Cognitive flexibility rides again

The article below revives a very old tale.  It originated in a book called "The authoritarian personality" published in 1950 under the lead authorship of prominent Marxist theoretician Theodor Wiesengrund (AKA Adorno).  The story was that conservatives are rigid thinkers, prone to oversimplified categories and generally unable to think straight.  Since almost all psychologists are Leftist, the story was wildly popular and generated much research based on it.  I had a lot of articles published which pointed out holes in that research.

As early as 1954, however, it emerged that the supposed measures of rigid/flexible thinking correlated very poorly with one another. In one popular measure, the Budner scale, I found that the supposedly positive and negative items of the scale were totally uncorrelated with one-another.  The conclusion had to be that there was no such thing as cognitive flexibility -- as the various alleged measures of it disagreed with one another.

Whenever it was examined, however, they showed a correlation with IQ, suggesting that they were all just clumsy measures of IQ and should therefore be either abandoned or used only in conjunction with an IQ measure. So the various correlations found with flexibility/rigidity were in fact correlations with IQ.

And that very well explains the findings below.  The heavy Brexit vote came from generally depressed centres in Northern England which would have had few bright sparks left there.  Smart people in England gravitate to London.  And it was the London vote which  was most pro-EU.  So the most probable explanation of the findings below is simply that it confirms the well-known IQ gradient from the big city towards rural areas.  The interpretations the authors put on the findings simply reflect their own intentions and prejudices.  The correlates with "flexibility" were in fact correlates of IQ.

Interpreting that, however, would be a whole new story.  Why are Brexit opponents dumber?  Probably because of a third factor. Probably because the EU really is bad for areas where poor people live.  A comparison with Northern affluence before and after membership of the EU would probably be adverse to the EU.

The academic journal abstract is appended to the summary immediately below

The Cambridge Analytica scandals have made it obvious that some people’s votes can be predicted and manipulated by knowing their emotional triggers. But new research suggests that the way people think, in apparently unemotional ways, is also a reliable predictor of political attitudes, and in particular, of nationalism and enthusiasm for Brexit.

Leor Zmigrod, a Cambridge University psychologist, set out to investigate whether a preference for clear categories in thought mapped on to a preference for clear national boundaries and precise, exclusionary definitions of citizenship. Instead of relying on self-reported habits of thought, as previous surveys have done, she had participants (who were not students) take part in some standard psychological tests. One of them tested how easy it is for participants to adapt to changes in the rules of the game they are playing; the other is a test of the ability to associate words and ideas across different contexts, so that it works as a measurement of cognitive flexibility, or woolly-mindedness, as the more rigid would no doubt say.

Even with a reasonably small sample of about 330, the differences that appeared were large and startling. In particular, her team found that less cognitive flexibility correlated strongly with “positive feelings toward Brexit and negative feelings toward immigration, the European Union, and free movement of labour”. This not to say that there is anything abnormal about people on either side of the question. There is a lot of normal variation in temperament and imagination among perfectly healthy and sane people, even those who disagree with us. But it is still extraordinary to think that some political differences can quite reliably be traced to cognitive ones which seem to have no connection with politics at all.

One of the strongest links was between cognitive flexibility, as measured by these two tests, and disagreement with Theresa May’s statement that “a citizen of the world is a citizen of nowhere”.

These cognitive styles do not work directly on attitudes to Brexit, says Zmigrod. They predispose people to wider ideological attitudes, and those in turn determine the attitudes people took to the referendum. And the test results she found work differently to each other: in particular, nationalism and authoritarianism were very strongly predicted by a preference for fixed rules and categories, whereas political conservatism (as self-reported) was influenced by an inability to take words out of familiar contexts and make fresh connections between them (which the second test measures).

Nonetheless, the correlation between the style in which people think and the way that they voted was very much stronger than any of the other factors in the sample: controlling for class, age and sex only changed the results by 4%, although there was a strong, and possibly related, correlation with the length of time in education.

“The way the brain constructs internal boundaries between conceptual representations and adapts to changes in environmental contingencies has been shown here to be linked to individuals’ desire for external boundaries to be imposed on national entities and for greater homogeneity in their cultural environment. Information-processing styles in relation to perceptual and linguistic stimuli may also be drawn upon when dealing with political and ideological information,” she writes.

What this suggests to me is that some kinds of political argument are going to be literally interminable. Obviously this isn’t true of any particular issue. Even the question of our relations with Europe will be settled some time before the heat death of the universe. But it may be replaced by something else which arouses the same passions and splits the population in the same way, because the cognitive traits she is analysing are all part of the normal variation of humanity.

Despite what you learn on the internet, the people who disagree with you about Brexit do not all have something terrible wrong with their brains. Progress is not necessarily on our side. Nor is it even on the other side. One of the underlying tendencies of political argument at the moment is that both left and right expect the other side to be proved conclusively wrong by history – either to be swept away by progress or to be destroyed by the return of traditional reality. But if ideologies arise in part from differences in cognitive style which are evenly distributed through the population, the war between progress and reaction will continue for as long as humanity does.

SOURCE

Cognitive underpinnings of nationalistic ideology in the context of Brexit

Leor Zmigrod, Peter J. Rentfrow and Trevor W. Robbins

Abstract

Nationalistic identities often play an influential role in citizens’ voting behavior and political engagement. Nationalistic ideologies tend to have firm categories and rules for what belongs to and represents the national culture. In a sample of 332 UK citizens, we tested whether strict categorization of stimuli and rules in objective cognitive tasks would be evident in strongly nationalistic individuals. Using voting behavior and attitudes from the United Kingdom’s 2016 EU referendum, we found that a flexible representation of national identity and culture was linked to cognitive flexibility in the ideologically neutral Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Remote Associates Test, and to self-reported flexibility under uncertainty. Path analysis revealed that subjective and objective cognitive inflexibility predicted heightened authoritarianism, nationalism, conservatism, and system justification, and these in turn were predictive of support for Brexit and opposition to immigration, the European Union, and free movement of labor. This model accounted for 47.6% of the variance in support for Brexit. Path analysis models were also predictive of participants’ sense of personal attachment to the United Kingdom, signifying that individual differences in cognitive flexibility may contribute toward ideological thinking styles that shape both nationalistic attitudes and personal sense of nationalistic identity. These findings further suggest that emotionally neutral “cold” cognitive information processing—and not just “hot” emotional cognition—may play a key role in ideological behavior and identity.

SOURCE

UPDATE:  A reader has sent in a comment on why London people voted so strongly against BREXIT:

Now, I can think of a much more cogent reason: London is foreign. It is the one place in the sceptred isle where the indigenous population, the so-called "white British" are marginally in a minority. The others are not necessarily black or brown, but they hail from somewhere else - especially Europe.

Indeed, I might add an anecdote of my own. Last year, I spoke to a guard outside a major hotel in London, and discovered that he worked for a company which provided guards. I then said, "I could tell you weren't employed by the hotel, because you have a British accent. There seems to be some rule that nobody who works for a major hotel can be native born."

"You're not the first person to make that comment," he replied. (To be fair, the hotel staff were very helpful and efficient.)

The majority "Remain" vote came from Scotland and SE England. The heartland of England voted for Brexit just as the heartland of the US voted for Bush. In fact, the two best predictors for Brexit were:

Age, Older people (who remembered what it was like to be independent) were more likely to vote for Brexit.

Englishness. People were asked whether they considered themselves (say) more English than British, more British than English, British but not English etc. The more they self-identified as English, the more likely they were to vote for Brexit.

Incidentally, they were more likely to vote for Brexit if they self-identified as Anglican, even if they didn't attend church. The established church is part of their English identity, whereas many Roman Catholics and, of course, non-Christians, have affiliations outside the UK.

Also, it was pointed out that, in many market towns, the local church has a central social function irrespective of its spiritual function - something I've noted on British TV.

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Has Maine found a bipartisan solution to easing health care costs?

Might we ever see a bipartisan health care bill that addresses costs and receives unanimous legislative support? Although one emanating from Washington seems unlikely anytime soon, an innovative bipartisan health care bill — referred to as Right to Shop — unanimously passed the Maine Legislature in 2017 and merits a closer look.

The Maine Right to Shop law begins by giving patients direct access to price information, enabling them to make informed decisions about costs of their care. It simultaneously incentivizes them to shop for high-quality, lower-cost providers by offering them financial rewards when they do so.

Maine’s bill was developed by a local lawmaker who was fed up with the rising cost of coverage at his small, family-owned business. He borrowed from initiatives promoting transparency in at least three other states — Arizona, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire — and cleverly coupled these with cash (or other) incentives to encourage patients to shop. This combination has already shown promising results with state employees and at large companies, but until this legislation, it was largely nonexistent for those at small companies or buying insurance on their own.

But will this work to lower health spending? Some have questioned the effectiveness of price transparency, and others have reported mixed outcomes with transparency alone. But this shouldn’t be surprising, because price transparency has rarely been coupled to meaningful incentives — like paying cash to patients who use high-value providers.

Today, most of us make online purchasing decisions to obtain savings of a few dollars. But remarkably, we remain indifferent to choices between care options whose prices differ by tens of thousands of dollars, despite numerous studies showing that higher health care prices do not correlate with better quality. Choosing the wrong provider might cost patients and the overall system more, with no improvement or even with lower quality care.

Until providers are incentivized to compete for patients based on both the cost and quality of care, the massive waste of resources produced by this predictable market failure is unlikely to be remediated. The Maine law is one approach that just might open the door to such developments.

In addition to transparent pricing and rewards, a third key feature of the Maine law allows out-of-network providers to compete for patients on a level playing field. In other words, you can see any provider you want out of network, as long as they are lower-cost. Together, these ingredients could set off a race to provide high-quality care at lower prices. In addition, this policy would provide a counterweight to the growing trend toward hospital consolidation and narrower insurer networks, both of which reduce patient options. Consolidation drives prices and expenditures higher.

By combining transparent prices that enable a patient to shop with financial rewards for accessing the best-value providers — independent of insurer network — incentives may finally align to improve quality and reduce cost of care.

Like many legislatively driven health care solutions, Maine’s new law certainly won’t solve all the problems in health care. But broader application of Right to Shop could catalyze innovation to improve both cost and quality. Indications of bipartisan interest in the Maine law on the part of state lawmakers across the country suggest this approach could help break today’s partisan health care legislative gridlock. Why? At the risk of overgeneralizing: Republicans are drawn to the potential for more competition and Democrats to greater access to care, and both like the outcome of lower costs.

Some incumbent providers will probably resist this change, fearing price competition, and insurers may claim this would burden them with added administrative costs. Yet without innovations like Right to Shop, we’ll be stuck with high prices and inconsistent quality — the worst possible combination.

In 2018, federal lawmakers would be wise to consider similar efforts by rewarding patients who can shop on both private and public-subsidized insurance, like Healthcare.gov, Medicare, and Medicaid. Without such sensible innovations, many patients, whether insured or not, will struggle to afford care. With respect to both cost and quality of health care, Maine’s new law could be just what the doctor ordered.

SOURCE

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There are idiots and then there are real idiots

Why would Trump sign it?  A  pocket veto would kill it

According to The Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to APPROVE legislation that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday.

The panel approved the bill in a 14-7 vote that go support from both Democrats and Republicans. Four GOP senators supported the legislation, including Sens. Tillis, Graham, Grassley, and Flake.

The Republicans who opposed the bill were Senators Hatch, Lee, Cornyn, Crapo, Sasse, Kennedy, and Cruz.

“The vote marks the first time Congress has advanced legislation to formally protect Mueller from being fired by President Trump, who has railed against him in public and reportedly talked in private of dismissing him,” reports the Hill.

The bill doesn’t have the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate, and has even less of a chance to pass the more conservative House. It also would be unlikely to win the two-thirds support needed to override a presidential veto.

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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Student Confronts Pelosi: Actually, Tax Reform 'Crumbs' Are Helping My Family Put Me Through College

A college student confronted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at an on-campus event sponsored by Georgetown University's Institute of Politics on Tuesday, challenging her rhetoric referring to the GOP-passed tax cuts and related bonuses as "crumbs."  Other Democrats have followed suit, sneering at the tangible benefits being experienced by everyday American families -- all thanks to a law that people like Pelosi wrongly predicted would inflict "Armageddon" on the US economy and trigger "the end of the world."  The student, who identified himself as freshman from Virginia, relayed his family's positive experience with tax reform and pressed Pelosi on whether she would stand by her dismissive formulation

“You’ve spoken about the effects of the Republican tax plan, specifically referring to its effects on average Americans as crumbs,” the student said. As the son of small business owners, I know that it’s helped my parent hire more employees. It’s helped us pay off our mortgage, helped put me through college...Would you still refer to the effects of this tax plan on average Americans as crumbs?”

Pelosi conceded that some people are benefitting from the new law, but referred to the economic arguments in favor of the Republican policy as "BS." She also made the following claim: "Here's a tax bill that they advertise as a benefit for the middle class, and did you know 83 percent of the benefits of the tax bill go to the top one percent? ...In the life of the bill, 86 million middle class families will pay more taxes." 

The first part of that statement is flat-out false.  The second, carefully-parsed attack is deeply misleading.  Let's unpack each element.  It's simply wrong to say that 83 of the new law's tax benefits go to the top one percent.  Here's the truth:

Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute points out, “The bottom 80 percent of families currently pay 33 percent of all combined federal taxes, yet will get 35 percent of the tax cuts. By contrast, the top one percent currently pays 27 percent of all federal taxes, but will get just 21 percent of the tax cuts. This means the share of all federal taxes paid by upper-income earners will slightly rise.”

That's a far cry from what Pelosi said (and while we're at it, read this piece about tax burdens and "fair shares"). So where did she come up with that number? By embracing a total distortion that we've dismantled in previous analyses. Here is FactCheck.org exposing her dishonest point back in January:

"The Republican tax plan was signed into law just last month, and Democrats already have a well-worn, and misleading, talking point about it: 83 percent of the tax cuts go to the wealthiest 1 percent. That’s true for 2027 but only because most of the individual income tax changes expire by then. In 2025 — the last year before those tax changes expire — a quarter of the tax cuts go to the top 1 percent. It’s a classic case of politicians using a technically accurate statistic but without the context or explanation it requires...

The important missing context is that the final tax legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law Dec. 22, allows most of its individual income tax provisions to expire by 2027, making the tax benefit distribution more lopsided for the top 1 percent than in earlier years.

In other words, the only way transform Pelosi's statement into something remotely accurate is to pretend as if the years 2018 through 2026 do not exist.  That's preposterous and goes well beyond mere "misleading," especially considering how she used that statistic to describe the entirety of the law.  That's a lie. 

Her talking point also assumes that all of the tax cuts will, in fact, expire by 2027.  How likely is that?  Not bloody likely.  Indeed, Republicans are already planning to call votes to make the middle class tax cuts permanent, which would completely blow up this critique from Democrats.  Her latter statistic, which was preceded by the caveat about "the life of the bill," relies on the same sleight of hand.  She was slapped with Pinocchios by the Washington Post over a previous iteration of this fear-mongering, so she's added a qualifier to make it slightly less deceitful. 

Again, the bottom line is that these alleged "tax increases" on 86 million middle class families would only hypothetically occur if the GOP tax cuts go away years from now.  Republicans are on the record in favor of extending them indefinitely, but couldn't make the "reconciliation" math work in order to pass the original bill with a simple majority in the Senate.  That's why the on-paper expiration date was included; it was a necessary budget gimmick, and everyone knew it. 

Will Democrats oppose efforts to keep those tax cuts in place?  If so, they would be to blame for a potential politically-painful and therefore extremely unlikely tax hike in the future.  And what's especially galling about this line of attack from Pelosi is that she's endorsed repealing the law, which would guarantee a massive middle class tax increase.

Back in reality, the law is reducing taxes for roughly 90 percent of all taxpayers, across all income groups, including an estimated 91 percent of middle income families.  The corporate tax cuts have resulted in hundreds of companies announcing expansion plans, new investments, enhanced benefits, and special bonuses for millions of workers. 

Financial optimism among voters, manufacturers and small business owners has soared, as have employment projections for the wider economy -- all of which has spurred stepped-up GDP growth.  Pelosi can wave this all away as "crumbs" and "BS," but she's living in an alternate, anti-math universe.  But that's nothing new, especially on this front.  I'll leave you with Mitch McConnell calling out Indiana Democrat Joe Donnelly (not by name, but by obvious implication) for voting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi against a law that has precipitated a great deal of good news for Hoosiers:

“As my colleague, Senator Young, reports, the results in Indiana are adding up. He heard from a Hoosier in Cedar Lake who’s expanding his family milk-hauling business, and a Kokomo small business owner who’s now hiring more workers. And I recently read that over in Ellettsville, one family has found an additional $200 in their monthly paychecks -- enough to cover a week’s worth of groceries. I don’t think my colleagues across the aisle intended to make life more difficult for middle-class families across the country. It’s just that left-wing policies make it harder, not easier, for American workers and job creators to get ahead.

But when my Democratic friends had the chance to join us and deliver historic tax relief to American families, they stood firm and tried to block tax relief on party lines. One of Indiana’s own senators tried to block all that good Indiana news from happening. I’m proud Republicans overcame that obstruction and got tax reform done for Americans.”

Don't be surprised to see a "Joe voted no" reprise in Indiana sometime soon.

SOURCE 

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Democrats Won’t Be Pleased with Ben Carson’s Plan for Public Housing

President Donald Trump’s administration will propose increasing the minimum percent of income that poor families living in subsidized housing will pay in rent, according to suggested legislation The Washington Post first reported.

Currently, the lowest-income residents in housing provided by the Department of Housing and Urban Development pay 30 percent of adjusted salary toward rent.

However, Secretary Ben Carson’s proposal would raise that to 35 percent.

Carson’s proposal suggests raising the minimum rent for the poorest families to $150 a month, compared to the current monthly minimum of $50, according to The Post.

The suggested legislation text stipulates the secretary may raise the minimum rate through regulation.

The administration’s proposal would have to be approved in Congress, which is currently considering proposals to reform HUD’s rent assistance model in line with Trump’s goal of encouraging poor families and welfare recipients to participate in the workforce and become self-sufficient.

Carson also hopes to reduce the burden of Byzantine rules housing authorities and tenants must navigate to calculate rent costs for families with similar incomes.

“The system we currently use to calculate a family’s rental assistance is broken and holds back the very people we’re supposed to be helping,” Carson said Wednesday.

“HUD-assisted households are now required to surrender a long list of personal information, and any new income they earn is ‘taxed’ every year in the form of a rent increase,” he added.

“Today, we begin a necessary conversation about how we can provide meaningful, dignified assistance to those we serve without hurting them at the same time.”

The current rental structure for subsidized housing encourages families to work few hours and doesn’t provide incentives raise incomes, critics said.

SOURCE

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Mattis On Russian Mercenaries In Syria: I Ordered Them 'To Be Annihilated'

On Thursday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he ordered Russian mercenaries in Syria to be annihilated once he found out that they were not part of the Russian military.

Mattis revealed that the military used a deconfliction line with Russia to make sure that forces with which they were engaged in conflict were not part of the Russian military. Once the military received confirmation from Russia, Mattis ordered U.S. military forces to destroy the Russian mercenaries, The Washington Free Beacon reported.

"The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated," Mattis said. "And it was."

Mattis added that at this point he couldn't attribute responsibility for who was behind the Russian mercenaries to the Russian government, noting that there are multiple forces involved in the operations in Syria.

"I cannot target the responsibility to the Russians right now," he said. "It is a crowded battlefield; it’s also got Iranians there and, of course, the regime forces as well."

SOURCE 

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: Palestinians Need To Negotiate Or 'Shut Up And Stop Complaining'

According to Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 10 News and Axios, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shocked Jewish attendees during a meeting in New York in March, saying:

In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.

Bin Salman also slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reports Ravid, citing inside sources.

Mohammed Bin Salman has risen to fame on a rocket after he was made Crown Prince in June 2017. Since he came to power, bin Salman has begun to open up the nation to more Western values — if only by inches. According to TIME:

In June, women will drive on Saudi roads, independent from male chaperones. Music festivals and movie theaters are opening, though questions remain about separate seating for men and women. The kingdom’s religious police are being reined in. In a setting as sterile and controlled as Saudi Arabia, these modest changes have generated genuine enthusiasm among activists, many of whom had been skeptical of bin Salman.

However, the Saudi government has also continued to conduct itself in a manner more befitting a dictatorship.

The New York Times reports that in November, a number of Saudi businessmen and royals were imprisoned in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton at the behest of bin Salman, some of whom were allegedly manipulated or forced into handing over “more than $100 billion” collectively.

This act was billed as an “anti-corruption campaign,” according to the Saudi government — although some critics say it was the opposite, a move designed to gather power.

SOURCE 

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Broward Deputy Union Drops Hammer On Sheriff Scott Israel

In an overwhelming vote, the Broward Sheriff's Office Deputies Association announced it has "no confidence" in Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel and is going to ask Florida Governor Rick Scott to remove him from office over his handling of the Parkland shooting.

Out of the 628 officers in the union, 534 voted that they had no confidence in Sheriff Israel. Union President Jeff Bell said that it was the "union's first vote of no confidence against a sheriff."

WPBF Investigative reporter Terri Parker noted that the union said Sheriff Israel was a liar, deputies were demoralized and the police force was understaffed.

In response to the vote, Israel claimed that Bell was trying to "use the Parkland tragedy as a bargaining tactic to extort a 6.5 percent raise."

Bell responded by telling the newspaper, “Amazing leadership starts from the top, and there is no amazing leadership here. We are a ship out at sea with no power — adrift,” adding that “members have displayed great courage to come out and vote under threat of retaliation and reprisal from the sheriff.”

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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Federal Court Rules Against Liberals, Decimates Voter Fraud with Historic Ruling

A New Orleans-based federal court ruled Friday that a Texas law that requires proper identification to vote was constitutional, Reuters reports.

The 2-1 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision that found that the voter ID law was discriminatory against minorities.

Reuters described the current law as being “designed as a fix for previous voter ID legislation struck down for being discriminatory,” with the three-judge panel noting that the new law has “improvements for disadvantaged minority voters.”

In a statement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised the court’s decision.

“The court rightly recognized that when the Legislature passed Senate Bill 5 last session, it complied with every change the 5th Circuit ordered to the original voter ID law,” the statement read.

“Safeguarding the integrity of our elections is essential to preserving our democracy. The revised voter ID law removes any burden on voters who cannot obtain a photo ID.”

“Senate Bill 5 allows registered voters without one of the seven state-approved forms of photo identification to cast an in-person ballot by signing a sworn declaration of reasonable impediment stating why they couldn’t obtain photo ID,” the statement noted.

Liberal groups have predictably decried the ruling as discriminatory.

“No law should be allowed to stand that is merely built on the back of a plainly discriminatory law,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

I’ve never quite understood the idea that liberals think minorities who are legally entitled to vote are somehow biologically or socially unable to get identification but it’s those proposing voter ID laws who are the racists. The logic here eludes me.

Of course, perhaps it’s the specter of voter fraud. Democrats insist that it’s so rare as to be negligible, although few studies have been done on the matter. One — widely attacked by liberals after the election — found that the percentage of non-citizens who could have voted in the 2008 presidential election could be as high as 6.4 percent.

This probably doesn’t even include the biggest instance of voter fraud, however, which are people who are ineligible to vote because they’re registered in more than one state or locality.

A Judicial Watch study in Virginia found that at least 57,000 voters were illegally registered in two states just in the swing state of Virginia, compared with a little over 1,000 illegal aliens on voter rolls.

When you consider how few votes can decide elections these days, that’s not negligible.

Remember — back in 2000, the presidential election was decided by 537 votes in the state of Florida. Even if you disregard non-citizen voting, protecting the system from voters who are ineligible to vote in a certain district or state is vital to our national interest. It’s not discriminatory, and it’s not fighting a phantom problem. Voter ID ought to be a national issue, but Texas is certainly a start.

SOURCE 

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Ben Carson Attacks Welfare Leeches, Moves Against Millions Living on Taxpayer Dime

Ben Carson just gave liberals one more reason to hate him.  The man who achieved world fame as a gifted neurosurgeon before entering politics already had a target on his back for being a black man with the courage to espouse conservative beliefs.

And now, the secretary for Housing and Urban Development is putting those beliefs into practice.

In an announcement this week, Carson proposed sweeping changes in the country’s subsidized housing program that would raise the percentage of their income housing assistance recipients pay toward rent from 30 percent to 35 percent. The proposal would also raise the minimum rent payment from $50 to $150.

In an interview with the Townhall website Friday, Carson said it was a way of “moving people along to a position of self-sufficiency.”

And naturally, liberals are screaming.

With the mainstream media giving the idea scathing headlines like “HUD Secretary Ben Carson Wants to raise rents on the poorest of the poor” (Los Angeles Times) and predicting — of course — that it would “hurt single mothers the most” (Washington Post), Carson had to reach out to a conservative-leaning site like Townhall to get his point out to Americans.

The proposal is called the “Making Affordable Housing Work Act,” and it would require congressional action because HUD can’t change rent rules on its own authority, according to CNN Money.

That means it’s already getting hammered by Democrats in Congress — who love nothing more than keeping poor people poor and voting Democrat — but Carson told Townhall he was expecting the resistance.

That doesn’t mean the ideas are bad, he said. With the economic improvements under President Donald Trump, with the nation’s unemployment rate is at an historic low, now is the time to overhaul the system, he said.

“I would only be shocked if someone said yes, please increase my rent,” he told Townhall. “No one’s ever going to say that, but you know we have exemptions for anybody for whom this is going to be a great hardship.” “For the vast, vast majority of cases it is not going to be.”

But for those who do find themselves kicking in more of their own money to pay for a roof over their own heads, only a liberal Democrat (or a mainstream media reporter) could treat Carson like he just stole Tiny Tim’s crutch.

First of all, the proposals don’t apply to the elderly or physically handicapped, only to able-bodied adults, according to CNN. Americans as a rule have a pretty low tolerance for able-bodied adults who would rather sponge off the taxpayers than provide for their own needs.

Second, as Carson said, the idea of subsidized housing isn’t supposed to be using taxpayer dollars to support families for generations of poverty, but that’s what it’s become.

“If you look at HUD over the last couple decades it’s been mostly about just putting people under a roof and sort of keeping them there,” Carson told Townhall.

“Instead of it being a stepladder it’s become a mode of life and, in many cases, for generation after generation of individuals and I don’t think it’s their fault. I think it’s the fault of the system that has basically sapped the incentive for people to work.”

Finally, the move is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration and Republican governors to tie the receipt of public assistance — like food stamps — to recipients being willing to work.

There’s going to be plenty of shrieking from the left as the proposal makes its way through Congress (and if Democrats win either the House or Senate in November it’s probably as good as dead), but Carson clearly thinks the time to act is now.

“Obviously we’re sensitive to people who have exceptional situations,” he told Townhall. “Obviously, we’re going to take care of those people in an appropriate way but the key thing for people to understand is that doing nothing simply is not an option.”

Liberal Democrats have had a lot of reasons to hate Ben Carson before this: His intelligence, his work ethic, his phenomenal success against the odds make him living evidence that the eternal victimhood preached by progressives is simply a lie.

With this proposal, he just gave them one more.

SOURCE 

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More scientific deceit from the Left

Leftist ideologues couldn't lie straight in bed. 

Gary Kleck, a criminologist now retired from Florida State University, was likely astonished to learn that his controversial study, The National Self-Defense Survey, was accurate after all. He and FSU fellow professor Marc Gertz concluded, based on their carefully-crafted surveys conducted in 1993, that there were more than 2.2 million defensive gun uses (DGU) each year in the United States. The results were presented in 1994, published in 1995, and have been incessantly attacked by the anti-gun movement ever since. His conclusions didn’t fit the anti-gun narrative that guns are used in crimes far more than in self-defense and therefore private ownership must be abolished.

Kleck just learned that almost immediately after the publication of his study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a federal agency that receives more than $11 billion of taxpayer money every year, conducted its own study of the matter. It conducted three separate studies, in fact, and each of them came to the same conclusion as Kleck and Gertz: Indeed, about 2.5 million Americans use guns to defend themselves or their families every year.

But the CDC studies were never published. It would have infuriated the powers-that-be in the Clinton administration, and so the results were buried.

After reviewing the newly-discovered/recovered studies, Kleck — in his best professorial manner — wrote:

The final adjusted prevalence of 1.24% [of the population experiencing a DGU in the past twelve months] therefore implies that in an average year during 1996-1998, 2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense. This estimate, based on an enormous sample of 12,870 cases (unweighted) in a nationally representative sample, strongly confirms the 2.5 million past-12-months estimate obtained [by me and Marc] Gertz in 1995 … CDC’s results, then, imply that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they were used offensively by criminals.

Kleck added, “CDC never reported the results of those surveys, does not report on their website any estimates of DGU frequency, and does not even acknowledge that they ever asked about the topic in any of their surveys.”

In other words, the CDC got caught hiding information damaging to the anti-gun narrative then prevalent during the Clinton administration. But they didn’t bury it deeply enough.

Dean Weingarten, recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30-year career in Army research, development, testing, and evaluation, knew exactly what the CDC was up to, calling “the timing and size of the surveys done by the CDC … fascinating. They were done immediately after Kleck and Gertz published their paper.”

Weingarten noted that

"Gary Kleck, as a scientist, a Democrat, and a proponent of a number of gun control measures, is careful not to cast aspersions on the CDC. He does not accuse anyone of malfeasance. He notes the surveys were done during the Clinton administration, and these findings would have worked against the gun control agenda of the administration."

Someone at the CDC made the decision not to publish these results.

Does any of this matter? It’s common knowledge that operatives supportive of the gun-control narrative have infiltrated various government agencies. These studies took place more than 20 years ago. There’s been a lot of water under that bridge since then. Private ownership of guns has skyrocketed, while overall gun violence has fallen by half. National reciprocity has already passed one branch of Congress. Americans own more weaponry than any other country on Earth.

It matters because first, it removes one more “talking point” used by anti-gunners to defend their intention to remove firearms from every law-abiding gun owner in the country. Second, it confirms that government agencies cannot be trusted without verification. Third, it is one more argument in the arsenal of those promoting private gun ownership to those who haven’t yet made up their minds.

That means that the real battlefield isn’t between Kleck’s study and the the CDC’s failure to admit the truth. Anti-gunners aren’t likely to change sides merely because of deceit committed by one of their own 25 years ago. The real battle is in the hearts and minds of Americans who will one day have to take a stand on the issue, one way or the other.

This obvious example of deceit on the part of the CDC is just one more reason why education is of paramount importance. Educating the American populace is key on the issues involving gun control and gun ownership. And it’s precisely there where the educational programs of organizations such as the John Birch Society come into play — programs such as Support Your Local Police, Stop a Con Con, Get US Out! Of the United Nations, Get US Out! of NAFTA to stop the North American Union, and others.

SOURCE 

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Fishing



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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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No attack, no victims, no chem weapons: Douma witnesses speak at OPCW briefing at The Hague

Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including 11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led strike on Syria was, in fact, staged.

“We were at the basement and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me,” the boy told the press conference, gathered by Russia’s mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.

Hassan was among the “victims” seen being washed by water hoses in a video released by the controversial White Helmets group on April 7. The boy and his family later spoke to the media and revealed that Hassan was hurried to the scene by men who claimed that a chemical attack had taken place. They started pouring cold water on the boy and others, filming the frightened children.

“There were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors actually,” Ahmad Kashoi, an administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. “That happened for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

Halil al-Jaish, a resuscitator who tended to people at the Douma hospital that day, told the press conference that some of the patients had indeed experienced respiratory problems. The symptoms, however, were caused by heavy dust, which engulfed the area due to recent airstrikes, and no one showed any signs of chemical warfare poisoning, al-Jaish said.

The hospital received people who suffered from smoke and dust asphyxiation on the day of the alleged attack, Muwaffak Nasrim, a paramedic who was working in emergency care, said. The panic seen in footage provided by the White Helmets was caused mainly by people shouting about the alleged use of chemical weapons, Nasrim, who witnessed the chaotic scenes, added. No patients, however, displayed symptoms of chemical weapons exposure, he said.

Ahmad Saur, an emergency paramedic with the Syrian Red Crescent, said that the ward he was working at did not receive any patients exposed to chemical weapons on the day of the alleged incident or after it. All the patients needed either general medical care or help with injuries, he said. Saur told journalists he came to speak at The Hague independently of the Red Crescent, and that he was testifying freely and without any pressure.

One reporter asked what would happen to the eyewitnesses and whether they would “stay in Europe to testify.”

“We’re going back home, and see no problem with that. The situation is a lot better now. We’re Douma residents, like many others,” Hassan Ayoun, a doctor with the emergency department, said.

Six of the Douma witnesses brought to The Hague have already been interviewed by the OPCW technical experts, Russia’s permanent representative to the OPCW, Aleksandr Shulgin, said.

“The others were ready too, but the experts are sticking to their own guidelines. They’ve picked six people, talked to them, and said they were 'completely satisfied' with their account and did not have any further questions,” Shulgin revealed. He added that the allegations by “certain Western countries” ahead of the briefing that Moscow and Damascus were seeking to “hide” the witnesses from the OPCW experts did not hold water.

The alleged chemical incident was only supported by the White Helmets’ video and social media reports from militant-linked groups, but the US, the UK and France judged they had enough evidence that it actually took place and launched a series of punitive strikes against Syria on April 14. The US and its allies accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of carrying out the “attack,” without providing any proof of their claim. Notably, the strike came hours before the OPCW fact-finding team was set to arrive in Douma to determine whether chemical weapons had been used there.

SOURCE 

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Market dominance might be good for consumers

The phrases monopoly, duopoly and oligopoly typically rouse fear in the hearts of the public. They imply big, self-interested companies, with a purportedly unhealthy dominance of the market. Consumers will get ripped off, critics say. The barriers to entry are too high for new competitors to have a chance.

Such imagery is typical of the suspicion of big business, and the superlatives have been flowing in recent weeks as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission continues its investigation into the dominance of Google and Facebook in Australia’s digital advertising market.

However, outside of price fixing and state supported market dominance, aren’t these major players just providing consumers with a superior product?

One of the greatest strengths of the private market is that companies are judged solely on how consumers value their goods and services. Offer something good and customers will come flocking. Offer something bad and bankruptcy beckons.

If a company has established market dominance, that suggests it is offering a product so good that the vast majority of shoppers prefer it to the competitors’ alternatives.

Google has certainly accomplished this. Who remembers Ask Jeeves? Who still searches the internet with Yahoo? Not many, is the answer. Back in the early 2000s Yahoo and Google were neck and neck. However, with its comprehensive search engine and wide range of complimentary products, Google won the battle for consumers’ hearts and minds.

Facebook has achieved similar feats. MySpace, Bebo and Google Hangouts were usurped for a reason — because people like Facebook’s offerings more.

As a result, the two companies have come to dominate the digital advertising market. They offer an advertiser’s dream: detailed information on billions of users, which can see promotions customised down to the individual level.

Even in the more congested US market, inferior competitors have lost their share (see graph). As an advertiser, why would you want to work with a secondary player when these two companies offer so much?

Market dominance is a good thing if it means that consumers get a superior, reasonably-priced product.

SOURCE 

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Progressives are using lawfare to target their political opponents

The Democrat Party has unveiled a not so new technique to attack their opponents. Everyone knows about the typical intimidation techniques such as boycotts, protesting, and rioting. Lawfare is an asymmetric technique using the legal system against an enemy. Keeping their enemies tied up in court and legal costs demoralize and sometimes forces the opponents to quit. Republicans need to wake up to tactics of the left and realize they are sometimes playing into their hands.

This has been a successful strategy for the Democrat Party so far, as we have seen with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. After the fraudulent Mueller investigation was started, it quickly became apparent Flynn was one of the primary targets. After months of interviews and interrogations, Flynn finally gave in and pled guilty to lying to the FBI. The charge had nothing to do with what Mueller was supposedly investigating, it was just another scalp.

Shortly after the guilty plea, the mainstream media concluded Flynn must have lied to the FBI if he pled guilty. It quickly became apparent the plea had nothing to do with guilt or innocence, it had more to do with finances. Flynn was going broke defending himself against the multimillion-dollar team Mueller sent after him. Almost immediately after pleading guilty, Flynn was forced to sell his home in Alexandria, Va. to pay his legal bills.

Since the guilty plea, it has revealed that former FBI Director James Comey briefed several Members of Congress in March of 2017 on the Flynn matter. Writing for the Washington Examiner, Byron York stated, “According to two sources familiar with the meetings, Comey told lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional.” Why did Flynn plead guilty then? Because he couldn’t afford to prove his innocence.

Former Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo has been under constant siege since the end of the 2016 election. Once the various congressional committees started to investigate the non-existent connections between President Trump and Russia, Mr. Caputo would end up retaining lawyers in March of 2017. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) would state Mr. Caputo was Vladimir Putin’s “image consultant” in congressional testimony with no evidence to back up the claim.

So far Mr. Caputo has only been interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee as a witness, but that comes at a steep price. Caputo estimates his legal bill will be in the neighborhood of $125,000, and that is if he is not part of the special counsel probe. If he has to go to the grand jury, the cost could further skyrocket.

Why would anyone want to serve in the Trump administration if they are going to have to spend more than half if not all their salary on lawyers for non-existent crimes? It has become increasingly obvious the Trump-Russia narrative was faked by the DNC and Hillary Campaign, but do the people caught up in the investigation get their time or money back? No.

It appears we had an attempted coup after the last election. Why does it seem the only people that are paying for the coup are Republicans that had nothing to do with Russia? Republicans must realize the longer they keep this sham investigation going instead of focusing on the coup attempt they are only hurting innocent people.

SOURCE 

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Trump saves millions of working-class families from Obamacare penalty

The Trump administration just quietly made it possible to escape having to pay the Obamacare fine imposed for not having health insurance in 2018, potentially saving millions of families hundreds or even thousands of dollars in penalties.

When congressional Republicans passed tax reform in December, they gutted the provision of the Affordable Care Act mandating uninsured Americans pay a fee for not having “qualifying” health insurance. Although this important decision will provide tax relief to millions of people forced to pay a fine for not being enrolled in a health insurance plan the government approves of, a completely ridiculous mandate that greatly limits freedom, the new policy does not go into effect until 2019, which means families are still required to have health insurance this year to avoid paying the penalty.

The Affordable Care Act allows for people who do not have qualifying health insurance to escape paying the penalty if they apply for at least one of a few available “hardship exemptions.” Perhaps the most common exemption allows people to escape the penalty if they “experienced financial or domestic circumstances, including an unexpected natural or human-caused event, such that … [they had] a significant, unexpected increase in essential expenses that prevented [them] from obtaining coverage under a qualified health plan.”

Earlier in April, the Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a new guidance expanding the allowed exemptions to include four new qualifying circumstances: (1) living in a region where there is just one health insurer selling plans in an Obamacare marketplace, (2) living in a region where there are no plans sold on an Obamacare exchange, (3) the lack of availability of a plan that doesn’t include coverage for abortion, and (4) when a person is unable to find a plan on the Obamacare exchange that covers the “specialty care” needed.

These four added exemptions will make it possible for millions of people now forced to pay the Obamacare mandate penalty to escape liability, especially the provision that permits people living in a region with only one insurer to avoid the fine. According to CMS’ most recent analysis of Obamacare exchanges, people living in half of all counties in the United States have only one health insurer to choose from when purchasing a qualifying plan through Obamacare. All these people (about 2.1 million) would not be forced to pay a fine for not having qualifying health insurance under the Trump administration’s new guidance.

Most Americans who are forced to pay the Obamacare penalty are not upper-middle class or wealthy families, but rather lower-income filers. IRS data for 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, show more than 6.6 million people were forced to pay the Obamacare fine. Nearly 79 percent of those required to pay reported adjusted gross incomes between $10,000 and $50,000, which means the penalty disproportionately punishes lower-income and working-class people.

This is particularly troubling because of how expensive Obamacare plans have become in recent years. Many annual family deductibles for the cheapest qualifying Obamacare plans, Bronze Plans, now top $12,000. Forcing people to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year for health insurance they can’t afford to use is morally wrong, but thanks to congressional Democrats and the Obama administration, that’s the current situation facing countless families across the country.

Obamacare has been a complete disaster, but the Trump administration is working tirelessly to find ways to improve the health insurance market and expand access to affordable healthcare plans. Thanks to Trump and his team, millions of people will be able to keep more of their own money when they file their taxes next year.

However, there is only so much President Trump can do. Congress must act by passing legislation that makes permanent many of the Trump administration’s policies, embraces free-market principles, and empowers states with the ability to pass reforms locally that best fit the unique needs of their citizens.

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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The Protected class

Ask anyone on the left if we have a class system in this country.  He'll go on for hours explaining how some are lifted up at the expense of all others.  Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) gives whole speeches on income inequality and the need for a "moral economy" to make things fair for everyone.  Feminists will tell you about the patriarchy and their never-ending fight for income equality for women.  Consult the various racial and LBGT groups, and they'll talk of their ongoing struggles for civil rights equality.  What all share is a common belief in a ruling class (made up of the affluent, male, white, and straight) that disadvantages non-members.

They may be on to something.  There might just be a segment of society that has set privileges aside for itself, but this class isn't based on wealth, gender, race, or sexual orientation.  It is politics and control of our federal enforcement agencies that have exempted these people from the law.  From the Andrew McCabes of the world to those associated with the Clinton Foundation, one would be hard pressed in recent years to explain that we don't have a protected class.

If a protected class existed, it would be the creation of and populated by those on the left.  In their obsession with inequality of wealth, gender, race, and sexual orientation, the left has become narrow in its thinking.  Like a world-class athlete too lazy to get out of bed and work out regularly in his sport, those who reside on the left have allowed their mental abilities to atrophy to Marxist thinking about all things.  They've trapped themselves in a world that can be understood only in terms of class struggle between the haves and have-nots.  To them, the solution isn't equality, but how to use the system to their own advantage.

Admittance to the protected class is reserved for those who are particularly skilled at ginning up animosity about unfairness.  It also includes those public servants willing to overlook the misdeeds of or break the law on behalf of those who are particularly good at playing the grievance game.  The true masters know how to stoke the engine of the victimhood industrial complex to maximize the output of resentment against economic, sex, racial, or sexual orientation differences.  Like some glider pilot, they ride the thermals of discontent they sow to the heights of political power.  The occasional burning of a lowly cake-decorator or the loss of some local law-enforcer's life is the sacrifice made by others so those seeking inclusion among the protected can gain their foothold.

Once granted membership, the protected set about taking care of their own.  They're personally rewarded by favor-seekers and the extorted who wish to avoid legislative or regulatory disaster.  Like any dynastic rule, the protected class enroll family members in the best schools, network them into lucrative careers, and otherwise shield themselves from the rest of us deplorables.  If the masses grow disillusioned and appear ready to cast them from their lofty positions, the protected simply open the border and invite a more pliable demographic to take their place at the polls.

Having never been exposed to or having wished to ever learn of an alternative system (say, one that rewards merit, drive, and ability) the protected know only class, envy, and inequality.  They cannot surrender the mechanism that lifted them to their high station, nor are they really interested in taking meaningful action that would alleviate the misery they claim as their own particular crusade.

I could be wrong about all this.  There might not be a protected class.  Perhaps we really are a nation of laws, where justice is blind to a person's wealth, sex, race, orientation, or station.  Maybe we do all play on the same level field by the same rules, giving each the same chance.  Such a system has to be based on equality of justice.  Without it, the fight to right all the other wrongs would be meaningless.  Justice inequality would subject us all to an arbitrary legal system that could be used at any time against the noncompliant.  Isn't it time we set aside our concerns about all the other inequalities until we've been shown that there is equality of justice that applies fairly to everyone, including the McCabes of this world?

SOURCE 

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Wisdom and the Smartest People Ever

We value intelligence and knowledge.  With good reason. Intelligent, thoughtful illumination has an uplifting effect on individuals and a civilization. We've seen that many times throughout history.  The founding of our American Republic is one such stellar example.

Back in the 1980s, I recall someone lamenting how the most qualified and best candidate to never become president was Adlai Stephenson.  Certainly, the Democratic Party has been trying since Stephenson to claim the mantle of "intelligent."  Democrats are always the smart ones – smarter, better policies, and as a result morally superior.

Now, it's hard not to notice that the pinnacle of the left being smarter than everyone came to us with one Barack Obama, with his incredibly über-intelligent, superior group of advisers and administration.

Nobody was ever smarter.  Ever. Except they really weren't.  For smart people, they actually did some of the dumbest things ever in public life.  The tragedy of so many believing they were the smartest people ever may haunt us for years.

There is a huge disconnect between the true concept of wisdom and the smartest people ever.

Culturally, valuing knowledge and intellect has three main sources: the Greek philosophers, the Bible, and the Church.  There were others, but these three more than any other sources provided the basis for the respect for knowledge and wisdom in our culture.  The concept of highly valuing the realm of the mind became imbedded in the West because of them.  Jordan Peterson loves to praise how clean our lives are, how things work so well, and how wonderful we have it.  He lets us know in so many ways that all this bounty came from our belief system, one where we cherish achievement of thought.

Wisdom is the subject of Solomon in the Book of Proverbs.  Some central quotes:

"Seek wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.  Find wisdom.  Though it cost all you have, get understanding."

"Does not wisdom call out?"

"Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her."

These, and so many other lines from Proverbs, form the genesis of why we prize intellect, or wisdom.  If the search for and the study of wisdom can bring us so much, then indeed it was right for our culture to value it.

What we call the Protestant work ethic came straight from Solomon.  Perhaps it should rightfully be called the Jewish work ethic.  The important thing to note is that having that value imbedded in our civilization makes things better, makes things nicer, and does great things for us and our culture.

Our culture.  It's why we are prosperous, live longer, live better, and have so much in depth in so many areas of life.  C.S. Lewis called the Bible our "instruction manual."  If you follow the manual, the human machine works at its best, tuned finely for maximal effect and output.  The wisdom of Solomon was a huge part of the manual.

Enter the deconstructive left. Leftists authored this divorce from wisdom.  They divorced themselves from the "instruction manual" and its source.  They began the effort to take away the moral underpinnings from our culture.  The great Greek philosophers were no longer to be held in high esteem.  Likewise, the great Church figures, and the Founding Fathers, they were simply dead white males who should be made fun of.

The deconstruction has been slow but effective.

The eight years of Barack Obama were the West at its low point.  My take: I never thought our culture could turn so wrong so fast.  Things happened in our government and culture during those eight years we never deemed possible even ten years ago.  Destructive trends, destructive ideas, destructive social movements.  All at their peak through the Obama years:

*The destruction of our health care system through the oh, so smart Obamacare.

*The worst economy since WWII, in any measure – jobs, GDP, unemployment, spending, etc.

*The worst race relations since the 1960s.  Race-baiting, straight from the top.

*The worst foreign policy ever.  Iran.  Cuba.  ISIS.  Help our enemies.  Betray our friends.  Bolster Islamists; destroy American confidence and its military.

*The most corrupt administration ever.  By far.  We're just now seeing how bad.

*A turn in leftist immigration policy – its clear intent to replace the current electorate with a malleable, ignorant new electorate willing to believe the leftist siren songs so the left can have unchallenged power.

*The worst of pay to play.  Leftists at the trough of government sucked deep.  The Clinton Foundation sucking the deepest.  Follow the money if you dare.

*The moral preening of Hollywood and the media.  All the while, they lived and played in the cesspool of Weinstein and Matt Lauer.  #MeToo was caused by them and still is.

The list is longer and should be a book by itself.  The list of failures could get to over a hundred easily.  And yes, it was that bad.  Like frogs in the simmering pot, we were being cooked.  "Transformed."  Also known as destroyed.

So how does all this horrible stuff happen under a group of people who were considered by our elites, our media, and themselves the smartest people ever?  How did our media get away with calling so many major failings wonderful?  Cow patties strewn around the pasture on stale bread were described as culinary treasures.  It was, and is, sickening.

How is it possible to morph from JFK to Barack Obama in one generation?  From revering wisdom to wearing a dunce cap in fifty years?  That is surely what so many did.

The Book of Proverbs gives an answer.  It gave us the overwhelmingly beautiful description of wisdom, but it also gave us this clear warning: "be not wise in your own eyes."

On the surface, that doesn't seem like much.  But it's really the key to understanding what has happened to the left.

They became arrogant.  Filled with hubris.  A group of narcissists who believe their own P.R.  They really were the smartest people ever.  Obama himself, and those surrounding him, really believed it.  It's a Greek tragedy written for today – a group of narcissists in charge of the levers of power, doing terrible things in the name of good.

Most of them thought there was no reason to heed the "instruction manual." They replaced centuries of wisdom with their own image and called it good.

They replaced generations of wonderful ideas with degenerate, unworkable, truly horrific notions that had never worked anywhere else they were tried.  These ideas had failed miserably so many times.  Except they were now so smart and morally superior that they would surely make them work.  The pinnacle of smart.

And it showed for eight years.  And it was covered up for eight years.  And it was reported as wonderful for eight years.  Stupidity linked with hubris was mistaken for wisdom by so many of our elites.  And that's all it was.  True wisdom and its rewards are described beautifully by Solomon.  It needs be sought, to avoid these horrors.

Wisdom should be exalted – just not the fake kind as espoused by the left.

SOURCE 

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Emmanuel Macron and French Anti-Semitism

Macron has promised to lead in the fight against the "scourge" of anti-Semitism in France wherever it surfaces in the street or online. According to official figures, anti-Semitic violence in France increased by 26% in 2017 and criminal damage to Jewish places of worship and burial increased by 22%. France has been the scene of too many anti-Jewish atrocities. In January-February 2006, the 23-year-old Ilan Halini, a French-born Jew of Moroccan ancestry was abducted and tortured and killed by a Muslim group, the Gang of Barbarians. In March 2012, the Ozar HaTorah school in Toulouse was attacked and three children and a rabbi were killed by a jihadist who has already murdered three French soldiers.

On April 4, 2017 Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old retired physician and Orthodox Jew, living in the Belleville district of Paris, was beaten and thrown out of the window to her death by a native of Mali who shouted “Allahu Akbar.” Most recently, on March 23, 2018 the 85-year-old Mireille Knell, who narrowly escaped the Vel d'Hiv roundup in Paris on July 16-17 1942 by fleeing to Portugal, was stabbed repeatedly in the throat before being set on fire by Muslim individuals. Islamist atrocities led between 2014-16 to more than 20,000 French Jews leaving France.

These events have led to Macron's pledge to provide protection for Jewish schools, synagogues, and other Jewish sites. In view of the atrocities committed by Muslims, they have also led to a "deradicalization" program. There is no magic formula for deradicalization, but Macron and his government have made various proposals to prevent the spread of Islamist extremism in prisons, schools, mosques, and Islamic centers. High among them is the effort to stop Islamist extremism from flourishing in prisons which have influenced jihadists. Currently, 512 people are in prison for terrorist offences. The effort will mean separating prisoners from radicalized inmates.

There are also plans for centers that will attempt to reintegrate Islamist radicals referred by French courts, and for a wide effort to get internet platforms to remove content that feeds extremism, tighter regulation of private Islamic schools, and reassigning of public servants who show signs of radicalization.

It is encouraging that France is implementing its policy of increased surveillance of Muslim clerics accused of hate speech and inciting violence. Before Macron became president, more than 90 Muslim clerics and radicals had been expelled from France.

It is noteworthy that on April 20, 2018 France expelled Imam el Hedi Doudi based in the as-Sounna mosque in Marseille, to Algeria. France is fortunate to have got rid of a bigot who provoked discrimination, hatred, and violence, and who preached that Jews are "unclean, the brothers of monkeys and pigs."

In view of these determined efforts to eliminate discrimination and violence it's gratifying to recognize and appreciate the best part, that Emmanuel Macron is among the very young at heart.[He is aged 40].

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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Leftist Propaganda Thwarts Unity

By Tom Trinko

In Nazi Germany, the people believed, right up to the bitter end, that they were going to win the war.  They did so because all the news they got was from state-controlled media.

During the Cold War, citizens of the Soviet Union believed that Americans lived in poverty.  After all, didn't all the papers say so?

Today in America, we have a similar situation.  While the government doesn't control the media, the leftists do.  The Americans who listen to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and all the networks are being systematically lied to.  As a result, those Americans have a false view of what is really going on – just like their predecessors in North Korea, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.

Those Americans who trust the mainstream media (MSM) incorrectly "know" that Trump colluded with Russia.  They don't know that Hillary paid the Russians for dirt on Trump or that all the investigations into the supposed collusion by Trump have found not a jot of evidence.

The MSM are why so many Americans believe that 25% of Americans are gay rather than the real value of around 2%.  In entertainment, gays are grossly overrepresented, and MSM coverage rarely discusses either the true nature of the gay lifestyle or the actual number of people who suffer from same-sex attraction.  Clearly, if one in four Americans is gay and the gay lifestyle is just like the heterosexual lifestyle, supporting a version of "marriage" that includes same-sex couples is not that strange.

MSM propaganda ensures that most Americans don't know that abortion is legal in America for any reason up to the point of birth.  People also don't know that Jesse Jackson called abortion "genocide against blacks" and that black women are three times as likely to abort their unborn children as white women are.

The only reason why people don't recognize Democratic policies as racist is MSM propaganda.

Think about it.  Around 3,500 blacks were shot in Chicago, called Chiraq by black Chicagoans, last year, but that's rarely mentioned in the news.  On the other hand, the MSM had wall-to-wall coverage when a white police officer shot a black thug in self-defense.  Note that both Obama and his black attorney general agreed that the shooting was justified and that that wasn't given wall-to-wall media coverage.

Because of this sort of "reporting," many Americans think the real problem in America isn't out-of-control crime in black neighborhoods in Democrat-run cities, but that the police are out hunting innocent blacks on a regular basis.  The real story is that the Democrats who run Chicago don't care about blacks.  Can you imagine what the Democratic mayor of Chicago would be doing if 3,500 white people had been shot there last year?  What could be more racist than not caring that blacks in Chicago are less safe than American soldiers in Iraq?

Perhaps the fact that those blacks can't get a decent education.  For decades, the public school system has failed inner-city blacks.  That's why conservatives are calling for school choice – so blacks can have a chance to get a decent education.  We know that school choice works because those blacks who can make the huge sacrifices to afford to send their kids to Catholic or other private schools see their kids getting a good education.

Yet the media don't cover that.  Rather, they cover Democrats who say school choice is somehow racist.  The media also don't mention the huge contributions the Democrats get from the teacher unions.  As a result, those Americans who get their news from the MSM don't know that Democrats have been working against getting poor blacks a decent education for decades.

One key aspect of the propaganda machine is that Republicans are always shown in a bad light, and Democratic scandals are minimized.  We all remember the MSM trying to make us think Bill Clinton was impeached because of his sex scandals and not because he lied under oath in order to minimize his risk of having to pay a settlement for sexually harassing an Arkansas government employee.  Similarly, a Democratic senator was on trial for seven weeks recently for corruption, and the MSM ignored it.  When a Republican senator was on trial years ago, there was extensive coverage.

Perhaps the poster boy for MSM #FakeNews propaganda is so-called global warming.  There is an incessant drumbeat of stories about how man is causing the Earth to warm so much that catastrophe will result.  The fact that all the computer models are wrong and disagree with the data and that even those scientists – who are not 99.7% of all scientists – generally don't believe that the warming we see will result in disasters is never reported.

The media don't really cover the fact that the infamous Paris Accords allowed China and India to massively increase their CO2 emissions.  If global warming is an existential crisis, why can we allow those countries to massively increase their contribution to our impending doom?

From this tiny subset of the media's propaganda effort, it's clear that we're being manipulated in two ways: by presenting lies as truth – global warming is a fact – and by not reporting the truths that are inconvenient for leftist's positions – such as the scientific fact that human life begins at conception.

The left knows that without its propaganda, it will lose in the court of public opinion.  The American people opposed the Republican tax cuts because the MSM propaganda machine constantly lied that only the rich would get tax breaks.  But as more and more people saw that they directly benefited from the tax cuts, both because they would pay less in taxes and because companies passed on their lower costs to their employees in terms of higher wages, polls showed that people changed their position and supported the Republican plan.

Hence, leftists know that they must keep the truth from the people just as the dictators who ran Nazi Germany, North Korea, and the Soviet Union knew they had to keep the truth from their people at all costs.

Because the American people will reject leftists when they see the truth, leftists are working hard to shut off all forms of communication that aren't part of their propaganda efforts.  That's why Facebook and Twitter censor honest news and hype the propaganda of the MSM.

Interestingly, the disunity in America that the media complain about is due to the propaganda they spew.  If all Americans had the truth, there would be a lot less conflict in this country.  For example, the vast majority of Americans favor restrictions on abortion, but many of them aren't supporting change because they've been lied to about the fact that abortion is currently legal for any reason at any time.  If they think the restrictions they support are the law, why call to change the law?

The reality is that America is not as disunited as it appears.  If we can remove the vast leftist propaganda machine and give the American people the truth, we'll find that they tend to agree on most key issues.

Take this opportunity to help wake your friends who have are trapped in the web of media lies.  They'll eventually thank you.

SOURCE 

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Welfare reform is happening fast

Despite near-historical low unemployment rates and employers desperate to fill open jobs across the country, welfare enrollment is soaring. And overwhelmingly, the newest enrollees aren’t those the system was intended to serve — the elderly and those with disabilities, among others. Instead, they’re mainly able-bodied adults.

But now, things are changing. And they’re changing quickly.

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order on welfare reform, laying the groundwork for federal and state agencies to promote economic mobility and opportunity through work. Just two days later, the House Committee on Agriculture released a draft proposal of the 2018 Farm Bill, calling for an expansion of work requirements for able-bodied adults receiving food stamps and committing to initiatives that will reduce fraud and abuse across the food stamp program.

And in the states, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed key welfare-reform legislation into law last week, reaffirming the state’s commitment to move able-bodied adults from welfare to work and making policy changes that will restore the state’s welfare program to a safety net for the truly needy. One day later, Kentucky followed suit, with Gov. Matt Bevin signing a bill that will strengthen commonsense work requirements and reduce fraud among the state’s welfare programs.

The timing of these legislative and executive actions at both the state and federal levels isn’t coincidence. It’s a clear indication that policymakers are addressing the big problems facing their constituents and their states. And it’s an even bigger indication that finally, they’re giving their constituents what they want: welfare reform.

A recent poll found 90 percent of voters support work requirements for able-bodied adults. And a poll conducted by Politico and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health found 64 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of independents overwhelmingly support work requirements.

It’s not difficult to believe, given that work requirements were initially laid out in the bipartisan welfare reform of 1996. Able-bodied adults were intended to work, train, or volunteer for at least 20 hours per week in order to be eligible for food stamps. But a series of loopholes and gimmicks created opportunities for states to waive these requirements, and welfare enrollment exploded.

There are now nearly 21 million able-bodied adults dependent on food stamps, more than three times as many as 2000. Nearly 28 million able-bodied adults are now dependent on Medicaid, up from 7 million in 2000.

This enrollment explosion has wreaked havoc on state budgets and on taxpayer spending. It’s threatened spending for education, public safety, and infrastructure, and has threatened limited resources for those who welfare was originally designed to help: the disabled, the elderly, and poor children.

It’s why Kentucky fought to become the first state to win federal approval of the same commonsense work requirements for able-bodied adults on Medicaid, and why nearly a dozen other states are pushing for the same reform. It’s why state legislators are advocating for reforms that eliminate welfare fraud and check the assets of beneficiaries to ensure that food stamps aren’t going to millionaires.

It’s why Govs. Bevin and Walker signed welfare reform bills into law.

The recent executive order and the 2018 Farm Bill are the next steps. They have the power to move millions of Americans out of dependency and back to a life of self-sufficiency and dignity. There’s never been a better time to move able-bodied Americans back to work than now, with 6 million open jobs nationwide.

It’s about time our welfare system gets with the times.

SOURCE 

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Want income equality? Here is the nation for you!

Cuba is so lucky.  With the installation of their new president, Miguel Díaz Canel, Cubans will be able to continue with their terrific lifestyle.  What lifestyle?  Income equality.

Cuba has income equality.  Verifying this requires a careful look at the data.  Most sources – for example, Brookings – cite a per capita income of about $240 per year.  Wikipedia cites about $22,000 per year, so be careful with your information sources.  The government employs 78% of the workers, so there is little opportunity to get an income very different from the average.  How can people survive on a salary of practically nothing?  Thanks to the government, Cubans get free food and medicine.  They get subsidies for virtually everything they might buy.  As a result, someone getting no salary is only slightly worse off than someone with a relatively high income.  In all practicality, Cuba has as close to income equality as a society can provide.

Cuba also has abject poverty and child prostitution.  Before the 1959 revolution, Cuba exported $780 million (1959 dollars) of goods, mostly food.  Now it imports 70% to 80% of the food that it consumes.  The result is that Cubans risk their lives in shark-infested waters to escape.

Before the Castros took over Cuba, it was quite prosperous.  PBS describes Cuba's 1950s living standards this way:

Cuba ranked fifth in the hemisphere in per capita income, third in life expectancy, second in per capita ownership of automobiles and telephones, and first in the number of television sets per inhabitant.  The literacy rate, 76%, was the fourth highest in Latin America.  Cuba ranked 11th in the world in the number of doctors per capita.

If you like Cuba's income equality, how do you get it?  The same way the Castros did.  Take away the people's freedom.

Is income inequality so bad?  Giving people the freedom to prosper as much as their hardworking nature will allow is the most efficient way to give the most people the most good.  Some people will still be poor, but with so many people setting a good example, the number of people with an optimistic attitude leading to prosperity will be maximized.  The income will be unequal, but it will be quite high.

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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