Democrats Overplay Their Hand With Extreme DACA Demands 

The current immigration debate is surreal, worthy of a chapter in a Lewis Carrol novel, where logic is turned upside down and words have no meaning whatsoever because they mean what their utterers want them to mean in that moment.

The current crisis du jour is the pending end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as “DACA,” through which Barack Obama granted protection against deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.

In 2010, with Democrats firmly in control of Congress, Obama faced immense pressure to push amnesty for millions of illegals. At first, Obama rightly recognized the limits of his power, stating, “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” In March 2011, he reiterated that position, saying, “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” In 2012, desperate for Hispanic voters to bail him out at the ballot box, Obama did an about-face and announced the implementation of the DACA program.

Of course, Democrats never allow the truth to ruin a political narrative, so despite Obama’s confession that DACA is unconstitutional, and despite the courts concurring, Democrats now claim President Donald Trump is a heartless racist for ending a program that Obama had no right to implement. And two activist judges have issued orders to block Trump’s move.

In actuality, Trump is being far more compassionate than the law requires. In exchange for securing the border and ending chain migration and the visa lottery, Trump is offering to grant not only amnesty but a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegals — nearly three times more than signed up for Obama’s DACA program.

Such generosity has been met with extreme demands by Democrats: amnesty without border security, and a continuation of chain migration, further exploding the number of illegals entering the U.S.

There is zero legal obligation for the U.S. to grant amnesty to any illegals, and even the claim of a moral obligation is tenuous at best. The blame lies solely with the parents of the illegals who were brought here as children in direct defiance of U.S. immigration laws.

Regardless, because Americans are a compassionate people, there is widespread agreement that those illegal alien children who are truly here through no fault of their own, and who have known no other country, should be allowed to stay. Even Numbers USA, which advocates for strict limits on immigration, supports giving the so-called “Dreamers” legal status.

It is important to delineate between the “Dreamers” under DACA and what might be called “DACA-plus.” The DACA recipients took advantage of Obama’s (illegal) program and applied for the deferral, paid fees and were issued work permits that allowed them to be hired by American employers. There were about 800,000 who took advantage of the program, minus the approximately 110,000 who were deported for crimes, or failed to renew their green cards, or married U.S. citizens. These are the people Americans support allowing to stay.

Not good enough, say Democrats. They cynically shut down the government last month to pressure Republicans to capitulate to their demands to expand the amnesty pool to include illegals who came here late in their teens, who were not born here, and for whom America is not their only home. It was a showdown they lost, but it was a revealing moment.

What is particularly galling to many Americans is to have their compassion rewarded with contempt and ingratitude. The job of the American government is first and foremost to protect the rights and interests of American citizens. As President Trump stated in his State of the Union Address, “My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans, to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream. … Because Americans are dreamers, too.”

Democrats are overplaying their hand, and it will come back to bite them. Nothing will erode the goodwill of the American people like being told that their kindness is not only owed to the illegals who broke our laws but that it is insufficient.

No other nation takes in as many immigrants as the United States. No other nation treats them as well as we do. Not only have we allowed them to stay, we have spent tens of billions of dollars feeding, housing and educating them.

Compare that to Mexico, home to many of these illegals. Mexico is in the process of a harsh crackdown on illegals coming up through Central America. In Mexico, instead of access to welfare programs and education, illegals are rounded up in police raids, imprisoned, beaten and often tortured.

America’s current situation is untenable. Our immigration laws must be reformed to deal with those here and those who want to come here. But in doing so, Americans and their interests should come first. Not one single immigrant or illegal alien has a “right” to come to America. Those allowed to stay do so out of the kindness of the American people.

And limiting immigration to those who truly love America, who want to embrace our history and culture, who promise to obey our laws, and who will be a net gain for our country is not an unreasonable demand.

SOURCE

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Trump proposes cutting all federal funds for NPR, PBS

The 2019 federal budget that the White House unveiled Monday again proposes cutting all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funnels money to NPR and PBS -- a potential move that the CPB president quickly slammed.

In a statement, President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Patricia Harrison excoriated the proposal, suggesting it might even lead to fatalities.

“Americans place great value on having universal access to public media’s educational and informational programming and services, provided commercial free and free of charge,” Harrison said in a statement Monday.

“Since there is no viable substitute for federal funding that would ensure this valued service continues, the elimination of federal funding to CPB would at first devastate, and then ultimately destroy public media’s ability to provide early childhood content, life-saving emergency alerts, and public affairs programs," the statement continued.

But the idea must win the approval of a skeptical Congress to become reality. Just last year, the White House made a similar proposal to defund the CPB, although Congress effectively ignored the request.

"The Budget proposes to eliminate Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) over a two year period," the 2019 proposal states.

Republicans have long suggested that PBS and NPR, which some politicians and commentators say are left-leaning and partisan, should not receive federal funds.

But the Trump budget, rather than raising the issue of bias, simply asserts that the money is not necessary.

"CPB funding comprises about 15 percent of the total amount spent on public broadcasting, with the remainder coming from non-Federal sources," the propsal says, under a section titled "Justification."

"This private fundraising has proven durable, negating the need for continued Federal subsidies," the proposal continues, adding that NPR and PBS could make up the shortfall by "increasing revenues from corporate sponsors, foundations, and members."

SOURCE

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Love Trumps Hate? Media Swoon Over Kim's Murderous Sister

Some of you may recall many years ago when CNN founder Ted Turner made some cringe-inducing bromides about North Korea. In 2005, he portrayed the murderous regime of Kim Jong-il — the father of current madman Kim Jong-un — as fairly typical and not altogether lacking human decency. He deliriously pontificated: "I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. ... I looked them right in the eyes. And they looked like they meant the truth."

In reference to Kim, he stated, "He didn't look too much different than most other people." He added, "I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars, but ... I didn't see any brutality." And the Non Compos Mentis gold medal goes to...

Fast forward to today, and Turner's impaired perception of North Korea is no different from what the Leftmedia despicably showed during Friday night's Olympic Games opening ceremony. In fact, the Olympics were quickly tarnished by Trump Derangement Syndrome. Vice President Mike Pence, who was on hand for the ceremony, was eviscerated for his refusal to overlook North Korea's abhorrent and tyrannical dictatorship. North and South Korea had recently — and no doubt apprehensively — agreed to show harmony at the Olympics, such as processing together for the opening ceremony and sporting a joint women's hockey team. That's their prerogative, and everyone hopes that something good can come out of it.

But the U.S. certainly shouldn't be shamed for its cautionary approach to the Koreas' decision and the inevitable outcome. According to The New York Times, "Mr. Pence drew the greatest reaction for where he did not appear: most pointedly, at a dinner [South Korean President] Moon [Jae-in] hosted before the opening ceremony. That meant that he avoided spending much time with the North Korean delegation, including Kim Yong-nam, the country's ceremonial head of state." Pence also refused to stand when the combined Korean delegate was accentuated during the opening ceremony. The Times wrote that critics view the snub as "disrespectful of the athletes and his host, Mr. Moon."

Naturally, the Left quickly pounced on Pence's stern but substantive conduct. This isn't surprising, but what's absolutely despicable is the length to which media outlets went to shown their disdain for the Trump administration — and love for the North Korean communists. Kim Jong-un did not attend the opening ceremonies but instead dispatched his sister, Kim Yo-jong. And she was quickly adopted as the new face of the anti-Trump "Resistance." CNN — the same network on which Ted Turner extolled the "virtues" of North Korea — ran with the atrocious headline, "Kim Jong Un's sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics." The New York Times wasn't much better, tweeting, "Without a word, only flashing smiles, Kim Jong-un's sister outflanked Vice President Mike Pence in diplomacy."

Reminder: North Korea is so impoverished that soldiers ransack farms for food while Kim and his family eat to their hearts' content and while precious money is diverted toward nuclear weapons proliferation. The state has executed hundreds of innocent people, including Kim's own brother. It's facilitated numerous global hacking campaigns. It's threatened time and time again to annihilate America and its allies. And some 300,000 people have defected since 1953. Who knows how many lost their lives trying or didn't try at all out of fear.

Complicit in all this? Kim's sister. And the Leftmedia want to slam Pence for not acquiescing to North Korean propaganda? Yo-jong is just as ruthless as Jong-un is. Together they have committed atrocities most Americans can't comprehend. And President Donald Trump knows that what North Korea wants is not at all reflected in what it's trying to sell at the Olympics. The media in the Age of Trump perpetually lecture us that "Love Trumps Hate." Unless, of course, they can prop up someone who literally hates all that lives and breathes and who can serve to promote the Left's equally hateful agenda of trying to destroy the Trump administration.

SOURCE

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Flushing Obama's Potty Policies

Stories of President Donald Trump's administration undoing the bankrupt policies of Barack Obama's White House are especially welcome news. The latest episode is the announcement from Betsy DeVos's Department of Education that it will no longer intervene in kerfuffles over public school bathroom use on behalf of transgender individuals.

In May 2016, Obama's school powder room police dictated that public schools must accommodate kids suffering from gender dysphoria — not by actually helping them, of course, but by forcing female students to share bathrooms and locker rooms with males claiming to be females. Federal funding always comes with strings attached. It was nothing less than part of a growing pattern of progressive child abuse.

The law in question says simply, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." The key word is "sex."

Education Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill explained, "Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity. In the case of bathrooms, however, longstanding regulations provide that separating facilities on the basis of sex is not a form of discrimination prohibited by Title IX." Indeed, words mean things, and leftists' constant redefinition of accepted terms is a big part of enacting their agenda. "Sex" does not mean gender "identity."

Unfortunately, what was enacted by a pen and undone by a pen can be re-enacted with a pen by the next Democrat administration — at least until the courts weigh in, and at least one case is headed to the Supreme Court. Regardless, leftists will by no means concede defeat in the bathroom wars. For the moment, however, there is some semblance of common sense coming from the Department of Education.

SOURCE

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

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

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Trump and House GOP push for stricter work requirements for welfare

Republicans, flying high after big victories on tax cuts and military spending increases, are turning their sights to shrinking the nation’s safety net, targeting food stamps, Medicaid, and other social service programs for poor Americans.

President Trump’s proposed budget released Monday reinforced the emerging theme, with cuts of $17 billion from the nation’s food stamp program, known as SNAP, next year and a claim that “millions of Americans are in a tragic state of dependency” on the federal government and should be funneled into the workforce.

Trump’s plan dovetails with proposals from House Republicans to reduce spending on entitlement programs, an initiative that House Speaker Paul Ryan recently branded as “workforce development.” GOP lawmakers acknowledge the phrase could make slashing eligibility more palatable to the broader public by focusing on the job requirements and job training aspects of their plans.

Presidential budgets are more likely to be used as door stops than as legislative blueprints in Congress, which jealously guards its power of the purse. But Trump’s support for cutting food stamps lends much-needed political momentum to House Republicans, who have had a hard time persuading the more moderate Senate to take on the safety net in an election year.

“You can tell [Trump] understands it, you can tell he gets it,” said Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who introduced a bill to stiffen job requirements for food stamps and other entitlement programs in the House over the summer.

$4.4 trillion budget proposal adds $7 trillion to deficits
The budget calls for steep cuts in domestic programs and entitlements, and large increases for the military.

The recent budget deal, passed late last week, increased federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two years and sparked Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to blast his fellow Republicans over their deficit hypocrisy. That criticism has also increased interest in cutting spending on entitlement programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.

The first piece of the plan is to tighten work requirements for food stamps in the new Farm Bill, which is likely to come up for a vote over the next six months.

Currently, unemployed SNAP recipients with minor children must look for work, but Jordan and other House Republicans would like to require them to work or job train 100 hours a month, unless their children are under 2 years old. (Those with children between 2 and 6 years old would need to work 80 hours per month.)

In his budget, Trump has also asked for a significant chunk of food stamp money to be delivered to the program’s 43 million recipients in the form of a box of food from the Department of Agriculture instead of money loaded on a debit card to be spent at the grocery store.

Jordan is also pushing to tighten work requirements for Medicaid and public housing. Trump’s budget would cut rental assistance for poor people by nearly $1 billion and calls on Congress to pass legislation to require able-bodied tenants in public housing to work. Trump also seeks $250 billion cuts in Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health coverage for low-income people and others.

The broad effort to cut entitlement spending and require that recipients work was aired earlier this month at the GOP lawmakers’ annual policy retreat at the tony Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, where the lawmakers at an hourlong workshop discussed mandating new work requirements as a condition for receiving aid.

There, Tarren Bragdon, the president of a think tank that pushes for welfare overhaul called the Foundation for Government Accountability, presented findings from a poll he commissioned that suggested more than 80 percent of Americans would support requiring people to work or volunteer in order to receive food stamps or public housing. Seventy-five percent backed work requirements for Medicaid.

“I think they were pleased by it,” Bragdon said of the lawmakers’ reaction to the poll. “We looked at some key demographics of our poll — how do suburban women feel about this? How do independents feel about this?”

The poll showed that while Americans are more skeptical about changing Medicare or Social Security, which benefit older Americans of all income levels, they are open to reforms to social safety net programs designed for the nation’s poor.

Ryan is also not pitching the program to fellow House Republicans as a way to cut costs, even though many GOP lawmakers say they are eager to find a way to reverse their deficit spending spree so far.

The tax overhaul and last week’s bipartisan spending deal have set the stage for a $1.2 trillion deficit next year, with annual deficits topping $1 trillion “indefinitely,” according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. (In 2014, the deficit was $483 billion.)

Any move to cut food stamps and other antipoverty programs would face fierce resistance from Democrats.

“President Trump may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but many Americans have to work long hours doing backbreaking work just to get by,” said Democratic Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who sits on the Agriculture Committee. “With the heartless cuts to SNAP — our country’s premier antihunger program — President Trump will be taking food out of the mouths of millions of families desperately working to escape poverty.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders called the budget “morally bankrupt.”

But Republicans in the House who are leading the effort describe the changes as morally necessary — a way to ensure that people in poverty have a chance to move out of it and climb up into the middle class. Ryan has talked about reinvesting the savings from people who stop collecting benefits into job training programs.

“What we have to do is change an entire culture of thinking so that the government is there to maybe be a bridge sometimes but it’s not there to be your eternal resting place,” Walker said.

Walker sees welfare changes as part of a “profamily agenda” that includes reducing the high number of incarcerated people in the country. He is expecting a “backlash” once Republicans begin tackling the issue but thinks Americans will eventually be sold on it.

“I can tell you historically that just because something isn’t popular from the start doesn’t mean that it’s not good for the American people,” Walker said. “We can talk government policy, we can talk the civil rights movement, we can talk a whole lot of things.”

Even if the House adopts Trump’s ideas on food stamps, it is unlikely that every Senate Republican plus nine Democrats would sign on as well, which is what it would take to pass the Senate. When President Clinton sought stiffer work requirements for temporary cash assistance for poor families in the 1990s, a Republican-led House crafted a bill that both parties backed.

“Unless people are going to be serious about sitting down and doing bipartisan entitlement reform we’re probably not going to make any progress,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania. “We could pass a bill every now and then out of the House, but nothing will get to the president’s desk.”

 SOURCE

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Venezuela’s economy is so bad, parents are leaving their children at orphanages

We were at Venezuela’s largest orphanage, just after lunch. The yard was an obstacle course of abandoned children. A little chunk of a boy, on the cusp of 3, sat on a play scooter. He was called El Gordo — the fat one. But when he was left here a few months ago, he was skin and bones.

He zoomed past a 3-year-old in a pink shirt with tiny flowers. “She doesn’t talk much,” one of the attendants said, tousling the girl’s curly hair. At least, not anymore. In September, her mother left her at a subway station with a bag of clothes and a note begging someone to feed the child.

Poverty and hunger rates are soaring as Venezuela’s economic crisis leaves store shelves empty of food, medicine, diapers and baby formula. Some parents can no longer bear it. They are doing the unthinkable.

“People can’t find food,” Salazar told me. “They can’t feed their children. They are giving them up not because they don’t love them but because they do.”

Ahead of my recent reporting trip to Venezuela, I’d heard that families were abandoning or surrendering children. Yet it was a challenge to actually meet the tiniest victims of this broken nation. My requests to enter orphanages run by the socialist government had gone unanswered. One child-protection official — warning of devastating conditions, including a lack of diapers — confided that such a visit would be “impossible.” Some privately run child crisis centers worried that granting access to a journalist could damage their delicate relations with the government.

My Venezuelan colleague Rachelle Krygier introduced me to Fundana — an imposing cement complex perched high on a hill in southeastern Caracas. Her family had founded the nonprofit orphanage and child crisis center in 1991, and her mother remains the head of its board and her aunt its president. Rachelle remembered volunteering there a decade ago, when she was a student and the children were almost exclusively cases of abuse or neglect.

There are no official statistics on how many children are abandoned or sent to orphanages and care homes by their parents for economic reasons. But interviews with officials at Fundana and nine other private and public organizations that manage children in crisis suggest that the cases number in the hundreds — or more — nationwide.

Fundana received about 144 requests to place children at its facility last year, up from about 24 in 2016, with the vast majority of the requests related to economic difficulties.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” said Angélica Pérez, a 32-year-old mother of three, near tears.

On a recent afternoon, she showed up at Fundana with her 3-year-old son and her two daughters, ages 5 and 14. She lost her job as a seamstress a few months ago. When her youngest came down with a severe skin condition in December and the public hospital had no medicine, she spent the last of her savings buying ointment from a pharmacy.

Her plan: leave the children at the center, where she knew they would be fed, so she could travel to neighboring Colombia to find work. She hoped she would eventually be able to take them back. Typically, children are allowed to stay at Fundana for six months to a year before being placed in foster care or put up for adoption.

“You don’t know what it’s like to see your children go hungry,” Pérez told me. “You have no idea. I feel like I’m responsible, like I’ve failed them. But I’ve tried everything. There is no work, and they just keep getting thinner.

“Tell me! What am I supposed to do?”

Venezuela descended into a deep recession in 2014, battered by a drop in global oil prices and years of economic mismanagement. The crisis has worsened in the past year. A study by the Catholic charity Caritas in poorer areas of four states found the percentage of children under 5 lacking adequate nutrition had jumped to 71 percent in December from 54 percent seven months earlier.

Venezuela’s child welfare ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the phenomenon of children being abandoned or put in orphanages because of the crisis. The socialist government provides free boxes of food to poor families once a month, although there have been delays as food costs have soared.

For years, Venezuela had a network of public institutions for vulnerable children — traditionally way stations for those needing temporary or long-term protection. But child-welfare workers say the institutions are collapsing, with some at risk of closing because of a shortage of funds and others critically lacking in resources.

So, increasingly, parents are leaving their children in the streets.

In the gritty Sucre district of Caracas, for instance, eight children were abandoned at hospitals and public spaces last year, up from four in 2016. In addition, officials there say they logged nine cases of voluntary abandonment for economic reasons at a child protective services center in the district in 2017, compared with none the previous year. A child-welfare official in El Libertador — one of the capital’s poorest areas — called the situation at public orphanages and temporary-care centers “catastrophic.”

“We have grave problems here,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals from the authoritarian government. “There’s definitely more abandoned children. It’s not just that there are more, but also their health conditions and nutrition are much worse. We can’t take care of them.”   

With the public system overwhelmed, the burden is increasingly falling on private facilities run by nonprofit organizations and charities.

Leonardo Rodríguez, who manages a network of 10 orphanages and care centers across the country, said that in the past, children placed with his centers were almost always from homes where they had suffered physical or mental abuse. But last year, the institutions fielded dozens of calls — as many as two per week — from desperate women seeking to give up their children so that they would be fed. Demand is so high that some of his facilities now have waiting lists.

To manage the surge in demand at Fundana, the organization opened a second facility in Caracas with the aid of private donors. But it still had to turn down dozens of requests to take in children. At Bambi House, Venezuela’s second-largest private orphanage, requests for placements surged about 30 percent last year, said Erika Pardo, its founder. Infants, once in high demand for adoption or foster placement, are also lingering longer in the organization’s care.

“Foster families are asking for older children because diapers and formula are either impossible to find or too expensive,” she said. The number of pregnant women seeking to put their children up for adoption is also jumping.

José Gregorio Hernández, owner of one of Venezuela’s main adoption agencies, Proadopcion, said that in 2017, his organization received 10 to 15 requests monthly from pregnant women seeking to give up their babies, compared with one or two requests per month in 2016. Overwhelmed, the organization had to turn down most of the women. It accepted 50 children in 2017 — up from 30 in 2016.

SOURCE

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

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

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Leftists are born unhappy

A reader has drawn to my attention a journal article from 2010 that suppports my contention that Leftists are born miseries. The author tries to put a leftist spin on it but the facts pretty well speak for themselves.  The abstract is below. I will add some comments at the foot of it

Political leanings vary with facial expression processing and psychosocial functioning 

Jacob M. Vigil

Abstract

Conservative, Republican sympathizers show heightened threat reactivity, but greater felt happiness than liberal, Democrat sympathizers. Recent evolutionary models interpret these findings in the context of broader perceptual and expressive proclivities for advertising cues of competency (Republicans) and trustworthiness (Democrats) to others, and in ways that facilitate the formation of distinct social networks, in coordination with individuals’ life histories.

Consistent with this perspective, I found that Republican sympathizers were more likely to report larger social networks and interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as expressing more threatening emotions as compared to Democrat sympathizers, who also reported greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction, and experiential hardships. The findings are discussed in the context of proximate and ultimate explanations of social cognition, relationship formation, and societal cohesion. Keywords evolution, group identity, neuroscience, political psychology, social cognition

SOURCE

So let us look at the findings and not the interpretations

Conservatives are happier.  That always comes out and Leftists hate it.  They claim that conservatives are maladjusted misfits but happy misfits is not a very persuasive notion.

"Threat reactivity"? A fancy way of saying conservatives are more cautious, which we already knew.

Conservatives have more friends.  "Laugh and the world laughs with you.  Cry and you cry alone"

Democrat sympathizers reported greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction, and experiential hardships.

My case rests:  Conservatives are the happy people. Leftists are the angry people.

These findings derive from a survey of students so are not authoritative by themselves but they do confirm what we see  in Leftist politics all the time.

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Apparently, white Americans should either feel ashamed, guilty or apologetic — simply for being white 

“Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements.” —American philosopher Eric Hoffer

Something repellently “uniting” is emerging from the more feverish fever swamps of progressive ideology: White Americans should either feel ashamed, guilty or apologetic — simply for being white.

That’s the premise behind “White Racism,” a course taught by professor Ted Thornhill at Florida Gulf Coast University. Thornhill believes a color-blind society is “a myth” that keeps both whites and misguided people of color “from recognizing the everyday realities that show the United States is white supremacist in nature.”

Unsurprisingly, Thornhill has a decidedly one-sided view of those who colonized America, insisting they “practiced all manner of inhumanity against non-whites,” including “genocide, slavery, murder, rape, torture, theft, chicanery, segregation, discrimination, intimidation, internment, humiliation and marginalization.”

That every group of human beings was guilty of all manner of inhumanity at various times in history? That Thornhill has a platform on a college campus and in the media to disseminate his twisted worldview, due to those same colonists establishing a republic where freedom of speech remains a bedrock principle? That they wrote a Declaration of Independence and Constitution establishing inalienable human rights that laid the groundwork for ending inhumanity best exemplified by slavery — slavery practiced by every ethnic group — at a cost of 360,000 lives? That this nation has gone even further, establishing affirmative action programs that continue redressing inequality, or the pernicious concept of disparate impact that presumes discrimination even where none is evident, based on nothing more than disproportionately negative impacts on protected classes of individuals?

Thornhill insists American is little more than a nation “comprised of laws, policies, practices, traditions and an accompanying ideology … that promotes the biological, intellectual and cultural superiority of whites to dominate other groups.”

What about non-white racism? Thornhill concedes non-whites can have “prejudices,” but racism accrues solely to whites because they are beneficiaries of “systemic privilege.”

Such mindless absolutism might surprise many whites whose systemic privilege consists of enduring decades of Rust Belt hopelessness — sometimes relieved by tuning into multi-millionaire black athletes taking a knee during the Star-Spangled Banner portion of an NFL football game. Yet for those who believe skin color is the sole arbiter of privilege, it is not surprising.

It’s not new, either. Critical Race Theory, a philosophy established by Harvard professor Derrick Bell, has long asserted that America is a permanently racist nation whose legal structures are invalid because they are designed to support white supremacy.

Meritocracy, equal opportunity, and colorblindness? Nothing more than illusory concepts used to maintain the racist status quo.

Another club in the assault on whiteness is “cultural appropriation,” as in the idea that the dominant culture inappropriately adopts or utilizes elements of a minority culture — with the attendant subtext that such appropriation is driven by colonial impulses, and an imbalance of power violating the “collective intellectual property rights” of the minority culture.

This separatism-on-steroids is another one-way street whereby certain aspects and/or manifestations of culture are reserved solely from minorities, even as those minorities are free to embrace any aspect of the dominant culture, absent similar recriminations for doing so.

And in a nation where progressive ideology far too often substitutes for a genuine education, such contemptible nonsense is becoming part of the classroom experience. “Social justice activists at a New York high school successfully shut down a production of ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ after a white student landed a lead role,” Fox News reports.

The protests began when Maddi Carroll, a black 17-year-old senior, quit the production as a result. “It shows you that theater wasn’t made for you,” she insisted. “And it shows you that, if you can’t get the parts that are written for you, what parts are you going to get?”

Perhaps the role of Angelica Schuyler, a white woman portrayed by 2016 Tony Award winning actress Renee Elise Goldsberry in “Hamilton,” the hit Broadway play where the nation’s white Founding Fathers were also played by minority actors.

Regardless, students banded together in a group called Students United Ithaca, and they wrote a letter that reveals how twisted their thinking has become. While they insisted the white student who landed the role “is a stellar actor, singer, and dancer” that “any stage, would be lucky to have” she is nonetheless the “epitome of whiteness.” Thus, casting her in this role is at best “cultural appropriation,” and at worst “whitewashing, a racist casting practice which has its roots in minstrelsy.”

The group doubled down on its Facebook page, posting a list of demands aimed at the Ithaca City School District. Two of them stood out. “STOP the racist and openly stated policy of ‘color blind’ casting in the ICSD,” stated one. “STOP ignoring and denying that you have created a white centered program run by white adults for the benefit of white children. White children should also be educated about interrupting these practices of White supremacy,” stated the other.

In other words, meritocracy be damned, along with anything else that doesn’t accord itself with progressivism’s racialist, bean-counting, cultural fiefdom worldview.

Moreover, when color-blindness is deemed racist, that worldview is plumbing Orwellian depths.

But, but, but… acting, singing and dancing talent is subjective and thus open to interpretation, right? “The U.S. Olympic Committee says it’s taking its most diverse team ever to a Winter Games, an impressive and deserved boast that requires a caveat of sorts,” The Washington Post reports. “Yes, USOC officials are pleased the team includes more African-Americans and Asian-Americans — and even the first two openly gay men — than recent winter squads. But they also realize this year’s U.S. Olympic team, not unlike those of most other nations gathering in Pyeongchang this week, is still overwhelmingly white.”

The paper added, “‘We’re not quite where we want to be,’ said Jason Thompson, the USOC’s director of diversity and inclusion. … ‘I think full-on inclusion has always been a priority of Team USA. I think everybody’s always felt it should represent every American.’”

One might be forgiven for assuming that full-on ability would be the priority for an Olympic team. Moreover, the notion that every American can’t be represented by any Olympian — utterly irrespective of ethnicity, sex or sexual orientation — reveals how obsessed the American Left is with identity politics.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” declared Martin Luther King in 1963.

Fifty-five years later, that dream is in danger of being exterminated by an American Left’s “common hatred” for America’s common culture. It is a common hatred that demands E Pluribus Unum give way to a hodgepodge of cultural fiefdoms where contempt for “the other” is the common currency, and where identity politics arrives at its most repugnant and virulent destination.

The destination where whiteness per se is tantamount to the Original Sin.

SOURCE

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A big audience for Peterson in Edmonton Feb. 11

The more they try to block him, the bigger his audiences get

Dr. Jordan Peterson’s every move sprouts another interview or article that sparks miles-long Twitter brawls and sharp YouTube comment section duels. The controversial clinical psychologist is on tour promoting his new self-help book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

His event, scheduled in Edmonton on the 11th, was declined by the Citadel on the grounds of his rhetoric not aligning with the theatre’s “mandate, values or vision statement,” which they further explained later.

His event was then moved to the Hyatt, which quickly sold out, and was rescheduled yet again to be held at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Centre in Sherwood Park, which has again, sold out.

SOURCE

Peterson tweeted:  "Finished my talk to a packed house of 750, 3x the size of the max audience at the canceled Citadel appearance, to a welcoming Alberta audience. Thanks Edmonton."

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For over a year we’ve heard…

A)Trump is unpopular.

B)Trump is not just unpopular, but historically unpopular.

C)Trump is the most unpopular president in his first year ever.

The latest respected Rasmussen poll was released on February 7th of last week. Trump was at 48% approval. That makes President Trump MORE popular than Obama at the exact same date of his presidency.

On Feb 7th, 2010 Obama was at 44% approval.

On Feb 7th, 2018 Trump was at 48% approval.

How is this possible? I thought Trump was universally hated? I thought he had the lowest approval ratings in history? Yet he’s four points more popular than Obama at the exact same time of his presidency.

If Trump is “historically unpopular” and he’s four points higher rated than Obama, what does that make Obama? But we never heard a word back then from the media.

By the way, by week's end Trump was even higher- at 49%.

More problems for the Democrats. The latest Quinnipiac Poll shows Americans now give Trump credit for the economy 48% to 41%.

The latest Real Clear Politics average of many respected polls shows Democrats have lost dramatic ground on the issues of economy, jobs, immigration and national security. The GOP now leads 45-36 on the economy, 43-37 on jobs, 46-33 on national security, and 43-37 on immigration. Blue wave? Sounds like a red tsunami to me.

SOURCE

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

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

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Who are Jordan Peterson’s followers?

Justin Murphy is a self-described Left-libertarian who has collected some statistics from Reddit which enable him to see who are the supporters of Peterson.  He does some analyses which I don't entirely agree with but it is clear that the most popular politician among Peterson supporters is Donald Trump, followed by Gary Johnson, the libertarian party candidate who many other libertarians dismissed as too Leftist (on gun control etc.)



So Murphy shows that there is a large silenced population and that Peterson has picked up the ones who are put off by Trump's very simplistic approach.  He sees both Peterson and Trump as having similar messages but with Peterson being the intellectual and impeccably scholarly representative of the same basic ideas.  And from Murphy's eigenvector analysis it seems clear that the suppressed ideas are on the whole simply traditional conservative ones

I wrote a book in 1974 under the title "Conservatism as heresy".  It seems that not much has changed since.  Excerpt only below


In many educated circles, support for Donald Trump is seen as somewhere between insane and evil, quite seriously. Yet, about 50% of the Americans who voted did so for him, so we know at least a non-trivial number of educated people voted for him. But who are they? I haven’t really had strong intuitions about this, and my sense is you just don’t really see or hear from educated and highly thoughtful Trump supporters. I’m aware this could definitely be “my bubble,” but I don’t think it’s just that. I think there exist thoughtful educated Trump supporters, but I think they are systematically unlikely to appear in mainstream culture.

But I have been watching closely the explosion of popularity enjoyed by academic psychologist Jordan Peterson, and it has seemed to me that his constituency might just be some of the educated Trumpians. It is also consistent with my “long-term mass suppression” thesis, because this helps to explain how a random academic psychologist achieved genuinely extraordinary, anomolous levels of fame, all of a sudden. It’s the same pattern with Trump (though I’m not, at all, equating the two individuals): a massive unexpected and rise-to-power indicating a massive reservoir of public interest in something that has hitherto been systematically under-supplied by the status quo.

As an ultralefty who is also 90% on board with Peterson’s key messages, I honestly did not expect this many of the Peterson disciples to be Trump supporters. I was thinking I’d find a sizable minority and say “Aha! A little evidence for my hypothesis.” But Trump is far and away the most favored candidate.

The reason this is important, in my view, is that Trump and Trump supporters are genuinely seen as unworthy of intellectually serious debate in progressive educated circles. But Peterson is an undeniable intellectual master of the most authentic kind. What this means is that genuinely educated progressives who are opposed to Trump need (if they are serious and sincere) to go through Peterson and his intellectual community. In other words, educated progressives cannot pretend there are no serious intellectual forces associated with Trump. There is at least one, and it’s the cluster of ideas Peterson has been working on for decades.

To be clear, I am not saying Peterson has caused support for Trump and I’m not saying Peterson himself supports Trump (I don’t know, but he generally avoids naïve blanket identifications.) I am just saying that, as far as I can tell, his perspective represents a major, public intellectual force that coincides with at least some vectors of support for Trump.

And the sizable minority of left libertarians makes sense to me (because that’s me, basically). So it’s interesting that left-libertarians are communicating thoughtfully in a community with many Trump supporters. I want to show this to all the left libertarian activists I know (who are very different than left libertarian people in general). To show them there is serious intellectual content in the new seeming “right-wing” ecology of ideas and figures

More HERE 

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From the 'Settled Science' Files: USDA Nutrition Guidelines Upside Down

New research finds that high carbohydrate intake is worse for one's health than a diet high in fats. 

Go ahead and put a slice of cheese and extra bacon on that burger. A recently published study in The Lancet calls into question the long-running nutritional guidelines advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) since its formation in 1960. The study, which followed 135,335 people in 18 countries on five continents, found that “high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality.” It was also concluded, “Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke.” The researchers suggest, “Dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.”

This research seems to corroborate a 2010 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that asserted, “There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease.”

Yet the USDA nutritional guidelines continue to promote the notion that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet is healthier. Meanwhile, the obesity problem in America has only been getting worse. Of course, government-recommended dietary guidelines on food consumption may not be the primary culprit for America’s obesity epidemic, as lower average activity levels since the 1980s may be the greater cause. But the point is that the science is not settled on this issue, even though the USDA has projected it as such for decades.

Might there be a lesson here for those who think “the science is settled” on global climate fluctuations?

SOURCE

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Our Infrastructure Is Not 'Crumbling'
   
One of the great myths of American politics, no matter who is president and no matter who runs Congress, is that our infrastructure is “crumbling.” Former President Barack Obama repeatedly warned us about our “crumbling infrastructure.” President Donald Trump now tells us that our infrastructure is “crumbling.” The next president is going to hatch a giant plan to fix our crumbling infrastructure as well, because most voters want to believe infrastructure is crumbling.

The infrastructure is not crumbling. Ask someone about infrastructure and his thoughts will probably wander to the worst pothole-infested road he traverses rather than the hundreds of roads he drives on that are perfectly safe and smooth. That’s human nature.

So “crumbling infrastructure” peddlers play on this concern by habitually agonizing over things like the impending outbreak of tragic bridge collapses that will kill thousands. They bring up tragedies like the 2007 disaster with the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis even though, according to federal investigators, the collapse was due to a design flaw rather than decaying infrastructure. Many outlets and politicians simply ignore the inconvenient fact that the rare fatality involving infrastructure typically has nothing to do with “crumbling” and everything to do with natural elements or human error.

In reality, the number of structurally deficient bridges, never high to begin with, has been dropping over the past 30 years despite all the hand-wringing. The overall number has fallen from over 22 percent in 1992 to under 10 percent in 2016. According to a Reuters analysis of those bridges, only 4 percent of those that carry significant traffic need repairs. Of the nation’s 1,200 busiest bridges, the number of those structurally deficient falls to under 2 percent — or fewer than 20 bridges in the entire country. And none of those bridges need repair to save them from collapse.

That has never stopped politicians from fearmongering, however. “Our roads and bridges are falling apart; our airports are in Third World condition,” Trump claimed during his 2016 campaign. Yet as The Heritage Foundation’s Michael Sargent points out, the percentage of airport runways deemed as poor has fallen from 4 percent in 2004 to 2 percent in 2016. And for the past 30 years, the number of “acceptable” or above roads has remained relatively consistent at approximately 85 percent.

Perhaps because they’re constantly being told that America’s roads are on the verge of disintegrating into dust, some voters aren’t aware that federal, state and local governments spent $416 billion on transportation and water infrastructure in 2014 — around the same 2.4 percent of gross domestic product they’ve been spending for decades. About $165 billion of that $416 billion, incidentally, was spent on highways. (This doesn’t count the bipartisan Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015, which added another $305 billion over five years.)

It’s also worth remembering that when liberals talk about infrastructure, they don’t necessarily mean roads or bridges or airports or water-processing plants. They mean expensive social engineering projects and Keynesian job-creation schemes. In 2017, Senate Democrats unveiled their own $1 trillion infrastructure plan, claiming the additional spending would create 15 million jobs over 10 years. Despite years of hearing otherwise, there is still no evidence that infrastructure bills create self-sustaining jobs — or any jobs, for that matter.

According to a 2010 Associated Press analysis, the first 10 months of Obama’s economic stimulus plan showed virtually no effect on local unemployment rates, which rose and fell regardless of money spent on infrastructure projects. It barely even helped construction jobs. What it did do was fund cronyistic ventures and debt-padding waste.

Around $90 billion of Obama’s infrastructure-heavy “stimulus” plan went to green energy companies (many of which are now in bankruptcy) rather than repairing bridges. Another $1.3 billion went to subsidize Amtrak rather than repairing the roads you actually drive on. Another $8 billion went to various other rail projects (with a priority on high-speed rail) rather than highways or byways or your local street.

Now, though one expects Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill to focus more on traditional projects, the case for the new spending is predicated on the same chilling and misleading rhetoric we’ve been hearing for years. Although still nebulous, the White House’s plan apparently features some attempt to reduce the regulatory burden that the private sector must wade through before gaining approval for building permits. This is a positive step considering the vast majority of infrastructure is still built by the private sector. This should be a goal of the administration with or without the massive infrastructure bill.

How we fund the infrastructure, and who builds these projects, is certainly a debate worth having. But it’s a debate worth having without ever using the word “crumbling.”

SOURCE

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Public Utility Avoids Fixing Damage by Paying Fancy Law Firm Triple the Money

To dodge its obligation, a state utility company paid a fancy law firm triple the amount of money required to fix damages caused by one of its trucks. It’s yet another example of government wasting taxpayer dollars, a senseless misuse of public funds that is all too common in government at all levels. It’s also a bizarre—and costly—struggle between one of the nation’s largest public power utilities and a small business owner whose security cameras captured the truck crushing the drainage system under the asphalt of her parking lot. The utility truck, which weighs nine tons, left a hole in the pavement and a broken drain pipe underground when it used the parking lot to turn around.

The case comes out of Phoenix Arizona where a single mother and respected professional is simply trying to get the parking lot of her chiropractic business fixed. The culprit is the Salt River Project (SRP), which has served central Arizona since 1903 and provides electricity to approximately 1 million customers in a 2,900-square-mile area, including most of metropolitan Phoenix. In addition to four officers and eight executive managers, SRP has more than 40 elected board members, directors and council members. The utility’s website describes it as a “community-based, not-for-profit organization”  that has adopted a “leaner, greener and even more customer-centric” strategy that meets customers’ needs. SRP assures the public that funds that it is committed to foundational values that have the best interest of the communities it serves.

SRP’s strategy in the Phoenix chiropractor case seems to contradict its promises and certainly cannot be considered in the best interest of the taxpayers who sustain it. The damage to the property is estimated to be $43,000, according to licensed experts hired by the chiropractor, Melody Jafari. She has spent about $20,000 trying to get the utility company to pay for the damage to her parking lot, including legal costs, an expert witness and temporary repairs to keep her business running. Rather than pay for the repairs, SRP has blown $129,000 so far to avoid taking responsibility. The public utility hired a multi-million-dollar national law firm called Jennings Strouss with offices in Phoenix, Peoria, Tucson and Washington D.C. The law firm boasts of leveraging its resources regionally and nationally and having a litigation department that stands as one of the most respected in the Southwest.

Jafari and SRP have been engaged in a tug of war since the incident occurred in early August 2015. The Phoenix area had just been hit with a fierce monsoon storm and power outages were occurring throughout the region. A utility truck was in the area tending to power lines that had been damaged by the storm, though none were in the vicinity of Jafari’s business. The SRP truck making rounds simply used the parking lot to turn around and that’s when the weight of the truck crushed the drainage system under the asphalt parking lot, leaving a large hole in the pavement and a broken drain pipe. Jafari has numerous security cameras monitoring her property and the entire incident was captured on video. When Jafari initially contacted SRP she says they seemed responsive and she was optimistic the utility would fix the damage. Instead, SRP chose to lawyer up and pay three times the cost of conducting the repairs on attorneys’ fees. Judicial Watch reached out to SRP through its media relations department but never heard back.

In the meantime, Jafari has been left to fend for herself. Her unbelievable years-long ordeal with the utility caught the attention of the local police labor counsel, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA), which is litigating on her behalf. PLEA’s attorney of four decades, Mike Napier, has partnered with Judicial Watch numerous times to address rule of law and conservative issues in the nation’s fifth-largest city and fastest growing county, Maricopa. Napier told Judicial Watch that back in December 2015 SRP offered to compensate Jafari $750 for a hot patch repair of the pavement, which doesn’t begin to cover the magnitude of the damage.

SOURCE

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

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

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Capitol Hill GOP Spending Like Obama Is Still President

I was not going to comment on this until I see what actually gets enacted but all the comments I have seen from others miss an important point. Obama and the Donks made an amazing discovery:  At least for the USA, you can spend all you like without raising taxes and nothing bad happens!  According to conventional economic theory, Obama & Co. should have caused a roaring inflation that made the greenback as worthless as the Venezuelan Bolivar.  It didn't happen.  Inflation remained within normal low bounds.

Why did it not happen?  There has been much scratching of heads about it among economists of both the Right and the Left and various theories have been put up.  I have put up attempted explanations myself.  But basically no-one knows.  It's a mystery on a par with the Holy Trinity.

And Trump has pushed the mystery even further. He is betting that you can actually CUT taxes and still spend as much as you like.  On form, he will almost certainly get away with it, if only because his spending will increase employment and hence tax revenue.

So, basically, while we seem to be in this happy state of suspension from reality, Trump and the GOP are saying "Let the good times roll.  Why should Obama have all the fun?  Let US get credit for looking after all sorts of special interests with all of this magic money".

Unless there's a whole new economic truth somewhere that we have not yet discovered, the whole show has got to come down to earth some time but when that will be nobody knows.  But Trump and the GOP are right to take advantage of our strange new fiscal state while they can.


In the aftermath of the 2010 Tea Party wave that returned Republicans to the majority in the House conservatives proposed a plan to reduce spending and balance the budget called “Cut, Cap and Balance.”

The plan would have cut and capped spending and brought the budget into balance after a period of time, and it federal debtwould have worked – except the Republican leaders in the House and Senate never gave it their support or a vote.

Instead they championed a plan worked out between Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid and Barack Obama that put spending caps in place through a process known as “sequestration” that placed most of the spending cuts on the defense budget.

Fast forward to 2018 and the three-day government shutdown over amnesty for illegal aliens that was a PR disaster for the Democrats.

Claiming to want to avoid another government shutdown, the Senate’s Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer announced a bipartisan deal to increase defense and domestic spending by roughly $300 billion over two years, according to administration and congressional sources quoted by Politico's Burgess Everett and John Bresnahan. The deal will also lift the debt ceiling through the election and include tens of billions of dollars in disaster aid.

Everett and Bresnahan report the agreement would increase defense spending this year by $80 billion and domestic spending by $63 billion beyond strict budget caps, according to a summary of the deal they obtained for POLITICO. Next year, defense spending would increase by $85 billion and domestic funding by $68 billion beyond the caps. The deal also includes $140 billion for defense and $20 billion for domestic in emergency spending over two years.

President Trump quickly announced his support tweeting, "The Budget Agreement today is so important for our great Military," he wrote. "It ends the dangerous sequester and gives Secretary Mattis what he needs to keep America Great. Republicans and Democrats must support our troops and support this Bill!" However, conservatives were equally quick to pan the Schumer – McConnel deal.

Our friends at The Club for Growth issued a statement saying, “…now that the BCA spending caps are busted under this deal yet again, it’s clear that McConnell and the GOP establishment want to speed up the big government freight train with the help of big spending liberals on the other side of the aisle. As if that’s not bad enough, this deal also includes $80+ billion in so-called disaster relief spending, cronyist tax extenders, an expansion of farm subsidies, and another suspension in the debt ceiling, conveniently timed to expire after the mid-term elections.”

Nowhere in this deal, the Club for Growth noted, are the $54 billion in spending cuts outlined in President Trump’s budget. Instead, the big government freight train is running out of control.

The deal ends sequestration caps on the Pentagon without acceding to Democratic demands for equal boosts to domestic spending, but it still raises spending by nearly $300 billion over the next two fiscal years.

That was a bridge too far for the Freedom Caucus reported Victor Morton of The Washington Times.

The principled limited government constitutional conservatives of the House Freedom Caucus tweeted Wednesday night that they officially oppose the budget deal struck by McConnell and Schumer earlier in the day.

“Official position: HFC opposes the caps deal. We support funding our troops, but growing the size of government by 13 percent is not what the voters sent us here to do,” the conservative group posted on Twitter.

The loss of the Caucus, which is believed to have a membership of almost 40 representatives, basically ensures the Senate deal cannot pass the House without significant support from House Democrats.

SOURCE

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Obsessed with Trump

Michael Reagan

You watch Fox News - "We love President Trump."

You watch MSNBC or CNN - "We hate President Trump."

Is there any other news going on in the world that isn't about Trump? I swear, if the World Trade Center had come down yesterday, the top story today in the mainstream media would be all about Donald Trump. What did he do wrong or not do? Say or not say?

While Trump and his daily reality TV show have become a profit center for the media, the rest of us can't even mention his name.

Trump has become a cuss word - "Trump you! Trump you and your whole family!"

I can remember when everybody in the media loved Trump before they hated Trump. CNN loved to have him on their air because he could be counted on to bring higher ratings.

Going back five, 10 or 15 years ago, when Trump was a celebrity billionaire golfer from New York, every TV network or cable channel courted him because they knew he'd drive up their audience numbers.

Now you have two angry Love Trump/Hate Trump camps holed up in their own media bunkers, talking only to their hardcore followers.

For me, it's sad to see that nobody is willing to have a fruitful conversation with the other side the way they did when my father was in Washington.

On Tuesday, when we marked my dad's 107th birthday at the Reagan Library, his chief of staff, James Baker III, reminded us how my father dealt with his opponents.

He never demeaned or degraded them or called them names. And even if they didn't agree with him politically, or were supporting some other Republican for president, they liked him personally.

Baker was a perfect example. My father hired him to be his chief of staff after he had run two tough presidential primary campaigns against him, one for Gerald Ford in 1976 and one for George H.W. Bush in 1980.

Unlike Trump, who constantly uses tweets to attack his critics and opponents, my father always took the high road.

When he was in a debate he didn't try to destroy people. He knew at some point he'd have to go back and work with them to get things done. That's how he and Tip O'Neill were able to get the largest tax break in American history passed through Congress in 1981.

It's almost impossible to make that kind of deal anymore in Washington. We live in a very angry, angry time, and President Trump doesn't seem to want to do anything to make people get along any better.

Meanwhile, both parties in Congress want 100 percent of everything they desire, and when they do come to a rare agreement like they did Wednesday on the bipartisan budget deal, there are people who can't control their anger.

The two-year budget, which adds $300 billion in spending to the federal deficit, has made the military and national security folks happy, but it has set some fiscal hawks' hair on fire.

It'd be nice to think that the rare display of bipartisanship on the federal budget is a sign that good things are going to start happening in Congress.

But it's really just the latest proof that there's only one thing that can consistently bring the two parties in Congress together - spending money it doesn't have.

SOURCE

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"Armageddon" continues: CVS to hike wages, introduce paid parental leave with windfall from new tax law

CVS Health will increase employee pay and sweeten benefits to some employees using a portion of the company's windfall from the new tax law.

CVS will boost starting pay for hourly employees to $11 per hour from $9 per hour, starting in April. Pay ranges and rates will be adjusted for many of its retail pharmacy technicians, front store associates and other hourly retail employees later in the year. Full-time employees will qualify for as much as four weeks of paid parental leave, and worker health-care premiums will hold steady at current rates.

The health-care company has more than 240,000 employees.

Retailers have started hiking their minimum wages to remain competitive in a tightening labor market. Numerous big names have announced raises and added benefits since President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December.

Walmart, the world's largest private employer, last month said it would increase its starting pay to $11, give one-time bonuses to some employees and expand its parental and maternity leave policy.

CVS' stores are key to its proposed $69 billion acquisition of health insurer Aetna. The pair want to create an integrated health system that combines pharmacy and health benefits while delivering preventive care services through the drugstore chain's retail clinics. Shareholders are slated to vote on the deal on March 20.

The news came as CVS reported its fourth-quarter results, which were better than analysts expected on both the top and bottom line.

Net income in the latest quarter rose to $3.29 billion, or $3.22 per share, from $1.71 billion, or $1.59 per share, in the year-earlier quarter.

Earnings in the latest period, included a $1.5 billion benefit related to the new tax law. After stripping out special items, such as the tax gain and a $56 million charge related to the proposed acquisition of Aetna, the company earned $1.92 per share, above analysts' estimates of $1.89 cents per share.

CVS' revenue grew 5 percent to $48.39 billion from $45.97 billion in the year earlier. Its pharmacy services revenue surged 9.3 percent from the year-ago quarter, reaching $34.15 billion, up from $31.26 billion.

Same-store sales for the pharmacy chain's front store, which doesn't include pharmacy, dipped 0.7 percent in the quarter, though a particularly bad cold and flu season helped boost traffic a bit.

"As much as CVS is forward thinking and innovative in health, it is an extraordinarily unimaginative and backward-looking retailer," said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. "This is one of the reasons why front of store sales are still in negative territory despite very weak prior year comparatives and a boost to sales from remedies for a particularly nasty flu and cold season."

Shares of CVS fell about 5 percent on Thursday.

CVS said the employee investments will total about $425 million annually. This spending includes the wage increases and improved benefits.

The company also anticipates spending at least $275 million of the tax windfall on investments in the business, including data analytics, care management solutions and pilot programs.

"The only thing we can think of for why the stock is down today is because a lot of these investments are going to be long-term phenomenons," said Edward Jones analyst John Boylan. "We think over the long-term they will help the company, but we think that's already reflected in the stock price."

As a result of these investments, the company expects operating profit for the year to be in the range of down 1.5 percent to up 1.5 percent. Previously, CVS expected growth between 1 percent and 4 percent.

For the first quarter, CVS now anticipates operating profit growth between 0.5 percent and 4.5 percent. CVS expects the tax law changes to add $1.2 billion to its cash flow.

SOURCE

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

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

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Trump – Middle American Radical

Pat Buchanan below has some good points but I think he is still too general in his analysis of Trump's thinking.  The key to Trump is that he is not a policy wonk of any kind.  He goes by instinct and common sense only.  But his instincts are conservative so he does a lot of good.  So while Buchanan makes a brave attempt to categorize him I think all such attempts will fail. He is "sui generis", one of a kind.  There are no others like him or even nearly like him.

President Trump is the leader of America's conservative party.  Yet not even his allies would describe him as a conservative in the tradition of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley.

In the primaries of 2016, all his rivals claimed the mantle of Mr. Conservative, Ronald Reagan. Yet Trump captured the party's heart.

Who, then, and what is Donald Trump? In a Federalist essay, "Trump Isn't a Conservative — And That's a Good Thing," Frank Cannon comes close to the mark.

Trump, he writes, "would more accurately be described as a 'radical anti-progressive'" who is "at war with the progressives who have co-opted American civil society." Moreover, Trump "is willing to go further than any other previous conservative to defeat them."

Many "elite conservatives," writes Cannon, believe the "bedrock institutions" they treasure are "not subject to the same infectious politicization to which the rest of society has succumbed."

This belief is naive, says Cannon, "ridiculous on its face."

"Radical anti-progressives" recognize that many institutions — the academy, media, entertainment and the courts — have been co-opted and corrupted by the left. And as these institutions are not what they once were, they no longer deserve the respect they once had.

Yet most conservatives will only go so far in criticizing these institutions. We see this in how cradle Catholics find it difficult to criticize the Church in which they were birthed and raised, despite scandals and alterations in the liturgy and doctrine.

Trump sees many institutions as fortresses lately captured by radical progressives that must be attacked and besieged if they are to be recaptured and liberated. Cannon deals with three such politicized institutions: the media, the NFL and the courts.

Trump does not attack freedom of the press but rather the moral authority and legitimacy of co-opted media institutions. It is what CNN has become, not what CNN was, that Trump disrespects.

These people are political enemies posturing as journalists who create "fake news" to destroy me, says Trump. Enraged media, responding, reveal themselves to be not far removed from what Trump says they are.

And, since Trump, media credibility has plummeted.

Before 2016, the NFL was an untouchable. When the league demanded that North Carolina accept the radical transgender agenda or face NFL sanctions, the Tar Heel State capitulated. When Arizona declined to make Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday in 1990, the NFL took away the Super Bowl. The Sun State caved.

This year, the league demanded respect for the beliefs and behavior of NFL players insulting Old Glory by "taking a knee" during the national anthem.

Many conservative politicians and commentators, fearing the NFL's almost mythic popularity in Middle America, remained mute.

But believing instinctively America would side with him, Trump delivered a full-throated defense of the flag and called for kicking the kneelers off the field, out of the game, and off the team.

"Fire them!" Trump bellowed.

And Trump triumphed. The NFL lost fans and viewers. The players ended the protests. No one took a knee at the Super Bowl.

Before Trump, the FBI was sacrosanct. But Trump savaged an insiders' cabal at the top of the FBI he saw as having plotted to defeat him.

Trump has not attacked an independent judiciary, but courts like the Ninth Circuit, controlled by progressives and abusing their offices to advance progressive goals, and federal judges using lifetime tenure and political immunity to usurp powers that belong to the president — on immigration, for example.

Among the reasons Congress is disrespected is that it let the Supreme Court seize its power over social policy and convert itself into a judicial dictatorship — above Congress.

Trump is no Beltway conservative, writes Cannon.

"Trump doesn't play by these ridiculous rules designed to keep conservatives stuck in a perpetual state of losing — a made-for-CNN version of the undefeated Harlem Globetrotters versus the winless Washington Generals. Trump instead seeks to fight and delegitimize any institution the Left has captured, and rebuild it from the ground up."

The Trump supporters who most relish the wars he is waging are the "Middle American Radicals," of whom my columnist-colleague and late friend Sam Francis used to write.

There was a time such as today before in America.

After World War II, as it became clear our long-ruling liberal elites had blundered horribly in trusting Stalin, patriots arose to cleanse our institutions of treason and its fellow travelers.

The Hollywood Ten were exposed and went to jail. Nixon nailed Alger Hiss. Truman used the Smith Act to shut down Stalin's subsidiary, the Communist Party USA. Spies in the atom bomb program were run down. The Rosenbergs went to the electric chair.

Liberals call it the "Red Scare." And they are right to do so.

For when the patriots of the Greatest Generation like Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy came home from the war and went after them, the nation's Reds had never been so scared in their entire lives.

SOURCE 

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A British parallel to the FBI v Trump saga

Last week saw political eruptions on either side of the Atlantic about a similar issue: whether government officials are neutral. The row over the leaked forecasts for Brexit, and whether civil servants were being partisan in preparing and perhaps leaking them, paralleled the row in America about the declassified Congressional memo on the FBI and Donald Trump. “Trump’s unparalleled war on a pillar of society: law enforcement”, said TheNew York Times. “Brexit attacks on civil service ‘are worthy of 1930s Germany’ ” said The Observer.

To summarise, in London a government forecast that even a soft Brexit would be slightly worse for the economy than non-Brexit was conveniently leaked. This happened just as some politicians and commentators were trying to shift the country towards accepting a form of customs union with the European Union — that is to say, not really leaving at all.

In Washington, the president declassified a memo prepared by Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee. It alleged that the FBI got a warrant from a secret court to bug a Trump campaign executive, using as evidence mainly a “salacious and unverified” dossier (the former FBI director James Comey’s words) prepared by a British ex-spy paid by the Democratic Party, a fact that the FBI apparently failed on three occasions to tell the court. The FBI also allegedly leaked the dodgy dossier to the press.

There are two sides to both stories. In Washington, the Democrats and some Republicans see a president prepared to break secrecy to make the FBI look bad, presumably as a distraction from its investigation of his alleged links with Russia. In London, Remainers focus on the fact that it is unusual and wrong for politicians to attack civil servants who are not allowed to answer back.

Nobody disputes, surely, that civil servants have views. Since 91 per cent of Washington DC voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and a similar percentage of public servants here probably voted Remain, we can guess what those views are in most cases. Former mandarins in the House of Lords and on Twitter are among the most outspoken opponents of Brexit in any form. In the FBI case, several key people (including the British
ex-spy, Christopher Steele) are on record as having been passionately opposed to Mr Trump’s election.

As chancellor, George Osborne set up the Office of Budget Responsibility precisely to remove economic forecasting from political pressure. Yet the Treasury returned to economic forecasting during the referendum campaign. It said that “a vote to leave would represent an immediate and profound shock to our economy. That shock would push our economy into a recession and lead to an increase in unemployment of around 500,000, GDP would be 3.6 per cent smaller” and so on. This turned out to be based on ridiculous assumptions and was utterly discredited by what actually happened.

This case is different, however. By all accounts the Treasury was stung by the humiliating failure of Project Fear (which would never have been exposed if Remain had won the referendum, remember). This latest forecast is not from a Treasury model at all but a “cross-departmental tool”, as Amber Rudd said yesterday. Nor is it based on the discredited “gravity” assumption, that trade decreases with the square of distance. It is thought to be a “computable general equilibrium model” of the kind that the Treasury’s critics have long recommended.

It is not clear who developed the model. It might have been contracted from an outside consultant. There is no evidence it has been “back-tested” on the British economy’s past performance to see if it works. More problematically still, the model does not test the government’s preferred policy at all, and makes ludicrous assumptions about what would happen under its three scenarios.

For example, if we leave on World Trade Organisation terms, it assumes we would keep the external tariffs of the EU that inflate the household costs of British consumers. Given that trade with the EU is about 12 per cent of British GDP, in order to achieve an 8 per cent hit to GDP, the model has to assume we would lose at least half that trade, which is for the birds. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say in modelling.

Who commissioned the forecasts? It appears it was not Treasury officials but nor was it a politician. The relevant ministers have distanced themselves. It looks increasingly like a freelance operation from within the top layers of the civil service. If so, this might indeed justify criticism not so much for doing analysis, but in who they got to model it. Being culturally averse to Brexit and free markets, they just would not think of going to economists like Roger Bootle, Gerard Lyons, Ryan Bourne, Liam Halligan and Patrick Minford, who see opportunities in leaving. They do not even realise they are being biased.

The pass-the-smelling-salts shock of those leaping to the defence of civil servants is excessive, as was their comparison of the critics to Hitler and snake-oil salesmen. Civil servants get secure, well-paid jobs with early retirement and excellent pensions. And when they screw up, politicians generally carry the can for them. An occasional question from a politician about whether they are letting their prejudices get in the way of doing their job may be uncomfortable, but it’s hardly unreasonable.

If they mount a freelance operation that frustrates a democratic mandate then all bets should be off, just as if it emerges that the FBI was freelancing to undermine a presidential candidate (either of them), then it would be a major scandal.

Britain faces its greatest decision in decades. If we leave the customs union, keep its tariffs and do nothing else, of course there will be pain. But if we also open up our economy more to the growing markets of Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas, and take measures to encourage investment and innovation, we will blow away any pessimistic forecasts. Civil servants should be modelling those possibilities.

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Fake News and the Tet Offensive

Leftist fake news goes back a long way

Seemingly out of nowhere, a shock wave hit South Vietnam on Jan. 30, 1968. In a coordinated assault unprecedented in ferocity and scale, more than 100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers stormed out of their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. They went on to attack more than 100 towns and cities across South Vietnam.

The following 77 days changed the course of the Vietnam War. The American people were bombarded with a nightly stream of devastating television and daily print reporting. Yet what they saw was so at odds with the reality on the ground that many Vietnam veterans believe truth itself was under attack.

The Tet Offensive had ambitious objectives: cause a mass uprising against the government, collapse the South Vietnamese Army, and inflict mass casualties on U.S. forces. The men in the Hanoi Politburo—knowing the war’s real center of gravity was in Washington —hoped the attack ultimately would sap the American people’s will to fight.

A key component of this strategy was terror. Thousands of South Vietnamese government officials, schoolteachers, doctors, missionaries and ordinary civilians—especially in Hue City—were rounded up and executed in an act of butchery not often seen on the battlefield.

Despite their ferocity, by most objective military standards, the communists achieved none of their goals. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces held fast, regrouped and fought back. By late March they had achieved a decisive victory over the communist forces. Hanoi wouldn’t be able to mount another full-scale invasion of South Vietnam until the 1972 Easter offensive.

But in living rooms across America, the nightly news described an overwhelming American defeat. The late Washington Post Saigon correspondent Peter Braestrup later concluded the event marked a major failure in the history of American journalism.

Braestrup, in “Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington” (1977), attributed this portrayal to television’s showbiz tradition. TV news editors put little premium on breadth of coverage, fact-finding or context.

The TV correspondent, Braestrup wrote, like the anchorman back home, had to pose on camera with authority. He had to maintain a dominant appearance while telling viewers more than he knew or could know. The commentary was thematic and highly speculative; it seemed preoccupied with network producers’ insatiable appetite for “impact.”

Braestrup criticized print media with equal vigor. The great bulk of wire-service output used by U.S. newspapers did not come from eyewitness accounts. Rather, he wrote, it was passed on from second- or third-hand sources reprocessed several times over.

He was stridently critical of “interpretive reporting,” in which editors allowed reporters to write under the rubric of “news analysis” and “commentary.” This, he asserts, produced “pervasive distortions” and a “disaster image.” The misinformation, fixed in the minds of the American people, played a role in shifting public opinion against the war.

“At Tet,” Braestrup assessed, “the press shouted that the patient was dying, then weeks later began to whisper that he somehow seemed to be recovering—whispers apparently not heard amid the clamorous domestic reaction to the initial shouts.”

Braestrup suggested that the press committed journalistic malpractice by taking sides against the Johnson administration and not correcting the record once the fog of the battle had lifted. These hasty assumptions and judgments, he documented, “were simply allowed to stand.”

Braestrup’s exhaustive analysis remains controversial. His friend and colleague at the Washington Post, the late Don Oberdorfer, attributed the erosion of public support to the credibility of the Johnson administration. The president’s office regularly issued rosy pronouncements at odds with the tactical ebb and flow on the battlefield.

But even to this day it’s difficult to find fault with Braestrup’s concluding insight: The professional obligation of journalists in a free society is to stay calm and get the story straight. It is not, as Walter Lippmann admonished, to conflate “truth” with the assembly and processing of a commodity called “news.”

SOURCE 

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