Leftist values

They just LOVE Islam. Both are religions of hate



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Revive conservatism in the GOP

Richard Viguerie

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak to a packed house at the Heritage Foundation about my new book TAKEOVER. If you want to watch the speech on C-SPAN’s Book TV here is the link.

But if you don’t want to watch the speech I’ll cut straight to the chase and give you the highlight here, because I think they are so important to keep in mind as we get into the next few weeks of Republican Primary elections, starting with North Carolina next Tuesday.

Senator Jim DeMint was my 1st choice for President in 2008 and 2012.  I knew Jim DeMint was going to be President. I just didn’t realize it would be President of the Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation, the conservative movement, and America are fortunate indeed to have Jim DeMint as Heritage’s leader.  Jim DeMint has been the de facto leader of conservatives for many years.

And as our leader, Jim has understood something that that has escaped most conservatives. Conservatives have been losing ground to the Left for the last 100 years.

And during the last 100 years, the entire Democratic Party and most Republican leaders have become unhinged from the Constitution.  Why?

Conservatives, the most important political battle in America is not between Republicans and Democrats. America’s most important political battle is for control of the Republican Party.

For decades conservatives have had their political guns pointed at the wrong targets.  Our main opponents are not Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama.  The people who are keeping limited-government, constitutional conservatives from governing America are big-government Republicans with names like Karl Rove, George Bush 41 and 43, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander.

And this war didn’t start with the arrival of the Tea Party in 2009 or Ronald Reagan’s election as President in 1980.  It started in 1912, 102 years ago, when Teddy Roosevelt left the Republican Party, ran a 3rd party ticket and split the Republican vote allowing the Democrat progressive Woodrow Wilson to become President with less than 42% of the vote. By the way, Teddy Roosevelt is one of big-government Karl Rove’s favorite Presidents.

Sometimes the Big-Government Republican looks like Teddy Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Bob Dole, John McCain or Mitt Romney.

And TAKEOVER is the only book that describes the past, present and possible future of the 102-year GOP Civil War.  I have included a detailed plan in my book which gives conservatives a road map to take over the Republican Party and govern America by 2017.

Conservatives are like the Biblical Jews who had to wander in the desert for 40 years until that generation of failed, flawed leaders had passed from the scene.  Conservatives are not going to get to the political promised land until we replace this generation of failed, flawed, big-government Republicans with limited-government, constitutional conservatives.

The establishment media and big-government Republicans have done a good job of blaming conservatives for Republican losses.

But the opposite is the truth.  The voters consistently reject big-government, content-free Republicans.

In the last fifty years, the Republicans have had only four big election victories.  In those four big Republican Party victories, the face of the opposition to the Democrats that the voters saw was not big-government Republicans.  It was limited-government, smaller government, lower taxes, less government spending, balanced budget, traditional value candidates.

The voters were presented a clear choice – two very different world views.

These four big Republican victories were: 1980 Reagan’s election as president; 1984 Reagan’s re-election; 1994 the Contract with America, the Gingrich-led revolution; and the Tea Party election of 2010.

In 2006 the Republicans lost the Congress and the White House in 2008, in my opinion, having nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or Barack Obama, but everything to do with the failed, immoral, corrupt leadership of the Establishment Republicans Denny Hastert, Bill Frist, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Karl Rove, and George W. Bush.

However, just a few years later in 2010, the voters turned around and gave Republicans their biggest Congressional election in 75-80 years.  But in 2010, these big-government Republicans such as Rove and Bush were nowhere to be seen.

The face of the opposition to the Democrats was the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, and the voters liked that and gave the Republican Party a big victory.

So that’s why I paraphrase James Carville, who in 1992 famously said over and over, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  And, in 2014 I say to conservatives, “It’s the primaries, stupid.”

We can all see a wave building that is likely to sweep a lot of Democrats out of office.

But if all that happens is more politicians in the mold of John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell are elected, conservatives will have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime, and we may have missed our last chance to return America to a limited-government, constitutional conservative republic.

In the primaries, conservatives must unite and support the most electable, principled, limited-government conservative running.  We must oppose all establishment, big-government Republicans whether they are incumbents or insurgents.

Incumbent, big-government Republicans that have principled, limited-government candidates opposing them include: Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Thad Cochran, Pat Roberts, and Lindsey Graham.

Most states’ filing deadlines have not passed. So if a principled, limited-government conservative hasn’t filed for every race on the 2014 November ballot, we should be organizing an effort to find that candidate. Perhaps you’re the candidate you’ve been waiting for.

By the way, that very weekend, Republican leaders Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy were at the Ritz Carlton in Amelia Island meeting with the Main Street Partnership, who are meeting to strategize and raise money to, in the words of the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, “Crush them everywhere.”

Remember to chart the future, you must study the past.  And TAKEOVER is the only book that explains why conservatives have mostly been losing for the last 102 years, and then gives you a clear road map for future success.

In my opinion, we’re just a few short years from taking over the Republican Party and governing America.

SOURCE

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Close the Export-Import Bank, Fount of Corporate Welfare

Nothing brings out the well-tailored lobbyists in Washington quite like a threat to corporate welfare. With the Export-Import Bank’s legal authorization set to run out this year, the Chamber of Commerce recently led a Big Business march on Capitol Hill to protect what is known as Boeing’s Bank.

Over the last eight decades ExIm has provided over a half trillion dollars in credit, mostly to corporate titans.  Congress should close the Bank.

The agency was created in 1934 to underwrite trade with the Soviet Union.  The agency uses its ability to borrow at government rates to provide loans, loan guarantees, working capital guarantees, and loan insurance.

ExIm is not free, as claimed.  Recently made self-financing, the agency has returned $1.6 billion to the Treasury since 2008.

However, economists Jason Delisle and Christopher Papagianis warned that the Bank’s “profits are almost surely an accounting illusion” because “the government’s official accounting rules effectively force budget analysts to understate the cost of loan programs like those managed by the Ex-Im Bank.”  In particular, the price of market risk is not included.  Delisle and Papagianis figured ExIm’s real price to exceed $200 million annually.  

Economist John H. Boyd took another approach, explaining:  “For an economic profit—that is, a real benefit to taxpayers—Eximbank’s income must exceed its recorded expenses plus its owners’ opportunity cost, a payment to taxpayers for investing their funds in this agency rather than somewhere else.”  He figured the Bank’s real cost at between $521 million and $653 million in 1980. Given the recent explosion in Bank lending the corresponding expense today could be much higher.

The Bank claims to create jobs.  No doubt, Exim financing makes some deals work.  But others die because ExIm diverts credit from firms without agency backing.

Economists Heywood Fleisig and Catharine Hill figured that channeling resources to exports reduces “domestic investment, consumption, or government expenditure.”  Thus, they explained, while export subsidies will increase employment in export firms, they will do so “at the expense of employment elsewhere.”

JayEtta Hecker, Associate Director of the then-Government Accounting Office, testified before the Senate: “government export finance assistance programs may largely shift production among sectors within the economy rather than raise the overall level of employment in the economy.  Hence, the jobs figure that the Eximbank reports may not represent net job gains.”

ExIm also sells itself as necessary to promote trade.  Bank president Fred Hochberg told a recent gaggle of supporters:  “we want to be the wind in your sales,” pushing U.S. exports. But exports should not an end in themselves irrespective of cost.

The Bank supports only about two percent worth of exports, barely a blip in a $17 trillion economy.  Moreover, ExIm often subsidizes competitors of American companies.  For instance, two-thirds of the Bank’s loan guarantees last year backed Boeing sales to rivals of U.S. airlines.

The Bank contends that it corrects market failures. Thus, explained the agency in its 2012 annual report: “When the availability of credit from commercial lenders is restricted or the cost is prohibitive, Ex-Im Bank can provide the financing assistance that U.S. exporters need.”

However, international financial markets are sophisticated.  And the Bank is busiest in Asia, Europe, and North America, not Africa and Latin America, where the risks are greater.

Moreover, it’s impossible to know just how many of the deals currently financed by American taxpayers wouldn’t go through absent the subsidy.  Everyone involved in the transaction—borrower, banker, exporter, bureaucrat—has an incentive to claim ExIm played a vital role.

The agency claims to support all businesses, including small ones.  However, candidate Barack Obama got it right in 2008 when he described the Bank as “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”  The most heavily subsidized industries in 2012 were aircraft and avionics, followed by oil and gas, power generation, and agribusiness.

The most money always goes to Big Business.  Boeing alone typically accounts for more than 40 percent of the Bank’s credit activities. Corporate behemoths General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Dow Chemical, Bechtel, John Deere, and Caterpillar regularly join Boeing at the federal trough.  Veronique De Rugy of the Mercatus Center figured that the top ten recipients collect 75 percent of ExIm’s benefits.  Financial institutions and foreign governments also enjoy bountiful subsidies.

Finally, ExIm’s warns that if the U.S. government doesn't provide cheap credit, American companies will lose out to foreign firms subsidized by their governments.  In this way the Bank claims “to help level the playing field to support U.S. companies.”

However, less than half of ExIm credit typically is even directed in this way, let alone proven necessary.  Moreover, the fact that other governments are willing to hurt their peoples by channeling credit away from worthier firms in the marketplace in favor of politically well-connected exporters is no reason for America to do the same.

A better way to help promote trade would be to strengthen the economy generally.  Lower and rationalize business taxes.  Cut and streamline regulation.  Reduce tariffs, especially on widely used imports, such as steel.  Discourage frivolous litigation.  Stop subsidizing the defense of prosperous, populous trade competitors.

Anyone on Capitol Hill who believes in free markets and limited government should oppose the agency’s reauthorization.  Let exporters pay to generate their own profits.

SOURCE

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Conservatives Victorious; Boehner Finally Establishes Benghazi Select Committee

Thanks to conservative pressure and the revelations contained in documents obtained by Judicial Watch, House Speaker John Boehner issued the following announcement:

"House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is announcing today in Washington, D.C., that he intends for the House to vote to create a new select committee to investigate the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans. He released the following statement:

“Americans learned this week that the Obama Administration is so intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the People's House.  These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen.  In light of these new developments, the House will vote to establish a new select committee to investigate the attack, provide the necessary accountability, and ensure justice is finally served.

“The administration's withholding of documents – emails showing greater White House involvement in misleading the American people – is a flagrant violation of trust and undermines the basic principles of oversight upon which our system of government is built.  And it forces us to ask the question, what else about Benghazi is the Obama administration still hiding from the American people?

“The House committees that have been investigating this attack have done extraordinary work, using their subpoena power, holding dozens of hearings, and conducting hundreds of interviews.  Without this work we would not know much that we do today.  But it’s clear that questions remain, and the administration still does not respect the authority of Congress to provide proper oversight.  This dismissiveness and evasion requires us to elevate the investigation to a new level.  I intend for this select committee to have robust authority, and I will expect it to work quickly to get answers for the American people and the families of the victims.

“Four Americans died at the hands of terrorists nearly 20 months ago, and we are still missing answers, accountability, and justice.  It’s time that change.”

Top Republicans say that the infamous White House Benghazi talking point emails should have been released to Congress months ago. Boehner signaled those concerns prompted him to rethink the need for a select committee.

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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How “The Smart and Clever” Jon Stewart was Made a Donkey by Fidel Castro’s Agents

Cuba was once a rich country  -- before Castro

Jon Stewart’s snark-fest against Fox News this week over Benghazi finally prompted a rebuttal (of sorts) from Greta Van Susteren: “Note to Jon Stewart (who I think is smart and clever …but like the rest of us, not always right…but a comedian has, of course, way more latitude – we in the media should get it right.)”

This “latitude,” however, should not allow Jon Stewart to disseminate propaganda from Castro’s KGB-founded and mentored intelligence services uncontested. “I LOVE this book!” Jon Stewart gushed upon greeting author TJ English who a few years ago was publicizing his book titled "How the Mob Owned Cuba, and Lost it to the Revolution," on The Daily Show.

“This is the TRUE story of Cuba!” continued the Peabody award winner (for meritorious public service) barely containing himself. “A fascinating book!” hailed Stewart.

Unknown to “The Smartest guy in the Comedy Central Room” Stewart, the primary source for English’s book-- cited no fewer than 72 times in quotes and footnotes-- is an intelligence apparatchik of Castro’s totalitarian regime named Enrique Cirules.

In fact, Senor Cirules is an official of Cuba’s “La Casa de las Americas” agency that publishes and promotes the Castro regime’s propaganda in books and articles under the guise of “art.” In 1983 a high ranking Cuban Intelligence officer named Jesus Perez Mendez defected to the U.S. and spilled his guts to the FBI. Among his spillings we encounter the following: "The Cuban DGI (Directorio General de Inteligencia, Castro's KGB-trained Secret service) controls Casa de las Americas.”

“We were hoping to have Senor Perez-Mendes on tonight to contribute his views on the veracity of your book’s claims, Mr English,” would have been a properly snarky Stewart introduction to English. “But were thwarted upon discovering that he lives under FBI protection for fear of being assassinated by the KGB-trained folks who hosted you in Cuba and collaborated with you in writing the book!”

“Mr English, in your book’s acknowledgements you describe this Castroite apparatchik Enrique Cirules as a “Cuban author," the properly snarky and Peabody-winning Stewart might have continued. “Wouldn’t this be like describing Julius Streicher as “a German author," and Ilya Ehrenburg as "a Russian author?"

Instead, minutes into the interview and in response to another Godfather-ite cliché by the smug TJ English, Stewart-- this winner of the Television Critics Association award for “Outstanding Achievement in News and Information,"-- gushed: "WOW! So the Mob actually built Cuba's economy! So it was actually worse than shown in Godfather II!"

I know, I know, the “the Mob ran pre-Castro Cuba” meme is so entrenched into the worldwide media/Hollywood/academia Cuba narrative that perhaps we shouldn’t single out Jon Stewart as a Castro dupe when so many other Castro dupes parrot the same propaganda every time Cuba hits the news cycle. Take a Boston Globe editorial just this week:

“Cubans… are also aware that the United States doesn’t have clean hands in Cuba. Under the thuggish reign of US-backed Fulgencio Batista, American sugar plantations exploited laborers and stoked racial anger through segregation; the US mafia, having been dislodged from American cities by the crusading Kefauver committee, took over much of Havana, operating gambling rackets, drug rings, and prostitution.”

Please be informed, Jon Stewart and Boston Globe: better sources on pre-Castro Cuba than Godfather II actually exist.

In 1955 Cuba contained a grand total of three gambling casinos, the biggest was at the Tropicana and featured ten gambling tables and thirty slot machines, the Hotel Nacional, featured seven roulette wheels and twenty-one slot machines. “By contrast, in 1955 the single Riviera Casino in Las Vegas featured twenty tables and one hundred and sixteen slot machines. This means that in 1955: one Las Vegas Casino had more gambling action than all of Cuba.

Also interesting: according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Commission the typical tourist spends five days in their city and spends an average of $580 ($75 in 1957 dollars) on gambling, the main motive for 90 per cent of visitors. Well, throughout the 1950's Cuba averaged 180,000 tourists a year.Let's assume ALL those tourists —men, women, adolescents, children—did nothing in Cuba but gamble, and at the Las Vegas' rate.Well, this would mean an extremely generous total of $13 and a half million for Cuba's gambling industry annually. But in 1957 Cuba's Gross Domestic product was $2.7 billion, and Cuba's foreign receipts were $752 million. How could the beneficiaries of that miniscule fraction of Cuba's income “take over” one of the wealthiest, most modern and economically diverse cities in the Western hemisphere?

Here’s another snark-opportunity for Jon Stewart’s writers in case they again host T.J. English: “Mr English, your book claims that: "Every Monday at noon, a bagman for mobster Meyer Lansky delivered a satchel filled with $1.28 million in cash that was to be delivered to Batista.”

“So Mr English, are you claiming that Mob chief Meyer Lansky was slipping Batista MORE every week than the COMBINED annual GROSS from EVERY casino in Cuba, including those unaffiliated with Meyer Lansky?”

Also interesting: In 1953 more Cubans vacationed in the U.S. than Americans vacationed in Cuba. How could the wretched and brutalized residents of that plundered and impoverished nation, (as the Boston Globe, New York Times, Hollywood, NPR, Jon Stewart, etc. depict it) have possibly pulled that off?

In fact, in 1958 the year prior to Castro’s U.S.-backed takeover of Cuba…

“But wait-a-minute Humberto?!” you say. “The media, Hollywood and our professors all swear up and down that Batista was backed by the U.S., who bitterly and violently opposed Castro?!”

Well, here’s the U.S. ambassador to Cuba from 1957-59 Earl T. Smith testifying to the U.S. Senate in 1960: “various agencies of the United States directly and indirectly brought Fidel Castro into power.”

And here’s the CIA’s Caribbean desk chief from 1957-60 Robert Reynolds, another knowledgeable party to the issue, you might think: “Me and my staff were all Fidelistas.”

In fact, during that horrible period for Cubans ( as depicted by Godfather II and Jon Stewart) not only did most Cubans voluntarily remain in Cuba despite open doors both from Cuba and into the U.S.—but the island’s standard of living and booming and diverse economy attracted immigrants from both Europe and the U.S.

During this period people (from nearby Haiti and Jamaica) often jumped on rafts trying to enter Cuba.

SOURCE

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Preparing for War, Keeping Peace

Exactly a century ago, the leading lights of Europe seemed to believe that war was impossible. One of the era’s most successful books, “The Great Illusion” by journalist Norman Angell, asserted that trade, not violence, was the way of the future.

He was wrong, but not completely wrong.

Yes, in 1914 the Western world mobilized in August. World War I killed some 15 million people, and would be followed by World War II and a series of skirmishes during the Cold War. More than 100 million people were killed in conflicts during the 20th century.

Ian Morris, a professor at Stanford, noted recently in The Washington Post, about 2 percent of the planet’s population died violently in that century. Compare that to the Stone Age, when roughly 20 percent of a much smaller population died violently. Modern humans are living much longer, safer, more productive lives. Why?

Morris attributes this overall decline to the formation of nation-states. Beginning in the 1600s, “Europeans exported unprecedented amounts of violence around the world. The consequences were terrible; and yet they created the largest societies yet seen, driving rates of violent death lower than ever before,” he writes.

Such successful governments included the United States. It was powerful enough to civil rights and protect property rights, so citizens could own the fruits of their labor, yet limited enough in size and scope to encourage private innovation.

The planet enjoyed its first period of peaceful growth because of Great Britain, Morris argues. “Its wealth came from exporting goods and services, [so] it used its financial and naval muscle to deter rivals from threatening the international order.” When the age of British dominance finally ended during World War II, the United States stepped up to fill London’s role of maintaining global order. “Like its predecessor, the United States oversaw a huge expansion of trade, intimidated other countries into not making wars that would disturb the world order, and drove rates of violent death even lower,” Morris writes.

But in an unsettling way, 2014 looks a bit like 1914. For example, the global intelligentsia seem to think they’ve banished war. They’ve certainly banished most war-spending, which -- ironically – as history has shown, leads to more war.

The United States is the only developed economy that invests 4 percent of GDP in defense. After the U.K. at 2.5 percent and France at 2.3 percent, things go downhill quickly, with Germany at less than 2 percent and Japan less than 1 percent. Still-developing China spends 2 percent.

It’s a positive that the developed world is comfortable trusting the U.S. military. And it’s a positive that the developed world thinks it has put war behind it. But in his book, “Civilization and Its Enemies,” Lee Harris points to what he calls an unsettling paradox. “The more the spirit of commerce triumphs, the closer mankind comes to dispensing with war, the nearer we approach the end of history, the greater are the rewards to those who decide to return to the path of war,” he writes.

Witness Russia in Crimea and, potentially, the whole of Ukraine. And should the Russians decide to go another few steps, consider the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Latvia. It’s in a tough neighborhood, right up against Russia. But it has almost no military; only 6,000 active troops and 11,000 reservists, financed by less than 1 percent of its GDP. It’s counting on NATO to protect it.

Whether NATO, which really means the U.S., will be there is the big question.

Perceptions matter. “Rogue states will behave more roguishly if they doubt America’s will to stop them,” The Economist points out. And, “In a world full of bluffers, the ruthless will rule,” as Harris writes.

There’s no reason the 21st century can’t be even more peaceful and profitable than the 20th was. American leadership, though will be key.

SOURCE

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Screening Immigrants for Fraud: A Tale of Two Enforcements

The press release from the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to be good news. Their agents had broken up a plot to fraudulently bring workers to America.

But if you looked a little deeper, as I did, I found that a couple of U.S.-based crooks had created a totally fraudulent university, and had, for years, been using the phony institution to bring a total of 24 illegal aliens to the United States. No one in our government noticed that the place simply did not exist!

Time and again decision-making employees in the Departments of State, Labor, and Homeland Security had rubber-stamped applications that allowed the aliens to enter the country. And in each and every case, all three of the agencies had erred. Since this happened 24 times and (24 x 3 = 72) that produced a box score of: United States, 0 hits and 72 errors.

Sometimes our government notices such white-collar crime, but all too often it does not; and usually, when it does, it’s years and years between the time of the violation and the corrective action.

Contrast the multiple errors in the U.S. case to what happened in the United Kingdom recently. British authorities learned that five illegal aliens (all men) from Pakistan were about to have fraudulent marriages with five legal residents (all women) that would give the Pakistanis instant legal status.

The Home Office agents swooped down on the group wedding, stopped it before it happened, and deported at least four of the five illegals. Score: United Kingdom: 5 hits, and 0 errors.

Clearly the U.K. won that one!

These, of course, are anecdotes but after decades of studying immigration policy, mostly in the U.S., but often overseas, I can say that these scores are pretty typical of the levels of interior immigration enforcement in the two nations.

Our Border Patrol does a pretty good job of discouraging one kind of illegal immigration—that of “entering without inspection.” But when it comes to rooting out people in the nation illegally, most of whom had arrived earlier with tourist visas, the Brits are much better than we are.

Let’s look at the two cases in more depth.

The Phony University. There is a temporary worker program in the U.S. called H-1B (for the provision in the immigration law). An alien needs to have a college degree to qualify, and to have a U.S. employer who can convince the U.S. Department of Labor that such a worker is needed in the U.S. economy (something Labor agrees to far too often.) Though there is a numerical limit on the program generally, there is none for H-1Bs coming to the U.S. to work at a university. There are other (mild) restrictions; work as a nurse does not qualify for an H-1B visa, though Homeland Security is currently chipping away at this restriction.

Meanwhile, there are nursing homes that are eager to hire foreign nurses at bargain rates.

Two bright crooks in the Denver area decided to create Adam University; they got formal papers from the relaxed folks in Colorado’s Department of Education, but never opened the institution. They were probably playing on the fact that there is an Adams State University.

Then they made use of the demand for low-paid nurses; the fact that nurses could not get H-1B visas; the parallel facts that professors of nursing could get those visas; and that many Filipino nurses wanted to work in the U.S. The crooks then processed the H-1B visas, got the nurses to the States, and told them that they would get work, but not at the wages shown on the Labor Department applications; if they objected, they were told they would be deported, so most of them accepted the low-paid jobs, and kept paying bribes to the promoters to prevent deportation.

All of this could have been avoided if on one of the 72 times the applications were reviewed someone did something as simple as to check Adam University against the list of nursing schools, or operative universities. It never happened.

The Phony Marriages. The Home Office (the government unit that handles immigration) apparently has worked out arrangements with wedding license agencies, to inform them of questionable applications. Further, wedding licenses appear, in the U.K., to state the time and the place of the forthcoming marriage.

In this case the U.K. investigators knew all about the planned “marriages” and were pro-active.

I have been paying close attention to immigration-fraud- weddings in the U.S. for several years and have never heard of a similar, alert move by our agents.

Both nations suffer from illegal immigration but the Brits are simply more motivated to do something about it than our officials. It’s as simple as that.

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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Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America

BOOK REVIEW

Bullying!  Bullying!  Bullying! Bullying is rampant in the United States according to Obama's Left and the popular media.  In reality, there has been no increase in bullying across America.  "In fact, by all available statistics, bullying is down across the board with young Americans demonstrating particular tolerance for those of different backgrounds."

The Left propagandizes that bullying has morphed into a "brilliant gambit:  they appropriated bullying to apply only to anything remotely conservative."  Shapiro identifies the Left's ability to unify all Americans against bullying and then to redefine bullying as anything the Conservatives oppose.  "A unified coalition against bullying becomes a unified coalition against Conservatism."  Shapiro's bullying list of the Left includes the Tea Party, religious people, global warming unbelievers, defense hawks, venture capitalists, fans of voter identification, traditional marriage, opponents of affirmative action, right-to-work advocates, supporters of Israel, and haters of Glee!

Ben Shapiro is a brilliant, caustically humorous writer who presents with clarity the current nuanced political situation.  His thesis is fresh and is one that the American public must quickly comprehend if Conservatives and America are to survive.  "The Obama embrace of the anti-bullying cause, and the subsequent linguistic trick of conflating anti-bullying with anticonservatism, is the single best bully tactic in the history of American politics." Shapiro's insight could be the key in alerting Conservatives to wake up and smell the Left's deception.  Conservatives have only been playing a bewildered defense up to this point. This is perhaps our last opportunity to play offensive politics and to save our Republic.

In Shapiro's political evolution, his meeting with Andrew Brietbart was pivotal.  He first met his future friend and mentor through his Conservative column in the UCLA Daily Bruin. Leftist-turned-Conservative activist, Breitbart hated the bullying of the Left and considered political correctness the ultimate form of bullying.  The Left's passion for bullying and its use of the propaganda manufactured by the "Democrat-Media Complex" and Left-based sources such as Soros-funded Media Matters bring constant pressure to silence their political opponents. Breitbart's exposure of these bullying tactics brought down upon him the extreme enmity of the Left, who actually celebrated his unfortunate and untimely death.

Shapiro states, "Conservatives have allowed liberals to win the culture war because we're generally civil people.  When the left says we're uncivil, we tend to shy away from the fight rather than, as Andrew put it, walking toward the fire."  Ben Shapiro is today the editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.

Shapiro believes that bullying requires power which the Left wields through the growth of government, the media, Hollywood, the education system, and the nonprofits.  "The right thinks individually; the left thinks institutionally."

The author covers the vast array of bullying engaged in by the Left.  He treats it all in a thorough, fresh, and scholarly fashion.  Shapiro covers with documentation, examples, and illustrations the following types of bullies:  Institutional Bullies, Anti-Patriotic Bullies, Race Bullies, Class Bullies, Sex Bullies, Green Bullies, and Secular Bullies.

"This is the world the left has bequeathed to us.  It is filled with lies; it says that truth is thuggish, and obfuscation of truth a required element of civility.  It says that moral clarity is nasty and uncouth, and moral relativism morally preferable.  It reverses bullies and victims, emboldening the world's true bullies in the process."

It is past time to expose the bullies and stand up to them. This is, indeed, an enjoyable, eye opening and provocative read.

SOURCE




Cruz Lists Obama Admin's Lawless Actions in Legal Limit Reports

"Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the President's persistent pattern of lawlessness," according to Texas Senator and Harvard Law graduate Ted Cruz.

Cruz exposed the Obama Administration’s illegal actions in four Legal Limit reports released Wednesday.

 Rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. No one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying, and waiving portions of the laws that he is charged to enforce. When President Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

The documents include a laundry list of the Administration's lawless actions relating to executive fiat, national security, free speech and privacy, Obamacare, executive nominees and personnel, and the economy. Two additional categories exist to encompass "other lawless acts" and "other abuses of power."

Here are two highlights:





Obama may have been a Constitutional Law professor back in the day, however, his actions as president reveal he knows very little about how to abide by the document.

SOURCE




Where has the money gone?

Most people, perhaps even the super-wealthy, who are usually accountable to auditors, want to know where their money goes. This is especially true when they detect money for which they can't account. Not so with the federal government.

Some recent headlines reflect a disturbing pattern that has contributed to our $17 trillion debt and to a growing cynicism among the public, which increasingly regards government in a negative light.

Here are just a few recent gems gleaned from reading newspaper stories and wire service reports: "Pentagon to destroy $1 billion in ammunition." This USA Today story says, "It is impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction ... remains viable because the Defense Department's inventory systems can't share data effectively, according to a Government Accountability Office report..."

So in addition to nonfeasance add incompetence.

The New York Times reports on a modest medical office in Brooklyn that received $4.1 million in Medicare funds for "therapy." The Times says the money went to one person. Maybe the government needs therapy. Taxpayers certainly do.

A personal favorite, again from USA Today: "IRS workers who didn't pay taxes get bonuses."

Then there's this from the Washington Post: "Navy to award contract for Marine One helicopter fleet in shadow of previous failure." Why let failure get in the way of a government program?

"$6 billion goes missing at State Department," reports the Fiscal Times. I'm constantly misplacing billions, aren't you?

Again the Fiscal Times: "Government Blatantly Wastes $30 Billion This Year." The key word is "blatantly."

Just in time for this year's university commencement exercises we learn, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal: "Government programs to reduce (student loan) defaults are encouraging more debt."

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) this week releases its 2014 "Pig Book" listing some of the outrageous spending by the federal government. The book focuses mostly on "pork," those earmarks added to a bill after the normal budget process. Earmarks have been outlawed since fiscal 2011, but members of Congress always seem to find ways around the many laws they pass.

This year's Pig Book has found earmarks attached to the 12 appropriations bills that fund the federal government. One paragraph from the introduction reveals the lengths to which some members of Congress will go to circumvent the law in pursuit of their own political interests:

"The 2012 Pig Book noted that although there were fewer earmarks than in prior years, the projects involved larger amounts of money and included fewer details. This is also true in 2014. For instance, a $25 million earmark for the National Predisaster Mitigation Fund appearing in the FY 2014 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations Act corresponds to 58 earmarks totaling $24.6 million for the same program in the FY 2010 DHS bill. The 2010 earmarks appeared in the 'Congressionally Directed Spending' section at the end of the bill, which contained the names of the members of Congress requesting each project and its location, as required by the pertinent transparency rules. "This is in stark contrast to the FY 2014 earmark, which contains no such information."

When committing a crime, some criminals try not to leave fingerprints at the scene. Congress engages in criminality on a higher plain by not leaving "fingerprints" on their earmarks. Who will hold them accountable? Apparently not enough voters, too many of whom appear indifferent, or deliberately ignorant of it all.

To paraphrase the old Peter, Paul and Mary song: where has all the money gone? Long time passing. Gone to earmarks and down a sinkhole. When will we ever learn?

SOURCE




Federal Land Ownership: Is It Constitutional?

The ongoing Cliven Bundy situation in Nevada has raised awareness of the hazards of federal land management.

In Nevada, the federal government owns a stunning 81 percent of the land. On the land they manage, the feds are threatening to evict tenants who refuse to pay outrageous fees. Bundy is the last of a dying breed, the only holdout who hasn’t been driven off land in Clark County in recent years, land his family has utilized and improved for nearly a century.

This behavior raises and important question: Is this how the Founding Fathers intended for the federal government to manage land when they created the Constitution? A 2005 University of Colorado Law Review article by Robert G. Natelson of the Independence Institute titled “Federal Land Retention and the Constitution’s Property Clause: The Original Understanding” attempts to answer that question by carefully examining the historical record against conservative and liberal interpretations of the Property Clause of the Constitution.

The article begins by talking about the case of a Bozeman, Montana native by the name of Casey Emerson. Emerson wants the feds to cede their land holdings back to the people. He argues that the feds don’t tend to the land as well as local folks could, and make blunders that harm the environment and livelihood of Montana residents. Natelson argues that while Emerson’s opinion doesn’t reflect present case law, there is a strong historical basis for his argument against the excessive hoarding of land by the federal government.

This becomes clear when you examine the core principles that the Republic was based upon. It is widely recognized that the principles of republicanism and decentralization were crucial in founding the United States of America, but there were also some principles that fell by the wayside as time passed. While they aren’t necessarily acknowledged now, they were considered to be essential for the continuance of a well-functioning Republic by our predecessors. These principles are fiduciary government, sympathy and independence.

Fiduciary government refers to the idea of government officials as “guardians, agents, servants, or trustees of the people.” Sympathy meant that public officials and private individuals are meant to share an “identity of interest, rather than conflict of interest.” Government officials are therefore expected to serve the public as a whole rather than serve a specific faction or political party. Independence is necessary to prevent collusion between government actors, to keep them free from each other and dependent only upon the public. Knowing these bedrock principles upon which the Republic was founded is key in understanding the appropriate purpose of federal land management.

Natelson brought up an example to illustrate how these principles weren’t respected during the Articles of Confederation era. In the early Republic, an angry band of former soldiers who felt they weren’t properly compensated stormed Congress. This was when Congress still operated out of Philadelphia, rather than Washington D.C. The Congress didn’t have the means to defend itself. Delegates asked Pennsylvania to send militiamen to help, and the state refused. Although nobody was injured, this incident was harmful to the principle of independence. The founders did not want one state to receive preferential benefits over another. They didn’t want a mob of folks from Pennsylvania intimidating Congress into granting special favors to people of that state at the expense of others.

The Constitution therefore allows the federal government to possess land in three forms: territories, enclaves and other property. Territories referred to land that was owned by the federal government but had not been formally made into states. Enclaves referred to land within a state that was owned by the federal government for essential purposes such as ‘Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards.’ Other property refers to land holdings for enumerated purposes, and gives the federal government limited discretion to possess land.

However, the Constitution does not authorize permanent land-grabs by the federal government. It authorizes Congress to make “all needful Rules and Regulations” pertaining to land. ‘Needful’ was a word carefully chosen to indicate that the regulatory power only expanded to powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The feds were expected to sell off non-essential land and distribute the subsequent monies in ways that benefited the public good such as paying off the debt or tax cuts.

The current regime of federal land management is blatantly unconstitutional. The founding fathers never intended to create a Republic where the feds could impose draconian fees on peaceful individuals and force them from the land. As a matter of fact, that is exactly the arrangement that the Constitution was written to prevent, as it clearly violates the principles of fiduciary government, sympathy and independence.

When the historical record is examined, it makes it abundantly clear that the Republic has gone awry since the days of the founders. Systematic attacks on the property rights of Americans have been justified through deliberate misreadings of the Constitution. This will only be changed when the public wakes up, re-discovers their rights and takes action against unjust federal power. Natelson’s article can provide a kick start toward creating a proper understanding of the Constitution amongst the American people.

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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Liberals: Exempt from Scrutiny

Victor Davis Hanson

The qualifications of a Tommy “Dude” Vietor or Ben Rhodes that placed them in the Situation Room during Obama-administration crises were not years of distinguished public service, military service, prior elected office, a string of impressive publications, an academic career, previous diplomatic postings, or any of the usual criteria that have placed others at the nerve center of America in times of crisis. Their trajectory was based on yeoman partisan PR work, and largely on being young, hip, and well connected politically. I don’t think either of these operatives has a particular worldview or competency that would promote the interests of the United States. But they do talk well, know the right people, and are hip. Again, they have no real expertise or even ideology other than that.

Al Gore is said to be our leading green activist, and the Steyer brothers the most preeminent green political donors. But do they really believe in reducing carbon emissions to cool down the planet?

Not really. The latter made much of their fortune in the sort of high-stakes speculations that the Left supposedly despises. Many of their financial payoffs derived from promoting coal burning abroad, of the sort most liberals wish to stop.

As for Gore, he cannot really believe in big green government or he would not have tried to beat the capital-gains tax hike when he peddled his failed cable network to a petrodollar-rich Al Jazeera, whose cash comes from the very sources of energy that Gore claims he hates. Do you make millions, and then in eleventh-century fashion repent so that you can enjoy them all the more? Gore certainly in the past has not lived modestly; the carbon footprint of keeping Al Gore going — housing, travel, and tastes — is quite stunning. Both the Steyers and the Gores of our human comedy know that it is lucrative business to appear green, and that by doing so one can keep one’s personal life largely exempt from scrutiny in general and charges of hypocrisy in particular. For them, 21st-century liberalism is a useful badge, a fashion not unlike wearing good shades or having the right sort of cell phone.

The 1 percent fetish is also not really ideological. Elizabeth Warren, one of its greatest supporters, is not just a 1 percent but a 0.1 percent grandee. Her house, habits, household income, past corporate consulting, and net worth all reflect a desire for profits and refinement not accorded to most Americans. Her life is about as much a part of the 99.9 percent as she is Native American. She is not worried about welders getting some work on the Keystone Pipeline or farmworkers put out of their jobs in Mendota, Calif., over a baitfish.

Ditto Paul Krugman. He is eloquent about inequality and about the sort of insider privileges that give so much to so few. But nothing about his own circumstances suggests that he lives the life he professes, as opposed to professing abstractions that psychologically make the quite different life he lives more palatable.

Certainly, Krugman’s liberalism means that few care that he once worked in the Reagan administration, that he was a paid adviser to Enron, or that he has just taken a part-time $225,000 post-retirement job at City University of New York — one that, at least initially, requires no teaching. Given what CUNY is said to pay its exploited part-timers, the university could have offered 75 courses with the salary it will be paying Krugman. Or, put another way, Professor Krugman will make the same as do 75 part-timers who each teach one class — and thus one class more than Krugman will teach.

Bravo for Professor Krugman to have marketed himself so well and to have earned all the compensation that the market will bear — and too bad for the part-timers, who don’t understand market-based economics, where there are winners like Krugman and losers like themselves who can’t earn commensurate hanging-around money. One last question: Is part-time teacher Krugman going to study the inequality inherent in the modern university’s exploitation of part-time teachers?

Such hypocrisy taxes Krugman’s supporters to find ingenious arguments for the idea that noble ends justify almost any means, and so they argue that Krugman’s advocacy for research into income equality trumps this minor embarrassment, or that he can be very rich and still fight the 1 percent, or that the salary in the metrosexual world of the Boston–New York–Washington corridor is not all that high.

Of course, the CUNY billet is likely just a small stream that feeds into Krugman’s other sizable income rivers. Indeed, he more likely belongs not just to the 1 percent, but to the same 0.1 percent as Senator Warren, which he so castigates. When President Obama exclaimed that at some point one needs to know when one has made enough money, Krugman would have agreed. He could now put that agreement into action by donating his salary to double the meager wages of 75 part-timers, who, unlike himself, are contracted professors who really do teach and are not “generously” compensated.

Does the NAACP stand as our watchdog over racism? In theory, yes; in fact, not so much. The L.A. branch was quite content to overlook Donald Sterling’s sterling racialism, given his donations. Sterling apparently thought that supporting the local NAACP either was not antithetical to his racist sloppy talk and rental practices, or was a wise investment in progressive insurance.

Al Sharpton receiving a “person of the year” award from the same branch of the NAACP is no less absurd than Donald Sterling’s “lifetime-achievement award” — given that Sharpton is on record as an anti-Semite, homophobe, inciter of riot, former FBI informant, tax delinquent, and convicted defamer of a district attorney. But the NAACP brand nowadays functions much like our green culture, as a sort of way to display correct coolness. It surely would not go after Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonya Sotomayor — or Barack Obama — for either using racialist speech or denigrating others on the basis of race or tribe. Such a fact is widely accepted because it is just as widely assumed that the NAACP has become something fossilized, like Betamax in its waning days, as it existed for a bit longer because it had once thrived.

Too many modern liberal fetishes are predicated on the medieval notion of exemption, and should not be taken as anything much other than useful pretensions or smart career moves — something like joining the Masonic lodge in the 1920s in small-town America. Charter schools are bad, and troubled public schools are noble, but the coastal elites, whether at Sidwell Friends or the Menlo School, assume that they should not sacrifice their children on the altar of their own ideology. Diversions of Central Valley canal water from agriculture to fish are good, but diversions of Hetch Hetchy canal water from San Francisco to fish are bad. Dreaming about salmon jumping in a hot Central Valley river is a lot easier than bathing with recycled grey water three times a week.

Concern for the Sierra toad and frog should stop logging-road and mountain development, but incinerating fauna with solar mirrors or grinding up eagles and hawks in wind turbines is the necessary price of green membership.

The Koch brothers have allegedly polluted politics with their ill-gotten cash; the Steyer brothers have not with their coal money. The revolving door is what right-wing operators do, not what a Tommy Vietor or Peter Orszag does. Affirmative action is necessary to stop “old boy” hiring and power wielding, but the sort of incestuous D.C. relationships that the Carneys or the Rhodes brothers have (Jay Carney’s wife, Claire Shipman, is a senior correspondent for ABC News; Ben Rhodes’s brother, David, is the president of CBS News) are not what we are talking about.

The issues per se are not so important. No prominent progressive really believes that his children belong in a public school with the “other.” He does not wish to live in an integrated neighborhood in order to promote his notion of high-density, non-suburban racial assimilation. A Che poster does not mean you want to live somewhere like Venezuela and wait in line for toilet paper.

The liberal is not immune from the material allurements of the 1 percent. Whizzing off on a private jet or climbing into a huge black ten-mile-a-gallon SUV limo is no problem. You do not necessarily denounce all racist stereotyping, given that sometimes attacking friendly bigots could be a headache. Taking the Google bus with like kind instead of the messy public bus or the uncertainties of the commuter train does not mean you are against mass transit for “them.” You surely don’t want the Coastal Commission enforcing beach-access rights for hoi polloi when who knows how many of the 99 percent wish to walk right by your deck in Malibu. It would be like ruining your beach view with a wind farm.

Liberalism offers a wise investment for a politician, a celebrity, an academic, or a journalist, by letting him take out inexpensive insurance against a politically incorrect slip of the tongue. Donald Sterling almost achieved exemption by his donations to Democratic candidates and the NAACP and his trial-lawyer billions; he lost it by keeping his ossified Republican registration while being an old, sick white guy who said the sort of reprehensible racist things that one hears sometimes in bits and pieces from some NBA players.

So, in medieval fashion, liberalism serves as a powerful psychological crutch: You can be noble in the abstract to assuage worries of not being so at all in the concrete. It adds a hip flourish to the otherwise mundane pursuit of power, lucre, and influence that plays out on the golf course, at the Malibu party, in front-row seats at NBA games, or in the tony Martha’s Vineyard summer home. About three decades ago, sipping a fine wine at a Napa bed and breakfast, or getting the right Italian-granite and teak flooring, became a force multiplier of being loudly liberal.

If a liberal has a really nice Chevy Chase estate or Upper West Side brownstone or Tahoe summer home, it is important to sound all the more liberal. Or maybe it is just the opposite: You cannot sound credibly liberal unless you first have the correct liberal address and square footage. The joke is on us. Having lots of stuff and lots of money, while deriding the system that provides it, is perverse, but perverse in a postmodern sense: You fools love the free market, where you didn’t do too well; we whose parents or selves did very well in it don’t like it all that much. How postmodern — like guffawing that lots of smoke came out of that Gulfstream ride, or lecturing about inequality from Rancho Mirage or the back nine at Augusta.

We are told that the Kennedys, the Pelosis, the Kerrys, and others like them are noble because they vote against their class interests. But they really do not; they vote for them. Liberalism is now the domain of the elite, and antithetical to the aspirations of the upper middle class that lacks the capital and tastes of the 0.1 percent. The higher the taxes, the more numerous the regulations, the greater the redistribution, so all the more the elite liberal distances himself from those less cool who breathe down his neck, and the less guilty he feels about the growing divide between him and the poor he worries about, but never worries about enough to associate with.

Liberalism professes a leftwing ideology, but these days it has absolutely no effect on the lives of those who most vehemently embrace it. In other words, being liberal is professionally useful and psychologically better than Xanax, but we need not assume any more that it is a serious belief.

SOURCE

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The truth about a great American massacre

The Sacrament, a new suspense film closely based on the 1978 Jonestown massacre, illustrates the extremes to which leftism corrupts and the ends to which its philosophy can ultimately lead. The fictional movie turns out to be more accurate than many documentaries and news articles in its treatment of Jim Jones’s radical left-wing politics — a topic that is inescapable when (honestly) broaching the subject of Jonestown.

The 1978 massacre at Jonestown, Guyana, was the largest mass suicide in recorded history and the largest single-day mass killing of American civilians prior to the 9/11 attacks. Some 909 members of Jones’s “People’s Temple” cult were murdered or (in an unknown but probably large number of instances) were forced to commit suicide by drinking a poison-laced fruit drink. The popular phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” to describe herd mentalities originated with the Jonestown massacre.

Yet the Jonestown massacre itself is only dimly known to contemporary Americans, and the details of the event are often ignored by news and academia. It is, after all, an inconvenient story, in which a Communist community, led by a committed Marxist and ’60s Bay Area radical, came to a horrifying end.

Following the mass suicide, the mainstream media spun the story into one of religious fanaticism rather than leftist fanaticism. Had a right-winger persuaded followers to join him in retreating from society and building their own enclave, then held them prisoner and ultimately persuaded or forced them to take their own lives in some sort of revolutionary act, Jonestown would be taught more widely in schools than Abe Lincoln. Instead, when Jonestown is addressed, the Marxism of the People’s Temple is whitewashed and the story is packaged as one of a religious cult gone awry, or as a warning against the perils of organized religion.

This deliberate obfuscation happened immediately. As a contemporaneous (1978) Accuracy in Media report made clear, “The ideology of Jonestown was communism, not Christianity, but the media have obscured rather than explained that fact.”

AIM explained, “Our media have concealed, misrepresented, or downplayed the key element in the philosophy of Jim Jones,” rightly noting that Jones was, contrary to the misleading media reports, “a long-time dedicated Marxist communist who admired totalitarian communist dictatorships such as the Soviet Union and Cuba so much that he built one of his own in Guyana.”

Even weeks after the event, AIM found there was not a single article in the mainstream press that delved into Jones’s Marxist beliefs and connections. Instead, despite his views and his well-known admiration for Castro’s Cuba and the Soviet Union, reporters went out of their way to avoid labeling Jones a Communist. Some in the media, such as Walter Cronkite, even reported on Jones as a “fascist” — any “ist” as long as it wasn’t a Communist.

Yet Marxist he was, and so was his group. Jonestown life was nearly identical to that in Communist nations: Inhabitants were essentially prisoners (prohibited from leaving the settlement and punished if caught trying to leave); no private ownership of any goods was allowed; no communication with the outside world was allowed; hard labor in the fields was mandatory, as was attendance at Jones’s lengthy, Castro-like sermons; armed henchmen spied on and intimidated others who dared step out of line or complain; family structures were deliberately destroyed, with Jones encouraging adultery or assigning husbands and wives to separate living quarters; residents were poorly fed and overworked, while Jones himself lived in luxury; and, of course, in keeping with Jonestown’s Marxism, there was almost no religious observance, making the media’s description of Jonestown cultists as religious fanatics, over more than 30 years, all the more dishonest.

As for the enigmatic Reverend Jim Jones, who was he? The Indiana-born Jones, a former community organizer, was a committed Marxist since at least the age of 18. (His idol was Mao Tse-tung.) He believed himself to be the reincarnation of Lenin and dreamed of a socialist America. Jones began attending Communist-party meetings in 1951 and was soon a full-fledged radical.

An atheist, Jones cleverly realized, quite early on, that religion could serve as a vehicle to attract followers to his social-justice views and his “church.” Masquerading as a Christian preacher, he ultimately founded the People’s Temple, which grew substantially thanks to followers’ donations. Jones would later readily admit that he asked himself what would be the best method to spread Marxism and decided on doing so by infiltrating Christians and preaching Marxism disguised as religion. In a 1977 New York Times interview, his wife reportedly admitted that Jones was promoting Marxism by mobilizing people via religion, and that he referred to the Bible as a paper idol he must destroy.

Lest there be any doubt about Jones’s political views and those of his fellow Jonestown residents, he once boasted: “I believe we’re the purest Communists there are.” When a Soviet diplomat visited Jonestown, Jones gushed: “Thank you, comrade. For many years, we have let our sympathies be quite publicly known, that the United States government was not our mother but that the Soviet Union was our spiritual motherland.”

This was not a church — this was a Communist organization.

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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It is not possible to get leftists to feel embarrassment or shame

Typical of psychopaths

Various members of the White House staff, mostly fresh-faced twenty or thirty-something leftists, have been out there lately demonstrating that they have no capability to admit error or feel the slightest bit of shame in mistakes made by this administration.

They quite literally act as if they just don’t see the problem. “Dude, this was like two years ago.” Four people were killed, and around here, we all believed at the time that incompetence was covered up for political purposes. Every piece of information that comes out confirms it.

But leftists are now in permanent “deny, deny, deny” mode. Bill Clinton taught them well. If you never admit mistakes or problems, you effectively reduce your opponents to sputtering frustration. If you never show shame or embarrassment no matter how silly you look, it’s never necessary to admit that your opponents have any valid points whatsoever.

The only thing you need is the willing cooperation of the legacy media so that you get first shot at persuading the legions of rationally ignorant people who don’t much like politics. If the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN all refuse to call you on it, or do so way after the fact so that editors can just say “old news, move on”, then you’ll get away with it.

I’ve long thought that people such as this ass Veitor literally don’t see the mistakes. Their post-modern training allows them to believe that whatever they convince the media and the people to believe is the truth. It doesn’t matter what facts contradict it. It doesn’t matter what the negative long-term effects are. It doesn’t even matter if it dissolves the bonds that hold civil society together. By post-modern axioms, the consensus narrative is the truth. It must be advanced.

Post-modernists don’t feel shame because they don’t think they’re lying. You could probably hook up Veitor to a lie detector and get no indication whatever that he thinks he’s lying. He believes it’s impossible to lie in support of leftist policies and practitioners. Leftism is right by axiomatic certainty, so anything that supports it must be true and right.

No doubt such people would, if pressed hard enough, admit that there are other viewpoints and details that support them. But they would simply say that the human mind can be irrational, blah, blah, blah, and none of it matters. The idea that they might be irrational in support of collectivism never, ever enters their mind.

They are very much like fundamentalists who see the will of God in everything that happens. No religious fundamentalist is capable of feeling shame about believing in God, or shame in the outcomes of what they claim are God’s works. It’s just all part of a grand plan that we can’t see.

Similarly, leftists see the validation of leftism is everything. They are cognitively incapable of seeing the facts and realities that dispute leftism. They are incapable of believing that anyone who denies leftism is interacting in good faith.

They can only see the narrative that upholds leftism. Only that can be true. It doesn’t matter how preposterous it is to someone connected to reality. For them, leftism is reality.

But, as kennycan said in a comment over at Daily Pundit concerning the Ukraine spokesbint, some realities are more real than others. Ezra Klein’s “reality” that the federal government cannot run out of dollars is just a comfortable fantasy in support of leftism. It doesn’t even pass basic logical analysis. For example if that were true, there would never be any reason to collect taxes! If the government can’t run out of dollars, those taxes are not needed.

That’s obviously preposterous. Even more preposterous is the idea that an exponential curve can continue its natural shape indefinitely. As Herb Stein said, what can’t go on forever will stop.

But, if leftists can use their post-modern approach to deny that Obamacare is a disaster and that Benghazi was a horrible, botched mistake that was covered up, or that the IRS is engaging in politically targeted harassment, then why should we believe they will be any different when the debt mountain collapses? They will come up with some narrative that blames Republicans for talking bad about the debt and spooking the financial markets, or whatever.

Using the “never let a crisis go to waste” mentality, they’ll demand that the rich have to just give up everything they own for the sake of society – why do you think they’re pounding so hard right now on the income inequality thing? They’re setting the stage to have options to advance leftism, no matter what happens.

This explains why arguing with them is fruitless. Remember the conversational dictum that you don’t discuss religion in polite company? That is what you are doing when you discuss collectivism with a leftist. (Though their concept of politeness is pretty far degraded from mine.)

Make your case to the muddled middle if you must, but trying to convince a leftist that he has to give up his post-modern, collectivist religion is no more likely to succeed than trying to convince a fundamentalist that his wife’s death in a car accident is evidence of either a cruel God or that God had nothing to do with it. They both have constructed elaborate mental models of how the world satisfies their religion, and there is no talking them out of it.

SOURCE

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Benghazi. Again. Still.

I am not generally a conspiracy believer, but last week, as the result of a Freedom of Information action by Judicial Watch -- a conservative legal organization -- at least one email was released that directly linked the White House to the immediate reaction to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the American Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The Benghazi attacks took place on September 11, 2012. The Obama Administration's first response -- and it was a significant response -- was that the attack on the American compound in Benghazi was a reaction by "extremists" to a video that had been released that Muslims felt mocked the Prophet Mohammed.

According to the Los Angeles Times: The email, sent by Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security advisor, help prepare Susan Rice, for a round of interviews on Sunday TV talk shows...He urged Rice "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."

Susan Rice, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, went on the shows to make that exact point: That the attack was spontaneous and, therefore, neither the State Department nor the Defense Department were in a position to offer aid to those under attack.

According to the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact.com, that was inaccurate. According to a posting on its website yesterday: "In a series of interviews on the Sunday news shows in 2012, Rice stressed that the violence was a reaction to an anti-Muslim Internet video and not part of an organized terrorist assault."

In spite of Cokie Roberts' attempts to bail out Susan Rice on ABC's This Week, on the issue of the video being the catalyst, Politicfact.com says that when Roberts said: "Rice stressed protests related to the anti-Muslim video and downplayed suggestions that the attacks were planned."

Politifact.com stated that claim was "mostly false" because Rice used the word "extremists" - suggesting these were spontaneous demonstrators - and not "terrorists" which would have suggested a planned attack - on that September 11.

This point was at issue during the October 16, 2012 President debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney when Obama asked debate moderator, Candy Crowley, whether the Administration had said terrorists had been involved.

She said, from the moderator position, that it had use the word "terrorists", but months later, on her CNN Sunday show she said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack the Administration had not blamed it on terrorists, that only 17 days later did they admit it was a terrorist attack.

White House press secretary Jay Carney tried to deflect attention from the newly released email by saying Ben Rhodes' note was not specifically about Benghazi but was about the broader protests that were taking place across the Middle East at the time.

That, in spite of the fact that, according to the Real Clear Politics, ABC's Jonathon Karl sparred with Carney over the impact of this email. At one point, Karl asked:

"Ambassador Rice went on those shows, and she said that the attack in Benghazi was rooted in protests over an Internet video. We now know that that was not true, that, in fact, former [CIA] Director Morell just testified last month that quote, "when she talked about the video, my reaction was, that's not something the analysts have attributed this attack to."

From the transcript of the White House briefing:

KARL: Why did it take a court case for you to release this - (inaudible) -

MR. CARNEY: Jon, I can say it again and again, and I know you can keep asking again and again. This document was not about Benghazi.

KARL: It was her prep for the - for the Sunday shows.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) has announced his intention to bring to the House floor a resolution to form a select committee - bi-partisan - to look into - a throwback to the Watergate hearings - what members of the Obama Administration knew and when they knew it.

I am not a conspiracy guy, but the White House has some explaining to do and all the bluster by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) will not change that fact.

SOURCE

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Why Occupational Licensing Is Unjust, Unneeded, and Increases Income Inequality

Employment gives people earned satisfaction and upward mobility. It can be especially fulfilling when a person is employed in their preferred field. But government policies often deprive some people of these benefits by establishing artificial barriers to employment.

One such barrier is occupational licensure that prohibits employment in a specific occupation unless a would-be worker obtains government permission by first satisfying various licensing requirements. These requirements are typically enacted in the name of “protecting public health and safety,” but their true purpose is to stifle competition from aspiring workers and businesses.

The common perception is that occupational licenses are required primarily of doctors, dentists, nurses, and other high-skill occupations where an unqualified practitioner could do serious harm to a customer. But many government licenses are required of relatively low-skill jobs, and these requirements eliminate the bottom rungs of the economic ladder for many poor and less-educated people.

The Institute for Justice examined licensing requirements for 102 low- and moderate-income occupations such as barber, florist, makeup artist, massage therapist, preschool teacher, shampooer, and tree trimmer in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The report found that five of the six states that impose the heaviest licensing burdens in the country are in the West (see the graphic below on the 20 worst states). Consider, for example, the nation’s most populous state of California, ranked second worst.

California licenses 62 of the 102 occupations studied—the 3rd highest. The average state licenses 43 of the occupations.

California charges its aspiring workers an average fee of $300 in the occupations it licenses, and imposes an average education-and-experience requirement of 549 days. Would-be workers must also pass one exam in the licensed occupations. The average state requires $203 in fees and 307 days in education and experience.

A year and a half of education/training, $300 in license fees, and one passed test might not sound like a heavy burden in California, but to a poorer or less-educated person these can be roadblocks to entry into their preferred field. Time spent in education is typically time spent not earning income, so the opportunity cost of the education requirements alone, in terms of foregone income, can be prohibitively expensive.

The report also found that California:

Is one of only a few states that license tree trimmers, landscape workers, dietetic technicians, psychiatric aides, still machine setters, funeral attendants, dental assistants, and farm labor contractors.

Requires tree trimmers and landscape contractors to hold a contractor’s license, requiring four years of training—the most burdensome requirements in the nation for those jobs.

Imposes four years of education-and-experience requirements with fees and examinations on would-be construction workers. Many states either require no education or experience or do not license this occupation at all.

Is the only state besides Florida to require farm labor contractors to pass a test.

Has the longest education-and-training requirement—a full two years—for teachers’ assistants.

California’s heavy licensure burdens make it harder for people to get hired or start new businesses that create jobs. The barriers are especially harmful to poorer people aspiring to climb out of poverty, those with less education, and minorities. People with means and education are little affected by licensure rules, while the poor and minorities can be shut out of entry points into the job market. This is unjust and regressive.

People have strong incentives to obtain the education they need to be qualified for employment in their preferred field. Businesses have strong incentives to screen prospective employees for minimum qualifications and to provide needed on-the-job training for employees. Professional and occupational associations often maintain certification standards. Customers often share bad experiences through word of mouth and social media. They also have strong incentives, encouraged by personal injury lawyers, to sue if they are damaged. These multiple layers provide sufficient protection of “public health and safety.” Government licensure is unneeded.

The real reason for government licensure is to artificially restrict entry into occupations to increase the wages of current practitioners. In the 1950s, one out of 20 U.S. workers were required to obtain a government license. Today that number is nearly one out of every three workers, according to economists Morris Kleiner and Alan Krueger.

Licensure increases the wages of current practitioners by 15 percent by erecting barriers to outside entrants. And these barriers disproportionately exclude the poor from jobs. Occupational licensing requirements, therefore, tend to artificially increase income inequality—a hot topic among progressives these days.

Lawmakers should eliminate occupational licensing requirements, which harm people of modest means the most.

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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French Islamic Congress Sinks into Anti-Semitic Hate Fest

In some deep corner of hell, Hitler is smiling.  One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Muslims gathered in Paris to attend the Union of Islamic Organization’s Thirty First Congress. It was advertised as a gathering about immigration, assimilation, and culture, but it soon descended into an anti-Semitic hate fest.

When the “Jew” was cast into the convention’s spotlight, the crowd was whipped into frenzy with as much emotion as Albert Speer could have ignited from his Nazi rallies orchestrated with cascading lights and burning torches. The atrocities in Syria, the bloodbaths in the streets of Cairo, the barbaric behavior of Boko Haram in Nigeria, and all the evil and wanton cruelty in the Islamic world that daily leap out at us from television, print, and the Internet, all of this was explained as being guided by an invisible hand, the Jew.

Hatred is the great unifier of mass movements. Hitler dressed millions of compliant Germans in uniforms and marched them to their deaths to fight the international Jew. He convinced the Germans they were Aryan superman. The ideal version of which was blond, tall, and slim.  So, consider, here was Hitler with dark hair; Goering  who was morbidly obese; and Goebbels who was a dwarf, all  preaching the genetic virtue of the blond, slim, and tall Aryan superman. And the incongruity escaped mass detection because hatred is also the enemy of rational thought.

In Paris, Hani Ramadan (brother of Tariq) took his place in the pantheon of Jew haters while spewing the irrational to an overly enthusiastic audience, who suspended disbelief. Does any rational human being believe that all the evil in the world, all the violence and barbarism in the imploding Islamic world, and all the backwardness of Islam is due to the all powerful Jew, who is clinging to a sliver of land the size of Rhode Island in a region that is one huge cesspool, whose peoples, like those meeting in Paris, are seeking eagerly to return to the seventh century?

Ramadan’s words, like Speer’s torchlight parades, echo manifestations of violence in the streets. Ilan Halimi, in 2006, was the first Jew killed in France since World War II for simply being a Jew. He was grotesquely tortured, beaten, set on fire, and left to die. His killers were Muslims steeped in anti-Semitism. Andrew Hussey, the British cultural biographer and expert on France, investigated Halimi’s murder and found that people in the Muslim neighborhood where he had been held knew where he was. Yet, they chose to do nothing, even finding convenient justification for the kidnapping because Halimi was Jewish.

Halimi was not the last Jew to die in France because he was Jewish. In 2012, a rabbi and two children were slaughtered in Toulouse as part of a hate crime. Again the murderer was Muslim, and elements of the Muslim community have not only justified in the crime; they cheered it.

Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, the Muslim French comedian, who is said to be the progenitor of the popular reverse Nazi salute, the quenelle, is obsessed with making Holocaust denial -- a crime in France -- mainstream. Dieudonne, of African origin, apparently is ignorant of the special hatred the Nazis held for blacks, whom they considered animals.

Anti-Semitism, embedded in the pages of French history, has taken on new life with the vast immigration of Muslims. A Jew can no longer go out on the streets of Paris dressed like a Jew. Europe’s largest Jewish community is faced with whether to remain amid the rising Islamic-fueled hatred or leave. The numbers that are leaving increase from year to year. French Jews buy second homes in Tel Aviv as a safety valve. And French Hasids have moved entire congregations to Brooklyn.

“If we do not stop these words that kill and that tear apart our society, there will be other Ilan Halimis,” former French Interior Minister Manuel Valls warned. Of course, as Hani Ramadan has shown, the words will not stop, and they will be received with the same passion that Albert Speer was able to choreograph at a torchlight ceremony in Nazi Germany.

Words do kill where there is a clear and present danger. They just need time and opportunity to incubate. One hundred and fifty thousand Muslims in their hate-fest frenzy are the creators of France’s future brown shirts.

SOURCE

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Poverty, not inequality, is the source of (some) social ills

By Shikha Dalmia

Conservatives are upset that Pope Francis' recent tweet “inequality is the root of social evil” was meant as a nod to French economist Thomas Piketty's 500-plus page controversial bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which warns that Western capitalist countries are headed for ever-widening inequality.

That the Pope is on Piketty's side is hardly a revelation given that he has previously blamed “unfettered” capitalism for perpetuating oppression, tyranny and every other ill on God's great planet. But he was wrong then, and wrong now.
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Setting aside the irony that this sweeping condemnation of inequality is being offered by the head of the most hierarchical organization in the world, there isn’t much empirical evidence for the Pope’s claims.

For example, the rap against rising inequality is that it slows economic growth and leads to bad health and social outcomes for the poor. But Harvard University’s Christopher Jencks found little impact of inequality on the poor’s standard of living, life expectancy, violent crime, political participation or even happiness.

Consumers in America, the most unequal of all Western countries, he found, “do better than their counterparts in other large democracies.”

Indeed, after looking for all the ills that liberals attribute to rising inequality in Western countries for over a decade, he has come up with so little that he has abandoned his book plans, he told New York Times' Eduardo Porter last week. (He feared headlines like, “Professor Doesn't Know What he is Talking About.”)

Jencks’ findings sound counterintuitive, but they aren’t. Why? Because the real issue is not inequality but poverty: If the rising income gap between the rich and the poor stemmed from the poor losing ground, Jencks would have found the dreaded ill effects. But even Piketty doesn’t claim that the poor are getting poorer in America or the West – only that the rich are getting richer faster. He expects this trend to grow because advanced capitalist economies offer bigger returns on capital investments (rich people's main asset) over labor (poor people’s main asset).

But even if inequality due to the rising income of the rich doesn’t affect economic and social outcomes of the poor, it is still possible that it is inherently corrupting for society. That’s because rich people can be arrogant jerks. Being vastly better off makes them feel that they are better: smarter, more talented, more virtuous and therefore more entitled. Such attitudes erode social bonds and trust.

Indeed, research by University of California’s Paul Piff found just that last year. He conducted lab experiments in which rich people consistently demonstrated an “empathy gap.” Even when their wealth resulted from pure chance, they became less generous and ethical.

That might be true. But my experience with rich people in a rich country like America and rich people in a poor country like my native India suggests that India’s rich are bigger jerks than America’s on all those counts. Whereas in America, expensive cars and designer clothes define a rich person’s style, in India they define his status and worth. India’s wealthy classes are far likelier to blame not the system and its lack of opportunities for rampant poverty, but the poor themselves. Conversely, they are more likely to attribute their success to their own superiority, not good fortune.

Why?

Because the scarcity of wealth elevates its social importance, making it a far more important metric for judging people. Since abject poverty has been more or less eliminated in America, wealth itself has become something of a lifestyle choice. Plenty of Americans opt for modest lifestyles not because they are losers; it’s because they cherish some other value -- leisure or family time or intellectual/artistic pursuits -- over extra income.

This undermines the notion that wealth is the sole measure of success, tempering the pathologies of wealth. This is one reason why America’s rich are far more apologetic – and less flamboyant – than their more in-your-face Indian counterparts.

All of this suggests that the Pope needs to bear in mind that not all inequalities are equal: Inequality that stems from prosperity isn't nearly as big a problem as that resulting from poverty. Wealth, paradoxically, is its own cure.

SOURCE

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DOJ's 'Operation Choke Point' May Be Root of Porn Star Bank Account Closings

Despite being in good financial standing, adult film performers and others in the porn industry have had bank accounts abruptly terminated—and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may have had something to do with it.

Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included payday lenders, ammunition sales, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia, and online gambling sites.

"Operation Chokepoint is flooding payments companies that provide processing service to those industries with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands," wrote Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, at The Hill.

    "The theory behind this enforcement program has superficial logic: increase the legal and compliance costs of serving certain disfavored merchant categories, and payments companies will simply stop providing service to such merchants. And it’s working—payments companies across the country are cutting off service to categories of merchants that—although providing a legal service—are creating the potential for significant financial and reputational harm as law enforcement publicizes its activities.

    Thus far, payday lenders have been the most frequent target. ... And if payday lenders are today’s target–what category will be next and who makes that decision?"

I'm not sure who made the decision, but it seems the next big targeted category is the adult film industry. Last week, adult film actress Teagan Presley and an unknown number of others in the porn industry received notices that their Chase Bank accounts were being abruptly terminated.

Layton Benton/TwitterLayton Benton/Twitter"When Presley went to the bank in person to ask why, she was told it’s because she’s considered 'high risk,'" according to VICE News. VICE's Mary O'Hara was the first to note a likely link between the porn bank account closings and Operation Choke Point. The DOJ did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

For years, various government initiatives have been aimed at reaching the "unbanked" and "underbanked." Federal officials claim to want to help these individuals avoid high fees and other downsides of nontraditional financial services, but it's hard not to suspect these efforts have at least as much to do with wanting a record of everyone's financial goings-on. If the unbanked were such a real concern, why would federal agencies be simultaneously encouraging banks to drop more customers?

Targeting porn performers or not, Operation Choke Point represents an incredible abuse of regulatory power. In a recent American Banker op-ed, former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman William M. Isaac called it "a direct assault on the democratic system and free-market economy."

In a March 2013 hearing before a Senate Banking subcommittee, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) pointed out the obvious: that DOJ has "no statutory authority" to be doing this. But why bother with statutory authority when you can just secretly strong-arm highly regulated businesses into doing what you want? I've never been much of a cryptocurrency evangelist myself, but I'm beginning to come around...

SOURCE

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The prison door keeps revolving

by Jeff Jacoby

Longer sentences are the only thing that reduces crime

THE UNITED STATES jails more prisoners than any nation on earth — about 2.3 million, or more than 1 percent of all American adults. Our gigantic penal system is regularly characterized as a national disgrace. I've applied the label myself.

Plainly there is something deeply disquieting about a democratic superpower locking up so many people that 25 percent of the world's reported prisoners are housed in US cells. How can a country with an incarceration rate of 716 inmates per 100,000 residents, roughly five times the global average, think of itself as "The Land of the Free?"

Yet whether America's vast prison population really represents such a scandalous failure depends on what prison is supposed to do. In that light, consider a trove of data released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the US Department of Justice.

In the first major federal study of recidivism since 1994, BJS statisticians tracked nearly 405,000 inmates in 30 states who were released from prison in 2005. Within six months, 28 percent of those freed prisoners had been arrested for a new crime. After three years, 68 percent had been arrested. By the end of the five years (the period covered by the study), the percentage had grown to a whopping 77 percent.

The report breaks down these new crimes by category. Five years after regaining their freedom, 29 percent of the prisoners had been arrested for a violent offense, 38 percent for a property crime, 39 percent for a drug offense, and 58 percent for public-order offenses. (Many released inmates were arrested on multiple charges.) Only 23 states could provide researchers with complete data on inmates who returned to prison; but among the released prisoners in those states, more than half — 55 percent — ended up behind bars once more.

The Justice Department's earlier recidivism study, though organized and presented differently, came to similar findings. It found that 67 percent of former inmates released from prisons in just 15 states had been rearrested for at least one serious new crime within three years. Those included, the bureau noted, "2,900 new homicides, 2,400 new kidnappings, 2,400 rapes, 3,200 other sexual assaults, 21,200 robberies, 54,600 assaults, and nearly 13,900 other violent crimes."

In April 2011, meanwhile, the Pew Center on the States issued its own report on recidivism. Its conclusion: "More than four out of 10 adult American offenders … return to prison within three years of their release."

Such recidivism rates are terrible. It is heartbreaking and alarming that so many criminal offenders emerge from prison only too ready to offend again. Too many inmates come out hardened and more antisocial than they went in. For decades, scholars, policy makers, social workers, and public-safety experts have searched for the holy grail of rehabilitation and effective sentencing that would give us a more humane corrections network — one less congested, less expensive, less unfair, and less of a revolving door for the addicted and the unstable.

The problem with holy grails is that they are more easily sought than found. Bill Keller of The New York Times recently described a range of seemingly promising strategies for addressing what has become "the hottest subject in criminal justice," the US system of mass incarceration. Among them: Easing mandatory-minimum sentences and three-strikes laws. Diverting nonviolent drug offenders to specialized courts focused on treatment. Counseling for inmates about to be paroled. Repeal of rules that bar felons from getting many kinds of occupational licences.

But would they work? Prison reform and rehabilitation programs have been earnestly advanced for decades, but that holy grail remains elusive — and recidivism remains sky-high. American sociologist Robert Martinson made waves 40 years ago with an influential essay that concluded: "With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism." Decades later, reformers are still trying to figure out what works.

Prison is awful, there's no question about it. It doesn't turn criminals into model citizens. It can't be expected to cure dysfunction whose roots go back to a broken home or a lousy school.

But one thing we know prison can do: It can isolate criminals from society, and thereby make society safer. In the 1980s we began locking up more convicts for longer terms. Now we have the largest prison population on earth — and crime rates at 30-year lows. When it comes to crime and punishment, there's always a trade-off. At least until we find that holy grail.

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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