Tariffs

By economic historian Martin Hutchinson

As President Trump imposes tariffs on China and elsewhere, much dark muttering is heard from the media and conventional economists about Smoot-Hawley and the 1930s. They are too gloomy.

Three developments in the last few decades have made it sensible to look again at this question. First, the inexorable growth of welfare states in every Western country, together with the increase in life expectancy, has destabilized budgets, making them impossible to balance. As a result, public debt which in the United States had fallen steadily since the end of World War II until 2000, has turned up again sharply and is inexorably increasing. The Obama administration and its overseas contemporaries, with their sluggish economic growth and phony Keynesian rationales for wasting money, have everywhere except Germany turned a difficult problem into an impossible one. Public debt levels everywhere except Germany are heading relentlessly upwards and will within the next decade reach historically unprecedented levels in the United States and several other countries.

The EU’s solution to this problem is an ever-escalating level of VAT. This effectively acts as a tariff, since exports are free from the tax while imports are subject to it. Thus, EU and British sanctimony about free trade is sheer hypocrisy. However, it also subjects domestic consumers to the VAT levy on items produced domestically as well as overseas, producing a highly regressive tax system that bears especially heavily on poorer consumers.

A second change since Smoot-Hawley is the spread of manufacturing capabilities to far more countries. Back in the 1930s, most products could only be produced in advanced economies that had undergone full industrialization. Other economies, often part of a colonial system, were mostly producers of agricultural and mine output, while importing industrial products. Only in a few sectors, such as textiles, was the industrialization process sufficiently cheap and simple to allow textile industries to develop even in poor countries.

Today there are over 100 different countries from which many products can be sourced, and the major centers of manufacturing capability have moved to emerging markets with lower labor costs. Consequently, trade has infinitely many routes it can take to achieve its objectives, and a tariff that blocks sourcing in one country still leaves a vast array of other sourcing possibilities open to the importer.

The third and most important change since the 1930s is the invention of computers, and more particularly the possibility of intelligent software that can track the trade barriers existing at any instant, calculate the optimal source for the components of a particular consignment of goods, then place sourcing and shipping orders to ensure that those goods are produced and delivered to where they are needed.

With the changes that have happened since the 1930s, the outcome of a tariff escalation today would be very different to that of Smoot-Hawley. At that time, if there was a high tariff against a particular import, there were few alternative sources of the item, and little ability to find out what the possibilities were. With intelligent software (which may still need to be designed for this specific purpose but is undoubtedly feasible with today’s technology) it will today be possible to find all the alternative sources of an item as well as the possibilities for substitutions of other items from other sources. Thus, an interlocking network of tariffs today need not be anything like as trade-destroying as was Smoot-Hawley. It will simply result in new routes being found for the global sourcing process that has grown up in the last few decades.

Tariffs today would thus kill much less trade than equivalent tariffs did in the 1930s and would have a correspondingly smaller adverse effect on the efficiency of the global economic system. Since more trade would remain after the tariffs, they would produce more revenue for the Federal budget, thus helping to balance it. Even a modest 10% tariff averaged over the current $3 trillion of U.S. imports would produce $300 billion of additional annual revenue for the federal budget, not enough to balance it but enough to make a sizeable hole in the deficit.

In addition, a world of tariffs would divert a considerable amount of trade towards domestic production, thus moving the U.S. closer to a balanced payments position and producing additional revenue from the people employed in the domestic production. Overall, with a substantial tariff, the U.S. tax system would be balanced between domestic production and international trade.

To the extent that tariffs deterred international trade which would otherwise take place, the lower domestic taxation and higher domestic production would encourage economic activity elsewhere. By ensuring that a higher percentage of world output was manufactured closer to where it was consumed, a tariff system would increase (not decrease as is conventionally asserted) the efficiency of the world economy. Global sourcing may have got easier, but it is still expensive, inefficient, time-consuming and prone to fraud.

Contrary to free-tradist thinking, the overall effect of a balanced and moderate set of international tariffs should not depress global GDP, indeed it should increase it because of the greater balance in the world’s fiscal system. There will no longer be corporate tax havens, because the tariff arrangements with such havens will generally be onerous, but there will be tariff havens, which have tariff arrangements that allow goods to move exceptionally cheaply between the different trading blocs.

When the “North American Free Trade Agreement” includes Canadian quotas on milk imports and a 218% average duty on dairy imports beyond those quotas, it is not truly a free trade agreement at all, as Richard Cobden would have understood it. Likewise, the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership’s imposition of $70 billion in U.S. intellectual property protection, far exceeding the free trade effect of the agreement, indicated that TPP was little more than a handout to the Hollywood and Silicon Valley lobbies. Quotas are essentially infinite tariffs; they block trade far more than ordinary tariffs, while intellectual property protections are impediments to trade, not enablers of it. All such quotas, bounties and trade regulations are sources of inefficiency that produce no revenue (or, in the case of bounties, consume revenue) and block economic activity. They should be swept away.

The regime under which we have been working is not one of free trade and has been grossly mis-sold as such. For fiscal and other reasons, we will be far better off with a world trading system that includes revenue-generating tariffs, which can be optimized and dealt with by high-quality software.  The world will be a happier place with less regulation, no bounties or quotas, and with openly disclosed tariffs, set at a moderate level.

More HERE

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America's Totalitarians

Today's leftists believe it is their solemn duty to take the country back even if our republic is destroyed



“We had to destroy the village in order to save it” was a quote popularized during the Vietnam War. Today’s Democrats, along with their allies in Hollywood, academia, Big Tech, and media, believe it is their solemn duty to take the country back from the “dregs of society” and their “ally in the White House,” even if our republic is destroyed.

And they’re increasingly embracing totalitarianism as the means to their end.

“I don’t use the ‘T’-word lightly,” writes columnist Sohrab Ahmari. “I’ve spent years pushing back against those who fling it about in free societies like ours. But totalitarianism doesn’t require cartoonish, 1984-style secret police and Big Brother. The classical definition is a society where everything — ethical norms and moral principles and truth itself — is subjugated to political ends.”

Political ends Democrats are willing to trash the Constitution to achieve. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Warner (D-VA), and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are demanding that the intelligence community, the FBI, and the Justice Department defy President Donald Trump’s order to release unredacted documents to Congress until they are vetted by the so-called Gang of Eight, calling it a “brazen abuse of power.” Former CIA Director John Brennan insisted deep-state officials — unelected and publicly unaccountable officials — were obligated to “push back” against the order as well.

Congress has lawfully subpoenaed the documents, yet a defiant deep state has refused to release them for months, citing “national security concerns.” Those concerns have already been debunked on two separate occasions, including the wiretap warrant applications presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that ultimately revealed the warrant to spy on Carter Page was based on the Hillary Clinton/DNC-funded Steele dossier. Moreover, redactions made by the FBI removed critical exchanges such as this: Lisa Page: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Peter Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

Trump initially ordered “immediate declassification,” but now wants the inspector general to review documents on an “expedited basis,” due to concerns about how it would impact the Russia investigation. Yet in a tweet he noted that he can still “declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me — and everyone!”

Indeed. The 2018 election is “not going to be just about economic growth and running on the economy,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) explains. “It’s going be about what the other side did to play dirty, to dirty up a campaign … by corrupting the FBI and the DOJ. That is important for the American people to know as we have to deliver that message going into October.”

Who’s going to deliver it? The New York Times reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein secretly proposed recording Trump’s Oval Office conversations and discussed the idea of Cabinet officials removing him via the 25th Amendment. Rosenstein insists he was joking. Times reporter Adam Goldman says otherwise.

The far bigger story? Rosenstein’s statements were reportedly corroborated in memos written by Andrew McCabe and given to Robert Mueller and kept at the FBI, according to the Times. Yet they were kept from Inspector General Michael Horowitz — while he conducted his investigation of McCabe? If Horowitz is corrupt, “expedited basis” becomes a meaningless term with regard to deep-state corruption impacting the midterm election.

Unfortunately, our law-enforcement agencies aren’t the only government departments where rank partisanship — bordering on sedition — exists. Last week Project Veritas released a trio of damning videos. One featured State Department employee and Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Stuart Karaffa bragging about drafting DSA communications at work, and stating his mission with regard to Trump administration policies. “Resist everything … Every level. F—k s—t up,” he declared.

The second video showed DOJ paralegal and DSA member Allison Hrabar, part of the DSA group that harassed DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a DC restaurant, bragging about using the department’s Lexis Nexis account to access home addresses of government officials DSA sought as protest targets. DOJ employee Jessica Schubel, former chief of staff for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is also shown discussing her efforts to resist the administration as well.

In the third video, Government Accountability Office auditor and DSA member Natarajan Subramanian admits he breaks rules “every day.” He boasted, “If you’re in an executive branch agency, you can slow-ball things to a degree.”

Three of these subversives expressed one common belief best stated by Karaffa: “I have nothing to lose. It’s impossible to fire federal employees.”

The DOJ, the State Department, and the GAO are conducting investigations, but if history is any indication, Karaffa’s right. At best it takes on average from 170 to 370 days to fire a government employee according to the GAO. Appeals can drag the process out for years.

Columnist James Simpson optimistically notes there are bills being contemplated in both chambers of Congress that would “greatly streamline the process for firing employees who are poor performers, insubordinate, or otherwise engaged in misconduct.” Will they pass?

Perhaps Simpson hasn’t noticed that some of the nation’s worst government employees are members of Congress.

In fact, it’s impossible to imagine how much lower Democrats can sink than their Stalin-esque treatment of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanugh, or how much more spineless Republicans can get acquiescing to their contemptuously orchestrated delay. Sentient Americans know this spectacle has nothing to do with Kavanaugh or the increasingly dubious charges leveled against him. “From abortion to gay marriage, plus a host of less titillating issues, modern liberalism has lived by the Court,” Ahmari explains. “And liberals fear their cause will die by the Court.”

Thus, force-feeding their agenda to the American public — by any means necessary — has become the American Left’s modus operandi. Can’t win elections? Insist Russian collusion was to blame and demand an investigation, call voter ID requirements “racist,” or simply grant illegals the right to vote. Don’t like the current administration’s foreign policy? Undermine it, like John Kerry is doing with Iran. Can’t persuade an American public to embrace your ideology? Have your progressive tech allies censor opposing viewpoints or manipulate searches; transform college campuses and public schools into citadels of progressive indoctrination that breed contempt for the nation’s history, traditions, Constitution and its exceptionalism; and turn everything from entertainment venues to corporate business operations into platforms for progressive virtue-signaling.

It’s become clear that virtually every aspect of modern-day progressivism is driven by the same despicable delusions that have animated every totalitarian movement since the dawn of time:

Our cause is “noble” and thus, the ends justify the means.

The 2018 election will likely be one of the most clarifying moments in the nation’s history. Either an American Left whose “win by any means necessary,” Constitution-crushing proclivities — never more exposed than right now — will be rejected by the electorate, or the number of Americans poisoned by a corrupt education system has reached critical mass, and a majority of voters will embrace totalitarianism, destroying America in order to “save” it. Save from whom?

Themselves.

SOURCE

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Yale Study: Twice as Many Undocumented Immigrants as Previously Thought in U.S.

A new Yale study has concluded that the population of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is close to double the generally accepted estimate.

The population of undocumented immigrants is widely thought to be around 11.3 million. But the study, which was conducted by three Yale-affiliated researchers, indicates that the total may be more than 22 million. Even the authors were surprised by their findings.

“Our original idea was just to do a sanity check on the existing number,” said one of the study’s authors, Edward Kaplan, a professor of operations research at the Yale School of Management. “Instead of a number which was smaller, we got a number that was 50 percent higher. That caused us to scratch our heads.”

“There’s a number that everybody quotes, but when you actually dig down and say, ‘What is it based on?’ You find it’s based on one very specific survey and possibly an approach that has some difficulties. So we went in and just took a very different approach,” said another of the study’s authors, Jonathan Feinstein, a professor of Economics and Management.

To arrive at their estimate, the authors used operational data such as deportations and visa overstays as well as demographic data such as death rates and immigration rates.

“We combined these data using a demographic model that follows a very simple logic,” Kaplan said. “The population today is equal to the initial population plus everyone who came in minus everyone who went out. It’s that simple.”

“The analysis we’ve done can be thought of as estimating the size of a hidden population,” he added. “People who are undocumented immigrants are not walking around with labels on their foreheads. . . . There are very few numbers we can point to and say, ‘This is carved in stone.'”

The researchers said their goal in crunching the numbers was not a political one.

“We wouldn’t want people to walk away from this research thinking that suddenly there’s a large influx happening now,” Feinstein commented. “It’s really something that happened in the past and maybe was not properly counted or documented.”

SOURCE

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A dash of reality from Britain's "Daily Telegraph"

A history lesson for those who would smear the moderate Right: the Nazis were socialists

By Norman Tebbit

The [Leftist] New Statesman magazine has become rather unsettled in recent weeks about what it describes, on the front page on September 14, as "the far Right wing rising again", and "the return of fascism".

Those headlines were printed across the cover picture of a huge Nazi rally of steel helmeted men. There was not much inside to back up the scary front cover.

Indeed, inside the cover story had the headline "The Dark European Stain" but the author, Thomas Meany, seemed to pour cold water over it all.

SOURCE

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

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

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Experts warn the next recession will be 'worse than the Great Depression' and predict it will hit US within two years

This is just scare talk designed to get its authors publicity.  Prophecies are almost always wrong and this one is based on conventional economic thinking.  But conventional economic thinking failed already in the Obama years. Obama spent vastly  more than he raised in taxes (around $9 trillion), which should have set off roaring inflation -- except it didn't -- no-one knows exactly why.

And Trump's tariffs should have led to a depressed economy -- except that they didn't.

And if the worse comes to the worse, Trump may be bold enough to declare a debt jubilee, which would really rev up the economy, with Wall St and China the big losers -- whom no-one would mourn. I have covered the issues of a jubilee previously
 

The next recession could put the 2008 financial crash to shame if two experts' predictions about the worldwide debt of $247trillion are correct.

Expected to hit the United States within the next two years, the impact has been compared to the severe worldwide economic crisis which started 1929 and last until 1939.

'We won't be able to call it a recession, it's going to be worse than the Great Depression,' economic commentator Peter Schiff, told the New York Post. 'The US economy is in so much worse shape than it was a decade ago.'

Economic commentator Peter Schiff (left in 2013) and Murray Gunn (right) head of global research at Elliott Wave International believe the next crisis will be worse than 2008

It means by the time President Donald Trump's first term should come to a close, the country – which saw debt more than double to $21trillion over a decade - could be a dire situation.

This is despite the lowest unemployment rate in a generation, tax cuts for businesses and the Dow hitting record highs.

Low wages are thought to be a factor in the slowing down of economic recovery.

'Obviously, there is a whole lot of optimism — but there is a very good chance the US economy is in recession within the next two years,' Schiff continued. 'This is already the second-longest economic expansion in history.'

The Post reports that he was wrong in the past when he said the US Federal Reserve would 'fail in its roundabout quantitative easing campaign to 'reflate' housing and stocks in the wake of the financial crisis'.

However another expert supports his prediction that the economy is more trouble than we realize.

'Should the [US] economy start to shrink, and our analysis suggests that it will, the high nominal levels of debt will instantly become a very big issue,' Murray Gunn, head of global research at Elliott Wave International warned.

He notes that household debt in America currently outdoes what is was in 2008 and is around $13.3trillion.

As part of that mortgage lending is near what was it was 10 years ago at more than $9trillion.

Student loans have more than doubled compare to a decade ago, going from $611billion to around $1.5trillion today.

Auto loans have also outdone the 2008 figure at $1.25trillion and credit card balances are akin to what was just before the big crash.

They blamed central bankers using cheap money financial free economies for the reason global debt is now $247 trillion compared to $177trillion in 2008.

'We think the major economies are on the cusp of this turning into the worst recession we have seen in 10 years,' Gun said about the debt that's two-and-a-half times the size of the world's economy.

'People will look to central banks to help them out, but the authorities will be found wanting,' Gunn continued.

'Our prediction is that central banks will go from being feted for 'saving the world' in 2008 to being vilified for being impotent in the coming deflationary crash.'

SOURCE

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Donald Trump to deny permanent resident permits for migrants seeking public aid

Immigrants who rely on public benefits for food, housing and medical care could be denied green cards under new rules put forth by the Trump administration that would effectively limit family-based "chain migration," as the president calls it.

The administration said at the weekend that the rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security would affect about 382,000 people a year, but opponents have said it could have a far greater chilling effect, leading current green card holders to stop using public benefits for fear of being deported.

"Those seeking to immigrate to the United States must show they can support themselves financially," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the new rule would "promote immigrant self-sufficiency and protect finite resources by ensuring that they are not likely to become burdens on American taxpayers."

The rule is one of several efforts by the Trump administration to further restrict legal immigration, including limits on those seeking green cards to immigrate to the US and those already in the country on temporary visas trying to adjust their status to stay permanently.

It does not need to be approved by Congress but faces a 60-day public review once published in the Federal Register in coming weeks. "After DHS carefully considers public comments received on the proposed rule, DHS plans to issue a final public charge rule that will include an effective date," the agency said.

Immigrant advocates and congressional Democrats have already vowed to fight the rule, and political observers said it could become a factor in upcoming midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.

"I see the Trump administration's hostility towards immigrants as part of a strategy of mass distraction to keep the focus on fomenting outrage directed at Latinos while keeping the focus off of the corruption and graft that are gripping the White House and the GOP," Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., chairman of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in a statement.

"Self-sufficiency has been a basic principle of United States immigration law since this country's earliest immigration statutes," the nearly 500-page proposal states, insisting that "the availability of public benefits not constitute an incentive for immigration."

Under federal law, those seeking green cards must prove they will not be a burden to the state, or a "public charge." But the administration's new public charge rule would require immigration officials to give added weight to an applicant's potential dependency on public assistance.

SOURCE

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Kavanaugh Has Found 1982 Calendar, Detailed Entries Help Clear His Name

The last-minute attempt to derail Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as the next Supreme Court justice has just hit a serious snag.

Facing damaging but almost completely unsubstantiated claims that he acted improperly with a girl back when he was a teenager, the conservative nominee has dug into his personal archives to defend himself.

Up until now, the vague accusations made by Christine Blasey Ford had only resulted in a “he said, she said” stalemate. Liberals insisted that Blasey Ford’s story of a bad encounter at a drunken party be believed, while conservatives have pointed out that the nearly 40-year-old claim is impossible to verify.

Finally, Kavanaugh has presented tangible evidence that the accusation doesn’t hold up.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the judge has found old calendars from the period when the unproven groping allegedly took place — and they appear to support his claim that the incident didn’t happen.

“Kavanaugh has calendars from the summer of 1982 that he plans to hand over to the Senate Judiciary Committee that do not show a party consistent with the description of his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford,” explained The Times.

“The calendar pages from June, July and August 1982, which were examined by The New York Times, show that Judge Kavanaugh was out of town much of the summer at the beach or away with his parents,” the newspaper continued.

“When he was at home, the calendars list his basketball games, movie outings, football workouts and college interviews. A few parties are mentioned but include names of friends other than those identified by Dr. Blasey.”

Here is perhaps the biggest nail in the coffin for Blasey Ford’s already-flimsy story: The calendar contains entries for parties, but none of the names included in those entries match the names Blasey Ford listed.

That any names were included in his calendar entries for parties shows Kavanaugh was remarkably thorough about recording his social schedule.

That fact is yet another point in favor of Kavanaugh and against his accuser. The woman behind the claim has admitted that she can recall almost nothing specific about the incident, including its location, time, or other people involved.

The few names brought up by Blasey Ford have refuted her story and indicated that they don’t remember a party with both her and Kavanaugh.

“Mr. (Mike) Judge has told the Judiciary Committee that he remembered no such incident and had never seen Judge Kavanaugh behave in such a way,” explained The Times, referring to one alleged witness of the drunken party.

“The only other two people identified as being in the house at the time, but not the bedroom, have also said in recent days that they did not recall the incident. Patrick J. Smyth said he did not remember such a party or see any improper conduct by Judge Kavanaugh.”

“Leland Keyser, a former classmate of Dr. Blasey’s at Holton-Arms, said she did not know Judge Kavanugh or remember being at a party with him,” stated the newspaper.

Accusations of this type are of course serious, and conducting due diligence is part of the vetting process for anyone nominated for a powerful position.

There comes a point, however, when weak and impossible to prove allegations need to be put to rest. Blasey Ford may genuinely believe that something like the incident she described did happen; she may be telling the truth about a teenage trauma affecting her for decades, too.

The problem is that there is zero evidence it was Brett Kavanaugh who did what she claims, and no way short of a time machine to prove her accusations.

By all accounts, Kavanaugh has been a responsible and thoughtful family man and legal scholar for the entirety of his adult life — and that record needs to stand far above one person’s increasingly shaky claim.

SOURCE

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Trump Jr. Unleashes in Rare Op-Ed: Democrats Are Now the Party of Lawlessness and Anarchy

In an opinion piece published by The Denver Post on Friday, President Donald Trump’s oldest son dove right into his vigorous criticism of the current state of the Democrat Party — and he made the point crystal clear.

“In their efforts to appeal to the extreme left-wing elements in their base, the Democrats are becoming the party of lawlessness and anarchy,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in a bold opening statement.

Trump Jr. pointed to the demonstrations of protest by Democrats at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“While radical Democrat ‘activists’ attempted to derail the proceedings — over 200 were arrested during the course of the hearing — Senate Democrats put on their own protest from the rostrum, marked by a complete disregard for law, order, and basic decency,” he continued.

“While it might shock Americans to see their elected officials behave this way, it’s not surprising from Democrats,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the unofficial motto of the Democrat Party now appears to be ‘attack and subvert the laws of the land whenever and wherever possible.’”

Trump Jr. went on to say that it is this sentiment that has become the basis of the Democratic party platform.

On this point, he indicated Democrats’ embrace of open borders and sanctuary cities.

“Not only do Democrats consistently support illegal aliens and look for every possible opportunity to give them citizenship (and let them vote in elections), but they also openly enable violent criminal illegal aliens through their support of sanctuary cities.

“For years, Democrats have opposed Republican efforts to crack down on sanctuary jurisdictions — cities and countries in Democrat control that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and willingly release illegal alien criminals onto our streets.”

He went on to call out some high-profile Democrats — like Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand — who are pushing to get rid of ICE.

Trump Jr. cited the Obama presidency as a time when Democrats’ hostility towards law enforcement flourished. Now, that open hostility is reaching politicial opponents, Trump Jr. wrote.

“Being pro-illegal immigration and anti-police is bad enough, but the Democrats have also begun to implicitly, and sometimes even explicitly, endorse violence against Republicans in pursuit of their political agenda,” he wrote.

The younger Trump said that Democrats don’t just ignore violence from their side, but actually encourage it.

He brought up Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who has recently spoken of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in a “knock off the first, and go after the second” scenario.

He also mentioned Rep. Keith Ellison, deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who in January tweeted a picture of himself holding the book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” which Trump Jr. called “the bible for the violent domestic terrorist group that shares the book’s name.”

(The fact that a man who apparently admires a book like that is running for attorney general in Minnesota — the chief law enforcement officer in the state — should give even Democrats pause.)

Trump Jr. then noted CNN host Chris Cuomo, who defended antifa thugs in August by claiming that,  “All punches are not equal morally,” and that “Fighting hate is right and in a clash between hate and those who oppose, those who oppose it are on the side of right.”

That might sound good on television, but as Trump Jr. wrote, tolerance for violence tends to create more violence.

“The problem with Cuomo’s interpretation, as we’ve seen through numerous college campus protests — and the recent phenomenon of mainstream conservatives like Dennis Prager being censored on social media websites — is that anyone who doesn’t support the radical agenda of the left-wing is slandered as hateful by Democrats and their extreme liberal base,” Trump Jr. wrote.

“Therefore, in their minds, it becomes morally justified to punch even the most mild-mannered and moderate conservative in the face.”

His father, Trump Jr. wrote, chooses instead to put Americans first by protecting the U.S from criminal illegal aliens, giving law enforcement the support it needs to carry out its duties well, and by enforcing the protection of free speech.

“Donald Trump and the Republican Party stand for law, order, and safety. The Democrats stand for lawlessness, disorder, and anarchy,” Trump Jr. concluded. “The choice this November could not be more clear — the people will pick law and order.”

Let’s hope that Americans can rally behind this message so that we can start undoing the culture of disorder which has been so visible recently.

And that will start with voting in November — and getting other Trump supporters to the polls, too.

SOURCE

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

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

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How Government Leakers, Media Have Waged War On Trump

For two years, top-level officials within our nation’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies and their allies in Congress have systematically targeted President Trump and his associates for destruction.

They have done so by colluding with the media to selectively and illegally leak classified and sensitive information from numerous investigations into Trump-Russia. Their motive seems pretty clear: overturn the results of an election via impeachment as if we lived in some “Banana Republic.” And having visited over 110 countries and six continents as a retired Naval Officer, I know a Banana Republic when I see one.

Some unelected bureaucrats collaborated with former British Intelligence agent Christopher Steele as he compiled political opposition research for Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton Campaign and DNC, via Perkins Coie law firm.

Others launched FBI surveillance of Trump Campaign members based on rumor and innuendo from foreign sources like Steele and former Australian Ambassador to the U.K., Alexander Downer.

The #Resistance went to the very top.

    Peter Strzok was the No. 2 official in the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Division and a key player in both investigations of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server and the Trump Campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. His FBI lover Lisa Page was the legal counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The most recently revealed Strzok-Page text discusses a “media leak strategy with DOJ.”  And how their sister intelligence agencies were “leaking like mad.” Despite denials from Strzok’s lawyer that he was trying to prevent leaks, his actual texts and timeline from April 2017 belie that claim.

    Former FBI Director James Comey admittedly passed sensitive memos about meetings with President Trump to a friend to leak to the New York Times in order to help generate a Special Counsel appointment. He was successful.

    Former CIA Director John Brennan reportedly leaked sensitive information from the Steele Dossier to then-Sen. Harry Reid, who promptly disclosed it to the public.

    Former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, the No. 4 official at the DOJ, continued to feed information to FBI leaders from his longtime friend Steele, even after the FBI officially cut ties with him  Ohr’s wife Nellie, a Russian expert, even worked for Fusion GPS to probe Trump.

Most of the leaks targeted Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, two members of the National Security Advisory Committee. And most of those breaking news scoops appeared in either the Washington Post or New York Times. But it didn’t stop there.

As the former Trump campaign director of national security and the person who supervised the committee to which Page and Papadopoulos were assigned, I have also been the victim of leaks.

For example, in late Summer 2017, the very next day after my Special Counsel four-hour closed testimony, Rosalind Helderman from the Washington Post telephoned out of the blue saying she heard the special counsel was interested in a specific topic that had come up. Coincidence?

I immediately called the FBI Agents who conducted my interview warning of severe consequences if there were any more leaks — if that’s what had happened. They swore it was not them personally, and they’d relay my concerns to their supervisor.

Also in Summer 2017, when the House Intelligence Committee postponed my allegedly private testimony, two reporters from CNN and ABC called asking if it was true that I had canceled for unknown reasons. Pure character assassination attempt designed to make a national news story out of nothing.

Reporters who have repeatedly received and published leaks stemming from the Trump-Russia investigations, like The New York Times’ Ali Watkins, and Roz Helderman, both of whom regularly targeted Page and Papadopoulos, should be compelled to testify before Congress, or any other criminal or civil trials, and reveal the identity of their sources.

Leaking information from Trump-Russia investigations is not a victimless act. Aside from fueling impeachment calls against President Trump and damaging the lives of innocent people who have been swept up in investigations and lost their jobs (and who have yet to be accused of any wrongdoing whatsoever), they have cost millions of dollars in personal legal bills to defend ourselves and reputations.

The DOJ inspector general and Congress must hold the leakers and complicit co-conspirators in the media accountable. Failure to act swiftly and decisively guarantees the further erosion of the rule of law and democratic principles as defined by the Constitution. America must never truly become a Banana Republic.

SOURCE 

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FY 2018 Refugee Admissions: 70.8 Percent Christians; 15.4 Percent Muslims

The difference between a Muslim president and a Christian one

The proportion of Christians to Muslims among refugees from around the world admitted to the United States has changed significantly in FY 2018, with Christians comprising seven in ten new arrivals, and Muslims fewer than two in ten.

With ten days of the fiscal year to go, a total of 21,561 refugees have been resettled since October 1 last year, of whom 15,278 (70.8 percent) are Christians and 3,333 (15.4 percent) are Muslims, according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data.

In FY 2017 by contrast, 47.2 percent of the 53,716 refugees admitted to the U.S. by both the Obama administration (during roughly the first one-third of the year) and the Trump administrations (during roughly the remaining two-thirds of the year) were Christians, and 42.1 percent were Muslims.

(Of the 53,716 refugees resettled in FY 2017, 56 percent arrived during the Obama administration and 44 percent during the Trump administration.)

And in FY 2016, 44.5 percent of the 84,994 refugees resettled in the U.S. by the Obama administration were Christians and 45.7 percent were Muslims. That was the first time in a decade that the total refugee intake from around the world included more Muslims than Christians.

The Christian refugees include large contingents of Catholics, Protestants and Pentecostalists from the Democratic Republic of Congo – which alone accounts for almost 39 percent of the total number of refugees resettled in the U.S.

There are also sizeable numbers of Baptists from Ukraine, Orthodox Christians from Eritrea, and Christians (no denomination specified) from Burma.

Muslim refugees comprise 2,016 individuals identified simply as Muslim, with Burma (857) and the DRC (324) accounting for the largest groups; 655 Shi’ites, including 504 from Afghanistan; and 486 Sunnis, with Afghans again making up the largest number (226).

The U.S. has also admitted 173 Ahmadiyya – all from Pakistan, a country whose constitution does not recognize Ahmadis as Muslims, and whose penal code criminalizes Ahmadi worship.

Syrians

In recent years the makeup of Syrian refugees in particular became a sensitive issue, both because of overall security concerns but also because so few of those admitted were Christians.

That was the case despite the Obama administration’s determination in 2016 that ISIS’ atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in areas under its control amounted to genocide.

The disparity was especially stark in FY 2016, when of a total of 12,587 Syrian refugees admitted – accounting for 1.8 percent of all refugees admitted that year – 12,486 (99.2 percent) were Muslims and 68 (0.5 percent) were Christians, including Orthodox, Greek Orthodox and Catholic.

Although Muslims do significantly outnumber Christians in Syria, the Christian minority nonetheless made up around 10 percent of the total population when the civil war began in 2011.

In FY 2017, the U.S. resettled 6,549 Syrian refugees, or 12.2 percent of all refugees admitted that year. Of those Syrians, 6,405 (97.8 percent) were Muslims and 113 (1.7 percent) were Christians.

In FY 2018, however, of 60 Syrian refugees admitted – just 0.27 percent of all refugees admitted this year – 40 (66.6 percent) are Sunni Muslims and 20 (33.3 percent) are Christians.

The skewed figures during the Obama administration prompted some Republican lawmakers to call for non-Muslim minorities to be prioritized but the administration rejected the appeals, with President Obama saying prioritizing non-Muslims would amount to a “religious test.”

President Trump came into office vowing to prioritize Christian refugees.

Although his policies have seen a sharp drop in the overall number of refugees admitted to the U.S., the shift in the Christian-Muslim ratio has been marked.

SOURCE 

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How George Washington Warned Us About Tribalism and Disunity

Sept. 19 is the 222nd anniversary of the publication of President George Washington’s Farewell Address. Appearing in newspapers nationwide, it announced Washington’s intention to retire from public life after his second term.

For most of American history, the Farewell Address was required reading in grade schools across the nation and was continually invoked in the public discourse.

Yet in recent decades, the address has faded into obscurity. That’s a shame, as it is a treasure trove of wisdom from the man who did the most to create our country—who knew, as well as anyone else, what it took to create a modern, large-scale republic.

After all, it was Washington who led the nation through the War of Independence, oversaw the drafting of the Constitution, and served as its first president. Washington addressed the document specifically to the American people—not just to policymakers—and recommended that they give his advice their “frequent review.”

The Farewell Address is mostly known for its warnings against political parties and entangling alliances during the nation’s youth. Certainly, Washington made those points, and offered practical advice on a wide array of other subjects. They include making permanent the powers of the federal government, obeying the Constitution, being sensible in public spending, accepting the necessity of taxes, and cultivating peace with other nations insofar as this was possible.

Wise though these recommendations may be, they underscore deeper philosophical arguments. To reduce the document to mere policy prescriptions misses the point. Besides, not all of them were meant to last forever.

Washington published his address when the United States was an infant nation, surrounded by European superpowers. His recommendations were intended “to gain time to our country … to progress … to that degree of strength … to give it … command of its own fortunes.”

Although Washington advised cultivating peace for a time, he envisioned an America that one day could “choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.” America would have greater freedom in due time. Policies would change as circumstances change.

If that’s the case, what can we today gain from reading his valedictory message? The answer lies in something Washington knew very well—something that hasn’t changed since 1796: human nature.

Washington strongly believed in the depravity of mankind. He identified a “love of power … which predominates in the human heart.” In his eyes, man could be “ambitious and unprincipled,” but even worse, he is “designing”—in other words, deceitful and scheming. Man often hides his depravity under the veneer of virtue and love of country. Washington described men as “cunning” and called for the American people to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”

If man is corrupt, it only follows that nations are as well. Washington believed nations not only seek their own interests, but often trample over the rights of other nations. This is why he warned us about “the insidious wiles of foreign influence” and counseled that “there can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.”

In other words, Washington warned that America’s opponents, both foreign and domestic, would pose as its advocates—they would use deception in their efforts to promote an alternative agenda. Specifically, he called Americans to suspect the motives and patriotism of their fellow citizens who:

Reject the national government. “Distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken [the union’s] bands.”
Promote narrow interests at the expense of the nation’s interest as a whole: “[Parties are] often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community.”
Undermine religion and morality: “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars [religion and morality].”
These were the hallmarks of America’s domestic adversaries: a rejection of the authority of the national government and the role of religion in society, and an obsession with narrow interests.

During Washington’s time, narrow interests often centered on geographical affiliations. Today, they often center on one’s racial or ethnic background or income level. Division along these lines has led to a toxic identity politics that demotes national identity while elevating lesser sub-identities—to the detriment of national unity. Washington likely could not have fathomed this sort of identity-based division, yet he warned that narrowly defined views in general would negate the national interest if pursued without compromise.

Not only was man corrupt, but he was also frail and prone to error. Washington argued that some citizens might believe they are serving America’s best interest while actually undermining it. He described these citizens as “deluded … tools and dupes” under “infatuation”—the very victims of those who practiced deception.

These two observations—the depravity and frailty of man—form Washington’s first core message: that America has real enemies, both foreign and domestic, some of whom are unaware of their pernicious effects on the country.

While Washington founded a nation based on humanity’s highest ideals—liberty and equality—he believed that America must reject naïve idealism about human nature, and not put too much faith in the good will of other countries.

Washington’s second core message focused on how America might survive in a world full of treachery. He unabashedly promoted America’s interest above that of other nations, referring to it 21 times in his address. Observers today will often critique this emphasis on the national interest as being devoid of morality—as if virtue and patriotism were mutually exclusive. After all, didn’t Washington decry the tendency of nations to pursue their own interests at the expense of the rights other nations?

While it is true that interest is often derived from selfish motives, Washington argued this need not always be the case. It is possible to promote one’s interest with respect for other nations’ interests and in support of a greater moral cause. After all, he advised the American people to “observe good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.” He hoped America would conduct itself “as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.”

Washington believed a nation could pursue its interest legitimately, under the restraint of justice and morality, while also being prepared for war. In addition, promoting American strength and prosperity, he believed, would ultimately prove the viability of republican government to the world and give America “the glory of recommending it to … every nation which is yet a stranger to it.” It would increase liberty’s appeal to a global audience and, therefore, benefit mankind.

This message serves as an antidote to those who dispute the morality of national self-interest or believe America is obligated to pursue the well-being of other lands and peoples over its own.

The father of our country envisioned an America that was prosperous, generous, and in command of its own destiny. He foresaw “a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation” giving “to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.” He hoped that America would one day live up to its highest ideals and conduct its affairs in an exceptionally just way.

To secure this future, however, Washington counseled Americans to reject the dreamy idealism about foreign nations and their intentions—an idealism that those dedicated to liberty and equality can find enticing.

He also warned us to be vigilant against both overt and covert enemies in our midst, and he trusted the American people—not just their representatives or bureaucrats—with this vigilance. His message speaks not only to us, but to all men and women who desire to establish and perpetuate a republic: Do not be naïve about human nature, for your adversaries (whether foreign or domestic, intentional or unintentional) will often appear as your friends.

Only with this in mind can an aspiring republic do what it has every right to do and ought to do: advance its own interests and, therefore, those of men and women everywhere who desire liberty.

In this era of uncertainty and division, we may do well to set apart Washington’s advice, as he hoped, for our “frequent review.”

SOURCE 

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

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

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The "ethnocentrism" fraud

Most  psychologists are Left-leaning, and leftists have an enormous talent for seeing only what they want to see, so we can be sure that psychological theories will show Leftists in a good light and conservatives in a bad light.

And, as we know only too well, race is a central Leftist obsession. They never stop talking about race and racism. American Leftists in the days of the Ku Klux Klan were very anti-black.  The Klansmen were Democrats, as were segregationists Orval Forbus and George Wallace.

But when the atrocities of Hitler made anti-minority thinking odious, the Left abandoned that orientation, though it hung on in the South for a while.  So what did the Left do when anti black attitudes became unfashionable?  Did they abandon all talk of race and focus on something else. No way!  With "affirmative action" and so on they did a rapid about-turn and became anti-white. They just love simple formulas and categorizing all sorts of different people in terms of race was too sweeping a formula for them to let go

And Leftist psychologists made it even simpler.  They invented the concept of "ethnocentrism" -- which was a claim that you disliked "outgroups" because you were strongly attached to your own "ingroup".  So all patriots were suspect racists.  The Left hate patriots because the Left want to tear society down while patriots want to preserve it.

So it was an enormously convenient simplification if white racism could be traced to patriots. Leftists routinely accuse conservatives of simplistic thinking but if you want to know what Leftists are like, just look at what they say about conservatives.

And all that came out in 1950 in the form of a big book called "The authoritarian personality" under the lead authorship of prominent Marxist theoretician Theodor Adorno. Adorno et al. had to allow that some patriotism could be OK but it was under a cloud generally.

But the ethnocentrism theory is false. Leftist psychologists just assumed it.  The only "proof" they had for it was that they could find some aggressive expressions of patriotism and some aggressive expressions of racism which correlated with one another among freshman students -- forming a reliable "scale". But at no time did they try to sample normal expressions of patriotism and normal expressions of racial attitudes and see if those two types of attitude were correlated. *

So I did that. I did it repeatedly in fact.  And I always used proper general population samples, not available groups of students. And I always got the same result:  Patriotism and racism were unrelated. Some patriots disliked blacks but roughly equal numbers of patriots did not dislike blacks.  You could not predict from knowing a person's degree of patriotism what he would think of blacks

So far in  my writings I have been content to point that out as it decisively explodes the central Leftist explanation for racism.  But I now think I can go further.  I think I can explain WHY Leftists cling to that falsehood.  They believe it because that is the way they think. They judge others by themselves. They hate the achievements of whites and they also hate patriots.  It is THEY who are ethnocentric -- but in a negative way.  They are generally hostile.  And that goes all the way back to Karl Marx.  Marx hated everybody, including his own mother.  It's in part his unwaveringly hostile tone that makes him an enjoyable study to the Left.

Instead of loving their ingroup Leftists hate it and they also hate those who thwart their goal of "fundamentally transforming" their country -- to use Obama's phrase of 2008. Attitudes to an ingroup and attitudes to what they see as an outgroup are strongly correlated among Leftists. Knowing what Leftists say about whites will enable you to make an almost CERTAIN prediction of their attitudes towards patriots. The whole affair is yet another example of my dictum that if you want to know what Leftists are like psychologically, just look at what they say about conservatives. Monolithic thinking is a trait of the Left, not of the Right.

The tendency of people to see their own faults in others is what Freud called "projection". And the Left are great projectors. They hate just about everybody so they think that conservatives do too. They even see patriotism as a form of hate. And many conservative writers these days have woken up to that and often now identify  Leftist accusations as projection. A good example is to be found in the recent utterances of Hillary Clinton.  Most of what she has been saying about Donald Trump would be much more apt as a description of her.  I put up an article recently that gave some examples of that.

Her claim that Trump is attacking democracy is a particular howler. Who is attacking democracy?  It wouldn't be the people who refuse to accept as legitimate and proper the result of a properly conducted democratic election in 2016, would it?  It wouldn't be the people who are doing their level best to unwind the result of that election would it? It wouldn't be the collective sore losers of the Left, would it?

REFERENCE: Adorno,T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J. & Sanford, R.N. (1950) The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper.

* It is however of considerable interest that anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan used  published  codes  and  data  collected for the standard cross-cultural sample of 186 societies to look at both ethnic loyalty and xenophobia.  She concludes: "If interethnic hostility is the flip side of intraethnic loyalty, the two should be strongly correlated and have the same determinants. Neither is the case".

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Project Veritas Catches Deep State Redhanded
   
We’ve long known that unelected leftist bureaucrats embedded in the bowels of the federal government have been lawlessly targeting conservatives and abusing their power to thwart the agenda of duly elected Republican policymakers. The proof keeps pouring in.

The Obama administration’s IRS deliberately discriminated against conservative groups in their applications for tax-exempt status. This isn’t an empty partisan allegation from an imaginary “right-wing conspiracy.” In 2013, an IRS official admitted scrutinizing groups with right wing identifying names, such as “Tea Party” and “patriots.” An inspector general’s report that year confirmed this nefarious practice.

At least two groups of cases were settled in 2017 with the IRS agreeing to a “substantial financial settlement” in one and expressing “its sincere apology” in another. This is the kind of tyrannical behavior that liberals used to care about.

In a case involving the Linchpins of Liberty and some 40 other conservative organizations, the IRS confessed that it used “heighted scrutiny and inordinate delays” and required unnecessary information in its review of applications for tax-exemptions.

In the NorCal Tea Party Patriots case, involving more than 400 groups, plaintiffs contended the IRS used their tax information for improper purposes.

I know opponents of President Donald Trump roll their eyes in ridicule at the mere suggestion of a deep state committed to undermining Trump’s agenda. That’s the stuff of paranoid conspiracy theorists or unhinged Trumpublican tribalists, they say. Well, James O'Keefe, and his Project Veritas, has shown, again, that there is a “there” there.

O'Keefe recently released secret videotapes in which some of these boorish bureaucrats brazenly admit their chicanery, and even brag about it. On Tuesday, Project Veritas released the first of its tapes unmasking these proud pinheads boasting of sabotaging the Trump agenda. The video features State Department employee Stuart Karaffa, a smarmy, self-proclaimed socialist using his government position to resist official Trump administration policies. Karaffa is a member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America, bless his heart.

He admits to drafting DSA communications at his worksite. “I’m careful about it,” says Karaffa. “I don’t leave a paper trail, like I leave emails, and like any press s-— that comes up, I leave that until after 5:30. But as soon as 5:31 hits, got my, like, draft messages ready to send out.” Precious.

Karaffa’s arrogance is astounding. He says he doesn’t believe he’ll be caught and punished, saying, “Maybe someday I’ll go to board of elections jail, probably not.” But what comes next is way worse and ought to infuriate all federal taxpayers. “I have nothing to lose,” he adds. “It’s impossible to fire federal employees.” He also expresses confidence that none of his superiors will detect his conflicts of interest even though he openly discloses them on his required forms. “Somebody just rubber stamps and it goes forward … I don’t know if (the ethics officer is) is all there. He’s so checked out.” Well, that’s comforting.

Most outrageous was Karaffa’s description of his objective toward the administration’s official policies: “Resist everything … Every level. F— s— up.”

In the second released video, Project Veritas exposes Department of Justice paralegal Allison Hrabar reportedly using government hardware and software as part of her socialist activism, and Jessica Schubel, former chief of staff for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Obama administration, attempting to thwart Trump’s agenda.

Hrabar, also a member of Metro DC DSA, was supposedly one of those who chased Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from a D.C.-area restaurant. That was beyond despicable. Hrabar allegedly uses the LexisNexis search engine on her work computer to find home addresses for DSA protests, such as that of D.C. lobbyist Jeremy Wiley. She reportedly ran his license plate to help locate his home. Hrabar smugly brags that as an employee of the DOJ, “We can’t, like, get fired.”

Hrabar also reveals that one of her DSA colleagues, who works in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, slows down the process to help people stay on food stamps longer.

Schubel admits on the tape to the existence of “a little resistance movement” within the federal government, and says that her friends at the Department of Health and Human Services give her confidential information before it is officially released. “Yeah. It’s kind of like the Nixon, deep throat-type of thing,” she gloats. She further admits, “There’s a lot of talk about how we can, like, resist from inside (the Justice Department).”

Isn’t it cute when leftists virtue signal their feigned concern for the integrity of our democratic process? When you hear a leftist complaining about interference with our elections — or corruption of “our democracy” — just remember that they are ends-justifies-the-means progressives who care not a whit about lawful elections, only advancing their agenda.

With their persistent lawlessness and overreach, the mavens of the “resistance” have awakened a sleeping giant in grassroots conservatives throughout the nation, and they will come to regret it.

SOURCE

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Four Characteristics of the Liberal Mind that Are Destroying Society

Conservatives often blame liberals for the breakdown in society today. After all, liberals challenged an order that existed and replaced it with a situation that is now unraveling.

This unraveling can be traced to the efforts of liberal activists to influence legislation and elections and to liberal control of the media that shape the debate.

The fragmented and polarized state of society is proof that something has gone terribly wrong.

Defining the Liberal Mindset

However, it is not only the activism that has caused the social decay of institutions, manners and communities. It is a mindset that determines the course of their action. Understanding the characteristics of the liberal mind helps people grasp the nature of the crisis.

This is not easy to do since liberal thought can be defined by its lack of definition and love of ambiguity Such characteristics might also be shocking because they cross party lines and include people from all walks of life. The premises of this mindset come from the classical liberal philosophy that is widely accepted by everyone. Only when these premises are taken to their final consequences, do the harmful effects become evident. The damage is now everywhere.

A Gradualist Progression Away from the Truth

One characteristic of the liberal mind is its gradualist progression away from the objective truth. In its early stages, the liberal mind does not deny the existence of objective truth outright. Instead, liberals deplore its rigidity. Instead, they offer half-truths that mitigate the hard-hearted attitudes of conservatives, smoothing the slide into error. The liberal mind likewise does not initially embrace error but is drawn toward and harbors sympathy for it.

Thus, the liberals might defend private property, but support excessive taxation on those who have large properties. They would oppose crime but propose leniency for felons because of imagined injustices they might have suffered.

The liberal mind is constantly looking for half-truths to appear more compassionate and kind.

Searching for Conclusions that Please

A second characteristic of the liberal mind is that it does not seek objective and external truths that explain reality. Liberals seek instead only those conclusions that please them. They search for perspectives that fit their temperaments, lifestyles and ways of being. These are the thoughts that guide their lives.

This liberal mind is perfectly expressed by the famous Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey which stated: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

A Distorted Vision of Freedom

The liberal mind gives rise to a mode of action which is easily defined. The foundation of liberal action is a distorted vision of freedom that consists of doing only what one wants to do.

Thus, liberal action tends to be relativistic and subjective, following the whims of the individual. It can be imaginative and fantasy-driven when a person takes the action to its final consequences.

Liberal action is also characterized by a spirit of doubt toward that which does not correspond to personal whims. Such doubt, however, is never directed toward that which does not please liberal whims.

A Dislike of Rules and Laws

The final characteristic of the liberal mind is a dislike of rules and laws. Law by definition is restrictive.

Law consists of those reasonable precepts coming from a competent authority to which all must conform for the sake of the common good. Rules and laws upset the liberal mind, which feels attacked by them.

Thus, liberals dislike anything that imposes restraint such as laws, manners or morals. In more advanced stages, even the restrictive nature of clothing or grammar can irritate the sensibilities of the liberal mindset.

This explains the liberal hostility to the Church and traditional notions of religion. God is the First Lawgiver and punishes those who sin against His Commandments. The liberal mind prefers a god for whom nothing is a sin. This god is one of the liberals own making. In their view, he radiates compassion, not justice.

A Common Trait

While these four psychological characteristics differ, they do have a common trait. They all are self-centered.

What governs liberal minds and actions are the dictates of each individual’s ideas, tastes and desires. The individual is the center of everything. Each person determines right and wrong, truth and error.

The Descent to Anarchy

Up to this point, the liberal order has survived because it lived off of the firm foundations of a Christian moral order. The moral influence of the Church, natural law and other institutions served to temper the disordered ideas, tastes and desires of individuals. The adverse effects of the liberal mind were mitigated by its gradualism. As long as the most extreme liberal elements stayed in the zone of half-truths, society could absorb their destructive influence.

The problem today is that half-truths now dominate and error is pushing the envelope ever closer to chaos. The liberal mind naturally leads to anarchy when taken to its final consequences. It admits no authority other than its own. It will accept no law nor respect any institution that encroaches upon the individual “right” to do whatever one wants.

Everyone wonders why the nation is polarized and fragmented. As social bonds decay, there is no unifying principle in society save that of self-centeredness. Everyone becomes increasingly isolated, lonely and frustrated.

In the words of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, the world becomes “nothing but a meeting place for individual wills, each with its own set of attitudes and preferences and who understand that world solely as an arena for the achievement of their own satisfaction, who interpret reality as a series of opportunities for their enjoyment.”

SOURCE

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

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

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Behind Trump's China Tariffs

Thomas Gallatin below says ending the North Korean nuclear threat and establishing fair trade are Trump's goals. That's fair enough.  But he also says Trump is intent on squashing China's ambitions of global influence, which is much more dubious. That would be too nebulous a goal for Trump.  He goes for quick, concrete results.  Trump himself says that he wants to stop China's theft of U.S. intellectual property.  He would like, for instance, for China to purchase more than one copy of Windows 10.

I can't see Trump getting that.  You would have to change the entire way China does business.  So the question is what he will settle for.  An almost total free trade between China and the USA could be it.  Both the American and Chinese economies are at effective full employment so neither Trump nor Xi is under much pressure to back down -- so the whole thing will probably go on for a while yet


With President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday of an additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, the specter of an all-out trade war increasingly looms. China was quick to vow $60 billion in retaliatory tariffs. But Trump only doubled down, declaring on Tuesday, “China has openly stated that they are actively trying to impact and change our election by attacking our farmers, ranchers and industrial workers because of their loyalty to me. There will be great and fast economic retaliation against China if our farmers, ranchers and/or industrial workers are targeted.” (We’ve previously warned of exactly this kind of electoral manipulation by China.) He then threatened to add another $267 billion in tariffs, raising the total to $517 billion — which essentially covers all of China’s U.S. exports — should Beijing follow through with its own retaliatory tariffs.

There is no question Trump’s tariffs will do further damage to an already hurting Chinese economy, but U.S. business will also increasingly feel the hit. Such is the harmful nature of tariffs and why free trade is preferable for sustaining business growth and a healthy economy. However, Trump has several important issues in view here beyond the immediate concern for the nation’s current economic welfare.

Almost like clock-work, every time Trump presses China, he gets results with Beijing’s nuclear puppet, North Korea. On Tuesday, it was reported that Kim Jong-un has agreed to allow outside inspectors to visit the country’s missile-test sites and that he is open to decommissioning its nuclear enrichment facility at Yongbyon. After meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Kim reiterated his desire to work “toward a peaceful peninsula without nuclear weapons or nuclear threat.” This is welcome news, though we note it with a healthy dose of skepticism. There is clearly still a long way to go, but few can reasonably argue that this is going in the wrong direction. This concession by Kim has Beijing written all over it.

But ending the North Korean threat is not Trump’s only aim. He is countering China’s active attempts to gain the upper hand in global economics. Investor’s Business Daily reports, “As part of its 10-year Made In China 2025 initiative, also known as CM2025, China hopes to gain global technological and market dominance in 11 key technologies.” Beijing’s goal is especially problematic because China has consistently and persistently violated international trade rules. In other words, the Chinese are not and never have been interested in fair play or truly free trade.

Trump’s ultimate aim is to force China into forgoing its efforts to control world markets. As IBD notes, “Nothing short of China abandoning its export-driven model for extending its economic domination of Asia and its CM2025 plan to dominate world markets — at the expense of the U.S. — will satisfy Trump. For free trade to work, it requires both parties to play by the rules. So far, China has failed to do so.”

So now it’s become a high-stakes game of chicken. Will China’s economic downturn push Beijing to blink first? Or will Trump’s play backfire on his booming economy?

SOURCE

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Clinton, Trump and Authoritarianism

Still holding on to ‘16 as long as she can, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is out with a new, expanded version of her campaign memoir, “What Happened.” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reports that the book “has a big new caboose” with much additional verbiage about “what has happened in the past year.” The big new literary caboose features claims of a Trumpian assault on our constitutional norms, but is bound to raise new questions about Mrs. Clinton’s own commitment to such norms.

Last night the former Secretary of State appeared on Ms. Maddow’s program and seems to have made news by warning that our duly elected President might exercise his authority to fire some of his un-elected subordinates. Mrs. Clinton spoke about Trump supporters:

"I don`t think that those people really fully appreciate what is potentially possible under this presidency. What I worry about, Rachel, is that after this election, this president`s going to wholesale fire people. That`s my prediction for tonight... if we don`t have one or both houses of Congress in place, he will be even more uncontrollable and unaccountable. He will fire people in the White House. He will fire people in his administration who he thinks are crossing him, questioning him, undermining him."

She may not be calling Trump voters “deplorables” any more—at least not publicly. Now she’s simply suggesting that they didn’t know what they were doing when they selected the President. Mrs. Clinton then elaborated on her view of the way presidential power is constrained:

"... the president is close to being uncontrollable. There are people still in there who by their own admission are trying to hold on to prevent even worse things from happening, and at some point, the American public has to say, number one, I may disagree with Democrats, I may disagree with the direction of this administration, but one thing I believe in is we have to have checks and balances. That`s why we have to vote for Democrats in November."

The constitutional scholars in the crowd may by this point be thanking their lucky stars that America did not end up with a President operating under the belief that she is accountable to the authority of her staff. As a federal judge named Brett Kavanaugh has noted, the President does not enjoy some of the executive authority under our Constitution, but all of it. It’s also disturbing that Mrs. Clinton seems to hold the mistaken belief that constitutional checks and balances only exist when people vote for Democrats.

Regardless of her confusion about the structure of the American republic, she nonetheless writes confidently about what she casts as a constant attack on the U.S. political system. Ms. Maddow shared a passage from Mrs. Clinton’s revised memoir:

"The corruption of the Trump administration is breathtaking. Our democratic institutions and traditions are under assault every day. There may not be tanks in the streets and the administration`s malevolence may be constrained by now by its incompetence, but make no mistake, our democracy is in crisis."

Mrs. Clinton shared more of the story in last night’s interview:

"I do say in the afterword that I, like every other American, hope for the best, wanted to give our new President the benefit of the doubt. But the actions that we have seen coming from the White House and this Administration, in the nearly two years since the election, have raised all kinds of signal flares, alarm bells about what is happening to our democracy. And put aside partisanship and all of the ideological concerns, we have to defend the fundamental values and ideals of the American democracy."

It’s unclear at one point Mrs. Clinton wanted to give our new President the benefit of the doubt, given that she endorsed the protests against him that occurred on his first full day in office in January of 2017. As for the alleged assaults against American institutions, she said last night:

"Well what I`m worried about is that these authoritarian tendencies that we have seen at work in this Administration with this President, left unchecked, could very well result in the erosion of our institutions to an extent that we`ve never imagined possible here."

That certainly sounds scary—greater destruction to our democratic institutions than we’ve even imagined! Given this commentary from the former secretary of State, Ms. Maddow naturally asked about impeachment:

MADDOW: Do you have thoughts on that about whether or not that`s something that Democrats should put on the table right away if they get control of Congress?

CLINTON: I think there should be a much broader agenda and I know it`s difficult to imagine having the Congress work on so many issues at the same time. Because it does require a level of organization and follow-through that is hard and I know that having been there. If there is evidence that comes up about high crimes and misdemeanors, yes, it should be followed through on but there are so many other things that need to be addressed.

If you look at what this Administration has done with respect to regulations on everything from asbestos to pesticides to labor concerns. This is going to begin to really have adverse consequences on many Americans."

So, there`s a role for the Congress to play in saying, “No, stop. We`re not going to ignore the evidence. We are not going to live in a fact-free universe. You, Administrator X need to come up here and justify what you`ve done for two years.”

There’s an uncontrollable would-be authoritarian in the Oval Office attacking the foundations of the American republic and the solution is to hold hearings on labor and environmental regulations?

Mrs. Clinton doesn’t really believe such nonsense. She knows that the Trump “authoritarian” argument is built on ill-considered Trump comments rather than concrete Trump actions and that American institutions have been holding up just fine. She also knows that only one major-party presidential nominee in 2016 sought the authority to limit the first two amendments to the Constitution. And it wasn’t Donald Trump.

SOURCE

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Lessons From Income Data: Study, Work, Family, Persistence

Every year, the U.S. Census Bureau releases new data on income trends in the American population that reinforce certain traditional lessons about life — which may be why liberals do not talk about this data much.

Are there any patterns in the lives of those who do — and do not — succeed financially in the United States? Yes.

For example, people who stay in school longer and graduate tend to earn more money than people who do not.

Table PINC-03, which the Census Bureau released last week, categorizes Americans 25 and older by their "educational attainment" and their "total money earnings" in 2017.

Those with a "less than 9th grade" education made the least. They had median earnings of $23,849.

Those who went to high school but did not graduate had median earnings of $25,237. Those who graduated from high school but did not attend college had median earnings of $32,320. Those who attended some college but did not earn a degree had median earnings of $36,633. Those who earned an associate degree had median earnings of $40,322.

Those who earned a bachelor's degree had median earnings of $53,882; a master's, $70,358; a doctorate, $94,854; and a professional degree, $100,276.

The pattern is obvious: A higher degree tends to pave the way to a higher income.

In Table HINC-01, the Census Bureau presents household income categorized by "selected characteristics" of the household. One of these is whether — and how much — the householder works.

In households where the householder did not work at all in 2017, the median income was $32,178. In households where the householder worked 50 weeks or more at a part-time job, the median income was $56,510. But in households where the householder worked a full-time job for 50 weeks or more, the median income was $86,590.

The obvious pattern: The more you work, the more you earn.

The Census Bureau also looks at household income by family structure.

Nonfamily households had a median income of $36,650 in 2017. Women householders with no spouse present had a median income of $41,703. Male householders with no spouse present had a median income of $60,843. But traditional married-couple families had a median income of $90,386.

The obvious pattern: Married Americans tend to earn more than unmarried Americans.

Table HINC-04 in the Census Bureau data indicates that family income also varies depending on the presence of children in the home.

Married couple families with no children under 18 had a median income of $84,944, while married couple families with children under 18 had a median income of $97,964.

When work, marriage and children are combined, according to the Census Bureau Table FINC-04, median income goes even higher. In married couple families where both the husband and wife work full-time year-round, the median income was $127,718 in 2017.

If the married couple working full-time year-round had one child between 6 and 17 years old, their median income was $131,271. If they had two or more children in that age bracket, their median income was $133,921.

The lesson: Raising children may cost money, but it inspires traditional married couples to make money.

The Census Bureau also reports that younger people generally do not make as much money as middle-aged people. They must persist and work for a while before they hit their earning peak.

Married-couple families in which the householder is 24 to 34 have a median income of $80,381, according to Table FINC-02. That rose to $101,682 when the householder was 35 to 44 and peaked at $112,407 when the householder was 45 to 54.

In the current American population, those who finished school, worked, married, had children and persisted in work, marriage and child rearing are likely to be independent and self-sufficient.

Liberal American politicians often argue that the best way to help those with lower incomes is to use the power of government to redistribute wealth from those with higher incomes.

A more effective strategy would be to restore throughout this country the values that history — and Census Bureau data — demonstrates motivate a free and independent people.

SOURCE

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Bob Woodward: I Looked For Two Years...There's No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion

Bob Woodward is out with Fear, a comprehensive insight into the inner workings and machinations of the Trump White House. CNN and MSNBC loved it, especially all the gossip about the infighting, calling the president names, the lack of respect, and the supposed chaos that reigns within the halls of the Trump White House.

Yes, while the liberal media is blathering about this book, they would definitely miss, or ignore, this tidbit: he found zero evidence of Russian collusion. Here’s the transcript courtesy of Real Clear Politics

Hugh Hewitt: So let’s set aside the Comey firing, which as a Constitutional law professor, no one will ever persuade me can be obstruction. And Rod Rosenstein has laid out reasons why even if those weren’t the president’s reasons. Set aside the Comey firing. Did you, Bob Woodward, hear anything in your research in your interviews that sounded like espionage or collusion?

Bob Woodward: I did not, and of course, I looked for it, looked for it hard. And so you know, there we are. We’re going to see what Mueller has, and Dowd may be right. He has something that Dowd and the president don’t know about, a secret witness or somebody who has changed their testimony. As you know, that often happens, and that can break open or turn a case.

HH: But you’ve seen no collusion?

BW: I have not.

Okay—the man who took down Nixon, who tracked a campaign donation to a slush fund within the Committee to Re-Elect The President, said there’s no evidence of collusion, which has been a pervasive theme in this clown show investigation. Wood ward found zilch—and he probably would have found it by now. Any investigative body would have found something to link the Trump team to the Kremlin if this shoddy allegation and liberal coping exercise were true; it’s not. There’s zero evidence of collusion. It’s time for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to wrap it up. Also, Democrats—brace yourselves—your antics over this whole episode will help Trump clinch a second term. Bravo!

SOURCE

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

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

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Where the rot began -- in the "Progressive" era

Some history that should not be forgotten

The Constitution of the United States has been abandoned wholly in theory and partially in practice by liberals. This is the result of the progressive movement that arose at the beginning of the 20th century, roughly 1880-1920. Because of this, today, the purpose and scope of the national government has drifted dramatically from the thinking of the American Founders.

While progressives differed on some matters they did have a coherent theory. The aims of progressives and their theory required the rejection of the political theory of the American founding.

Progressives intended and partially succeeded in extending the scope and purpose of the federal government. Why? The answer is simple: First, from the progressive perspective, the limited government established by the Founders was outdated. Second, the social and economic ills of modern society required action. Third, history had progressed to such an extent that a powerful central government no longer posed the threat to life, liberty, and property it did in 1776.

Progressives saw the constitutional limited government of the Founders as a barrier to much-needed progress. Progressives thought that the rise of big corporations and the Industrial Revolution required more extensive government regulation. They desired to move away from the enumerated powers, separation of powers, and federalism of the Constitution to a more active government. The move from the thinking of the Founding Fathers can be seen in several ways.

First, the rejection of natural rights theory, the idea that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights governments are instituted to protect. The end of government, after all, is the establishment of justice.

Second, progressives held to the idea of historical contingency over the constancy of human nature. Progressives held that the social and economic conditions had changed so greatly that the regime of the Founders was inadequate to address the situation.

Third, due to historical progress, government was no longer the threat it was perceived to be by the Founders but could be instead entrusted with increased power to meet the needs of a new era.

Progressives argued that the Constitution is a product of its time, designed to defend against the issues of the day. This stands in contrast to the Founders’ view that it was intended to instantiate the abstract truths applicable to all men at all times found in the Declaration of Independence.

Their aim was to make the national government a dynamic agent, directly responsive to changing social conditions. Practical parts of achieving this was the initiative, referendum, open primary, and passage of the 17th Amendment that brought about the direct election of senators.

Furthermore, progressives shifted how the executive office is viewed and the duties he assumes. For progressives, the executive would provide the unity of direction their movement required.

The product of progressivism, the current administrative state violates the Constitution in three distinct ways. First, the principle of non-delegation. Only Congress has been vested by the Constitution with legislative authority. Instead, agencies now legislate — creating laws and regulations. Second, the combination of functions within an agency violates the separation of powers. Agencies have been given the ability to legislate, adjudicate, and enforce their own rules. Third, the principle of the unitary executive. The administrators of the law should be accountable to the elected president. However, independent agencies violate this principle.

Progressives intended to separate politics from administration. At the same time, they were attempting to make the system more democratic. They tried to shield bureaucrats from political influence under the theory that well-educated, idealistic, and well-paid men would be able to be objective and politically neutral. This separation violates the consent of the governed. Americans do not elect the vast majority of bureaucrats who have a greater influence upon their lives than most politicians.

The administrative state has had doleful effects upon the national government: centralized bureaucracy, irresponsibility of Congress, and the compliance of the judiciary in bowing before administrators and their expertise.

Because of the administrative state, Americans are faced with a grave problem: Elections no longer change the character of government. The nature of the administrative state is insidious and is a different answer than that of the Founders to the political question of who should rule. Despite Republican elections in the past, little has been achieved to change the direction of the government. This led to dissatisfaction among the people and is perhaps best summarized in the phrase “drain the swamp.” The reaction of Washington bureaucrats to the election of Donald Trump, duly elected in accordance with the Constitution by the people, has shown the depth of this problem.

As Americans go to cast their vote in elections this November they should consider whether those they vote for and the party they are a part of support in practice the rule of the people or the rule of experts. It is time for Americans to choose men and women who will support the Trump administration’s goal of making the government accountable to the people who elect them and whose taxes pay their salary.

SOURCE 

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Governor Moonbeam cements his place as a member of the vicious left

California Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown threatened President Donald Trump on Monday, calling him a “saboteur” before snapping and saying, “Something’s got to happen to this guy, because if we don’t get rid of him, he’s going to undermine America and even the world.”

During an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Brown was asked about Hurricane Florence rocking the East Coast and Trump denying climate change.

When asked for his response, Brown went on an unhinged diatribe and called the president a liar.

    “First, I want to say that it’s really extraordinary that the president can deny science like that, but he’s done so many other terr—what’s the word, I don’t even have an adjective. It’s bad, and how we counteract it is with a climate summit, with normal people respecting the truth, and communicating that with other normal people, and combating the President of the United States in what are lies, distortions, and quite frankly, bizarre behavior.”

Mitchell then mentioned that Trump pulled the U.S. from he Paris climate change agreement earlier this year, asking Brown if that will essentially lead to the end of the world.

Brown again took the bait from the left-wing host and called Trump an “enabler of climate negligence” and said the president is a “saboteur.”

    “Trump is an enabler. We often hear the term ‘enabler.’ He’s an enabler of climate negligence and climate avoidance. So that’s what’s bad about it. So we have to make sure that all these other countries, whether it’s Russia, or Poland, or South America, Brazil, whatever the heck it is, everybody’s gotta step up, and the President of the United States should be the cheerleader, the exemplar, and instead, he’s the saboteur.”

Mitchell rounded out the interview by giving Brown a third chance to attack Trump, asking him about conflicting reports from Puerto Rico about the death toll from last year’s hurricane.

    “Well, the problem is, we never had a president who was engaged in this kind of behavior. I mean he’s not telling the truth; he keeps changing his mind; he’s sabotaging the world order in many respects. So it’s unprecedented, it’s dangerous, and hopefully this election is going to send a strong message to the country; the Democrats will win and then Trump — well, something’s got to happen to this guy, because if we don’t get rid of him, he’s going to undermine America and even the world.”

Brown is correct that something is going to happen to Trump — he’s going to easily win re-election in 2020 because the Democratic Party continues to push far-left, radical, and dangerous policies that a majority of Americans do not support.

Brown’s comments are indicative of how scared the Left truly is of Trump; where they cannot offer better ideas or solutions, so they just threaten and smear him.

Brown’s comments are very troubling, and he should not be allowed to threaten the president of the United States without facing any reprimand.

SOURCE 

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Census Bureau: Hispanic Household Income Hits Record High

The median household income for U.S. households in which the
householder is Hispanic hit a record high of $50,486 in 2017, according to the Census Bureau’s annual income report, which was released last week.

“[W]e can confirm that real median household income was higher in 2017 than in any prior year for which we have data,” the Census Bureau told CNSNews.com in specific reference to Hispanic household income.

The $50,486 Hispanic median household income in 2017 (as reported in Table A-1 of the Census Bureau report) was an increase of $1,786—or 3.7 percent--from the Hispanic median household income in 2016, which was $48,700 in constant 2017 dollars.

In its report—“Income and Poverty in the United States: 2017”—the Census Bureau cautioned on making historical comparisons between the report’s overall median household income numbers for years before and after 2013 because of changes the Census Bureau made in its survey in 2014.

“Although 2017 [overall] median household income appears to be the highest median household income ever reported from the CPS ASEC, comparisons to estimates prior to 2013 must be made with caution as the income questions were redesigned in the 2014 CPS ASEC (for income in 2013),” said the report.

However, in response to an inquiry from CNSNews.com as to whether the Hispanic median household income for 2017 was in fact a record, the Census Bureau confirmed that it was.

When the Census Bureau redesigned the survey in 2014, it ran what it called a “split panel” test to determine how the redesign impacted the numbers.

“To better understand how the survey changes would affect income estimates, the 2014 CPS ASEC used a split-panel design,” the report said. “In the split-panel design, about 70 percent of the sample was randomly selected to receive the traditional income questions, which matched those administered prior to 2014. The other 30 percent of the sample received the redesigned questions.”

In response to CNSNews.com’s inquiry as to whether Hispanic median household income had set a record in 2017, the Census Bureau confirmed that Hispanic income did not come out higher because of the redesign and that, therefore, the 2017 Hispanic median household income number was in fact a record.

“For Hispanics, income was not higher in the redesign than in the traditional sample in our split panel test,” the Census Bureau said. “Because of this, we can confirm that real median household income was higher in 2017 than in any prior year for which we have data.”

SOURCE 

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Administration Sets Record-Low Refugee Admission Ceiling; Will Prioritize Asylum Applications of Those Already in the US

The Trump administration has proposed a refugee admission ceiling for fiscal year 2019 of 30,000 – which would be the lowest ceiling set by an administration since the Refugee Act was passed in 1980 – but is arguing that that number should be viewed in the context of broader humanitarian programs.

Specifically, the administration says it wants to prioritize helping displaced people closer to their home countries, and to focus also on addressing a backlog of more than 800,000 individuals already in the United States with pending asylum cases.

In the coming fiscal year, therefore, it proposes to admit up to 30,000 refugees but also process more than 280,000 asylum-seekers already in the U.S., Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the State Department on Monday.

The proposed 30,000 refugee admission ceiling compares to one of 45,000 in FY 2018, which was itself a record low in the almost four decades since the Refugee Act’s passage.

As of Monday – with just 13 days of the fiscal year to go – the actual number of admissions in FY 2018 stands at just 20,918, according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data.

That is by far the lowest number of admissions since 1980: The next smallest number was in FY 2002, when 27,131 refugees were resettled (61 percent fewer than that year’s ceiling of 70,000 – a disparity attributed to security concerns after 9/11.)

In comments seen as an attempt to preempt anticipated criticism, Pompeo said the refugee admission ceiling should not be viewed in isolation. “Some will characterize the refugee ceiling as the sole barometer of America’s commitment to vulnerable people around the world,” he said. “This would be wrong.”

Pompeo said other countries highlight their assistance both to refugees and asylum-seekers – and the U.S. should do the same.

“This year’s refugee ceiling reflects the substantial increase in the number of individuals seeking asylum in our country, leading to a massive backlog of outstanding asylum cases and greater public expense.”

“In consideration of both U.S. national security interests and the urgent need to restore integrity to our overwhelmed asylum system, the United States will focus on addressing humanitarian protection cases of those already in the country.”

International law defines a refugee as someone who has fled his or her home country and is unable or unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.

An asylum-seeker is someone seeking international protection but whose claim has not been finalized. Not all asylum-seeker are recognized and resettled as refugees.

As Pompeo observed, other countries that take in sizeable numbers of displaced people usually cite both refugee and asylum seeker admissions.

For instance the European Union’s statistical agency Eurostat reports that the 28 member-states resettled just 23,925 refugees in total in calendar year 2017, but during the same period also made positive decisions on asylum applications for 538,120 individuals.

Pompeo said that since 2000, more than 1.5 million people have been admitted as refugees or granted asylum in the United States.

“Since 2001, the U.S. has permanently admitted 4.1 million total lawful permanent residents from refugee-producing nations.”

Hundreds of thousands of people had received temporary or permanent humanitarian protection under other immigration categories, such as victims of human trafficking and special immigrant juveniles.

The total U.S. humanitarian assistance worldwide in FY 2017 was more than $8 billion, “more than any other country.”

‘Defective’ vetting

Pompeo said the 30,000 refugee admission ceiling for the fiscal year starting October 1 “reflects our commitment to protect the most vulnerable around the world while prioritizing the safety and wellbeing of the American people, as President Trump has directed.”

He stressed the importance of security vetting for applicants, “to prevent the entry of those who might do harm to our country.”

Previous vetting procedures have been shown to be “defective,” he said, pointing to the admission this year of a foreign national who was later found to be a member of ISIS, along with others who had criminal backgrounds.

Pompeo said the more than 68 million people forcibly displaced worldwide were far more than could ever be resettled or granted asylum status in host countries each year.

It was critical to make it clear that U.S. support for the most vulnerable extends well beyond the U.S. immigration system.

He said the U.S. was maintaining its “enduring humanitarian commitments, by working to assist refugees and other displaced people as close to their home countries as possible, thereby increasing the number of displaced people who receive aid and protection.”

The U.S. will prioritize efforts to enable the safe and voluntary return of refugees to their countries of origin, “if and when conditions permit – a solution most refugees prefer”

“The best way to help most people is to promote burden-sharing with partners and allies, to work to end conflicts that drive displacement in the first place, and to target the application of foreign aid in a smarter way.”

Pompeo said the focus on helping refugees overseas also allows the U.S. to maximize its resources. “We can house, feed and provide medical care for hundreds of thousands more refugees closer to their homes, and do so more rapidly than we could possibly do here in the United States.”

He said the “improved refugee policy” of the Trump administration serves the U.S. national interest and expands its ability to help the needy around the world.

“We will continue to assist the world’s most vulnerable while never losing sight of our first duty – serving the American people.”

“We are, and continue to be, the most generous nation in the world.”

SOURCE 

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Leftists see only the bits they want to see



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

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

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