Fiction as commentary

The social justice warriors can often be violent but in Western societies they are greatly restrained by the forces of law and order.  I have just been reading a series of short stories in which they have more power than they do at the moment. It is a look at the dystopian future they have in mind for us all.  But because it is so close to what we see of them right now, the stories are quite riveting.  They stand alone as good fiction, even while having a thought-provoking purpose.  The title of the book is "Appalling Stories. 13 Tales of Social Injustice" By David Dubrow, Paul Hair, and Ray Zacek. It is available on Amazon

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

The Left are unresponsive to facts so get them where they do respond -- by attacking their social status.  Hence Trump's attacks on the purveyors of status -- the media

A good friend of mine wrote me recently. He complained about smug leftist neighbors who are “making decisions to ‘feel good’ with virtually no regard for true factual input or testing.” I get this a lot.

If you want to understand Donald Trump, you need understand why this complaint is myopic. Once you do understand, you’ll never see politics the same way again. You’ll also begin to grasp that leftism does work, and that you’ve just failed to understand how.  Which is why you lose so often.

Want a clue?  “Feel good” about what?

Not about being right, which is best described as “useful, to a point.” Aristotle noticed over 2,000 years ago that many people aren’t persuadable by logical arguments. So what’s the “feeling good” all about?

Try this on for size: People often take public positions in an attempt to increase their social status.

If you’ve been in a corporate setting, or settings with certain friends, I don’t need to offer further examples of this idea. You’ve seen it happen, and you also know that you need to be “reading the room” at all times before you speak and act. Failure costs status. People notice this dynamic, and act accordingly.

I didn’t say it was an ideal state of affairs. But a truly rational person must notice reality. My friend and his wife are picking up on a “we’re higher status than you” signal, and it’s part of the reason they’re so upset.

Macro examples also abound: Do you really think it’s a coincidence that leftism and its “Diversity Pokemon Points” amount to a full caste system?

Do you have any doubt about The left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status? Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signaling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class.

Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment. Where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favor of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status.

These aren’t accidents. They’re clues. Leftism isn’t a policy machine or an economic machine. Its economic results would tell you that much in a hurry. But the machine keeps running. Which means it must work for something. The correct question is: in what way does it work?

Analysis: Leftism is a status machine. A very, very successful status machine. Conservatives have lost status battle after status battle, often because they fought it as a policy battle. It rarely is. That’s conservatism’s most consistent and most damaging mistake.

From theory to practice: Trumping the media

President Trump’s systematic thrashing of the leftist media is the example that illustrates the theory.

Conservatives complained about the media for a long time. Aristotle’s dialectic approach, against people uninterested in truth. Net effect? Very low. Sad!

So let’s apply what we’ve learned.

Why do the media have power? Because they have social status with ordinary people. Are we still hearing about Watergate — decades later? The Pentagon Papers? How many movies seem to exist just to show journalists as heroes? Or let’s take a different tack: What’s the attraction of such a low-paying profession? Status given by the profession, and status from rubbing shoulders with high-status people. Status by acting as a vector for status signals, which is what every women’s magazine is. Ditto publications like WIRED, which is just Cosmo for geeks.

The media offers people clues about what things are high status within the areas they cover. People notice, and act accordingly. Yet most conservatives still don’t understand Trump’s response:

If I lower the media’s status, I will wreck their power.

So The Donald says that the media has “some of the most dishonest people” he has ever seen. Not an arm’s length complaint. A direct and personal status attack, rooted in truth.

Trump also acts in ways that cause journalists to fulfill his pre-suasion labeling. He makes “outrageous” statements, which many people outside the Beltway Bubble agree with. Those statements receive over-the-top media attacks, which make his enemies look ridiculous. Then events swiftly show that Trump had a point. Trump rubs it in, using the media’s own “Fake News” term against them and pouncing on every sloppy and dishonest mistake. As a final topper, Trump makes the dishonest media a focus during every massive rally. Which strengthens his out-grouping effect among participants and viewers.

He uses ridicule and lèse majesté, not bended knee and appeals — note that subordinating word — to logical argument.

The result? American belief in the credibility of their news media is now at about 32 percent. That’s the lowest ever polled, and an 8 percent drop from the lowest point of the 2008-2015 period. The media has lost audience, and a lot of power. When Vogue tried to damage Melania by ripping her wardrobe, activists promptly made memes from a photo of the weird-looking critic. The attack instantly lost its power.

Facebook has tried to fight these trend lines by flagging items as “fake news.” Recently, the social media giant decided to stop. Too many people sought out flagged articles. Or, put another way: In many circles, the mainstream media’s status has become negative. What an amazing amount of damage to a hostile institution.

Rational people notice and acknowledge real-world results. Even the left has noticed.

So, why hadn’t anyone ever done this before? In fairness, Newt Gingrich had some success in the 2012 primaries, and Ted Cruz has also tried. But they lacked the full array of tools. Worse, they didn’t understand how to make the media their enemy.

Once you understand conservatives’ biggest and most consistent mistake, it all becomes clear. Facts don't matter to the Left.  Status does. Make them feel bad.

SOURCE

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

Trump blows away another Leftist attack on himself
 
Never in the field of human politics has so much abuse been borne by one person



As the Russia collusion delusion melts away, the Left has adopted a new attack against President Trump. We have heard whispers for months, but the publication of Michael Wolff’s new book turned the rumors into a full-fledged media conspiracy.

According to the Left, the president is crazy. As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) noted recently, this tactic is not new for the Left — it has questioned the sanity of virtually every Republican president.

The theme of Wolff’s book is that the president can’t focus, is impulsive, can’t read, is obsessed with himself, etc. Well, little did Democrat congressional leaders know, as they were headed to the White House Tuesday, that they would end up demolishing the narrative the Left has been constructing in recent weeks.

They walked into the Cabinet Room and sat down at the table. The White House press pool was brought in to take a few pictures and record a few moments of video, which is shared with other media outlets and used for brief clips on the evening news. At that point the press is normally ushered out of the room.

Instead, President Trump kept the cameras rolling so that the American people could watch the negotiations play out on national TV. For the next hour, every cable channel broadcast the meeting live. It showed President Trump in command and fully in charge of the facts.

At one point, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) complained that what the president was proposing is very complex and would be hard to get done. Trump urged him to be serious about negotiating and to get it done.

The entire performance was a brilliant strategic move. Even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer acknowledged that President Trump deserved “a lot of credit” for hosting a “really remarkable meeting.”

But What’s the Policy?

The way the president conducted Tuesday’s meeting was remarkable. He looked very much like a stable genius. But there are concerns by many on the Right over where this may be headed.

For example, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pushed for a “clean DACA bill,” meaning no border security measures, followed by “comprehensive immigration reform,” which really means a massive amnesty.

DACA, Barack Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty for the children of illegal immigrants, is a bitter pill to swallow. If that pill is part of any deal, then it is imperative that the president gets authorization and funding for a border wall. For many conservatives, a big new immigration law prior to the wall would likely be a bridge too far.

The White House must be very careful that these negotiations do not result in a situation where all the president gets is a pledge to fund the wall at some future point. We have been burned by past promises for future border security. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past.

If that happens, we will have another wave of illegal immigrants bringing their children across the border. In fact, it may be happening already.

In my view, the president can survive, regardless of what the polling says, if DACA is terminated. What I don’t think he can survive is getting through his first term without serious progress on the wall.

A Good Day

There are many ways to define a good day. For me, a good day is whenever I can cause the Left to set its hair on fire. And when I tweeted support for the president’s performance at Tuesday’s meeting, I got an avalanche of attacks from hateful progressives, which I find reaffirming. A far-left attack group called “Right Wing Watch” generated the wave of invective.

As you can imagine, the remarks ran the gamut from suggestions that I needed a mental evaluation to accusing me of being anti-American. Much of it can’t be repeated here.

When I did a little checking, I quickly discovered that many of my critics where proud atheists. Not surprisingly, the anti-faith movement has become one of the most intolerant and vicious battering rams of the Left.

I hope President Trump is teaching every Republican leader that if they wake up in the morning and are not being attacked by the Left, they aren’t doing their job!

SOURCE

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

A new level of abuse from the Left in the DACA debate

If you support Trump, you are an "inhumane beast raised by wolves”


Judging by appearances, Rubin (on Left) was the one raised by wolves

Stephanie Hamill, advisor to the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, defended Trump to the panel, saying “I respect our laws and I understand we can’t allow everybody to come in,” also saying that the United States is “the most generous country in the world,” statements she could barely get out over the loud protests of the other panelists.

Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin responded, “Okay, number one, we do not have open borders. If she’d actually talk to any real people who actually work for the Immigration and Customs Agency, she would find out that in fact we have fewer border crossings than we have. Our borders are more secure than ever"

“Thanks to Trump,” Hamill said.

Rubin shot back, “Excuse me, it’s my turn! You be quiet while I speak!.. . She added, “And third of all, what kind of person would send back people who have been working here, who have contributed to this country, who have children here, who would be separated from their children, from their communities, what kind of inhumane beast–are you raised by wolves?”

SOURCE

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

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

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

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

The Labor Market Resurgence

There is good news to welcome in the New Year. For the first time in a very long time, labor markets have heated up, and much of the credit goes to the Trump administration and, specifically, Neomi Rao, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, who has taken the lead in chopping through the regulatory morass that for too long has strangled labor markets. But don’t take my word for it. Even the New York Times confirms the widespread “perception that years of increased environmental, financial, and other regulatory oversight by the Obama administration dampened investment and job creation—and that [Donald] Trump's more hands-off approach has unleashed the 'animal spirits' of companies that had hoarded cash after the recession of 2008."

By way of example, the Wall Street Journal has reported that pay raises were accompanied by signing and retention bonuses in tight-labor market cities like Minneapolis, especially in key sectors like construction, information technology, and manufacturing. Manufacturing is an especially critical indicator, because it shows that job growth wage increases are possible without following Trump’s counterproductive infatuation with protectionist legislation.

To be sure, the Times piece dutifully downplays the good news by reminding readers that “there is little historical evidence tying regulation levels to growth.”  The article even throws a bone in the direction of progressive economists who insist that in the long run, Obama-style regulations can produce benefits, not only for the regulated parties, but for the larger economy and the overall environment.

Yet this skepticism about the current wave of deregulation misses a critical point. The policy shift from the Obama administration to the Trump administration has been dramatic. The Obama administration relentlessly added new labor market regulations while Trump’s has pared back on the enforcement of the labor and antidiscrimination law to an extent that has little historical precedent. It is no wonder that wages were stagnant and that firms were reluctant to move forward with new hiring and expansion under the prior regulatory regime. But a year into the Trump administration, it is possible to explain the correct relationship between regulation and growth, by stressing two key points. The first disentangles good from bad forms of regulation. The second explains why wage increases are often a delayed response even to sensible forms of deregulation.

The first point relies on the simple distinction between regulations that help markets and regulations that strangle them. In the first class are the many regulations that increase the security of transactions. These include rules requiring that certain contracts (such as long-term employment contracts) be in writing, or recorded to be binding on third parties. In addition, sensible regulation of public utilities and the enforcement of antitrust to control monopolies and cartels generally lead to improved economic growth.

But Obama’s bundle of regulatory goodies never ameliorated either of these two recurrent problems.  Instead, at every point, his regulations increased transactional uncertainty by introducing restrictive trade practices in labor markets. Thus its vigorous enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act limited freedom of contract between employers and employees. Any regulation that stifles freedom of contract in competitive markets produces losses to all trading parties, while simultaneously reducing the economic opportunities of third parties. These rules hold as much in labor markets as anywhere else. Obama’s most notable initiative under FLSA was to propose doubling the annual wage level at which minimum wage and, most critically, overtime regulations would kick in, to around $47,000. That one blunder would have upended huge growth in three vital areas of the economy—start-ups, graduate students and post-doc fellows, and the gig economy. By rolling back this regulation, Trump transformed the regulatory landscape for the better.

Similarly, the Obama administration aggressively sought to hold franchisors, like McDonald’s, responsible for the unfair labor practices of their franchisees. That one sop to organized labor would have upended decades of prior practice in another highly successful industry. Nixing this proposal, as the Trump administration did, was a huge change for the better. Progressive policymakers are correct insofar as they argue that it is improper to judge regulations solely by their short-term burdens on regulatory parties. But that mantra continues to naively assume that these negative short-term effects will somehow usher in long-term positive effects. With virtually all progressive regulations, exactly the opposite is true. Systemically negative long-term effects on third parties only compound the original regulatory blunders.

The second point goes to the temporal relationship between regulation and investment. Investment decisions are made over time frames that can run from five years to a generation. These decisions are necessarily riskier if the regulatory environment can become more ominous between the time of the initial expenditures to the time the project goes into operation. Now that Trump has been in office for close to a year, business people look less to his erratic foreign policy tweets and more to his steadfastness of purpose on domestic regulation. Even without the controversial business tax cuts, the stable regulatory environment creates intangible but positive expectations that increase business confidence and open the purse strings. These new investments, present and future, create higher wages and increased consumption.

Progressive critics, of course, are never satisfied, because they still fear that minorities and the poor will miss the parade, thereby aggravating already savage inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunity. Critics like Vanderbilt Law School Professor Ganesh Sitaraman, in his much lauded, but profoundly misguided 2017 book The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic, argues that this situation will lead to wholesale class warfare or even violence. But Sitaraman only reflects the confusion of his mentor, Elizabeth Warren, who thinks that the only way the rich get richer is for the poor to get poorer. Right now, ironically, race relations are, if anything, better than a year ago because we do not have the constant acrimony over the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown that defined the final period of the Obama administration. It is not too far-fetched to assume that the relative calm in race relations (to which Charlottesville was the dreadful exception) stems in part because of increasing economic opportunities. As the the Wall Street Journal reports, “the unemployment rate for black Americans fell to its lowest rate ever at 6.8%.” The quiet news is the best news of all.

Theoretically, moreover, Sitaraman’s point is an absurdity because voluntary contracts in all markets—labor and finance not excepted—are positive-sum transactions that leave both sides better off than before. John F. Kennedy famously summed up the correct position by disdaining the epithet of the “trickle-down” economy by noting that “a rising tide raises all boats.” That is doubly true when all major federal initiatives are moving in the same direction. It is no coincidence that the widespread economic improvement has taken hold—including in minority communities—exactly at the time when the federal enforcement of the employment discrimination laws has fallen to a low ebb. By cutting off market transactions, these rules were job killers for black workers from disadvantaged backgrounds who today are more likely to be hired by employers who know that they will not face heavy liabilities if they are fired or demoted.

The key lesson going forward is to be aware of half measures that will only muddy the waters. The evidence on the power of deregulation will become clear only if the Trump administration continues its all-in policies. Even more importantly, it must firmly reject any and every progressive effort to tighten employment regulation. Perhaps the most perverse recent proposal is from Moshe Marvit and Shaun Richmand, both strong union advocates. Their legislative reform is to junk the current employment-at-will doctrine—whose powerful efficiency features are often overlooked—in favor of a “just-cause” dismissal regime in order to counter systemic employer hostility to union organizers, and indifference to workplace sexual harassment. This massive system of regulation would stop job growth in its tracks.

Remember, the strongest protection for any worker is not some balky legal regime, but a growing economy that makes the threat to quit credible. Indeed, one of the reasons why private sector unionism has dropped and covers only 6 percent of workers is that just–cause provisions are always needed to protect the union’s precarious position as representative of workers, many of whom would happily do without its services. It is critical to remember that the current labor boom is no short-term bubble. Today’s improvements rest on solid productivity gains. The same employers who fiercely resist unionization are happy to pay higher wages to workers whose efforts increase the profits and net worth of the firm, both in the short and long run.

SOURCE

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

Unions are out of control, the Office of Labor-Management Standards can fix that

Although the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) at the Department of Labor is not a large agency, it has a critical mission: rooting corruption out of unions to protect workers’ hard-earned dues money and helping to ensure free and fair union elections. Unfortunately, the agency’s capacity declined during the Obama Era. Now Congress needs to increase funding to rebuild the agency, which has lost more than one-third of its employees since 2008.

While President George W. Bush’s Administration was disappointing at times, his selection of Elaine Chao for Labor Secretary was a wise one. She chose Don Todd to lead OLMS; and because she saw the importance of the agency’s mission, she worked to increase its funding. But even with the increased funding, the agency’s staff was still significantly smaller than it was during the Reagan Era.

Under Don Todd’s leadership, OLMS grew and was very productive. For example, the agency dramatically increased the number of unions it audited. Compliance audits of unions increased by nearly 400% from 206 in the year 2000, the last full year of the Clinton Administration, to 798 in 2008, the last full year of the Bush Administration.

Perhaps if OLMS had had as many employees under Bush as it had under Reagan, it would have been able to audit even more unions than the OLMS did under Reagan. Nonetheless, the agency’s vigorous enforcement of labor law throughout the Bush years resulted in hundreds of corrupt union officials going to prison and tens of millions of dollars being returned to their unions.

Big Labor worked hard and gave generously to elect Obama and other Democrats and to enact Obama’s agenda. Democrats paid union bosses back for their support by pursuing policies designed to increase their power—and revenues. One of the Obama Administration’s favors to union bosses was to deprioritize the work of OLMS. On Obama’s watch, the OLMS workforce was slashed, and funding, audits, investigations, indictments, and convictions all decreased, which was good news for corrupt union bosses, but bad news for their union’s membership.

As an example of the stark contrasts between the Bush and Obama Administrations, consider the number of compliance audits of international unions that OLMS conducted under each. (Of course, it should be noted these audits are labor-intensive due to the size and complexity of international unions.) During the Bush Administration, there were 35 compliance audits of international unions; under Obama, there were zero compliance audits of these unions. In other words, the nation’s largest unions were given some latitude to do as they pleased for eight years, and not one of them had their books audited by the Labor Department.

While the Obama Administration refused to be held accountable to the law—by dragging its feet in appointing inspectors general, obstructing investigations by inspectors general, and refusing to cooperate with Congressional investigations—Obama’s Labor Department refused to hold the nation’s largest unions accountable to the law. Human nature being what it is, it seems highly likely that at least some of these international unions had some less-than-honorable officers or staffers who stole from union members.

Fortunately, the Trump Administration has been selecting quality leaders to turn things around at the Labor Department, and the Administration has also requested a funding increase of several million dollars for OLMS. These additional funds were requested to restart the long-neglected audits of international unions and to upgrade the agency’s dated electronic filing system.

Because of the important work of the agency, Congress should appropriate every penny requested for OLMS. In addition, if any savings can be found in the rest of the budget, Congress should appropriate even more funds to reverse the detrimental staff reductions under Obama. With good leadership and adequate staffing, who knows how much union corruption might be discovered after eight years of lax enforcement?

SOURCE 

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

Keep alert to your surroundings?



This picture is one of a series here

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

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)

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

Let's look inside a Leftist emptyhead

Alon Ben-Meir is Senior Fellow, Center for Global Affairs, NYU.  He is an elderly Jewish "expert" on peace in the Middle East.  It must be hard to be an expert on something that does not exist and shows no signs of coming to be but Ben-meir has allegedly attained it.  On his deathbed he will perhaps be wondering why he spent so much of his life on something so ephemeral.  But he has been heaped with honours and recognition from Leftists so  he might reflect that he has actually done rather well. Seeking praise and recognition is a major Leftist aim, after all.  Too bad if you accomplish nothing good.

He has recently put up an article under the heading: "A Party That Has Lost Its Soul".  And that heading typifies the article.  "Soul" is not defined nor is there any discussion of when and where and how the loss occurred.  The party concerned is of course the Republican party. So we have a meaningless but emotional outpouring.

We also learn that the GOP has failed to "safeguard America’s national interest".  How?  He does not say.

We also hear that the GOP has "no scruples and no moral compass".  So it must be the GOP that says "there is no such thing as right and wrong"?  I would have sworn that was a Leftist docrtine.

And Trump is a "president who has nothing to offer the country but disgrace".  Again no elaboration on that. I thought he offered America renewed greatness. What have I missed?

I have so far referred to his first paragraph only but the rest of his article  is similar so I think I have said enough to show that this Leftist eminence seems to have managed the remarkable feat of having emotions but no brains.  Sadly, a lot of the Left seem like that.

I note that proud RINO, Rick Moran, also accuses the GOP of having lost its soul.  But at least he says why.  It is because judge Moore was "credibly accused" of something.  No presumption of innocence?  Souls seem to fly out the window very readily these days.  As an atheist, I don't have one so I'm OK.

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

More statin propaganda

The New York Times has just published an article supposedly examining the pros and cons of the elderly taking statins. On the face of it the article appears to be balanced however, there are a great number of errors and omissions in this article and as a result the article creates completely the wrong impression about statins.

The New Times Article can be found here, it might be worth comparing the article with the information below.

The first problem with the New York Times article is found in the second paragraph where the author incorrectly states “[statins] get much of the credit for the nation’s plummeting rates of heart attacks and strokes”.

In fact, heart disease death rates have been declining rapidly in the United States (and the UK) since the 1970s. Statins were introduced in the mid to late 1990s - around 20-25 years after the sharp decline was already well under way.

The reduction in heart disease deaths in the United States (and the UK) is mostly due to the reduction in the number of people who smoke cigarettes. Improvements in hospital treatments has also contributed.

In addition, retrospective studies have also failed to find any benefit associated with statins. Although statin clinical trials have predicted a slight reduction in heart attacks in some patient groups, studies that have looked retrospectively have found that these predicted benefits have not actually materialized.

Clinical trials are perceived as the gold standard of clinical research but in recent decades there has been a greater understanding of how the clinical trial process can be manipulated by commercial interests in order to get the result that is favorable to the company sponsoring the trial. Therefore, it is also important to look retrospectively at the risks and benefits as the drug is used widely in the general population.

For example, researchers collected data from all but one of the municipalities of Sweden and they found that statins had not provided any benefit despite a huge increase in usage.

In 2012 the British Heart Foundation published a report detailing a wide range of heart disease statistics. One of the highlights of this report was the decline in heart disease death rates that had been seen in the UK between the years 2002 and 2010. The report listed the improvements that had led to this decline in deaths - statins were not mentioned at all.

Doctors in the pockets of drugs companies and lazy reporters often repeat the myth that statins have contributed to the decline in heart disease deaths, but there is not any to data to support this.

There are many other problems with the New York Times article, such as quoting relative percentages instead of absolute percentages (relative percentages hugely misrepresent the data), and also a failure to mention the other common adverse effects of statins that the elderly are more vulnerable to. However, I want to take particular issue with the fact that the New York Times article also fails to inform people of the strong connection between low cholesterol levels and shorter life expectancy and increased cancer rates - a correlation particularly strong in the elderly. People with High Cholesterol Live Longer!

 SOURCE

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

Leftist Socialism: The Toothfish of Modern Politics

Patagonian Toothfish, the rejected ugly, oily, bottom dwelling toothy fish was rebranded Chilean Sea Bass and became an expensive delicacy for gullible millennials.

So it is with Socialism, a rejected, ugly, oily, bottom dwelling ideology that enriched the elite and enslaved the masses was rebranded Social Democracy and became a rallying cry for naive 21st century millennials.

It is often useful to look backward to move forward so let's review. Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto, stated unequivocally, "Democracy is the road to socialism." Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist Party, affirmed, "The goal of socialism is communism." Social democracy began in the late 19th early 20th century as a political ideology advocating an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes to effect the transition rather than the revolutionary processes of Marxism.

The Socialist Party of America had been unable to field a successful presidential candidate for decades so in 1972 the Socialist Party of America officially rebranded itself and changed its name to Social Democrats, USA. "The name 'Socialist' was replaced by 'Social Democrats' because many Americans associated the word 'socialism' with Soviet Communism." Anyone familiar with Marx and Lenin correctly associated the two which is why rebranding was necessary to eliminate its negative image and conceal its identity.

The thing about rebranding is that it does not change the product itself - only the name changes and its psychological associations.

Rebranding Toothfish as Chilean Sea Bass was a successful marketing strategy designed to sell a rejected fish in the food industry. Similarly, rebranding the Socialist Party of America as Social Democrats was a successful marketing strategy designed to sell a rejected ideology in the political sphere. Both were highly successful.

The democratic socialism currently embraced by the left-wing radicals that dominate the Democrat Party in America has embraced identity politics to increase its membership with inclusive promises of "social justice and income equality." These slogan promises disguise the reality of socialism because, like the Patagonian Toothfish, changing its name does not change what socialism is.

Millennials would be well advised to ignore the rebranded marketing campaigns of political elites like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, DeBlasio, Obama and actually investigate real life socialism in real life countries like Cuba and Venezuela. Instead of accepting the fake news provided by the colluding mainstream media, millennials should be listening to real people who have escaped the tyranny of socialism/communism instead of watching the paid political pundits on television.

Millennials forget that people are not drowning on freedom rafts sailing from Miami to Cuba - they are risking their lives to sail from Cuba to Miami.

The Socialist Party of America's dream to transition America from a capitalist country to a socialist/communist country was always a long-term project and did not collapse with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

On Jan. 10, 1963, Congressman Albert S. Herlong Jr. of Florida read a list of 45 Communist goals into the Congressional Record. The list was derived from researcher Cleon Skousen's book The Naked Communist. The goals that articulate and expose the thinking and strategies of the political elite 55 years ago are the same goals and policies of today's Leftist Democrat leaders Sanders, Warren, DeBlasio, and Obama.

SOURCE

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

Trump Can Take Credit for Black Unemployment Drop
 
There’s plenty to celebrate in the December Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing black unemployment at 6.8 percent, the lowest ever since they started reporting the data in 1972.

President Trump tweeted out his excitement and, of course, took credit for the good news. Has there ever been a politician who didn’t take credit for good news on his watch (or rationalize away responsibility for bad news)?

The president’s detractors, of course, wasted no time in challenging him, pointing out that unemployment rates have been dropping since the economic recovery started, well before Trump took office. Trump, they say, is as responsible for this latest monthly drop as he is for the morning sunrise.

It seems to me quite reasonable for Trump to take credit for this. There are, indeed, positive things happening as result of his leadership — deregulation, a new tax bill, overall business-friendly policies and rhetoric. These things create a business environment of optimism and confidence, which drives investment and increases demand for labor.

However, rather than obsessing about what particular politician to praise or excoriate for certain economic results, our discussion should be about policies and not about personalities. Let’s savor this news but not lose our sobriety regarding the great task before us in this community.

The latest 6.8 percent black unemployment figure sounds great for blacks. But not for whites. The white rate for December was 3.7 percent. Why should there be celebrations that the black rate is “only” 3.1 percentage points higher than the white rate? Why should there be a different economic standard for blacks?

Black unemployment rates have averaged twice the white rate since 1972.

Black poverty rates are around twice the national average.

Black income and household wealth have hardly changed, remaining a fraction of that of whites.

This is the conversation we should be having. When do all American citizens participate equally in our national economic cornucopia?

Donald Trump was onto something when he asked blacks, during the presidential campaign, “What do you have to lose?”

Trump is offering a mindset that blacks should relish. A completely new and different reality. The cultural and political reality that blacks have turned to for years — big government — is the reason these gaps persist. It’s time for something new.

Black unemployment peaked at 16.8 percent in March 2010 during President Obama’s efforts to recover from the 2007-2008 economic collapse.

But the irony is that the collapse was driven by government policies put in place to help low-income Americans to make housing purchases. Contrary to what Barack Obama pitched to the country — blaming business and claiming the problem was insufficient government and regulation — American Enterprise Institute scholar Peter Wallison has shown the opposite.

Government policies mandating higher quotas of mortgages for low- to moderate-income borrowers put an increasing percentage of subprime mortgages on the market. By 2008, according to Wallison, 56 percent of the mortgages acquired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the two massive government-backed mortgage companies — were in this category.

Then everything collapsed.

An ocean of new regulations on financial services, enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, was the Democratic Congress’ answer to their own misdiagnosed analysis of what caused the collapse. As a result, we had a slower-than-normal economic recovery.

These are the discussions we need today. How do we get out of the big government mindset that has been a drag on our economy and has perpetuated economic underperformance in low-income communities?

In this context, Trump is right to boast. He is bringing badly needed new thinking on issues concerning low-income America. It’s already making a difference.

 SOURCE

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

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

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

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

Trump: Halt the ‘Hate,’ ‘Hostility and Anger’

In a bipartisan meeting with Congressional lawmakers on Tuesday, President Donald Trump bemoaned the nation’s “system” of inciting widespread hatred, even in the face of good news.

In the meeting negotiating terms of proposed immigration reform and border security measures, Trump said the system is rigged to encourage blind hatred: “Our system is designed right now that everybody should hate each other and we can’t have that.

“You know, we have a great country; we have a country that’s doing very well, in many respects. We are just hitting a new high on the stock market again. And that means jobs. I look at stocks -- I don't look at the stocks, I look at the jobs, I look at the 401(k)s. I look at what’s happening, where police come up to me and they say “Thank you, you are making me look like a financial genius,” literally. Meaning about them. "And, their wives never thought this was possible, right?"

This system really lends itself to not getting along.  It lends itself to hostility and anger, and they hate the Republicans.  And they hate the Democrats.

“And in the old days of earmarks, you can say what you want about certain Presidents and others, where they all talk about they went out to dinner at night and they all got along, and they passed bills.  That was an earmark system, and maybe we should think about it.”

 SOURCE

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

Google’s New Fact-Check Feature Almost Exclusively Targets Conservative Sites

Google, the most powerful search engine in the world, is now displaying fact checks for conservative publications in its results. No prominent liberal site receives the same treatment.

And not only is Google’s fact-checking highly partisan — perhaps reflecting the sentiments of its leaders — it is also blatantly wrong, asserting sites made “claims” they demonstrably never made.

When searching for a media outlet that leans right, like The Daily Caller (TheDC), Google gives users details on the sidebar, including what topics the site typically writes about, as well as a sidebar titled “Reviewed Claims.”

Vox, and other left-wing outlets and blogs like Gizmodo, are not given the same fact-check treatment. When searching their names, a “Topics they write about” section appears, but there are no “Reviewed Claims.”

In fact, a review of mainstream outlets, as well as other outlets associated with liberal and conservative audiences, shows that only the conservative sites feature the highly misleading, subjective analysis. Several conservative-leaning outlets like TheDC are “vetted,” while equally partisan sites like Vox, ThinkProgress, Slate, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Salon, Vice and Mother Jones are spared.

Occupy Democrats is apparently the only popular content provider from that end of the political spectrum with a fact-checking section.

Ostensibly trying to sum up the crux of the post, the third-party “fact-checking” organization says the “claim” in a DC article that special Counsel Robert Mueller is hiring people that “are all Hillary Clinton supporters” is misleading, if not false.

The problem is that TheDC’s article makes no such claim. Their cited language doesn’t even appear in the article. Worse yet, there was no language trying to make it seem that the investigation into the Trump administration and Russia is entirely comprised of Clinton donors. The story simply contained the news: Mueller hired a Hillary Clinton donor to aid the investigation into President Donald Trump.

Still, the Washington Post gave the claim, which came from Trump himself, its official “Three Pinocchios” rating. The method applies to several other checks. Claims concocted or adulterated by someone outside the TheDC are attributed to TheDC, in what appears to be a feature that only applies to conservative sites.

Examples of such misattribution and misrepresentation are aplenty.

For instance, using Snopes.com, an organization with highly dubious fact-checking capabilities, Google’s platform shows an article by TheDC to have a so-called “mixture” of truth.

The “claim” made, according to Snopes.com, and in-turn Google, is “a transgender women raped a young girl in a women’s bathroom because bills were passed…”

A quick read of the news piece shows that there was no mention of a bill or any form of legislation. The story was merely a straightforward reporting of a disturbing incident originally reported on by a local outlet.

And like Snopes, another one of Google’s fact-checking partners, Climate Feedback, is not usually regarded as objective.

Snopes and Google also decided to “fact-check” an obviously tongue-in-cheek article in which a writer for TheDC pokes fun at a professor saying the solar eclipse in 2017 was naturally racist.

Even Vox pointed out the absurdity of the educator’s literary tirade on Mother Nature’s purported racial prejudice, and the damage it might have done to real arguments of apparent racism.

While Snopes got some flak for its choice, no one seems to have noticed the absurdity of the world’s go-to search engine providing fact-checks to purposefully irreverent content, rather than hard news stories.

Overall, such inclusion embodies Google’s fact-checking services, which, as many presciently feared, are biased, if not also downright libelous.

SOURCE

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

Underestimating Trump Supporters

David Limbaugh

It is disheartening to see the ongoing rift between those conservatives supporting President Donald Trump and those opposing him — a rift that began before Trump and may survive his presidency.

Many conservatives opposed Trump's nomination because they believed he was not a true conservative — not even really a bona fide Republican — but rather a narcissistic opportunist who wanted to take his game show hosting and self-promotional platform to a grander stage.

Many also thought that a Trump presidency, even if it would somewhat forestall the Obama-Clinton agenda, would not be worth the long-term damage it would do to the conservative movement. They believed a Trump victory would embolden the so-called alt-right movement, which they saw as Trump's main base. They saw a mob-like mentality among many of his supporters, saying they were fueled by rage and would rubber-stamp every crazy idea Trump might pursue and also push him to pursue even nuttier ideas.

Admittedly, in the red-hot contentiousness of the primary campaigns, some of the alt-right types did surface as among the most vocal of Trump supporters. Trump supporters seemed to defend anything Trump said or did, even if indefensible.

I admit that during the primaries, I was concerned about Trump's commitment to conservatism and worried that the justifiable outrage of many of his most ardent supporters at the direction the country was headed under Obama was clouding their judgment. Trump was not the answer to the quintessentially anti-conservative and fundamentally leftist Obama.

Then two things happened. The first was that Trump won the GOP nomination fairly and squarely. This meant that he would be facing off against Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt, self-serving and politically opportunistic presidential candidate in decades — someone who had tied herself to the far left and who promised to double down on the Obama agenda.

There is nothing to blunt one's concerns about flaws in a GOP presidential candidate like the sober realization that unless he wins, the abominable Hillary Clinton will be the next president and drive America past the point of returning to anything resembling its founding principles. Only conservatives who didn't view America's trajectory with similar urgency could rationalize their refusal to vote for Trump against Clinton.

This same obliviousness to the urgency of our situation also led to GOP establishment inertia regarding the Obama agenda. The establishment's insufficient energy and willingness to oppose him sowed the seeds of Trump's rise to power. How ironic that the people who remain most opposed to Trump today are to some extent responsible for the emergence of such an unorthodox character to fill the void they helped to create.

The second thing is that I came to realize that I had misunderstood much of Trump's grass-roots support. Yes, grass-roots voters were convinced that there was no difference between the two parties and that only an outsider like Trump could break the mold and inaugurate a new paradigm in Washington. But they were not a mob, and they saw something that others may not have seen.

This epiphany came to me when I was debating a longtime friend who is respected in the community and every bit as conservative as I am but had supported Trump from the beginning. I saw that he was not the exceptional Trump supporter but the typical one, someone who had not given over his critical faculties to runaway emotions but who genuinely believed that Trump, flaws and all, was the answer for these unusual times. As time passed, my epiphany was repeatedly confirmed: Trump supporters are patriotic Americans — not bigots, not political illiterates, not overreacting zealots — who just wanted our country and culture back. It's that simple.

Based on my observation of those on the right who continue to oppose, even revile, Trump at almost every turn, I conclude that their ongoing opposition can largely be traced to disagreement on the two factors I describe — not to mention a healthy dose of stubborn pride, in some cases.

Many of them still deny the urgency in the Obama-Clinton agenda and seem to hold the average Trump supporter in contempt. Another irony emerges as to their willful blindness when it comes to the imminent dangers to America from the Obama-Clinton left. While they claim to have a monopoly on pure conservatism, they frequently hold hands in shared disgust with the leftists still pushing that agenda, and they often diminish the strides Trump has made toward rolling back Obama-era "progress" and advancing conservatism. Their opposition also goes beyond policy, as evidenced by their reflexive sympathy for Trump's Democratic Russia-collusion accusers and their revulsion at conservatives pointing to Obama and Clinton corruption. To them, even to utter criticism against Obama and Clinton is "whataboutism" — an alleged effort to divert attention from Trump's supposed corruption. What they don't realize is their cries of "whataboutism" reveal their own version of the malady; when you point out a Trump success, they say, "What about his character?"

The Trump opponents have a variety of excuses to deny Trump credit for advancing this agenda and discredit those who foresaw the landscape better than they. They can't stand his tone, his manners or his tweets. They view him as temperamentally and mentally unfit for office. Even when he achieves policy success after policy success, they childishly huff that it is only because other people besides Trump are running the White House — that he has delegated foreign policy matters and "outsourced" his legislative agenda. Come on, people.

Well, I don't know whether Trump has morphed into a full-blown ideological conservative, but I do know that he's largely governing as one — and an effective one at that, accomplishing some bold things that few other conservative presidents would have even tried.

Why are some never-Trumpers obsessively bogged down in evaluating Trump's character and competence and preoccupied with sanctimoniously judging Trump's supporters instead of admitting that Trump's supporters are just rooting for America and that Trump's policies are — to this point — moving us back toward the direction of the American dream?

This shouldn't be a contest over who's more conservative; it should be about what's best for the United States. I'm pleased with how things are going. If the conservative movement doesn't come together in the future, I don't think it will be primarily the fault of the Trump supporters.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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

Sexual harassment in Hollywood

Perhaps because I am old and remember different ways of doing things in the past, I draw conclusions about the sexual harassment furore in Hollywood which are diametrically opposite to the current beliefs

No figures have been mentioned for how many women gave in to approaches by Weinstein and others but many clearly did.

In days of not so long ago, a man who got "fresh" with a woman would get a slap across the face from her and that would be the end of the matter. So how come that didn't happen to Harvey Weinstein as far as we know?  Weinstein himself tells us the answer to that and no-one has been able to gainsay him:  It was because the women consented to his approaches.  And the police have got nothing on him because there is no evidence that the women did not consent.

Aha!  Someone will say: But it was coerced consent.  But there is no evidence that the coercion was heavily physical.  The women would just have had to let out a big scream and Weinstein would have rapidly detumesced.

So it is undoubted that the women consented because they wanted something from Weinstein.  That was the coercion.  There is almost a physical hunger to be "in the movies" in Hollywood.  People come to that suburb of Los Angeles from all over the world in hopes of being "noticed".  And most women have had at some time the experience of having sex when they did not really want it. So what Weinstein offered was a price they were willing to pay.

In short, Weinstein BOUGHT them.  And they didn't complain at the time because they went willingly into the transaction and had good hopes of it.  They prostituted themselves to his ugliness -- to be paid not in money but in fame.

So they have nothing to complain about.  By complaining at this juncture they reveal themselves for what they are:  Prostitutes.

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

Melanie Phillips on Hollywood

Stars who dressed in black at the Golden Globes were simply advertising their hypocrisy

Never mind the movies: the theatricality and demand for applause at the Golden Globe awards in Los Angeles at the weekend took place on the red carpet. Actors wore black outfits to signal their solidarity with victims of the sexual harassment scandals that have consumed Hollywood.

It’s hard to recall a more egregious display of vanity signalling than the black dress protest. It was “please snap me while I pose in my conscience”. MeToo! MeToo! -------

The hypocrisy is epic. Many actors expressing such outrage use sexual chemistry to attract the predatory male movie executives they then profess to despise. They habitually wear outfits that leave little to the imagination, split upwards or downwards or utterly transparent. What’s more, many of the movies and TV series in which they appear, some of them having forgotten to put on any clothes at all, have long crossed the line into soft porn.--------

Yet many of those blustering in black at the Globes knew about this behaviour but kept quiet about it in order not to jeopardise their careers.----------

Laura Dern used her acceptance speech for her best supporting actress award to urge: “May we teach our children that speaking out without the fear of retribution is our culture’s new north star.”

Yet the causes regularly promoted by such luvvies — climate change, Black Lives Matter, anti-colonialism, anti-Islamophobia, LGBT issues — are being advanced by condign retribution, such as character assassination or social and professional ostracism, against any who dares speak against them.

Moreover, Hollywood’s finest don’t don black outfits to protest against men in the developing world who not only abuse but slaughter women, men and children.

Millions of women around the world really do suffer in cultures where male violence towards women is a given; but on those victims, these Hollywood hypocrites are silent.

In cultures they choose to present as victims of western colonialism, they simply ignore the all-too real oppression of women. They profess “solidarity” with oppressed women; but of course, it’s really all about themselves

SOURCE

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

Love Texas



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

Liberal Prof: There's No Evidence of Collusion, 'I've Never Seen Media Malpractice Like This'

Stephen Cohen, a professor emeritus of Russian Studies at New York University and a contributing editor to the leftist magazine The Nation, said -- contrary to claims of The Washington Post -- "we do not" know if our democracy was "hacked" by Trump-Russia collusion, it is "not true" that a "consensus of intelligence agencies" said there was collusion and, when it comes to news coverage of the president, "I have never seen media malpractice like this before in my life."

Cohen, an author, writer, and leading expert on Russia since the Bolshevik coup d'etat in 1917, added that he travels to Moscow regularly and even knows Russian intelligence officers and he has not yet "found anybody in Moscow who believes the story" of collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials.

On the Dec. 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, host Tucker Carlson quoted from The Washington Post, which in a story about Trump and Russia ran a headline "hacking democracy," implying that this was true, an established fact. Carlson asked Prof. Cohen if it is true that "our democracy was, quote, 'hacked,' do we know that?"

Prof. Cohen, who is also professor emeritus of Russian Studies at Princeton University, said, "We do not. It's been alleged."  He then explained the "media malpractice" of The Post.

"Originally it was said that 17 intelligence agencies made that finding," said Cohen. "Turned out it was a few people and a couple of intelligence agencies. If you read on in The Washington Post story in the first paragraph, they go back to this claim that it's a consensus of intelligence agencies."

"So, it's simply not true," he said. "I have to say that, in addition to being a professor for a long time, I was also a paid consultant of a major American television network."

"I admire mainstream media, I learned a lot," said Prof. Cohen.  "But I have never seen media malpractice like this before in my life."

"What that constitutes is essentially making allegations for which there is no verified fact, information or evidence," he said.  "And then basically your commentary on it. So, briefly put, it said that somehow Trump has been compromised by Putin, the leader of Russia. Then when Trump does diplomacy with Putin, The New York Times literally calls it treason. I've never seen anything like this before."

Prof. Cohen then noted how, in the past, the media were often skeptical of leaks from U.S. intelligence agencies because all leaks have a political agenda atatched to them. He also said that presidents should be skeptical of intelligence claims and cited the Bay of Pigs disaster, based on CIA intel; the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution under President Lyndon Johnson; and the intelligence claims about WMD in Iraq.

"A president who is skeptical about intelligence, critical mind of it, is a good president," said Cohen.

Carlson then asked, "Do we have, that you have seen, any evidence at all that the Russian government materially affected the outcome of the 2016 election?"

Prof. Cohen said, "I've heard you say repeatedly there is no evidence. I've looked harder than you have. I've looked here in America but, also, I've looked in Moscow. When I'm there, I ask people I know and yes, I confess, I do know people who are or have been Russian intelligence agents. I haven't found anybody in Moscow who believes the story."

Stephen Cohen is the author of nine books on the Soviet Union and post-Communist Russia, as well as countless essays and articles. He is a former CBS News consultant, a friend of Mikhail Gorbachev, and he advised President George H.W. Bush in the 1980s.

SOURCE

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

How Income Taxes Increase Economic Inequality

New research suggests that some politicians may have been barking up the wrong tree when it comes to battling income inequality.

Take, for instance, Bernie Sanders, the former left-wing candidate for U.S. president who in 2015 said that a 90 percent top income tax rate on the wealthy would not be too high. His idea was to reduce income inequality and he cited the eye-watering tax rates as the right way to do it. Plenty in the media rushed to his defense.

The problem is that the evidence from the real world doesn’t support such assertions.

Income taxes don’t reduce income inequality. Instead they do quite the opposite, according to December-dated analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The paper looked at three major 20th century U.S. tax reforms and found that they did nothing to decrease income inequality and everything to increase it.

“I find that all the considered tax policy reforms raised economic inequality, instead of lowering it, as was intended by the policymakers,” states the paper titled “Do Taxes Increase Economic Inequality? A Comparative Study Based on the State Personal Income Tax” by Ugo Troiano, professor of economics at the University of Michigan.

The tax policy reforms he references are the introduction of state income tax, the introduction of tax withholding along with reporting by employers, and the agreement between the federal government and the states to coordinate audits.

Why did income inequality increase when that wasn’t the goal of the reforms?

“The fact that the only effect that these reforms had in common was raising the revenues from income tax and making the government bigger and the private sector smaller, suggest that a bigger government, at least in the recent history, had the effect of higher inequality,” the report states.

In other words, bigger government ends up retarding the private sector and reducing the size of the wealth pie. Naturally, the poorer come out worst in such a situation, while the well-heeled can get top tier advice to dodge the tax bullet. Hence, the rich get richer and the poor stay skint.

One caveat that Troiano does suggest is that it is possible in each case that the labor market changed dramatically after the reforms to cause the increase in income inequality. That said, this last idea seems unlikely.

There are others who take a far more cynical view than does Troiano.

“Nobody who believes in liberty, or public choice theory, will be surprised to learn that higher taxes lead to more inequality,” says Robert E. Wright, professor of political economy at Augustana University in South Dakota.

The problem is that the elites in any society, including the U.S., control the government and they quite naturally take care of themselves first, he says. He points out that the major difference between a tin-pot dictator in a dodgy country somewhere and the U.S. republic is that the latter “has to be more clandestine” in its efforts to rig the game.

That covert approach manifests in mind-bogglingly complex tax regulations, according to Wright, a view with which anyone trying to file their tax returns now may agree.

“Income taxes laden with complex deductions are particularly good ways of quietly redistributing wealth from the middle class to the rich, which I think explains America's outlying position in the inequality category,” he says.

The outlying position he refers to is what economists call the Gini coefficient, which measures income distribution. The higher the number (which is always between one and zero), the more unequal. The U.S. figure is high relative to other rich countries such as those in Europe.

What is notable is that states with no income tax, such as Alaska and New Hampshire, tend to have lower Gini coefficients than those with higher state income tax rates, such as New York and Massachusetts, according to data from the World Atlas website.

“That’s hardly coincidental if Troiano is correct,” says Wright.

What's perhaps more notable is that if Sanders and his ilk wish to lower inequality of income, maybe they should think about scrapping income taxes altogether.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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

The dangerous Dr. Lee



The Soviets used psychiatry to oppress those who disagreed with them so it is no wonder that American Leftists are marching in their footsteps.  The American Left always did like the Soviets

A PSYCHIATRIST has called for Donald Trump to be physically detained for an “emergency” mental health evaluation, sparking a debate about the professional ethics of “armchair” diagnosis.

Dr Bandy Lee, assistant professor in forensic psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, met with a dozen Democratic politicians last month to “brief” them on Mr Trump’s fitness for office — despite never having met or evaluated the US President.

“Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President’s dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation,” Dr Lee told CNN last week.

It came as Mr Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing the media of “taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence,” branding himself a “very stable genius”.

In October, Dr Lee co-authored a book called The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump, a compilation of 27 essays by psychiatrists and mental health experts offering the view that Mr Trump “presents a clear and present danger to our nation”.

Dr Lee joins a chorus of left-wing media outlets and commentators calling for Mr Trump to be removed under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution, which allows for the Vice President to take over if he and a majority of Cabinet secretaries decide the President is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, it is “unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion” on a public figure “unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorisation for such a statement”.

It’s known as the Goldwater Rule, after former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. In 1964, Fact magazine published an article titled “The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater”, featuring a poll of psychiatrists in which almost half said Mr Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president.

Mr Goldwater lost the election but several years later successfully sued the magazine’s publisher for defamation. Current APA president Maria Oquendo has described it as a “large, very public ethical misstep by a significant number of psychiatrists”.

Dr Lee claims she has not broken the Goldwater Rule because “we are not diagnosing him ... we are mainly concerned that an emergency evaluation be done”.

Her comments have been criticised by some of her peers, however. In a letter published in The New England Journal Of Medicine, Columbia University Department of Psychiatry chairman Dr Jeffrey Lieberman accused Dr Lee and her colleagues of “a misguided and dangerous morality”.

“Although moral and civic imperatives justify citizens speaking out against injustices of government and its leaders, that does not mean that psychiatrists can use their medical credentials to brand elected officials with neuropsychiatric diagnoses without sufficient evidence and appropriate circumstances,” he wrote.

“To do so undermines the profession’s integrity and credibility.  “More than any other medical specialty, psychiatry is vulnerable to being exploited for partisan political purposes and for bypassing due process for establishing guilt, fault and fact.”

Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz has also described the push by left-wing psychiatrists to remove Mr Trump as “very dangerous”.

“That’s what they did in Russia. That’s what they did in China. That’s what they did in apartheid South Africa,” he told Fox News. “How dare liberals, people on the left, try to undo democracy by accusing a president of being mentally ill without any basis.

“The 25th Amendment doesn’t apply. Everybody knew who Donald Trump was when they elected him ... he hasn’t changed in office and this idea of diagnosing him instead of opposing him politically poses an enormous danger to our democracy.”

SOURCE

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

Instead of 'Infrastructure Investment,' How About Killing Davis-Bacon?
   
Is there a difference between President Barack Obama’s “stimulus” and President Donald Trump’s “infrastructure investment”? Despite costing $800 billion, most economists do not believe Obama’s “stimulus” program did much stimulating. During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of Treasury wrote in his diary that the New Deal spending, designed to rescue the economy, was not working. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau wrote:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot!”

Trump, in announcing his upcoming plans for 2018, said: “Infrastructure is, by far, the easiest. People want it, Republicans and Democrats. We’re going to have tremendous Democrat support on infrastructure, as you know. I could’ve started with infrastructure. I actually wanted to save the easy one for the one down the road. We’ll be having that done pretty quickly.”

What if, instead of spending more on infrastructure, the government began paying nearly 20 percent less for projects? And how about pushing privatization, where possible, over the inevitably more costly government spending?

The Davis-Bacon Act, a Depression-era measure, was designed to thwart black workers from competing against white workers. It requires federal contractors to pay “prevailing union wages.” This act sought to shut out black workers from competing for construction jobs after white workers protested that Southern blacks were hired to build a Veterans Bureau hospital in Long Island, New York — the district of Rep. Robert Bacon, one of the bill’s sponsors. It is remarkable the Davis-Bacon still lives despite its racist intent and its discriminatory effect — to this day — on black workers. Passed in 1931, two Republicans teamed up to sponsor it.

In a labor market dominated by exclusionary unions that demanded above-market wages, blacks, at the time, competed by working for less money than the unionists. Davis-Bacon stopped this by requiring federal contractors to pay prevailing local union wages, causing massive black unemployment. Lawmakers made no secret of the law’s goal.

In the House of Representatives, Congressman William Upshaw (D-GA) said: “You will not think that a Southern man is more than human if he smiles over the fact of your reaction to that real problem you are confronted with in any community with a superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.” Rep. Miles Clayton Allgood (D-AL) supported the bill and complained of “cheap colored labor” that “is in competition with white labor throughout the country.” Rep. John J. Cochran (D-MO) stated that he had “received numerous complaints in recent months about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South.”

Davis-Bacon adds as much as 20 percent more to the cost of any federal project. And most states have enacted local Davis-Bacon laws that similarly jack up the price of those government construction projects.

This brings us to privatization. Why not encourage more projects to be built and run by the private market?

In California, for example, the Democratic governor pushes a “bullet train” that promises to benefit Los Angeles-to-San Francisco travelers. Yet the governor expects taxpayers to pay for at least part of this supposedly wonderful project. If it is predicted to be so profitable, why should taxpayers finance it?

Finally, it is not true that our gas tax has not kept pace with federal highway route expenses. From 1982 through 2014, federal gas tax revenues increased nearly 6 percent a year, according to the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards. He also points out that, beyond transportation and water, “most of America’s infrastructure is provided by the private sector, not governments.” “In fact,” says Edwards, “private infrastructure spending — on factories, freight rail, cell towers, pipelines, refineries, and other items — is four times larger than federal, state, and local government infrastructure spending combined.”

Businessman Trump is uniquely positioned to make the case not for more government spending but for less — but more efficient — spending. Obama’s failed “stimulus” should serve as Exhibit A for what we ought not do. Trump should make the case to abolish Davis-Bacon and for the privatization of as much infrastructure as possible.

So what’s the difference between Obama’s “stimulus” and Trump’s “infrastructure investment”? Obama spent $830 billion in four years, while Trump says he wants to spend as much as $1 trillion in 10 years. Unless we kill Davis-Bacon and move toward more privatization, the answer may be no difference at all.

SOURCE

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

Tax Reform Delivers Another Blow to Union-Funded 'Fight for $15'

The failing “Fight for $15” movement just suffered another blow. It appears that tax reform has produced results that have largely eluded the union-funded movement to raise the wages of workers across the country.

Americans for Tax Reform has a handy list of all the companies that are hiking wages, handing out millions in bonuses, and making charitable donations. And it is lengthy. In a very short time frame, tax reform has made good on what the Fight for $15 movement promised—provide a direct, positive impact on the well-being of thousands of workers.

Who would have guessed that lessening the tax burden on employers would have positive impact on wages and economic growth?

In contrast, the Fight for $15 has failed to deliver, despite the millions of dues dollars that the Service Employee International Union, along with other unions, have spent on the effort.

Part of the organizations’ failure stems from the fact that artificially raising wages to $15 per hour is a bad idea. Even the liberal-leaning Washington Post editorial board recently published an editorial imploring Montgomery County, Maryland, to not raise the minimum wage to $15.

Further, in real world test cases, the outcome of $15 minimum wage has not been pretty. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that in Seattle, which recently raised the minimum wage to $15, “some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They’ve cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go.”

Additionally, a study commissioned by the City of Seattle to monitor the impact of the $15, found the wage increase cost jobs and hours for workers.

While raising minimum wages to $15 is not economically wise, the Fight for $15, a thinly veiled union front group, has had to deal with other setbacks. Despite organizing protests and lobbying efforts, Michael Saltsman, managing director at the Employment Policies Institute, documents the Fight for $15’s losses in trying to raise the minimum wage:

New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez vetoed a state wage hike, pointing to its consequences for small businesses. And in Maine, legislators — at the urging of restaurant servers — are poised to roll-back harmful minimum wage provisions passed by ballot measure on Election Day.

Last month, Baltimore Democratic Mayor Catherine Pugh vetoed a $15 minimum wage. She justified her decision by pointing to the impact it would have on city finances and city businesses. City analyses predicted the wage hike would have raised city payroll costs by $115 million over four years. Employers in the city told her they would be forced to reduce job opportunities and move outside city limits if the law took effect.

Also last month, the City of Flagstaff voted to roll back its forthcoming $12 minimum wage after numerous municipal small businesses like Cultured Yogurt dessert shop and Country Host restaurant were forced to close as a result.

In Iowa, state legislators recently voted to set one minimum wage at the state level and eliminate the patchwork of local minimum wage increases around the state. Missouri legislators are working to do the same. Last summer, Cleveland’s Democratic City Council voted against a $15 minimum wage then worked with state legislators to set state preemption on this issue.

Numerous Chicago suburbs, including Barrington, Oak Forest, Rosemont, and Tinley Park, have opted out of Cook County’s $13 minimum wage. Some cities in Santa Clara County in California have also chosen to do the same.

Ultimately, a strong economy is the best path to higher wages. Unions should recognize this and stop wasting member dues on the Fight for $15 movement, which even if it succeeds in raising minimum wage laws is bad news for workers at-large.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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

Democrat Outrage Over GOP Tax Cuts Unfounded, Immoral

Government redistribution of wealth isn't charity, and tax cuts won't make Americans less generous



The progressive Democrat outrage over the recently signed Republican tax reform law provides both a fascinating insight into the minds of leftists and a unique opportunity to discuss taxes and spending from a moral standpoint.

Democrats are clearly infuriated at the idea that the federal government will now be prevented from confiscating quite as much of the earnings of tens of millions of Americans as it did last year. In a bizarre twist of logic, Democrats see tax cuts as greedy American citizens stealing from government. That is evidenced in their rhetoric, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calling the tax cuts “Armageddon,” and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accusing Republicans of “giv[ing] the richest few a bigger piece of the pie.”

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) called it a “looting of the federal treasury,” at least before conceding to CNN’s Jake Tapper that 91% of the middle class he claims to champion will, in fact, benefit from the Republican tax cuts, and then blaming Republicans for not making the cuts permanent. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) brilliantly trolled Sanders on Twitter, inviting him to co-sponsor legislation doing just that.

The common thread in the government-loving leftist narrative is that government has a right to whatever portion of our earnings it deems necessary to achieve its ends, with taxpayers as slaves whose labor provides the necessary funding.

Democrats have hijacked and distorted language and turned it on its face, accusing workers who want to keep more of their money to provide for their families of being “greedy,” while painting government, which takes our earnings by force to give to those who have not earned it, as altruistic. Harvard economist Thomas Sowell captures the essence of this looking-glass logic, stating, “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

As to the why of the progressive Democrat pursuit of what renowned economist Frederic Bastiat called “legal plunder,” well, that is a logical political calculation on their part, and it comes down to raw power. For, as socialist playwright George Bernard Shaw smugly noted, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.” Democrats seek to steal greater amounts from a shrinking number of workers, with the clear knowledge that voters benefitting from the redistribution of those ill-gotten gains will keep them in power.

Democrats claim to be horrified at the thought that tax cuts will (allegedly) increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years (as if keeping money in private hands, rather than ever-expanding government spending, is the problem). Yet an astute observer would note these same Democrats happily ran up the deficit during the Barack Obama years, resulting in $10 trillion in new debt.

Tax cuts are good policy. As liberal icon John F. Kennedy declared in 1962, in calling for significant cuts to the corporate and personal income tax rates, “In short, it is a paradoxical truth that … the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”

Tax cuts are also morally sound, allowing free men and women to provide for the care of their families, rather than be rendered serfs on a government master’s plantation, retaining just enough of the fruits of their labor to maintain subsistence.

And while leftists claim taxes need to be higher so the so-called “rich” can pay their “fair share,” let’s remind them they can voluntarily donate more of their money to government if they wish. That is, unless they wish to admit their philosophy is not about caring for the needy, but about cultivating envy and justifying theft.

Thus, speaking of benevolence with money, another fear regarding the impact of tax cuts is that, with the standard deductions and child tax credits doubling, it will drastically reduce the number of people who itemize and, therefore, reduce the number of people who give to charity.

Such a thought shows a misunderstanding of the nature of charity, which is a voluntary, individual act (by definition, government cannot be charitable, because it uses force). The American people are empirically the most generous people on Earth, giving twice as much in personal charity as the next closest country, Canada.

People give to charity not for tax breaks (which would be silly; the taxes saved are far less than the amount given to charity), but out of a sincere desire to help their fellow man. Last year alone, individual Americans donated nearly $300 billion to charity, nearly three times more than was donated by foundations and corporations.

The reality is that with more money in their own pockets, there will be more available for Americans to donate to charity. Multiple studies show the more conservative and religious a person is, the more they donate to charity, both in hard dollars and as a percentage of income. (Perhaps that’s tied with the way leftists think about taxes and deductions.) There is no reason to think the tax cuts will do anything but encourage even greater charitable giving, since those who were previously barely making ends meet may now have the means, and the desire, to share.

And voluntary sharing is a very good thing. Government redistribution is not.

SOURCE

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

Trump Rule Aims to Extend Health Care Option to 11 Million Uninsured

Small businesses and sole proprietors will be able to band together under a new federal rule to create employee health plans that would expand coverage options for 11 million uninsured Americans, senior Trump administration officials said.

The Labor Department rule allowing “association health plans,” placed Thursday in the Federal Register, builds on an executive order by President Donald Trump from October.

One senior Trump administration official said during a background briefing Wednesday that the association health plans will “level the playing field” between small businesses and large corporations and provide “more health care for more people at a lower cost.”

Currently, 8 million Americans employed by small businesses and another 3 million sole proprietors, who do business without employees, don’t have access to a group health insurance plan.

Entry on the Federal Register opens a 60-day public comment period, and the rule could be implemented as early as summer, officials said.

“The main objective of this effort is to expand choices for people who do not yet have insurance and [create] more options for employers and employees to take advantage of,” Robert Moffit, a senior fellow in health policy studies at The Heritage Foundation and a former assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, told The Daily Signal.

In theory, individual small businesses without many employees could band together—in some cases across state lines—to create a health insurance plan covering a combined, large pool of employees, not unlike that of a health plan run by a big company with its own large pool of employees.

Such association members must have a “commonality,” which could be based on region or industry, senior administration officials said on background.

For example, companies in a specific state could band together for a plan. Already, industry groups such as the National Association of Restaurants and the National Homebuilders Association have expressed support for the concept.

While association plans are targeted for small businesses, a larger corporation could join one. However, these companies already have existing plans, so there would be less incentive to do so, the senior administration officials said.

Conceptually, the association health plans would be comparable to certain union-sponsored plans, such as that of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, in which an individual entrepreneur may buy into a larger health insurance plan, officials said.

Administration officials who briefed state leaders on the idea described them as “cautious but not antagonistic” and “intrigued.”

States will be free to regulate to ensure the solvency of the plans.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the health insurance lobby, has warned that such plans could be prone to fraud without state oversight.

“For example, between 2000 and 2002, insurance scams through associations left more than 200,000 policyholders with unpaid medical bills totaling $252 million,” a research brief from the organization says.

However, Moffit contends this is not alone a reason to oppose the plans.

“That’s a matter of how they are governed,” Moffit said. “Medicaid is prone to fraud. Nobody is saying we should ban Medicaid. If that’s a reason for opposition, you could apply such a rationale across the board to welfare programs and food stamps.”

Participating companies will be required to have a role in governing the health plans, senior administration officials said.

Another potential point for opponents is that fewer people who are uninsured will turn to the existing insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

This could drive up the cost of the exchange plans, because they would have fewer participants. But Trump administration officials contend their plan will increase consumer options.

The rule will go into place administratively under an existing law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, known as ERISA.

When signing the executive order Oct. 12, Trump predicted:

Insurance companies will be fighting to get every single person signed up, and you will be hopefully negotiating, negotiating, negotiating, and you’ll get such low prices for such great care.

Trump’s executive order primarily does three things:

—Allows more small businesses to form associations to buy insurance plans, with the goal of creating more competition and expanding options across state lines.

—Reviews establishment of “short-term limited duration insurance,” which would not be subject to Obamacare’s expensive and comprehensive coverage regulations.

—Makes it easier for businesses to offer health reimbursement accounts, allowing more employees of small businesses to get coverage through work.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who had opposed other administration-backed health care plans, said at the signing ceremony that the Trump executive order was “the biggest free-market reform of health care in a generation.”

Paul added that the reform, “if it works and goes as planned, will allow millions of people to get insurance across state lines at an inexpensive price.”

In a Facebook post Thursday morning, Paul said he “applauds” the new rule allowing association health plans as described in the original version of this article:

SOURCE

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

The Obama legacy: Health Insurance Premiums Rising as High as 265% in Virginia This Year

Health insurance premiums in Virginia’s individual marketplace are set to rise as high as 265 percent in this new year.

According to the Virginia State Corporation Commission’s Affordable Care Act filing data, the maximum allowable premium hike for Optima Health Plan customers is 265.5 percent, which represents the largest increases in the Virginia individual market next year. Some Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company health plans on the individual market are set to rise 168.6 percent in 2018.

Thee Virginia State Corporation Commission explained that the sharp increases are legal in the state because they follow “federal uniform modification guidelines.” Insurance companies such as CareFirst provided reasons for the rate changes such as the “age factor.”

SOURCE

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

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

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

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