Sunday, July 07, 2019
The real reason why the left was against Donald Trump's July 4 speech
Gary Varvel
Now we know why the Democrats were so upset about President Trump speaking on the Fourth of July.
It was not because it was political or partisan. It was patriotic and that is what annoys the left the most.
Several days before the speech, we heard that Trump was hijacking Independence Day and turning it into a campaign rally. But Trump never mentioned the 2020 campaign in his speech.
We heard that Trump’s desire to have tanks on the National Mall was an out-and-out authoritarian performance art. But that wasn’t really the issue. Neither was the fake outrage over the cost.
There was no mention of political opponents and no mention of the fake news media. And this wasn’t Trump co-opting the nation’s birthday to celebrate himself. In fact, for a man who loves to talk about his accomplishments, he never mentioned himself.
No, Trump did something far more dangerous to the left. He gave America a strong dose of patriotism. He gave Americans a history lesson on the great people, heroes and their great accomplishments over the last 243 years.
Earlier in the week, The New York Times ran a video arguing America isn't the greatest nation on Earth, "the U.S. is really just O.K."
Without mentioning The Times or the video, Trump proceeded to tell us about America’s greatness for nearly an hour interrupted only by applause, flyovers and military songs. At one point, I thought “who is this guy and what have they done with President Trump?”
“Today, we come together as One Nation with this very special Salute To America,” said Trump. “We celebrate our history, our people and the heroes who proudly defend our flag — the brave men and women of the United States Military!”
And boy, did he. Starting with the story of America’s war for independence, Trump quoted the words and deeds of Americans that have long been forgotten but need to be remembered.
Trump told the story of Gen. George Washington as he readied his troops to fight the British invasion. Trump said, “Washington’s message to his troops laid bare the stakes, He wrote, ‘The fate of unborn millions will now depend under God on the courage and conduct of this army, we have therefore to resolve to conquer or die.’”
We are the millions who benefited from their sacrifice.
In reminding America of the great acts of past generation, Trump brought it to the present by honoring our first responders and all of the men and women of law enforcement. Trump also honored the Gold Star families who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Legends and icons
He introduced NASA legend Gene Kranz and told him, we’re going back to the moon and we’re going to plant our flag on Mars.
He also introduced and thanked civil rights icon, Clarence Henderson who was 18-years-old in 1960 when he took part in a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“Almost six decades later, he sits tonight in a seat of honor,” Trump said. “Clarence thanks for making this a much better place for all Americans.”
I found it very unifying but there were some triggers for the Left.
Trump said “This country the most exceptional nation in the history of the world and it’s at its strongest now.” American exceptionalism annoys the left.
“We are one people, chasing one dream and one magnificent destiny,” Trump said. “We all share the same heroes, the same home and the same heart and we are all made by the same almighty God.” Mentioning God annoys the left.
I think this should become a tradition for every president from now on. With all of the partisan political fights, it was nice to be reminded of American’s amazing heritage. It was inspiring and that’s what we need.
For one day, Trump put partisan politics aside and focused the eyes of America on our past, present and to our future.
Thanks, Mr. President.
SOURCE
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Trump seizes the political momentum
Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington seemed all but complete yesterday as he stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial watching fighter jets fly over him with army tanks on the sidelines.
It was all symbolic, of course, but this was the Independence Day party Trump had wanted and ordered against the howls of his opponents. As the President grinned on stage, cloaking himself in patriotism ahead of the July 4 fireworks display, it was clear Trump had once again rewritten the rule book to suit his presidency.
As usual, he did so in the face of a long list of opponents, including Democrats, most of the US media and some former Pentagon officials who accused him of politicising a bipartisan patriotic celebration. But Trump didn’t care. Instead, he only increased his demands during the week, extending the fireworks show and ordering that Abrams tanks be brought up from Georgia to add more grunt to the occasion.
This came just days after Trump’s made-for-television moment with Kim Jong-un when the President met the North Korean leader in the demilitarised zone on the border of the two Koreas after inviting him via Twitter.
Kim responded to his tweeted invitation and Trump became the first sitting US president to step into North Korea. At every turn, Trump is living out his 2016 promise to voters that he would be an unconventional president, not to mention compelling, controversial and unique.
As Trump approaches 2½ years in the Oval Office, his dominance of the daily news cycle in the US has never been greater, denying much needed oxygen to the gaggle of Democrats competing to challenge him for the White House. After a successful G20 meeting in Japan, for which he received positive reviews, even from long-time critics such as The Washington Post editorial board, Trump now surveys a political landscape that is as favourable to him as at any time in his presidency.
As the advantages of incumbency and a purring economy, growing jobs and pay packets, low unemployment, no major wars and even recent border security problems play into his hands, Trump finds himself politically in a rare sweet spot.
It is a far cry from the dark days of early last year, at the height of the Mueller investigation, when Trump was reeling from the fallout from his sacking of FBI chief James Comey and his dysfunctional White House was being stripped bare by the lurid revelations in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury.
Even so, it is difficult for Republicans to claim with any confidence that Trump is now the favourite to win next year’s presidential election.
Trump’s approval rating — at 43.8 per cent according to the RealClearPolitics’ poll average — is near the highest of his term, but it is still far lower than any president would want at this stage of the re-election cycle. His disapproval rating is still above 50 per cent at 52.5.
However, Trump’s low poll ratings previously have been misleading. He trailed his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, all the way in the 2016 campaign, including on polling day, until he won.
Internal Republican polling also shows the President performing poorly in the three key swing states he stole in 2016 to win the election — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump won these three states by a combined 79,646 votes. If he loses these three states next year, he loses office.
The polling shows him trailing Joe Biden and other leading Democratic candidates by sizeable margins in these three key states, largely because of a drop in support from moderate voters, especially women, in the suburbs of regional towns and cities. These were moderate Democratic voters who switched to Trump in 2016 but have since been alienated by his style of leadership. It was this group that primarily drove the Democrats to win back the House of Representatives in last November’s midterm elections. They remain the most powerful obstacle to his re-election.
“My feeling is the election is really a 50-50 prospect right now,” says Mike Green, senior vice-president for Asia at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies and a former member of the National Security Council under George W. Bush.
“I say that because something unprecedented will have to happen for him to either win or lose re-election. No president in the postwar era has lost re-election when the unemployment rate is as low as it is now.
“On the other hand, no president has won re-election with negative numbers as high as Trump’s, so one of those two records or precedents will have to be broken.”
But for now the momentum is with Trump, helped by the implosion among Democratic contenders after their first debate, in which two clear frontrunners, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, faltered.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale says: “I think the President could beat anybody. The momentum behind this President right now is like nothing that history has ever seen.”
Of course Parscale would say that, but on the key issues that will have an impact on voters next year the trends right now are favouring the President.
This week marked the 121st straight month — or 10 straight years — in which the US economy expanded, the longest expansion on record. The US economy is growing at a healthy 3 per cent, although slower rates are forecast next year.
Unemployment is at a 49-year low of 3.6 per cent.
Trump has been in power for only a quarter of this time and has been lucky to inherit a good economic cycle, but voters tend to credit presidents for strong economies and punish them for bad ones.
The trickle-down effects of the economy also are benefiting African-Americans and Hispanics, two important groups that Trump is trying to woo after they largely voted against him in 2016. The growing problem of undocumented migrants at the Mexican border is also playing into Trump’s hands politically in a way that seemed unlikely six months ago.
Early this year, when Trump claimed there was a “crisis” at the southern border, he was criticised by Democrats because the numbers of detained migrants crossing into the US were still far fewer than a decade earlier.
They accused Trump of manufacturing a crisis to secure funding for his promised border wall. But since then a sharp spike in the number of unauthorised migrants entering the US, especially family groups with children, has changed the perception of many Americans. The number of migrants apprehended at the border surged in May to 132,887, including 11,507 unaccompanied children.
This was the highest monthly level since 2006 and the first time that detentions exceeded 100,000 since April 2007. The conditions at overcrowded border detention centres now are making daily headlines in the US.
A CNN poll this week found 74 per cent of Americans now say the situation on the border is a “crisis” compared with only 45 per cent who felt that way in January. This increase was steepest among Democratic voters, who previously had ridiculed Trump’s claims: 70 per cent of Democrats now call it a crisis compared with 23 per cent in January.
Trump has seized this as opportunity to intensify his attack on Democrats as weak on border security, an issue that resonated loudly with his base in 2016 and will likely do so again next year.
When Democratic presidential contenders in last week’s debate advocated decriminalising illegal border crossings and providing undocumented migrants access to healthcare, it must have seemed like a gift to Trump, who immediately jumped on to Twitter.
“All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare,” he tweeted. “How about taking care of American Citizens first! That’s the end of that race.”
Opponents also criticised Trump’s highly unorthodox threat to levy tariffs on Mexico unless it did more to help secure its borders with Central America. But it did have the intended effect of forcing Mexico to deploy thousands of extra troops to reduce the number of undocumented migrants entering Mexico from Central America en route to the US.
Each of these issues gives Trump the same ammunition he used in 2016 to secure his base and win the election.
Yet to the puzzlement of some, Trump has so far directed all of his campaign efforts into keeping, rather than expanding his base. His campaign launch rally in Orlando, Florida, this month was a re-run of his 2016 rallies as he mixed dark claims of persecution by the FBI, by Mueller and by the media with boasts about his achievements.
So far, Trump’s base has proved to be intensely loyal to him. About 90 per cent of Republicans approve of his performance. When asked by Time magazine last week whether he should reach out to swinging voters, Trump said: “I think my base is so strong, I’m not sure that I have to do that.”
Trump has come out of the Mueller inquiry without serious injury in the polls and Democrats in the house are divided on whether to try to impeach him. The President’s biggest selling point for next year’s campaign will be that he has ticked off a long list of those promises he made in 2016, from tax cuts, to job growth, the US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate change accord and the Iran nuclear deal, the reworking of North American Free Trade Agreement, the challenges to China and NATO, and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, among others.
Trump’s divisive and confrontational style remains his biggest weakness and it explains his persistently high disapproval ratings. Biden believes this is his ticket to the White House.
The former vice-president is campaigning almost entirely on being the anti-Trump, promising to restore more civility and decency to the office of the president.
The key question is whether Trump’s controversial style will attract more people to vote Democrat than they did in 2016. The argument against this theory is that Trump’s maverick style is hardly breaking news and he won the 2016 election when voters were already fully aware of who he was.
The biggest risk to Trump’s base right now, and perhaps his re-election, is whether he can strike a deal to end his trade war with China before US farmers turn against him in key swing states.
At the G20 meeting, Trump agreed with Chinese President Xi Jinping to reopen negotiations on a trade deal and to pause his threat to impose a further $US300 billion in tariffs on Beijing.
CSIS’s Green says Trump’s decision to resume talks with Xi was driven by political concerns about imposing more financial pain on American farmers.
“The tariffs on China, because of China’s retaliation with (tariffs on US) soybeans and agriculture, are really unpopular with the farmers, who are probably more important to Republicans than the blue-collar base,” he says.
Green says he has been meeting the heads of the US farm lobbies, who tell him their members hate the tariff war but they’re not blaming Trump yet.
“They still support Trump but what the leaders of these agricultural associations say is that by August and September when farms start foreclosing, the pain will be enough that they think farmers will start to turn on the President.
“So for me, it was very predictable at the G20 that he would just agree to keep talking to the Chinese because he can’t raise tariffs again without taking a major political hit yet he can’t lower tariffs right now without taking a hit.
“He has very little manoeuvring room on policy.”
Many observers, including Green, say Trump’s political strategy over the year ahead will focus not so much on growing his own base but on goading Democrats into adopting policies that are to the left of mainstream Americans.
Green says Trump is already seeking to push the Democrats to the left of the mainstream on issues such as immigration and healthcare.
“Trump can’t break his negative 50 per cent plus ratings but he can try to drive up the negative rating of the Democrats by baiting them to take on policies that are unpopular with the majority of Americans,” he says.
Trump would be encouraged by what he saw in the first debate between 20 of the 25 Democrat contenders. After sub-par performances from the two frontrunners, Biden and Sanders, they both have tumbled in the polls.
The debates also shone light on the extent to which most of the field, from poster-girl Kamala Harris to Elizabeth Warren, embrace policies on immigration, health and taxes that were too left-wing even for Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. There is a long way to go until polling day in November next year — a lifetime in the fast-moving Trump presidency — and much can still go wrong for him.
But as he approaches the 2½-year mark in the White House, the prospects of a second Trump term are improving.
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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Friday, July 05, 2019
CNN see hate everywhere except where it is -- on the Left
They see an "explosion of white supremacy" but anything non-Leftist rates as white supremacy to them. By any sane definition, the number of white supremacists is tiny. Muslim supremacy and Leftist supremacy are the big problems. If you want to witness an explosion of hate, just say the name "Trump" to almost any Leftist
CNN marked the beginning of the Fourth of July holiday week with a one-hour special called "State of Hate: The Explosion of White Supremacy." These people pledge allegiance to "Facts First" in their marketing, but on what factual basis is there an "explosion of white supremacy" in America?
CNN will deny it, of course, but at the end of the day, it doesn't see much difference between white supremacists and Trump Nation. CNN spent an hour promoting fringe racist figures like Richard Spencer and David Duke, who promised he was going to "fulfill the promises of Donald Trump." But this was outdated, since Spencer tweeted last November, "The Trump moment is over, and it's time for us to move on."
In the CNN special, racists were interspersed with footage of people saying "Make America Great Again" and footage of people protesting illegal immigration, with an obvious smear implied. Oppose illegal immigration? You must be a Klansman. Or a neo-Nazi.
This "explosion of white supremacy" is apparently so dangerous that CNN felt the need to expose it during an hour of prime-time programming.
The left-leaning Anti-Defamation League reported a KKK decline in 2016, but it wasn't specific about an overall number. It said: "Despite a persistent ability to attract media attention, organized Ku Klux Klan groups are actually continuing a long-term trend of decline. They remain a collection of mostly small, disjointed groups that continually change in name and leadership. Down slightly from a year ago, there are currently just over thirty active Klan groups in the United States, most of them very small."
Has it gone up since then? A 2018 ADL report on the Loyal White Knights group within the Ku Klux Klan said the group "is the largest and the most active Klan group in the country with approximately 100 members." You read that correctly. The Knights' rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, in July 2017, with "fifty-odd Klansmen" qualified as "the largest rally organized by a Klan group in recent years."
To CNN, this is somehow the evidence that demands an hour on white supremacy.
Giving oxygen to the Klan comes naturally to CNN. Black comedian W. Kamau Bell began his CNN documentary series, "United Shades of America," in 2016 with a stunt where he hung out with the KKK, as if the group was deeply important. The Washington Post saluted Bell for peppering "his wry observations with a big, booming laugh" and his ability to "stay cool" around the KKK kooks.
The same leftists who spent decades lamenting the Red Scare paranoia — as if conservatives were saying there was a communist under every bed — promote a Brown Shirt Scare about impending American fascism. This, in turn, fuels a radical "anti-fascist" (or "antifa") movement that threatens violence in the streets over the cuckoo conspiracy theory of a Nazi takeover of America.
What about antifa? CNN didn't include the movement in its "State of Hate" special. "Hate" is only something the right-wingers do. They might agree with their friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center about the "myth of the unhinged, violent left." Sadly, the day before CNN's special, thugs in Portland, Oregon, assaulted several people at an antifa protest including Quillette journalist Andy Ngo, who routinely films antifa rallies.
If the media really wanted to describe dangerous and violent "hate" groups fairly, they would find them on the left with antifa. Conservatives want nothing to do with the KKK. Downplaying antifa — or even promoting it, as CNN has — is the very opposite of putting the facts first.
SOURCE
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Trump Signs Law Making It Harder for IRS to Seize Money From Americans
The Internal Revenue Service seized $446,000 from the bank accounts of brothers Jeffrey, Richard, and Mitch Hirsch in 2012, claiming a “structuring” violation against the owners of Bi-County Distributors Inc. for making multiple bank deposits of less than $10,000.
The government never charged them with a crime, nor gave them a hearing to enable them to contest the seizure, but after intense national media attention to the case, the government returned the funds.
The case was among many that highlighted an abuse by IRS agents known as legal source structuring that allowed the tax collection agency to use a law, the Bank Secrecy Act, intended to combat money laundering, to seize assets.
President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill Monday to force greater accountability on the IRS in the property seizures, as well as protect taxpayers from identity theft, boost whistleblower protections, and modernize the tax agency.
“We just finished signing, the important signing, of the Taxpayer First bill, the IRS Taxpayer First, which is a tremendous thing for our citizens having to deal with the IRS,” Trump told reporters after the signing. “It streamlines and so many other changes are made. That was just done and signed. It’s been made into law. So we are all set on that.”
The new law, the Taxpayer First Act, requires the IRS to show probable cause that the smaller transactions were made in order to evade financial reporting requirements.
Legal source structuring laws kick in when large financial transactions are broken up into smaller transactions, which sparks suspicion from the IRS. If dividing up transactions is done with the intent to evade bank reporting requirements, it’s illegal, and the IRS can seize assets.
A 2017 audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found no evidence of underlying crimes in 91% of the structuring cases examined in a sampling.
The inspector general’s report further noted that the IRS frequently ignored reasonable explanations business owners have for deposits.
The IRS used the power in 2,500 cases between 2005 and 2012, gobbling up $242 million in assets, according to the Institute for Justice, a public interest legal group. Of those, one-third involved only allegations of structuring, and not other alleged wrongdoing, the institute found.
The provision of the Taxpayer First Act largely codifies rules the IRS had already made in response to public pressure, but unlike laws, regulations can be overturned administratively.
The new law further requires a hearing within 30 days of an assets seizure. It also establishes an independent office of appeals within the IRS for taxpayers.
“This is a long time coming,” said Jason Snead, senior policy analyst at the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation. “There have been many noted abuses in cases not derived from illegal behavior. I hope this is the beginning of a longer process to reform the civil forfeiture laws.”
At a time when Congress has had a tough time agreeing to any major legislation, the Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-controlled House voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation.
“This bipartisan, bicameral bill represents years of hard work and consensus building,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement after its Senate passage. “It’s a big first step toward strengthening taxpayer protections and turning the IRS into the customer service organization it ought to be.”
The new law authorized the IRS internal investigators to communicate with whistleblowers who are, during the processing of their claims, reporting bad behavior within the agency if doing so would be helpful to the investigation. The internal investigators, usually the inspector general, would also notify the whistleblowers on the status of the investigation, under the new law.
The law further extends anti-retaliation provisions to the IRS whistleblowers currently afforded to whistleblowers in other agencies.
SOURCE
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Walter Williams: Assault on Western Civilization
Western civilization was founded on a set of philosophies that focus strongly on the sanctity of individuals and their power of logic and reason. This belief led to a desire to trust things that could be proven to be true or legitimate, from government to science. Judeo-Christian morality has formed the basis of most Western notions of ethics and behavioral standards. Thus, the attack on Western civilization must begin with the attack on the church and Christian values, and, just as important, the family unit must be undermined. The reason why the church, Christian values and family are targets of the left is they want people's loyalty and allegiance to be to the state. The church, Christianity and the family stand in the way. Let's look at some of the left's agenda.
Joe Biden, criticizing sexual assault, said, "This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man's culture," adding, "It's got to change." The Western world's culture isn't perfect but women fare better under it than any other culture. Just ask yourself: If you're a feminist, in which countries would you like to live? Would it be Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, China or countries on the African continent, north or south of the Sahara? In those countries, women encounter all kinds of liberty restrictions plus in at least 30 countries on the African continent, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, female genital mutilation is practiced. You might ask Joe Biden what part of the "white man's culture" needs to be changed.
The greatest efforts to downplay the achievements of Western civilization start at our colleges and universities. An American Council of Trustees and Alumni 2016 study reported that "the overwhelming majority of America's most prestigious institutions do not require even the students who major in history to take a single course on United States history or government." Because of this ignorance, our young people fall easy prey to charlatans, quacks and liars who wish to downgrade our founders and the American achievement.
In 2012, 2014 and 2015, an ACTA-commissioned survey of college graduates found that less than 20% could accurately identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. Less than half could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown. One-third of college graduates were unaware that FDR introduced the New Deal. Over one-third of the college graduates surveyed could not place the American Civil War in its correct 20-year time frame. Nearly half of the college graduates could not identify correctly the term lengths of U.S. senators and representatives.
The left in our country often suggests that people who stand up for Western civilization are supporting a racial hierarchy. The fact is that the history of the world is one of arbitrary tyrannical abuse and control. Poverty has been the standard fare for a vast majority of mankind. America became the exception to what life was like. That exceptionalism inspired imitators, and our vision of freedom and liberty spread to what has become known as the Western world.
Many do not appreciate the fact that freedom and competition in both the marketplace and idea arena unleashed a level of entrepreneurism, risk-taking and creativity heretofore unknown to mankind. Look at the marketplace of ideas. The Nobel Prize has been awarded to 860 people since its inception in 1901. The prizewinner distribution: Americans (375), United Kingdom (131) Germany (108), France (69) and Sweden (32); that's 83 percent of Nobel Prizes won. The large majority of other Nobel winners are mostly westerners. I might add that Japan has 27 Nobel Prize winners, but their first winner was awarded in 1949, after WWII led Japan to became more westernized.
There's a reason why the West leads the world in terms of scientific innovation, wealth and military might and it has little to do with genetics. Instead, it's the environment of freedom, both in the market for goods and in the idea marketplace. Rigorous competition brings out the best in mankind. Leftists and would-be tyrants find Western values offensive.
SOURCE
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The Dangerous Seduction of ‘Free’
By offering all sorts of freebies to various constituencies, Bernie Sanders has positioned himself as the true-believing socialist in the Democratic race (even though he’s actually a member of the “top-1 percent”).
But he has plenty of competition. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren are strong competitors in the free-lunch Olympics, and most of the rest of the candidates are saying “me, too” as well.
Assuming these candidates get a warm reception, this is a worrisome development.
Part of America’s superior societal capital is (or has been) our immunity to the free-lunch message.
If that’s changing, it will be very hard to be optimistic about the future.
Antony Davies of Duquesne University and James Harrigan of the University of Arizona wrote for FEE about the dangerous – and seductive – ideology of something-for-nothing:
“… politicians are tripping over each other to offer voters more ‘free’ things, including everything from health care and college to a guaranteed basic income. But voters should be fostering a healthy sense of skepticism. If there is one eternal and immutable fact in economics, it is that nothing is free. Nothing.
… as voters, our healthy skepticism seems to go right out the window. When politicians promise all sorts of ‘free’ things, it doesn’t occur to many of us that those things can’t possibly be free. It doesn’t occur to us that, like businesses seeking our dollars, politicians will tell us whatever it takes to get hold of our votes. … Don’t be so gullible …when you hear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders tell you how health care and higher education will be free for everyone, remember that … health care and higher education cannot and will never be free.”
Davies and Harrigan are economically right. Indeed, they are 100 percent right. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
But there are lunches that are financed by others. And that’s why I’m worried about support for these types of policy proposals.
I don’t want America to turn into Europe, with people thinking they have a “right” to a wide array of goodies, paid for by someone else.
So what’s the alternative to the something-for-nothing ideology of the modern left?
Bobby Jindal, the former Louisiana governor, recently opined on this topic in The Wall Street Journal.
“Progressives are changing the Democratic Party’s focus…to subsidizing everything for everybody. … Democrats now promise free college, free health care and more—for everyone. Republicans can’t outspend Democrats, but they can make the case for freedom and against the idea that everything is ‘free’ … The Republican ideal is … an aspirational society. … becoming dependent on government is the American nightmare. … Republicans have to do more than mock the Green New Deal … if they want to persuade young voters of the case for limited government and personal freedom.
… ‘free’ means more government control at the expense of consumer autonomy. When progressives promise government will pay for health care and college, they are really saying government will run medicine and higher education. … ‘Free’ means less efficiency, more expense and lower quality. … ‘Free’ means robbing from America’s children. … Despite proposed marginal rates as high as 70% or even 90%, none of the tax plans Democrats have put forward would raise nearly enough revenue to pay for the promised spending. …
Republicans can’t outbid Santa Claus. Americans are willing to work hard and sacrifice for a better life but need to know how pro-growth policies benefit them. Voters may be tempted by progressives’ crazy plans … They will embrace effective market-based solutions that promote freedom if Republicans offer them.”
Gov. Jindal has a great message about trumpeting growth as an alternative to redistribution.
SOURCE
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Video: Why doesn't Portland mayor Ted Wheeler let the police stop violence at political rallies?
The Portland Police Association is blasting Portland Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler for not allowing law enforcement to effectively deal with political violence instigated by Antifa that erupted at rallies on June 29, saying, “Police officers work to uphold the Constitution, including the right to free speech. It’s our job to ensure that our community can peacefully protest without fear of violence but right now our hands are tied. It’s time for our Mayor to… remove the handcuffs from our officers and let them stop the violence through strong and swift enforcement action. Enough is enough.”
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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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They see an "explosion of white supremacy" but anything non-Leftist rates as white supremacy to them. By any sane definition, the number of white supremacists is tiny. Muslim supremacy and Leftist supremacy are the big problems. If you want to witness an explosion of hate, just say the name "Trump" to almost any Leftist
CNN marked the beginning of the Fourth of July holiday week with a one-hour special called "State of Hate: The Explosion of White Supremacy." These people pledge allegiance to "Facts First" in their marketing, but on what factual basis is there an "explosion of white supremacy" in America?
CNN will deny it, of course, but at the end of the day, it doesn't see much difference between white supremacists and Trump Nation. CNN spent an hour promoting fringe racist figures like Richard Spencer and David Duke, who promised he was going to "fulfill the promises of Donald Trump." But this was outdated, since Spencer tweeted last November, "The Trump moment is over, and it's time for us to move on."
In the CNN special, racists were interspersed with footage of people saying "Make America Great Again" and footage of people protesting illegal immigration, with an obvious smear implied. Oppose illegal immigration? You must be a Klansman. Or a neo-Nazi.
This "explosion of white supremacy" is apparently so dangerous that CNN felt the need to expose it during an hour of prime-time programming.
The left-leaning Anti-Defamation League reported a KKK decline in 2016, but it wasn't specific about an overall number. It said: "Despite a persistent ability to attract media attention, organized Ku Klux Klan groups are actually continuing a long-term trend of decline. They remain a collection of mostly small, disjointed groups that continually change in name and leadership. Down slightly from a year ago, there are currently just over thirty active Klan groups in the United States, most of them very small."
Has it gone up since then? A 2018 ADL report on the Loyal White Knights group within the Ku Klux Klan said the group "is the largest and the most active Klan group in the country with approximately 100 members." You read that correctly. The Knights' rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, in July 2017, with "fifty-odd Klansmen" qualified as "the largest rally organized by a Klan group in recent years."
To CNN, this is somehow the evidence that demands an hour on white supremacy.
Giving oxygen to the Klan comes naturally to CNN. Black comedian W. Kamau Bell began his CNN documentary series, "United Shades of America," in 2016 with a stunt where he hung out with the KKK, as if the group was deeply important. The Washington Post saluted Bell for peppering "his wry observations with a big, booming laugh" and his ability to "stay cool" around the KKK kooks.
The same leftists who spent decades lamenting the Red Scare paranoia — as if conservatives were saying there was a communist under every bed — promote a Brown Shirt Scare about impending American fascism. This, in turn, fuels a radical "anti-fascist" (or "antifa") movement that threatens violence in the streets over the cuckoo conspiracy theory of a Nazi takeover of America.
What about antifa? CNN didn't include the movement in its "State of Hate" special. "Hate" is only something the right-wingers do. They might agree with their friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center about the "myth of the unhinged, violent left." Sadly, the day before CNN's special, thugs in Portland, Oregon, assaulted several people at an antifa protest including Quillette journalist Andy Ngo, who routinely films antifa rallies.
If the media really wanted to describe dangerous and violent "hate" groups fairly, they would find them on the left with antifa. Conservatives want nothing to do with the KKK. Downplaying antifa — or even promoting it, as CNN has — is the very opposite of putting the facts first.
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Trump Signs Law Making It Harder for IRS to Seize Money From Americans
The Internal Revenue Service seized $446,000 from the bank accounts of brothers Jeffrey, Richard, and Mitch Hirsch in 2012, claiming a “structuring” violation against the owners of Bi-County Distributors Inc. for making multiple bank deposits of less than $10,000.
The government never charged them with a crime, nor gave them a hearing to enable them to contest the seizure, but after intense national media attention to the case, the government returned the funds.
The case was among many that highlighted an abuse by IRS agents known as legal source structuring that allowed the tax collection agency to use a law, the Bank Secrecy Act, intended to combat money laundering, to seize assets.
President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill Monday to force greater accountability on the IRS in the property seizures, as well as protect taxpayers from identity theft, boost whistleblower protections, and modernize the tax agency.
“We just finished signing, the important signing, of the Taxpayer First bill, the IRS Taxpayer First, which is a tremendous thing for our citizens having to deal with the IRS,” Trump told reporters after the signing. “It streamlines and so many other changes are made. That was just done and signed. It’s been made into law. So we are all set on that.”
The new law, the Taxpayer First Act, requires the IRS to show probable cause that the smaller transactions were made in order to evade financial reporting requirements.
Legal source structuring laws kick in when large financial transactions are broken up into smaller transactions, which sparks suspicion from the IRS. If dividing up transactions is done with the intent to evade bank reporting requirements, it’s illegal, and the IRS can seize assets.
A 2017 audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found no evidence of underlying crimes in 91% of the structuring cases examined in a sampling.
The inspector general’s report further noted that the IRS frequently ignored reasonable explanations business owners have for deposits.
The IRS used the power in 2,500 cases between 2005 and 2012, gobbling up $242 million in assets, according to the Institute for Justice, a public interest legal group. Of those, one-third involved only allegations of structuring, and not other alleged wrongdoing, the institute found.
The provision of the Taxpayer First Act largely codifies rules the IRS had already made in response to public pressure, but unlike laws, regulations can be overturned administratively.
The new law further requires a hearing within 30 days of an assets seizure. It also establishes an independent office of appeals within the IRS for taxpayers.
“This is a long time coming,” said Jason Snead, senior policy analyst at the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation. “There have been many noted abuses in cases not derived from illegal behavior. I hope this is the beginning of a longer process to reform the civil forfeiture laws.”
At a time when Congress has had a tough time agreeing to any major legislation, the Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-controlled House voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation.
“This bipartisan, bicameral bill represents years of hard work and consensus building,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement after its Senate passage. “It’s a big first step toward strengthening taxpayer protections and turning the IRS into the customer service organization it ought to be.”
The new law authorized the IRS internal investigators to communicate with whistleblowers who are, during the processing of their claims, reporting bad behavior within the agency if doing so would be helpful to the investigation. The internal investigators, usually the inspector general, would also notify the whistleblowers on the status of the investigation, under the new law.
The law further extends anti-retaliation provisions to the IRS whistleblowers currently afforded to whistleblowers in other agencies.
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Walter Williams: Assault on Western Civilization
Western civilization was founded on a set of philosophies that focus strongly on the sanctity of individuals and their power of logic and reason. This belief led to a desire to trust things that could be proven to be true or legitimate, from government to science. Judeo-Christian morality has formed the basis of most Western notions of ethics and behavioral standards. Thus, the attack on Western civilization must begin with the attack on the church and Christian values, and, just as important, the family unit must be undermined. The reason why the church, Christian values and family are targets of the left is they want people's loyalty and allegiance to be to the state. The church, Christianity and the family stand in the way. Let's look at some of the left's agenda.
Joe Biden, criticizing sexual assault, said, "This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man's culture," adding, "It's got to change." The Western world's culture isn't perfect but women fare better under it than any other culture. Just ask yourself: If you're a feminist, in which countries would you like to live? Would it be Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, China or countries on the African continent, north or south of the Sahara? In those countries, women encounter all kinds of liberty restrictions plus in at least 30 countries on the African continent, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, female genital mutilation is practiced. You might ask Joe Biden what part of the "white man's culture" needs to be changed.
The greatest efforts to downplay the achievements of Western civilization start at our colleges and universities. An American Council of Trustees and Alumni 2016 study reported that "the overwhelming majority of America's most prestigious institutions do not require even the students who major in history to take a single course on United States history or government." Because of this ignorance, our young people fall easy prey to charlatans, quacks and liars who wish to downgrade our founders and the American achievement.
In 2012, 2014 and 2015, an ACTA-commissioned survey of college graduates found that less than 20% could accurately identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. Less than half could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown. One-third of college graduates were unaware that FDR introduced the New Deal. Over one-third of the college graduates surveyed could not place the American Civil War in its correct 20-year time frame. Nearly half of the college graduates could not identify correctly the term lengths of U.S. senators and representatives.
The left in our country often suggests that people who stand up for Western civilization are supporting a racial hierarchy. The fact is that the history of the world is one of arbitrary tyrannical abuse and control. Poverty has been the standard fare for a vast majority of mankind. America became the exception to what life was like. That exceptionalism inspired imitators, and our vision of freedom and liberty spread to what has become known as the Western world.
Many do not appreciate the fact that freedom and competition in both the marketplace and idea arena unleashed a level of entrepreneurism, risk-taking and creativity heretofore unknown to mankind. Look at the marketplace of ideas. The Nobel Prize has been awarded to 860 people since its inception in 1901. The prizewinner distribution: Americans (375), United Kingdom (131) Germany (108), France (69) and Sweden (32); that's 83 percent of Nobel Prizes won. The large majority of other Nobel winners are mostly westerners. I might add that Japan has 27 Nobel Prize winners, but their first winner was awarded in 1949, after WWII led Japan to became more westernized.
There's a reason why the West leads the world in terms of scientific innovation, wealth and military might and it has little to do with genetics. Instead, it's the environment of freedom, both in the market for goods and in the idea marketplace. Rigorous competition brings out the best in mankind. Leftists and would-be tyrants find Western values offensive.
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The Dangerous Seduction of ‘Free’
By offering all sorts of freebies to various constituencies, Bernie Sanders has positioned himself as the true-believing socialist in the Democratic race (even though he’s actually a member of the “top-1 percent”).
But he has plenty of competition. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren are strong competitors in the free-lunch Olympics, and most of the rest of the candidates are saying “me, too” as well.
Assuming these candidates get a warm reception, this is a worrisome development.
Part of America’s superior societal capital is (or has been) our immunity to the free-lunch message.
If that’s changing, it will be very hard to be optimistic about the future.
Antony Davies of Duquesne University and James Harrigan of the University of Arizona wrote for FEE about the dangerous – and seductive – ideology of something-for-nothing:
“… politicians are tripping over each other to offer voters more ‘free’ things, including everything from health care and college to a guaranteed basic income. But voters should be fostering a healthy sense of skepticism. If there is one eternal and immutable fact in economics, it is that nothing is free. Nothing.
… as voters, our healthy skepticism seems to go right out the window. When politicians promise all sorts of ‘free’ things, it doesn’t occur to many of us that those things can’t possibly be free. It doesn’t occur to us that, like businesses seeking our dollars, politicians will tell us whatever it takes to get hold of our votes. … Don’t be so gullible …when you hear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders tell you how health care and higher education will be free for everyone, remember that … health care and higher education cannot and will never be free.”
Davies and Harrigan are economically right. Indeed, they are 100 percent right. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
But there are lunches that are financed by others. And that’s why I’m worried about support for these types of policy proposals.
I don’t want America to turn into Europe, with people thinking they have a “right” to a wide array of goodies, paid for by someone else.
So what’s the alternative to the something-for-nothing ideology of the modern left?
Bobby Jindal, the former Louisiana governor, recently opined on this topic in The Wall Street Journal.
“Progressives are changing the Democratic Party’s focus…to subsidizing everything for everybody. … Democrats now promise free college, free health care and more—for everyone. Republicans can’t outspend Democrats, but they can make the case for freedom and against the idea that everything is ‘free’ … The Republican ideal is … an aspirational society. … becoming dependent on government is the American nightmare. … Republicans have to do more than mock the Green New Deal … if they want to persuade young voters of the case for limited government and personal freedom.
… ‘free’ means more government control at the expense of consumer autonomy. When progressives promise government will pay for health care and college, they are really saying government will run medicine and higher education. … ‘Free’ means less efficiency, more expense and lower quality. … ‘Free’ means robbing from America’s children. … Despite proposed marginal rates as high as 70% or even 90%, none of the tax plans Democrats have put forward would raise nearly enough revenue to pay for the promised spending. …
Republicans can’t outbid Santa Claus. Americans are willing to work hard and sacrifice for a better life but need to know how pro-growth policies benefit them. Voters may be tempted by progressives’ crazy plans … They will embrace effective market-based solutions that promote freedom if Republicans offer them.”
Gov. Jindal has a great message about trumpeting growth as an alternative to redistribution.
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Video: Why doesn't Portland mayor Ted Wheeler let the police stop violence at political rallies?
The Portland Police Association is blasting Portland Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler for not allowing law enforcement to effectively deal with political violence instigated by Antifa that erupted at rallies on June 29, saying, “Police officers work to uphold the Constitution, including the right to free speech. It’s our job to ensure that our community can peacefully protest without fear of violence but right now our hands are tied. It’s time for our Mayor to… remove the handcuffs from our officers and let them stop the violence through strong and swift enforcement action. Enough is enough.”
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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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Thursday, July 04, 2019
Anti-Trump fever takes threatening turn
The toxicity of the resistance to President Trump has risen in recent days, with the nation's most respected newspapers publishing rationalizations for denying Trump supporters public accommodation and for doxxing career federal employees, while a journalist found himself under physical attack from the so-called anti-fascist group Antifa, which has stepped up its violent activities since Trump's election.
The justification for denying public accommodation came from the Washington Post in an op-ed by Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of a farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. Wilkinson became famous in June of last year, when she refused to serve White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders and and told Sanders and her family to leave the restaurant. Wilkinson's staff then followed the Sanders group in protest as they tried to find another place to eat.
Wilkinson later told the press she ejected Sanders because the Trump administration is "inhumane and unethical" and because the Red Hen "has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation."
In her new article, Wilkinson discussed the case of The Aviary, a trendy bar in Chicago where a waitress recently spat on Eric Trump, the president's son. Wilkinson wrote that the incident, along with her own decision to oust Sanders, shows that in the age of Trump "new rules apply" in public accommodations: Americans who work for the administration or support the president should stay away.
"If you're directly complicit in spreading hate or perpetuating suffering, maybe you should consider dining at home," Wilkinson wrote.
Wilkinson noted that "no one in the industry condones the physical assault of a patron," but at the same time declared that Americans should understand that a "frustrated person" — for example, a restaurant employee — will "lash out at the representatives of an administration that has made its name trashing norms and breaking backs." Americans should accept that such things will happen.
"If you're an unsavory individual," Wilkinson concluded, "we have no legal or moral obligation to do business with you." Better to stay home than risk the spittle. (And of course, Wilkinson and her colleagues in the hospitality industry will decide who is "unsavory.")
The apology for doxxing came from the New York Times in a piece by Kate Cronin-Furman, an assistant professor of human rights at University College London. The article focused on the treatment of illegal immigrant children in detention centers near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Cronin-Furman discussed the detentions, as well as actions by employees of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in terms of the Holocaust and genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. Those are, of course, contexts which most Americans would likely dismiss as preposterous and offensive but which Cronin-Furman and the New York Times apparently take seriously. Her idea is that opponents of the administration should publicly identify and shame low- and mid-level Customs and Border Protection employees who care for migrant children.
Such workers would be dismayed at being publicly shamed because they are "sensitive to social pressure," Cronin-Furman wrote, "which has been shown to have played a huge role in atrocity commission and desistance in the Holocaust, Rwanda, and elsewhere. The campaign to stop the abuses at the border should exploit this sensitivity."
"This is not an argument for doxxing," Cronin-Furman continued. "It's about exposure of their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father's arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements. For those who won't (or can't) quit, it may induce them to treat the vulnerable individuals under their control more humanely. In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens."
Needless to say, that was a clear argument for doxxing.
Finally, there was Antifa's recent attack on Andy Ngo, a freelance journalist often associated with the pro-free thought cultural publication Quillette. At a demonstration in Portland, at which Trump was a focus of dispute, Antifa fighters beat up and milkshaked Ngo, apparently because he was there and he was not on their side.
The president is not always at the center of such demonstrations, but Antifa has become an angry and violent fringe force in the Resistance. It has played an ugly role in a number of events, most notably Charlottesville, in which feelings about Trump have played a role.
Shunning, shaming, doxxing, attacking. As the 2020 campaign reaches full speed, would it surprise anyone to see all of it increase? And all from people who congratulate themselves for standing against hate. Perhaps our politics will cool down at some point in the future. But not now.
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Unmask Antifa and Watch the Cowards Retreat
I’d urge everyone to read my colleague Jim Geraghty’s post on the thuggery this weekend in Portland. It was appalling to watch masked Antifa thugs attack Andy Ngo, and it was also appalling that the police weren’t immediately present to arrest his attackers. Antifa’s propensity to violence is well known, and while I’d love to hear a sympathetic explanation for the absence of police, the lack of response looks a lot like a dereliction of duty.
There is, however, a simple and well-known legal reform that will go a long way towards deterring Antifa violence — even when police aren’t close by, but iPhones are. It’s called an anti-masking law. They’ve long existed in the South as a check on Klan violence, and they not only make it easier for police to immediately identify and arrest criminals, they also allow witnesses to preserve the pictures and videos of violent attackers for later criminal or civil action.
When I tweeted over the weekend in support of an anti-masking ordinance in Oregon, a number of correspondents asked me if the laws were consistent with First Amendment protections for anonymous speech. The answer is generally (though not always) yes, and there’s relatively recent on-point case law in the Second Circuit saying so. While court of appeals cases aren’t nationally dispositive, the panel in Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Kerik included Sonia Sotomayor, and its reasoning is instructive.
New York’s anti-masking law predates the Klan, tracing its history back to an 1845 effort to combat violent Hudson Valley farmers. The statute essentially prevents gatherings of masked people unless they’re gathering for a “masquerade party or like entertainment.” The panel considered a number of constitutional challenges, including claims that wearing masks was a form of expressive conduct and claims that wearing masks protected a right to anonymous speech. Regarding the first claim, the panel noted that the in the Klan context, the mask constituted a “redundant” form of expression:
The mask that the members of the American Knights seek to wear in public demonstrations does not convey a message independently of the robe and hood. That is, since the robe and hood alone clearly serve to identify the American Knights with the Klan, we conclude that the mask does not communicate any message that the robe and the hood do not.
Similarly, Antifa mobs are full of people who wear similar “black bloc” gear. Their message and purpose is easily identifiable without a mask or scarf. As for the Klan’s anonymous speech claims, the court held that state interests in public safety trumped Klan members’ interest in deciding the precise manner in which they speak:
Assuming for the discussion that New York’s anti-mask law makes some members of the American Knights less willing to participate in rallies, we nonetheless reject the view that the First Amendment is implicated every time a law makes someone-including a member of a politically unpopular group-less willing to exercise his or her free speech rights. While the First Amendment protects the rights of citizens to express their viewpoints, however unpopular, it does not guarantee ideal conditions for doing so, since the individual’s right to speech must always be balanced against the state’s interest in safety, and its right to regulate conduct that it legitimately considers potentially dangerous.
Anti-masking laws can be unconstitutional when applied to peaceful demonstrators seeking to protect their identities as a matter of personal safety, but that reasoning doesn’t apply to Antifa. Its members seek to engage in violence and destruction with impunity, and the mask protects them from legal accountability. If you think Antifa members like to have their identities revealed, watch this video of Alabama police officers enforcing an unmasking law at Auburn University:
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Political violence in Portland, Oreg. a sneak preview of our unraveling civil society if all Americans do not denounce it
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is calling for federal law enforcement authorities to investigate Portland, Oreg. Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler after an incident where Quillette editor Andy Ngo was brutally assaulted by left-wing Antifa demonstrators on June 29 amid a nationwide scourge of political violence.
On Twitter, Cruz wrote, “To federal law enforcement: investigate & bring legal action against a Mayor who has, for political reasons, ordered his police officers to let citizens be attacked by domestic terrorists.”
In 2018, Wheeler told Portland police not to get involved when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were attacked by an Antifa mob during a 38-day demonstration at ICE facilities to protest President Donald Trump’s stance against illegal immigration.
Now, Wheeler’s hands-off-Antifa approach is coming under scrutiny as these mobs have been allowed to engage in violence and intimidation with minimal repercussions. On June 29, groups like Proud Boys showed up to support a competing #HimToo demonstration. The result was skirmishes across the city. What should have been simply two different demonstrations occurring instead turned into a scene from the Gangs of New York, with partisans kicking the crap out of each other in the streets.
Daryl Turner, President of Portland Police Association, issued a statement on Facebook decrying the violence and accusing Wheeler of tying the police’s hands, writing, “Police officers work to uphold the Constitution, including the right to free speech. It’s our job to ensure that our community can peacefully protest without fear of violence but right now our hands are tied. It’s time for our Mayor to do two things: tell both ANTIFA and Proud Boys that our City will not accept violence in our City and remove the handcuffs from our officers and let them stop the violence through strong and swift enforcement action. Enough is enough.”
Note, the Portland Police Association is denouncing violence on both sides of the skirmishes. I mention that because when President Donald Trump did the same thing, blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville, Va., it was wrongly pilloried. But really, it takes leadership to stand up and say political violence is destructive on all sides and must stop. You know who also said, “Violence begets violence”? Martin Luther King, Jr., who spent his career supporting non-violent protest as a mechanism for social change.
In the case of Portland, Ngo had warned about the imminent assault a day prior to the event on Twitter, writing, “I am nervous about tomorrow’s Portland antifa rally. They’re promising ‘physical confrontation’ & have singled me out to be assaulted. I went on Tucker Carlson last year to explain why I think they’re doing this: They’re seeking meaning through violence.”
Sure enough, Ngo was assaulted when he went to the event to report on it after posting several live streams on his Twitter thread. He had to go to the emergency room where he was told he had a brain hemorrhage from the attack.
Others too were attacked. Michele Malkin reported on John Blum and Adam Kelly who were also assaulted, writing, “Both John & Adam were beaten by Antifa after trying to help a gay man in a sun dress being chased down the street. While the cowards are masked, John and Adam faced the crowds openly and agreed to be named publicly. ‘I’m not afraid,’ John told me.”
One can question the wisdom of knowing that violence is being threatened and then showing up to cover or attend the event anyway. It’s an expression of free speech even to the point of danger. Ngo, Blum and Kelly clearly are standing up to the mob.
But maybe they should be afraid. These are not isolated incidents. Across the nation, Antifa demonstrators have engaged in political violence at Berkeley, in San Jose, in Chicago and elsewhere. They say they are fighting fascists or Nazis, but often the victims turn out to be journalists brandishing nothing more than smart phone camera attempting to capture these mobs in action. So, what is to be done?
The vast majority of people would prefer a civil society. Political differences in America are settled with elections. But that may be starting to change if this keeps going.
Locally, more can be done in liberal cities like Portland that I suppose are not so liberal anymore. An approach to addressing political violence will at some point require leaders to stand up and say enough is enough. There shouldn’t be a need for police associations to come forward saying they are being ordered to stand down.
Local cities need to confront rioters with riot police and shut them down. The state of Oregon has an entire chapter of the criminal code devoted “Offenses against the public order.” There shouldn’t be roving gangs brandishing weapons in a threatening manner in the streets, intimidating journalists and other bystanders and there not be a response. The outcome is in fact violence. Some are sincere partisans who are seeking it out and are looking for trouble, but invariably innocents are getting caught in the crossfire.
But Cruz has a strong point about a national approach. Organizations whose sole purpose is to use violence to achieve political ends, operating across state lines, would appear to be a matter that federal law enforcement could address. Attorney General William Barr should look into Antifa and other organizations that commit and seek out violence against their political opponents.
The scenes of political violence in Portland, Oreg. we are witnessing are just the beginning. The worst thing civil society can do in the face of it is nothing. A permissive environment is encouraging this violence and when it goes unanswered, opposing partisans appear to confront it in the streets. This is a power vacuum and a recipe for anarchy.
In short, our civil society is unraveling before our eyes.
Assuming a state of political violence is not the America we want to live in and raise our families, it’s time to let the police do their jobs. Public officials that get in the way are complicit with staging that violence. The civil society must be restored. Everyone, Republicans, Democrats and everyone in between need to speak in unison against political violence — before it’s too late. This is a sneak preview of what’s coming to all of our hometowns if we do nothing.
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A Walk Into History
Last week, while the 20 presidential wannabes engaged in two debates and often looked like squabbling children, President Trump was commanding the world stage during a trip to Asia.
On Friday, Trump tweeted, “I will be leaving Japan for South Korea… While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”
The media, foreign policy establishment and armchair diplomats everywhere mocked Trump’s tweet, essentially saying, “Doesn’t he realize these meetings require months of preparation?"
These are the same critics who, when Trump tweeted tough responses to Kim in the past, warned that the president would get us into a war and that he needed to sit down and talk with Kim. Many commentators assured us that there was no reason to believe any meeting would result and that Trump would look stupid.
But lo and behold on Sunday, the president made history. As the New York Times put it, "From a tweet to a handshake to a historic 20 steps by an American leader into officially hostile territory."
The handshake in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) was a great photo-op, but it was more than that. The two men walked back across the border into South Korea where they met for an hour in the Freedom House, and announced that negotiations between the United States and North Korea would resume.
The Sunday talk shows were full of left-wing commentators and Democrat presidential candidates whining that North Korea still has nuclear weapons, that nothing has been accomplished, that Kim’s regime is still a threat. Today’s left truly resembles the "nattering nabobs of negativism."
Here’s a little reality check.
When Barack Obama took office, North Korea may have had a few nuclear bombs but no means of delivering them. By the time Obama left office, after having accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, North Korea had dozens of nuclear weapons and the ICBMs capable of threatening the U.S. mainland.
None of Trump’s critics today were demanding that Obama do something to stop North Korea during those long eight years. On this, like so many other things, Donald Trump is trying hard to clean up the mess his predecessor left behind.
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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Wednesday, July 03, 2019
Ivanka snubbed?
There have been several reports -- e.g. here -- that Ivanka took part in a conversation with world leaders in which she was snubbed. In fact there was only one person who snubbed her -- Christine Lagarde, who is NOT a national leader. Lagarde is just an ugly old crone who was showing her jealousy of a young and beautiful woman. That's all that happened. Lagarde was being ageist and lookist, something she would decry in others.
Piers Morgan has more on the subject
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After Legally Receiving Food Stamps, This Millionaire Is Trying to Change the System
Rob Undersander, a retired engineer in Waite Park, Minnesota, wasn’t eager to go public about being a millionaire, but he wanted to expose a loophole that would allow wealthy—or at least those not needy—to qualify for food stamps.
So, in June 2016, he filled out an application form at the Stearns County social services office, and said he used an “abundance of honesty and caution” in applying for food stamps.
He recalled even talking to a top county official regarding social services, and told him about his assets upfront.
“I begged him to find some reason to deny my application for food stamps,” Undersander, 66, told The Daily Signal after a congressional hearing Thursday. “He said there is nothing he can do, because he doesn’t make policy.”
Undersander intentionally set out to expose the systemic flaw in the “broad-based categorical eligibility” policy of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly referred to as the food stamp program.
The policy allows applicants to bypass an assets test, so someone could qualify for food stamps even if he has property and bank accounts, as long as his income is low enough.
Minnesota is among 34 states that, along with Washington, D.C., use the “broad-based categorical eligibility” loophole to avert the need to check assets, according to the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Naples, Florida-based fiscal watchdog group.
Three weeks after applying, Undersander received the electronic benefits transfer card in the mail that he said he hoped would be denied. It came with a letter informing him he had $278 per month of benefits on it to spend.
He notified a local newspaper, the St. Cloud Times. After the newspaper published a piece, he said, two women from the county’s fraud and abuse investigation unit came to his home, asked a few questions, and left.
Although he’s retired, he doesn’t yet collect Social Security, which would be enough income to make him ineligible.
Over 19 months, Undersander received $6,000 from the government—which he donated to charity.
Undersander contends that an asset test that ensures only the needy can access food stamps would ensure that needy people will be helped.
The Agriculture Department, which administers the food-stamp program, is considering a regulation that would eliminate the broad-based policy, to ensure the program would measure whether someone is genuinely in need.
At a Thursday hearing of the House Agriculture Committee’s nutrition, oversight, and department operations panel, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said that Undersander “intentionally defrauded the federal government.”
Because he was just attending the hearing, and not testifying, he couldn’t respond to majority Democrats on the subcommittee who excoriated him as a fraudster or to minority Republicans who praised him as a whistleblower.
“These were not the first Democrats that wanted to send me to jail,” Undersander said, recalling he testified several times before the Minnesota state Legislature on bills. “The problem is, I was following their rules and the laws that they support.”
Undersander had been a volunteer for the Central Minnesota Council on Aging, where he helped seniors with annual Medicare re-enrollment and with various social services.
All other state and federal programs measure income and assets, he said, but he discovered the food stamp program considers income only. “I was shocked,” he said. “I don’t like it when taxpayer money is wasted.”
The loophole is “egregious and unnecessary,” said the subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D. “A man with assets in the millions—who was able to receive more than a nominal SNAP benefit month after month because of Minnesota’s abuses of their administrative flexibility—Mr. Undersander is not alone,” he said.
“Mr. Undersander didn’t lie on his forms. He exposed the flaws of a failed system,” Johnson said. “It’s not his fault that we in D.C. haven’t done our job. Receiving a welfare check shouldn’t be easier than applying for a job. If millionaires are receiving those benefits—as they have—this committee has work to do.”
The “broad-based” policy also allows states to make decisions outside the federal guidelines. For example, Johnson noted that Vermont determined that receiving a mailer about public assistance can convey food stamp eligibility.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the “broad-based categorical eligibility” also allows someone to qualify for food stamps based on receiving a heating assistance flyer in the mail.
However, subcommittee Chairwoman Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, rejected the notion that there is a need for any reforms to the system and instead targeted Undersander.
“I heard about that ridiculous millionaire stuff,” Fudge said, looking at Undersander. “You willfully and maliciously gamed the SNAP system. You, an alleged millionaire, used mischaracterizations of your finances.
“You took benefits from the very citizens you serve in your volunteer work. You did all this to continue your right-wing crusade against poor people,” the Ohio Democrat said.
During the hearing, Fudge said of Undersander’s donations of his food stamp benefits to charity: “It wasn’t yours to give.”
Undersander countered in an interview after the hearing that he “did a better job of distributing that money than the government did.”
“I didn’t give it to millionaires,” he said.
Fudge also questioned why Republicans chose this particular program to oppose giving states more flexibility.
“Republicans love talking about states’ rights, promoting state flexibility, and handing over to states the administration of federal safety net programs,” Fudge said. “But when it comes to putting that rhetoric into practice for SNAP, they want something very different.”
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Democrat, was among those testifying for the need to maintain the program.
“If the broad-based categorical eligibility were to be eliminated, it would have a profound impact on the health and well-being of children in Wisconsin,” Barnes told the subcommittee. “Roughly 24,000 children in the state would lose access to nutritious food under the proposed rule change. That’s 41% of those who qualify for SNAP under broad-based categorical eligibility.”
Fudge cited a Congressional Budget Office estimate that eliminating the “broad-based” policy would result in 400,000 fewer people eligible for food stamps.
Johnson referenced an Agriculture Department report that estimated most food stamp income-eligible homes have financial resources that exceed the federal limit of $20,000 in assets. One in five had more than $100,000 in assets, while tens of thousands had more than $1 million in assets, the South Dakota Republican said.
A Congressional Research Service report from January said eliminating broad-based categorical eligibility would save roughly $12 billion over the next decade.
With regard to fraud, a separate Congressional Research Service report last year found 11% of food stamp overpayments resulted from fraud. However, it found just 5% of food stamp recipients were overpaid.
However, a Government Accountability Office report from 2012 “found that a greater percentage of SNAP households eligible under broad-based categorical eligibility that had incomes over the federal limits had errors than other households (17.2 percent compared to 6.7 percent) in fiscal year 2010.” It warned that fraud could rise.
Undersander told The Daily Signal he’s glad he didn’t testify because of the criticism he thinks would have been leveled against him. Still, he would have preferred the chance to tell a fuller story.
“I wish I could have told the committee I never told anyone in the county something that wasn’t true,” Undersander said. “I wasn’t trying to become famous.”
SOURCE
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Gallup: Americans Radically Overestimate LGBT Population
Although U.S. adults think LGBT persons make up nearly 24% of the U.S. population, this is a dramatic overestimation, according to Gallup, which asserts that the LGBT population is in reality closer to 4.5%. Gallup also reports that the percentage of Americans identifying as LGBT is most prevelant among millenials.
In its survey, Gallup asked, "Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?"
From the respondents' answers, the average was 23.6%. In other words, American adults think LGBT people make up nearly 24% of the population, which is more than 5 times the real percentage of 4.5%.
"[A]ll available estimates of the actual gay and lesbian population in the U.S. are far lower than what the public estimates," said Gallup, "and no measurement procedure has produced any figures suggesting that more than one out of five Americans are gay or lesbian."
"Overestimations of the nation's gay population may in part be due to the group's outsized visibility," said the survey firm. "An annual report by GLAAD, an LGBT advocacy group, found that representation of LGBT people as television series regulars on broadcast primetime scripted programming reached an all-time high of 8.8% in the 2018-2019 television season, which is nearly twice Gallup's estimate of the actual population."
Gallup added that it has "seen the percentage of self-identifying LGBT people grow among millennials, who are making up an increasing share of the U.S. adult population. It is, therefore, possible that Americans' perceptions of the gay population may be influenced by the greater representation they see among young people.
"This also likely explains why younger adults produce higher estimations, as LGBT self-identifiers make up a larger share of their peers than is the case for older Americans."
SOURCE
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Cuccinelli: 'The Liars Are Getting in the Way of...True Asylum Seekers'
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the nation has a backlog of more than 300,000 asylum cases, as more and more people flood into this country, expecting to stay.
"We're doing everything we can to knock that backlog down," Cuccinelli told "Sunday Morning Futures" with Maria Bartiromo. "But until Congress fixes the loopholes, meaning gets rid of them...we are not going to see an end to this crisis."
Cuccinelli said many people are coming here for economic reasons -- they want a job, but that is not a valid reason to grant asylum.
"Well, overwhelmingly, they just want opportunity. Plenty of them are lying and saying they want asylum and trying to make up cases for asylum. It is our job to filter through those...and vet those cases to find only the true ones.
"And what's happening here is, the liars are getting in the way of America's historic and continuing merciful approach to true asylum seekers...The whole system is clogged, including for the good ones." "They are jumping the line," Cuccinelli said.
Cuccinelli just returned from the border, where he saw Border Patrol agents doing what he called a "phenomenal" job, despite the overcrowding pressures.
"I mean, you think about the logistics of screening these people who come across uncontrolled into our country. You have medical screening. They've got to be held.
"And, remember, the Border Patrol was designed and their facilities were designed basically to intercept, capture, process and return adult Mexican males. And they can do that in hours, literally in hours."
But Cuccinelli noted that the rules are different for Central Americans and for people claiming to be families. Those people cannot be immediately returned to their home countries until their cases are heard.
At last week's second Democrat debate, every one of the ten candidates raised their hands when they were asked if they would provide health coverage for illegal aliens.
"And it's those incentives that are the problem here that Congress refuses to fix," Cuccinelli said. "We can't just issue memos, like President Obama did. Courts strike those down when President Trump does it. And they defend the memos of President Obama, even when they were illegal, even acknowledged to be by the president, meaning President Obama himself, like DACA. So we don't have these options.
"Congress has to fix these loopholes. And that means closing them."
SOURCE
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The True Story of Two Dead Migrants
“Photo of drowned migrants triggers fight over Trump asylum clampdown.” That’s how Reuters headlined the fallout following this week’s revelation that two Salvadorans, a father and his two-year-old child, failed in their attempt to traverse the Rio Grande. The photo is unequivocally heartbreaking. It’s the kind of picture that makes one sick to his stomach. But like most things in life, emotional incidents without proper context inevitably result in irrational knee-jerk reactions.
According to The Daily Mail, the family’s journey began on April 3, when they departed El Salvador. For the next two months, the family — which was seeking asylum in the U.S. — was lodged in a migrant camp in southern Mexico. Restless and intent on engineering a more expeditious asylum process, they jumped onto a bus that took them to the U.S. border this past weekend. “When they arrived, the consulate was closed but they also learned they were far down a list of hundreds of migrants in line for interviews,” the Mail reports. “They decided to make the crossing illegally rather than wait — a decision that led to their deaths.”
Bad choices have consequences. Furthermore, as The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh observes, “This was not a family turned coldly away as it fled violence and oppression. They were not turned away at all. They simply grew impatient waiting for the bureaucratic wheels to turn. Indeed, family members confirm that the family was not being persecuted in its home country.”
Which gets us to the other half of the story. The Mail goes on to reveal that the father had been employed at Papa John’s Pizza. Granted, his income of $350 per month was paltry, but seeking entry based on low or insufficient income, as Walsh explains, “isn’t how the asylum program is traditionally meant to be used.”
Yet Democrats are hell-bent on hanging the incident around President Donald Trump’s neck. Sen. Bernie Sanders bellowed, “Trump’s policy of making it harder and harder to seek asylum — and separating families who do — is cruel, inhumane and leads to tragedies like this.” And according to NBC News, presidential candidate Julian Castro “pointed to the Trump administration’s metering policy as what ‘prompted’ the father and daughter who were found dead Monday to cross the Rio Grande illegally.” (Side note: An NBC “fact check” absurdly labeled this assertion as “true.”)
Actually, to Sanders’s point, other countries’ failure to enforce their own borders is what leads to tragedies like this. And to Castro’s point, Democrats are prompting this behavior — both with open-borders advocacy and legislative malfeasance. As Trump put it, “If they fixed the laws you wouldn’t have that. People are coming up, they’re running through the Rio Grande. They can change it very easily so people don’t come up, and people won’t get killed.”
But that would mean losing an important narrative leading up to the 2020 elections. Can’t have that.
Part of the Democrat effort to push Trump out of the Oval Office and to take over both chambers of Congress is to suggest that “Republicans don’t care about kids.” They point to this week’s photo of two drowned people as proof. Yet it’s Democrats who won’t budge on fixing the laws. And that’s to say nothing of the people who really don’t care about kids — the ones trafficking them. The Department of Homeland Security has so far flagged 316 fraudulent families. Sadly, our lawmakers have also perpetuated this fraud.
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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Tuesday, July 02, 2019
The peacemaker
Can you imagine Hillary doing anything like this?
President Trump made history on Sunday by crossing into North Korea as part of a meeting with Kim Jong Un in which he and the North Korean leader agreed to restart stalled nuclear talks.
Trump and Kim shook hands across a concrete slab forming the line between to the two nations at the Demilitarized Zone, according to a reporter traveling with the president.
“Good to see again,” Kim said, according to a translator. He added he would have “never expected” Trump “at this place.”
Trump then became the first sitting U.S. president to step into North Korea. “Good progress, good progress,” Trump said as he and Kim crossed back into South Korea.
“Stepping across that line was a great honor,” Trump said, adding that he would invite Kim to visit the White House. “I think it’s historic, it’s a great day for the world.”
Trump and Kim then met for approximately 45 minutes at the Freedom House on the South Korean side of the DMZ, where the North Korean leader said he was “willing to put an end to the unfortunate past.”
Kim credited the “excellent relations between the two of us” for the development.
“You hear the power of that voice” Trump said, adding that the North Korean leader “doesn’t do news conferences.” “Thus is a historic moment, the fact that we’re meeting,” he added.
Trump later told U.S. troops at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea that he noticed that “many people … from Korea were literally in tears” when he crossed the DMZ.
SOURCE
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Democrat Candidates Agree: Taxpayers Will Cover Health Care For All Who Break Into The United States
Paving the Way for Trump Victory
Whereas Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg called coverage for illegal immigrants an “insurance program” and “not a hand out,” Clinton said in 1993—well before the most recent waves of migration—that “we do not want to do anything to encourage more illegal immigration into this country. We know now that too many people come in for medical care, as it is. We certainly don’t want them having the same benefits that American citizens are entitled to have.”
Likewise, whereas Joe Biden said “you cannot let people who are sick, no matter where they come from, no matter what their status, go uncovered,” the president whom he worked for promised the American people that “the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” Granted, the promise had a major catch to it—Obamacare verifies citizenship but not identity, allowing people here illegally to obtain benefits using fraudulent documents—but at least he felt the need to make the pledge in the first place. No longer.
Ironically enough, even as all Democrats supported giving coverage to illegally present foreigners, the candidates seemed less united on whether, how, and from whom to take health insurance away from U.S. citizens. Only Sens. Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders said they supported abolishing private health insurance, as Sanders’ single-payer bill would do (and as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged on Wednesday evening). For Harris, it represents a return to her position of January, after fudging the issue in a follow-up interview with CNN last month.
As usual, Sanders made typically hyperbolic—and false—claims about his plan. He said that his bill would make health care a human right, even though it does no such thing. In truth, the legislation guarantees that individuals would have their bills paid for—but only if they can find a doctor or hospital willing to treat them.
While Sanders pledged that under his bill, individuals could go to whatever doctor or hospital they wished, such a promise has two main flaws. First, his bill does not—and arguably, the federal government cannot—force a given doctor to treat a given patient. Second, given the reimbursement reductions likely under single payer, many doctors could decide to leave the profession altogether.
Sanders’ home state provided a reality check during the debate. Candidates critical of single payer noted that Vermont had to abandon its dream of socialized medicine in 2014, when the tax increases needed to fund such a program proved too overwhelming.
SOURCE
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Who will foot the bill for all the spending Democrats have proposed? Take a guess
In dueling campaign rallies, former Vice President Joe Biden and President Trump made their argument to voters in Iowa. Biden joined his Democratic opponents in calling for higher capital gains taxes to pay for his pet programs.
Democrats are racing to the left in a desperate attempt to mollify their radicalized base. Almost every 2020 Democratic presidential candidate is abandoning capitalism.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has said she is a "capitalist to my bones," sings the same chorus with her massive wealth tax plan. Her campaign estimates that it would cost the American people $3 trillion over 10 years.
Taxing the rich is never the answer, and it’s proven to bring in far less revenue than one may optimistically estimate due to many factors.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a bill earlier this year called "For the 99.8 Percent." This legislation would heavily tax the 0.2 percent of the country by taxing the estates of those who inherit more than $3.5 million. This would eliminate the ability to pass hard-earned companies, such as family farms, down to new generations.
Despite the left’s best efforts, the Trump economic plan keep fueling the incredible growing economy we’re currently experiencing in the United States. For the large field of Democratic candidates, that's a big problem. Not one can deny Trump’s "America first" economic policies are working.
We have seen Democratic candidates across the board rail against Trump’s tax cuts in a completely falsified messaging campaign. They want to implement more taxes instead. A gas tax, a carbon tax, a wealth tax, higher capital gains tax, carried-interest capital gains, you name it, they will raise it! But despite the left’s best efforts, the Trump economic plan keep fueling the incredible growing economy we’re currently experiencing in the United States.
For the large field of Democratic candidates, that's a big problem. Not one can deny Trump’s "America first" economic policies are working.
American workers are seeing their wages increase at a rate not seen in more than a decade. The New York Times earlier this month even ran a column, the headline of which reads “Why Wages Are Finally Rising, 10 Years After the Recession.”If our nation wants to remain the economic powerhouse it has become in recent years, it is imperative that policy proposals which would stunt domestic growth remain on the cutting-room floor.
A higher gas tax? No! Motor fuel is one of the most taxed goods in America. A higher gas tax would hurt working Americans and increase the cost of goods. Some estimates suggest that raising the gas tax by even 1 percent takes a whopping $1 billion out hardworking families' pockets. Raising the gas tax simply doesn’t solve the real problem, but lowering it does.
A higher carbon tax? No! What Americans don’t know is that carbon taxes hit consumers hard almost everywhere imaginable — grocery stores, shopping centers, you name it. And if we want to get to the root of our world’s pollution problems, let’s start with China, which emits more carbon dioxide than America and the European Union combined.
A wealth tax? No! This is not only a radical idea but a terrible one no matter how you slice it. It would wreak havoc on our healthy economy. Taxing the wealthy even more than we already do would drain resources that go toward the entrepreneurs who create startups and small businesses.
Higher capital gains taxes? No! Taxing long-term investment would be a blow to thousands of good-paying jobs. This would hurt our local communities and job creators the most. Why would we want to punish entrepreneurs who risk everything to start small businesses on "main street" and bring new jobs to our neighborhoods?
Higher taxes are never the solution. Trump’s economy is doing better than ever thanks to the tax reform he signed into law in December 2017. The unemployment rate is at the lowest level in over 50 years, wages are at a 10-year high, and over four million jobs have been created since Trump took office.
When we lower taxes, Americans are better off because they keep more of their hard-earned income instead of letting the fiscally reckless government dictate where it is spent.
SOURCE
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‘He Is The Enemy Of Every Entrepreneur’ — Home Depot Founders Blast Socialism, Issue Dire Warning For Bernie Supporters
Home Depot founders Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone had strong words for socialism and the politicians who espouse it, particularly 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, during a Monday interview with Fox News host Neil Cavuto.
The wide-ranging interview with the billionaire businessmen included topics like trade, the company’s history and philosophy, and even tax policy, but Cavuto hit a “red flag” for Marcus when he brought up the topic of Sanders and his socialist campaign proposals.
“He is the enemy of every entrepreneur that’s ever going to be born in this country and has been born in the past,” Marcus said.
“If he became president, what would you guys do?” Cavuto asked.
“Probably move to Australia,” the Home Depot founder responded, laughing. “Well what could he do? I mean he can’t do anything to us. He’s going to affect my grandchildren.”
Marcus then contrasted Sanders and his socialized medicine proposals with work his foundation is doing with war veterans:
And let me just bring up one thing, Bernie Sanders talks about socialized medicine. My foundation now is working on one issue and that is taking care of these veterans, kids who’ve fought in Afghanistan, Iraq. You know that 20 a day commit suicide, 20 every single day. What is Bernie Sanders doing about that? Why doesn’t he shut his mouth and do something about these kids? They go to the Veterans Administration, they can’t take care of it.
The proof in the pudding is 20 a day are committing suicide. If it was measles, the CDC – the world will be in an uproar. But it’s the kids that put their lives on the line that are treated so badly, I didn’t hear one single candidate talk about it.
By the way, Trump is fully supportive of this and you know he’s done some things, they could fire people that have done the wrong thing at the Veterans Administration. The Veterans Administration is what medical care is going to be like in the United States if Bernie Sanders is elected president.
Cavuto thought he was going to switch the subject to something else, but Langone wasn’t finished with the topic of Sanders.
“I don’t know, but let me go back to Bernie Sanders for a minute,” said Langone. “Believe it or not, Chavez in Venezuela came to power through a democratic process. If the people in America today, the fellows out here with the hard hats on, if they want to know what the future holds for them, and they follow Bernie Sanders, go to Cuba, go to Venezuela, go to Russia, go to eastern Europe. Guess what? It doesn’t work. It never works.
“The average Venezuelan last year lost 34 pounds. There is no food out there,” he added
Earlier in the interview, Marcus responded to a question about higher taxes by joking that people who want them “trust the government” more than he does. He then pointed to the billions his own foundation has given away.
“Look we do better with our money than the government,” he said. “Why would I want the government to have it? Anything they touch …”
SOURCE
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Sean Hannity: Trump Is 'Not Going to Start a War with Boots on the Ground' in Iran
On his nationally syndicated radio talk show “The Sean Hannity Show” on Monday, host Sean Hannity suggested that President Trump is “not going to start a war with boots on the ground.”
“He's not going to start a war with boots on the ground,” stated Sean Hannity. “So, whatever he decides militarily is going to be devastating to Iran.”
Sean Hannity's comments came after a tense week between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. President Trump used an executive order to introduce new sanctions targeting the Iranian regime as a reaction to Iran shooting down an American drone.
Here is a transcript of Sean Hannity’s remarks from his show on June 24:
“So people want to just— There’s nothing Donald Trump can ever do that’s ever going to be right in the eyes of those people that have decided they hate him. There’s nothing. They cured cancer, gave everybody ten million dollars, it’s not gonna matter. So the president, you know, the media is saying, ‘Oh, no. Donald Trump is going to get us … it’s World War III starting.’ No, no it’s not.
“I do believe Donald Trump absolutely is standing back, he's watching, he's negotiating, and he's doing things that we don't know, and he will do it in his time. And if you doubt he has the ability and willingness to do what's necessary to obliterate Iran than you don't know Donald Trump.
“But now, he is acting, and what he's done is we have struck Iranian military computers hard, apparently, over the weekend. He's now put sanctions on the Ayatollah himself The president is being prudent. We have the ability to be more prudent than ever before in any Middle Eastern entanglement because of his decision to make us energy independent, which every other President before could have but never did.
“And it to me— And if he does— He's not going to start a war with boots on the ground. So, whatever he decides militarily is going to be devastating to Iran.
“I think we eventually, one day, as hard as it is, considering the, how big the Iranian landmass is and the location of their nuclear reactors, I think there's going have to be a partnership to take all those facilities out, and that's a very difficult military operation."
SOURCE
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Twitter Blue Checks Celebrate After Chicago Restaurant Employee Spits On Eric Trump
U.S. Secret Service took an employee of a Chicago restaurant into custody Tuesday evening after she spit on President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump.
“It was purely a disgusting act by somebody who clearly has emotional problems,” Eric Trump told Breitbart News when reached by phone late Tuesday evening. “For a party that preaches tolerance, this once again demonstrates they have very little civility. When somebody is sick enough to resort to spitting on someone, it just emphasizes a sickness and desperation and the fact that we’re winning.”
According to Breitbart News, Eric Trump declined to press charges and the woman was released, which will now make her a hero:
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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Monday, July 01, 2019
If Trump is Hitler, then Obama was Hitler too
Why is Trump’s treatment of migrants ‘fascism’ but Obama’s wasn’t?
Under the Obama administration, hundreds of migrants died every year at the Mexican-US border. Thousands were detained in camps. Children were detained in those camps, too. The average daily population of these detention centres was between 30,000 and 40,000. Children were often the first to be cast out of the country – as one report put it, the border authorities moved unaccompanied children to ‘the head of the line’ for deportation. More undocumented migrants were deported by the Obama administration than by any previous administration. One critic called Obama ‘the most stringent enforcer of immigration laws in American history’.
So, was Barack Obama Hitler? Was that fascism?
To see the double standards, the hypocrisy, the staggering lack of principle in contemporary radical politics, look no further than the discussion of the immigration crisis in the US. As a result of his immigration policies, President Trump is being branded fascistic, the architect of ‘concentration camps’, someone who has, in the words of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, failed to heed the message of ‘Never Again’ – that is, he’s doing something eerily and dreadfully similar to what the Nazis did in the 1930s.
And yet Obama did all these things too. Where were those people back then? They were on their comfortable college campuses or in their swanky New York or London bars, and the 47,000 minors apprehended by the US authorities as they crossed the border in the US in the first eight months of 2014 alone – some of whom were as young as three – never crossed their minds.
Or if they did cross their minds, perhaps fleetingly stirring their dormant morality as they perused their New York Times over a Shake Shack lunch, they didn’t call it fascism. They didn’t compare Obama to Hitler. They didn’t say, ‘This is like the 1930s’. AOC didn’t trek to the processing centres in which children were being crammed into cells and were sleeping under rough blankets and allow a photographer to capture her weeping, as she did with Trump’s detention centres last year. Those painfully staged photos, these much-tweeted, much-cheered displays of hollow virtue, have been shared widely today. And yet they raise an embarrassing and pressing question, not only for AOC but for all of those horrified by Trump’s apparently Hitlerian treatment of migrants – where were your tears when Obama did this?
A horrible photo of a man and his daughter who drowned while crossing the Rio Grande between Mexico and the US has been widely published today. It’s on the front page of the London Evening Standard, which refers to the image as ‘The picture that shames America’. It is held up as proof of Trump’s wickedness. But again that question rises up – why are you more horrified by this death than you were by the thousands of migrant deaths under Obama?
Migrant deaths just over the border in the US have been rising since the mid-1990s and especially during the Obama administration. So in 1996, there were at least 87 deaths of migrants within the US border. In 2012, the year Obama was re-elected, to the whoops and cheers of liberals across the West, there were at least 463. In total, 7,216 people died crossing the US-Mexico border between 1998 and 2017. Where were the frontpage headlines? Why weren’t there massive marches when Obama visited London? Why was there no talk of ‘America’s shame’ or ‘America’s concentration camps’?
The answer to this question is as straightforward as it is disturbing. It’s because the current discussion isn’t really driven by a concern for migrants. Rather, it is driven by an exhausted left’s urge to find an issue on which it might successfully harm its political opponents and, even more importantly, demonstrate its own presumed virtue. The thoroughness with which contemporary radicals reduce every issue to an opportunity for political point-scoring and virtuous public preening is summed up in their sudden, cynical discovery that bad things happen on the Mexico-US border.
Numerous questions are thrown up by the Mexico-US border problem. A key one, which very few of Trump’s critics want to address, is the issue of national sovereignty. Surely it is the right of a nation to determine who may enter the country and how they may do so? The contemporary cult of erasing borders, promoted by everyone from Brussels suits to the supposedly liberal chattering classes, can be seen as an attempt to undermine the idea of the nation itself, and the thing that the nation embodies: the right of a people democratically to determine their country’s affairs and policies, including on immigration.
And a broader question is raised by all this; a question about the state of Western politics in general. Principle and morality seem to have disappeared. Instead, everything is reduced to a shallow Culture War game of moralistic oneupmanship. This is where those AOC photos become important. The way in which, today, this has been turned into a story about her, and about how virtuous she is, is actually grotesque. The narcissism is staggering. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that for her and many other Trump-haters, those detained migrants are little more than props in their own moral drama about themselves and their virtue and decency.
All the time these days, serious political issues – in this case, the issues of borders, democracy and how we treat migrants – are reduced to shallow, soapbox-style opportunities for observers to hysterically denounce politicians they hate and to narcissistically display their own presumed goodness.
SOURCE
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China And U.S. Agree To Restart Trade Talks Following Trump, Xi Meeting
President Trump agreed to restart trade negotiations with China on Saturday after meeting with the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, during a Group of 20 summit in Japan.
The Hill reports,
Trump said during a news conference Saturday afternoon that he would scale back restrictions on Chinese telecom giant Huawei and delay slapping new tariffs on Chinese goods as talks resume between the two countries.
“U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei,” Trump said, explaining that the move was aimed at helping American tech companies that had complained about the ban. The company is on an “entity list” that essentially bars it from buying components from American firms without approval from the U.S. government.
Trump said China, in turn, had agreed to resume large purchases of American farm products and other goods from U.S. companies, though he did not offer further details.
The Trump administration will keep in place the 25 percent tariffs previously levied on roughly half of China’s annual exports to the U.S., according to The New York Times.
The major concessions came after the two economic giants had been locked in an escalating trade war for more than a month, hitting the other with sanctions on billions of dollars worth of goods. Talks came to a standstill in May in the lead-up to the G-20 in Japan.
The Trump administration had insisted that any trade deal with China must address intellectual property theft protections, enforcement mechanisms, tariffs and other barriers to commerce.
Trump struck a cautiously optimistic note late Friday on the prospects of reaching such an agreement with Xi.
“I actually think that we were very close and then we — something happened where it slipped a little bit and now we’re getting a little bit closer,” the president said as he sat down with Xi for a highly anticipated meeting at the G-20 summit.
All eyes had been on the outcome of the Trump-Xi sit-down, given the potential ripple effects for the world economy. Trump previously threatened to implement tariffs on another $300 billion in Chinese goods if the talks did not yield progress.
SOURCE
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David Limbaugh: Making America Great – for All Americans
I know I'm not the only Trump supporter who is tired of progressives maliciously accusing President Trump and his supporters of racism. They've used the slander against conservatives for years, and it has only intensified in the Trump era.
Of all their other nasty smears, they get the most mileage with the race card, so it's unlikely they'll do the right thing and abandon it. They probably wouldn't stand a chance in presidential elections if they were to do so, as they depend on some 90 percent of the African American vote, which they seek to maintain by constantly stirring agitation.
They didn't need Trump as their ideal bogeyman on race, but caricaturing the GOP's leader sure doesn't hurt in perpetuating the fiction. For them Trump is an equal opportunity scoundrel — he's bad in every category, so it's not a great leap to tar him as a racial bigot. His signature issue, immigration, just fell into their lap. Why else would he be such a border hawk if not for his racism? Please don't get me started on this outrage again. Just pray to God that the thrust of their message — that you can't support American sovereignty unless you're a racist — doesn't prevail, or the country truly is finished.
As I've noted before, I'm not sure what percentage of progressives actually swallow this bilge versus those who push it for political gain. But they are pushing it, and it has caused great damage. Many rank-and-file leftists claim they feel threatened in the presence of MAGA hat-wearing citizens. Some writers have likened them to an unsophisticated version of Klansmen because Klansmen had the sense to wear hoods to conceal their identity.
Tolerant leftists believe that Trump supporters provoke them simply by evidencing their support for Trump, because they can't possibly support him without being racists, sexists and homophobes. They wear the hats not to signify their support but as an in-your-face symbol of their unapologetic bigotry.
Can you fathom how sick this is? How out of phase with reality? But it's apparently real to progressives, or they want you to believe it is.
On Tuesday's "Morning Joe," MSNBC's Joy Reid talked about her new book, "The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story."
Co-anchor Willie Geist asked her, "As you write about in the book, the people who heard the phrase 'Make America Great Again,' it meant to them an America that appeared to be slipping away was going to be reclaimed by this man, and their lives would return to what they were. I'm interested in the other side of it. What do you hear when you hear 'Make America Great Again'?"
Reid's response illustrates the extent to which progressives are promoting this delusional malice. "I hear exactly that," said Reid. "I hear make America a country that, in the 1950s, meant white Christian men had dominion over everyone else. That's exactly what it means when I hear it. It's George Wallace. He's just Republican George Wallace, and that message has been resonant and has actually been potent for a very long time. David Duke used that message when he ran for governor of Louisiana; George Wallace obviously used it and — he had a pretty good chunk of the — at the time, the Democratic Party. Richard Nixon used it. It's a common message because you just do have a certain quarter, maybe a third of the country, that does not like the idea that we're becoming a more multiracial society where women have a lot of asserted rights and where they're not on top."
There we have it again: If you are bullish on America, you are advertising your bigotry. Under this standard, at least leftists don't have to fear they'll be accused of bigotry.
When you couple this nonsense with old white guys like Joe Biden — Democratic presidential front-runner, no less — saying Republicans want to put black people back into chains, and tons of other abominable slanders, what are African Americans supposed to think about us?
Well, many progressives don't want them to see the truth: that they have been stoking the flames of racial disharmony to obscure the reality that Republicans, conservatives and other Trump supporters believe in the equal dignity of all human beings, and that the Christians among them — probably the vast majority — believe this is true because we are all made in God's image.
The proof is in the pudding. Trump's economic policies — lower taxes and regulations — have generated explosive growth benefitting most Americans, including minorities, who are prospering and getting back to work at unprecedented numbers.
I realize that experts say you give credence to false allegations when you dignify them with a response, but I'll take my chances, because silence can sometimes be the elephant in the room.
So let's proclaim the message that we do indeed seek to restore and amplify America's greatness for the benefit of all Americans directly — and the world, derivatively. God bless America.
SOURCE
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Sen. Collins: Trump Has a Duty to Enforce Immigration Law, U.S. Needs ‘Stronger Border Security’
Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) said President Donald Trump has a “constitutional duty” to enforce immigration laws and added that America has a “crisis” at the border and needs “to have stronger border security.”
At the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, CNSNews.com asked Sen. Collins, “Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution says the president ‘shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ Does the president have a constitutional duty to enforce the immigration laws?”
Senator Collins said, “The president has a constitutional duty to enforce all duly passed laws by the Congress.”
CNSNews.com then asked, “Should the president deport aliens who are in the United States illegally?”
The senator did not answer the question directly but said, “We have a crisis and we need to have stronger border security. But we also cannot ignore the very serious humanitarian needs that are affecting children who have come to this country through no choice of their own.”
A 2018 study conducted by researchers at Yale University and MIT estimated the illegal immigrant population in the United States to be 22.1 million.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated in 2017 that “the total cost of illegal immigration for the United States – at the federal, state, and local levels – was approximately $116 billion.”
Many Americans have been killed by illegal aliens. FAIR provides details on these cases here and videos here.
SOURCE
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De Blasio: 'There's Plenty of Money in This Country, It's Just in the Wrong Hands'
It's mostly in the hands of those who earned it. Those are the RIGHT hands
The topic of "income inequality" arose at Wednesday's Democrat debate, with various candidates explaining how they would address it.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke not only for himself, but for the Democrat Party in general: "There is plenty of money in this world, and there's plenty of money in this country, it's just in the wrong hands. Democrats have to fix that," he said.
De Blasio also embraced a 70 percent tax rate on wealthy people, although he did not define the term "wealthy."
Here is his full answer to the question, "How would you address income inequality?"
Well, we've been addressing income inequality in New York City by raising wages, by raising benefits, by putting money back in the hands of working people -- $15 minimum wage, paid sick days, pre-k for all, things that are making a huge difference in working people's lives.
But let me tell you, what we're hearing in the first round of questions is that battle for the heart and soul of our party. I want to make it clear. This is supposed to be the party of working people.
Yes, we are supposed to be for 70% tax rate on the wealthy; yes, we're supposed to be for free college, free public college, for our young people. We are supposed to break up big corporations when they're not serving our democracy. This Democratic Party has to be strong and bold and progressive.
And in New York, we've proven that we can do something very different, we can put money back in the hands of working people.
And let me tell you, every time you talk about investing in people and their communities, you hear folks say there's not enough money -- what I say to them every single time is, there's plenty of money in this world, there's plenty of money in this country, it's just in the wrong hands. We Democrats have to fix that.
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.
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