Should Voting Be Made Harder?

The large rusted-on vote that Democrats get from most of America's large minority population certainly undercuts the vote as a considered evaluation of parties and policies   -- and the result is an America that is steadily losing liberties and prosperity in ceaseless small bites.  So some reform should be thought about.  A once-common idea was for the vote to be limited to property owners but a more plausible idea these days would be to limit the vote to those who pay Federal income tax.  That only those who put in should have a say in what is paid out seems only fair -- JR

 By David Bozeman

In what could be a harbinger of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton recently slammed North Carolina’s new voter ID law, saying that it reads like a “greatest hits of voter suppression.”  Aside from requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote, the law’s other provisions cut early voting to — gasp! — ten days and end same-day registration during the early-voting period.

One can certainly debate the necessity of crafting new legislation, but the ensuing hysteria, including lawsuits by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and the ACLU, misses the larger point.  Conservatives and Republicans believe that the endless attempts to make voting easier (motor voter registration, for instance) are, in the words of National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg, synonymous with making it cheaper.

Simply, if voting requires a degree of effort or even inconvenience and a moment of deliberation, then maybe we are a better people because of it.  Here in North Carolina (and a handful of other states), those only slightly interested in public affairs can be roused out of their apathy by a polished but ineffectual orator, register to vote and then cast their votes all in the same day.  American Idol winners are chosen with more contemplation.

Early voting, likewise, once reserved for the military and hardship cases, has degenerated, if not into a circus, then into a cushy vehicle of convenience to those for whom standing in line is a bother.  Whatever the advantages of early voting, surely our founders envisioned all citizens voting pretty much together, sorting out the same facts.  With voting becoming not a day but a season, how many news cycles and debates affect one vote but not another?

When the media (barely) revealed candidate Barack Obama’s expressed goal of targeting big energy (particularly the coal industry) literally days before the election in 2008, how many already-cast votes did not reflect knowledge of Obama’s radical agenda?  Furthermore, how much greater leeway is granted for corruption as more days and weeks are added to election season?

Whether or not corruption exists, however, is not really the point.  Not that Democrats care — as long as they keep winning national races, they don’t give a whit about any preventive measures aimed at ensuring fair elections.  Let them lose a nail-biter or two (like in 2000) and election reform will be all the rage.  Till then, they take refuge in the claim that Republicans just want to keep black people away from the polls.

Bottom line — and most of us know this, but few will dare say it — maybe not everyone should vote.  If you have to be induced by convenience to vote, then maybe you shouldn’t.  If your preference is based on your narrow self interest and not the overall good of your country, then maybe you shouldn’t vote.  If you have no idea who your senators are or who the vice president is, then maybe you shouldn’t vote.

The idea that voting should be rational and contemplative, as much a rite as a right, is no doubt the impetus behind North Carolina’s harmless little measures.  Only modern liberals believe that large masses of poor and black Americans are somehow incapable of procuring photo IDs!  But the only way for Hillary Clinton to gain power is to convince you that you are powerless.  Voting, while a precious right born of toil, revolution and blood, is hardly, unto itself, a shield against tyranny.  Merely the right to vote will not protect one citizen from the passions of the mob.  That requires a culture that embraces individual spirit, purpose and rationality.  The fact that demagogues derive their power from the vote is the strongest argument that voting should enjoy a very limited, deliberative time period.

SOURCE

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Big Brother has arrived

“Clearly, any family may be visited by federally paid agents for almost any reason.”

According to an Obamacare provision millions of Americans will be targeted.

The Health and Human Services’ website states that your family will be targeted if you fall under the “high-risk” categories below:

* Families where mom is not yet 21.

* Families where someone is a tobacco user.

* Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities.

* Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.

There is no reference to Medicaid being the determinant for a family to be “eligible.”

In 2011, the HHS announced $224 million will be given to support evidence-based home visiting programs to “help parents and children.” Individuals from the state will implement these leveraging strategies to “enhance program sustainability.”

Constitutional attorney and author Kent Masterson Brown states:

“This is not a “voluntary” program. The eligible entity receiving the grant for performing the home visits is to identify the individuals to be visited and intervene so as to meet the improvement benchmarks. A homeschooling family, for instance, may be subject to “intervention” in “school readiness” and “social-emotional developmental indicators.” A farm family may be subject to “intervention” in order to “prevent child injuries.” The sky is the limit.

Although the Obama administration would claim the provision applies only to Medicaid families, the new statute, by its own definition, has no such limitation. Intervention may be with any family for any reason. It may also result in the child or children being required to go to certain schools or taking certain medications and vaccines and even having more limited – or no – interaction with parents. The federal government will now set the standards for raising children and will enforce them by home visits.”

Part of the program will require massive data collecting of private information including all sources of income and the amount gathered from each source.

A manual called Child Neglect: A Guide for Prevention, Assessment, and Intervention includes firearms as potential safety hazard  and will require inspectors to verify safety compliance and record each inspection into a database.

SOURCE

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RACISM CARD LOOKING A LITTLE DOG-EARED

Ann Coulter

Do liberals have any arguments for their idiotic ideas besides calling their opponents "racist"?

The two big public policies under attack by the left this week are "stop-and-frisk" policing and voter ID laws. Democrats denounce both policies as racist. I'm beginning to suspect they're getting lazy in their arguments.

Stop-and-frisk was a crucial part of the package of law enforcement measures implemented by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani that saved the city. Under David Dinkins, who preceded Giuliani, murders averaged about 2,000 a year. There were 714 murders in New York the year Giuliani left office. Continuing Giuliani's policing techniques, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's New York had only 419 murders last year.

Just during his first year in office, Giuliani's policies cut the murder rate an astonishing 20 percent. That first year of his administration was responsible for 35 percent of the crime drop nationwide from 1993 to 1995. The New York Times hailed this remarkable achievement with an article headlined, "New York City Crime Falls but Just Why Is a Mystery."

It was mostly black lives that were saved by Giuliani's crime policies. By the end of his administration, the Rev. Calvin Butts, liberal pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, was comparing Giuliani to King Josiah of the Bible, who "brought order, peace, the law back to the land." The black minister told The New York Times, "I really think that without Giuliani, we would have been overrun."

About the same time as the Rev. Butts was comparing Giuliani to King Josiah, Richard Goldstein of The Village Voice claimed he felt less safe in New York under Giuliani. It was the ravings of a madman, like saying winter is warmer than summer. But now, Goldstein's ideas are being delivered from the federal bench by Judge Shira Scheindlin, who recently held New York City's stop-and-frisk policies unconstitutional.

Yes, Democrat Bob Filner can pat down his female employees, but cops can't pat down suspected criminals.

Liberals wail about guns, but how do they imagine police get guns off the street without going to high-crime neighborhoods and stopping young men acting suspiciously? Giuliani's policing policies, including stop-and-frisk, reduced gun homicides in New York by 75 percent within five years.

It is precisely the fear of being caught with a gun that induces young hoodlums not to carry them. The word gets out: Don't carry a gun! It's not worth the risk.

Of course cops don't find many guns anymore! That's because they're doing stop-and-frisk.

By liberals' logic, the government should stop doing meat inspections because it turns up so few cases of contamination these days, anyway. We can also drop the metal detectors at airports. How many people does the TSA actually catch trying to sneak guns onto airplanes?

Have liberals polled the elderly black residents of high-crime neighborhoods on stop-and-frisk? As soon as the word gets out that it's now safe to carry weapons, spray paint, drugs and stolen goods again, criminals will rule the streets and the elderly will, once more, be confined to their homes. As Martin Luther King said, crime is "the nightmare of the slum family."

But liberals don't care about the innocent black victims of crime. They don't care about citizens being prisoners in their own homes -- as long as it's not in their neighborhoods. The important thing is to self-righteously preen about racism.

When a policy that has saved thousands of black lives is attacked as "racist," the word has no meaning. At this rate, liberals will be claiming that peanut butter sandwiches are racist -- except that wouldn't be as crazy.

Voter ID laws don't actually save black lives the way stop-and-frisk policies do, but it's not clear how such laws hurt them. I suppose the argument is that by allowing Democrats to steal elections, they can pass all those laws that improve black lives immeasurably, like promoting trial lawyers, gay marriage, abortion and amnesty for illegals. You know, the Democratic policies that really enhance black lives.

The claim that modern voter ID laws are a racist Republican plot to prevent minorities from voting is complicated by the fact that, in 2011, such a law was enacted by the overwhelmingly Democratic Rhode Island legislature and, in fact, was pushed through by black Democrats.

Despite the pleas of national Democrats who realized their cover was being blown, the state senate's only black member, Democrat Harold Metts, sponsored a voted ID bill. He said he'd heard complaints about voter fraud for years, telling the story of one poll worker who encountered a voter who couldn't spell his own last name.

A black legislator in the House, Anastasia Williams, complained that when she showed up to vote in 2006, she was told she had already voted. Another time, she saw a Hispanic man vote, go to the parking lot and change his clothes, then go back in and vote again.

If white liberals are so concerned about black votes counting, why don't they ever vote for black representatives in their own congressional districts? Black Republicans are always elected from majority white districts: Gary Franks, J.C. Watts, Tim Scott and Allen West.

But black Democrats apparently can get elected to Congress only from specially designated minority districts. How come white liberals won't vote for a black representative? Can't a black person represent Nita Lowey's district?

Democrats do nothing for black Americans except mine them for votes, which they do by telling tall tales about racist Republicans.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Left loses the plot on real life - and the meaning of borders

The following article is by Mark Latham, a former federal leader of the Australian Labor Party, Australia's major Leftist party.  He is critical of the direction of his party in recent years.  He uses the issue of illegal immigrants (mostly boat-borne in the Australian case and usually referred to as "asylum seekers" or "boat people") to make a wider critique of current Leftism.  His claim that Leftism is ideology-driven rather than reality-driven is well-made

About a decade go, I noticed something distinctive about the Australian Left. It was wrong on every major issue for which the Australian parliament had legislative responsibility.

On economic policy, its belief in protectionism and industry welfare had been made to look ridiculous by the Keating revolution. Families which had been trapped for generations in blue-collar factory work were enjoying the benefits of economic liberalisation, business start-ups and booming prosperity. In social policy the Left's obsession with command-and-control public service provision was out of step with new attitudes in the outer suburbs. With extra money in their kick, people wanted to buy in the services which best suited their needs. It didn't matter whether these were publicly or privately run, as long as they got the job done. Customisation was king.

The other big issue was border protection. I was battling the Labor For Refugees group and its determination to abolish offshore processing and mandatory detention. When John Howard introduced his Tampa legislation prior to the 2001 election, I was one of a handful of Labor MPs who would have been comfortable voting for it On a question of competing interests (the needs of UN refugee camp asylum seekers versus unauthorised boat arrivals), the only way of avoiding a humanitarian disaster was to enforce the rule of law and an orderly, fair system of processing. I was perplexed as to how the Left could advocate open-door policies: an invitation for anarchy.

In each area, the so-called progressive wing of politics had failed. Why couldn't these people understand the basis of sound policymaking and social justice?

To answer this dilemma, I set about analysing the lifestyle and life values of the mistaken Left activists like the millionaire journalist Phillip Adams and my parliamentary colleagues representing gentrified inner-city boroughs. My conclusion was they had abstracted themselves from the empirical, commonsense views of suburban Australia. They saw issues as an exercise in ideological dogma, instead of problem-solving. Learning and adapting were foreign concepts.

The lessons of Whitlamism in the 1960s and Keatingism in the 1980s - that Labor is strongest when it relies on practical ideas drawn from suburban electorates had been forgotten. Ten years later, nothing has changed. Senators Kim Carr and Doug Cameron still regard government economic intervention as more important than market competition. The Left still talks about community services, such as school education, through the eyes of providers (teachers, union organisers and public servants) rather than recipients (students and parents).

For asylum seekers, the tragedy is doubly unfathomable. Not only has the Left's open-door policy, as implemented by the Rudd government in 2008, led to 2000 people drowning, the fanatics who urged on this atrocity have shown no signs of contrition.

Unmoved by rows of body bags and tiny coffins loaded onto planes, the Greens still see that boat journeys between Indonesia and Australia are an act of compassion. The blood on their hands has had no impact on their sense of right and wrong.

Privately, Labor's hard-Left faction despises the government's new Papua New Guinea solution but, out of self interest, it sees no point in opposing a vote-winning policy this close to an election.

Elsewhere in the media, apologists for the open-door/drownings policy have re-emerged, no less brazen than a decade ago. Three types of rationalisation are being used. The first is a straight denial of reality, the argument that deterrence strategies have never worked. Among  others, the clownish Charlie Pickering has repeatedly made this claim on Channel 10's The Project, ignoring the obvious success of the Howard government in stopping the boats, This is a strange reaction to truth. It is almost as if, psychologically, Howard's record in saving lives - something which runs against the grain of everything Pickering believes in - cannot be accepted as reality.

The second rationalisation is to downplay the significance of death. Last week, in an editor's note to subscribers of The Monthly, John van Tiggelen complained that Australia's "humanitarian obligations [have come] down to a single KPI: preventing the deaths of one in 25 boat people."

He lamented how "the complementary statistic, that of the  crushed hopes and condemned lives of the other 96 per cent, will remain invisible, untold and unrecorded".

 How can anyone look at the horror of boatloads of people drowning and try to establish some form of moral relativity against the circumstances of those still alive? The highest calling of one's conscience - in many ways, the emotion which sets our civilisation apart from the animal world - is for the preservation of human life.

If 4 per cent are dying, the only compassionate response is to address the problem directly, regardless of the economic interests of the remaining 96 per cent

The third stance is a surreal "business as usual" argument.

Last week, Adams returned to the opinion pages of The Australian on the boat people issue, rolling out words identical to those he used 10 years ago. He made no mention of the drownings, ignoring his long-running error in advocating policies that have made them more likely. Everyone else was at fault, all bar Adams.

Perhaps this tells us more about the Left than any other perspective.

When the world fails to comply with its ideological template, it uses ignorance as a way of keeping its beliefs alive. But then, when ignorance can no longer hold out the facts, when the evidence becomes overwhelming, it turns to Adams-style arrogance, lecturing others on where they went wrong.

The asylum-seeker crisis has changed Australian politics forever. The mistaken Left has forfeited its claim to moral superiority and a valid understanding of compassion. It now faces an uncomfortable truth. If left-wing politics means thousands of people drowning, we would be better off with no left-wing politics at all.

SOURCE



You're right-wing? You must be stupid

Frank Furedi on how conservatism came to be treated as a mental deficiency.  Frank points out that the whole argumnent is "ad hominem" and hence of no intellectual worth.  He does not however allude to direct evidence on the question.  For that evidence, see here

Mocking conservative and right-wing political figures for their stupidity is all the rage in certain media circles. Yesterday it was the turn of Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition in Australia, after he mixed up the words `suppository' and `repository' in a live TV debate. Last week, Australian election candidate Stephanie Banister was branded ignorant after she made a series of gaffes about Islam during a TV interview. A video of the interview went viral, and as a result of the humiliation Banister has now withdrawn her candidacy.

Not surprisingly, commentators compared Banister to Sarah Palin, the former US Republican vice-presidential candidate who was, and continues to be, regularly targeted for her `stupidity'. One blogger recently referred to Palin as the `Queen of Stupidity', the `very embodiment of all things stupid'.

The idea that conservatives are thick and simple is increasingly being backed up by a new brand of advocacy research. In recent years there have been numerous so-called studies purporting to prove the intellectual inferiority of conservative people. Two Canadian academics gave us a good example of this tendentious research last year. Their `study', titled Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact, claimed there is evidence that simpletons go on to become prejudiced right-wingers in later life.

It is worth noting that, historically, the manipulation of science to discredit political opponents - from nineteenth-century craniology to twentieth-century Stalinist and Nazi theories - was strongly criticised by the intellectual community. Today, by contrast, it is self-styled intellectuals, especially the ones who refer to themselves as `liberal', who use such pseudo-scientific tactics to pathologise their opponents as a mentally and intellectually inferior political species. And there is barely any dissent from this view.

The intellectual devaluation of conservatism originates in the nineteenth century, when the British Tories were described as the `stupid party'. That phrase was probably coined by John Stuart Mill, who wrote in 1861 that although both the Whigs and the Tories were lacking in principle, it was the Tories who were `by the law of their existence the stupidest party' (1). Back then, associating conservatism with stupidity was justified on the grounds that upholding tradition and the status quo - as conservatives do - does not require much mental agility or imagination. In contrast, it was claimed that taking a more questioning and critical approach to politics required an ability to think abstractly and in a sophisticated way.

But it wasn't until the post-Second World War era that the pathologisation of conservatism gained real intellectual credibility. Instead of seeing right-wing prejudice as the outcome of various cultural and social influences, left-leaning observers treated it more like a psychological problem. Theodor Adorno's classic text, The Authoritarian Personality, helped to give credence to the new dogma that the disposition for a certain kind of intolerance was a psychological issue. From this standpoint, right-wing people not only suffer from an intellectual deficit, but also from a psychological one.

Since the end of the Second World War, right-wing and conservative ideas have come to be marginalised within the key cultural and intellectual institutions of Western society. In a frequently cited statement, the American literary critic Lionel Trilling declared in his 1949 preface to a collection of essays that right-wing ideas no longer possessed cultural significance:

"In the United States at this time, liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."

While Trilling's statement contained an element of exaggeration, there is little doubt that it also captured something important about political developments in the 1940s. The experience of the inter-war years and of Second World War itself helped to discredit the influence of the right-wing and conservative intellectual traditions in Western culture. The 1930s Depression, followed by the rise of fascism, significantly diminished the appeal of right-wing ideas. These events also solidified the association of being an intellectual with adhering to left-wing philosophies, to the extent that universities almost became no-go zones for the right.

Things have now moved so far in this direction that today, in the twenty-first century, it is sometimes hard to appreciate the fact that until the second half of the last century, right-wing thinkers constituted a significant section of the Western intelligentsia.

Since the 1940s, intelligence has been turned into a cultural weapon that is used by individuals and groups to validate their status and authority. Inevitably, this weapon is most effectively used by those claiming the status of an intellectual. As Mark F Proudman has written: `The imputation of intelligence and of its associated characteristics of enlightenment, broad-mindedness, knowledge and sophistication to some ideologies and not to others is itself therefore a powerful tool of ideological advocacy.'

Making fun of the parochial and folksy ways of right-wing politicians and exposing their grammatical errors to ridicule is one way that intellectuals assume moral superiority these days. Those who have something of a monopoly over modern-day intellectual capital can thus present themselves as the possessors of moral authority, too.

Not surprisingly, many conservatives become defensive when confronted with the put-downs of their intellectual superiors. Consequently, in many societies, particularly the US, they have become self-consciously anti-intellectual and hostile to the ethos of university life. Anti-intellectualism works as the kind of counterpart to the pathologisation of conservatism. And of course, the bitter anti-intellectual reaction of the right, which sometimes seems to affirm ignorance, only reinforces the smug prejudices of the intellectuals who see themselves as being morally superior.

The use of the term stupid as a political label speaks to the infantilisation of public life. Name-calling is an activity normally associated with childish behavior. Making fun of someone's speech, mannerisms, vocabulary or historical knowledge is the politics of insult. And an insult does not constitute an argument, or even an idea. In fact, often the political insult serves as a substitute for argument and debate. The use of invective and the suggestion of mental deficiency closes down debate. After all, what's the point of using a rational argument against people who are incapable of reasoning? To use a popular American expression of the modern era: `They just don't get it.' When someone says this, particularly in relation to political and moral debates, what they're really saying is not only that the other person `doesn't get it' but that he is incapable of getting it. Therefore, further debate is pointless.

It is of course quite legitimate to argue that the ideas held by conservatives are stupid. But the tactic of devaluing the mental capacity of conservatives calls into question the validity of open debate and free speech. Why take seriously or discuss the views of those who are intellectually inferior? In the past, such arguments were used by anti-democratic theorists to put the case against popular sovereignty, against mass engagement, against allowing the allegedly ignorant public to get involved in politics. Today, such arguments are used by those who pose as knowledge-rich experts as a way of suggesting that the rest of us - the ignorant - should defer to them.

Genuine intellectuals who are devoted to the pursuit of ideas and who understand the transformative potential of debate should reject the politics of insult. Instead of sneeringly declaring `they don't get it', a real intellectual should develop ideas in a way that would allow `them' to get it. Indeed, it is the conviction that most human beings have the potential to grasp the issues facing their communities that underpins the ideals of democratic politics and popular sovereignty. The real problem today is not stupid conservatives, but people with multiple university degrees who `don't get' what it truly means to be an intellectual.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Naïve no more

By Rick Manning

At what point did you stop ascribing good intentions to the left?

Perhaps it was when you learned that the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign was financed by a $26 million gift from Chesapeake Energy, a natural gas company that benefitted from regulations shifting utilities from burning coal to natural gas.

Or perhaps it is when you learned that the same Sierra Club that was strangely silent on hydraulic fracturing while going “Beyond Coal” suddenly became inflamed against “fracking” when the Chesapeake Energy “gift” was reported?

It might have been when you discovered that the big scene in the anti-fracking documentary Gasland, where the storyteller lights water directly from the tap on fire was nothing unusual as the water in the area has a high methane content and has been ignitable well before fracking ever came to town.

Or did you lose your innocence when it was revealed that the big Matt Damon anti-fracking movie bomb, “Promised Land”, was financed by oil exporter United Arab Emirates?

You might have been shocked when the liberal alternative energy advocates in Hyannisport, Massachusetts became the ultimate NIMBYs in opposing an off-shore wind energy farm of their coastline.  Leading the hypocritical parade was RFK, Jr., a man who flies around the globe in his private jet attacking projects for their negative carbon footprint.  In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Junior opposed the wind farm off the shores of his family compound arguing that the energy could be replaced by a Canadian hydroelectric plant that he publicly opposed.

Some lost their faith when an Obama-assembled group of millionaires came to D.C. to urge passage of a so-called “millionaires tax,” but when asked if they would voluntarily give more money to the government on camera, not one stepped forward and was willing to write a check.

Others were stunned to learn that investment icon, Warren Buffett, who led the charge for higher taxes has been battling the IRS for years over whether his investment company should pay more than a million dollars more in taxes that the government claims they owe.  It would seem if the second wealthiest man in the world really thought he should pay more in taxes, he could have written the check himself shielding his shareholders from the liability.

It could have been when you learned that Mr. Inconvenient Truth Al Gore sold his CurrentTV for a cool $70 million profit to middle eastern oil interests who have turned it into Al Jazeera America.

Obama supporters may have given up when they learned that after criticizing the concept of intercepting calls between suspected terrorists and their overseas operatives when Bush was president, Nancy Pelosi voted to allow Obama to effectively record every electronic communication from everyone without regard to that pesky little Fourth Amendment probable cause requirement.

If these crazy contradictions didn’t get you, you just may hit the tipping point in your trust when you learn that President Obama reacted to a request from Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (not Congress, but the leading Democrat in the Senate) and found a way to exempt Congress and its employees from the devastating impacts of the massive increase in costs associated with Obamacare’s implementation.

As hard as they try, the left can’t blame John Boehner for this one.  The very people who both voted for and have voted to keep Obamacare the law of the land, have now at the last minute found a way not only to give their labor buddies waivers from the system, but have given themselves a waiver as well.

The left’s assumed moral high ground has been so eroded that it now has the appearance of Death Valley when viewed from the 14,496 heights of Mt. Whitney.

The only problem is that when you stop giving the left the benefit of the doubt that they are misguided or perhaps just plain dumb, you come to the inevitable conclusion that their corruption is something much, much worse.

Are they nothing more than greedy opportunists who have discovered that government is the way to riches, or is it something even more insidious?  That is for the newly disillusioned to determine, but next time you hear a liberal declare the equivalent of I’m from the government and I’m here to help, run for the hills, you have just met Colonel Sanders heading into the coop, and you are the chicken.

SOURCE

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For Obama, Words Conceal the Indefensible

How the president uses language as a cover for the abuse of power

"The 'let me be clear' preface" is a recurring rhetorical tic for Obama, the Washington Post pointed out in 2010, and it's "become a signal that what follows will be anything but."

On Aug. 9, with his approval rating at a near all-time low of 41 percent, facing sharp scrutiny over the National Security Agency's dragnet data-collection plan, Obama held a press conference where he insisted: "I want to make clear once again that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people."

At the same time, Obama's Justice Department released a white paper defending the proposition that the PATRIOT Act allowed the covert collection of all Americans' phone records for a period of seven years because, under the language of Section 215, they're "relevant to an authorized investigation" of international terrorism.

Has there ever been a president whose career has depended so heavily on the power of language? Obama leapt onto the political scene with a stirring keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and, on the campaign trail in 2008, when Hillary Clinton suggested her opponent was too fond of speechifying, he responded with yet another passionate speech, declaiming: "Don't tell me words don't matter."

He was right, words do matter. Which is why it's ironic that the public case for so many of Obama's policies depends on doing violence to plain language. To our various "wars" on drugs, crime, and terror — add Obama's "War on Words."

The day before Obama's defensive presser, the Post's Charles Krauthammer accused the president of launching "the world's first lexicological war," marked by "linguistic tricks," "deliberate misnomers" and "transparent euphemisms."

Indeed, the euphemisms may be the most transparent thing about the self-styled "most transparent administration in history." Krauthammer, an inveterate hawk, focused on phrases suggesting that the president lacks the stomach for the War on Terror, or "overseas contingency operations," in Obama's preferred coinage.

But Krauthammer missed some of Obama's most glaring euphemisms, deployed to "disguise the unpleasantness" of war.

Last year, the administration added a new phrase to the doublespeak lexicon. Americans slated for death by drone go on something called "the disposition matrix," which lacks the harsh clarity of "kill list."

Harry Truman famously redefined war in Korea as a "police action." For its 2011 Libyan adventure, the Obama Team did HST one better: Raining cruise missiles on Tripoli isn't "war," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes insisted; it's "kinetic military action."

That's the kind of construction that makes your head hurt: "Kinetic," "resulting from motion" is the only kind of "action" you can have. What's the alternative? "Static" military action?

At times, it seems that Team Obama claims full-spectrum dominance over the English language itself. That's apparent in their legal position papers rationalizing undeclared wars, assassination of American citizens, and mass surveillance.

To get around the War Powers Resolution's limits on presidential war-making, State Department legal adviser Harold Koh argued that bombing Libya was "distinct from the kind of 'hostilities' contemplated" by the WPR.

In a DOJ memo that was leaked earlier this year, the administration claimed the right to kill U.S. Citizens who present an "imminent threat of violent attack." Despite what your dictionary may tell you, "imminent" doesn't mean "in the immediate future."

Nor, in the case of Friday's memo defending the legality of dragnet surveillance, does "relevant" mean "having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand."

Words matter because they mean things. But, as George Orwell wrote in 1946, when politics becomes "the defense of the indefensible ... language must suffer." This administration has made that all too clear

SOURCE

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Welfare Can Make More Sense than Work

Most decisions in life are the result of a cost-benefit analysis. When residents in Connecticut consider getting a job, they assume they would be better off having a job than not. They’d be wrong. Because in Connecticut, it pays not to work.

Next Monday, the Cato Institute will release a new study looking at the state-by-state value of welfare. Nationwide, our study found that the value of benefits for a typical recipient family ranged from a high of $49,175 in Hawaii to a low of $16,984 in Mississippi.

In Connecticut, a mother with two children participating in seven major welfare programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, utility assistance and free commodities) could receive a package of benefits worth $38,761, the fourth highest in the nation. Only Hawaii, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia provided more generous benefits.

When it comes to gauging the value of welfare benefits, it is important to remember that they are not taxed, while wages are. In fact, in some ways, the highest marginal tax rates anywhere are not for millionaires, but for someone leaving welfare and taking a job.

Therefore, a mother with two children in Connecticut would have to earn $21.33 per hour for her family to be better off than they would be on welfare. That’s more than the average entry-level salary for a teacher or secretary. In fact, it is more than 107 percent of Connecticut’s median salary.

Let’s not forget the additional costs that come with going to work, such as child care, transportation and clothing. Even if the final income level remains unchanged, an individual moving from welfare to work will perceive some form of loss: a reduction in leisure as opposed to work.

That’s not to say welfare recipients in Connecticut are lazy — they aren’t. But they’re not stupid, either. Surveys of welfare recipients consistently show their desire for a job. There is also evidence, however, that many are reluctant to accept available employment opportunities. Despite the work requirements included in the 1996 welfare reform, only 24 percent of adult welfare recipients in Connecticut are working in unsubsidized jobs, while roughly 41 percent are involved in the broader definition of work participation, which includes activities such as job search and training.

We shouldn’t blame welfare recipients. By not working, they are simply responding rationally to the incentive systems our public policy-makers have established.

Of course, not every welfare recipient meets the study’s profile, and many who do don’t receive all the benefits listed. (On the other hand, some receive even more.) Still, what is undeniable is that for many recipients — particularly “long-term” dependents — welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job.

In a Connecticut recipient’s short-term cost-benefit analysis, choosing welfare over work makes perfect sense. But it may hurt them over the long term because one of the most important steps toward avoiding or getting out of poverty is a job. In fact, just 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, compared with 23.9 percent of adults who do not work.

Even though many anti-poverty activists decry low-wage jobs, starting at a minimum wage job can be a springboard out of poverty. And while it would be nice to raise the wages of entry-level service workers, government has no ability to do so. (Study after study shows that mandated wage increases result in increased unemployment for the lowest skilled workers).

If reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work is the goal, Connecticut legislators should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare and work by reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements. For its part, Congress should consider strengthening welfare work requirements, removing exemptions and narrowing the definition of work.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The Barren Wombs of Smart Women

That dummies tend to have more babies than smarties has been recognized as a problem for decades now so the update to the discussion below is useful.  It might however be noted that it is a mistake to see high IQs as a direct CAUSE of fewer children.  There may be other factors involved.  For instance, high IQ women will undoubtedly spend more time in the educational system, where they are heavily exposed to the "anti-men" diatribes of feminists.  Being anti-men is not a good start to family formation -- JR

A statistical analysis from England suggests that a woman’s IQ is inversely proportional to her desire to breed. This, in turn, suggests that the world will grow dumber with every new day.

In his book The Intelligence Paradox, London School of Economics researcher Satoshi Kanazawa surveyed data from the United Kingdom’s National Child Development Study. Controlling for variables such as education and income, he reached the following conclusions:

 *  With each increase of 15 IQ points, a woman’s urge to reproduce is diminished by 25%.

 *  The average IQ of women who want children is 5.6 points lower than those who don’t want them.

 *  Among all 45-year-old women in England, 20% are childless, but this figure rises to 43% among those with college degrees.

The paradox is that women who are measurably more intelligent based on IQ tests are dumber in terms of evolutionary survival instincts. Kanazawa writes:

"If any value is deeply evolutionarily familiar, it is reproductive success. If any value is truly unnatural, if there is one thing that humans (and all other species in nature) are decisively not designed for, it is voluntary childlessness. All living organisms in nature, including humans, are evolutionarily designed to reproduce. Reproductive success is the ultimate end of all biological existence."

Kanazawa’s findings correlate with a 2010 Pew survey that found women ages 40-44 with a master’s degree or higher are 60% more likely to be childless than women who never graduated high school.

Kanazawa is widely known as a “controversial” researcher, which is coded speech meaning that his results cause significant discomfort among those who swallow the reigning cultural dogma. In the past he has faced disapprobation, ridicule, and even job dismissal for publishing studies that claim black women are less attractive than women of other races due to their higher testosterone levels, sub-Saharan Africa’s poverty is caused by low IQ, intelligent men are less likely to cheat on their partners, and attractive people are more likely to produce female offspring. He also wrote that if Ann Coulter had been president in 2001, she would have dropped nuclear bombs on the Middle East and won the War on Terror “without a single American life lost.”

But it is specifically his research on race and intelligence that causes his critics to dismissively snort that he is a zero-credibility genocidal wackjob who peddles junk science riddled with huge methodological flaws that raise the terrifying notion of eugenics that has long been debunked and discredited because of, well, Hitler and everything.

Paul Gilroy, a colleague of Kanazawa’s at the London School of Economics, says:  Kanazawa’s persistent provocations raise the issue of whether he can do his job effectively in a multi-ethnic, diverse and international institution.

In other words:  His statistical findings do not jibe with our cultural dogma.

Despite all the jeers and catcalls, Kanazawa defends his research:

"The only responsibility scientists have is to the truth. Scientists are not responsible for the potential or actual consequences of the knowledge they create."

The most egregious blasphemy one can utter in today’s insanely stifling and repressive climate of intolerant egalitotalitarianism is to gently suggest that genetics play any role in determining intelligence differences and relative prosperity between individuals and social groups.

Yet (grab a hankie) that’s what the evidence suggests.

Despite the propaganda the media uses to try and blow out your eardrums, the scientific consensus suggests that adult IQ is roughly 75-85% inherited. But due to the currently taboo nature of this fact, Western researchers are unlikely to even suggest such things publicly without sacrificing their careers. The Chinese suffer no such ultimately dysgenic superstitions and are forging ahead in their attempts to crack the code. This might be one of the main reasons why the coming century could belong to them.

Further buttressing Kanazawa’s findings, global evidence suggests that high IQ tends to be negatively correlated with total fertility rate. J. Philippe Rushton’s r/K selection theory noted that parents who actually invested time and thought in nurturing their children tended to have fewer of them…and vice-versa.

Intelligent people have the reflective capacity to consider things such as whether they’d have the economic wherewithal to raise successful offspring, whereas dumber people tend to invest as much thought into reproduction as they do to defecation.  The end result is an increasingly dysgenic world—Idiocracy made flesh.

Western sophisticates claim that the world already has enough people, and many tend to see it as a matter of conscience to not breed. The problem is that hordes of Third Worlders suffer no such ethical qualms. Paradoxically, the pampered First World utopian ideal that the world should be intelligent, sustainable, and filled only with children who are wanted could backfire and create a planet crammed almost exclusively with emotionally, financially, and intellectually deprived Third World bastards.

This wasn’t the case before feminism came along to empower women and free them from childbearing’s oppressive shackles. It wasn’t the case until Big Brother morphed into Big Daddy and financially penalized the intelligent for reproducing as it gave handouts that encouraged cretins to spawn. It wasn’t the case during the Victorian Era, when it wasn’t considered so déclassé for wealthy and intelligent women to have children and when it’s estimated that the mean Western IQ was nearly 14 points higher than it is now.

The grand irony is that by failing to breed, this new breed of woman will breed itself out of existence.

SOURCE

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Obama general destroys career of Army officer to appease Muslims

During a press briefing, Army General Martin Dempsey, President Barack Obama's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly lambasted Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Matthew Dooley, a 1994 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a highly decorated combat veteran. His reason: The course on Islamic Radicalism which LTC Dooley was teaching at the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) of the National Defense University was offensive to Muslims, according to a statement released on Monday by officials from a public-interest law firm in Michigan.

As a result, the Thomas More Law Center on Monday announced it is taking on LTC Dooley's case against the Defense Department and the Obama administration.

"General Dempsey characterized LTC Dooley’s course as "totally objectionable," and ordered all material offensive to Islam scrubbed from military professional education within the JFSC and elsewhere. In addition, LTC Dooley was fired from his instructor position and given an ordered negative Officer Evaluation Report (OER) -- the death-knell for a military career," according to Thomas More officials.

The actions against LTC Dooley follow a letter to the Department of Defense dated October 19, 2011 signed by 57 Muslim organizations demanding that all training materials offensive to Islam and Muslims be purged and the trainers disciplined.

According to a source, Joint Forces Staff College course included a slide-show that told students -- mostly battle-hardened officers -- that the U.S. is fighting a life and death battle with Islamists and that "we need to recognize that the U.S. and its allies are at war with Islam."

According to the American Forces Press Service's Jim Garamone, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had ordered a thorough review of the course on Islam and military education in general after a Muslim soldier complained about the content of the course entitled "Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism" at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

JFSC educates military officers and other national security leaders in joint, multinational, and interagency operational-level planning and warfare, counterterrorism and other subjects.

"The study also recommends that the Staff College modify its processes for reviewing and approving course curricula while improving oversight of course electives," Garamone wrote.

The elective course relied on outside instructors who emphasized negative aspects of Islam. The review found that a lack of leadership on the course contributed to the problem, leading to an unbalanced approach to teaching the subject matter. "The course is suspended and will not be offered again until changes are in place, officials said and the military instructor has been relieved of instructor duties," the AFPS noted.

According to a Law Enforcement Examiner source, it's believed the complaining soldier, whose identity is being protected, may be a pawn of some of the Muslim groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) or Muslim Advocates, who are currently suing the New York City Police Department.

A Pentagon spokesman stated earlier this year that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was deeply upset with a course that promulgates the notion the United States is at war with Islam.

"This politically correct nonsense would be laughed at if we had a reality check now and then. On the one hand, the majority of terrorist attacks worldwide are perpetrated by radical Muslims who actually apply the teachings of the Koran. Anyone who studies the history of Islam, especially within the last two hundred years will discover what America faces is not new," said the counterterrorism source.

"The CAIR group is considered by some to be a front-group for radical Islamists -- several of whom are currently in prison or deported -- and frequently supports certain Democratic politicians who do their bidding. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan is a perfect example," the counterterrorism source alleges.

Counterterrorism experts condemned by CAIR include Walid Phares, Robert Spencer, Bill Gertz, Pam Geller and others who "refuse to sugarcoat the Islamic terrorism threat," said Mike Snopes, a former detective who served in the Special Investigations Unit in New York City.

SOURCE

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"Nudges" and Abortion

Bryan Caplan

The main pro-life argument, of course, is that abortion is murder, and murder is harmful to the victim.  But on reflection, there is also a simple libertarian paternalist case against abortion.

Key starting point: Parents very rarely regret having children - even initially "unwanted" children.  This is not mere status quo bias: Most childless adults eventually regret not having children.  As I've said about parenthood before, "Buyer's remorse is rare; non-buyer's remorse is common."  Implication: Most women who want to terminate their pregnancies would probably change their minds after their babies are born.  Most won't go through the next eighteen years thinking, "I wish I'd gotten that abortion."

Armed with these facts, an old-fashioned hard paternalist would simply ban most abortions: "You'll thank us later."  What about the libertarian paternalist?  He'd want to achieve the same result - discouraging abortion - with subtler means.  Instead of prohibiting abortion he'd want to nudge pregnant women into carrying their fetuses to term.  Some candidate nudges:

1. Waiting periods: Abortions must be scheduled at least a week in advance.  This gives women time to reconsider their decision, so they don't abort rashly.

2. An opt-out rule for counseling.  The libertarian paternalist could schedule all women who want an abortion for a pre-procedure session with a psychologist - or maybe just volunteer mothers who previously considered abortion.  Women who don't want counseling would have to explicitly refuse to participate.

3. Inconvenient locations: Abortions have to be performed in remote rural hospitals.  Women who definitely want abortions will make the extra effort, but more ambivalent women will decide to keep their babies.

4. Deny government funding for abortion.  If the government thinks that a procedure is generally ill-advised, the first step is to refrain from encouraging it.  If people want to pay for it out of their own pocket, they're still free to do so.

As an actual libertarian, rather than a libertarian paternalist, I support only nudge #4.  But it's hard to see why a staunch libertarian paternalist would object to any of them.  (Before you appeal to the slippery slope, remember that Thaler has repeatedly minimized this danger).  Despite all the nudges, a woman who really wants an abortion would remain free to get one.  The upside, though, is that well-crafted nudges would sharply reduce the number of women who abort children they would have eventually come to love.  It's seems like libertarian paternalists should jump right on board.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Government is dangerous. Handle with care

by Jeff Jacoby

THERE IS NO connection, of course, between the prosecution of notorious gangster James "Whitey" Bulger and the recent spate of scandals and revelations roiling the Obama administration. Or is there?

Law enforcement and criminal justice are essential functions of government. No civilized society could survive for long if it lacked tools to combat lawlessness or make dangerous villains answer for their crimes. And Bulger was certainly dangerous — "one of the most vicious, violent criminals ever to walk the streets of Boston," as Assistant US Attorney Fred Wyshak called him in summing up for the prosecution last week.

But Bulger wasn't the only one on trial in Boston's federal courthouse. So was the government trying him. Bulger and his henchmen may have been the degenerates who physically committed the gruesome murders and other crimes that jurors learned about during 35 days of sometimes stomach-churning testimony. But it was other degenerates, in the FBI and the Justice Department, who for so long enabled Bulger's bloody mayhem. They enlisted Bulger as an informant, protected him from police investigations, and warned him to flee when an indictment was imminent. "If the FBI had not made Whitey its favorite mobster, broken the rules, and rigged the game to his benefit," reporter David Boeri has concluded, "Bulger would never have reached as high as he did."

The corruption of the federal government was a key element in Bulger's trial, as it was in so much of his sadistic career. Officials charged with defending the public from gangsters like Bulger used their considerable influence to defend the gangster instead.

It would be comforting to believe that this was a one-off, that law enforcement agencies never abuse their authority, that the immense powers of the federal government are always deployed with scrupulous integrity. But no one believes that.

As Bulger's racketeering prosecution was playing out in Boston, other stories of federal overreach, secrecy, and obstruction were making headlines: The scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, which for more than two years had targeted conservative grassroots groups for intimidation and harassment. The Justice Department's unprecedented designation of national-security reporter James Rosen as a "co-conspirator" in order to trawl through his personal email, and its surreptitious seizure of telephone records from up to 20 Associated Press reporters and editors. The disclosure that the National Security Agency's collection of domestic communications data is far more intrusive than was previously known, with the NSA reportedly collecting billions of pieces of intelligence from US internet giants such as Google, Facebook, and Skype.

President Obama insists that none of this should undermine confidence in the federal government. "You've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity," he told Ohio State's graduating class in May. "You should reject these voices."

At a press conference in June, he likewise assured Americans that they needn't worry about the NSA's vast data-mining operation being abused. "We've got congressional oversight and judicial oversight," he said. "And if people can't trust not only the executive branch, but also don't trust Congress and don't trust federal judges to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution and due process and the rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here."

According to Gallup, nearly half of Americans believe that the federal government "poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens." A Rasmussen Poll asks whether the NSA's metadata is likely to be used by the government to persecute political opponents; 57 percent say yes. Maybe we do have some problems here.

Or maybe Americans are remembering that government is always dangerous, regardless of the party in power. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary," James Madison famously wrote. Alas, men are never angels, not even those entrusted with political authority. "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

The Bulger trial, the IRS scandal, our gigantic surveillance state – they are only the latest reminders that even the best government in the world depends on human beings, with all their human vices and appetites. Politicians, regulators, and law enforcement agents are as capable of villainy as anyone else. Government is dangerous, and should always be handled with care.

SOURCE

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More Americans Going Galt

President Obama promised he would unite the world…and he’s right.

Representatives from dozens of nations have bitterly complained about an awful piece of legislation, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that was enacted back in 2010.

They despise this unjust law because it extends the power of the IRS into the domestic affairs of other nations. That’s an understandable source of conflict, which should be easy to understand. Wouldn’t all of us get upset, after all, if the French government or Russian government wanted to impose their laws on things that take place within our borders?

But it’s not just foreign governments that are irked. The law is so bad that it is causing a big uptick in the number of Americans who are giving up their citizenship.

Here are some details from a Bloomberg report.

Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship surged sixfold in the second quarter from a year earlier… Expatriates giving up their nationality at U.S. embassies climbed to 1,131 in the three months through June from 189 in the year-earlier period, according to Federal Register figures published today. That brought the first-half total to 1,810 compared with 235 for the whole of 2008. The U.S., the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside.

I’m glad that the article mentions that American law is so out of whack with the rest of the world.

We should be embarrassed that our tax system – at least with regard to the treatment of citizens living abroad and the treatment of tax exiles – is worse than what they have in nations such as France.

And while there was an increase in the number of Americans going Galt after Obama took office, the recent increase seems to be the result of the FATCA legislation.

Shunned by Swiss and German banks and facing tougher asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas are weighing the cost of holding a U.S. passport. …Fatca…was estimated to generate $8.7 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

I very much doubt, by the way, that the law will collect $8.7 billion over 10 years.

And it’s worth noting that President Obama initially claimed that his assault on “tax havens” would generate $100 billion every year. If you don’t believe me, click here and listen to his words at the 2:30 mark.

So we started with politicians asserting they could get $100 billion every year. Then they said only $8.7 billion over ten years, or less than $1 billion per year.

And now it’s likely that revenues will fall because so many taxpayers are leaving the country. This is yet another example of how the Laffer Curve foils the plans of greedy politicians.

You may be tempted to criticize these overseas Americans, but I’ve talked to several hundred of them in the past few years and you can’t begin to imagine how their lives are made more difficult by the illegitimate extraterritorial laws concocted by Washington. Bloomberg has a few more details.

For individuals, the costs are also rising. Getting a mortgage or acquiring life insurance is becoming almost impossible for American citizens living overseas, Ledvina said. “With increased U.S. tax reporting, U.S. accounting costs alone are around $2,000 per year for a U.S. citizen residing abroad,” the tax lawyer said. “Adding factors, such as difficulty in finding a bank to accept a U.S. citizen as a client, it is difficult to justify keeping the U.S. citizenship for those who reside permanently abroad.”

Imagine what your life would be like if you had trouble opening a bank account of conducting all sorts of other financial activities. Things that are supposed to be routine, but are now nightmares.

I collected some of the statements from these overseas Americans. i encourage you to visit this link and get a sense of what they have to endure.

And then keep in mind that all of these problems would disappear if we had the right kind of tax system, such as the flat tax, and didn’t let the tentacles of the IRS extend beyond America’s borders.

P.S. Based on people I’ve met in my international travels, I’d guess that, for every American that officially gives up their citizenship, there are probably a dozen more living overseas who simply drop off the radar screen. Many of these people can’t afford – or can’t stand – to deal with the onerous requirements imposed by hacks, bullies, and lightweights in Washington such as Barbara Boxer.

P.S. Remember the Facebook billionaire who moved to Singapore to escape being an American taxpayer? Many of us – including me – instinctively find this unsettling. But if we believe that folks should have the freedom to move from California to Texas to benefit from better tax policy, shouldn’t they also have the freedom to move to another nation?

The same is true for companies.  If our tax law is bad, we should lower tax rates and adopt real reform.

Unless, of course, you think it’s okay to blame the victim.

SOURCE

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Unions, Gov. Cuomo Protect State Workers Found Guilty of Abusing Disabled Patients

On Friday, The New York Times released a follow-up report, revealing that only 25% of NY state home-workers found guilty of abusing disabled and mentally ill patients are terminated from their positions.

The majority of workers found guilty of physical, sexual or psychological abuse receive written warnings, deduction of vacation days, or suspension; 25% of those found guilty are sent to other state-run homes.

The Time’s original investigation began over two and a half years ago, when they started exposing the quality of state-run care in over 2,000 New York homes for the disabled and mentally ill.

When Governor Cuomo (D-NY) was re-elected in 2010, he vowed to address this problem and make state workers more accountable. However, the review found “no discernible progress” made over the past two and a half years.

The cases uncovered by The Times are disturbing and truly harrowing. A few examples from the most recent report:

“One state worker bit a patient’s ear.

Another sent threatening text messages to a female co-worker, according to state records, including one that said: “I’m gonna gut you like a fish blondie. Don’t even try to call the police.”

A third, a nurse, left a patient naked and bleeding from a head injury on a bathroom floor, soaking in his own feces.

And a fourth knocked a group home resident out of a chair, hit the resident on the back of the head and squirted water from a bottle in the resident’s face.”

All of these employees were found guilty in internal disciplinary hearings; none of the employees were fired.

Why do 75% of state-workers found guilty of abuse retain their jobs? Why hasn’t Governor Cuomo come to the defense of the disabled and mentally ill?

The answer is (tragically) not surprising—the toxic relationship between left-leaning government officials and the public employee unions has protected abusive state-workers from getting fired or facing prosecution.

According to The Times, state employees working is disabled homes are rarely fired due to:

“Weaknesses in the arbitration process, the permissive attitude of state officials and the aggressive stance of public sector labor unions — particularly the Civil Service Employees Association.”

They also noted that, “one reason for the low dismissal rate is the wide latitude given to arbitrators who decide many cases, and who have a history of siding with the union.”

That’s right, The Civil Service Employees Association, one of the most powerful public employee unions in Albany, “(contests) just about every charge leveled at a worker… (creating) a system in which firings of even the most abusive employees are rare.” The union’s cozy relationship with government officials and arbitrators prevent state reform that would benefit the vulnerable and victimized, and ensure that public employees found guilty of violent crimes are never fully reprimanded for their actions.

By the way--Governor Cuomo struck a deal with the CSEA six months after he was re-elected on the platform that he would address the issue of abuse. The deal included “CSEA protection from broad layoffs,” as well as the implementation of a new “Select Panel on Patient Abuse” to specifically protect the disabled and mentally ill. Two years later, CSEA employees have avoided layoffs, and the man appointed by Cuomo to lead the Justice Center for the Protection of People With Special Needs has a record of lobbying against employee accountability, and actually “lobbied against Jonathan’s Law, the legislation that forced the state to start disclosing abuse reports to parents, named after a teenager with autism who died after being asphyxiated by a state worker.” Meanwhile, the record for firing employees guilty of abuse remains at an abysmal 25%.

I wonder who got the better end of that ‘deal?’

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Giving new meaning to ‘let’s roll’

Rather than run toward danger, Obama’s America curls up

We all run across the pill bug in our gardens. At the first sign of danger, the tiny, paranoid crustacean suddenly turns into a ball — in hopes danger will have passed when he unrolls.

That roly-poly bug can serve as a fair symbol of present-day U.S. foreign policy, especially in our understandable weariness over Iraq, Afghanistan and the current scandals that are overwhelming the Obama administration.

On Aug. 4, U.S. embassies across the Middle East simply closed based on intelligence reports of planned al Qaeda violence. The shutdown of 21 diplomatic facilities was the most extensive in recent American history.

Yet we still have more than a month to go before the 12th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an iconic date for radical Islamists.

Such pre-emptive measures are no doubt sober and judicious. Yet if we shut down our entire Middle East public profile on the threat of terrorism, what will we do when more anti-American violence arises? Should we close more embassies for more days, or return home altogether?

Apparently al Qaeda did not get the message that the administration’s euphemisms of “workplace violence,” “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disasters” and jihad as “a holy struggle” were intended as outreach to the global Muslim community.

Instead, the terrorists are getting their second wind, as they interpret our loud magnanimity as weakness — or, more likely, simple confusion. They increasingly do not seem to fear U.S. retaliation for any planned assaults. Instead, al Qaeda franchises expect Americans to adopt their new pill-bug mode of shutting down and curling up until danger passes.

Our enemies have grounds for such cockiness. President Obama promised swift punishment for those who attacked U.S. installations in Benghazi, Libya, and killed four Americans. So far, the killers roam free. Evidence abounds that they have been seen publicly in Libya.

Instead of blaming radical Islamist killers for that attack, the Obama re-election campaign team fobbed the assault on a supposedly right-wing, Islamophobic video-maker. That yarn was untrue and was greeted as politically correct appeasement in the Middle East.

All these Libyan developments take place against a backdrop of “lead from behind.” Was it wise for American officials to brag that the world’s largest military had taken a subordinate role in removing Moammar Gadhafi — with a military operation contingent on approval from the United Nations and the Arab League, but not the U.S. Congress?

No one knows what to do about the mess in Syria. When you do not know what to do, it is imprudent to periodically put down “red lines.” Yet the administration did just that to the Bashar Assad regime over the past two years.

In a similar vein, the administration has so far issued serial “deadlines” to the Iranians to cease the production of weapons-grade uranium. The mullahs don’t seem much worried about yet another deadline.

In Egypt, the United States went from abandoning ally and crook Hosni Mubarak to welcoming the freely elected and anti-American Muslim Brotherhood. Now, we are both praising and damning the military junta that overthrew President Mohammed Morsi. Do we still call that “the Arab Spring”? Is a junta still a junta, a coup still a coup?

Our entire antiterrorism agenda is a paradox. Mr. Obama ran for office on the promise of shutting down Guantanamo Bay, curbing the Patriot Act, ending renditions and preventative detention, and mumbling about drones. Then, in office, he went both hot and cold on all of them.

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hinted at trying accused terrorist killers such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in civilian courts and holding CIA interrogators responsible for enhanced interrogations. Then the administration abruptly dropped those bad ideas and embraced or expanded many of the Bush-Cheney antiterrorism protocols — and in many cases, went far beyond anything envisioned by the prior administration.

These paradoxes were not lost on our terrorist enemies. The successors to Osama bin Laden apparently guessed that the Obama administration might not like America’s antiterrorism policies any more than the terrorists themselves did.

News that the FBI scrutinized and then apparently forgot about unhinged Islamists such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sent the wrong message to terrorists. Was the Obama administration more worried about hurting feelings than preventing further attacks?

Other rivals and enemies are now fully aware of our new pill-bug mode in the Middle East — and are willing to bet that it might apply everywhere. Without worry over the U.S. reaction, Russia has given tentative asylum as a reward to Edward Snowden, who single-handedly exposed — and sabotaged — a vast National Security Agency spying network. Increasingly, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan seem to be on their own with a bullying China, unsure whether to bend or resist.

Meanwhile, the new American pill bug curls up in hopes that the mounting dangers will just go away.

SOURCE

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War by wordplay

By Charles Krauthammer

Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but “a reduction in staff.” This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the “evacuation” — the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of the country.

Thus continues the administration’s penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano’s famous formulation, terror attacks are now “man-caused disasters.” And the “global war on terror” is no more. It’s now an “overseas contingency operation.”

Nidal Hasan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. But the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of “workplace violence.”

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others are killed in an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror attack — and for days it is waved off as nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration gone bad. After all, famously declared Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?

Well, it makes a difference, first, because truth is a virtue. Second, because if you keep lying to the American people, they may seriously question whether anything you say — for example, about the benign nature of NSA surveillance — is not another self-serving lie.

And third, because leading a country through yet another long twilight struggle requires not just honesty but clarity. This is a president who to this day cannot bring himself to identify the enemy as radical Islam. Just Tuesday night, explaining the U.S. embassy closures across the Muslim world, he cited the threat from “violent extremism.”

The word “extremism” is meaningless. People don’t devote themselves to being extreme. Extremism has no content. The extreme of what? In this war, an extreme devotion to the supremacy of a radically fundamentalist vision of Islam and to its murderous quest for dominion over all others.

But for President Obama, the word “Islamist” may not be uttered. Language must be devised to disguise the unpleasantness.

Result? The world’s first lexicological war. Parry and thrust with linguistic tricks, deliberate misnomers and ever more transparent euphemisms. Next: armor-piercing onomatopoeias and amphibious synecdoches.

This would all be comical and merely peculiar if it didn’t reflect a larger, more troubling reality: The confusion of language is a direct result of a confusion of policy — which is served by constant obfuscation.

Obama doesn’t like this terror war. He particularly dislikes its unfortunate religious coloration, which is why “Islamist” is banished from his lexicon. But soothing words, soothing speeches in various Muslim capitals, soothing policies — “open hand,” “mutual respect” — have yielded nothing. The war remains. Indeed, under his watch, it has spread. And as commander in chief he must defend the nation.

He must. But he desperately wants to end the whole struggle. This is no secret wish. In a major address to the National Defense University just three months ago he declared “this war, like all wars, must end.” The plaintive cry of a man hoping that saying so makes it so.

The result is visible ambivalence that leads to vacillating policy reeking of incoherence. Obama defends the vast NSA data dragnet because of the terrible continuing threat of terrorism. Yet at the same time, he calls for not just amending but actually repealing the legal basis for the entire war on terror, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Well, which is it? If the tide of war is receding, why the giant NSA snooping programs? If al-Qaeda is on the run, as he incessantly assured the nation throughout 2012, why is America cowering in 19 closed-down embassies and consulates? Why was Boston put on an unprecedented full lockdown after the marathon bombings? And from Somalia to Afghanistan, why are we raining death by drone on “violent extremists” — every target, amazingly, a jihadist? What a coincidence.

This incoherence of policy and purpose is why an evacuation from Yemen must be passed off as “a reduction in staff.” Why the Benghazi terror attack must be blamed on some hapless Egyptian-American videographer. Why the Fort Hood shooting is nothing but some loony Army doctor gone postal.

In the end, this isn’t about language. It’s about leadership. The wordplay is merely cover for uncertain policy embedded in confusion and ambivalence about the whole enterprise.

This is not leading from behind. This is not leading at all.

SOURCE

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Norway ponders conservatism and the future of the welfare state

Parts of Northern Europe have had a bit better luck than some other sectors across the pond during the economic troubles of the past decade, but they still have had to deal with the legacy of welfare states and costly entitlement programs. Earlier this year, Mary Katharine looked at Sweden’s attempts to deal with rising debt and costly entitlements, while Erika covered some steps being taken in Denmark to deal with their long term financial issues arising from the same core issues. This sense of realism and worry about the future seems to be spreading across the region, and John Fund has a great analysis of current events in Norway, where conservatives seem poised to take control of the government there for the first time in ages.

    If polls taken over the last year are accurate, the eight-year-old Labor-party government of Jens Stoltenberg is headed for a landslide defeat.

    Normally, you would think it would be a shoo-in for reelection. Labor’s social democrats have long thought of themselves as the natural party of government — Labor has been the leading party in Norway for all but 16 of the last 78 years. While much of Europe is wracked by recession, Norway’s economy grew by 3 percent last year, and the unemployment rate is only 3.5 percent. Norway’s GDP per capita is now over $60,000 a year.

    But Norwegians appear likely to elect a conservative coalition government for the first time in over a decade. Polls show the Conservative party leading with 32 percent of the vote, which should give it 58 seats in the 169-seat parliament, a dramatic increase from 2005, when it won only 23 seats. The Labor party has about 30 percent of the vote, and its left-wing allied parties are floundering. The Progress party — a populist party that supports low taxes and stricter limits on immigration, and that worries about Muslim extremism – has about 16 percent of the vote, and it and the Conservatives, together with their smaller allies, look to have a clear majority in the new Parliament. Both the Conservative party and the Progress party are headed by women — former local-government minister Erna Solberg and economist Siv Jensen, respectively — making it very likely that Norway will soon have its second woman prime minister.

We don’t tend to hear much about Norway over here, aside from one tragic shooting by a madman, but that’s likely because things have been going fairly smoothly for them. As Fund notes, the discovery of massive oil deposits off their coast in the sixties led to the formation of a state operated oil company which generates more than a third of the country’s entire revenue. The lion’s share of those profits go straight into Norway’s Government Pension Fund, doled out from there to an extremely generous welfare program. This report provides details of just some of the benefits being funded by the government, including free healthcare, dental care until 19 years of age, and cut rate prescriptions. They also offer essentially unlimited disability payments, pensions for retirees, survivor benefits and more. So in such an apparently successful socialist paradise, why would the voters suddenly turn to the conservatives?

As Fund notes, there is a growing realization and public discussion of the fact that, “the oil won’t last forever.” And with an ever increasing – and aging – army of pensioners to fully support, if either the supply or the profitable demand for oil were to begin to plunge, the system would collapse under its own weight. Rather than waiting for the wolves to actually arrive at the door, it appears that the citizens are actually thinking of planning for the future. Not in any “radical” and massive ways, mind you, but even baby steps can get you started on the road to redemption. If nothing else, this might make the Norwegian elections worth watching this year. Stay tuned.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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People Everywhere Are Getting Smarter?

The article below by Ronald Bailey  is fairer than most but overlooks some important facts.  His reliance on the Eppig study, for a start, is incautious.  I pointed out the large flaws in that study long ago.

But the most important point he omits is that the 20th century rise in IQ seems to reflect measured IQ rather than underlying IQ.  The rise is smallest on the tests that correlate most highly with 'g' (underlying IQ).  The rise is probably due to increased test sophistication, which in turn is driven by the large increase in the number of years most people now spend in the educational system.

There is evidence that micronutrient deprivation can reduce IQ but a U.N. study assigned only 5 points to that effect.  In summary,  most of the apparent rise in IQ is likely to be illusory

In 1980, the New Zealand political scientist James Flynn discovered that average IQs in many countries have been drifting upward at about 3 points per decade over the past couple of generations. In fact, the average has risen by an astonishing 15 points in the last 50 years in the United States. In other words, a person with an average IQ of 100 today would score 115 on a 1950s IQ test, and a person of average IQ today would have been in approximately the top 15 percent of same-age scorers 50 years ago. If the average American kid were to take the first Stanford-Binet IQ test from 1932, she would score about 124 points today.

“This means that on an IQ test made in 1930 the average score of the entire population would give an IQ between 120 and 130 according to the original standardization,” the Hungarian technologist Kristóf Kovács explains. So “instead of 2 percent, 35–50 percent of the population would have an IQ above 130. And vice versa; if the current standard was applied to people living in 1930, average IQ would be between 70 and 80, and instead of 2 percent, 35–50 percent would be diagnosed with mental retardation.”

What accounts for this massive increase in IQ scores? Researchers have suggested a panoply of causes, including better nutrition, exposure to more mentally challenging media, and more formal schooling, but my favorite is the reduced load of infectious childhood diseases.

A fascinating study published in the June 2010 Proceedings of the Royal Society by the University of New Mexico biologist Christopher Eppig and his colleagues finds an intriguing correlation between the average IQ of a country’s citizens and the intensity with which they suffer from parasites and infectious diseases. The authors note that the brains of newborns burn up 87 percent of infants’ metabolic energy; 5-year-old brains use 44 percent; and adult brains consume 25 percent of the body’s energy. Mobilizing the immune system to fight off diseases and parasites is very metabolically expensive, diverting nutrients and energy that would otherwise be used to fuel the building and maintenance of the human brain. If this analysis is substantially correct, then promoting public health also promotes higher IQs.

The new study reports, “Infectious disease remains the most powerful predictor of average national IQ when temperature, distance from Africa, gross domestic product per capita and several measures of education are controlled for. These findings suggest that the Flynn effect may be caused in part by the decrease in the intensity of infectious diseases as nations develop.”

The converse of this research should find a correlation between higher average IQs and increasing allergy and asthma rates. Allergy and asthma rates are hypothesized to be on the rise because children’s immune systems, no longer challenged by infections, have become oversensitive, attacking the bodies they are supposed to protect. Myopia also correlates with higher IQ scores; U.S. myopia rates in people ages 12 to 54 increased from 25 percent in 1971–72 to 41.6 percent in 1999–2004. But higher IQ correlates with better health and longer lives, less propensity to commit crimes, and higher income (although not greater than average personal wealth).

SOURCE

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Don’t Hate on Welfare Recipients — The Real Parasites are Elsewhere

Everywhere you look in the right-wing commentariat, you see the recurring theme of the “underclass” as parasites. Its most recent appearance was the meme of the productive, tax-paying 53% vs. the tax-consuming 47%. And of course there’s the perennial favorite mythical quote attributed to Alexander Tytler, trotted out by many who should know better, about the majority discovering they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. (If you really believe the majority control the government, or that the government serves the interests of the majority, you should avoid using sharp tools without supervision.)

But mainly there’s an endless supply of resentment against “welfare queens,” and friend-of-a-friend stories about the luxurious tastes of those using food stamps at the checkout line, whose cumulative effect is to reassure the middle class that their real enemies are to be found by looking down, and not up.

If your resentment is directed downward against the “underclass” and recipients of welfare-for-the-poor, it’s most definitely misdirected.

First, let’s look at the little picture, and consider the net effects of state policy on the actual recipients of welfare. Consider how state policies on behalf of land owners and real estate investors, like the enforcement of absentee title to vacant and unimproved land, drives up rents and closes off access to cheap living space. Consider how licensing schemes and “anti-jitney” laws, zoning laws against operating businesses out of one’s home or out of pushcarts, and regulations that impose needless capital outlays and entry barriers or overhead costs, close off opportunities for self-employment. And consider how zoning restrictions on mixed-use development and other government promotions of sprawl and the car culture increase the basic cost of subsistence. You think the money spent on welfare for the poor equals that drain on the resources of the underclass?

Next, look at the big picture. Consider the total rents extracted from society as a whole by the dominant economic classes: The inflation of land rent and mortgages by the above-mentioned absentee titles to unimproved land; the usurious interest rates resulting from legal tender laws and restraints on competition in the supply of credit; the enormous markups over actual production cost that result from copyrights, patents and trademarks; the oligopoly markup (once estimated by the Nader Group at around 20% of retail price in industries dominated by a handful of firms) in industries cartelized by government regulations and entry barriers …

Now consider, out of this vast ocean of rents extracted by state-connected parasites, the miniscule fraction that trickles back to the most destitute of the destitute, in the form of welfare and food stamps, in just barely large enough quantities to prevent homelessness and starvation from reaching high enough levels to destabilize the political system and threaten the ruling classes’ ability to extract rents from all of us. The state-allied landlords, capitalists and rentiers rob us all with a front-end loader, and then the state — THEIR state — uses a teaspoon to relieve those hardest hit.

Every time in history the state has provided a dole to the poorest of the poor — the distribution of free grain and oil to the proletariat of Rome, the Poor Laws in England, AFDC and TANF since the 1960s — it has occurred against a background of large-scale robbery of the poor by the rich. The Roman proletariat received a dole to prevent bloody revolt after the common lands of the Republic had been engrossed by the nobility and turned into slave-farms. The Poor Laws of England were passed after the landed classes enclosed much of the Open Fields for sheep pasture. The urban American blacks who received AFDC in the 1960s were southern sharecroppers, or their children, who had been tractored off their land (or land that should have been theirs, if they had received the land that was rightfully theirs after Emancipation) after WWII.

As Frances Fox Piven and Andrew Cloward argued in “Regulating the Poor,” the state — which is largely controlled by and mainly serves the interest of the propertied classes — only steps in to provide welfare to the poor when it’s necessary to prevent social destabilization. When it does so, it usually provides the bare minimum necessary. And in the process, it uses the power conferred by distributing the public assistance to enforce a maximum in social discipline on the recipients (as anyone who’s dealt with the humiliation of a human services office, or a visit from a case-worker, can testify).

So don’t resent the folks who get welfare and food stamps. Your real enemies — the ones the state really serves — are above, not below.

SOURCE

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Markets Make People Nicer

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx thundered that the bourgeoisie and the markets that allow them to prosper “left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’ ” In other words, markets destroy fellow-feeling, turning human beings into cold, cruel calculators. But recent research on how 15 small-scale societies play certain canonical economic games suggests that simply isn’t so.

The societies investigated by the economists and anthropologists organized as the MacArthur Foundation’s Norms and Preferences Network ranged from hunter-gatherers to slash-and-burn horticulturalists on five continents. To probe these societies’ attitudes toward sharing and fairness, the researchers had their members play several games. One of these is called the Ultimatum Game. In it, researchers provisionally allot a divisible pie ($10, say) to one player. This player, the “proposer,” offers a portion of the pie to the second subject, the “responder.” The responder, who knows both the offer and the total amount of the pie, chooses to either accept or reject the offer. If the responder accepts, he or she gets the amount offered and the proposer gets the remainder. If the responder rejects the offer, neither player receives anything.

Rationally speaking, one might expect that the proposer would offer as little as possible ($1, say) and that the responder would never reject an offer because, after all, one dollar is better than nothing. Yet in hundreds of experiments in nearly two dozen countries, subjects rarely act in that purely self-interested way. In modern societies, the most frequent amount offered by proposers is 50 percent, and responders commonly reject offers under a third. After examining a number of different explanations, most researchers have concluded that those choices are based on the players’ sense of what is fair. Since these experiments are usually conducted using western undergraduates, the Preference Network researchers wondered if the results would hold true across societies.

The experimenters offered participants the equivalent of a day or two’s wages in their societies. The researchers found that the average offers from proposers ranged from a low of 26 percent to a high of 58 percent and that the most frequent offers ranged from 15 percent to 50 percent. Some groups, such as the Machiguenga and Quichua in South America and the Hadza in Africa, offered around 25 percent of the pie. The most frequent offer from the Machiguenga proposers was 15 percent. Only one Machiguenga responder rejected such a low offer.

Societies like the Machiguenga and Hadza, which deal with few outsiders and are not economically dependent on people other than close kin, turn out to be the stingiest players. The Orma in Africa and the Achuar in South America, who are more integrated into markets, tend to play more like the western undergraduates. “The higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs of cooperation, the greater the level of prosociality found in experimental games,” the researchers found.

Herbert Gintis, co-director of the Preference Network team, speculates that markets bring strangers into contact on a regular basis, encouraging people to develop more concern for others beyond their family and immediate neighbors. Instead of parochialism, being integrated into markets encourages a spirit of ecumenism. “Extensive market interactions may accustom individuals to the idea that interactions with strangers may be mutually beneficial,” the researchers theorize. “By contrast, those who do not customarily deal with strangers in mutually advantageous ways may be more likely to treat anonymous interactions as hostile, threatening, or occasions for opportunistic pursuit of self-interest.”

Markets teach participants the habits of cooperation, trust, and fairness. Based on his research, Gintis argues that history traces humanity’s ascent from tribal selfishness to more cosmopolitan liberality. “Market societies give rise to more egalitarianism and movements toward democracy, civil liberties, and civil rights,” Gintis argues. “Market societies and democratic societies are practically co-extensive.” And they are more generous too.

SOURCE

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Candidate Obama vs. President Obama

Flying across the internet waves recently was a young ex-Illinois Senator’s speech from 2007 which seemed to be addressing the actions of President Obama.  Yet, it was presidential candidate Obama who said, “This administration (George W. Bush) also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.”  Candidate Obama also added, “Ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.”  You might even say that candidate Obama echoed the words of Ben Franklin who once stated, “Those who give up freedom for security neither deserve freedom or security.”

In addition, by recently declaring, “Our Constitution works,” it’s quite obvious that President Obama didn’t anticipate all the negative repercussions from Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS “targeting” scandal, the AP phone hacking dilemma, and the NSA surveillance program.  Candidate Obama also proclaimed, “The law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and justice is not arbitrary.”  Indeed, these types of messages were very self-serving for candidate Obama, but as President Obama, the familiar song is, “To keep the American people safe and concerns about privacy…there are some tradeoffs involved.”  Not long ago, President Obama also said, “You can complain about big brother…I think we’ve struck the right balance,” and added, “Personal intrusion is only moderate.”

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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