Life in hard-Left San Francisco

San Francisco's excrement problem is worse than ever. A new study found that the city by the bay fielded 28,315 calls about human and animal waste piling up on the streets from 2017 to 2018, an increase of 35 percent.

The figures were compiled after a review of calls to San Francisco's 311 line, according to the report by RentHop, an online apartment search company.

The worsening situation comes as San Francisco poop complaints have steadily risen about 80 percent since 2011, RentHop reports.

San Francisco can partly blame its love affair with pets. The dog-friendly city has around 120,000 canines, according to San Francisco Animal Care & Control.

The rest can be attributed to some 7,000 homeless persons, in a city that's lacking enough shelters and services to help them, says RentHop.

The problem has even prompted San Francisco to send out a 'poop patrol', armed with street washers to hose away the waste.

'It's a serious public health concern,' said Richard Tarlov, owner of the Canyon Market in the San Francisco's Glen Park section, where the city had 61 complaints of the neighborhood getting pooped on by either human or beast in 2018, up from just 20 complaints the previous year.

Tarlov, in an interview with KRON, called the city's excrement woes a problem also for public relations, tourism and convention hosting. 'Frankly it's embarrassing', he told the news outlet.

The dirtiest neighborhoods are at the heart of San Francisco, with its Tenderloin neighborhood winning the 'poopiest neighborhood' contest three years in a row, says RentHop.

Tenderloin saw 8,644 incidents of either human or animal excrement per square mile in 2017, 7,722 in 2018, and 6,887 so far in 2019.

SOURCE 

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Leftmedia Pulls More Fake 'Kids in Cages' News

"A Nov. 18 story headlined 'U.S. has world's highest rate of children in detention — U.N. study' is withdrawn," Reuters reports. "The United Nations issued a statement on Nov. 19 saying the number was not current but was for the year 2015." Agence France-Presse and National Public Radio likewise scrubbed stories about this. And the Associated Press explained in its retraction, "The story quoted an independent expert working with the U.N. human rights office saying that over 100,000 children are currently being held. But that figure refers to the total number of U.S. child detentions for the year 2015."

Other than that, the story was accurate!

These stories initially made it past the vaunted fact-checkers solely because they were meant to vilify the Trump administration over immigration detentions. They fit the leftist narrative of Trump's "xenophobic and racist" immigration policies. Of course, that was untenable because the data was collected during the Obama administration.

In fact, there are roughly 6,500 minors detained in the U.S. at the moment, and over the past year, the Trump administration has detained less than 70,000 kids at any point or duration. Again, 100,000 was the cumulative total for all of 2015. Hope 'n' Change and all that.

Moreover, says the Washington Examiner's Becket Adams, "That '100,000' figure should have never made it past the editing process, let alone launch a handful of headlines declaring the U.S. the leader in detained children. That figure requires not just shoddy math but also a total suspension of disbelief regarding what goes on in the darker, more tyrannical corners of the world. To say the U.S. is a world leader in detained minors would mean that America is being measured against all countries, including China, Russia, and North Korea. If you believe U.N. investigators have reliable figures from any of those countries, then, oh boy, have I got a bridge to sell you." China is currently detaining as many as two million Uighurs. Think maybe some of them are children?

We've seen this movie before. Back in the summer 2018, when outrage over the Trump administration's detention polices was at its peak, the media hyped pictures of kids in cages that were actually taken during Obama's regime, all to make Trump look bad. Fake news often happens because of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

SOURCE 

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Democratic candidates stupid or in denial about wealth tax

You may recall, a number of years ago an admiral was testifying before Congress about the need to put more military personnel on an island in the Pacific. A congressman, in all seriousness (perhaps after having a bad night), asked the admiral if he was concerned that the island in question might “tip over and capsize” with all of the additional people on it. Others, who are not that foolish, deny they have an alcohol or drug problem when it is obvious that they do. And now there are presidential candidates who claim it is possible to have massive tax and spending increases without making most people worse off rather than better off.

The evidence shows that at some point the burden of more government spending and regulation becomes so great that the economy slows and real income growth, despite the increase in government transfer payments, is much lower than it would be with smaller government. The United States and most other countries are beyond that point.

Likewise, each tax has a rate beyond which tax revenue and the general welfare fall over time (the Laffer Curve effect). The revenue- and welfare-maximizing tax rates are a function of the form of tax and time. For instance, the capital gains tax revenue depends on the willingness of people to realize capital gains by selling an asset such as real estate or stocks. If the rate is perceived as being too high, fewer people sell assets, and the government often receives less revenue rather than more.

The Reagan Treasury Department did a study to try to determine the optimum capital gains rate and concluded it was approximately 15 percent. Many studies in the years since have shown similar results. Current capital gains tax rates — federal plus state — are higher than the optimum; so, if our political leaders were more rational, they would cut the rate to bring in more revenue. Yet, most of the presidential candidates have proposed increasing the capital gains tax rate with the totally false claim (ignoring all of the empirical evidence) that it will bring in more revenue.

Most of the candidates have also proposed increasing the income tax rate on “the rich.” One great advantage of actually being rich is that one can often determine both the form and place of their compensation, unlike the less well off. That is why every time and every place politicians have tried to increase tax revenue by taxing the rich at very high rates, it always fails to bring in the promised revenue. This experiment has been tried in dozens of countries, including the United States, over the last century; yet the political and media class are in denial. The maximum individual tax rate under President Carter was 70 percent; and under President Reagan, it was finally lowered to 28 percent. Yet, tax revenues were higher under the 28 percent rate than under the 70 percent rate because the economy grew so much faster with the lower tax rates.

Elizabeth Warren and some of the other candidates want to put in a “wealth tax” to pay for their multi-trillion-dollar spending schemes. Other than the fact that the wealth tax is unconstitutional, unadministrable and destined to fail, as did the other attempts to impose wealth taxes in various countries — it is a fine idea in the minds of those who have lost touch with reality.

A person’s “wealth” is not fixed — it is variable. Rich people do not keep their wealth in a pile of gold coins in a safety deposit box, but instead normally have numerous investments in many different places. Most of these investments create jobs for others. As the late great Jack Kemp used to say, “How many truck drivers do you have if there are no trucks?” Wealthy people supply the trucks, the factories, the stores, and all of things and places where people find good-paying jobs. Those who would tax the “wealth” (in reality, productive capital formation) are job destroyers, if the truth were told.

If a wealth tax is placed on stock holdings, the wealthy will hold fewer stocks, driving down the price and new investment. If a wealth tax is placed on private businesses (many of them family owned), the owners are likely to move part of their assets elsewhere and the government’s tax base will shrink year by year. If the government puts a wealth tax on luxury second homes — the wealthy will sell again, driving down the price and the tax base, and perhaps choose to buy or rent in low-tax jurisdictions around the world.

Ah, but Elizabeth Warren has an answer to capital flight — a 40 percent exit tax. The old Soviet Union had exit taxes, which most people correctly considered evil. Clearly, she sees the American people as tax slaves to serve the interest of the government class. The American Founders believed government was a necessary evil and therefore should be kept to a minimum to protect liberty, property and person.

SOURCE 

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Christmas in the Swamp: The Top Ten Bad Policies in the Continuing Resolution

This week, Congress passed a short-term continuing resolution (CR) that funds the federal government through Friday, December 20. In recent years, funding the federal government has become an exercise in governing by crisis. Everyone in Congress knows these deadlines exist, but congressional leadership uses them to force members to vote for either CRs or omnibus spending bills packed with other legislative items that have nothing to do with funding the government. If members don’t vote for these bills, leadership says, the government will shut down.

The current CR is a bad deal because it sets up a Christmas for the Swamp, leaving taxpayers with a lump of coal in their stockings. This is not a theoretical notion. In March 2018, Congress passed a 2,232-page omnibus spending bill that included several other bills that had nothing to do with funding the federal government. Why? Because it was one of the few opportunities to legislate all year. Leadership added the legislation that they knew would get the votes they need to pass the bill and relied on the fear of a government shutdown to coax others into voting for something that they may have otherwise opposed.

Although the current CR isn’t quite as loaded as the March 2018 omnibus, it still includes several things that are bad for Americans. Below are the top ten bad provisions included in the CR that Congress passed this week:

Only extends spending to December 20 of this year, setting us up for yet another massive omnibus spending package with who-knows-what in it. Congress knows that Americans stop paying attention to politics during the holidays, and leadership will use that to their advantage to leave plenty of goodies under the Christmas tree for lobbyists and special interests.

Waives the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, eliminating any accountability in Congress for increasing spending. Under the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, if Congress increases spending without offsets, it sets up automatic mandatory spending cuts at the end of the year. By waiving this requirement, Congress is only continuing to worsen the budgetary outlook, adding more red ink to a deficit that is already expected to exceed $1 trillion.

Repeals $7.6 billion recission in highway funds that was scheduled to come into effect in 2020. Was used to offset projected costs of the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. $5.4 billion would have been straight recissions of unauthorized funds, while $2.2 billion would have been taken from funding already allocated to states. Because of a technicality of the federal budget process, this won’t even be counted as a spending increase by the government.
Extends the authorization of government mass surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot Act for three months with zero reforms.

Delays scheduled cuts to Medicaid hospital reimbursements until December 20. These cuts were scheduled under ObamaCare as part of gradually shifting more of the burden of its Medicaid expansion onto the states over time. The states are naturally lobbying hard to make sure those scheduled cuts never happen so they can continue to shift the costs of their bad decision to expand a broken program onto other states’ taxpayers.

Renews the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s (PCORI) funding until December 20. PCORI is the rationing board under ObamaCare that was often referred to as the “death panel” because of its task to decide how to allocate (or not allocate) Medicare funding to reduce costs.

Continues the last CR’s extensions of the expiring National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), again avoiding a needed debate on reforming or eliminating this problematic program

Reauthorizes U.S. Export-Import Bank, the reauthorization of which FreedomWorks has continually opposed. The Export-Import Bank is the face of cronyism and is used by corporations that can easily get private financing for taxpayer-backed loans and subsidies.

Adds in an extension of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), one of the primary federal direct welfare programs. Once again, this is ducking the need to evaluate and reform the program on its own.

Although all of the individual changes above seem to incur fairly small costs on their own (inasmuch as millions or billions of dollars can be called small costs when it’s coming out of our wallets), the CBO has estimated that this CR authorizes a further $77 billion in new mandatory spending over the next ten years.

As one can see, the CR that Congress passed this week is pretty bad for those of us who believe in limited government and individual liberty, but it’s just a precursor of what’s to come only days before Christmas when Americans are preparing for the holiday with their families. If we don’t speak out now and put members in an uncomfortable position, the budget deficit will only get worse and taxpayers will continue to lose while lobbyists and special interests feast on Christmas.

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here

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The huge hole in Donald Trump’s impeachment hearing

Moves to impeach Donald Trump have divided America, and one factor at the heart of the issue is set to decide what happens to the US president.

After two weeks of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump, there is a mountain of evidence that analysts say is now beyond dispute.

Trump explicitly ordered US government officials to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine, a country deeply dependent on Washington’s help to fend off Russian aggression.

The president pushed Ukraine to launch investigations into political rivals, leaning on a discredited conspiracy theory his own advisers disputed. And both American and Ukrainian officials feared Trump froze a much-needed package of military aid until Kiev announced it was launching those probes.

Those facts were confirmed by a dozen witnesses, mostly career government officials who have served both Democratic and Republican administrations. They relied on emails, text messages and contemporaneous notes to back up their recollections from the past year.

Stitched together, their hours of televised testimony paint a portrait of an American president willing to leverage his powerful office to push a foreign government for personal political help. That alone has many Democrats on the brink of voting to impeach Trump before the end of the year, potentially pushing towards a trial in the Senate.

Yet the witness accounts left one prominent hole that offered a lifeline for Trump and his Republican allies.

None of the witnesses could personally attest that Trump directly conditioned the release of $US400 million ($A589 million) in military aid on a Ukrainian announcement of investigations into former vice-president Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

Some Republicans suggested that even if that link could be made, it would not be enough for them to support impeaching Trump and removing him from office. And without that link, the president’s wall of support among GOP politicians seems formidable.

SOURCE 

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'Coup' Concerns Suddenly Don't Seem So Far-Fetched

For most of the last three years, Donald Trump's critics have scoffed at supposed "conspiracy theories" that claimed a "deep state" of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency. We have been told the word "coup" is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.

Yet oddly, many people brag that they are proud members of a deep state and occasionally boast about the idea of a coup.

Recently, former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin proclaimed in a public forum, "Thank God for the deep state." Former CIA director John Brennan agreed and praised the "deep state people" for their opposition to Trump.

Far from denying the danger of an unelected careerist bureaucracy that seeks to overturn presidential policies, New York Times columnists have praised its efforts to nullify the Trump agenda.

On the first day of the impeachment inquiry, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called his initial two witnesses, career State Department diplomats William Taylor, Jr. and George Kent. Far from providing damning evidence of criminal presidential behavior, Taylor and Kent mostly confined themselves to three topics: their own sterling resumes, their lack of any firsthand knowledge of incriminating Trump action, and their poorly hidden disgust with the manner and substance of Trump's foreign policy.

Oddly, both had little clue that their demeanor and thinly disguised self-importance were a perfect example of why Trump got elected -- to come up with new ideas antithetical to the conventional wisdom of unelected career bureaucrats.

Taylor and Kent announced that they are simply high-minded civil servants who serve the presidential administrations of both parties without bias.

But by nature, the huge federal bureaucracy counts on bigger government and more taxes to feed it. So naturally, the bureaucracy is usually more sympathetic to big-government progressives than to small-government conservatives.

Taylor and Kent cited their anguish with Trump's foreign policy toward Ukraine -- namely that it did not go through official channels and was too unsympathetic to Ukraine and too friendly to Russia. If so, one might have thought the anguished bureaucrats would have similarly gone public during the Obama administration.

After all, Vice President Joe Biden took over the Obama administration's Ukrainian policy at a time when his son Hunter was knee-deep in Ukrainian affairs. As a consultant for a Ukrainian natural gas company, Hunter Biden made a reported $80,000 a month without expertise in either the energy business in particular or Ukraine in general.

Also, Trump's policies have been more anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian than those of the Obama administration. Trump armed the Ukrainians; Obama did not. Trump imposed new sanctions against Russia, used force against Russian mercenaries in Syria, beefed up NATO defenses, pulled the U.S. out an asymmetrical missile treaty with Russia, and pumped more oil and gas to lower world prices -- much to the chagrin of oil-exporting Russia.

In contrast, Obama was the architect of "reset" with Russia that reached its nadir in a hot mic exchange in which Obama offered a quid pro quo, vowing more flexibility on issues such as U.S.-sponsored missile defense in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia giving Obama "space" to concentrate on his re-election.

Trump's critics have also radically changed their spin on "coups." To them, "coup" is no longer a dirty word trafficked in by right-wing conspiracists. Instead, it has been normalized as a possibly legitimate means of aborting the Trump presidency.

Mark Zaid, the attorney representing the Ukraine whistleblower, boasted in two recently discovered tweets of ongoing efforts to stage a coup to remove Trump.

"#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow," Zaid tweeted in January 2017. Later the same month, he tweeted: "#coup has started. As one falls, two more will take their place."

Retired Admiral William H. McRaven recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times all but calling for Trump's ouster -- "the sooner the better."

No sooner had Trump been elected than Rosa Brooks, a former Defense Department official during the Obama administration, wrote an essay for Foreign Policy magazine discussing theoretical ways to remove Trump before the 2020 election, among them a scenario involving a military coup.

In September 2018, The New York Times published an op-ed from an anonymous White House official who boasted of supposedly widescale efforts inside the Trump administration to nullify its operations and subvert presidential directives.

Such efforts to oppose Trump are often self-described as "The Resistance," a reference to the underground French fighters resisting the Nazis in World War II.

Trump's opponents often have praised the deep state precisely because unelected career officials are seen as the most effective way to sabotage and stymie his agenda.

A "coup" is no longer proof of right-wing paranoia, but increasingly a part of the general progressive discourse of resistance to Trump.

In these upside-down times, patriotism is being redefined as removing a president before a constitutionally-mandated election.

SOURCE 

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Billionaires fund left-wing ‘resisters’ and schemers to abolish the electoral college, same-day registration and oppose voter ID

For years, Democrats have argued that they will soon have a permanent majority due to the country’s demographic changes. However, liberal billionaires, like George Soros and John and Laura Arnold, are not content to wait. To speed things along, they support left-wing organizations that constantly scheme to find ways to undermine the integrity of our elections and boost Democrats’ chances of winning.

To begin with, Soros and the Arnolds support the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Brennan Center for Justice. The ACLU has a long and sordid history of proudly defending the indefensible. These days, it brags that it has sued the Trump Administration more than 100 times. The Brennan Center was founded by former clerks for liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan; the Center is now run by a senior official in the Clinton Administration. In the early days of the Trump Administration, the Center was recognized as part of the “Resistance Network.”

Both the ACLU and the Brennan Center oppose voter ID laws. While these left-wing organizations do everything they can to make it easier to commit voter fraud, a 2016 Gallup poll shows just how out-of-touch they are on voter ID laws. Gallup found that 80% of voters support ID laws, including 95% of Republicans, 63% of Democrats, 83% of independents, 81% of whites, and 77% of nonwhites. Furthermore, although the ACLU and the Brennan Center claim that voter ID laws disenfranchise minority voters, they disregard evidence that shows that these laws do not suppress minority voter turnout.

Of course, there is much more to these group’s agendas than just blocking voter ID laws. For example, the ACLU opposes efforts to clean up voter rolls that would reduce chances of voter fraud. Not to be outdone, the Brennan Center supports having at least two full weeks of early voting (including nights and weekends), allowing people to register and vote on the same day, and having the government automatically register voters.

Why is it that the ACLU is so desperate to ensure that voter rolls are filled with dead people and those registered in multiple states? Good government? Doubtful. What the ACLU refuses to recognize is that, while some efforts to maintain the integrity of our elections might inconvenience some voters from time to time, the broader voting public has a right to expect that the government is taking reasonable steps to ensure that only those eligible to vote are allowed to do so. After all, no in their right mind wants their vote cancelled out by a non-citizen or someone who votes twice.

Despite the Brennan Center’s claims, there is very little justification for weeks of early voting. If a voter cannot find any time to vote on Election Day during the 12 or so hours that polls are open and cannot submit an absentee ballot, many would reasonably conclude that that voter is not sufficiently motivated to vote. In addition, despite liberal groups’ advocacy for early voting, the evidence suggests early voting does not increase turnout – and could even result in lower turnout. Early voting does, however, increase work for county workers, increase costs for taxpayers, and increase work for volunteers handing out sample ballots to voters.

Soros and the Arnolds, along with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, support FairVote. FairVote is run by Rob Richie, a former campaign staffer for a liberal Democrat Congresswoman. FairVote supports same-day registration and voting, automatic voter registration, and even allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote.

All three of these organizations, the ACLU, the Brennan Center, and FairVote, support the National Popular Vote interstate compact. Under this scheme, states with 270 electoral votes would agree to cast their electoral votes for whichever candidate wins the popular vote regardless of whether that candidate actually won the states giving that candidate their votes. Although a number of states have signed on, this end-run around the Constitution may well be unconstitutional and could even spark a constitutional crisis.

When Soros and the Arnolds are not funding the abortion industry, trying to impose a carbon tax, or trying to erode your Second Amendment rights, they are trying to rig our elections. This is why we need more conservative donors and activists – as well as more cooperation between right-leaning organizations – to push back on these fronts.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

NOTHING TO SEE HERE... Ukraine widens criminal investigation into Biden-connected Burisma (The Daily Wire)

SPEAKING OF CORRUPTION: DNA test of love child confirms Hunter Biden cheated on his dead brother's widow (PJ Media)

FEDS TOO SLOW TO RESPOND: Senate report: U.S. taxpayers have unwittingly funded China's economy and military for decades (The Daily Wire)

TIP OF THE ICEBERG: DOJ inspector general finds "numerous issues" with FBI management of secret sources (Washington Examiner)

RAINBOW MAFIA: Illinois school district gives transgender students unrestricted access to bathrooms (The Daily Signal)

MIND-BOGGLING: Children are being locked away, alone and terrified, in schools across Illinois. Often, it's against the law. (Chicago Tribune)

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Jussie Smollett files suit against Chicago for "malicious prosecution" (National Review)

POLICY: A pro-growth alternative to the Left's tax-hike agenda (The Daily Signal)

POLICY: Setting the record straight on the value of U.S. military aid to Ukraine (The Daily Signal)

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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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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The retirement savings crisis sweeping the world

The basic problem of super-low interest rates is not going to go away.  First Obama and now Trump have issued vast amounts of new U.S. dollars.  And the greenback is the world's reserve currency.  So the world is awash with money. So much so that banks are close to giving it away.  They don't charge much to the people they lend it to.  But those charges are the source of retirement income for many.

So putting your retirement savings into a bank is a mug's game.  You will get less interest on it than the rate of inflation.  Far from providing an income, your savings will wither away.

So many retirees put their money into superannuation and other funds, which do promise an income.  But the superannuation funds are stretched too.  No matter what they invest in, they are not getting much return either.

There are two things they can do about that:  Invest in riskier schemes or cut benefits.  A lot of funds are doing both.  Risky investments are a huge peril, however.  There is a history of them sending funds broke.  How would you cope if your fund went broke and your income dried up altogether?  That has happened in saner times so it is even more likely now.

So what to do?  I think that careful investment on the stock exchange is the best solution for most people.  Good stocks still return their average dividends of about 4% each year so that puts most people about where they thought they were.

So why do the funds not invest solely in stocks?  They do invest but they are always looking for growth and safe stocks tend not to grow much.  But if you are already retired that may not matter much.  If your income is OK but grows only slowly, it still may be enough for you.  It is a heap better than losing the lot -- which can happen with growth stocks.

I may add that I do put my money where my mouth is.  About half my money is in real estate but the other half is in the stock exchange.  I buy stocks with about a 4% return and that gives me a good income plus a stable value for my portfolio.

Stockmarket experts despise such simple investments as mine but I have the last laugh.  During the last big crash in 2008, the smarties bombed badly while the value of my portfolio barely budged and my 4% income also went on as usual.  I guess it is evil of me but I was much amused at the time when lots of hot-shot investors lost the lot


Jan-Pieter Jansen, a 77-year-old retiree from the Netherlands, had high hopes for a worry-free retirement after having saved diligently into a pension during his working life.

But Mr Jansen, a former manager in the metal industry, has been forced to reappraise his plans after receiving notice from his retirement scheme, one of the Netherland’s biggest industry-sector funds, of plans to cut his pension by up to 10 per cent. Understandably, the news has hit like a sledgehammer.

“This is causing me a lot of stress,” says Mr Jansen, who retired 17 years ago and hoped to use his pension pot to treat his grandchildren and afford good hotels on holidays. “The cuts to my pension will mean thousands of euros less that I can spend on the family, and the holidays we like. I’m very angry that this is happening after I saved for so long.”

Mr Jansen is not alone in experiencing pension pain. Tens of millions more pensioners and savers around the world are facing the same retirement insecurity as Mr Jansen, as plunging interest rates since the financial crisis wreak havoc on the funding of schemes. As average life expectancy increases, pensions have become a defining political issue in countries as diverse as Russia, Japan and Brazil.

General Electric, the US industrial conglomerate, recently announced that it is joining a growing list of companies that are ending guaranteed “final salary” style pension schemes, affecting around 20,000 of its employees. In the UK, tens of thousands of university academics are preparing to take strike action over steep rises in their pension contributions.

A common factor in this global pension upheaval has been suppressed bond yields.

Bonds have historically provided a simple match for the cash flows needed to be paid out to the members of retirement schemes such as Mr Jansen’s. But decades of declining bond yields have made it far harder for pension funds to buy an income for their members, pushing them more into equities and other riskier, untraded investments, such as real estate and private equity.

Buoyant financial markets have so far ensured robust investment gains for pension plans on their existing holdings. Yet given their long-term liabilities, the dimming outlook for future gains is causing anguish.

“Their house is on fire,” says Alex Veroude, chief investment officer for the US at Insight Investment, which manages money on behalf of many pension funds. “And rates can and probably will go lower from here. Even if the house is on fire, it’s still only the first floor. We think it can hit the second and third floor as well.”

This is not merely a danger to individuals like Mr Jansen who may see their pensions cut — it could also have a wider impact on the economy. If people set aside more money for retirement, it may hamper economic growth by reducing consumption — the opposite of the intention of central banks when they cut rates. The Swedish Riksbank hinted obliquely at this when it recently signalled it would lift interest rates back to zero by the end of the year, saying that “if negative nominal interest rates are perceived as a more permanent state, the behaviour of agents may change and negative effects may arise.”

There may even be more systemic consequences. Last month the IMF warned in its annual report on global financial stability that the rush by pension funds into “illiquid” assets will hamstring “the traditional role they play in stabilising markets during periods of stress”, as they will have less money available to scoop up bargains.

The push into more unorthodox investment strategies is worrying some in the industry, who warn that they could exacerbate market downturns. “We’re seeing some really unusual behaviour, and we’ll see some payback,” says Con Michalakis, chief investment officer of Statewide, an Australian pension plan. “The trillion dollar question is when? I’ve been doing this for long enough not to want to predict when it will happen.”

When Christopher Ailman studied for a degree in business economics at the University of California in the late 1970s, Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker was ratcheting up interest rates, sending bond yields spiralling higher. Soon after he graduated in 1980 the 10-year Treasury yield hit a record of nearly 16 per cent — and the concept of sub-zero yields seemed preposterous.

“At school my textbooks said that there was no such thing as negative interest rates,” says Mr Ailman, now chief investment officer at Calstrs, the $238bn Californian teachers’ pension plan. “But here we are.”

In the wake of the financial crisis, many central banks deployed unconventional new tools to reinvigorate the global economy once interest rates hit zero. At first this primarily meant massive, multitrillion dollar bond-buying programmes, but in 2009 Sweden became the first central bank to experiment with negative interest rates.

It was later followed by Japan and the rest of Europe, with the desperate scramble for bonds pushing yields lower. Growing concerns over the health of the global economy, a subdued inflation outlook and expectations of even easier monetary policy have now pushed the pile of negative-yielding debt to about $13tn.

Pension plans invest in a broad array of asset classes, but with many stock markets at or near record highs, the prospect of gains are dimming across the board. AQR Capital Management estimates that the classic 60-40 balanced equity-bond fund might return as little as 2.9 per cent on average a year after inflation over the next decade, compared with an average of 5 per cent since 1900.

“Higher prices are simply pulling forward ever more future return to the present,” says Andrew Sheets, a strategist at Morgan Stanley. “That’s great for today’s asset owners, especially those close to retirement. It is much less good for anyone trying to save, invest or manage well into the future, who face an increasingly barren return landscape.”

The tumble in bond yields is particularly problematic for “defined benefit” pension plans, which promise members a specific payout. They use high-grade bond yields to calculate the value of their future liabilities, and every small move downwards deepens their funding challenges.

A one percentage point fall in long-term interest rates will increase liabilities of a typical pension scheme by around 20 per cent, but the value of their assets would only go up by about 10 per cent, estimates Ros Altmann, a former UK pensions minister. “Clearly, then, scheme funding will deteriorate and employers will need to increase funding,” she adds.

Many UK pension schemes are now using sophisticated “liability driven investment” strategies, hedging against the impact of lower rates on their liabilities. This has slowly started to catch on in Europe and the US as well.

But those schemes that have not taken steps to guard against interest rate risk now face huge increases in their deficits, and are having to make difficult decisions about how to bridge the funding gap.

Across the western world pension fund managers face similar challenges. The industry outlook is now as grim as it has ever been in Peter Damgaard Jensen’s two-decade stint at the top of PKA, a Danish pension fund.

“In some countries the pension system cannot survive if things don’t change,” he warns. “They either have to pay in more or cut benefits.”

In the Netherlands, the government has come under pressure to change retirement system rules so schemes can effectively shrink deficits, blown out by negative bond yields. With European bond yields hitting record lows in August, funding ratios — a measure of how much money a pension plan has compared with its liabilities — have collapsed to around 90 per cent, according to Anna Grebenchtchikova, a Dutch pensions expert. “The 90 per cent funding ratio means that benefit cuts are likely unless interest rates and/or equity markets rise substantially before the end of the year,” she says. “Consequently, many opposition parties and organisations for the elderly have called for a relaxation of the rules.”

One such fund is Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn, the second-biggest Dutch pension fund. While it generated €39bn of investment gains in the first nine months of this year, falling yields have forced it to set aside an extra €54bn to meet current and future demands from pension holders. It now warns it might have to cut benefits for the first time in its half-century history.

“To avert a reduction, we urgently need help from politicians in The Hague,” Peter Borgdorff, PFZW’s director, wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “The clock is ticking.”

To counteract the fading outlook for returns from mainstream bonds and equity markets, many pension plans are ratcheting up their investments in “alternative” or “private” assets, such as private equity, real estate, venture capital, infrastructure and untraded loans.

For long-term investors who can accept the illiquidity in return for the promise of higher returns, this makes sense. A housing project or toll road can produce a bond-like, steady income stream. Yet with almost every institutional investor exploring this avenue, it has led to froth in “private markets”.

“There are some dangers,” says Mr Damgaard Jensen. “It can create bubbles when people go into new areas. They’re not the cheapest asset classes to go into. And there are a lot of fees. Often the only people that get rich are the fund managers. And you have to make sure you can hold on as it’s hard to sell.”

These private market investments involve allocating money to private equity or real estate funds, which will be “called” when their managers want to make a big acquisition. But this could reduce how much money pension funds have available. The IMF estimates that pension plans have doubled their allocations to illiquid assets over the past 10 years, and for about a fifth of funds these capital commitments amount to more than half their liquid assets.

“Given higher liquidity risks, pension funds will probably have to set aside more of their liquid assets to cover potential outflows during and after periods of stress, especially if market funding becomes more expensive,” the IMF said in its Global Financial Stability Report. “This would make it more difficult for them to buy assets traded at distressed price levels, limiting their ability to invest counter cyclically and thus play a stabilising role during periods of market stress.”

Faced with a continued subdued outlook for investment returns, fund managers face the unpalatable prospect of inflicting further pain by asking for bigger contributions from pension members and employers, imposing benefit cuts, or closing their schemes.

Baroness Altmann believes intervention is needed to limit the impact of pension pain spreading to the wider economy, as businesses divert cash from investment into paying more money to plug retirement scheme deficits.

“Government and regulators should be planning to help those pension schemes and their sponsors who may never be able to afford full annuity buyout, without becoming insolvent,” she says. “The development of a regime for ‘winding down’ rather than ‘winding up’, which does not require annuity purchase and which would see pensions paid out of a pooled fund of assets, would be more likely to deliver higher pensions overall.”

Without intervention, there are also wider risks to society as more workers could be shunted out of company-backed guaranteed schemes and into arrangements where their pension is at the mercy of the stock market.

“In 20 years we may find ourselves with a real global crisis where we haven’t saved enough money for retirement,” says Calstrs’ Mr Ailman. “Returns can fluctuate, but longevity has been extended dramatically . . . We just have to explain to millennials that their parents might have to move back in with them.”

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here

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Leftist Violence to Crush Dissent Undermines Rights

The very definition of rights is under assault by the Left. The consequences will be dire.

One of the most dangerous realities of America today is that the American people — blessed with unimaginable freedom and prosperity thanks to the revolutionary idea of our Founding Fathers that rights are granted not by government but by God — are disastrously uninformed as to what natural rights are and are not.

Even as the world watches heartbreaking scenes from Venezuela and Hong Kong, where oppressive socialist/communist regimes beat, imprison, and kill their own citizens for peacefully protesting the already oppressive activities of those regimes, America is teeming with foolish progressives demanding we turn to socialism to solve our problems, real or perceived.

Our Constitution established a list of “negative” rights; things government is prohibited from depriving citizens of without due process. For example, the First Amendment protects the freedoms of religion, speech, the press, peaceable assembly, and petitioning government for a redress of grievances. The Second Amendment protects our right of self-defense, the Fourth our right to personal property. And so on.

In each case, the right is protected simply by having government leave us alone. In fact, of all the rights protected by the Constitution, the only one requiring a positive action by another citizen is the right to a trial by a jury, for which jurors are compensated.

To leftist Democrats, everything they want is a “right”.

Democrats have long claimed healthcare, primary education, and retirement security as human rights. Now, with calls for “free” college, they claim secondary education is a right as well. In fact, the list of “rights” declared by progressives is dizzying — paid vacation, paid maternity leave, contraception, high-speed internet, a “living” wage, affordable housing, and more.

Before dropping out, former Democrat presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke even declared that a short commute is a universal right, tweeting, “Living close to work shouldn’t be a luxury for the rich… It’s a right for everyone.”

Take note of the fact that every single one of the progressives’ “rights” requires the time, wealth, property, or intellect of another person, regardless of the recipients’ ability to pay.

The last we checked, compelling one person to work for the benefit of another, especially without compensation, is the definition of slavery.

In a speech last week to the Federalist Society’s 2019 National Lawyers Convention, Attorney General William Barr explained why this dichotomy puts conservatives at a distinct disadvantage when defending against the attacks of the political Left. He explained:


"This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have always had in contesting the political issues of the day. … In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing. … This means that we naturally test the propriety and wisdom of action under a Rule of Law standard. The essence of this standard is to ask what the overall impact on society over the long run if the action we are taking, or principle we are applying in a given circumstance, was universalized — that is, would it be good for society over the long haul if this was done in all like circumstances?"


Over the last three years, we’ve witnessed the attempted coup by progressive Democrats and deep-state operatives to remove Donald Trump, the duly elected president of the United States, using manufactured evidence to frame him for colluding with our Russian enemies. After that failed, they now seek to impeach him over disagreements in foreign policy regarding Ukraine.

Then there are the more militant, violent factions of the Left, like antifa and Black Lives Matter. These groups have taken to the streets, rioting, dragging people from their cars and beating them, assaulting elderly people, and viciously beating reporters who covered their criminal behavior.

It is a tragic irony that, even as leftists demand a cornucopia of new “rights” at taxpayer expense, they are actively and often violently suppressing actual, enumerated constitutional rights. Leftists are relentless in their efforts to repeal the Second Amendment through gun control. They suppress free speech through “speech codes” that constrain utterances to only those expressions approved by the politically correct mob.

And when that fails, they turn to threats of violence, shouting down opponents, doxxing, disrupting speeches, firebombing, and physical violence.

Ironically, and completely lacking in self-awareness, American progressives demand more government even as they warn that the president is a despotic tyrant.

A stable, just society cannot long survive such lawlessness and violence. Americans must understand that if the rights of one are violated, the rights of all are violated.

No longer can Americans of good will stand idly by and allow the mob to crush those they oppose. We must defend our rights now or lose them forever.

SOURCE 

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Runaway Health Insurance Costs Under the Affordable Care Act

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was supposed to make the cost of health insurance more affordable by slowing the rising trend of increases in health insurance costs. The controversial law was passed in 2010 on a strict party line vote, with nearly all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed.

The law went into effect in 2013 and by now we all know the story. Instead of bending the cost curve downward, as promised by then-President Obama in 2010, health insurance costs spiked sharply upward when the law took effect in 2014 and then continued to increase through the remainder of President Obama’s tenure in office.

That trend changed only after 2018, as several modest reforms introduced by the Trump administration slowed that exponential rate of growth.

The average annual premium and deductible data comes from the private health insurance firm eHealth for the years 2008-2017 and 2018-2019. As of this writing, average cost data for the health insurance policies that Americans buy for coverage in 2020 should become available in several months.

The failure of the ACA to restrain the growth of the cost of health insurance was not a surprise. The Independent Institute’s senior fellow John C. Goodman predicted the Affordable Care Act would fail to restrain the rate of growth of the cost of health insurance coverage for Americans shortly after it became law in 2010. The government’s intervention sharply increased its cost instead.

All this has become relevant again today because many of the leading candidates now running for president in 2020 are calling for an even more radical and costly expansion of government control over health care in the United States without addressing any of the factors that led to the runaway health insurance costs that occurred because of the Affordable Care Act.

All of these presidential primary candidates supported the passage of the Affordable Care Act. If nothing else, their support for an even more intrusive government intervention in American health care is a tacit admission the ACA is a failure.

SOURCE   

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Wealthy Warren and Sanders Attack Wealthy

Socialist candidates arrogantly claim government is responsible for people's wealth.

Taking a cue from Barack Obama’s “you didn’t build that” pronouncement, Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren released a new ad seeking to justifying her planned wealth tax. In the ad, Warren bloviates, “You built a great fortune? Good for you. I guarantee you built it at least in part using workers all of us helped pay to educate, getting your goods to market on roads all of us paid to build.” Ah, the socialist fallacy of government being the ultimate source for everything, including people’s wealth.

On the back of her fraudulent claim that an increased tax on wealthy Americans will fully fund her $52 trillion Medicare for All plan, Warren is also leveling a wealth tax on top of that. Just how many millionaires and billionaires does Warren believe exist in America? And why is she entitled to redistribute their money?

Part of the reason the economy is doing so well today is because Republicans cut taxes, which has proven to fuel economic growth with more jobs and higher wages. The only credit that can honestly be given to the government is that it got out of the way. Warren wants to hit the brakes on the economy out of spite, claiming that millionaires and billionaires don’t deserve to own or control their own fortunes.

Warren’s fellow socialist Bernie Sanders sees things the same way, with his call for an 8% tax on the richest Americans. Ironically, when Sanders was asked about a government-instituted mandatory firearms “buyback” program, he stated, “A mandatory buyback is essentially confiscation, which I think is unconstitutional. It means that I’m going to walk into your house and take something whether you like it or not. I don’t think that stands up to constitutional scrutiny.” Well said, Bernie. Now how about applying that same sound logic to the government’s taking of people’s hard-earned money simply because they have more than others?

Both Warren and Sanders see individuals as vassals of the government, rather than the government as beholden to the people. The government owes its existence to the people, not the people to the government. The Founders declared Americans’ rights to be inalienable precisely because they recognized those rights come from God and not from government. The government does not grant rights; rather it is tasked with recognizing them and defending them.

Socialists like Warren and Sanders advocate flipping the whole system on its head, and they point to wealth disparity as the sole justification for such a radical and foolish endeavor. Using the politics of envy, they condemn the wealthy and successful for the “sin” of industriousness. How dare the wealthy be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labors!

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

TAX RETURNS ON HOLD: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts puts hold on release of Trump tax returns (The Resurgent)

JUNK CARE FOR ALL: Elizabeth Warren relies on rationing in Medicare for All plan; cost-cutting measures would likely lead to long wait-times, limited care (The Washington Free Beacon)

NEVER MIND: Elizabeth Warren gives up on Medicare for All: By planning to pass single-payer in year three of her presidency, she's acknowledging it will never happen at all (Reason)

CONFLICT OF INTEREST, CONTINUED: Ilhan Omar funneled another $150,000 to alleged lover's consulting group (New York Post)

WOLVES AMONG SHEEP: Nearly 80,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients have prior arrest records (National Review)

MIGRATION GATEWAY: Tough Trump asylum policy prompts migrants to enter U.S. and then flee to Canada (Washington Examiner)

"I WANT THEM TO KNOW HOW": Utah police training teachers for active shootings (Washington Examiner)

STOPGAP FUNDING BILL: House votes to avoid government shutdown for a month, sending funding bill to Senate (CNBC)

EPSTEIN PROBE: FBI looking into possibility that "criminal enterprise" was involved in Jeffrey Epstein's death (National Review)

GESTURES: Senate passes bill in support of Hong Kong protesters (UPI)

PUSHBACK: Navy seeks to eject four, including sailor championed by Trump, from elite SEALs (NBC News)

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: ISIS rebuilds in Syria after Turkish incursion and U.S. drawdown, Pentagon watchdog says (NBC News)

BALTIMORE MAYOR CHARGED: Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh charged with fraud, faces up to 20 years in prison (National Review)

DIVINE INTERVENTION: Sixteen-year-old girl arrested before attack on predominantly black Georgia church (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

IRAN DISSENT: Iran imposes "largest Internet shutdown ever" as protests spread (National Review)

POLICY: How Medicare for All would make most families poorer (The Daily Signal)

POLICY: Trump admin is right to reapply sanctions to Iran's uranium enrichment (The Federalist)

BLIND PROGRESSIVES: Don’t care about Hong Kong or anti-Semitism but consider themselves to be the most caring, moral and progressive generation ever, committed to combating injustice, stamping out racism and saving the planet (London Telegraph)

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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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here

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Does the Left Hate America?

Whenever leftists are charged with not loving or even with hating America, they respond angrily, labeling the question absurd, mean-spirited and an example of right-wing McCarthyism.

But there can be little doubt that the left has no love for America, just as there can be little doubt that liberals and conservatives love America. Love of America is one of the many dividing lines between liberalism and leftism. (For a description of six differences between liberalism and leftism, please see my PragerU video "Left or Liberal?")

Here are six reasons to believe the left hates America:

1. No one denies that the international left -- the left in Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere -- hates America. Therefore, in order to argue that American leftists do not hate America, one would have to argue that on one of the most fundamental principles of international leftism -- hatred of America -- American leftists differ with fellow leftists around the world: All the world's left hates the U.S., but the American left loves it.

This, of course, makes no sense. Leftists around the world agree on every important issue. Why, then, would they differ with regard to America? Has any leftist at The New York Times, for example, written one column critical of the international left's anti-Americanism?

2. Leftists want to "fundamentally transform" the United States. Five days before the 2008 presidential election, candidate Barack Obama told a huge audience in Columbia, Missouri, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

More recently, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced that she plans to "fundamentally transform our government," that America needs "big, structural change" and that her proposed Accountable Capitalism Act would bring about "fundamental change."

Likewise, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said earlier this year, "We're going to try to transform the United States of America," and last month he said, "This campaign is about fundamental change."

Examples are legion.

So, here's a question: How can one claim to love what one wishes to fundamentally transform?

The answer is obvious: It isn't possible.

If a man were to confide to you that he wants to fundamentally transform his wife, would you assume he loves his wife? If a woman were to tell you she wants to fundamentally transform her husband, would you assume she loves him? Of course not.

3. Leftists have contempt for the American flag.

I am unaware of a single left-wing individual or organization that has condemned NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for the flag during the playing or singing of the national anthem that precedes NFL games. To the contrary, on the left, he is universally regarded as a hero. Indeed, Nike anointed him as one, making him its brand model.

Leftists might respond that Kaepernick's public refusal to stand for the flag and national anthem says nothing about his love for America, as it is only a form of protest against racial injustice. But that is nonsense. Would leftists argue that anyone who publicly refuses to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day really loves Dr. King?

4. Leftists routinely describe America as racist, sexist, xenophobic, imperialist, genocidal, homophobic, obsessed with money and morally inferior to most Western European countries. No moral person could love such a place. As one person commenting on a Paul Krugman column wrote, "Does loving your country mean you love or ignore the fact that we destroyed Iraq, shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, and waged a brutal war in Asia for reasons that today make no sense?"

5. America is the most successful country in world history -- while being the most committed to capitalism and remaining the most religious of all the industrialized democracies. To the extent that America is great, that means two of the institutions the left most loathes -- Christianity and capitalism -- are also great.

6. Love is, among other things, an emotion. So, here is a question about leftists' emotions: Do any leftists get the chills when the national anthem is played or when they see the American flag waving as the anthem is played? Given their rhetoric, it is most unlikely. Yet, every person I know who loves America does get a chill at such moments. Do leftists, as opposed to some liberals and conservatives, display the flag on any national holiday? How many leftists even own a flag?

Finally, if leftists do not love America, what do they love?

According to their own rhetoric, they love the planet -- Mother Earth, as they frequently refer to it. And they love animals.

They really love power, and they claim to love material equality.

They don't love Western culture -- and they now dismiss praise for it as a euphemism for white supremacy.

Interestingly, while they often claim to love humanity, many don't seem to love people. They give less charity and volunteer less time to the downtrodden than conservatives, for example. They have much less interest in having children and making families. They are far more likely than conservatives to cut off relations with friends or relatives with whom they differ politically. And if they really loved people, they would love capitalism because only capitalism has lifted billions of people from poverty.

But most of all, they love ... themselves.

SOURCE 

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Those Shaming Amazon about Bangladeshi Factories Should Be Ashamed of Themselves

It’s difficult to muster a lot of sympathy for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, reportedly the world’s richest individual, whose divorce this summer from his wife of 25 years cost him an estimated $38 billion. But recent attacks on Bezos and Amazon for selling clothing made in Bangladesh are ill-informed and unfair.

The controversy began in October when a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Amazon sells clothes from Bangladeshi factories that other retailers have blacklisted for poor safety records. Amazon’s critics ignore that the blacklisting these factories denies Bangladeshi garment workers the opportunity to earn a living.

Concerns about the safety of Bangladeshi garment factories stem from the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse, which killed more than 1,100 workers. In the aftermath of the collapse, the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh was established to promote factory safety and monitor compliance with safety agreements. The accord now includes more than 1,600 factories employing more than 2 million Bangladeshi workers.

Far more Bangladeshi firms, however, are not party to safety agreements under the accord. According to the International Labor Organization, there are more than 5,000 garment factories in Bangladesh; one study estimates there may be as many as 8,000 factories if subcontractors are counted. The 3,400 to 6,400 firms that aren’t part of the accord also employ about 2 million garment workers.

Last February, I participated in a panel discussion at the University of Denver alongside Joris Oldenziel, the accord’s deputy director for implementation. Understandably, perhaps, Oldenziel believes all Bangladeshi factories should have to live up to the accord’s safety standards. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal report implied that Amazon was harming workers by sourcing from factories blacklisted by the accord. Both are wrong.

With a per capita annual income of just over $1,500, poverty is widespread in Bangladesh. Factory work, even in unsafe factories, is a big step up for workers compared to subsistence agriculture, household services, or most other available alternatives. As I pointed out in my book, Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy, even the workers at garment factories that U.S. activists protest and label as harmful “sweatshops,” on average, earn far more than the “less than $2 a day” the vast majority of Bangladeshis were earning at the time of my analysis in 2010.

Better safety is not free, and companies respond to increased costs by shifting production to cheaper labor from other parts of the world or by investing in machinery and other automated processes that reduce employment. Forcing all companies to meet accord safety standards, either by passing new safety laws or by shaming companies like Amazon, jeopardizes jobs that provide millions of Bangladeshis the opportunity to escape extreme poverty.

When the overall pay is low, workers prefer the vast majority of their compensation to come in the form of wages, rather than safety expenditures or other benefits. That’s because they are in a struggle just to feed and clothe their families.

When productivity rises, so does total worker compensation. And as workers become wealthier, they demand more of their compensation in the form of safety and benefits. This process is underway in Bangladesh, and the accord is part of it.

Today, about only 10% of the employed population in Bangladesh is living on less than $1.90 per day. As productivity and compensation have risen, safety has also improved. The accord provides credible information on factory safety standards—or the lack thereof—giving workers more information to choose where they want to work.

The factories participating in the accord are disproportionately the larger firms with higher revenues. To force accord safety standards on smaller firms, where many of the poorer and less productive Bangladeshi workers are employed, would result in job losses for those who need jobs the most.

Sustainable safety improvements come through the market’s process of economic development. Amazon and other U.S. companies sourcing from accord factories, unlisted factories, and blacklisted factories are part of this process. If we care about the welfare of Bangladeshi workers, we need to continue to let the process play out.

SOURCE 

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The Bolivian ‘Coup’ that Wasn’t

Claiming to be the victim of a coup, former Bolivian president Evo Morales has been granted political asylum by Mexico, where he and his allies will continue to push the fiction that he was forced out by Bolivia’s powerful oligarchy.

Morales’s claim stands truth on its head. In fact, it was Morales who tried to engineer a coup—and not for the first time—by rigging the Oct. 20 presidential election.

Morales came to power at the beginning of 2006 after two previously elected presidents were toppled by Morales-led mobs. As is customary among those embracing “21st century socialism,” Morales then convened a constitutional assembly, the main purpose of which was to rubber-stamp his proposal to amend the constitution to allow the president to seek a second term, something the previous constitution expressly banned. Not surprisingly, the constitution was rewritten and Morales was reelected in 2009.

That, too, wasn’t enough for Morales. So he turned to Bolivia’s constitutional tribunal—the court in charge of protecting the constitution—to extend his rule even further. And to no one’s surprise, the court decreed in 2013 that he could stand for a third term, ruling that his first term didn’t really count since the country had been “refounded” in 2009 when the new constitution was adopted.

Morales then began to plot against the constitution’s two-term limit, with his cronies in the legislature approving a referendum that would put the two-term limit to a vote. When the vote was held in 2016, to Morales’s shock, the people rejected the proposal.

But Morales couldn’t take no for an answer. His constitutional tribunal decided he had a “human right” to be reelected. In perfect theater-of-the-absurd style, Morales and his stooges invoked Article 23 of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, which states that citizens have a right “to vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections.” So, once again, Morales stood for reelection.

Only this time things didn’t go so well. When it became clear that Morales wouldn’t win the needed majority and instead would have to face off against former president Carlos Mesa in a “mano a mano” contest Morales was likely to lose, the vote counting system mysteriously crashed. Twenty-four hours later, it miraculously recovered—and lo and behold Morales all of a sudden had a better-than-10-point lead, enough to avoid a runoff.

The electoral fraud triggered massive protests that eventually forced the government to accept an international audit by monitors from the Organization of American States. The monitors concluded that widespread irregularities had taken place and that it was “statistically unlikely” that Morales won the election.

Which brings us to the present mess. After the massive protests turned violent, with several police garrisons stepping in to protect the public from paramilitary thugs loyal to Morales, the head of the military, a longtime ally of the president, “suggested” that Morales stand down.

The general’s stance might have been imprudent, but it had nothing to do with a classic military takeover—so common in Latin America. Instead, it was a decision by the military leadership to steer Bolivia away from a bloodbath, which likely would have occurred if they had rejected the will of the people in support of Morales’s attempt to extend his tenure through a rigged election.

This is what led Morales to claim he was the victim of a coup. Since Morales’s vice president, a close ally, also resigned, as did the head of the senate, who was next in line to take over, this puts the new president of the legislative assembly in charge until new elections are held and the reins of power are handed over to Morales’s duly elected successor.

As I write, the chaos continues, as one might expect given the harm Morales has done to his country’s constitution and institutions, the violence his thugs have instigated and the fury his critics feel after he attempted to steal the presidential election.

But let us be clear: There has been no coup in Bolivia except the one Morales tried to engineer.

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Tulsi Gabbard condemns the Democratic party

What she condemns is a description of them.  She sounds a lot like Ronald Reagan.  She would be a real threat to Trump but what she wants is not what the Donks want so she could never be nominated by them.  She believes in love. They are consumed by hate

By Michael van der Galien

I've got to admit: I only respect and like two Democrats running for president. The first is Marianne Williamson. The second (and more prominent candidate at the moment, since she's polling at a couple of percent nowadays) is Tulsi Gabbard.

Tulsi is has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. She's a lefty, but she's honest and upfront about it. More than anything, though, she fears no one, not even her party's own godfathers and godmothers. Heck, she has all but declared war on Hillary Clinton. That takes balls.

However, sadly for Tulsi, she has one major problem. A weakness that she won't be able to overcome.

No, I'm not talking about her age or lack of experience. Trump had never held office before he became president, so hey, everything goes nowadays. No, Tulsi's problem is... that she's simply a decent human being.

"You know, sometimes politicians who are stuck in Washington, and don't take the time to get out, don't get out to where real people live and play and work, they lose touch with the reality of where the heartbeat of our country is," she told a crowd at a recent campaign rally. "The heartbeat of our country, it's certainly not in Washington, D.C. The heartbeat of our country is in rooms like this. In communities like yours all across this country, standing up and saying it is time now for our voices to be heard."

"It has gone on for so long that self-serving politicians in Washington and the richest, and the most powerful, and the most elite among us, have been in control and have been in power, and they have left us behind."

OK, so far so good, but that's where it all went wrong:

"The problem is our politics has been so poisoned and tainted for so long by those who are only interested in their own political power, their selfish interests or lining their pockets, and using fear and hatred and bigotry to divide us for their own personal gain that they don't know what this looks like. They don't understand what the power of the people feels like. They think that they have the power but they have forgotten that really, the power lies within our hands."
And she made it even worse:

"When we come together and stand united, not motivated by fear, not motivated by hatred, not motivated by racism or bigotry, but motivated by love. Motivated by love. Motivated by love for our country and for each other and for our planet and for our future. When we stand united in this love, there is no obstacle we cannot overcome."

Of course, the problem is that everything she says she doesn't want to be is exactly what the Democratic Party represents. This is the party that tells Trump voters that they're just angry white people, smelly Walmart shoppers and a basket of deplorables. This is the party that tells African Americans that they have to vote for Democrats or else they're Uncle Toms. This is the party that has started an impeachment procedure against the democratically elected president simply because he (and his voters!) don't share their views. This is the party that smears anyone who mildly suggests that perhaps -- perhaps! -- unborn life deserves some protection at some point.

In short, the Democratic Party is the party of hatred, racism, and bigotry. There's literally no chance of someone like Tulsi -- decent, unifying, brave -- winning that party's nomination.

SOURCE 

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Brooklyn: Man Arrested for Egging Synagogue Turns Out Not to Be a White Supremacist

But names like his are readily found in Pakistan

The New York Post reported Thursday that “a teenager who threw an egg at a Brooklyn synagogue and chucked another one at a woman in Borough Park has been arrested on a number of hate crime charges, police said.”

This took place in a neighborhood where many Orthodox Jews live. The young activist’s name turns out to be Mohib Hoque, and he was “hit with three counts of hate crime assault, three counts of hate crime aggravated harassment, three counts of hate crime harassment and hate crime reckless endangerment.”

Mohib Hoque. A white supremacist, perhaps? An avid consumer of “far-right” news analysis?

Anti-Semitic attacks have sharply increased in the U.S., and virtually the entire political and media establishment has agreed that this is attributable to the rise of “white supremacists” and the “far-right.”

One problem with this claim is that actual white supremacists are a minuscule band of losers; another is that the same political and media establishment attaches the label “far-right” to virtually everyone who dissents from the Leftist agenda. And a third difficulty with the mainstream view is that it ignores the increasing hostility toward Israel and Jews in general on the Left, and the deeply ingrained anti-Semitism of one of the Left’s protected groups, Muslims – as a recent incident in New York City indicates.

Young Mohib Hoque “allegedly chucked an egg at a 38-year-old woman who was walking on 38th Street near 14th Avenue at about 6 p.m,” and then “about 15 minutes later, Hoque allegedly threw another egg at a wall of nearby Congregation Bnei Torah Sanz.”

None of Hoque’s behavior is really surprising to those who are aware of what Islam’s core text, the Qur’an, says about Jews. Most people assume that any hostility any Muslim may have toward Jews is motivated by the alleged mistreatment of “Palestinians” by Israel. That mistreatment, however, is largely the work of “Palestinian” propaganda mills that fabricate Israeli atrocities on a large scale, and is also in some cases a result of the practice of Hamas and Islamic Jihad of basing operations in civilian areas so that they can use retaliatory actions as a basis for more victimhood propaganda.

While it may be that Hoque actually believes some of this propaganda and it moved him to express his hatred and contempt for the synagogue, the Muslim animus toward Jews is much more deeply rooted than most people realize. The Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the well-being of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more. They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29).

These aren’t just random verses tucked away in a dusty book that everyone has forgotten. The Qur’an is at the very center of Islamic culture and life, and has exerted its influence upon Islamic culture to such an extent that even many Muslims who don’t read it regularly and aren’t familiar with its contents share its hatred of Jews – in many Muslim-majority areas, that hatred is in the air.

The names of many of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City are not realized. If they were, it is likely that there would be more names such as that of Mohib Hoque than New York authorities are willing to admit.

SOURCE 

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USCIS: Nearly 80,000 DACA Recipients Have Arrest Records

With the question of the constitutionality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program before the Supreme Court, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released a study showing that nearly 80,000 DACA recipients have arrest records ranging from immigration violations to rape and murder.

The study should add fuel to the fire if Congress were to try and make DACA recipients legal.

Before jumping to conclusions, both sides should consider what exactly the USCIS studied.

Fox News:

The data released Saturday by  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shows only arrests or apprehensions for a criminal offense or an immigration-related civil offense and does not take into account whether there was a conviction, acquittal, dismissal or a lessening of charges.

This is important when giving weight to the study and judging its relevance. Getting arrested doesn't make you a felon and given the kinds of offenses that the overwhelming number of DACA recipients were arrested for, it certainly doesn't make one a violent or dangerous criminal.

But perhaps recipients of DACA should be subject to more scrutiny.

The report finds that of the nearly 889,000 applicants for the DACA program, 110,000 had arrest records. Of the more than 765,000 approved for DACA, 79,398 had arrest records. Of that number, 67,861 were arrested before their most recent DACA approval, while 15,903 were arrested after their most recent approval.

The offenses incurred by DACA requestors who were arrested before their most recent approval include battery (3,421), assault (3,308), burglary, breaking and entering (1,471), rape (62), murder (15) and theft or larceny (7,926). The largest population arrested were suspected of driving-related offenses excluding DUIs (23,305) and immigration-related offenses (12,968.)

USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli, well known for his anti-DACA views, issued a statement:

“As DACA continues to be the subject of both public discourse and ongoing litigation, USCIS remains committed to ensuring transparency and that the American people are informed about those receiving DACA,” USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli said in a statement.

“This agency is obligated to continue accepting DACA requests from illegal aliens as a direct result of the previous administration’s decision to circumvent the laws as passed by Congress. We hope this data provides a better sense of the reality of those granted the privilege of a temporary deferral of removal action and work authorization under DACA,” he said.

The "reality" is that the Supreme Court is likely to find the program unconstitutional. But there is a strong sense in Congress on both sides of the aisle, that punishing someone who was brought here illegally by their illegal parents, shouldn't have to suffer the consequences.

I'm sure that part of that deal will be to prevent violent convicted felons from being allowed to stay in the country. But what about the others? Should drunk drivers be deported? Should a previous civil immigration violation be a reason to kick an otherwise law-abiding illegal out of the country?

These are questions for Congress as the issue of DACA once again comes before it.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

LANDMARK SCUFFLE: Trump asks Supreme Court to let him keep his tax returns secret, setting up a landmark fight (CNBC)

TRADE PROGRESS: Nancy Pelosi says finalized trade deal with Mexico and Canada "imminent" (National Review)

BACKGROUND HERE: Federal judge rules U.S.-born "ISIS bride" not an American citizen, U.S. not required to repatriate her (National Review)

AWKWARD: U.S. manufacturing group hacked by China as trade talks intensified (Reuters)

IRON FIST: Hong Kong violence continues to escalate as China's Xi Jinping makes strongest statement yet (Hot Air)

POLICY: Don't reauthorize the Export-Import Bank — defund it (Washington Examiner)

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards hangs on to his Louisiana seat; however, Republicans procure a supermajority in the state senate (Vox)

"WE'RE ABSOLUTELY GOING TO MAKE MISTAKES HERE": Twitter rolls out ban on political ads covering candidates, elections, and legislation (National Review)

DISASTROUS: Elizabeth Warren's tax plan would hit some with rates over 100% (The Daily Wire)

LAGGING BEHIND: Immigration jails in Trump era are packed, but deportations are fewer than in Obama's (The Washington Post)

TRANSPARENCY: Trump's team delivers a big win for patients by making health costs clearer (Washington Examiner)

AN INDICATOR THAT TRUMP WILL PERSEVERE: As impeachment fizzles, the stock market soars (The Federalist)

SHAPING WHAT YOU SEE: How Google interferes with its search algorithms and changes your results (The Wall Street Journal)

POLICY: Improving surface transportation through federalism (The Heritage Foundation)

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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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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UK: Why Boris will win

One of the strange things about General Election campaigns is that you can never really predict what will capture the public imagination.

Day after day, the nation's politicians trudge up and down the country, and most people barely even notice they're there. And then, quite suddenly, a stray remark seizes the nation's attention and can never be wiped away.

Two years ago, for example, Theresa May travelled the land intoning her terrible mantra about strong and stable leadership, and nobody cared. Then she told an interviewer that the worst thing she'd ever done as a girl was to run through a field of wheat, and everybody remembered it.

For Boris Johnson, that moment came during his mock-spontaneous campaign video, released online a few days ago. In case you haven't seen it, the Prime Minister is interviewed wandering around his campaign headquarters, making a cup of tea and greeting random staff members.

He talks about wanting to get Brexit done, and about liking Marmite. Then comes the remark that, in the public mind at least, seems to sum him up.

What, asks the interviewer, has surprised him most about being Prime Minister?

The biggest shock, he says, is that he can no longer have a takeaway. The other day, he adds, 'I couldn't actually get a Thai curry to deliver to Number 10 because of the security problems'.

Classic Boris, you might think. The kind of man who's desperate to get stuck into a decent curry. A man who likes the Rolling Stones and forgets to take out his teabag before pouring in the milk. A man of the people.

Of course, there's more to it than that. You can bet that every line in that campaign video was carefully scripted, right down to the last syllable. As recent months have shown, Johnson is a very canny, even ruthless, operator and he knew exactly what message he was sending.

Indeed, his critics — some of them inside his own party — claim the whole thing is an act. They point to his upper middle-class background, his classical education at Eton and Oxford, his plummy accent, his membership of the Bullingdon Club, even his air of carefully manicured dishevelment, and see an Establishment figure in populist clothing.

But that takeaway line resonated because it matches what the public already think. For in Johnson, many working-class voters do see a man of the people, to an extent unmatched by any Tory leader in living memory.

The very fact that so many people automatically refer to him as 'Boris' is very telling. Even that campaign video begins with the interviewer, in a strong Estuary accent, greeting him with the words: 'Hi Boris, all right?'

Even when he went to South Yorkshire, meeting residents who were angry that the official response to the floods had not been quicker, people automatically called him by his first name. 'You've took your time, Boris, haven't you?' said one heckler.

Afterwards, the Mail's man in Yorkshire, Chris Brooke, noted that even diehard Labour supporters, who thought he should have done more to help the flood victims, invariably called him 'Boris', not 'Prime Minister'. And although they might not be his biggest fans, many were pleased to shake his hand and even sit down for a cup of tea.

Nobody called Mrs May 'Theresa'. Nobody bumping into her predecessors called David Cameron 'Dave' or Michael Howard 'Mike'.

The last Conservative leader to whom ordinary voters referred by her first name was Margaret Thatcher — 'Maggie'. And she was the last Tory leader who strongly appealed to ambitious working-class voters, not least because she sold them their council houses.

Yet according to the latest polling data, Johnson's appeal to working-class voters is even stronger than Mrs Thatcher's in the early 1980s.

A ComRes poll this week, for example, found that fully 43 per cent of skilled and semi-skilled manual workers — those people at the bottom of the social pyramid — are planning to vote Conservative, up from just 35 per cent in 2017.

A YouGov poll, meanwhile, found that among all working-class voters, the Tories are on 47 per cent, a staggering 20 per cent ahead of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

This picture might change on Election Day, of course, but I doubt it. Every last bit of evidence suggests that the Tories are far more popular than Labour among working-class voters, turning the time-honoured stereotypes of British politics on their head.

Not all of this, mind you, is down to Johnson. Contrary to Labour gibes that the Tories have never been anything more than the party of the rich, they have typically attracted between a quarter and a third of the working-class vote.

But in the past few years, there has been a marked surge in the Tories' working-class support. Some 38 per cent of working-class Britons voted Tory in 2017, the Party's strongest showing since 1979.

One of the central factors, obviously, is Brexit. Some political scientists believe Brexit has shattered the old political alignment, with millions of voters abandoning old haunts for new homes.

For the Conservatives, the obvious downside is their abandonment by affluent urban Remainers who might once have been regular Tory voters. In 2017, for example, they lost Canterbury, a classic leafy, middle-class university city, for the first time since 1835.

Or take Oxford West and Abingdon, which is positively stuffed with PhDs. The Tories won it in 2010 and 2015, but lost it two years ago to Lib Dem Layla Moran, almost entirely thanks to Brexit.

But the Tory calculation is that they can afford to lose seats like this if they pick up more working-class constituencies in the North and Midlands. They have high hopes, for example, of winning the veteran Dennis Skinner's seat in Bolsover, where as recently as 2005 they came third with just 17 per cent of the vote.

To capture Bolsover would be extraordinary indeed, but it is part of a pattern. The Tories' route to victory depends on success in the North, where they hope Labour voters' frustrations with the Brexit impasse, fury at the metropolitan political class and utter contempt for Jeremy Corbyn will outweigh decades of tribal loyalty.

This is where the Boris factor comes in. To paraphrase the old Heineken advert, Johnson refreshes the parts other Tory leaders cannot reach — in particular, the declining towns of Northern England.

Obviously Brexit, again, is part of the story, since the Prime Minister was the front man for the Leave campaign. Even his inability to get Britain out on October 31 — or, as he promised, to 'die in a ditch' if he failed — has not hurt him among most Leave voters.

There are other issues. Nobody doubts that Johnson, who wrote a book about Churchill, quoted Rudyard Kipling when he visited Burma and criticised Barack Obama for disliking the British Empire, is a patriot to his fingertips.

And given that Corbyn has consistently supported Britain's enemies, sympathised with the IRA and even talked of dismantling the Armed Forces, it is hardly surprising that so many patriotic Labour voters are planning to jump ship.

But there is more to it than Brexit, or even an anti- Corbyn backlash. The truth, as almost everybody in politics grudgingly admits, is that Johnson has the X Factor.

Six years ago, novelist Jonathan Coe wrote a remarkably prescient essay arguing that the key moment in Johnson's rise was his first appearance on the BBC One panel show Have I Got News For You. For Coe, very far from being a Boris fan, this was the moment the future Prime Minister cemented his public image as a 'loveable, self-mocking buffoon', an everyman rather than an Etonian.

He made people laugh, but he laughed at himself, too, pretending to be stupider than he actually was. And although the audience knew exactly what he was doing, they laughed nonetheless.

In an age of robotic, bland politicians, frightened of looking silly or saying anything controversial, that made him stand out.

Even his outspoken newspaper articles cemented his reputation as a free spirit, who refused to be shackled by the po-faced, politically correct thought police.

By and large, Johnson has stuck to that relentlessly good-humoured, self-deprecating formula. His most celebrated moment as London Mayor, for example, came when he celebrated Britain's first gold medal in the 2012 Olympics by taking to a zip-wire, which got stuck, leaving him dangling ludicrously while clutching two Union Jacks.

Trapped in his harness, a safety helmet jammed on his blond mop, he looked absurd — and that, in a sense, was the point. He was not afraid to look ridiculous; rather, he embraced it. It was later alleged that this was a deliberate stunt.

As a result, people have always felt comfortable with him. There is nothing starchy or censorious about him: quite the reverse. Among many voters his frankly disreputable private life probably works in his favour. People rarely enjoy the company of saints, but never mind meeting another sinner.

SOURCE 

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Attorney General Barr Shreds The Political Left During Federalist Society Speech

On Friday, Attorney General William P. Barr delivered the 19th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society's 2019 National Lawyers Convention.

The most significant part of the speech, to me, was when Barr slammed the political left for their endless attacks on Trump, and their bogus narrative that Trump is subverting the Constitution.

One of the ironies of today is that those who oppose this President constantly accuse this Administration of “shredding” constitutional norms and waging a war on the rule of law. When I ask my friends on the other side, what exactly are you referring to? I get vacuous stares, followed by sputtering about the Travel Ban or some such thing. While the President has certainly thrown out the traditional Beltway playbook, he was upfront about that beforehand, and the people voted for him. What I am talking about today are fundamental constitutional precepts.

The fact is that this Administration’s policy initiatives and proposed rules, including the Travel Ban, have transgressed neither constitutional, nor traditional, norms, and have been amply supported by the law and patiently litigated through the Court system to vindication.

Indeed, measures undertaken by this Administration seem a bit tame when compared to some of the unprecedented steps taken by the Obama Administration’s aggressive exercises of executive power – such as, under its DACA program, refusing to enforce broad swathes of immigration law.

Barr also specifically called out the resistance.

The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of “Resistance” against this Administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law. This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have always had in contesting the political issues of the day. It was adverted to by the old, curmudgeonly Federalist, Fisher Ames, in an essay during the early years of the Republic.
Oh, but he wasn't done there:

In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion.  Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the state to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection.  Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursing a deific end.  They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications.  They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.

I strongly encourage you to watch (or read) the whole thing. After eight years of having partisan radicals running the show and turning the Department of Justice into a political weapon for Barack Obama, it's refreshing to see we have an advocate for the Constitution and the rule of law again.

Naturally, some on the left were triggered by this. As would be expected. They were spoiled by the corruption of the Obama years when Democrats were above the law and constitutionality was based on the whim of Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch, not the actual Constitution. It's clear from Barr's speech that he's on the side of the Constitution and rule of law, and that makes the left very afraid.

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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