More on Pope Francis

I have to conclude that Evangelii gaudium is a failure as a policy document.  It has been extensively misunderstood.  As I think I showed yesterday, a careful reading of it favours neither Left nor Right in politics.  Francis identifies what he sees as a raft of social problems and many of those problems are ones that Leftists dine out on. But he does not call for political action to remedy those problems .  He recommends prayer and personal compassion as the response to such problems.

But just about nobody seems to have noticed that. The Left think he has come down firmly on their side and conservatives  see him as pro-Left  too.  See for instance here for a conservative critique.

The problem as I see it is that people on both sides of politics in the Western world see a statement of social grievances as a call for political action.  So Francis has misjudged his audience.  He is politically naive: Rather surprising in a Jesuit.

Past Popes in their encyclicals have taken care to remain in the middle ground of politics.  John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus annus is a good example of that.  Fortunately, Evangelii gaudium is an informal document so is not binding in any way.  So Francis should move soon to issue an encyclical which cancels out the naive political views that are expressed in Evangelii gaudium.  He will lose a lot of conservative Catholics otherwise.  And Leftists are not conspicuous as churchgoers.  His good intentions may be bad for his church.  Pius XII came quite unfairly to be called "Hitler's Pope".  Will Francis come to be known as "Stalin's Pope"?  -- JR

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Another senseless shooting of an American white by American blacks

Though it obviously made sense to the limited minds of the blacks concerned

An Iraq veteran who thought he was buying an iPad as a Christmas present after responding to a Craigslist posting, has been shot dead in an Indianapolis parking lot by the fake sellers.

New-dad Jim Vester, 32, was lured to an address on Wednesday in the west side of the city and brothers Tyron Kincade, 19, and Tyshaune Kincade, 18, have been arrested after Vester was shot dead leaving behind his one-year-old son, Gavin and wife, Jamie.

In the wake of the senseless murder, nearly 1,500 people have donated $58,000 to a YouCaring.com fundraiser set up by Vester's family for the man described as a 'great cook, loving father and faithful man.'

'He would drop everything and cross town to help you and your family,' friend Master Sgt. Jerry Wurm said.

Vester was a career military man, with 12 years of service in the Indiana National Guard, including a year-long tour of duty in Iraq in 2006.

SOURCE

More documentation of black on white violence here.

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In Government We Trust: The Progressive Religion

With a storied history of attacking people of faith as extremists, radicals and the greatest threat this nation faces, it seems odd to see progressives embrace religion in their “advance the agenda at any and all costs” march. But they are, with vigor.

The wheels are coming off the progressives’ dream of a cradle-to-grave entitlements, amnesty-ridden nanny state. Their wish list for complete government control – and their predictions the government shutdown would be the end of the GOP have been sacrificed to an Obamacare rollout that has enjoyed all the success of the Hindenburg (except on MSNBC, of course, where the Earth remains flat).

Since the government reopened on Oct. 17th, the American people have had an unfiltered look at what progressive policy means to them, and they don’t like it. Not only have President Obama’s approval ratings tanked since Americans got a look at his “signature legislation,” the generic ballot for control of the House of Representatives has gone through a dramatic flip. The chances of Congressional Democrats retaking the House have sunk lower than that of a hooker with an open cold sore getting a date at a eunuch convention before the bars open.

As such, desperate times require desperate measures. Enter the religious appeal.

It’s not overt, for the most part, and it’s certainly not well thought out. But when the ship starts to sink you grab whatever you can to bail it out, bucket or coffee mug.

What has happened is Democrats’ previously uncheckable lies are now fully checkable. It’s real now. You can’t keep your doctor or insurance, no matter how much you like them. And this hurts in the wallet – a lot. Now that we know this does not qualify as a practical solution, certainly not to health care anyway, Democrats –with all the credibility of a used-Pinto salesman – now embrace “morality” as the reason to embrace Obamacare.

In a column reeking of desperation on par with a kid hoping for a unicorn under his Christmas tree, the Washington Post’s Ryan Cooper complied a list of reasons “Why millennials will come around on Obamacare.” Aside from a desperate lack of understanding of health policy and how people work, the second reason Cooper lists stands out. He writes, “Going without health insurance is morally wrong.”

I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in.

This pathetic attempt to manipulate the unthinking into an overwhelming sense of guilt that forces them to capitulate may work on those with fewer IQ points than fingers, but it won’t work on those with a third-grade education.

Cooper explains, “The only way insurance can work for everyone is if everyone is in the system so risk can be pooled. This one doesn’t carry much weight yet, since the system isn’t even operating. But as time passes, this will become an important norm — and for young people, the norm has outsized importance (older people already have a reason to get coverage; they get sick more easily). Getting insurance will be part of living in a decent society where everyone chips in when they can afford it, and free-riding is frowned upon — and over time, young people will come to see this as part of being a responsible citizen.”

Those 108 words are an incredibly inefficient way of rephrasing “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Cooper’s appeal wouldn’t be noteworthy were it a lone cactus in the desert, but it’s not.

Also this week the buffoonish Ed Schultz, MSNBC’s angry Fred Flintstone clone, mused about how God would feel about Obamacare. “I'll tell you what I think God thinks of the Affordable Care Act. It's a big amen!”

Not to be outdone in the office pool of idiocy, Charlie Brown’s illegitimate child, Chris Matthews, had an offering on this theme. Matthews temporarily snapped out of his loving gaze while interviewing the president Thursday and put the cherry on top of one of this planet’s worst displays of sycophantism to utter what was supposed to be a question: “You know, Mr. President, your — your remarks the other day on economic justice to me, as a Roman Catholic, was so resonant with what the Holy Father, Francis, has been saying. Talk about that common Judeo-Christian or, even further, Muslim background to the belief we have a social responsibility, a moral responsibility to look out for people who haven't made it in this country.”

The one thing missing from these transparent attempts at manipulation is a basic understanding of morality. Morality is not set by government, laws are. Morality, like it or not atheists, stems from religion. It’s not exclusive to it, but religion is the soil in which the seeds of morality were planted. And nowhere in the Bible or Qur’an does it say government should confiscate the fruits of one man’s labor for the benefit of another.

True, the texts of our major religions do call for aiding our fellow man, but they do so as part of the religion, not a mandate for every human being.

Setting aside the gross bastardization of religion through the integration of communist tenets by these progressives, the most striking part of their appeal is its hypocrisy. These are the same people who spent the better part of the last half-century proclaiming “government can’t legislate morality” on any issue remotely moral. Perhaps Chris “Roman Catholic” Matthews can explain where the Vatican changed its views on, say, abortion to dovetail with the progressive agenda? Probably not.

In nearly every way government has replaced religion in the progressive sphere. It is the grantor of rights, the arbiter of morality, the moderator of justice, the compass of true north. Government is the religion, and the agenda is God.

Any act done in service to the agenda is justified; the end is what matters, the means are irrelevant. That’s how you rationalize selling big lies, known lies, to a public wanting to believe your snake oil is the cure for what ails them.
Perhaps progressives were correct in their charge that religious zealots are the greatest threat to our liberty today. And if they want to see one of those zealots, they need only look in the nearest reflective surface.

SOURCE

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Coming to Grips with Rise of The Machines

Jonah Goldberg

After you heard President Obama's call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots?

But just in case the question didn't occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee's announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili's already made this move earlier this year.

With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay their checks without dealing with a waiter or waitress. Both companies insist that they won't be changing their staffing levels, but if you've read any science fiction, you know that's what the masterminds of every robot takeover say: "We're here to help. We're not a threat."

But the fact is, the tablets are a threat. In 2011, Annie Lowrey wrote about the burgeoning tablet-as-waiter business. She focused on a startup firm called E La Carte, which makes a table tablet called Presto. "Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table -- making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter. Moreover, no manager needs to train it, replace it if it quits, or offer it sick days. And it doesn't forget to take off the cheese, walk off for 20 minutes, or accidentally offend with small talk, either."

Applebee's is using the Presto. Are we really supposed to believe that the chain will keep thousands of redundant human staffers on the payroll forever?

People don't go into business to create jobs; they go into business to make money. Labor is a cost. The more expensive labor is, the more attractive nonhuman replacements for labor become. The minimum wage makes labor more expensive. Obama knows this, which is why he so often demonizes ATM machine as job-killers.

Just a few days before Obama's big speech on income inequality, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos launched a media frenzy by revealing on "60 Minutes" that he's working on the idea of having a fleet of robot drones deliver products straight to your door. I can only imagine the discomfort this caused for any UPS or FedEx delivery guys watching the show. There are still a lot of bugs to be worked out, but does anyone doubt that this is coming?

You might take solace in the fact that there will still be a need for truck drivers to deliver the really big stuff and to supply the warehouses where the drones come and go like worker bees. The only hitch is that technology for driverless cars is already here, it just hasn't been deployed -- yet.

None of this is necessarily bad. Machines make us a more productive society, and a more productive society is a richer society. They also free us up for more rewarding work. As Wired's Kevin Kelly notes, "Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines."

While some hippies and agrarian poets may disagree, most people wouldn't say we'd be better off if 7 out of 10 people still did back-breaking labor on farms.

That doesn't mean the transition to a society fueled by robot slaves won't be painful. The Luddites destroyed cotton mills for a reason. Figuring out ways to get the young and the poor into the job market really is a vital political, economic and moral challenge. My colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, James Pethokoukis, argues that one partial solution might have to be wage subsidies that defray the costs of labor, tipping the calculus in favor of humans at least for a while.

"Of course," Pethokoukis notes, "wage subsidies are an on-budget, transparent cost -- which politicians hate -- while the costs of the minimum wage are shifted onto business and hidden. But the costs exist just the same."

The robot future is coming no matter what, and it will require some truly creative responses by policymakers. I don't know what those are, but I'm pretty sure antiquated ideas that were bad policy 100 years ago aren't going to be of much use. Maybe the answers will come when artificial intelligence finally comes online and we can replace the policymakers with machines, too.

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, 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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Is the Pope a Protestant?

I want to devote some time today to discussing the first major document issued by the new Pope  -- EVANGELII GAUDIUM.  It is "merely" an Apostolic Exhortation, which is a long way from an Encyclical, but it clearly sets out what Francis hopes will be a new direction for the church. Like its author, the document has attracted a lot of attention so it is surely desirable that we know something about it, whether we agree with it or not.

And I can't see that even evangelical Protestants will find much to disagree with in it.  In fact, of all people, evangelical Protestants should find most to agree with in it. He has to a considerable degree stolen their clothes. The Preface to the document is actually a good refresher course in most of what they believe. It would sound good from any Protestant pulpit and its focus  -- on evangelism  -- sounds very Protestant.  The title of the document translates as "The joy of evangelism", which is something of a departure from church history  -- which might be summarized as Evangelii Gladius (the sword of evangelism).

Even in small ways we see evidence of a Protestantized Pope.  He refers, for instance, to the last book of the Bible as "Revelations", rather than the traditional Catholic title of "Apocalypse".

Some instructive excerpts below with my comments in italics:

Francis thinks that the church at the moment is pretty dead:

"We must admit, though, that the call to review and renew our parishes has not yet sufficed to bring them nearer to people, to make them environments of living communion and participation, and to make them completely mission-oriented.

Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach."

The church needs to stop talking about homosexuality etc. and start talking about salvation

"34. If we attempt to put all things in a missionary key, this will also affect the way we communicate the message. In today’s world of instant communication and occasionally biased media coverage, the message we preach runs a greater risk of being distorted or reduced to some of its secondary aspects. In this way certain issues which are part of the Church’s moral teaching are taken out of the context which gives them their meaning. The biggest problem is when the message we preach then seems identified with those secondary aspects which, important as they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ’s message. We need to be realistic and not assume that our audience understands the full background to what we are saying, or is capable of relating what we say to the very heart of the Gospel which gives it meaning, beauty and attractiveness.

35. Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed. When we adopt a pastoral goal and a missionary style which would actually reach everyone without exception or exclusion, the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary. The message is simplified, while losing none of its depth and truth, and thus becomes all the more forceful and convincing."

In the next excerpt I think Francis is absolutely wrong.  Philosophy, theology and social sciences DESTROY faith.  Faith is emotional, not intellectual.  Francis is a great optimist to think it will work the way he thinks


"40. The Church is herself a missionary disciple; she needs to grow in her interpretation of the revealed word and in her understanding of truth. It is the task of exegetes and theologians to help “the judgment of the Church to mature”.[42] The other sciences also help to accomplish this, each in its own way. With reference to the social sciences, for example, John Paul II said that the Church values their research, which helps her “to derive concrete indications helpful for her magisterial mission”.[43] Within the Church countless issues are being studied and reflected upon with great freedom. Differing currents of thought in philosophy, theology and pastoral practice, if open to being reconciled by the Spirit in respect and love, can enable the Church to grow, since all of them help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s word. For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion. But in fact such variety serves to bring out and develop different facets of the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel.[44]"

Now for the first "socialist" bit in the document.  Francis is taking the side of the "Down and out" people.  But note that he deplores that only.  He is telling the clergy and laity of the church to be compassionate, not telling politicians to enact redistribution.  And note that he rejects an economic focus ("Exploitation") for his comments and suggests a different, more sociological focus, marginalization.

"Masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

I like this bit

"47. The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door."

This is where Francis is different.  He says "No" to grandeur.  And he is surely right.  The wealth of the church offends many.  It's almost a Salvation Army doctrine that he is voicing

"I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."

Again comes a "socialist" bit.  But note again that he does not say that equality is possible.  His Lord and Master after all said it is not:  "The poor ye have always with you". It is religion and individual action that Francis sees as the solution.  See the quote following the one immediately below

"The hearts of many people are gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries. The joy of living frequently fades, lack of respect for others and violence are on the rise, and inequality is increasingly evident."

"And not our own"

"We end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own"

He goes on to condemn the idolatry of money and consumerism but so does the Primate of the Church of England and so do many others.  (I myself think consumerism is great but only some libertarians seem to share that view).  The rest of the document is religious up until paragraph 183 and could have been written by many Christian leaders. But in 183 we see a "desire to change the world", which is of course the essence of Leftism

183 "An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better that we found it."

But how is that to be implemented?  By political campaigns?  No.  "Concern" is what is needed.  Again his emphasis is on the personal:

"All Christians, their pastors included, are called to show concern for the building of a better world."

Note that the following paragraph is about what "We desire"  -- to which a reasonable response might be"  "Who doesn't?".  Desiring and attaining can be very distant from one another

"192. Yet we desire even more than this; our dream soars higher. We are not simply talking about ensuring nourishment or a “dignified sustenance” for all people, but also their “general temporal welfare and prosperity”. This means education, access to health care, and above all employment, for it is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labour that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives. A just wage enables them to have adequate access to all the other goods which are destined for our common use."

But in para. 204 he shows his South American roots by becoming explicitly Leftist.  He clearly knows no economics

"204. We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality."

But again his solution is religious

"205. I ask God to give us more politicians capable of sincere and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots – and not simply the appearances – of the evils in our world! Politics, though often denigrated, remains a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good.[174] We need to be convinced that charity “is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones)”. I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor! It is vital that government leaders and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare. Why not turn to God and ask him to inspire their plans?"

The rest of the document is either conventionally religious or simply conventional. Like notable encyclicals of the past such as De Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus, the Pope has a politically naive and hence Left-leaning view of the world's problems but avoids support for any sort of reform or revolutionary politics.  He has ZERO political prescriptions, only personal and religious ones.  I think he is right to say that the church should put evangelism first and he would hardly be a responsible Christian leader if he did not deplore the pain and suffering in the world.  

And as a religious document, I can see nothing in it that Protestants would object to -- excepting perhaps a few incidental references to the authority of the church.  Am I right about that?  Others will have to answer that.  But at least I have read the document, which seems to be more than some critics have done  -- JR

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Obama Worship Syndrome

Ben Shapiro

When George W. Bush was president of the United States, many of the left fell prey to what columnist Charles Krauthammer called "Bush Derangement Syndrome": "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush." With Bush out of office, BDS has waned somewhat. Unfortunately, it has been replaced by a converse condition, just as grave and dangerous to the mental stability of its victims: "Obama Worship Syndrome." Primarily affecting low-information voters and members of the mainstream media, Obama Worship Syndrome attributes impossible capabilities to Obama's political opponents, finds excuses for every Obama failure in everyone around him and praises the president as the finest politician -- nay, human being -- of our time.

On Monday evening, for example, CNN's Piers Morgan considered whether New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could run for president as an overweight man. Morgan, with stars in his eyes, asked crisis-management expert Judy Smith, "After the perfect Barack Obama -- who's a perfect physical specimen to many people's eyes -- does it matter?" After toweling himself off, Morgan then asked whether Americans could even stomach "a regular kind of guy who likes cheeseburgers and beer, but appears to be a straight talker?"

Morgan's OWS pales in comparison to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who infamously declared that Obama made his leg tingle. But that's just the first symptom of Matthews' OWS: He's also declared Obama "the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect American," explaining that Obama has "never done anything wrong in his life, legally, ethically, whatever"; he's blamed the sun for Obama's pathetic June 2013 speech in Berlin (it glared off his teleprompter, Matthews insisted); and he's compared Obama to Henry V among others.

Morgan and Matthews are extreme cases for sure. But the most widespread symptom of OWS lately is the media's bizarre insistence that Republican opposition to Obamacare is responsible for the botched rollout. "You could argue that there are some Republicans that are trying to sabotage the law," NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd said back in July. The Washington Post did a full story quoting members of the Obama administration blaming Republicans for Obamacare's rolling record of epic failure. Jamelle Bouie of The Daily Beast wrote that the "Affordable Care Act needed GOP cooperation to succeed."

This is idiotic. Obama rammed through Obamacare legislation without a single Republican vote. As he has repeatedly stated, it is "the law." It is his job to implement the law, given that he runs the executive branch. Yet his media defenders continue to maintain that Republicans, who unsuccessfully attempted to defund Obamacare, somehow bear blame for Obamacare's slow-motion collapse.

It's not just Obamacare. After spending years trumpeting Obama's supposed hardheadedness on Iran, the media has now performed a complete about-face on the issue: Iran has suddenly become a potential peace partner, and Obama is a historic peacemaker. Sure, Iran has already declared its intention to continue enriching uranium, has said it will continue building the Arak nuclear reactor and has never backed off its stated intention to destroy Israel. But "The One" must be defended.

Obama Worship Syndrome is far more dangerous than Bush Derangement Syndrome. Speaking truth to power is often worthwhile, even when such action springs from personal dislike. But drool-cup god-worship is never worthwhile, especially with such a power-hungry commander in chief.

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, 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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Apologia of a "Heartless Hypocrite"

A thoroughly enraged reader took exception to my Thanksgiving entry, claiming that the meal portrayed was inaccessible to most Americans. Here's the meal that caused the apoplectic reader to label me heartless because "most Americans" couldn't possibly have this home-made meal:



I decided to fact-test the enraged reader's claim of general inaccessibility of a home-cooked potluck dinner. First, how many meals did this dinner provide, including the soup that was made with the turkey carcass? This potluck dinner served a crowd on Thanksgiving, 6 more friends the following day, neighbors whom we delivered food to, and multiple meals of leftovers for the three of us. It has already made 40 adult servings of a bountiful multi-course meal, and counting the many meals remaining in leftovers and the soup, the total adult servings will be more like 50.

Our cost of ingredients for the traditional meal was less than $80, or roughly $2 per serving. The cost of all the potluck dishes brought by others was less than $30. The sparkling wine, ginger ale and red wines (all bought on sale) was about $20.

Total cost of the meal: $130, or $3.25 per serving, less than a "value meal" at a fast food outlet. If we add in meals made from leftovers (the turkey soup, etc.), the cost per serving drops to less than $3.

Are the "poor" really too poor to buy fresh ingredients that add up to $3 per serving? Let's start with the fact that according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49% of Americans Get Gov't Benefits; 82 million in Households on Medicaid. That means roughly 156 million Americans out of 317 million total population are receiving cash benefits (i.e. direct transfers) from the Federal government. Approximately 57 million receive Social Security retirement or disability benefits.

Over 47.6 million people get SNAP food stamps, a non-cash benefit that acts just like cash at the grocery store. Clearly, the vast majority of those with low incomes receive government cash or equivalent benefits.

How many "poor" people routinely buy fast food meals that cost $3 or more? How many buy frozen waffles, chips, snacks, frozen pizzas, etc. with food stamps, purchases that add up to way more money than the ingredients of the Thanksgiving dinner that so enraged the reader? How many households would it take to pool some food stamps to spend $130 to make 40-50 servings of a great, healthy home-cooked meal?

This kind of refutation of victimhood enrages the excusers, enablers and guilt-trippers because it demolishes the primary claim of victimhood: that people have no other choices--in other words, denying that the vast majority of situations offer a range of choices, and that choices have consequences.

The basic assumption of excusers, enablers and guilt-trippers is that victimhood arises not from choices but from Fate or the heartlessness of those with "more."

Can we deny that most people have choices, even in poverty? Can we plausibly claim that poverty is all Fate and choice is inconsequential? If choice is inconsequential, then isn't our entire system of government and all major religions completely false, because they are all based on human will and choice being consequential?

If low-income (i.e. poverty) is fated, or the result of institutional forces that cannot be overcome, then how do we explain the multitudes of immigrants from every continent who arrive in America essentially penniless and who somehow manage to improve their lives despite low income, unfamiliarity with English, a dearth of institutional or family connections, etc. etc. etc.?

How is a low-income immigrant family able to pay off the mortgage on the family home in a few years while others blame the system for their heavy debt loads?

This kind of refutation of victimhood enrages the excusers, enablers and guilt-trippers for another reason: we know from psychology that two primary psychological defenses against accepting responsibility are transference and projection: if we can project our own ills onto others, we feel justified in our self-pitying victimhood.

If we can transfer the source of our problems (i.e. our own issues and failures) onto someone else, then we feel blameless for our own difficulties, i.e. being a victim.

This is the root psychology of the permanently-enraged excusers, enablers and guilt-trippers, i.e. those who have memorized entire chapters of the Book of Excuses: people are victims not from their own choices or a combination of choice and the fate that everyone is exposed to just by being alive, but because the non-victims are heartless hypocrites clinging greedily to everything that victims don't have access to, for example, a potluck Thanksgiving meal that costs $3.25 a serving.

Stripped to its essence, the outrage of excusers, enablers and guilt-trippers is phony and self-righteous, a classic psychological defense against having to accept responsibility: blame the heartless who "should" be giving their own meal away (if you don't, you're a heartless hypocrite, you heartless hypocrite!), blame Fate or something/somebody, do anything but accept that there are choices and that choices have consequences, both short and long-term.

I have a number of disabilities that are "good enough" to claim membership in the victimhood class (one famously "owned" by a Steinbeck character) but they are none of anyone else's business. I think it's self-evident that victimhood and the sense of enraged, self-pitying entitlement it fosters is a dead-end, ethically, spiritually, psychologically, politically and financially.

According to Social Security, I have earned $543,718 in 43 years of ceaseless toil (2013 is not yet included, of course, so I have been working for 44 years), generally working 50-60 hours a week in multiple endeavors. That is $12,644 per year. That was a decent wage in 1977, now, not so much. Inflation makes it difficult to adjust previous years' income into "today's dollars," but however you figure it, it isn't the lifetime earnings of a "wealthy" person. And no, I have never received an inheritance or made a fortune in capital gains or made a ton of unreported income in the black market, nor did my wife have any advantages or unearned wealth.

(In fact, she dropped out of college to spend three years working 60+ workweeks in low-paying jobs to save the money to buy her single-parent mother a modest home. In other words, clearly she too is a heartless hypocrite for daring to spend hours preparing a meal from scratch for family, friends and neighbors.)

Thank goodness some people are so saintly and godlike that they can discern heartless hypocrites without knowing a darn thing about the people they so assuredly toss into the heartless hypocrite class. Now I know how the Inquisition worked: the saintly sinless fingered the heartless without needing any facts.

In 14 of the past 20 years, my net taxable wages were less than $10,000 a year.  In other words, by official measures, I have been "poor" for much of my working life.

For the vast majority of those who choose to write for money (as opposed to pursuing an unpaid hobby), one consequence of that choice is a low income. Choices have consequences; there is nothing mysterious about this causal link. If you want another consequence, fire up your will and make another choice.

Improving one's circumstances (health, mindset, spiritual attainment, financial security, networks of colleagues, circles of friends, etc. etc. etc.) is the same process as getting good enough at something that people will pay you to perform that service or make that good for them.

Sometimes it requires moving to a new locale, changing careers, studying hard, and distinguishing between conveniences that are assumed to be essentials but that are actually luxuries that can be sacrificed for thrift in service of long-term goals. In all cases, it requires accepting risks: risks of failure, risk that the study might not pay off, risk that some accident could derail your plans, and so on.

Victimhood is not just a rejection of choice and consequence, but of risk--yet risk is ever-present and cannot be disappeared. Risk can only be managed and hedged, and only imperfectly at best.

Alas, earning a modest income doesn't preclude one from being tossed into the "heartless hypocrite" class if your ceaseless toil includes being extremely thrifty and making your own Thanksgiving meals with family, friends and neighbors. That you have have something others do not makes you a heartless hypocrite, regardless of your own frailties, disabilities, income or indeed, any other fact.

Sadly, there are consequences to the pursuit of victimhood and the denial of will, choice, consequence, risk and fact, and they will be consequential indeed.

More HERE

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Obama’s inequality hypocrisy

Directing attention to the “defining issue of our time,” Barack Obama recently warned the American people of the “fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe.” The President wasn’t referring to terrorism, an economic crisis, the presently occurring healthcare disaster, or human rights violations. Rather, he was talking about the trends of wealth  inequality and decreasing economic mobility in the United States.

Curiously, he made this speech in reference to a nation that has suffered under his administration’s policies for half a decade and is only beginning to feel the repercussions.  In fact, the income gap is actually deeper under the Obama administration that it was during the eight years of his predecessor. Now, as his empty words navigate the airwaves, Barack Obama’s stint in the Oval Office has done more to accelerate the “threats” of wealth inequality and decreased economic mobility than any other identifiable variable.

Wealth is a fairly simple concept. It is created by the mutual exchange of goods and services–and created in greatest scale by those with the most resources to risk and leverage in the market. When resources are invested into the marketplace, jobs are filled, wealth is created, and the standard of living increases for everyone.  A stable economy where enterprise is free to operate makes economic growth a simple, natural phenomenon: when quality jobs are abundant, lower-to-middle-income Americans thrive.

The past five years of tax increases and industry-killing regulations have been anything but stable.

Conversely, the government, having raised about zero dollars of revenue not forcibly poached from private sector pockets, creates no wealth. It plunders wealth and moves it around as it chooses. The more wealth taken, the less there is to create more wealth.

Perhaps, if Obama is so intent on shrinking the American income gap, he should look to places like North Dakota where regulators like the EPA have not yet killed economic expansion through oil and natural gas refinement. There, infrastructure is being built and blue-collar workers without a college degree commonly make six figures.

Obama’s words from the same speech addressing decreased economic mobility for American children born into poverty are actually startlingly accurate.

“[T]he idea that a child may never be able to escape [a life of poverty] because she lacks a decent education . . . should offend all of us.”

Indeed, children forced to attend to attend failing schools because of their zip code and family  income should be offensive to each American. Each illiterate child given a high school diploma or who joins a gang after being trapped in a dropout factory is a national embarrassment and a failure to the American principle of equal opportunity. But as the words left the President’s mouth, his budget plan for this very year cuts Washington D.C.’s remarkably successful school choice program in its entirety. His actions defy his every word.

This speech accomplished nothing but shine a harsh light on the negative effects of Obama’s own record to date.

There is indeed a present and fundamental threat to the American dream and way of life, but it’s been grossly misidentified by Mr. Obama. Low-income earners have fewer opportunities because job creators don’t trust the economy he’s sabotaging. His budget would again condemn low-income children to failing schools, crippling them from the opportunity to rise from poverty.

The fundamental threat is the President’s agenda and the policies of his allies.

SOURCE

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Family of Six-Year-Old Cancer Patient Loses Coverage, Now Faces Soaring Premiums

A stark and searing reminder that Healthcare.gov's ongoing struggles and security vulnerabilities are only a small component of Obamacare's comprehensive failure. After the website's myriad technical difficulties are at long last sorted out, mass cancellations, rising premiums and doc shock will remain as the devastating residual legacy of President Obama's top legislative "accomplishment." Every one of those consequences represents a broken White House promise. Meet young Ellie Porter and her family, who've experienced the new law's affects firsthand. Heartbreaking:

"Having a child diagnosed with cancer is an unimaginable ordeal for any family, and adding any challenges on top of it can seem overwhelming. Paul and Jami Porter of Kaysville learned last week their insurance plan was terminated under the Affordable Care Act, more than 3 1/2 months into their daughter's fight with undifferentiated sarcoma began. Six-year-old Ellie Porter, who has had one kidney removed, just wrapped up her radiation treatments and is expected to be done with chemotherapy around the first of the year. "You're getting used to what's going on; and then all of a sudden having something like this thrown in is definitely challenging and frustrating at the same time," Paul Porter said. He and his wife are now in the middle of shopping for a new plan that complies with the Affordable Care Act. He said the old plan didn't meet some of the requirements, according to a letter from the insurer. The options the family is weighing have premiums that are more than double the premiums under their previous plan, Paul Porter said. Additionally, the Porters said they had limited time to sign up for a new plan and didn't have all the information they felt they needed to make an informed decision. Like many others across the nation, they were also struggling to simply enroll through the federal website, healthcare.gov."

Ellie isn't an "anecdote." She's a little girl who's very sick:

"This poor family hit the Obamacare trifecta: (1) They've been dropped off of their existing insurance plan -- which they were counting on to help pay for their cancer-stricken daughter's treatments -- because Beltway Democrats decreed that their coverage was "substandard." (2) Their efforts to obtain new coverage in time for 2014 were hampered terribly by Obamacare's broken website. (3) Their options for new coverage entail premiums twice as high as what they were previously paying.

More HERE

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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, 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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Destroying entry level jobs and teen opportunity

Foolish push to hike minimum wages

By Rick Manning

Fast food restaurants will get the joy of having labor unions stage protests demanding an increase in their worker's wages and more than doubling the overall federal minimum wage this week.

Everyone wants to make more money, so what could go wrong?

Perhaps it would be wise to ask Food and Commercial Worker Union members in the Washington, D.C. area.  These union members have priced themselves out of jobs as the consuming public is being trained to scan their own food items, cutting out the middle man.  The union workers are so concerned about their dwindling numbers that they are threatening to strike on December 20th with a major complaint being that the implementation of self-scanning technology is eliminating their jobs.

Now the same Big Labor economic geniuses whose demands for ever increasing benefits and wages threaten the grocery clerks very existence are being equally helpful to entry level fast food workers.  Workers who perform low skill functions for a minimum wage or just slightly higher.

At a time when Amazon has built a drone to deliver packages, and hopes to have them operational with full Federal Aeronautics Administration approval within four to five years, it takes little imagination in our current culture to see a fast food restaurant operating with very few personnel.

You punch your order in at a display screen, or in drive thru, Siri's younger, more advanced sister, takes your order showing you the results on the screen.  You put your credit card or cash into the ATM like payment system and drive to the pick-up window where you get your food that comes out when sensors tell the machine you are in place to receive it.  The food gets cooked by a series of machines that put the right patty on the grill, drop just the right amount of fries and automatically puts the appropriate soft drink cup under the right beverage.  A lid is attached and your meal is delivered to you when you drive up.

The restaurant has next to perfect food cost controls, and a labor force that doesn't sleep in on Saturday or shut the restaurant fifteen minutes early because it is slow and they are bored.

Automakers build cars using very exact automation, is it so unreasonable to believe that a burger could be made similarly?

Yet, protestors are going to blithely march around fast food restaurants demanding wages that virtually guarantee mechanized product delivery, a result that has disastrous consequences.

Fast food restaurants are gateway jobs, and are not intended for the vast majority of people to be anything but that – entry level.  This is a great thing.

Teens learn that they have to get to work on time both from getting pinged by their bosses, and by having to stay late due to the tardiness of a coworker.  Teens learn about this FICA fellow who takes a bunch of their paycheck without their ever seeing a dime, and wonder how their $183.75 check for five, five hour days dwindled down to a mere $135.  And most importantly, teens learn that money to go to the movies, pay car insurance and put gasoline in the car has to be earned by trading time, energy and effort in a value creating way.

The demand that these entry level wage jobs be transformed into "living wage" jobs changes this fundamental dynamic.

Those positions that do remain will be highly sought after by older, more experience people who never would consider a burger joint job, driving the stereotypically unreliable teen from taking their first step into the American economic workplace.

Already, our nation is seeing a destruction of opportunities for young Americans to enter the workforce which may be why almost two out of three teens aren't even trying to get a job in today's America.

Contrast this with teen expectations forty years ago.  In 1973, the economy was terrible.  Gas lines, oil embargoes, the economy reeling from the impacts of Nixon's wage and price controls, 1973 was a mess for those trying to get a job.  Yet, more than half the teens were in the workforce and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 46.9 percent of the teens aged 16-19 in October, 1973 were employed compared to 26.6 percent today.

When three quarters of your teens are not working either by choice or due to the lack of employment opportunities, something is dramatically wrong.

It would be foolhardy in the face of a youth unemployment crisis to destroy the very entry level jobs that young people depend upon to gain the work experience and basic workplace skills to survive and thrive moving forward.

While doubling the minimum wage sounds like a swell idea on its face, the impact on our nation's youth will be devastating.

It is time to just say no to those who would destroy our nation's entry level jobs under the mantle of doubling wages at fast food and other retailers.  After all, those jobs are for our teen children.

SOURCE

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Liberals Are Culture War Aggressors

Jonah Goldberg

Maybe someone can explain to me how, exactly, conservatives are the aggressors in the culture war? In the conventional narrative of American politics, conservatives are obsessed with social issues. They want to impose their values on everyone else. They want the government involved in your bedroom. Those mean right-wingers want to make "health care choices" for women.

Now consider last week's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to consider two cases stemming from Obamacare: Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius and Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores. Democratic politicians and their fans on social media went ballistic almost instantly. That's hardly unusual these days. But what's revealing is that the talking points are all wrong.

Suddenly, the government is the hero for getting deeply involved in the reproductive choices of nearly every American, whether you want the government involved or not. The bad guy is now your boss who, according to an outraged Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., would be free to keep you from everything from HIV treatment to vaccinating your children if Hobby Lobby has its way. Murray and the White House insist that every business should be compelled by law to protect its employees' "right" to "contraception" that is "free."

I put all three words in quotation marks because these are deeply contentious claims. For starters, the right to free birth control -- or health care generally -- is not one you'll find in the Constitution. And even if you think it should be a right, that is hardly a settled issue in American life.

The right to own a gun is a far more settled issue constitutionally, politically and legally in this country, but not even the National Rifle Association would dream to argue that we have a right to free guns, provided by our employers. If your boss were required to give you a gun, your new employer-provided Glock still wouldn't be free because non-cash compensation is still compensation. The costs to the employer are fungible, which means whether it's a pistol or a pill, the cost is still coming out of your paycheck -- and your coworkers' paychecks.

"Regular, predictable expenses such as birth control pills cannot be defrayed by insurance; they can only be prepaid, with a markup for the insurer's administrative costs," writes Bloomberg's Megan McArdle. "The extra cost is passed on by the insurers to your employer, and from your employer to you and your fellow workers, either by raising your contribution or lowering the wage they are willing to offer."

Last, birth control pills really aren't the issue. Both companies suing the government under Obamacare have no objection to providing insurance plans that cover the cost of birth control pills and other forms of contraception. What both the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties object to is paying for abortifacients -- drugs that terminate a pregnancy rather than prevent one. (Hobby Lobby also opposes paying for IUDs, which prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.) The distinction is simple: Contraception prevents fertilization and pregnancy. Drugs such as "Plan B" terminate a pregnancy, albeit at an extremely early stage.

The plaintiffs in these cases aren't saying the government should ban abortifacients or make it impossible for their employees to buy them. All they are asking is that the people using such drugs pay for them themselves rather than force employers and co-workers to share the cost. In other words, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood want such birth control decisions to be left to individual women and their doctors. Leave the rest of us out of it.

But leaving the rest of us out of it is exactly the opposite intent of the authors of Obamacare. The law forces not only arts and crafts shops but also Catholic charities and other religiously inspired groups to choose between fulfilling their mission or violating their values. You may have no moral objection to such things, but millions of people do. By what right are liberals seeking to impose their values on everyone else? Isn't that something they denounce conservatives for?

They could have allowed for plans that exclude controversial forms of birth control -- or even uncontroversial ones -- which would have lowered premium costs and expanded health care coverage to more poor people.

But Democrats wanted a wedge issue to drum up a new battle in the culture war -- a war in which liberals have always been the aggressors.

SOURCE

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Real Charity

John Stossel gives below his idea of how to channel charitable giving.  My rule is to give only to the end user, not to any middleman organization.  My biggest gifts are to people I know  -- JR

'Tis the season for giving.  But when you give, do you know your money will help someone?

Social workers say, "Don't give to beggars." Those who do give are "enablers," helping alcoholics and drug users to continue bad habits. It's better to give to charities that help the "homeless." I put "homeless" in quotes because my TV producers have quietly followed a dozen of the more convincing beggars after "work," and all had homes.

Once, I put on a fake beard and begged for an hour. At the rate money was coming in, I would have made ninety bucks in an eight-hour day -- $23,000 per year, tax-free! I see why people panhandle.

Their success, however, means that people who give them money, no matter how good their intentions, are not engaging in real charity. Giving may make you feel better, but it doesn't make the world a better place.

So where should we give? Charity-rating services try to separate good charities from scams, but they get conned, too. The definition of "charitable work" is rarely clear. How should the board of a nonprofit's first-class hotel expenses during a trip to Africa be classified?

That's why I give to charities I can watch. I donate to The Doe Fund, a nonprofit helping to rehabilitate ex-convicts. I saw their "Men in Blue" working near my apartment -- cheerfully and energetically. I thought, "Whoever's rehabbing these guys is doing something right!" So I give money to them -- and to a couple other groups I can see.

Finally, I give more to charity because I'm not much of an entrepreneur. I don't have business-building skills. But for those who do, here's a novel idea: Don't give to charity.

Years ago, Ted Turner was praised for donating a billion dollars to the United Nations. He said he wanted to "guilt" other billionaires into giving more and told me Warren Buffet was "cheap" for giving too little.

At first, the idea makes sense. Billionaires have more than they need; merely chasing more profit seems selfish.

But giving it a second thought, I found a fallacy in Turner's argument. The U.N. is a wasteful bureaucracy, leading me to assume it squandered Turner's gift. Buffet, meanwhile, continued to direct his investors' money to growing companies. Based on Buffet's stock-picking success, his investments were probably a more productive use of capital than Turner's. Money went to people making better products, inventing better things, creating more jobs and so on. Maybe Buffet's stock picks are now funding the next Bill Gates.

Today, the real Gates spends his time giving money away. He's unusually conscientious about it. He experiments, funding what works and dropping what doesn't. His charity work saves lives. Good for him. But Gates was also unusually skilled at bringing people better software. Had he continued doing that at Microsoft, I bet the company would have been even more productive. And Gates would have done more for the world.

I tried that thought experiment on Turner, who, in turn, unclipped his microphone and walked off the set.

OK, so people who give away a billion dollars don't want to hear skepticism about their gift. But there's little doubt capitalism helps people more. Even rock star Bono from U2 has come to understand that. He used to call for more government spending on foreign aid. Now he says: "Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce, entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty."

Bingo. If Bono gets it, Turner should, too.

I applaud those who give to charity, but let's not forget that it's capitalists (honest ones, not those who feed off government) who do the most for the poor. They do more good for the world than politicians -- and more even than do-gooders working for charities.

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, 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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Why Liberalism Is On The Wrong Side Of History

Liberals dream of one day seeing all Americans permanently locked in the smothering, cradle-to-grave death grip of the nanny state. Nothing excites a liberal more than the idea of controlling where you go to school, regulating your work and play, deciding what type of health care you're going to have and then deciding when you get to retire and how much money you have when you do. Even if you want to choose, you can't. Even if you want to break free, you're stuck. You're not allowed to make different choices because liberals have made it illegal.

What if you're pro-choice on spending your tax dollars on a private school instead of a public school? What if you'd prefer to keep your current health care plan instead of a much more expensive new plan that provides coverage you don't need? What if you'd rather invest your own Social Security money instead of giving it to the government? Sorry, but you don't get a choice. You get the same antiquated 1920s style mentality that prompted Henry Ford to say, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."

It's a kinder, gentler version of George Orwell's horrific "boot stamping on a human face - forever." In the liberal version, it's a boot gently pressing you to the ground, forever, "for your own good" -- as if liberals have the slightest idea of what "your own good" might be. Certainly, they believe they know what's best for you. It's what they were told by their college professors, the New York Times and their friends. There's a whole echo chamber dedicated to telling them exactly what they want to hear about how other people should be living.

The problem with that is not so much liberals living how they want to live; it's that liberals want to force everyone else to live how they want to live. They don't like guns; so no one should have guns. They like gay marriage; so everyone must be forced to like gay marriage. They like PBS; so everyone should be forced to pay for PBS.

Once, when the planet was mostly made up of illiterate people who engaged in subsistence farming and were ruled by noblemen, that sort of thinking made a certain kind of sense. Today, liberalism's hunger to control people is an anachronism that's out of place in the modern world. If California wants to go billions into debt, welcome illegal aliens and have more people on welfare than working, that's its mistake, but the real problem with liberalism is that liberals insist on trying to force it to become EVERYONE'S MISTAKE. It's not enough for California, New York and Illinois to destroy themselves; liberals insist on trying to use the federal government to force citizens in Texas, North Carolina and Utah to embrace the same destructive policies. It's a one-size-fits-all philosophy in a world that's giving consumers more choices every day.

If Justin Bieber is at the top of the pop charts, should EVERYONE be forced to listen to Justin Bieber? If Duck Dynasty is popular, should EVERYONE be forced to watch Duck Dynasty? If the two most popular foods in America turn out to be hotdogs and chocolate ice cream, should EVERYONE have to eat those two foods at every meal? We laugh at this sort of thinking in the marketplace, but that's exactly the philosophy liberals have with government.

Liberals like expensive health care plans that pay for birth control and maternity care; so EVERYONE has to have those plans or be taxed. Liberals love abortion; so they believe EVERY STATE must make abortion legal, even the ones that are pro-life. Liberals want to control how your children are educated; so they refuse to allow parents to choose whether they want to spend their tax dollars on public or private schools. Most people have hundreds of options on TV, on the Internet and in the grocery store; yet liberals want to use the federal government to take all of your choices away when it comes to guns, education, your retirement and your health care.

It's why Congress has an approval rating of 6%. It's why Obamacare is wildly unpopular. It's why D.C. and our court system have devolved into partisan warfare. It's because liberalism is a non-functional, imperious philosophy that is out of step with the modern world and on the wrong side of history.

SOURCE

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White House Tells Obamacare Subscribers to Make Sure They're Really Enrolled

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the White House is "very mindful of making sure that consumers who want coverage starting in January are able to get it." But there's no guarantee.

In fact, Carney said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is "reaching out directly to consumers" who have chosen a health insurance plan, reminding them to pay their first premium -- and asking them to make sure they are really covered:

"So there's a joint effort to reach out to those who have enrolled to make sure that every step is being -- that they know they need to take all the necessary steps to ensure that that coverage kicks in," Carney said on Monday.

The problem involves the transmittal of information from the faulty healthcare.gov website to the actual insurers.

According to Carney, "CMS is having daily conversations with issuers to get feedback from them." He said the administration has made "a number of significant fixes to the so-called 834 forms," which send a subscriber's information to the policy issuers. "We expect the info now sent to insurers to be vastly improved. But we're going to continue to work with issuers to make sure that whatever remaining problems exist are addressed and fixed."

Asked if he can assure people who sign up if they will "definitely" have coverage beginning on Jan. 1, Carney responded, "Well, I think what I would say is that CMS is reaching out to those who have enrolled to make sure that they know the steps that they need to take to ensure that coverage kicks in, that if a consumer enrolls in a plan by December 23rd and makes their first payment by the date set by their insurers, they are covered beginning January 1st. And if consumers are not sure if they are enrolled, they should call our customer call center or the insurer of their choice so that they can be sure they're covered by January 1st.

"So we're making -- this is a high priority, making sure that those who are enrolled are aware of the steps that they need to take, including that they need to pay their premiums on time for coverage. We're working with insurers to make sure that those who are enrolled know this information, and we're reaching out -- we're telling consumers that if they're not sure if they're enrolled, they should call the call center or their insurer directly."  ....

"Can you imagine? You think you've signed up. You go to get coverage because you need health care. You go there and you find out that, in fact, you haven't been signed up. That is a huge issue because what does someone do at that point? How do they work their way through the bureaucracy to actually verify they've been signed up? I see this as much of an issue as the access issue on the health care (website). The fact that that has not been fixed is a huge problem."

SOURCE

See also: Obama Admin Admits 126,000 Obamacare Enrollments Might Not Be Real

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Blacks and Obama

 Walter E. Williams

In a March 2008 column, I criticized pundits' concerns about whether America was ready for Barack Obama, suggesting that the more important issue was whether black people could afford Obama. I proposed that we look at it in the context of a historical tidbit.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson, after signing a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization, broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. He encountered open racist taunts and slurs from fans, opposing team players and even some members of his own team. Despite that, his batting average was nearly .300 in his first year. He led the National League in stolen bases and won the first Rookie of the Year award. There's no sense of justice that requires a player be as good as Robinson in order to have a chance in the major leagues, but the hard fact of the matter is that as the first black player, he had to be.

In 1947, black people could not afford an incompetent black baseball player. Today we can. The simple reason is that as a result of the excellence of Robinson — and many others who followed him, such as Satchel Paige, Don Newcombe, Larry Doby and Roy Campanella — today no one in his right mind, watching the incompetence of a particular black player, could say, "Those blacks can't play baseball."

In that March 2008 column, I argued that for the nation — but more importantly, for black people — the first black president should be the caliber of a Jackie Robinson, and Barack Obama is not. Obama has charisma and charm, but in terms of character, values, experience and understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson.

In addition to those deficiencies, Obama became the first person in U.S. history to be elected to the highest office in the land while having a long history of associations with people who hate our nation, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 20 years, who preached that blacks should sing not "God bless America" but "God damn America." Then there's Obama's association with William Ayers, formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Ayers, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, told a New York Times reporter, "I don't regret setting bombs. ... I feel we didn't do enough."

Obama's electoral success is truly a remarkable commentary on the goodness of the American people. A 2008 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reported "that 17 percent were enthusiastic about Obama being the first African American President, 70 percent were comfortable or indifferent, and 13 percent had reservations or were uncomfortable." I'm 77 years old. For almost all of my life, a black's becoming the president of the United States was at best a pipe dream.

Obama's electoral success further confirms what I've often held: The civil rights struggle in America is over, and it's won. At one time, black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.

There is every indication to suggest that Obama's presidency will be seen as a failure similar to that of Jimmy Carter's. That's bad news for the nation but especially bad news for black Americans. No white presidential candidate had to live down the disgraced presidency of Carter, but I'm all too fearful that a future black presidential candidate will find himself carrying the heavy baggage of a failed black president.

That's not a problem for white liberals who voted for Obama — they received their one-time guilt-relieving dose from voting for a black man to be president — but it is a problem for future generations of black Americans. But there's one excuse black people can make; we can claim that Obama is not an authentic black person but, as The New York Times might call him, a white black person.

SOURCE

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Holding Foreign Visitors to Their Promises

Yesterday’s heckler at Obama’s pro-amnesty speech in San Francisco was Ju Hong, an approved guest of the White House and an illegal alien from South Korea who recently graduated from UC Berkeley. People who still say illegal aliens “live in the shadows” obviously don’t know this guy: He’s on Twitter and LinkedIn, was a member of student government, has lobbied for taxpayer subsidies for illegal-alien students, and has been the subject of so much fawning news coverage he has his own topic page at the Cal student paper.

The salient fact here for immigration policy is that he came with his family on a tourist visa, and never left. Visa overstayers are believed to represent between a third and a half of the 12 million illegal aliens in the United States — and with improvements in border enforcement it’s possible the majority of new illegal aliens are overstayers. That translates to 4 to 6 million liars, people who swore they’d leave when their visit was over but didn’t, something at least as contemptible as sneaking into someone else’s country. Hong came as a child, so he wasn’t doing the lying, but he’s no more entitled to stay than the child of someone who lied on a mortgage application and later lost his home.

There are also more Korean illegal aliens than you might think. For instance, nearly 7,000 South Korean illegal aliens have been amnestied by Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (a.k.a. the administrative Dream Act) through the end of August, making it the No. 5 country after Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

The reason we have 4 to 6 million illegal-alien visa overstayers is that we have no effective way of tracking the departure of foreign visitors. This despite the fact that Congress has mandated the development of an exit-tracking system eight separate times, starting in 1996. As Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano dismissed the importance of exit-tracking. At a 2009 hearing, she told Senator Dianne Feinstein the “value of that system to security is dubious.” While the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill passed by the Senate in June made development of such a system a sort-of prerequisite before amnestied former illegal aliens upgrade to full green-card status, the ten-year deadline would mean that exit-tracking wouldn’t be in place until more than a quarter-century after Congress’s original mandate.

Exacerbating this problem with regard to South Korea and other countries is the Visa Waiver Program. As the name suggests, people from the 37 countries on the list don’t have to get visas for short tourist or business trips. Only those countries whose citizens are very unlikely to overstay are supposed to be included in the program. Unfortunately, the main force expanding the list of participating countries has been lobbying pressure from the travel industry and foreign governments. South Korea was added in 2008 and Greece — Greece — in 2010. This has been a significant driver of illegal immigration; the GAO reported earlier this year that, of a very large sample of apparent overstays, nearly half were people who entered under the Visa Waiver Program.

With a proper exit-tracking system, and guaranteed follow-up arrests of all those who overstay more than a couple of weeks, we could afford to make our visa process more flexible. But as it is, we grant visas to people who shouldn’t get them, waive visas for countries that send large number of illegal aliens, don’t have any comprehensive way of knowing whether visitors have left when they were supposed to, and don’t bother even to send a notification postcard to people we do know overstayed. It’s no surprise, then, that there are millions of illegals like Ju Hong. But until we’ve fixed these problems, there can be no justification for amnesty; otherwise, we’ll just have millions more Ju Hongs that the Democrats, and their GOP enablers, will insist have to be amnestied.

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, 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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Lies and Hypocrisy Are Essential Components of Liberalism

Recent events once again demonstrate that there is no point arguing with liberals. Reason, facts, truth – these bourgeois concepts mean nothing to the adherents of progressivism. You are never going to change the mind of someone who believes in nothing except the imperative of his own absolute power. You simply have to defeat him.

Progressivism is not a coherent ideology so much as a purpose – to control every aspect of our lives. It is about consolidating progressive power. Nothing else matters. That includes the truth.

This is why we see YouTube videos of Harry Reid, Joe Biden and Barack Obama waxing eloquently, while in the minority, about the moral necessity of the preserving the filibuster that they just shot through the forehead when in the majority.

This is what led to an agreement ensuring that a power that explicitly states its intention to reboot the Holocaust, once it finishes hanging all its gays, will be able to create the means to do so.

This is the reason the President repeated dozens of times that if you like your health plan and your doctor you can keep them even though he knew this to be an outright lie.

Progressivism is not about principles but necessity. Yesterday, the left needed the filibuster to bar conservative judges. Today, it needs to pack courts with allies who will rule in whatever way progressives need, so the filibuster goes.

Sure, progressives pose as friends of Jews and gays when it’s convenient, but now it’s more convenient to get the Obamacare abomination off the front page while simultaneously weakening America and Israel. For progressives, that’s a win-win-win. And if some Jews and gays have to die, well, uh … hey look! Republicans want to make you pay for your own birth control!

Progressives needed to provide cover to their legislators to socialize the health care system, so they simply lied. The only fault the progressive-owned mainstream media can find with that is with us for being stupid enough to believe what the liberals told us.

I agree. If you believe anything a liberal tells you, if you imagine you can count on a liberal to hold to any particular principle when that principle stops being useful as a means to accumulate power, you are a fool.

Such people still get surprised when the pro-woman party slut shames women who object to being used as sex toys by feminist heroes. Teddy got drunk and left a woman to drown in his Oldsmobile after he drove off a bridge on the way to a routine session of joyless, creepy Kennedy adultery. Mary Jo Kopechne died; Teddy was hoisted on a sea of liberal shoulders and hailed as the “Lion of the Senate.”

But Teddy arguably had the moral high ground compared to liberal icon Robert Byrd, the Grand Imperial Cyclops Kleagle of the Senate. Their degeneracy was irrelevant; they were both useful to progressivism. Nothing else mattered.

Yet the squish caucus wing of the GOP still imagines that it can make deals with the liberals, as if this time Lucy Reid is really, truly, totally going to hold that football in place so that the Lindsey Browns can kick it.

Look at these GOP mouth-breathers and their undying fixation on amnesty. Obama won’t enforce the laws we have. In what universe could any idiot be stupid enough to imagine that he might enforce any of the laws that the GOP amnesty appeasers might get in exchange for their abject capitulation?

You can’t negotiate with progressivism. You can’t reason with it. You can’t compromise with it.  You have to destroy it, utterly, root and branch.

Understand that progressivism isn’t just another way of looking at things. It isn’t an equally valid lifestyle that we should treat with respect and courtesy. It is not an intellectual peer of conservatism.

Progressivism is the hapless Cousin Oliver of the collectivist Brady Bunch. Whether you label it “progressivism,” “socialism,” “communism” or “fascism,” it’s all just the same collectivist tyranny, varying only by degrees of bloodshed and fashion choices. Differentiating them is like choosing between herpes strains – it’s just a matter of the size of the chancres.

We need to know our enemy and understand it, because when we do we can destroy it.

Expect hypocrisy. Expect lies. Highlight them certainly, but not for ourselves. We know that hypocrisy and lies are essential components of progressivism. Do it instead for those who don’t yet understand. Do it for the undecided in the battle for the soul of America.

It’s that mass of people who are not aware of just what a sick power grab progressivism really is behind its false front of “caring” and “social justice” that we need to reach. If their hearts and minds weren’t in play, the progressives wouldn’t bother lying to them. They would enforce their will with storm troopers.

We are still at the stage where the opinions and desires of people who aren’t progressive still matter – the hypocrisy and lies are part of the long-term process designed to change that forever.

We must continue to highlight this truth: Progressives care about gays, women, blacks and other groups only to the extent that appearing to do so brings short-term political advantage.

Does anyone think progressives wouldn’t abandon their belief in their right to government-funded abortion at will if having that belief stopped being useful? You could ask the gays in Iran about how pro-gay progressives are when liberal leaders need to change the news cycle, except they’ll be hard-pressed to answer with nooses around their necks.

Arguing with progressives is a waste of time because they believe in nothing except that they should rule over us. Progressives don’t seek justice. They seek power. Treat them accordingly.

SOURCE

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The Dysfunctional Life of Leftist Communes and other Collectives

Despite a few successes (the kibbutzim in Israel in the early 20th century) in their history from the great waves of idealism that swept through intellectual circles from the nineteenth through the twentieth century, the founding and maintaining of communes and collectives did not work out very well.  The latest revelations about the three virtual women slaves in London allows us to reflect on some problems intrinsic to this mode of socialist or anarchist cooperation.  All this happened under the careful watchful eye of Big Brother in Brixton.   Aravindan Balakrishnan, so-called Comrade Bela, was the founder of the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, all all-inclusive mouthful even for back in the 1970s when each of these "ways" was usually at each other's necks.  But can everything be reduced to saying this aging gentleman and his wife were cult leaders and their three victims dupes of an ideology that failed?

In my own experience, the whole idea of groups of like-minded idealistic people living together, sharing work and wealth. Moving away from what to young enthusiastic minds seems like the depressing oppression of bourgeois responsibilities and the corruption and dullness of ordinary urban living is strong.  It was the 1960s, I was young, and almost every day there seemed to be another leader assassinated.  I was tempted and toyed with the idea, spoke with some university friends, and then thankfully decided not to drop everything, move into the wilderness, and fulfil myself as a human being, along the way giving my eventual children an opportunity to breathe free in unpolluted air and in the midst of nature's raw splendors.  A few more years of growing up and watching young men and women I knew commit themselves to these high ideals and their seemingly empowering ideologies showed me it was a lucky thing I never did join in the mess that was the commune or the collective.

Despite the impeccable theoretical base of the ideologies that said under the proper conditions all members of a group would eagerly share tasks, would respect one another's privacy and be able to intuit the needs of one's fellows because that was the natural condition of mankind once the chains of conformity and capitalism were broken by an act of the collective will, somehow things never quite turned out that way... at least not for very long.  What did tend to happen was that older, more mature couples-perhaps in their late thirties or early forties-went in; they had made careful, considered and rational plans to purchase land, organize a legal structure for the group, and set about putting in place the basic amenities needed for human beings to live, labour and reproduce and care for and educate their families.  These were the true idealists, usually university graduates, more often than not sociologists.  They were not "losers", though perhaps there were secret psychological lapses no one outside of their intimate relations could see.  Then there were the young people, boys and girls in their late teens and early twenties.  Their reasons for entering the collective were quite different.  They were almost all from dysfunctional homes where they were abused physically and psychologically, were rebellious at school, and well on their way towards becoming drug addicts and petty criminals.  They went into the commune to get away from nagging parents and teachers and because they were too lazy and dumb to actually figure out how to live on the streets.  These were the real "losers".

This was obviously not a good mixture of people.  Therefore three things seemed to  happen.  First and most often, the whole project quickly fell apart and everyone returned to their old separate ways.  The middle-aged founders became more bourgeois than ever in their domestic relationships, raising of children, and career trajectories, that is, sadder but wiser folk; although in a few instances they retained some remnants of their sartorial dress and hairstyles.  The young, well, they became what we saw out on the streets over the next twenty or thirty years.

Second, driven by the idealism and sense of responsibility in the founding older members of the group, an illusion of cooperation was created, while barely below the surface some crazy and apparently unforeseen and even unpredictable changes were made to the original plans.  While the husband or senior male of the group undertook to perform all the heavy-duty jobs, various farming chores, household repairs, and negotiating with outside authorities, he began to think it his right to have a controlling access to all females in the group, including adults and children; this was deemed proper compensation for the loss of his previous career in a university or other professional activity.  This was the guru phenomenon, but not quite the cult leader.  The wife or senior female, officially or tacitly undertaking the role of Earth Mother, served as the main provider of food, healthcare and whatever minimal formal education was required both by the state and for the proper running of the commune; then, also noticing that her erstwhile husband or partner, was more actively interested in younger and more sexually receptive and obedient partners, she began to cohabit with one or more of the vigorous young men who, in their own ways, profited from this continuous access to a mature female body, satisfied unconscious Oeidipal urges, and deemed the entire process as a hilarious joke and a massive snub at bourgeois propriety.  Eventually, thanks to the loss of idealism and the unproductivity of the venture-laziness, stupidity, and endless bickering and jealousies-the whole enterprise collapsed.  The young people went back on to the streets.  The older ones, their families and careers in tatters, somehow drifted back into a relatively lower middle class existence marked by bitterness and regret.

In the third outcome, the free-flowing ("go with the flow") commune found that to survive it had to put aside its democratic socialistic ideals and its anarchist freedom for all, including free speech, sex, drugs, and take up strict concentration of leadership-it became a dictatorship not of the proletarian but of the all-knowing father (and sometimes mother)-the cult leader(s).  Suicide, violent punishments, madness, in other words, violence became the glue that kept everything together.

This is what seems to have happened in London.  Rather than a rather general and vague group of people coming together, Comrade Bela came up through the ranks of various Communist parties in England, shifting from one collective to another, and being forced out from another because of his rigid and uncompromising style of leadership.  In the process his entourage was reduced to the three women who stayed with him for more than thirty years, as well as his wife or partner.  In the late 1990s someone in his household "fell" out of a window and died, the police investigated, but found no reason to treat the case as criminal.  But that is not all. Other people seem to have "fallen" from view, disappearing into some indeterminate other existences.  But the three women who remained, one in her late 60s, another in her 50s, and the last in her early 30s who may or may not have been born into this moral captivity, are now "freed" from the virtual psychological slavery they had experienced.

To the neighbors and to any official outsiders who interviewed the five co-dependent members of this household, they seemed eccentric, but not criminal.  The three "captivated" women could walk outside in the streets and shop locally, provided they did not go out alone, so that there were no obvious chains or handcuffs to keep them in check.  They could have, as seems to have happened, tossed letters out to neighbors and passers-by and have made phone calls, but they did not until a few weeks ago take any of these opportunities to flee or seek help from the police.

Why?  Fear of retribution, shame of being exposed as weak and submissive, inability to imagine a life other than the one they had grown accustomed over for three decades, belief in the original ideologies that brought them into the collective in the first place-who knows?  What is clear, however, is that some people fall into situations where they become so frightened of the outside world that they accept the humiliations, discomforts and pains of the mind-control of other masterful leaders as preferable to anything else.  That means there are aspects of personality that choose slavery over freedom because they fear they will otherwise fall apart, collapse, shrivel up.  They are reduced to near total childish dependence on the leaders and then in a strange dynamics of mutuality within the group, wherein violence towards themselves and severe limitations on what they can do, say and even feel are felt as deserved punishment for their weaknesses.

Is this condition an exaggerated version of how all of us learn to live in the world, to make so many compromises with our principles and ambitions, that we are finally too ashamed to admit that we ever had such ideals?  Or are these type of groups hold-overs from the social rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s, very time and culture-specific?   Whatever the psychological explanations for such group dynamics,  with all their psychotic implications, the arrogance of the leaders, the resistance by the victims to seek help over the years, and the failures of police, social agencies, and others to pick up the clues indicates something "rotten" in the core of modern society.

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, 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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