJ grants to certify compliance with [U.S. Code 1373] as a condition of receiving those awards.”

Sessions highlighted the glaring contradiction espoused by those who, under the guise of protecting immigrants, support these lawless sanctuary policies: “Failure to deport aliens who are convicted of criminal offenses puts whole communities at risk, especially immigrant communities in the very sanctuary jurisdictions that seek to protect the perpetrators.” While all Americans suffer from the effects of unchecked illegal immigration, those communities most vulnerable to criminal aliens are legal immigrants. Sessions surmised that “countless Americans would be alive today … and countless loved ones would not be grieving today … if these polices of sanctuary cities were ended.”

Another important point Sessions made was the fact that his order is based upon the policies put in place by the Obama administration last year — policies it subsequently failed to follow through on. Sessions is simply doing his job as attorney general in applying the Rule of Law.

Predictably, leftist leaders from these sanctuary cities and immigrant groups voiced their consternation and intent to rebel. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio stated, “We won’t back down from protecting New Yorkers from terror … or from an overzealous administration fixated on xenophobia and needless division.”

Irrespective of the deluded sentiments expressed by these leftist leaders, the reality is that sanctuary cities provide no sanctuary from crime. Among numerous examples, the 2015 murder of Kate Steinle by a five-time deported criminal alien in San Francisco and the recent rape of a 14-year-old high schooler by illegal aliens in Maryland attest to that. Thankfully, for legal immigrants as well as native-born citizens, America now has an attorney general who believes in the Rule of Law and intends to apply it.

SOURCE

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

The religion of peace



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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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

What Georgia Could Teach Trump About How to Drain the Swamp

If the Trump administration wants to “dismantle the administrative state,” it might examine state-based efforts to tame the bureaucracy—the oldest being that of Georgia, where a Democratic governor moved state employees away from stringent civil service protections that blocked accountability.

“Who gets cut out of the picture when you protect the civil servant? The average citizen dealing with a bunch of bureaucrats,” Joe Tanner says.

In 1996, then-Gov. Zell Miller signed the Merit System Reform Act, a bill that initially encountered opposition from state employee associations and lawmakers.

Joe Tanner, who was chairman of the state’s Commission on Privatization of State Services during the Miller administration, recalled obtaining one file about hiring a state maintenance worker that was 6 inches thick. A file regarding firing another state maintenance worker for repeatedly not showing up for work was 12 inches thick.

After state Sen. Thurbert Baker, a Democrat, showed the two stacks on the Senate floor, the bill sailed to passage. The state Senate vote was 40-8, the House 141-35.

It worked beautifully to transform state government because people knew they had to get to work, even if they had a little sniffle. A lot of people will say, ‘You have to protect the civil servants.’ Who gets cut out of the picture when you protect the civil servant? The average citizen dealing with a bunch of bureaucrats.

The Georgia law ensured all state employees hired after July 1, 1996, would be at-will employees, but grandfathered in civil service protections for all of the existing employees.

The “at-will” designation means employers may fire employees without going through a long appeals process, which public sector employees rely on.

By 2012, over 88 percent of Georgia state employees were working on an at-will basis, hires and pay had actually increased, as did communication between employees and supervisors. The result of Georgia’s reform was not a decimation of the civil service, but instead, a more flexible and responsive system that adapted as the needs of the agency changed over time.

SOURCE

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

Trumping the State Department

Reining in the budget and activities of this bloated bureaucracy is essential

Scot Faulkner

President Trump’s budgetary assault on the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is long overdue.  He is forcing a rethinking that will benefit America and the world.

The State Department is one of the most bloated of federal bureaucracies.  Front line consular officers, many just starting their careers at State, actually help Americans abroad. However, there are also countless “Hallway Ambassadors” who aimlessly roam from irrelevant meeting to obscure policy forum, killing time and our tax dollars.

Legions of these taxpayer funded drones fill the State Department.  Some are reemployed retirees who travel to overseas missions conducting “inspections” to justify their additional salaries.

The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) is to the State Department what the Teacher Unions are to public education.  It exists to protect tenure and to prevent any accountability or reduction among the State Department drones.

The Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance (AVC) is a uniquely harmful part of State.  This Bureau’s main mission has been to create photo ops of treaty signings.  The arms control treaties have usually been unenforceable with sworn enemies of America.  The Bureau’s agreements with the Soviet Union undermined U.S. security.  Its bureaucrats developed elaborate procedures for justifying the minimizing or overlooking of blatant treaty violations.  They are using this same play book for the Iranian Nuclear deal.

Headquarters waste and dysfunction are just the beginning of State Department ineffectiveness.  In the mid-1980’s, I viewed State Department field operations personally while serving as Director of the U.S. Peace Corps in Malawi.

The most egregious problem was the un-American culture that permeates career Foreign Service Officers.  Except for toasting America at the July 4th Embassy party each year, being pro-American is viewed as unprofessional. Long serving Americans would advise me that rising above nationalism and acting “world wise” was the mark of a seasoned diplomat.

Not only did these U.S. foreign bureaucrats avoid Americanism, they avoided the host country.  The Embassy team members spent their business and recreational time with diplomats from the other Embassies and with European expatriates living in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city.  Their only sojourns outside the capital were to Salima, the lakeside resort, or to the Ambassador’s vacation home on the Zomba Plateau.

As Country Director, I eliminated the chauffer-driven luxury car used by my predecessor and reallocated the chauffer to other duties.  At the wheel of a Nissan Patrol, I spent the majority of my time in the field with my seventy-five volunteers.  This meant absorbing in depth knowledge of Malawi and its people.

State Department versus reality was proven many times over.  The most blatant was the 1985 fuel shortage.  Malawi was land-locked.  The Mozambique Civil War closed off its closest ports.  A problematic network of rail lines brought goods, including gasoline, to Malawi via South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia.  My volunteers told me a Zimbabwean labor dispute was going to cause a five week disruption of fuel to Malawi.  I dutifully reported this to the Embassy Team.  They scoffed, assuring me that their British friend running Mobil-Malawi was telling them no disruption would occur.  I directed my staff to begin stockpiling gasoline.

The disruption occurred.  The Embassy team kept dismissing my reports and telling themselves the disruption would be short-lived.  By week four, the Embassy motor pool was without fuel.  Staff was delivering messages via bicycle.  By week five, the Ambassador asked to purchase fuel from the Peace Corps, which had remained fully operational.

The Embassy was blind-sided on an even more important issue.  Air Malawi announced it was going to purchase a new fleet of passenger jets along with a comprehensive parts and maintenance agreement.  At this point the State Department replaced the Embassy’s Commercial Attaché with a Hispanic who could barely speak English.  Instead of sending this person to Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea, they posted him to the most Anglophile country in Africa.  He was miserable and totally ineffective.

Alternatively, the German Ambassador moved about Malawi’s 28 regions, equaling my zeal for the field.  When Boeing’s sales team arrived they were given a proper, but cool reception.  The Fokker team arrived to a hero’s welcome and the multi-million dollar deal was signed shortly thereafter.  American business lost a huge contract.

USAID has spent over $1 trillion on overseas projects since its founding in 1961.  Empty buildings and rusting tractors are silent testaments to its failures.  What funds were not diverted to corrupt government officials went for unsustainable efforts, driven more by academic theories than practicality.

State Department and USAID need a fundamental review and a day of reckoning. This is fertile territory for President Trump and Secretary Tillerson to implant business principles and common sense.

 Via email

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

Law Takes a Holiday

Victor Davis Hanson
 
In the 1934 romantic movie “Death Takes a Holiday,” Death assumes human form for three days, and the world turns chaotic.

The same thing happens when the law goes on a vacation. Rules are unenforced or politicized. Citizens quickly lose faith in the legal system. Anarchy follows — ensuring that there can be neither prosperity nor security.

The United States is descending into such as abyss, as politics now seem to govern whether existing laws are enforced.

Sociologists in the 1980s found out that when even minor infractions were ignored — such as the breaking of windows, or vendors walking into the street to hawk wares to motorists in a traffic jam — misdemeanors then spiraled into felonies as lawbreakers become emboldened.

A federal law states that the president can by proclamation “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” Yet a federal judge ruled that president Trump cannot do what the law allows in temporarily suspending immigration from countries previously singled out by the Obama administration for their laxity in vetting their emigrants.

In the logic of his 43-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson seemed to strike down the travel ban based on his own subjective opinion of a president’s supposedly incorrect attitudes and past statements.

Some 500 “sanctuary” cities and counties have decided for political reasons that federal immigration law does not fully apply within their jurisdictions. They have done so with impunity, believing that illegal immigration is a winning political issue given changing demography. In a way, they have already legally seceded from the union and provided other cities with a model of how to ignore any federal law they do not like.

The law states that foreign nationals cannot enter and permanently reside in the United States without going through a checkpoint and in most cases obtaining a legal visa or green card. But immigration law has been all but ignored. Or it was redefined as not committing additional crimes while otherwise violating immigration law. Then the law was effectively watered down further to allow entering and residing illegally if not committing “serious” crimes. Now, the adjective “serious” is being redefined as something that does not lead to too many deportations.

The logical end is no immigration law at all — and open borders.

There is a federal law that forbids the IRS from unfairly targeting private groups or individuals on the basis of their politics. Lois Lerner, an IRS director, did just that but faced no legal consequences.

Perhaps Lerner’s exemption emboldened New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to invite IRS employees via social media to unlawfully leak Donald Trump’s tax returns. Later, someone leaked Trump’s 2005 tax return to MSNBC.

There are statutes that prevent federal intelligence and investigatory agencies from leaking classified documents. No matter. For the last six months, the media has trafficked in reports that Trump is under some sort of investigation by government agencies for allegedly colluding with the Russians. That narrative is usually based on information from “unnamed sources” affiliated with the FBI, NSA or CIA. No one has been punished for such leaking.

The leakers apparently feel that prosecutors and the courts do not mind if someone’s privacy is illegally violated, as long as it is the privacy of someone they all loathe, like Donald Trump.

The logic seems also to be that we need only follow the laws that we like — and assume that law enforcement must make the necessary adjustments.

At this late date, a return to legality and respect for the law might seem extremist or revolutionary. For the federal government to demand that cities follow federal law or face cutoffs in federal funds might cause rioting.

Going after federal officials who leak classified documents to reporters would make those officials martyrs.

And to warn high-ranking IRS officials that they could likely go to prison for targeting groups based on their political beliefs might earn a prosecutor an unexpected IRS audit.

There is one common denominator in all these instances of attempted legal nullification: the liberal belief that laws should “progress” to reflect the supposedly superior political agenda of the left.

And if laws don’t progress? Then they can be safely ignored.

But when the law is what we say it is, or what we want it to be, there is no law. And when there is no law, there is not much left but something resembling Russia, Somalia or Venezuela.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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

When the Devil quotes scripture to his purposes

Jeff Jacoby writes below.  He is a fine fellow and I often quote him.  He was Anti-Trump but so were a lot of people.  So it's amusing to see a gap in his basic cultural knowledge.  He quotes Shakespeare below but seems unaware of the  Bible background that Shakespeare was referring to. It is in Luke 4:10-12, where the Devil tempts Jesus in the wilderness.  But Jeff is Jewish so a lack of familiarity with Christian scripture can readily be forgiven

"THE DEVIL can cite Scripture for his purpose," says the wealthy Antonio to his young friend Bassanio in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice."

So can the politician, he might have added. And the party activist.

When the Trump administration released an outline recently of its forthcoming budget proposals, many on the left expressed dismay. The White House wants to reduce spending on the State Department, environmental programs, arts and broadcast subsidies, and housing initiatives, while significantly increasing outlays on defense, homeland security, and veterans' health care.

Cue the Scripture-citers.

Rachel Held Evans, a liberal Christian author, took to Twitter to decry proposed cuts to the Meals on Wheels program. "There are few things the Bible is unambiguously clear about," she tweeted, "but from Hebrew Scripture to Matt. 25, care for the poor & needy is one of them."

Nicholas Kristof used his New York Times column to craft a pastiche about Jesus and "Paul of Ryan," with the former speaking familiar lines from the New Testament — "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God," "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required" — while the latter disdainfully swats those teachings away. "Oh, come on, Jesus," the Ryan character sneers, "don't go socialist on me again."

On Monday, a story from the Religious News Service was headlined: "Trump's Budget Slashes Aid To The Poor. Would Jesus Have A Problem With That?" The piece recounted the "scriptural smackdown" pitting conservative blogger Erick Erickson against liberals condemning Trump's budget scheme as religiously "immoral" and downright "evil."

On a different tack, liberal activist Jay Michaelson weighed in with a bizarre biblical defense of the National Endowment for the Arts — God's appeal to the Israelites in Exodus 35 to donate precious metals, jewels, fabrics, and spices for the construction of the Tabernacle and its vessels. "Public art projects like the Tabernacle of the Israelites," writes Michaelson, demonstrate "what our civilization stands for" and why taxes should fund it.

Debating government spending is standard fare in Washington. Sanctimony is, too. But the posturing grows a little too pious when pundits and politicos, brandishing a line from the Bible, declare that Jesus would never reduce spending on X or that God must be in favor of budget hikes for Y — and imagine that that settles the debate.

Some of these Biblical invocations are just silly. The Tabernacle described in Exodus was not a "public art project," it was religious infrastructure used for priestly sacrifices and to house the Ark of the Covenant.

More importantly, the Bible is a sacred text, not a Cliffs Notes for federal budgeteers. No one can deny that Scripture is replete with exhortations to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and be compassionate to the downtrodden. But those injunctions are personal, not political. If they constitute a moral mandate, it is for the action of private individuals guided by conscience, not for government programs created by the state and collectively imposed through the pains and penalties of law.

I would never argue that American politics should be devoid of religious influence. This has always been a nation of Bible-readers and churchgoers. "In God We Trust" is the nation's motto. God appears four times in the Declaration of Independence. His blessing is entreated in every state constitution, and in countless presidential proclamations. It is altogether fitting and proper that religion has played so prominent a role in America's great social movements, from independence to abolition to equal rights.

But the nation's deep current of religious influence does not mean that public policy can be made by pointing to Bible verses. It is reasonable to read (for example) Jesus' words in Matthew 25 — "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me" — as a reminder that the ethical test of any society is how it treats its most vulnerable members, and a call to each of us to extend a hand to those in need. It is not reasonable to claim that every faithful Christian must therefore endorse Meals on Wheels or defend public housing vouchers from budget cuts.

The temptation to quote the Bible for political purposes is bipartisan: Republicans and Democrats do it; conservatives and liberals do it. The impulse may be sincere. But flaunting a verse from Scripture to promote a political purpose ends up tarnishing the one without elevating the other.

By all means, study the Bible. Take its lessons to heart. Let those lessons guide how you live your life. Just don't confuse the word of God with a partisan political agenda.

SOURCE




Typical Leftist thuggery

They seize their right to demonstrate but want to deny it to others.  These are seriously bad people

A fight broke out on a Southern California beach on Saturday night as supporters of President Donald Trump clashed with counter-protesters who doused organizers with pepper spray.

The violence erupted when the "Make America Great Again" march of about 2,000 people at Bolsa Chica State Beach reached a group of about 30 counter-protesters.

The counter-protesters, dressed in black, created a wall to stop the rally. A masked man began spraying the irritant in the face of an organizer, said Capt. Kevin Pearsall of the California State Parks Police.

The masked counter-protester using the pepper spray attempted to flee the scene but was quickly detained by highway police.

Pearsall added that two additional male counter-protesters were arrested on suspicion of illegal use of pepper spray and a third female counter-protester was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery. Two people suffered minor injuries that didn't require medical attention, he said.

SOURCE

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

Thanks to Trump, Pruitt, Gorsuch, and Goodlatte, the Constitution Is Back in Business

America has begun the process of reclaiming the Constitution.

This week, the Senate is taking up the confirmation Judge Neil Gorsuch, one of many Trump nominees known for his dedication to constitutional government. This follows the Senate confirmation of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA — a federal agency he has sued not once, not twice, but fourteen times.

Pruitt’s appointment could not come at a better time. During the past eight years, the Obama administration has passed well over 25,000 regulations. These regulations cost taxpayers a whopping $890 billion, or about $15,000 a household. And of that $890 billion, the EPA is responsible for $344 billion — more than any other agency.

This kind of power goes directly against the framers’ original intent. These regulations are not openly promulgated on the floor of Congress by elected legislators who serve a set term. Instead, they are quietly passed by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.

Not only do they affect matters at the federal level, but they also impact states, regions and even other countries. When Obama signed the Paris Agreement last year, he did so entirely of his own accord and without the necessary ratification in the Senate. Shocking as this is, it’s only a symptom of the ongoing erosion of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Administrator Pruitt has spent his career fighting against this erosion. He created a “federalism unit” in Oklahoma to defend the states against federal overreach and sued the federal government over the enactment of Obamacare. His confirmation is a strong first step towards restoring the vision of the Founding Fathers — but it is only a first step. If the Constitution is to be revitalized, the executive agencies must continue to concede their excess power and the other branches must step up and claim what is constitutionally theirs.

Since his inauguration, President Trump has done just that. At the end of January, he signed an executive order that directs the agencies to repeal two regulations for every new one they pass. The order also prohibits the agencies from spending any more money this year on regulations unless they receive a direct mandate to do so from Congress or approval from the Office of Management and Budget. Such radical restrictions on regulation would have devastated Obama’s cabinet, but leaders like Pruitt will use them to effect change in a conscientious and constitutional way.

This week’s confirmation hearings mark Trump’s most significant step in restoring the Constitution: his selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court seat left empty after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last year. Many have noted the similarities between the two. By and large, they both favor a strict and literalist interpretation of the Constitution. But Gorsuch takes it one step further than Scalia did: he openly opposes Chevron deference.

Chevron deference is the reason that the EPA has the kind of power that it does and could spend the kind of money it did. It is the result of a 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron USA v. the National Resources Defense Council. The court, in a remarkably self-defeating decision, ruled that the courts should defer to an agency’s interpretation of legislation or statutes. The result was that agencies were free to interpret any vagueness or ambiguity in legislation as they saw fit — without review from the courts.

Gorsuch opposes Chevron deference because of its blatant violation of the separation of powers. He has made no bones about his position: in his opinion in Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, when he argued, “There’s an elephant in the room with us today… Chevron… permit(s) executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design. Maybe the time has come to face the behemoth.”

The time has indeed come to face the behemoth — if the legislative branch can work up the courage to challenge it. The Senate has already shown its mettle in confirming Pruitt, another avowed enemy of agency overreach, to lead the most overreaching agency of all. Congress at large will have two more opportunities to confront Chevron in the months to come. The first is on March 20, when Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings will begin. Speedily confirming him will be another step towards regaining the power lost to the federal agencies in Chevron.

The second opportunity lies in a piece of legislation currently sitting on the floor of Congress. Introduced by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the Regulatory Accountability Act combines several pieces of previously passed legislation to roll back the power of the agencies. It forces agencies to adopt the least expensive rule and to publish electronically all the evidence (transcripts, exhibits, etc.) used in crafting a rule. It demands that agencies research and report on the effect their regulations will have on small businesses, which are often sunk before they start by the exorbitant legal fees necessary to deal with federal regulations. But most importantly, it overturns Chevron deference and restores the separation of powers that makes up the beating heart of our republic.

In the 1940s, with his artery-clogging alphabet soup of agencies, Franklin Delano Roosevelt expanded the size and scope of the federal government more than any other 20th century president. But he was aware of the health risks, and worried “that the practice of creating independent regulatory commissions, who perform administrative work in addition to judicial work, threatens to develop a ‘fourth branch’ of Government for which there is no sanction in the Constitution.”

The result was the Administrative Procedure Act, a 1946 piece of legislation that attempted to keep the agencies in check via judicial review. Whatever the act attempted to do has been undone by years of executive overreach that cripples American companies and crushes American citizens.

But no more. President Trump’s executive order explicitly mentioned the Administrative Procedures Act and commands the agencies to abide by it as they begin to slash old regulations. Between Trump’s surrender of executive power, Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court, and Congress’ passage of the Regulatory Accountability Act, the U.S. has the chance to return to the kind of government the founders imagined — namely, a three-branch government that genuinely promotes the general welfare without risking the blessings of liberties either for ourselves or for our posterity.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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

Teetotalling is bad for you

That's the basic conclusion of the research below. The findings are in fact fairly conventional.  Moderate drinkers get fewer strokes and heart attacks than either teetotallers or heavy drinkers.  The good old Golden Mean again.  All the associations were quite weak in absolute terms but are fairly high in the context of what one generally finds in medical research.  It is also interesting that the various subtypes of cardiovascular disease all seem to be alcohol influenced.  So the conclusion embodied in my heading above is reasonably safe.

What's amazing is the spin that "New Scientist" put on the findings.  Their conclusion is:

“This study suggests that sticking within alcohol guidelines may actually lower your risk of some heart conditions,” says Tracy Parker, of charity the British Heart Foundation, who was not involved in the study. “But it’s important to remember that the risks of drinking alcohol far outweigh any possible benefits. These findings are certainly no reason to start drinking alcohol if you don’t already.”

Which is actually the reverse of what the study found.  It's just do-gooder lying.  But when is lying doing good?  Far from "the risks of drinking alcohol outweighing any possible benefits", alcohol actually confers the benefit of helping you to live longer!  There were fewer "unheralded coronary deaths" [fatal heart attacks] among moderate drinkers.   That's a pretty good benefit.  The British Heart Foundation should fire the lying Tracy Parker.  She is a preacher of some Puritanical ideology, not a competent science commentator


Association between clinically recorded alcohol consumption and initial presentation of 12 cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study using linked health records

Steven Bell et al.

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the association between alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease at higher resolution by examining the initial lifetime presentation of 12 cardiac, cerebrovascular, abdominal, or peripheral vascular diseases among five categories of consumption.

Design: Population based cohort study of linked electronic health records covering primary care, hospital admissions, and mortality in 1997-2010 (median follow-up six years).

Setting: CALIBER (ClinicAl research using LInked Bespoke studies and Electronic health Records).

Participants: 1 937 360 adults (51% women), aged ≥30 who were free from cardiovascular disease at baseline.

Main outcome measures: 12 common symptomatic manifestations of cardiovascular disease, including chronic stable angina, unstable angina, acute myocardial infarction, unheralded coronary heart disease death, heart failure, sudden coronary death/cardiac arrest, transient ischaemic attack, ischaemic stroke, intracerebral and subarachnoid haemorrhage, peripheral arterial disease, and abdominal aortic aneurysm.

Results: 114 859 individuals received an incident cardiovascular diagnosis during follow-up. Non-drinking was associated with an increased risk of unstable angina (hazard ratio 1.33, 95% confidence interval 1.21 to 1.45), myocardial infarction (1.32, 1.24 to1.41), unheralded coronary death (1.56, 1.38 to 1.76), heart failure (1.24, 1.11 to 1.38), ischaemic stroke (1.12, 1.01 to 1.24), peripheral arterial disease (1.22, 1.13 to 1.32), and abdominal aortic aneurysm (1.32, 1.17 to 1.49) compared with moderate drinking (consumption within contemporaneous UK weekly/daily guidelines of 21/3 and 14/2 units for men and women, respectively). Heavy drinking (exceeding guidelines) conferred an increased risk of presenting with unheralded coronary death (1.21, 1.08 to 1.35), heart failure (1.22, 1.08 to 1.37), cardiac arrest (1.50, 1.26 to 1.77), transient ischaemic attack (1.11, 1.02 to 1.37), ischaemic stroke (1.33, 1.09 to 1.63), intracerebral haemorrhage (1.37, 1.16 to 1.62), and peripheral arterial disease (1.35; 1.23 to 1.48), but a lower risk of myocardial infarction (0.88, 0.79 to 1.00) or stable angina (0.93, 0.86 to 1.00).

Conclusions: Heterogeneous associations exist between level of alcohol consumption and the initial presentation of cardiovascular diseases. This has implications for counselling patients, public health communication, and clinical research, suggesting a more nuanced approach to the role of alcohol in prevention of cardiovascular disease is necessary.

BMJ 2017;356:j909

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

Time to Repeal the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

America is the only major country in the world to have an extraterritorial tax system, demanding its expatriate citizens pay tax on their foreign earnings. For many years this rule was obeyed more in the breach than the observance, but in 2010 the Congress, looking for new sources of revenue to shore up America’s teetering finances, passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act – FATCA. This law has empowered the IRS to demand extraordinary compliance from expats and those who provide banking services for them, at home and abroad, to demonstrate their incomes and pay taxes on them.

The consequences have been devastating. Families have been broken up, passports cancelled, citizenships have been revoked, and dictators have been given a glimpse into dissidents’ finances. Expat Americans have found it increasingly difficult to find anyone willing to offer them banking services. FATCA amounts to a fine levied by the U.S. on any of its citizens who have the temerity to live abroad.

It is time for the law to go, as a simple matter of justice. That’s why I signed this coalition letter along with 22 other leaders from think tanks, taxpayer groups, and grassroots organizations, calling for the repeal of FATCA. As the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which organized the letter, says:

The letter makes 5 key points: 1) FATCA fails in its primary goal to catch wealthy tax cheats; 2) It ensnares innocent Americans with excessive reporting requirements and draconian penalties for the slightest oversights; 3) It makes U.S. citizens living and working abroad toxic assets in the eyes of both financial institutions and employers; 4) Its compliance costs far outstrip the revenue it collects; and 5) It encourages other nations and international organizations to pursue aggressive tax grabs that threaten American businesses and the global economy.

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute said, FATCA may be “the worst provision in the entire tax code.” He’s right. Moreover, if other governments start thinking FATCA is a good idea, we could start seeing large numbers of people in this nation of immigrants taxed by foreign powers. Extraterritoriality was a bad idea to begin with. It should end before it gets any worse.

SOURCE

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

Ted Cruz Exposes Dem Hypocrisy Over Criticizing Federal Judges

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made an interesting observation on day three of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearings. The Democrats, he said, have no right to criticize President Trump for his negative treatment of U.S. federal judges who defy his executive orders, when they have done nothing but impugn Judge Gorsuch’s integrity all week.

The senator offered an abbreviated list of the Democrats’ smear campaign against the judge.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Cruz recalled, told Gorsuch he has a tendency to “choose corporate interests over people.”

He then reminded Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) that he told Gorsuch he was guilty of "rejecting families" and failing to defend their freedoms.

Other Democrats, I would add, have been trying to corner the judge into revealing his personal opinions on controversial issues like abortion and torture, despite his reiterating how inappropriate that would be to future litigants.

Later on, Sen. Ben. Sasse (R-NE) said there is a “danger in not condemning reckless attacks” considering most Americans don’t watch these hearings and will only see sensational headlines once the Senate Judiciary holds the vote on Gorsuch.

SOURCE

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

This reckless Russia-baiting must stop

And so this weekend, with the first deployment to Estonia of a prospective 800 UK troops, the NATO plan to ‘project… stability’ against Russia, agreed upon at a summit last July, continues to move up a gear. In total, NATO members will soon have deployed four battalions, consisting of nearly 4,000 troops, in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – that is, right along Russia’s western borders. This will be supplemented by the provision of hi-tech weaponry, vehicles and aircraft, and the construction in Romania and Poland of missile-defence systems.

The narrative justifying this display of military might has been repeated to thought-nullifying effect. UK defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon was the latest to rehearse this deadeningly familiar story, as he explained that the aim of the NATO plans is to ‘deter [Russian] aggression’. After all, that’s what Western political and media elites seem to think Russia is: an aggressor. We know this because that’s what we are constantly being told: that Russia is now in the grip of the imperialist delusions of Mad Vlad Putin; that it wants, in the words of US defence secretary James Mattis, to break the postwar global order; that it will stop at nothing to order the world according to Putin’s grand designs.

That’s why Russia supposedly semi-rigged the US elections, why it bombed Syria into Russian line, why it invaded Ukraine. Because it wants to dominate its enemies, and where its desire exceed its means, undermine and disorient them. As UK defence chief Mike Penning told parliament in October, it’s time ‘to look back to the old foe’ and defend ourselves.

Yet to see Russia as the aggressor, and the NATO-fronted West and its allies as the picked-upon, is a distortion of historical reality. For every cruise missile test by the Russians, there has been a ‘military training exercise’ by NATO – such as that in June, when NATO members embarked on the largest movement of foreign allied troops in Poland since the Second World War. For every annexation of former Russian territory in Ukraine, there has been a Western-backed coup to install a pro-EU premier. For every heavily highlighted sign of Russian aggression, there has been an accompanying, obscured, misrepresented act of Western aggression to prompt it.

In fact, since the end of the actual Cold War, the West, with NATO its institutional and organisational expression, has seemingly been set on antagonising Russia. Not deliberately, exactly, but almost as a byproduct of the West’s post-Cold War disorientation, its want of purpose – a want writ large in NATO itself, a remnant of the Cold War that has lived on in search of an enemy to justify its mission. And where better to look for this enemy than towards the ‘old foe’, as Penning tellingly called Russia.

That’s why after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and despite promises to the contrary, NATO actually became more pro-active, more expansionist, extending its membership eastwards towards the Russian border, taking in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. It was reaching out for a point, enemies against whom it could define itself. As then US president Bill Clinton insisted in 1997, in almost existential terms: ‘The bottom line is clear: expanding NATO will enhance our security. It is the right thing to do.’ Then, following the NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the former Soviet satellite states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were admitted in 2004, followed by Croatia and Albania in 2009. A 2012 NATO strategy statement captures well its expansionist logic: ‘[NATO’s] goal of a Europe whole and free, and sharing common values, would be best served by the eventual integration of all European countries that so desire into Euro-Atlantic structures.’

In the West of course, NATO’s expansion is seen as benign and right. Every intervention in territories picked almost at random, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, Iraq to Libya, is presented and perceived as an intervention in the service of the good, the ethical (no matter the often terrible consequences). And every new member admitted, almost entirely from the old Eastern Bloc, is presented and perceived as an extension of peace and security. But it’s not difficult to see that from the perspective of Russia, the perspective of the Kremlin, NATO’s wars, its expansionism, might be seen as at least something approaching an act of aggression.

And now, incredibly, NATO is amassing troops on the Russian border. So while Fallon et al might try to paint Russia as the aggressor here, it doesn’t take an FSB agent to see a rather less West-flattering counter-narrative. This is why, following the announcement of NATO’s plans to deploy troops to its eastern frontier states, former Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, a man well-versed in old-school Cold War diplomacy, declared: ‘[NATO’s rhetoric] screams of an intention practically to declare war on Russia. They only talk about defence, but in fact they are preparing an offensive.’

Yes, Russia has made its own moves. It did annex Crimea in the aftermath of the EU-backed, de facto coup in Ukraine in 2014. It is involved in the rebel-controlled eastern region of Ukraine. And Russian armed forces did help Assad’s Syrian regime roll back ISIS at great civilian cost. But these actions are not those of a power-crazed military aggressor — they’re those of a nation state with relatively clear strategic interests, chief among them being the protection of its borders, and beyond that, preserving regional stability. Russia is not so much driving conflicts as it is responding to them – responding to the West’s unravelling of the Middle East, responding to NATO and the EU’s various entreaties to the Baltic states, and responding, above all, to the transformation of Ukraine from a long-term ally into a EU-ified and NATO-encouraged antagonist.

Yet if NATO’s reckless sabre-rattling on the ground continues, Russia might really become what its Western antagonists presently only imagine it to be: a clear and present danger to the West.

SOURCE

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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