COMPASSION AND POLITICS

Nathan J. Robinson, a leftist writer with an apparently substantial educational background (He quotes Schopenhauer) has a recent article under the heading above.  I offer below some excerpts from it.  He comes across as someone who is genuinely concerned about the poor.  He also writes that many prominent Democrats don't give a fig for the poor and in fact look down on the poor.  And he is right to say that this is the opposite of the historic Leftist claim.

It is a article worth reading in full but, like most Leftist writing, leaves out half the story.  So maybe I should briefly allude to some of that other half.

He appears to think that Leftist elitism is a new thing. He seems to see it as something that came into the light only with the advent of Trump. That is hilariously wrong. Leftism has always been elitist. Karl Marx, for instance, was born into a middle class German Jewish family and was homeschooled by his father, the gentlemanly and rather admirable Heinrich Marx. He later studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. He was fascinated by the ponderous writings of the near-incomprehensible German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, regarded by many as the founder of modern Leftism. Marx was also a parasite, living off the generosity of his rich businessman admirer, Friedrich Engels. So Marx was not a man of the people in any sense.

The Bolsheviks too were overwhelmingly middle class.  And the prominent Leftists in prewar Britain were almost entirely prominent literary and intellectual figures, such as the Bloomsberries, the Webbs, J.M. Keynes, H.G. Wells, G.B. Shaw, Bertrand Russell etc.  They were also -- most amusingly but also most revealingly -- great believers in eugenics.  And that's as elitist as you can get: Wipe out the dummies!

And elitism on the American Left is not new to the era of Trump.  Expressions of disdain for the masses were equally prominent at the onset of the G.W. Bush presidency in 2004.  I in fact set up a blog to preserve such expressions for posterity.  Google has however taken most of that blog down for reasons unknown to me.  Never fear, however!  I have kept exact copies of all the posts Google has censored and have now uploaded them to a new site here.  So the whole gruesome episode is once again online for all to see.

Something else that comrade Robinson fails to remember is that G.W. Bush ran on a platform of "compassionate conservatism".  It may have been no more sincere than similar protestations from Leftists but it is the platform he ran on and which got him elected.  And if it is deeds not words that count, who was it who sent in the troops to break the racial segregation maintained by the Southern Democrats?  It was Ike, a Republican President.  And who was it that enlisted Chappaquiddick Ted to help set up the "No child left behind" attempt to improve black educational outcomes?  It was G.W. Bush.  The Republican record on helping the underdog is at least as good as the Democrat record.  I won't mention Woodrow Wilson's segregationist policies or FDR's antisemitism.

So comrade Robinson is pissing into the wind if he thinks it is possible for the Left to become genuinely egalitarian and compassionate.  Elitism is an integral part of what they are.  See here for more details of that. Leftists are as compassionate as their most famous exponents: Robespierre, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot


Instead of heeding suggestions that greater amounts of empathy for working-class Trump constituencies might make Democrats less likely to lose these people’s votes, lately some liberals have doubled down. As Clio Chang pointed out recently in Jacobin, figures including Paul Krugman (“I try to be charitable, but when you read about Trump voters now worried about losing Obamacare it’s kind of hard”) and Markos Moulitsas (“Be happy for coal miners losing their health insurance; they’re getting exactly what they voted for”) have reacted to stories about hardships and deprivation in Trump-leaning communities with unqualified disdain. Ex-New York Times theater critic Frank Rich recently declared he had “no sympathy for the hillbilly,” and suggested that:

“Liberals looking for a way to empathize with conservatives should endorse the core conservative belief in the importance of personal responsibility. Let Trump’s white working-class base take responsibility for its own votes — or in some cases failure to vote — and live with the election’s consequences… Let them reap the consequences for voting against their own interests.”

This kind of thinking isn’t limited to media commentators. It seems to be a strand in liberal thinking more broadly. Matthew Stoller collected a series of Huffington Post comments on an article about poor whites dying from ill-health and opiate addiction:

    “Sorry, not sorry. These people are not worthy of any sympathy. They have run around for decades bitching about poor minorities not “working hard enough,” or that their situation is “their own fault.” Well guess what? It’s not so great when it’s you now, is it? Bunch of deplorables, and if they die quicker than the rest of us that just means the country will be better off in the long run.”

    “Karma is a bitch and if these people choose to continue to vote Republican and try to deny other [sic] from attaining the American dream, they deserve no better than what they are getting!”

    “I for one have little sympathy for these despairing whites. If they can’t compete against people of color when everything has been rigged in their favor, then there’s really no help for them. Trump and his G(r)OPers will do little to elevate their lot. If anything, these poor whites will be hired to dig grave pits and assemble their own coffins.”

SOURCE

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Today’s populist movements are not the first to challenge parasitic oligarchies

Their grip needs to be broken in order for their country to flourish, says The Rt. Hon, the Viscount Ridley

I am writing this from the Netherlands, where one of the most gruesome paintings in the Rijksmuseum, by Jan de Baen, depicts the eviscerated bodies of the de Witt brothers, hanging upside down after the mob had killed them and then roasted and eaten their livers in 1672. It is an episode mentioned in a new book published this week by Douglas Carswell, a British MP, called Rebel, in which he wrestles with an eternal dilemma: why populist revolutions sometimes bring tyranny.

The republics of Rome, Venice and the Netherlands all experienced the same thing: an inept populist revolt against the growing power of an oligarchy — by Tiberius Gracchus, Bajamonte Tiepolo and Johan de Witt respectively — followed by a counter-revolution that resulted in an even worse oligarchy that throttled prosperity, in the form of Sulla, the Council of Ten and William of Orange respectively. The coups that killed the French and Russian revolutions were similar, but more about new forms of tyranny than returns to old ones.

Carswell sees parallels in today’s populism. Despite a hundred commentators saying so, Donald Trump is not like Nero or Hitler, but he may be like Gracchus (“a cross between Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump”): an anti-oligarch insurgent who soon makes oligarchy look preferable. After Trump, Americans may fall back in love with the bicoastal elite. Faced with Le Pen, many French will feel that énarques are not so bad after all. Prime Minister Farage would have made us appreciate PPE graduates again.

It is the Dutch parallel that is perhaps most instructive. Mr Trump has seen off a Bush and a Clinton, just as Johan de Witt tried to prevent the stadtholder of the Netherlands becoming a hereditary position, owned by the House of Orange. The similarities perhaps end there. De Witt was a cultured doctor of law with a fascination for Roman history who believed in free trade, free speech and republicanism. Yet in the end he ushered in monarchy, bankruptcy and decline.

That decline was not, Carswell says, because the Dutch lost their entrepreneurial spirit, as historians sometimes lazily assert, but because the Orangist elite became closed and parasitical, living off the spoils of conquest and investing their regressively raised taxes in bonds issued by overborrowed government, rather than in ships and shops. By 1713, 70 per cent of tax revenue went on servicing debt. “A free-wheeling republic had become a restrictionist, rentier state,” as Carswell puts it.

There is a lesson here. Europe as a whole is heading down the same path: slow growth and far too many people living off redistribution rather than enterprise — in private, public and voluntary sectors. The goose that always lays the golden eggs of prosperity is the habit of exchange and specialisation: people doing what they are good at, and getting better at it with innovation, while swapping the results freely with others through commerce. (Disclosure: here Carswell draws on my own recent books to buttress his case, and he showed me the text before publication.)

Carswell reminds us that “every society that ever managed to sustain intensive economic growth did so by staying close to the free-exchange end of the spectrum”. Like a rainforest ecosystem, commerce is a self-organising system that results in spontaneous order and complexity. For instance, nobody has planned or is in charge of the job of feeding ten million people for lunch in London today, but this incredibly complex task will be achieved smoothly.

Yet history shows that free exchange is constantly at risk of being infected and captured by parasites and predators who live off productive people through taxes, tithes, rents, slavery, subsidy, war and theft. This is what killed the goose in ancient Greece and Rome, in Renaissance Italy and Holland’s golden age. From time to time anti-oligarch insurgents are needed to purge the parasites, expel the predators and free the economy from their burden.

Now, says Carswell, is such a time. Forget the Ukip debacle: he is as genuine a rebel as parliament contains, who wants to “rein back the emerging oligarchy”. One of the problems with most of the new radicals, whether a Trump, a Farage, a Wilders or a Le Pen, is that they seem to be in thrall to the myth of the big (wo)man, who will lead the people to the promised land. Carswell wants to challenge the myth of the Big Man who knows everything. Instead he would allow the organisation of society along bottom-up lines.

He would end the power of central bank bureaucrats, allowing customers to decide banks’ reserve ratios by choosing among different options with different risks and rewards.

In place of debased fiat currencies, he would have self-regulating currencies controlled by competition, not by officials, along the lines of Bitcoin. He would have corporations regulated by those who own them and those who buy from them, rather than by easily lobbied crony regulators and subsidy providers. He would have public services controlled by members of the public.

All easier said than done, of course. And in politics he would undermine the power and privilege of the cartel of the main political parties with their public subsidies, access to patronage and ability to gerrymander constituencies to preserve safe seats: “In Clacton, I have twice taken on and defeated the established parties by doing for myself, often on a laptop, what political parties spend millions failing to do well.” It is now possible to do politics without party. Trump, Bernie Sanders and Emmanuel Macron all ran almost independently of their parties.

Carswell is right that the left does not get this. He cheered when Corbyn was elected, but says that radicals on the left do not understand how free exchange has elevated the human condition or the way that redistribution ultimately sustains oligarchy. We end up with the spectacle of left-wing activists such as Owen Jones and Paul Mason campaigning alongside Goldman Sachs and Christine Lagarde on behalf of the oligarchs of Brussels.

You might ask what a low-grade oligarch like me is doing endorsing this insurgent philosophy against my interests. The truth is I spend most of my time exchanging prose for profit, or speaking up in parliament for innovation and free exchange, and against cronyism and subsidy, usually ineffectively.

So when the revolution comes, metaphorically at least, I will join Douglas at the barricades.

SOURCE

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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)

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Hate-filled DNC Chairman Perez Doesn't Share American Values

"Republicans don't give a s**t" about you" - DNC Chairman Tom Perez, addressing attendees at a rally

Is this what public discourse has come to? The head of one of the two major parties uses potty mouthed language in public...and then goes on to say he doesn't care what people think about what he said.  Charming, isn't he...

Of course, we shouldn't be surprised...Perez was Obama's labor secretary. Anyone who worked for someone as virulently opposed to all of America's founding ideals and way of life as Barack Obama is bound to be infected with the same Alinksy inspired communist drivel.

Perez seems to be lacking when it comes to facts in general. In addition to his other "colorful" remarks, the DNC head claimed that "Donald Trump, you don't stand for our values."

Whose values? Those of Perez and the left wing loons that form the largest part of the Democrat party? Those values?

People may question how sincere President Trump is regarding his campaign platform, but the policies he ran on are America's values.

America First means having fair trade that helps keep and expand American jobs for American workers. Does Mr. Perez disagree with helping to expand job opportunities for American citizens?

America First means keeping out people who don't belong here, thereby preserving jobs for Americans. It also means to stop picking the pockets of American taxpayers who have been forced to support the cost of keeping up those who are here illegally. Mr. Perez apparently finds that not to be a value he shares with the majority of Americans, who do support Trump's policies.

America First also means keeping our people safe from those who mean us harm. Perez doesn't share that value either, as he apparently thinks the more potential jihadists flooding into the country, the better.

Actually Mr. Perez, it's a lot more than just "Republicans" or "Trump" who don't "share your values".

Donald Trump won the votes of millions of people who aren't "Republicans". They were independents, moderates, working class and yes, a lot of disaffected Democrats who like Reagan, said many years ago, "I didn't leave the Democrat Party, they left me".

While your party has sold out to a myriad of special interests and engaged in identity politics for the sake of getting votes, you left the middle class behind.

Because of that, those middle class "deplorables" find the current Democrat Party deplorable...That's why your party lost all of those rust belt states that you took for granted of all these years.

Now you have the nerve to open up that potty mouth of yours and insult the people who said enough of class warfare and the divisive Democrat Party.

You're right, we don't share "your values", because your values are rooted in a very deep anti-American hatred. Your values represent destroying jobs for Americans. Your values represent destroying the rights of Christians to worship and exercise their faith freely as outlined in the first amendment of that document that you so despise.

Your values mean a never ending cycle of poverty for the inner cities with continued high unemployment and crime in black communities, because you'd rather buy their votes with welfare schemes than empowering small businesses.

Your values mean attacking law enforcement and making those communities even less safe as a result.

I could go on, but the fact is you're right about one thing - we don't share your "values". What you call values are not values at all...they are nothing more than a not so subtle attempt to take down this country.

No Mr. Perez, we don't share your "values", and we never will.

SOURCE

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Another poisonous bureaucracy

What happens when a reckless, unaccountable arm of the administrative state collides head-on with a Congressional committee demanding answers for constituents who have been harassed, extorted, or ignored for more than five years?

In the case of yesterday’s appearance by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray before the House Financial Services Committee, that would be a call for his dismissal. Surrounded by a cadre of green t-shirt wearing “consumer advocates,” Cordray was greeted by Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) with this statement:

“Under Dodd-Frank, you can be removed for cause. Either way, I believe the President is clearly justified in dismissing you and I call upon the President — yet again — to do just that, and to do it immediately.”

Harsh? Maybe. Undeserved? Consider Chairman Hensarling’s succinctly stated case against the CFPB:

“[U]nder Mr. Cordray’s leadership, the CFPB has shown an utter disregard for protecting markets and has made credit more expensive and less available in many instances; this is particularly true for low and moderate income Americans. What is also clear is that under Mr. Cordray’s leadership, the CFPB has acted unlawfully, routinely denied market participants due process and abused its powers.”

If the charges against the CFPB had ended there, Chairman Hensarling would have had enough reason for calling the agency and Cordray out on the carpet. But the CFPB has been tagged with a laundry list of other shady practices, including race and sex discrimination, political favoritism, the targeting of individuals, and extravagant advertising.

Of even greater concern is the CFPB’s total lack of accountability. Created by the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB’s only oversight requirement is to appear and report twice annually before the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees.  Its funding comes from the Federal Reserve System, not Congress; therefore, it is considered “off-budget” and not constrained by the Congressional appropriations process. The CFPB is run by a single director, who does not report to the President and can only be removed for “good cause.” Recently, a federal appeals panel found this structure to be unconstitutional, calling the unelected CFPB director “the single most powerful official in Washington,” aside from the duly elected President.

This absence of agency accountability, combined with the CFPB’s unprecedented thumbing of its nose to oversight inquiries, reinforced an adversarial environment for the hearing.  Knowing that their opportunities to question Mr. Cordray were few and far between, committee members gave the CFPB director their best shots.  Sadly, committee members had more questions than Cordray had answers. Here are a few highlights.

Prepaid Cards

In October 2016, the CFPB issued a 1,689-page rule, regulating the issuance of prepaid cards, which have garnered popularity due to rising checking account fees and minimum balance requirements. Opponents of the rule say it endangers providers of these cards and the nearly 68 million Americans who use these products. Congressional threats pressured the CFPB to delay implementation of the rule. At the hearing, Rep. Roger Williams (R-FL) stated his intention to pursue legislation introduced by him and Senator David Perdue (R-GA) to use the Congressional Review Act to rescind the rule.

Small Dollar Lending

Last summer, the CFPB proposed a far-reaching rule regulating small dollar, or “payday” lending practices. Under questioning from Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), Cordray mentioned that the CFPB had received more than a million public comments to the rule. But he passed on answering Luetkemeyer’s questions about alternatives for small-dollar loan users if the regulations effectively ban the product. Nor did Cordray respond to questions about when to expect a final rule, despite the public comment period ending six months ago.

International Remittances

Under questioning from Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), Cordray stated that the CFPB could not exempt credit unions from its regulations, in spite of the fact that CFPB’s burdensome rulemaking has forced credit unions on military bases to stop offering remittance products to American military personnel. Cordray made his assertion, despite the disagreement of Barr and other committee members, including Democrats.The CFPB continues to review this regulation.

Questions were also directed at Cordray regarding potential law breaking by the CFPB during the issuance of indirect auto lending regulations and rules adversely affecting the manufactured housing industry. Throughout the hearing, Cordray hemmed, hawed, and otherwise neglected to give answers.

Congress is unlikely to put up much longer with the dilatory tactics of the CFPB to explain its heavy-handed and abusive “consumer protection” tactics. Last year, Chairman Hensarling offered “The Financial CHOICE Act,” which would overhaul the Dodd-Frank Act, severely rein in the CFPB, and build in greater accountability safeguards for the agency and its director.  With Hensarling preparingto introduce a 2.0 version of the Financial CHOICE Act this year and the possibility that President Trump could remove Cordray from his perch of power, the director may have to come up with some answers — while he still can.

SOURCE

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She Never Joined a Union. But Union Fees Got Deducted From Her Paycheck

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Patricia Johansen has worked as a home caregiver for her two special-needs grandchildren for about 10 years.

Since she never agreed to join the union that represents such Medicaid-eligible caregivers in Minnesota, Johansen was surprised to discover that union dues had been deducted from her benefit check for about four months.

In an affidavit, the Fergus Falls resident says she is convinced the union, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, forged her signature so it could start deducting the dues.

Johansen’s story is one reason a state lawmaker is scheduling a hearing where she expects the head of the state’s labor relations agency, a political appointee of Gov. Mark Dayton, to explain how SEIU Healthcare Minnesota won a unionization election—and why it should continue to represent the home caregivers.

State Rep. Marion O’Neill, chairman of the Subcommittee on Employee Relations, told The Daily Signal that she wants the Dayton appointee to appear before the joint panel of the Minnesota House and Senate to address evidence of “fraudulent signatures, nonexistent voters, and ballot tampering” in a 2014 unionization election.

Johansen’s experience is one such discrepancy.

“We are going to have a full, robust hearing on how this process happened and have the personal care assistants come forward to talk about their experiences, and to talk about how it came to be that union dues were taken out of their paycheck without their knowledge or permission,” O’Neill, a Republican from Buffalo, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

The SEIU affiliate collects $4 million to $5 million in annual dues from the Medicaid benefits paid to what Minnesota calls personal care assistants, a lawyer representing them estimates.

The state government considers residents who care for chronically ill or disabled relatives at home to be personal care assistants who are able to receive Medicaid benefits for providing that care.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, a relatively small number of Minnesota’s 27,000 eligible personal care assistants voted in favor of an affiliate of Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, becoming their representative in collective bargaining.

Now personal care assistants such as Johansen have banded together in an effort to set a new election to decertify SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, in part because of what their lawyers describe as questionable tactics and the evidence of fraud.

The Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services, a state agency that describes itself as promoting “stable and constructive labor-management relations,” has denied the caregivers’ petition for a new election.

O’Neill wants Commissioner Josh Tilsen, appointed in 2011 by Dayton, a Democrat, to lead the bureau, to explain its pro-SEIU actions so far.

More HERE

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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)

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An important victory



The media hopes it goes away unnoticed   ....  Another win for Trump, another loss for Chuck Schumer, the Libtards, and the media that said Trump couldn't get Gorsuch through the Senate.  But, he did, didn't he?

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Russia! Russia! Russia! from the Left -- A frantic attempt to cover up for the real crooks -- in the Obama administration.

And judging by his increased military preparations, the fact-free hysteria has caused concern to Vladimir Vladimirovich.  That most of the loud voices in America seem to be both insane and hostile must bother him.  He must wonder whether Trump can override it

BY: ANN COULTER

The Susan Rice bombshell at least explains why the Democrats won’t stop babbling about Russia. They need a false flag to justify using national intelligence agencies to snoop on the Trump team.

Every serious person who has tried to locate any evidence that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election — even Trump-haters at the New York Review of Books and Rolling Stone magazine — has come away empty-handed and angry. We keep getting bald assertions, unadorned with anything resembling a fact.

But for now, let’s just consider the raw plausibility of the story.

The fact-less claim is that (1) the Russians wanted Donald Trump to win; and (2) They thought they could help him win by releasing purloined emails from the Democratic National Committee showing that the Democrats were conspiring against Hillary Clinton’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.

First, why on earth would Russia prefer a loose cannon, untested president like Trump to an utterly corrupt politician, who’d already shown she could be bought? The more corrupt you think Russia is, the more Putin ought to love Hillary as president.

The Russians knew Hillary was a joke from her ridiculous “reset” button as secretary of state. They proceeded to acquire 20 percent of America’s uranium production, under Hillary’s careful management — in exchange for a half-million-dollar speaking engagement for her husband and millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation.

More HERE

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Russia! Russia! Russia! no more?

Strike on Syria is Trump's most popular move yet -- Approval from around the world

One president blinked, the other didn’t. When Bashar al-Assad crossed Barack Obama’s famous red line by using chemical weapons against his own people, nothing happened to him. When he did it on Donald Trump’s watch, he got hit with 59 Tomahawk missiles.

The Syrians are outraged at Trump’s actions; so are the ­Iranians; so are the Russians.

All of this might be good for Trump politically and in defining the character of his still inchoate presidency.

This US missile strike will have real effects — it destroyed a ­Syrian air force base — but it is unlikely to change the underlying strategic dynamics in Syria.

Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have been at pains to say this does not represent a basic change of Syria policy from the US. The missile strike was a one-off — as Malcolm Turnbull puts it, a calibrated and ­proportionate response to a war crime.

It has three narrow purposes: to punish the Assad regime for using chemical weapons; to show Assad that such actions will have costs; and to deter him from doing such things in the future.  The missile strike has a very good chance of achieving all three of those aims.

It also has wider strategic ­consequences. It shows bad actors everywhere that for all his domestic troubles, Trump remains a dan­gerous President to cross.

Trump has appointed three generals to his cabinet. He loves the US military and plans to strengthen it considerably.

He is not indifferent to risk; certainly the generals around him will have all the characteristic military caution about unnecessary military action, but nor is he scared to exercise the military option.

The political success of this ­operation lies in its limited, proportionate nature.

Trump is not committing the US to any follow-up action, still less to large numbers of US boots on the ground and a central role in shaping Syria politically. He has switched from a few weeks ago believing that the identity of the ­Syrian leader was a matter of indifference to the US to saying now that Assad should go.

This is a real setback for the Syrian dictator who, despite the savagery of his behaviour throughout the civil war, had won a kind of grudging acceptance from realists in governments around the world.

Increasingly they had come to recognise that Assad could not be ousted while he had Russian and Iranian support. More than that, they were terrified of what might come after Assad.

The biggest risk in the missile strike was that it might unintentionally kill Russians and provoke some kind of hot conflict between Russian and American forces in Syria.

This was the greatest danger of escalation. The Americans have avoided that. They told the Russian forces on the ground what they were doing in advance and the strike was precisely targeted.

The Russians nonetheless don’t like it, but it is not in Moscow’s interests to escalate against Washington.

And it will be impossible for Trump’s opponents to argue any longer that he is secretly acting in Russia’s interests. That may be a liberation for Trump.

For all that, the Syrian tragedy will continue.

SOURCE

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Trump's statement about the strike:

My fellow Americans:  On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians.  Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children.  It was a slow and brutal death for so many.  Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack.  No child of God should ever suffer such horror.

Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched.  It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.  There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council.

Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically.  As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.

Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.  We ask for God’s wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world.  We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed.  And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail.

SOURCE

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12,392,000: U.S. Manufacturing Jobs Reach Highest Level in 8 Years

The United States added 11,000 jobs in manufacturing in March reaching a total of 12,392,000 people employed in the manufacturing sector, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That is the greatest number of people employed in manufacturing in the United States since January 2009—the month that President Barack Obama was inaugurated—when there were 12,561,000 people employed in manufacturing.

In February 2009, manufacturing employment dropped to 12,380,000—a number it did not exceed until February of this year, when it reached 12,381,000.

At the same time, according to BLS, the number of people employed in government increased by 9,000 in March, climbing from 22,309,000 in February to 22,318,000.

Since December 2016, the U.S. has gained 49,000 manufacturing jobs and 19,000 government jobs.

Government jobs in the United States in March still outnumbered manufacturing jobs by 9,926,000.

The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States peaked in June 1979 at 19,553,000. Since then, it has declined by 7,161,000 to the 12,392,000 reported for this March, according to the BLS numbers.

During the same time frame—from June 1979 to February 2017—the number of government jobs grew from 16,045,000 to the current 22,318,000, an increase of 6,273,000.

SOURCE

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Swedes not laughing now

Was Donald Trump right all along about Sweden's crime and immigration problems?

Just over six weeks after Donald Trump was mocked across the world for suggesting that Sweden was the victim of a terror attack, at least three people have been left dead when a hijacked truck ploughed into pedestrians.

The American president's proclaimed attack - which turned out to be fictitious - was linked to high levels of immigration and rising levels of crime in the country he said, later clarifying that he had based his comments on a Fox News report.

He was immediately ridiculed, with Carl Bildt, the former Swedish Prime Minister asking "what has he been smoking?" and the country's US embassy appeared to mock him on Twitter.

But yesterday the Swedish capital was hit by its own terrorist attack, with echoes of those in London, Berlin and Nice.

Integration has remained a problem in the country where the relatively high numbers of immigrants compared to a population of just under 10 million means it has one of the highest rates of immigration per capita in northern Europe.

The numbers have been rising steadily since the 1990s, and in 2015 Sweden accepted a record number of more than 160,000 refugees.

Meanwhile, in a report published in February last year the police "identified 53 residential areas around the country that have become increasingly marred by crime, social unrest and insecurity".

While the Government denies that these are "no-go zones", it admitted in a rebuttal to the claims of Mr Trump that police "have experienced difficulties fulfilling their duties".

SOURCE

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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)

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Politics and IQ

Are smart people Left-leaning?  There is some recent evidence to say so, though the correlation is weak.  A paper by Michael Woodley is therefore of interest ("Problematic constructs and cultural-mediation: A comment on Heaven, Ciarrochi and Leeson (2011)").

He surveys the literature and shows that the findings go both ways.  On some occasions Leftists score highest while on others conservatives do.

He resolves that the way I do -- by saying that high IQ people are quicker to figure out what is currently socially acceptable and say that.  At the moment being conservative is likely to bring a ton of abuse ("racist") down on your head so it is no wonder that smart people claim to be Leftist

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US healthcare: most people don't know what they're talking about

The article below is good at debunking some myths about U.S. healthcare.  It points out factors that distort the national averages.  It skips over the big one, however.  National averages are a poor guide to the health of most Americans.  America has two big minorities that tend to have poor health and which therefore drag down the national averages. If the statistics for whites only are extracted, they show average health levels that are among the world's best

US healthcare is famous for three things: it's expensive, it's not universal, and it has poor outcomes. The US spends around $7,000 per person on healthcare every year, or roughly 18% of GDP; the next highest spender is Switzerland, which spends about $4,500. Before Obamacare, approx 15% of the US population were persistently uninsured (8.6% still are). And as this chart neatly shows, their overall outcome on the most important variable—overall life expectancy—is fairly poor.

But some of this criticism is wrongheaded and simplistic: when you slice the data up more reasonably, US outcomes look impressive, but being the world's outrider is much more expensive than following behind. What's more, most of the solutions people offer just don't get to the heart of the issue: if you give people freedom they'll spend a lot on healthcare.

The US undoubtedly spends a huge amount on healthcare. One popular narrative is that because of market failures and/or extreme overregulation in healthcare, prices are excessively high. So Americans with insurance (or covered by Medicare, the universal system for the elderly, or Medicaid, the government system for the poor) get the same as other developed world citizens, but those without get very poor care and die younger. A system like the NHS solves the problem, according to this view, with bulk buying of land, labour, and inputs, better incentives, and universal coverage.

But there are some serious flaws in this theory. Firstly, extending insurance to the previously-uninsured doesn't, in America, seem to have large benefits. For example, a recent NBER paper found no overall health gains from the massive insurance expansion under Obamacare.* A famous RAND study found minuscule benefits over decades from giving out free insurance to previously uninsured in the 1970s. In fact, over and above the basics, insuring those who choose not to get insurance doesn't ever seem to have large gains. Indeed, there is wide geographic variation in the life expectancy among the low income in the US, but this doesn't even correlate with access to medical care! This makes it unlikely that the gap between the US and the rest is explained by universality.

To find the answer, consider the main two ingredients that go into health outcomes. One is health, and the other is treatment. If latent health is the same across the Western world, we can presume that any differences come from differences in treatment. But this is simply not the case. Obesity is far higher in the USA than in any other major developed country. Obviously it is a public health problem, but it's unrealistic to blame it on the US system of paying for doctors, administrators, hospitals, equipment and drugs.

In fact in the US case it's not even obesity, or indeed their greater pre-existing disease burden, that is doing most of the work in dragging their life expectancy down; it's accidental and violent deaths. It is tragic that the US is so dangerous, but it's not the fault of the healthcare system; indeed, it's an extra burden that US healthcare spending must bear. Just simply normalising for violent and accidental death puts the USA right to the top of the life expectancy rankings.

This is what we'd expect if we approached the topic more honestly, and dug into the detail of healthcare stats. You might think—you might think!—that this is what international healthcare rankings like those from the WHO or the Commonwealth Fund do. Not so. The WHO just looks at a corrected life expectancy measure, but not one corrected for any of the factors which attempt to isolate the impact of healthcare. The Commonwealth Fund's is a mix of high level aggregate measures like physicians per capita and a survey asking people around the world questions like whether "Doctor or other clinical staff talked with patient about a healthy diet and healthy eating". Neither are useless, but they are not the real deal.

Academic papers that drill down into the detail find that the US does well in cancer survival, heart attack and stroke survival, and successfully medicating those with long-term conditions such as diabetes. In fact, when the Commonwealth Fund did this sort of analysis themselves decades ago, the US ranked among the best of countries. This is partly because the US has much more advanced equipment, partly because it funds more costly treatments in general, and partly because it funds the newest treatments, when their marginal costs are often stratospheric. This may subsidise medical research for everyone else.

Now this is not to say the US system works well. The fact that the US spends vastly more than everyone else, and only does a bit better, if that, makes the system pretty unimpressive. But it's important to understand why. The UK really does have "death panels" that refuse treatments because they're extremely costly relative to their tiny impact. The USA has a system where most people can buy—are even subsidised through the tax system to buy—insurance that is as extensive as they like, paying for ever more expensive and marginally beneficial therapies. Eventually you're spending a fifth of your GDP on it.

Maybe if the US government straightened things out—scrapped the incentives that push people to get too much healthcare and deregulated the system to increase competition and push down costs the US would spend a more rational share of its income on health. I think this is pretty likely. But I bet the gap wouldn't go away fully. Americans just have a lot of cash, and want to spend an increasing share of it on their wellbeing as they get even richer. As long as the system is mostly open, I'd expect that to continue.

SOURCE

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Levin: Progressivism, Statism 'Is a Poison for Power'

Talking about the judicial branch of government on his nationally syndicated radio talk show program, host Mark Levin suggested that the leftists would use the court to gain power, saying that progressivism, statism “is a poison for power.”

“[P]rogressivism, or as I call it, statism, but either way, is a poison,” stated Mark Levin. “It is a poison, and it is a poison for power.”

Levin’s comments come as Judge Neil Gorsuch awaits confirmation this week in Washington DC.  Below is a transcript of Mark Levin’s comments from his show:

“You need to know, and I know you do, that progressivism, or as I call it, statism, but either way, is a poison. It is a poison, and it is a poison for power.

“And you’ll learn all about it and a heck of a lot more in “Rediscovering Americanism,” but I want to stay on this.

“The leftists decided, the statists decided more than 100 years ago that the key institution that would be used to alter the American landscape, the constitutional landscape, the American culture with rugged individualism, the American psychology of freedom would be the courts.

“First, you needed an all-powerful president, and then you need an all-powerful president who would change the judiciary. And that’s exactly what happened – in big chunks, starting in the 1900s, the early 1900s, and then a massive leap with Franklin Roosevelt. “And it’s never stopped.”

SOURCE

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Benign neglect:  How Hong Kong prospered

The power of do-nothing government

Hong Kong could easily be described as the most neoliberal country in the world — a paragon of neoliberal success.

The story of Hong Kong’s growth is both long and fascinating, and could not be done justice in a mere blogpost. But there is one man who is worth mentioning, who has much responsibility for making Hong Kong into what it is today, and yet is all too often forgotten.

John J. Cowperthwaite is not likely a name that you will remember from your history lessons. In fact, it is not likely a name that you will remember at all. He is arguably one of history’s most unsung heroes, and that is a great shame, for he was absolutely instrumental in not only taking Hong Kong’s economy from strength to strength after the Second World War, but also in showing the world that laissez faire economics is workable and brings results.

Milton Friedman said “it would be hard to overestimate the debt that Hong Kong owes to Cowperthwaite”. But he was by no means a self-important man. He had a reputation for being shy, and as an appointed civil servant, he owed no favours to anyone. He arrived in Hong Kong in 1946 as the Assistant financial secretary, with instructions to “come up with a plan for economic growth”. But he came up with no plan, and yet the economy grew. It grew astoundingly. In the decade that he was financial secretary, wages rose by 50% and the percentage of those living in poverty in Hong Kong plummeted from 50 to 15%.

What did this son of a Scottish tax collector do to propel so many into prosperity? The answer is that he didn’t do anything. When a British executive approached Cowperthwaite to ask him to develop the merchant banking industry, Cowperthwaite politely palmed him off and told him that he had better find a merchant banker. Similarly, when a legislator suggested to Cowperthwaite that the government should prioritise the development of promising industries, Cowperthwaite refused and asked how the government could possibly know which businesses had potential and which did not.

Cowperthwaite flat out refused to collect most economic statistics, from fear that doing so would give bureaucrats and legislators an excuse to meddle in the economy. Of course, this caused upset in Whitehall, and when they commanded a group of civil servants to go over and see just what the hell was going on, Cowperthwaite sent them home as soon as they arrived. Yet still from 1945 to 1997 Hong Kong ran a surplus every financial year – surprising all involved because the surpluses were not planned. Rather, they arose as a result of the market being left free.

It was slightly unfair of me to state that John Cowperthwaite “didn’t do anything”. For though his success was largely down to his non-interventionism, ensuring that there was no intervention was backbreaking work. People were always trying to tinker with the economy. But Cowperthwaite maintained: “in the long run, the aggregate of the decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is likely to do less harm than the centralized decisions of a Government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.”

Today Hong Kong has a GDP per capita at 264% of the world's average, which has doubled in the last 15 years. The World Bank now rates the “ease of doing business” in Hong Kong as the best in the world. It has no taxes on capital gains, interest income or earnings from abroad. Its overall tax burden is just half of that of the United States. Its people are rich and its government small, and for this reason, it makes a fitting cover for our latest paper, but for this reason also, we should be thankful to John J Cowperthwaite.

SOURCE

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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)

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‘Shameful’ Media Defense of Susan Rice in Unmasking Scandal

 Liberals in the media are scrambling to cover for the revelation that Barack Obama’s former National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, unmasked Donald Trump associates in classified intelligence. Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued the following statement:

“The liberal media’s ‘nothing to see here’ approach to Susan Rice’s politically-motivated unmasking of Trump associates in sensitive intelligence material is shameful. You’d think someone who lied to the press and the American people about her role in the unmasking just two weeks ago would invite more scrutiny. We have a smoking gun that points to criminal activity by President Obama’s national security advisor and the media have shown an utter lack of interest in pursuing the story. If this story is not a top priority for every news outlet, they are aiding and abetting a cover-up. President Trump has every right to be furious with the press and the American people have every reason to be disgusted."

SOURCE

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Limited Government is Important -- and Trump is actually limiting it

Fewer than 70 days into the new administration and some in the media are already writing and talking about the "do-nothing" Congress and presidential administration, which critics allege have yet to accomplish anything significant.

Regardless of what you might hear from their critics, you shouldn't believe these baseless accusations. In less than three months, President Trump and Congress have done a lot. Most of their early actions are getting relatively no attention, however, which is occurring for a number of reasons, including the fact most members of the mainstream media are big-government liberals who dislike Mr. Trump and Congress for what they've achieved.

The laws passed and executive orders issued by Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans are substantially different than those actions taken by most previous administrations. Rather than expand the size and scope of the federal government, Mr. Trump and the GOP have worked to reduce government's influence on society - in large part by reversing or blocking "midnight" regulations enacted by Obama administration officials before they finally made their way out the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in January.

Republicans have long-claimed their party is the champion of limited government, but since Ronald Reagan was president in 1980s, they have done relatively little to back up the claim. Instead, Republican presidents have often pushed their own brand of activism that grew government, including No Child Left Behind, the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, the expansion of prescription drug coverage, a ban on imported semi-automatic rifles, and the creation of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

When Republican presidents weren't busy doing their best impression of big-government Democrats, Republican-controlled Congresses repeatedly failed to block regulations they said are illegal and passed budgets that increased government's power and control.

Thus far, this trend seems to have halted with the Trump administration. Mr. Trump issued an executive order that ultimately ensured the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project President Barack Obama blocked in the waning days of his administration to appease his radical environmental allies.

Mr. Trump also issued an executive order to force reconsideration of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, which would have greatly expanded the federal government's control over private property across the United States. Federal courts had previously stayed WOTUS, out of the suspicion it unconstitutionally ignored previous Supreme Court wetlands decisions. Now, Trump ordered EPA to reconsider the rule and has decided not to defend it in court.

Arguably the most far-reaching executive order Mr. Trump has issued is his directive for all administrative agencies to remove two regulations for each new regulation they issue.

On the budget front, Mr. Trump has proposed cutting the budgets of the vast majority of the existing regulatory agencies. For instance, he proposed cutting EPA's budget by more than 25 percent and reducing the agency's staff by 20 percent. In the process, Trump would end all of EPA's climate programs.

Other agencies and cabinet offices would also see significant cuts, including a nearly 29 percent cut to the State Department's budget and an approximately 12 percent cut to the Department of the Interior.

Mr. Trump seems intent to do what he has promised - which greatly conflicts with what other so-called conservatives before him have done - forcing government to focus on its core functions. No more funding for the arts, public television, green-energy boondoggles, or international climate programs on Mr. Trump's watch.

Congress has had the power to review and block major regulations since it passed the Congressional Review Act (CRA) in 1996, but it has rarely used it. CRA allows the House and the Senate to pass resolutions of disapproval to block major regulations issued by federal agencies. Despite tens of thousands of regulations being enacted in the 20 years since CRA passed, Congress has used it only three times to block new rules, and only once has a president signed the resolution. (Mr. Obama vetoed the two disapproval resolutions passed during his presidency.)

Mr. Trump's ascendance seems to finally have stiffened Congress' backbone, because the House and Senate are now using the CRA with a vengeance. Congress has sent more than a half-dozen CRA resolutions disapproving late-term Obama administration regulations to Trump for his signature, and, incredibly, he's actually signing them.

Using the CRA, Congress blocked a regulation forcing local school districts to adopt specific federal teacher-preparation programs and directions for how states and school districts must evaluate and report school performance. Congress also prevented regulations that would have taken away senior citizens' Second Amendment rights if they need help managing their finances.

In its first use of the CRA under Mr. Trump, Congress halted a rule imposed by Mr. Obama that would have unnecessarily threatened over one-third of the nation's coal-mining jobs. Despite the Interior Department's own reports showing virtually all coal mines have no off-site impacts and lands are being restored successfully under existing federal and state regulations, Mr. Obama tried to institute a so-called "stream protection rule," which would have forced the revision of more than 400 regulations.

Contrary to what is being reported, Mr. Trump and Congress are quickly working to achieve one of their most important goals: limiting the size and power of the federal government over people's lives. And in doing so, they are keeping the commitment they made when they took the oath of office, which requires they uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Let's hope the progress continues.

SOURCE

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What Congress Can Learn From the Rhode Island Miracle

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more poorly designed program in the federal budget than Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans. The costs are shared between the states and the feds, which means that the more money a state wastes under Medicaid, the bigger the check Washington writes to the state. No wonder the program costs keep spiraling out of control.

Obamacare added nearly 20 million people to the Medicaid rolls, and the Left considers that a policy victory. Federal and state budgets are swelling.

Oh, to return to the days when taking people off of welfare — not putting them on the dole — was the goal.

Conservatives have argued that Medicaid’s management should be turned over to the states through a block-grant allotment of funds. When Republicans proposed this in their Obamacare replacement bill, liberals blew a gasket. They hate the notion of allowing governors to run the program in their states as the governors see fit, free of the thicket of cumbersome federal rules. The Left portrays the idea as heartless and a scheme to rip a hole in the safety net.

In reality, block granting Medicaid to the states would likely add a new incentive structure to control costs while holding state lawmakers accountable for delivering quality care. Medicaid doesn’t do that right now. It delivers subpar care, with many top hospitals and treatment centers refusing to take Medicaid patients.

We already have a wonderful case study of a state running its own Medicaid program, and Congress and the White House should aim to duplicate this success story.

I am referring to the under-publicized Rhode Island experiment of a few years ago. In 2009, Rhode Island received a waiver from federal Medicaid rules in exchange for a cap on federal costs.

It worked like a charm. A 2013 analysis by Gary Alexander, the former secretary of Rhode Island’s Health and Human Services, found that in the first four years the state’s annual cost increases dropped to less than half of the national pace.

When Rhode Island received its Medicaid waiver, 1 of every 5 residents was enrolled, and costs were growing by 7.5 percent annually. Under the waiver, the state’s official Medicaid documents show, costs rose an average of only 1.3 percent a year from 2009 to 2012 — far below the 4.6 percent rate in the other 49 states.

Rhode Island saved money by reducing the amount of emergency-room visits by Medicaid recipients for routine medical needs. The state saved even more by shifting the elderly out of expensive nursing homes, offering home-care subsidies and promoting assisted-living arrangements. Seniors often would rather avoid institutionalization, making this a win-win.

An independent assessment by the economic consulting firm Lewin Group concluded that reforms allowed under the waiver were “highly effective in controlling Medicaid costs.” The program was found to have “improved access to more appropriate services.”

Alexander has become the Pied Piper for Medicaid waivers. “This is such a terrific solution because in Rhode Island we reduced costs and provided better care. When the state had an incentive to save money rather than spend it, this changed everything.” He added, “State waivers are the way out of the Medicaid crisis.”

But the Left and the Washington bureaucrats don’t want to surrender control of the program. They want a universal, one-size-fits-all solution. We know from welfare reform in the mid-1990s (with work requirements, time limits and training programs) that turning control over to the states will lead to innovative solutions that improve people’s lives — and save money. Why can’t that success happen with health care?

Republicans should continue to insist on solutions to Medicaid that provide some federal funding but allow states maximum flexibility. The GOP block grant makes financial sense and will help ensure that Medicaid doesn’t bankrupt Washington and the 50 states.

The Trump administration doesn’t need to wait. It can start this program tomorrow, simply by putting out word that it will issue Rhode Island-style Medicaid waivers to states that apply. The White House has full authority to do this, and many states will line up for the offer.

One big advocate for this is Vice President Mike Pence. Back when Pence was governor of Indiana, he told me: “If Washington would give me 80 percent of the Medicaid money they now send Indiana but got rid of the red tape and regulations, I would take that deal in a minute.” Donald Trump should listen to his vice president and let the Rhode Island miracle take hold in every state in the nation.

SOURCE

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Liberal logic yet again



Hatred of the rest of us is all they know

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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)

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Don’t ask cronies to reform crony capitalism

MARTIN HUTCHINSON

Paul Ryan’s health care “reform” bill was defeated last week without even receiving a vote in the House of Representatives, in spite of the care he had taken to get input from the health insurance industry. That was the problem. In a crony capitalist system, where bad lobbyist-pushed laws and regulations have poured illicit profits into the pockets of oligopolists, the oligopolists are the last people to consult on how to reform those laws. The same dynamic is visible in monetary policy, in bank regulation and in corporate and individual tax. We are a long way from true free-market capitalism, and we won’t get there by consulting the current crony “capitalists.”

Healthcare is a classic example. U.S. healthcare costs 18% of GDP, compared to 12% in the next-highest cost countries, France, Sweden and Switzerland, 11% in Germany and Canada, 10% in Japan and 9% in Britain and Australia. Effectively, the U.S. government pays as much for healthcare as Britain’s state-run system, then private American citizens pay the same amount all over again. The U.S. gets nothing extra in terms of outcomes for all this expenditure; indeed U.S. indicators of healthcare results, such as life expectancy, are distinctly mediocre by rich-world standards.

Whatever your political view on who should pay for what, getting the United States’ appallingly high healthcare costs down to those of its competitors should surely be the top priority, indeed more or less the only priority, in any healthcare system reform.

Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act achieved essentially nothing in the way of cost control. It claimed to do so, replacing Medicaid by a system of “block grants” to the states, but that change does not actually reduce the cost of healthcare at all, it merely shifts it from the Federal government to the states and, inevitably, to America’s less wealthy citizens who depend on Medicaid.

The legislation did nothing about the trial lawyer blight, it kept all Obamacare’s cost-increasing regulations in place, it did not provide for insurers bidding across state lines and it did not remove the egregious 1986 emergency room mandate, by which hospital emergency rooms must treat indigent patients without limit and without receiving any kind of compensation from the state that mandates this nonsense. Without proper cost-reducing measures, the legislation was essentially useless; its 17% approval in the polls was probably higher than would have been achieved once the public discovered what a colossal waste of Congressional time it had been.

The reason for the Ryan bill’s poor quality is that it was designed after extensive discussions with the insurance industry and other beneficiaries of the current system. Ryan is a champion fund-raiser and much admired as a “policy wonk”, largely because of the care he takes to consult the special interests before proposing new policies. Thus, the provisions that might make a serious dent in insurance company incomes were missing from Ryan’s bill, as were provisions that would collapse the cost of medical care overall, reducing the economic rents that health insurers, hospital chains, trial lawyers and others could extract.

This is not a problem limited to healthcare. We are likely to get another almost perfect example of it when Ryan unveils his corporate tax reform plan. While it may include some form of “border adjustment tax”, favored by President Trump, which redistributes income from retailers to manufacturers, it’s likely that the main feature of it will be the abandonment of worldwide taxation and a movement to “territoriality” in corporate tax, by which corporations will pay U.S. corporate income tax only on U.S. income.

This is a move in precisely the wrong direction. The economically neutral and efficient means of taxing multinationals would tax all worldwide income, without any deferral of income earned overseas, but with a full tax credit for taxes paid overseas. The United States has never had this system; corporations’ overseas income is deferred from tax until it is remitted to the United States, under “Subpart F” legislation introduced in 1962.

Thus, we have a system in which U.S. corporations have stashed over $2 trillion overseas to avoid taxes, and companies such as Apple are borrowing domestically to pay dividends and engage in economically damaging repurchases of stock, while keeping ziggurats of cash offshore.

The current system makes no sense at all. It encourages companies to invest overseas, by giving them the potential to avoid tax on the investment, thus discriminating against domestic investment, precisely the problem against which Trump rightly rails. It is also grossly unfair to U.S. individual taxpayers, who have only a very limited ability to use this loophole. U.S. taxpayers who earn income overseas, as I did for some years, must pay full U.S. tax (and in some cases, state tax) on that income, with a modest $75,000 foreign earned income exemption. What’s more if they attempt to keep their own money overseas tax free, in a tax haven bank account, the U.S Treasury goes after the foreign banks, with a spurious excuse of finding terrorist funding, and subjects the taxpayers to threats of imprisonment.

The corporate tax bill Ryan is likely to propose, as favored by corporatist lobbyists from the Wall Street Journal down, would make this economic insanity worse, by allowing all foreign income to be fully exempt from U.S. corporate tax. Of course, the first effect of this would be a “giant sucking sound” of money rushing out of the U.S. into tax havens for spurious foreign investment, doubtless leveraged to the eyeballs by Fed-induced cheap money.

There are other examples of this. President Trump’s economic crew, made up largely of alumni of Goldman Sachs, are unlikely to reform the disgraceful Fed funny-money policies that have distorted resource allocation and destroyed productivity growth for the last decade. They are also likely to gut banking regulations that restrict the insane amount of leverage in the system, while retaining those that add cost and bureaucracy, which provide useful barriers to entry against new and smaller competitors.

We are also likely to see this problem in the Trump administration’s “reform” of individual taxes. It may well be inspired by President Reagan’s 1986 tax law, which reduced rates of tax by eliminating deductions. It may well eliminate the deductions relied upon by the upper middle class, for home mortgage interest and state and local taxes. But you can be absolutely sure that, guided as they will be by the billionaires in the political donor class, the tax law’s drafters will not reform the true source of inequality and scams: the charitable tax deduction. This serves the combined purpose of funding a myriad of sleazy left wing agitators and allowing the ultra-rich to finance their lifestyles tax-free through foundations such as the Clintons’ while the merely mega-rich on the two coasts tax-deduct their repulsive social climbing and networking through charity dinners.

There is an overall principle here, and it should be pretty obvious. Once an economic system has moved away from a free market, usually through legislation drafted by panicky and economically illiterate leftists given license by a war or an economic crisis, it creates crony capitalists. These benefit from the new restrictions and build businesses optimized for the restrictions that the laws and regulations have introduced. Very often, as in the case of medical care and modern financial services, the new system absorbs a far larger share of GDP than would the equivalent activity in a free market, with the result that new avenues are opened up for crony capitalists to generate extraordinary levels of profits, while the old free-market businesses are squeezed out of existence.

This happened most visibly in Britain after the 1986 Financial Services Act, when the merchant banks, which had provided sophisticated financial services worldwide, some of them for as long as 200 years at modest economic cost, were within a decade squeezed out by foreign behemoths. The behemoths were much larger (and so less efficient) because of the compliance costs they were forced to absorb, which increased the economic share absorbed by the financial services businesses and their practitioners, while destroying the quality of service that the merchant banks had provided.

Similarly in U.S. healthcare, a business with which I am less familiar, the addition of regulations after 1960 took away the family doctors and small hospitals that had provided good cost-effective services, and pushed the business towards large bureaucratic hospital chains, with teams of lawyers attached to resist shyster lawsuits, plus an entirely new and unnecessary layer of health insurance companies that exist purely to shuffle paper and intermediate between patients and health services providers. As in finance, these new “crony capitalists” have no interest whatever in dismantling the system under which they have grown rich.

Every now and then a government is elected that wants to return, at least partially, to a free market system. To do so, that government must dismantle a host of regulations which in many sectors have destroyed the free market and replaced it with a crony capitalist rent-seeking cabal. The free-market-seeking government will face huge opposition from the crony capitalists, as well as from the myriad of citizens who benefit from heavy regulation, high taxes and government control, or are ideologically in favor of them.

To win through, a free-market government will need to draft the new laws itself, and not rely on crony capitalist help, however generous the crony capitalists may be as political donors. If Paul Ryan is a major political fund-raiser, he should not be allowed near the drafting of free-market legislation.

SOURCE

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Meals on Wheels Outrage is Based on a Lie

It made for great copy—irresistibly clickable and compulsively shareable. “Trump’s Budget Would Kill a Program That Feeds 2.4 Million Senior Citizens,” blared Time’s headline. “Trump Proposed Budget Eliminates Funds for Meals on Wheels,” claimed The Hill, in a piece that got 26,000 shares.

But it was false. And it wouldn’t have taken long for reporters to find and provide some needed context to the relationship between federal block grant programs, specifically Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), and the popular Meals on Wheels program.

Funding Has Not Been Cut

From Thursday’s conversation in the press, it was easy to assume that block grant programs—CDBG and similar block grants for community services and social services—are the main source of federal funding for Meals on Wheels. Not so.

Instead, as the national Meals on Wheels site explains, the major source of federal funding for the programs, accounting for 35 percent of overall local budgets, comes through the Sixties-era Older Americans Act. (Local programs also obtain support from state and county governments, private donors, and so on.)

According to the website, cuts have not been announced in Older Americans Act funding, although the group fears that they may lie ahead.

So where do the federal block grant programs come in? Well, they give states and localities a lot of discretion on where to allocate the money, one option is to add money to supplement Meals on Wheels funding. Some do use it for that purpose.

But as Scott Shackford makes clear in his new piece for Reason, that isn’t what CDBG is mostly about. CDBG funds regularly go into pork-barrel and business-subsidy schemes with a cronyish flavor. That’s why the program has been a prime target for budget-cutters for decades, in administration after administration.

It’s important to the CDBG program’s political durability that its grantees wind up sprinkling a bit of extra money on popular programs mostly funded by other means. That way, defenders can argue that the block grants “fund programs like Meals on Wheels.”

That’s what happened in the press this week.

Outrage Over Nothing

The New York Times got things rolling by reporting that the new budget proposes “the complete elimination of the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which funds popular programs like Meals on Wheels, housing assistance and other community assistance efforts.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper then boiled it down to a tweet: “On chopping block: $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which funds programs like Meals on Wheels.”

Meals on Wheels’s own national website, meanwhile, quotes its CEO and president Ellie Hollander being appropriately cautious and conditional: “We don’t know the exact impact yet,” she said. Big cuts “would be a devastating blow.” According to the website, “Details on our network’s primary source of funding, the Older Americans Act, which has supported senior nutrition programs for 45 years, have not yet been released.”

Most of the major press coverage Thursday had nothing at all to say about the OAA, which would only have complicated the shock headlines. And social media burned all day with indignant posts that seemed unaware that no cuts had been announced as of yet in the main program that funds Meals on Wheels.

One reason was the press conference at which budget director Mick Mulvaney faced a host of questions about the new budget release, with Peter Alexander of NBC News pressing him especially hard on the aren’t-you-trying-to-cut-things-like-Meals-on-Wheels angle.

Mulvaney repeatedly tried to switch the conversation over to the shortcomings of the wider CDBG program, and did not bring up the point about OAA funding at all. Amid further awkward exchanges, Mulvaney spoke about how social programs had often not been shown to have benefits.

A charitable reading of his intended point was that activities funded by block grants in general often lack any proof of positive effect; a less charitable reading was that he was trying to single out Meals on Wheels in particular as an endeavor of no proven use to anyone. (A middle ground, I suppose, would have been to call his office for a clarification.) No prizes for guessing which direction the press, from MSNBC to New York magazine, chose to take for its headlines.

SOURCE

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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)

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A revolt against deference

Frank Furedi

People aren’t rejecting truth – they’re rejecting the values of the elites

When political commentators talk of the emergence of a post-truth world, they are really lamenting the end of an era when the truths promoted by the institutions of the state and media were rarely challenged. It’s a lament that’s been coming for a few years now. Each revolt of sections of the public against the values of the elites has been met with the riposte that people are no longer interested in the truth. What the elites really mean is that people don’t care about their version of the truth. So when the French celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy asserted that people have ‘lost interest in whether politicians tell the truth’, he was venting his frustration at an electorate that no longer shares his values.

Today’s elite angst about so-called post-fact or post-truth public discourse is but the latest version of an historical struggle – a struggle over the question of who possesses moral and intellectual authority. Indeed, the rejection of the values and outlook of the holders of cultural power in many Western societies has long been portrayed as a rejection of truth itself. The reason elite values have been enshrined as ‘the truth’, right from the Ancient Greeks onwards, is because the rulers of society need to secure the deference of the masses. The masses are being encouraged to defer not to the power of the elites, but to the truth of elite values.

That this is not widely understood is due to contemporary society’s reluctance to acknowledge that cultural and political life still relies on the deference of the public – passive or active – to the values and moral authority of the elites. The term ‘deference’ – ‘submission to the acknowledged superior claims, skill, judgement or other qualities of another’, as the OED defines it – suggests a non-coercive act of obedience to authority. Hence it was frequently coupled with terms such as instinct, custom and habit (1). In the 19th century, it was frequently used to imply people’s willingness to accept and bow down before the elites on the basis of their superior wisdom. Deference presumed the intellectual and moral hegemony of the educated middle class, or cultural elite, over the wider public.

In recent decades it has been suggested that the era of deference is over. We are told that people are far too critical to defer to the superior wisdom of others. In this context, the idea of deference has acquired negative connotations, and is often identified with uncritical thinking. However, in practice, deference is still demanded by elites. But it is demanded in the form of calls to respect the authority of the expert, because he speaks the truth. So, in almost every domain of human experience, the expert is presented as the producer not just of facts, but also of the truth. Those who fail to defer to experts risk being denounced as irrational, superstitious or just plain stupid. Hence, in 2001, the consummate cynic, Michael Moore, could ask his educated American readers: ‘Do you feel like you live in a nation of idiots?’ Moore knew that his readers would share his contempt for their moral inferiors (2). Today, many sections of the commentariat share Moore’s disdain, and portray people’s rejection of their values, and with it their cultural authority, as something other than it is – that is, as a rejection of facts and truth.

Historically, concern about what is now called fake news and post-truth politics was bound up with a worry about the capacity of ordinary people to discriminate between what the cultural elites interpreted as the truth and other versions of reality. It was Plato, writing through the figure of Socrates, who first raised the alarm about the threat to truth, as he saw it, posed by the invention of reading and writing. Socrates feared that written ideas, unlike verbal communication, could acquire a life of their own, and ‘roam about everywhere’. Writing does not discern between readers who can understand and benefit from a communication and those who will become misled and confused by it. He warned that writing reaches those with ‘understanding’ no less than ‘those who have no business with it’ (3). In line with the paternalistic worldview of his era, Socrates assumed that in the wrong hands, a little knowledge was a threat to the social order.

Socrates’ disapproval of the written text was based, in part, on a conviction that the pursuit of the truth was so demanding that only a few Athenian citizens could be trusted with its undertaking. He insisted that knowledge ‘is not something that can be put into words like other sciences’; it is only ‘after long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject’ that true knowledge finds its way to the soul (4). Plato’s main concern appears to have been not so much the written text, but its circulation among a mass audience.

In today’s self-consciously inclusive democratic public culture, Socrates’ inclination to restrict people’s freedom to read material of their own choosing and in circumstances of their own making would be seen as anathema. Yet even in the 21st century, the public is often represented as a mass of powerless victims of media manipulation. They have been led astray by tabloid journalism or by the subliminal techniques of advertisers, we are told. Such concerns have become amplified in the age of the internet. And now, after the apparent rejection of the cultural values of the political establishment by populist movements, concern with the supposedly fragile status of the truth often assumes the form of a moral panic.

Socrates’ critique of the capacity of the people to distinguish between truth and falsehood led him to invest his faith in the authority of the would-be experts of the day – or, as he imagined them, ‘philosopher guardians’. He derided the authority of the Athenian demos, and argued that the people lacked the intellectual resources required to grasp the truth. In some of the comments attributed to him in the Apology, what he seeks is not opinion but ‘opinions that are better informed and more completely thought through’ (5). Consequently, Socrates offered an unambiguous argument for deference to expertise.

As he put it, if society is ready to defer to the views of experts and ignore the opinion of ordinary folk on technical matters such as shipbuilding and architecture, why is it not prepared to defer to experts on political matters? In his dialogue with Protagoras, Socrates states that ‘when it is something to do with the government of the country that is to be debated, the man who gets up to advise [people] may be a builder or equally well a blacksmith or a shoemaker, a merchant or ship owner, rich or poor, of good family or none’ (6). Socrates took the view that the people could not be trusted to find their way to the truth. As far as he is concerned, what most people think on political matters is far less important than the views of the one man who really understands the issues at stake – the expert (7).

Socrates believed that in the domain of politics, there was a need for men who possessed the wisdom to grasp what is true. Although he looked to the authority of the moral expert to guide people towards the truth, he was at a loss to explain where such special individuals could be found. It is only in modern times, when the focus shifted from the moral expertise of the philosopher to the factual expertise of the scientist, that the quest for a political expert has been resolved.

Deference to the expert

Public life in Western societies is underpinned by the assumption that people will defer to the opinion of an expert. Politicians frequently remind us that their policies are ‘evidence-based’, which usually means informed by expert advice. Experts have the last word on topics of public interest and increasingly on matters to do with people’s private affairs. The exhortation to defer to experts is underpinned by the premise that their specialist knowledge entitles them to a higher moral status than the rest of us.

In the 19th century there was an ascendancy of the expert as the producer of truth. This was the outcome of the project to construct a form of deference appropriate to the age of mass politics. Strikingly, it was during the 19th century that the question of deference emerged as a major issue in British public life. British elite opinion recognised that ‘natural deference’ to authority would have to be replaced by a new form of deference to the superior sections of society. It was identified by the 19th-century journalist and essayist, Walter Bagehot, as ‘intellectual deference’ (8).

The debate over deference in 19th-century Britain represented an important change in the way that the elites have sought to validate their authority. The most interesting contribution to this shift was made by liberal and utilitarian thinkers who sought to reconstitute deference on a new rational foundation. In his 1820 essay Government, James Mill outlined a theory of political deference that had as its premise the capacity of the new middle class to exercise moral authority over the lower orders (9). Mill wrote:

‘The opinions of that class of the people, who are below the middle rank, are formed, and their minds directed by that intelligent and virtuous rank, who come most immediately in contact with them, to whom they fly for advice and assistance in all their numerous difficulties, upon whom they feel an immediate and daily dependence, in health and in sickness, in infancy, and in old age: to whom their children look up as models for their imitation, whose opinion they hear daily repeated, and account it their honour to adopt.’ (10)

James Mill’s optimism about middle-class hegemony was based on his belief in that class’s superior public virtues. He praised this class for giving ‘to science, to art and to legislation itself, their most distinguished ornaments, the chief source of all that has exalted and refined human nature’. And he sought to reassure those who doubted the capacity of middle-class opinion to influence the behaviour of urban workers and the poor: ‘Of the people beneath them, a vast majority would be sure to be guided by [the middle class’s] advice and example.’ (11)

James Mill’s son, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, believed that the power of persuasion was the most effective way of avoiding instability and conflict. He wrote that the ‘only hope from class legislation in its narrowest, and political ignorance in its most dangerous form, would lie in such disposition as the uneducated might have to choose educated representatives and defer to their opinion’ (12). Mill’s argument for deference was founded on a belief in the authority of the knowledge of the expert. Although he was inclined to be more democratic than most of his liberal contemporaries, he allocated a central role for elected expert representatives in the drafting of legislation (13), insisting that it was ‘so important that the electors should choose as their representatives wiser men than themselves, and should consent to be governed according to that superior wisdom’ (14).

The elevation of the status of the expert along with the professionalisation of expertise’s authority has profound implications for the meaning of truth. As the historian Thomas Haskell pointed out in The Emergence of Professional Social Science (2000), the professionalisation of expertise during the 19th century led to ‘changes in the very notion of truth itself’. Truth was now perceived as the outcome of expert reasoning, and it was assumed that citizens would readily defer to it.

Experts versus the people: an unresolved tension

Most experts are responsible and well-meaning individuals who have an important contribution to make to the welfare of society. However, given the authority enjoyed by expertise, it is not surprising that it has become the target of political manipulation. The consolidation of the political role of experts, and the reliance of politicians on expert advice rather than on their own analysis, has encouraged the development of a form of authority that violates the fundamental norms of democratic accountability. Politicians now find it all too easy to retreat behind the experts. And they are happy for issues to be complicated, rather than simplified, explained and resolved.

The problem is not expertise in itself. Society needs expert authority on technical and scientific matters. But it does not need expert authority for political decision-making; in that sphere, rather, it needs people to exercise their own political judgement.

The flipside of the apotheosis of expertise is the idea of an incompetent public. This is why, historically, the ambiguous relationship between democracy and a reliance on expertise has led many commentators to draw pessimistic conclusions about the capacity of the public to play the role of a responsible citizenry. The public are seen as irrational, governed by emotion rather than reason. As a result, the public’s refusal to defer to the experts is perceived as a threat to the political order – because it promises the rule of unreason and emotion. The political elites do not see a decline in deference to their opinions for what it is – a rejection of their values; rather, they experience it as a rejection of the facts and even of truth itself!

Plato’s disdain for the demos and his advocacy of the authority of the expert have reappeared today in the form of the anti-populist script. It was not surprising that during the EU referendum campaign, anti-populist commentators were outraged and horrified when then Conservative minister Michael Gove said: ‘I think the people of this country have had enough of experts.’ From the media and political establishment’s standpoint, all that stands between civilisation and barbarism is the authority of the expert.

It’s worth thinking about why Socrates was unable to explain where political or moral expertise could be found and how it could be institutionalised. He failed because politics and morality are not appropriate subjects for the pronouncements of experts. Science can certainly provide facts, but not truths. It is only through the public interpretation of facts that people arrive at truths.

Truths are simply not reducible to scientific reasoning. When Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, stated that ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident’, he was giving voice to something that was not simply a product of reasoning. As the political philosopher Hannah Arendt explained, ‘by virtue of being self-evident, these truths are pre-rational – they inform reason but are not its product – and since their self-evidence puts them beyond disclosure and argument, they are in a sense no less compelling than “despotic power” and no less absolute than the revealed truths of religion or the axiomatic verities of mathematics’ (15). In the current climate, different attitudes towards the truth will not be decided by the ‘facts’, but by the contestation of cultural authority.

In recent years the decline of deference towards the Western establishment’s truths has prompted it to wage a crusade against populism. This has led to a new stage in the decades-long Culture War. What stands in the way of the elite crusade to regain deference is the wisdom of the people.

SOURCE

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Which Commandments?

There are three different versions of the Ten Commandments (seen as the Ten Suggestions by liberal churches) in the Torah.  Which is most authoritative?  I have an article up on my Scripture Blog which looks at that.

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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)

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