Nearly 1 Million Californians Registered to Vote Are Ineligible, Says Non-Partisan Group
 
A non-partisan group has reported that there are still several counties in California where the number of registered voters is greater than the number of eligible citizens, with the total nearing one million people.

The Election Integrity Project California (EIPCa) stated in a release on July 8 (pdf) that if voter problems are not promptly addressed by state officials, fraudulent election activities may continue to haunt the state.

Using the state’s own data on active and inactive status registrants, the organization found that eight counties have not cleaned up their inactive registrant lists, despite a 2018 legal settlement that requires California counties to properly maintain their voter rolls and remove inactive voters according to federal law.

According to EIPCa, there are currently 991,411 people registered who are ineligible to vote. This is an increase of 63,376 from the group’s 2017 report, which found 928,035 ineligibles registered to vote.

As the number of names with inactive status continues to grow, the organization noted that these excess registrants open up the doors to fraud.

Voter registration rates that exceed the eligible population range from 103% in Ventura, San Benito, and Plumas counties to 115% in San Diego. Other counties include San Mateo at 104%, Solano and Santa Cruz at 107%, and Los Angeles at 109%.

Just months ago, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) acknowledged making 105,000 registration errors, with at least one noncitizen claiming the DMV improperly added him to the voter rolls.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, EIPCa Chief Analyst Ellen Swensen confirmed that the DMV’s practices still need improvement, although the EIPCa doesn’t have a way of finding out who is or isn’t a citizen by just looking at their voter registrations.

In addition to the errors made by the DMV, she said, people who are ineligible to vote might also be getting registration forms from people who are paid to register voters and who might be unaware of the law.

“This can harm [immigrants’] future chances of gaining citizenship, so it’s important that non-citizens become educated about this,” she said. Furthermore, there are “thousands of duplicated [and ineligible] registrations” that can be used during elections “with or without the person’s knowledge.”

Recently, nine people were accused of offering cash or cigarettes in exchange for forged signatures on voter registration forms and petitions in Los Angeles. Prosecutors claim the group was active during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles, targeting the homeless to help them register fictitious persons.

EIPCa says this type of abuse may have been enabled by the state’s voting laws.

“Because California does not require an ID for a person to vote, and because some counties include the names of inactive registrants on their publicly-displayed Election Day rosters, anyone can claim to be the inactive registrant and receive a ballot,” Swensen said.

“All that is required is an oath (verbal or signed) that they are who they say they are.”

Swensen said officials need to do more to fix this problem.

“EIPCa would like to see counties become more proactive with list maintenance by mailing a card to every registrant on the list, not just those with inactive status,” she explained.

“This would allow all registrants to update their information and would, for those who have moved, died, etc., begin the lawful [process of inactivation and cancellation]. This would go a long way to reduce the almost 1 million ineligibles currently on CA’s list.”

In early 2019, the Sacramento Bee reported that Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s office was investigating whether noncitizens had voted in the June 2018 primary. At the time, Padilla admitted that voters were losing their trust in the system due to registration errors, echoing others such as State Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa), who said that despite his “high level of confidence in California’s election systems,” he knew that the state should “do more to assure the voters that the system doesn’t have holes in it and that the boat isn’t leaking.”

Meanwhile, in November 2018, San Francisco became the largest city in the United State to give noncitizens the chance to vote in a local election. While the city’s move did not impact any election in the state or federal levels, some believe that the trend could spread to the rest of the state, and errors could continue to occur.

“Noncitizen voting is a very contentious issue,” said Robin Hvidston, executive director of We the People Rising, a Claremont organization that lobbies for stricter immigration enforcement, at the time, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The move to extend voting rights to those illegally residing in San Francisco has the potential to backfire among citizens with a moderate stance on illegal immigration.”

SOURCE 

**************************************

Atonement as Activism

JOHN MCWHORTER

Today’s consciousness-raising on race is less about helping black people than it is about white people seeking grace.

By the age of 50, you have lived long enough to remember being a mature adult in what is now a distant era. I recently recalled a conversation I had as a graduate student in 1991 that demonstrates a key change in America’s “conversation” on race over the past 30 years.

A white humanities graduate student was a member of a campus organization that had brought black activist and filmmaker Marlon Riggs to campus to give a talk. The student recounted that in his critique of racism, Riggs had leveled some potshots at the students themselves. This surprised and hurt her, as she had supposed that Riggs would consider her and her friends on his side in having invited him to speak.

Today, that same graduate student would be much less likely to take remarks like Riggs’s that way. Rather, today’s “woke,” educated white people would quite often lap up being apprised of the racism inside of them by a black speaker they paid, lodged, and fed. That speaker as often as not today is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who charismatically limns America as a cesspool of bigotry in his writing and in talks nationwide, and is joyously celebrated for it by the very people he is insulting.

Coates is a symptom of a larger mood. Over the past several years, for instance, whites across the country have been taught that it isn’t enough to understand that racism exists. Rather, the good white person views themselves as the bearer of an unearned “privilege” because of their color. Not long ago, I attended an event where a black man spoke of him and his black colleagues dressing in suits at work even on Casual Fridays, out of a sense that whites would look down on black men dressed down. The mostly white audience laughed and applauded warmly—at a story accusing people precisely like them of being racists.

This brand of self-flagellation has become the new form of enlightenment on race issues.This brand of self-flagellation has become the new form of enlightenment on race issues. It qualifies as a kind of worship; the parallels with Christianity are almost uncannily rich. White privilege is the secular white person’s Original Sin, present at birth and ultimately ineradicable. One does one’s penance by endlessly attesting to this privilege in hope of some kind of forgiveness. After the black man I mentioned above spoke, the next speaker was a middle-aged white man who spoke of having a coach come to his office each week to talk to him about his white privilege. The audience, of course, applauded warmly at this man’s description of having what an anthropologist observer would recognize not as a “coach” but as a pastor.

I have seen whites owning up to their white privilege using the hand-in-the-air-palm-out gesture typically associated with testifying in church. After the event I have been describing, all concerned deemed it “wonderful” even though nothing new had been learned. The purpose of the event was to remind the parishioners of the prevalence of the racist sin and its reflection in themselves, and to offer a kind of forgiveness, this latter being essentially the function of the black people on the panel and in the audience. Amen.

Some might see all of this as a healthy sign of moral advance. And I suppose if I had to choose between this performativity and the utter contempt most whites had for any discussion of discrimination 50 years ago and before, I’d choose our current moment. But goodness, it piles high and deep, this—well, I’ll call it fakeness. The degree of fantasy and exaggeration that smart people currently let pass in the name of higher-order thought on race parallels, again, Biblical tales.

Coates, for example, argues in one article after another that America’s progress on race has been minimal, despite pretty window dressing here and there, and that there is no reason to hope things will get any better. Yet one can be quite aware of the prevalence and nature of racism in America while also understanding that the recreational pessimism of views like Coates’s is melodramatic and even unempirical. To insist that Starbucks or even Dylan Roof define America’s progress on race is as flimsy as treating certain young black men’s misbehavior as embodying the black essence. Perfection is ever a dream; we are, as always, in transition. Everybody knows that.

The very fact that the modern equivalent of the graduate student I knew reveres Coates’s writing is a sterling indication that America has grown up quite a bit on race even in the past quarter of a century. The fact that this brand of enlightenment has not made it to every barstool and kitchen table in the country hardly disqualifies it as influential. Anyone who really thinks that on race America has merely rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic isn’t old enough to realize that most smart white people as late as 1978 would have found The Wire about as interesting as Chinese opera.

Also, views like Coates’s qualify more as performance art than thought in their disconnection from activism and pragmatism. If the government is not doing enough to help black people, precisely what would a Coates offer as counsel? Coates argues for reparations, ignoring decades of careful argumentation that has shown the impracticality of the idea. Who would the money go to? And for exactly what? And whence the sense many have that to ask such questions is to miss some larger point? Is the larger point to provide fodder for personal atonement? It would seem that for some, bemoaning that reparations aren’t happening is as active, vital, and self-affirming as making them happen, or, better, moving on and considering realistic strategies for forging change.

The self-affirming part is the rub. This new cult of atonement is less about black people than white people. Fifty years ago, a white person learning about the race problem came away asking “How can I help?” Today the same person too often comes away asking, “How can I show that I’m a moral person?” That isn’t what the Civil Rights revolution was about; it is the product of decades of mission creep aided by the emergence of social media.

What gets lost is that all of this awareness was supposed to be about helping black people, especially poor ones. We are too often distracted from this by a race awareness that has come to be largely about white people seeking grace. For example, one reads often of studies showing that black boys are punished and suspended in school more often than other kids. But then one reads equally often that poverty makes boys, in particular, more likely to be aggressive and have a harder time concentrating. We are taught to assume that the punishments and suspensions are due to racism, and to somehow ignore the data showing that the conditions too many black boys grow up in unfortunately makes them indeed more likely to act up in school. Might the poverty be the key problem to address? But, try this purely logical reasoning in polite company only at the risk of being treated as a moral reprobate. Our conversation is to be solely about racism, not solutions—other than looking to a vaguely defined future time when racism somehow disappears, America having “come to terms” with it: i.e. Judgment Day. As to what exactly this coming to terms would consist of, I suppose only our Pastor of White Privilege knows.

Another problem is that I am not sure that today’s educated whites quite understand how unattainable the absolution they are seeking is. There is an idleness in this cult of atonement, in that it cannot get whites what they want.There is an idleness in this cult of atonement, in that it cannot get whites what they want. I wonder if today’s atoners quite understand that “getting it” will not, for example, make Ta-Nehisi Coates like them any more than Marlon Riggs liked the graduate student and her friends despite their leftist politics. There is an Old Testament quality to the Coates preachings, for example. He is unmoved by the deaths of white firefighters during 9/11, uncomfortable seeing his son as a tot playing comfortably with white kids, and sees young white parents with their big strollers as white people taking up too much space as always. The degree of self-hatred—if sincere—is staggering in whites proclaiming how much they “love” this kind of scripture.

And all of this, ultimately, is often as condescending as nakedly dismissive views of blacks were in the bad old days. I doubt most whites truly think racism is so acridly pervasive and persistent in this country that a middle-class black man ought to fear his children playing with theirs, or look upon firefighters barbecued on 9/11 as mere racists getting their just desserts. Pretending to believe this sort of thing is insincere and insulting. It’s a pat on the head.

Mendacious, even. I recently attended a read-through of a play written by a black man about himself travelling back in time and viewing plantation slavery. The leader of the discussion afterwards was a white woman of a certain age who attested to how taken unawares she had been to learn that slave families were often separated and that slaves were sometimes whipped to death. However, this woman’s age, occupation, and demographic were such that the chances are infinitesimal that she did not see Roots and 12 Years a Slave, has not read Beloved, and has not read the New York Times daily and The New Yorker weekly for at least 30 years. In other words, she was, in all of her good intentions, lying.

It is not 1960, and a person like her is quite aware of the horrors of slavery. This was testifying again—she felt it her job to declare herself hip to the horrors of racism. The problem was that the point of the play concerned the protagonist’s psychology. Having taken in her time’s directive to internalize and parrot the proper “woke” message, she missed the essence of the play and reduced it to a school auditorium civics lesson. This isn’t woke, it’s weak.

We have gone from most whites being unaware that racism was a problem for black people at all to whites being chilled to their bones at the possibility of harboring racism in their souls, terrified at the prospect of being singled out as a heretic, and forgetting that the indulgences they purchase and the praying they do for their souls has more to do with them than with anyone black and their problems. This is a white America in which the message has become garbled. Among too many, the activist impulse has stuttered, faded, and jelled into a therapeutic one somewhere between “I Have a Dream” and Between the World and Me.

Whites today are in a hard place on this, I know. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You’re taught that on race issues you are morally obliged to suspend your usual standards of logic. Faced with a choice between some benign mendacity and being mauled, few human beings choose the latter.

But it all makes me miss 1991 in some ways. I think that graduate student had it about right in being insulted by Riggs that night. She needed to understand that the hurt of racism can make its victims act out at times, but not to pretend to think she actually deserved the potshots. Yet I wouldn’t be surprised if she today has learned to enjoy being told what a moral reprobate she is on race no matter what she does or thinks, and considers herself the wiser for it.

Let us pray?

SOURCE 

*********************************

House Democrats Overcome Internal Fissures to Approve Defense-Spending Bill

In a 220–197 vote, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act on Friday, giving a win to Democratic leaders who’d spent months coaxing progressives to vote for the defense-funding package.

Progressive lawmakers had expressed distaste for the high price tag of the $733 billion measure and argued unsuccessfully for imposing stricter guidelines regarding the treatment of migrants at the southern border. Despite those progressive objections, House Armed Services Committee chairman Adam Smith and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn convinced all but eight Democrats not to vote against the House measure, after the inclusion of a number of progressive amendments.

Before the bill’s passage on Friday, the House approved an amendment requiring congressional approval for military strikes on Iran amid rising tensions with the country. It also approved amendments repealing the 2001 authorization for the use of military force, removing the Trump administration’s ban on transgender service-members, stopping emergency arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and ending U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

The measure’s passage sets up a conflict between House Democrats and the Republican Senate, which passed a $750 billion dollar defense budget backed by the White House last month.

SOURCE 

Most of the progressive bits will presumably be stripped out in the reconciliation process

************************************

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)

**************************

Democrats always talk about change but they are ignoring it now that it has happened
   
We are all, to some extent, prisoners of the past. Things that have already happened — or that we remember as having happened — constitute the world that we know. Anything else is a product of imagination.

But it can also be a pitfall for politicians, particularly for those seeking national visibility when they’re running for president. It’s jarring to see candidates ignore recent changes and describe a world that no longer exists, as when they were asked leadoff questions about the economy in the first two Democratic debates.

Night one: “It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top”; “The economy has got to work for everyone, and right now we know it isn’t”; “We know that not everyone is sharing in this prosperity”; “This economy is not working for average Americans”; “There’s plenty of money in this country. It’s just in the wrong hands.” So spoke Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Bill de Blasio, respectively.

Night two: “(T)he bottom 60 percent have seen a raise since 1980”; “We have three people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America”; “We do have enormous income inequality”; “This economy is not working for working people”; “Forty years of no economic growth for 90 percent of the American people.” Those were Tim Ryan, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Michael Bennet, respectively.

These are reasonably accurate descriptions of the macroeconomy in the years after the financial crash and recession of 2008, during the Obama presidency, and plausible descriptions of the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Even in the buoyantly prosperous years of the 1980s and 1990s, incomes rose faster among the affluent and well-educated, while blue-collar wages tended to flatline. Economic inequality tended to increase according to various measures. Those trends continued in the 2000s and 2010s and were decried by Democratic politicians and Donald Trump.

Now there are signs that those trends are reversed. In percentage terms, wage gains seem to be increasing most for those at the bottom of the wage scale. Blue-collar incomes are apparently rising more rapidly than white-collar. Unemployment has dropped to levels not seen for 50 years, and unemployment among blacks and Hispanics seems to have dropped to the lowest levels since measurement began.

Candidate Trump promised an economy whose gains would go more to those less well off than they have in the recent past, to blue-collar workers in particular, and to blacks and Hispanics. And that’s how the economy has performed in the 30 months he has been in office. Looks like he delivered.

Of course, Democrats don’t want to admit that, and so, they fall back on congenial rhetorical tropes even after the tropes have gone stale. And maybe their outdated analyses didn’t strike their debate audiences as dissonant with reality.

We Americans are fractured into political tribes these days, and it was mostly the Democratic tribe that tuned into MSNBC for the Democrats’ debate. Polling shows that voters’ assessment of economic trends is more highly correlated with partisan loyalty than economic performance.

But it won’t be only Democrats watching once the party has a nominee and once general election campaigning starts. And that nominee may want to avoid the unpopular stands that most of today’s two dozen candidates have endorsed — ninth-month abortions, free college, open borders through decriminalization of illegal border crossing, free medical care for illegal immigrants, abolition of private health insurance.

Democrats remember the 1992 Bill Clinton mantra “It’s the economy, stupid,” and how Clinton won despite a macroeconomic upswing. So why not describe the economy as it used to be and as they’d like voters to see it, rather than as it actually is?

This has another benefit for Democratic partisans, who are increasingly upscale white college graduates who care most about cultural issues but who’d like to think their policies help the less fortunate.

Their party has already lost the blue-collar whites who were once its base, and erosion of its supermajorities from blue-collar blacks and majorities from blue-collar Hispanics could destroy its dreams of long-term majorities. So tell them they’re suffering, even if they’re not anymore. Hope they’re prisoners of the past.

SOURCE 

************************************

“Abolish ICE” Leftists Replace US Flag With Mexican Flag: Vandalize “Blue Lives Matter” Flag

Leftist anti-ICE protesters are so anti-American and unpatriotic that a group of them removed a U.S. flag and replaced it with a Mexican flag outside an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facility in Aurora, Colorado.

Hundreds of protesters also removed a “Blue Lives Matter” flag and vandalized it by spray-painting the words “Abolish ICE” across it before raising the flag upside-down on a pole next to the flag of Mexico.

Ironically, most of the protesters are self-flagellating white apologists who prioritize illegal aliens above taxpaying U.S. citizens and lawful residents.

While they gleefully raise the flag of Mexico to undermine US immigration laws, they forget that if any of them snuck across the Mexican border illegally, they’d immediately be deported back to the United States — no questions asked.

There would be no Mexicans protesting for their right to stay illegally in Mexico. Let that sink in.

Protests around the United States erupted yesterday in sanctuary cities around the country, including Denver, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. They’re heating up in anticipation of ICE raids scheduled in 10 cities tomorrow (July 14).

Despite the disinformation campaign being pushed by the left-wing media, the ICE raids are not targeting random illegal aliens, but those who have been ordered to be deported by federal immigration judges.

The protesters are open-borders leftists who are demanding that ICE detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border be closed. They also want amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens currently in the country.

In Philadelphia, anti-ICE protesters took to the streets yesterday. Philadelphia is a sanctuary city that harbors illegal aliens.

As BizPac Review reported, Democrats have repeatedly denied that the border crisis is real, and have accused President Trump of “manufacturing” a crisis. In recent weeks — when they could no longer deny the facts — Democrats and the media finally conceded that there is indeed an emergency at the border.

Race-baiting leftist politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar claim that enforcing longstanding federal immigration laws (that were passed decades ago by both Democrats and Republicans) are racist.

However, even Jeh Johnson — the secretary of Homeland Security under “Deporter-in-Chief” Barack Obama — said there’s nothing unusual or illegal about the upcoming ICE raids that are targeting illegal immigrants who have orders for deportation.

“Deportations occur all the time,” Johnson told MSNBC. “Of those who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge, we simply have to enforce the law, particularly if someone has been ordered deported. They’ve exhausted all their appeal rights. Enforcement actions themselves are not extraordinary.”

Jeh Johnson, a Trump-hating Democrat, also clapped back at the left-wing media and members of his own party, saying this sensationalized leftist talking point of “children in cages” did not start the day President Donald Trump took office.

“Chain link barriers, partitions, fences, cages — whatever you want to call them — were not invented on Jan. 20, 2017, OK?” Johnson said. Johnson also slammed Democrats’ proposals to decriminalize illegal border crossings, saying that “is tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders.”

SOURCE 

**********************************

Billionaire Dem Donor Blasts Bernie Sanders: He's a 'Communist Under the Cover of Being a Socialist'

You may have never heard of Haim Saban before, but his money has affected you, nonetheless. As one of the single biggest donors to the Democrat Party, Saban is helping shape the politics of this country. This is why his opinions on the Democrats hoping to earn their party's 2020 presidential nomination matter. His money gives his words clout. This is bad news for Bernie bros (and, by extension, fans of AOC). In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Saban went out of his way to diss Bernie Sanders.

Because Saban is unknown to many, a little background information may be useful. With an estimated worth of $3.2 billion, Haim and his wife Cheryl are the media moguls behind the Power Rangers phenomenon. According to The Hollywood Reporter:

Eight years after Saban Entertainment's inception, he merged the L.A.-based company with Fox Children's Productions to form Fox Family Worldwide. That joint venture with News Corp. — which included Fox Family Channel, Fox Kids international channels in Europe and Latin America, and Saban Entertainment's library of 6,500 episodes of animated and other family programs — was sold in 2001 to The Walt Disney Co. for $5.3 billion.

Selling the company to Disney is what launched the couple's philanthropic organization. As generous supporters of the nation of Israel, the Sabans also donate money to many children's charities and feminist organizations. As already stated, they're also counted as one of the biggest donors to the Democrat Party. This fact, THR explains, is, "why all eyes are on who they will back in the 2020 presidential election. After the first debates, they remained undecided."

They may be undecided about who they're going to support, but based on Haim Saban's words, they will never back Bernie Sanders.

"We love all 23 candidates," Haim says, then pauses. "No, minus one. I profoundly dislike Bernie Sanders, and you can write it. I don't give a hoot. He's a communist under the cover of being a socialist. He thinks that every billionaire is a crook. He calls us 'the billionaire class.' And he attacks us indiscriminately. 'It's the billionaire class, the bad guys.' This is how communists think. So, 22 are great. One is a disaster zone."
During the 2016 presidential election, a high-level Hill staffer told me that Bernie's fellow Democrats on the Senate's Budget Committee can't stand Sanders.  According to my friend, he obstructs their goals because "he doesn't understand math."

Add, Bernie Sanders doesn't understand history nor economics to that. Billionaire Haim Saban understands this and isn't afraid to publicly say it. For that, even among all our other disagreements with him, conservatives owe Saban a thank you.

The backlash against Bernie Sanders and his socialist version of populism by Saban is bad news for the new socialist flavors of the month like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The power brokers understand that Sanders and AOC's version of socialism is detrimental to their bank accounts. It's a small comfort knowing that powerful people like the Sabans are acting to protect the Democrat Party from their worst instincts.

SOURCE 

**********************************

Christine Blasey Ford: Just another crooked Leftist

Is there such a thing as an honest Leftist?

When Christine Blasey Ford came forward to accuse then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of decades-old sexual assault, little was known about her; in fact, she had no social media footprint at all — an extreme oddity for modern times.

But according to a new book set for release on Tuesday, penned by two prominent conservative politicos, Blasey Ford “completely scrubbed” her digital footprint weeks before sending the sexual assault allegation to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in the form of a letter.

Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway and her co-author, Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network, suggest in “Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court” that this social media history scrubbing had been done to cover up Blasey Ford's far-left politics and her expressed "antipathy" toward President Donald Trump, who tapped Kavanaugh for the position on the highest court.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, the book outlines how Blasey Ford was portrayed by the media as “politically moderate,” even though “her acquaintances reported Ford’s profile on social media ‘had been notable for its extreme antipathy to President Trump.’”

“Additionally, her political views 'ran decidedly to the left and were at variance with most of her family’s,' and Ford's friends on Facebook said she 'regularly expressed hostility' toward the Trump administration, they said,” the Examiner noted, adding that Blasey Ford’s social media “was ‘completely scrubbed’ about the time Kavanaugh was tapped for the Supreme Court in early July 2018.”

Blasey Ford told Sen. Feinstein in a letter last year that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a house party, which was not specified, sometime in the early 1980s. The dubious claim was completely uncorroborated and the Senate Judiciary Committee ultimately found that there was "no evidence to substantiate any of the claims."

"In neither the committee's investigation nor in the supplemental background investigation conducted by the FBI was there ANY evidence to substantiate or corroborate any of the allegations," the Committee said.

SOURCE 

*********************************

Trump Administration Substantially Boosts Healthcare Freedom for Employees

The Department of Health and Human Services has published a new rule that will promote the portability of health insurance. The rule may be the most significant the Trump administration has published related to healthcare freedom since it could put more people in charge of their health insurance, rather than their employer.

According to the most recent data available, in 2017 more than 159 million Americans received health insurance coverage from their employer, while 20.5 million had purchased health plans on the individual market. More than 112 million were on some form of government-run health plans, such as Medicare or Medicaid.

American reliance on employer-sponsored health insurance coverage has existed since 1943, when the Internal Revenue Service exempted certain employer-provided benefits from taxation. Employers used benefits to attract workers to get around wage and price controls mandated by President Franklin Roosevelt. Congress made the exemption permanent in 1954.

There are problems with this system, however. Ultimately, the employer-based health insurance system isn’t responsive to employees because employees don’t own their health plans. This system also reduces choice. Insurers don’t look at employees as their customers, rather health insurance companies treat the employer or third-party administrators as the customer. The system also locks employees into their jobs out of a fear that if they leave, they may lose access to health insurance.

When he served in Congress, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) acknowledged this problem. He introduced the Empowering Patients First Act to address the issue. The legislation allowed employees to opt out of employer-sponsored health insurance coverage in exchange for a monthly tax credit to purchase a plan on the individual market.

“When you own [your health insurance], then they know you’re the customer,” then-Rep. Price said in a January 2015 interview. “That means that [health insurance companies] want to be responsive to you and what it sets up is a system that’s much more patient-centered than government-employer-centered.”

The new rule published by the Department of Health and Human Services isn’t the same as what then-Rep. Price proposed, but it certainly shares the spirit. The rule has the potential to put employees in control of their health insurance coverage by making their health insurance portable. If an employee leaves his or her job, the employee won’t lose access to their health insurance plan.

The rule expands Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) to make them available to more Americans. HRAs already exist, but only businesses with fewer than 50 full-time employees can use them to buy health coverage for their workers. The rule expands HRAs to make the accounts available to all employers, regardless of size, for employees to purchase health insurance coverage.

Employers would provide employees with a monetary contribution, either monthly or annually, to purchase health insurance coverage. Employees would use the monetary contribution to purchase any off-exchange plan on the individual market. Like the monthly contribution from employers, employees may pay the difference between the employer contribution and the health insurance premium on a pre-tax basis as long as the plan is not purchased on the Obamacare exchange.

Employees are empowered under HRAs because they get to choose which health plans they want and which provider networks, such as doctors and hospitals, they want. The decision is theirs and not left to an employer or a third-party administrator. As more people come into the individual market, competition between insurance companies will increase and premiums will stabilize.

Democrats want to either eliminate private health insurance, employer-sponsored and the individual market, and would replace it with a government-run, single-payer system. Alternatively, they aim to create a public option that would undercut insurance companies and eventually collapse private health insurance. Putting the government in charge of your healthcare is one of the worst ideas in the long, sad history of bad ideas. The HRA rule is a tremendous opportunity to begin to change the direction of the American healthcare system in a patient-centered direction by empowering employees to make decisions about their health insurance and their healthcare that are the best for them and their families.

SOURCE 

*********************************

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)

**************************

America, as seen from Beijing

A fly-on-the-wall account of what China tells visiting American bigwigs

A bit late, China’s leaders are starting to accept that their trade war with President Donald Trump is only one element of a larger crisis in relations with America—and not the most dangerous one. The leaders understand that their critics within America’s foreign-policy and national-security machine—meaning aides to Mr Trump, members of both parties in Congress and officers in the State Department, Pentagon, spy agencies and beyond—want China to change its ways. They also believe (or hope) that Mr Trump wants something different, and perhaps less painful for them: to show voters the spectacle of China losing a trade fight with him.

China’s rulers now accept that they face more than a Trump problem. They concede that bipartisan suspicion of China in America will intensify in the run-up to the elections of November 2020, and will continue afterwards, whoever wins. They absorbed that message during visits by high-ranking Americans, including Mr Trump’s officials, business bosses and veterans of Republican and Democratic governments. Dismayingly, they show no sign of accepting that China’s own actions are in any way to blame.

Chinese leaders believe that America’s policy machine wants them to change principles that have guided China’s rise for 20 years. They protest that these demands cut to the heart of China’s model of development. They are not entirely wrong. Such figures as the United States Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, have drawn up a charge sheet of Chinese norms and practices deemed intolerable now that China is so large, and so competitive in so many fields. Mr Lighthizer has allies in Congress, from both parties. They want China to abandon its model of state capitalism, with its subsidies for local champions, arm-twisting transfers of technology, curbs on market access and politicised regulation. Mr Lighthizer has proposed enforcement and verification mechanisms that Chinese figures indignantly compare to the inspections that underpinned cold-war arms-control agreements. No Chinese leader, it is said, could accept such a humiliation—any more than they will tolerate American moves to strangle Huawei, a telecommunications giant that is central to China’s plans to become a standard-setting tech superpower.

There is much Chinese grumbling about security hawks working for Mr Trump, from his national security adviser, John Bolton, to military commanders. The hawks are accused of breaking understandings about support for Taiwan, the democratic island that China claims as its own. The Chinese side thinks that Mr Trump was bullied by hawks into walking out on North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, at their summit in Hanoi in February. It is no accident that China’s president, Xi Jinping, decided to pay a state visit to North Korea, shortly before attending a G20 summit in Japan which Mr Trump will also join. Chinese officials gasped when Mr Trump threatened to slap extra tariffs on China if Mr Xi did not agree to meet him on the G20’s sidelines. Japan’s prime minister might swallow an American insult like that, growl Chinese sources, but not us. By visiting Pyongyang first (he arrived on June 20th), Mr Xi reminded Mr Trump that China’s leader is an indispensable diplomatic actor, not a junior partner in a trade dispute.

Chinese policy types obsess over the idea that Team Trump is not engaged in a sincere negotiation, but is seeking to contain a rising China. They complain about shifting American demands. At first China was told that the problem was the trade balance, and offered to buy American goods. Then economic rules and norms were called the crux of the dispute. So China prepared to negotiate, drawing up a 150-page draft agreement. Then, as the Chinese side tells it, Mr Xi realised that America’s plan amounted to an assault on Chinese sovereignty, rejected it and has since been cheered within his own system for his stand. There is muttering, in contrast, about Mr Xi’s chief economic aide and trade envoy, Liu He. Mr Liu, a deputy prime minister, is accused of lacking political sense.

Mr Trump is not a leader in thrall to principles. That is why the Chinese side hopes, in essence, that he could accept a trade deal which breaks Mr Lighthizer’s heart, and a North Korean pact that leaves Mr Bolton miserable, as long as those deals bring him applause from voters. Mr Xi, it is said, believes that Mr Trump does not want to decouple America’s economy from China’s—except in the production of some sensitive technology. But Mr Xi does worry that America’s president could be hijacked by hardline advisers. If no reasonable deal can be struck, Chinese hosts tell Americans, Mr Xi will wait for the election in November 2020 to produce a different president. They express confidence that relief will come sooner, because Mr Trump needs votes from farm states hurt by the tariff wars, and is desperate to keep the stockmarket roaring.

Imperialists never change

Doubts lurk amid the bluster. In public Chinese officials say that Mr Trump needs a deal to win in 2020. In private they ask whether, perhaps, American voters might prefer to see him fight on. They admit to bafflement over some of Mr Trump’s sallies, such as when he told Fox News that he could not accept a “50-50 deal” with China, but had to come out ahead. To Chinese ears, that was fantastically unhelpful. It recalled the “unequal treaties” imposed by 19th-century powers which every Chinese schoolchild is taught to hate. Mr Trump has said that he will not let China become the world’s largest economy in his lifetime. Does he mean these things, Chinese hosts ask, or is this all domestic politics?

Doubts have consequences. To prepare Chinese public opinion for a long trade stand-off, propaganda chiefs have abandoned months of restraint and told state media to start thundering about American bullying. Stoking nationalism is a familiar Chinese ploy. But it has real-world effects, too. As China reduces its own room for manoeuvre, it risks forcing Mr Trump to concede ground to China to secure a deal. Meanwhile his chaotic style is straining China’s system to its limits. The mood in Beijing is anxious, with reason.

SOURCE 

*************************************

Democrats Double Down On Hating America

Kurt Schlichter

You gotta hand it to them – it’s an innovative strategy to run for President by taking the position that your country is garbage and that its are people deplorable monsters. It’ll be interesting to see how the Democrats fare on their “America sucks!” platform. The last week has seen Team Donkey take brave stands against the flag and celebrating our military, and you would half expect them to next advocate something insanely suicidal, like taking your health insurance or forcing you to pay for illegal aliens’ doctors.

Oh wait, that happened too.

Who are these lunatics? Do they really think this is going to play in America as well as it does in Chicago, Manhattan and Scat Francisco?

They do. But it’s not.

Not that they would know it, since they don’t know any real Americans. The current Democrat Party consists of hipster geebos, race hustlers, pierced campus mutants, bitter middle-aged divorcées who teach high school, tech twerps and uninvited foreigners who shouldn’t even be here. The libs will be shocked to learn that real Americans love America.

Their platform, carried out by the carnival freakshow that is the Democrat Party and its allies in the media and in the woke corporations, is part of a greater strategy. It’s to denigrate and then destroy what makes America America, to steal our story from us and replace it with a bogus legacy of oppression and misery. They want to impose upon us a new narrative of a morally stained America unworthy of respect or gratitude, and guess who will be the heroes of that new narrative…

Not the armed Americans who shot the British king’s thugs.

Not the heroic pioneers who civilized the West.

Not the captains of industry who took a primitive backwater and made it the most prosperous and freest nation in human history.

Not the warriors who won at Gettysburg and Normandy.

Not you.

Them. Yes, the very same Social Justice Weasels who try to rip down everything that is great about America will be the new heroes of this new story. They are the ones with the courage to nag, pester, whine and complain about this country. That’s it. That’s their contribution. Our proposed new heroes are people who never made anything but fools of themselves.

Where is their parade, damnit?

Oh, and you’ll be the story’s villain.

That is, if you let them write you out of your own history. And the indications are that you’re not going to.

We saw the pushback when that cop killer-loving, commie thug-slurping, stupid hair-having bad quarterback got fussy over an old flag, and his ridiculous corporate employer went along with it. We were supposed to accept this latest ratchet left of the Overton Window of America-hating as an old version of the flag was declared “offensive” in anticipation of the predictable next move, when our 50-star Old Glory will get the same treatment. But it didn’t work this time. We laughed at them, and other companies came out with flag-themed footwear.

I went to get new gym shoes and walked right by the Nike display. The hell with them. Let them become niche kicks for jerks. And I’m not the only one. We’re not playing anymore. We’re tired of this.

On the Fourth, we were fed the lie that recognizing our military on a holiday made possible by Americans with rifles hunting oppressors for sport was some sort of prelude to dictatorship, though in fairness the Trumpian dictatorship has allegedly been descending upon America for the last two-and-a-half years, though it never seems to actually arrive. Dummy journalists journalisted about tanks in the streets of our nation’s capital, compounding their dumb by calling everything with armor and tracks a “tank.” “That’s a Bradley, not a tank” became the new “It’s a republic, not a democracy” as we merrily schooled these pompous goofs. One idiot who is a professor at Harvard, but I repeat myself, noted the eerie parallels to Tiananmen Square, which was quite a trick since there were none. We laughed at him too, and watched the President speak and the B-2/F-22 flyover and embraced the awesomeness that is America.

I think we’ve decided that we’ve had enough of this crap, but I don’t think the liberals understand how annoyed we are. Shhhh. Don’t tell them.

Instead, they are continuing to battle over the relatively tiny America-hating slice of the electorate while Trump is gathering up the patriots. Here’s a quick quiz: Name the Democrat running for president who would be willing to unequivocally say aloud what is the indisputable truth – that the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth.

None of them will.

Not one.

Not the furry.

Not Chief Spitting Bull.

Not Groovy Hippie Lady.

Not Spartacus.

Not crusty Curb Your Socialism guy.

Not the political gold-digger who wants to bring back busing because of course she does.

Not even Gropey Floppy Sleepy Joe.

And none of them will ever take America’s side in a fight.

Euroweenies won’t foot the bill for their own NATO defense? The real problem is Trump telling them to pay up.

Chinese pillaging our intellectual property and imposing its “Heads China Wins, Tails America Loses” trade policies? The real problem is Trump fighting back with tariffs.

Iran getting uppity? The real problem is Trump wasn’t sucking up to the mullahs enough.

And Russia? The most amusing part of the last week had to be Totally Not Senile Joe explaining how the Russians had hacked our last election and how that would never have happened if he had been Veep. Oh, to be able to listen in on the voices echoing around in his head…

Poor Joe, trying to compete in the Democrat Party’s primary woke-stakes but not understanding that he can never be woke enough. There’s always someone who will go woker. “Detention camps are bad? Oh yeah, well I’ll raise you – now they’re concentration camps! And you’re racist!”

Just think if Joe had been smart, brave, and tough enough to look over at the other weirdos, losers and mutations on that stage and say, “Are you people crazy? A Biden administration will not take your health insurance. It’s not going to open the borders and it’s not going to ask Americans to pay for illegal aliens’ – yeah, illegal aliens – health care. We’re not doing reparations or free college for gender studies majors or climate panicking. Oh, and America is the greatest nation on earth.” He would immediately win over the people who have doubts about Trump but a certainty about the America-hating nimrods that AOC’s party is pushing – the certainty that these idiots can never be trusted with power.

Luckily for Trump, it won’t happen. Good-Guy-To-Have-A-Beer-With Joe is long gone, like the wrinkles he had Botoxed away in preparation for this last disastrous White House run. Joe was the Democrat’s final chance to run a major candidate who likes America and likes Americans. Now one of the two major American political parties is all-in on hating the USA and hating you.

“America is terrible!” That’s a great slogan for winning in Santa Monica and Brooklyn, but not so great for winning in America.

SOURCE 

************************************

Anti-Trump Shoppers Call For Boycott Of Home Depot Over Founder’s Support For Trump

Political boycotts rarely achieve anything.  If they look like having an effect, members of the opposite party will rally to support of the targeted businesses.  Chick Fil A did well out of boycotts

The #BoycottHomeDepot hashtag trended on Twitter as a virtual battle erupted over the news that the company’s co-founder Bernie Marcus plans to support President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

In an interview that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published at the weekend, the 90-year-old billionaire praised Trump for having “a businessman’s common sense approach to most things.”

“Now, do I agree with every move that he makes? No, I don’t,” said Marcus, who retired from his role as chairman at the home improvement supplies store in 2002. “But the truth is he has produced more than anybody else. He has,” Marcus added. “If we look at this country, I would say that we are better off today than we were eight years ago or six years ago.”

Marcus reportedly donated $7 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he also penned an essay for RealClearPolitics explaining why he stood “ready to help” the then-reality television personality “at every turn.”

That also sparked calls for a boycott.

Marcus has donated $2 billion to philanthropic causes during his lifetime, reported the AJC, and on his death some 80% to 90% of his estimated $5.9 billion fortune will be used for similar ends.

His backing of Trump has divided people on Twitter over the last week, where some people have demanded a boycott of the store and others have sprung to its defense.

A Home Depot representative told MarketWatch on Monday that Marcus “isn’t speaking on behalf of the company.”

SOURCE 

**********************************

Conservatism Healthier Than Beltway Pundits Believe

The majority of the most popular governors just happen to be Republican governors.
   
National Review’s Jim Geraghty recently wrote an interesting piece wherein he notes that, contrary to much of the mainstream media’s political assumptions, “conservative ideas and policies are doing just fine beyond the nation’s capital.” As evidence, Geraghty points to the increasing number of states whose Republican governors enjoy positive favorable polling numbers. Even more impressive is that three of the four Republicans with the highest approval rating are governors of blue states — Charlie Baker (MA), Larry Hogan (MD), and Chris Sununu (NH).

The reason Republican governors have been doing so well in blue states, Geraghty theorizes, is due to the nature of conservatism. Rather than seeking to push for massive government-led changes, these Republican governors tend to act more as a check against Democrat excess. Geraghty notes that some Republican governors “support and try to enact policies that are explicitly conservative,” but that “guys like Baker and Hogan act as a conservative check on more liberal state legislators.”

As far as policy goes, conservative tax policies have gained in favorability among the states, as 16 states passed large tax cuts in 2018 alone. These cuts amount to an estimated $1.7 billion in combined savings for Americans in those states.

A final interesting note is that since much of the mainstream media is so focused on the political drama in Washington, state-level policy news is often ignored. And this is where conservatism, outside the hyper-partisan spotlight, most thrives at doing the work of good governing.

SOURCE 
 
*********************************

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)

**************************

Trump is the most open President America has ever had -- by far

Both on Twitter and in most of his speeches to supporters you see and hear exctly what is going through his mind at the time -- no filtering, no censoring, no political, correctness. And you particularly note that he seems to contradict himself sometimes.  He says something, decides it was not quite right and then says a derivative of the original thought that  suits him better.  It is not at all a contradiction, just online editing.  The difference is that he lets you see the whole process of him coming to a statement that he thinks is right.

  He can be a bit hard to follow at times but if you are on his wavelength you get his thought well enough.  He is not a policy wonk and is light-years away from having a Churchillian turn of  phrase but he may be the most honest man ever to occupy the oval office.  His ideas and policies are his own and what he really thinks.

Slate are totally contemputuous of his speaking style and have put up some excerpts from a recent speech to his supporters that they think are most contemptible. You can pick at the way he says it but I think he makes his points pretty well.  His comments on his hair gave me a laugh. I reproduce what Slate picks out below.  See if you get what he is saying.  He is focused on censorship by social media:

On the Economy

So I’m thrilled to welcome you here, and we’re all working very hard, and I don’t know if you know but we just had 27,000 on the Dow. That’s the highest in history. We’re up a couple of hundred points today—the highest in history, for those of you that like the stock market.

But the stock market means jobs. I view it as jobs. And I view it as 401Ks. A lot of people say, “Oh, the rich people are getting rich.” But if you look at the numbers, the greatest impact proportionately is blue collar workers, in what’s happened, in this miracle that’s happening.

And people with 401Ks, they’re up 72 percent and 67 percent. And the wife or the husband, whoever is responsible, the other one says, “You’re a genius. You’re a great financial investor. Darling, you’re up 77 percent this year.” So a lot of good things happen. A lot of people are happy, and I think really everybody’s happy. Some people just aren’t willing to admit it. Does that make sense?

Popular in News & Politics

On White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino
We’re delighted to be joined at this summit by someone you know very well, our senior adviser for digital strategy, and somebody that’s been working for me for a long time—for many years—Dan Scavino. Where’s Dan? Stand up, Dan. So, long before we were even doing this, he was at a club. Running a club, and other businesses. And he was okay at doing it. Not the greatest. I wouldn’t say the greatest. But, you know what he was great at? He was always looking at his computer screen. I said, “That guy’s incredible.”

So right at the beginning, I said, “That’s the man.” And there was nobody better at that. And I think Hillary had 28 people, and I had Dan. Right? I had my Dan! And he works about 28 hours a day, and he works very hard. But he doesn’t work. I mean, he loves it. He loves it. And his imagination, and really working with all of you, and many of you. He’ll come up with ideas, and you’ll come up with ideas. And he’ll run into my office, he says, “You got to see this.” And a lot of times I’ll go out, and I’ll spend a lot of money on a concept. I’ll say, “Here’s a concept. Come up with this.” And we’ll hire these companies, and they want a lot of money, and they come back. Just happened the other day, right? I said, “That’s terrible. These guys have no talent.”

The people that have the talent are the people that we deal with. And it’s true, and some of you are extraordinary. I can’t say everybody, but no, but some of you are extraordinary. The crap you think of is unbelievable. Unbelievable.

On the Census Citizenship Question

Can you believe… “Are you a citizen of the United States of America?”

“Sir you can’t ask that question.”

“Why?”

“Because a court said you can’t.”

We have three very unfriendly courts. They fight us all the way. The judges don’t like us too much, I guess. But think of that, Herman, think of that question. “Are you a citizen?” We spend—this is another thing that’s so crazy—$20 billion on a census, $20 billion. They spend $20 billion! I said, “Twenty billion WHAT?” Twenty billion dollars. On a census. They go through houses. They go up. They ring doorbells. They talk to people. How many toilets do they have? How many desks do they have? How many beds? What’s their roof made of? The only thing we can’t ask is, are you a citizen of the United States? Isn’t it the craziest thing? Twenty billion. Pretty amazing.

On What’s Happening

But I’ll tell you, a lot of bad things are happening. I have people come up to me: “Sir, we want to follow you. They don’t let us on.”

And it was so different than it was even six, seven months ago. I was picking up unbelievable amounts of people. And I’m hotter now than I was then, OK? Because you know, you also cool off, right? You do. But I’m much hotter. Especially with a nice, new stock market like it is. Right?

But no. I’m hotter now, and I go to Dan, I say, “Hey, what’s going on here?” It used to take me a short number of days to pick up 100,000 people. I’m not complaining; we’re like at 60-some-odd million. But then we have five different sites. We have another site with 25 million. We have another site with 10 or 12. Then we have Facebook. Then we have Instagram. We have a lot!

We got a lot of people. Way, way over 100 million, but I used to pick them up… And when I say “used to,” I’m talking about a few months ago. I was picking them up, a hundred thousand people every, very short period of time. Now, it’s, I would say, ten times as long. And I notice things happening when I put out something—a good one, that people like, right? Good tweet. It goes up. It used to go up, it would say 7,000, 7,008, 7,000, 7,017, 7,024, 7,032, 7,044. Right?

Now it goes, 7,000, 7,008, 6,998. Then they go, 7,009, 6,074. [Audience boos] I said, “What’s going on?” Now, it never did that before. It goes up, and then they take it down. Then it goes up. I’d never had that. Does anyone know what I’m talking about with this? [Audience screams “yes”] I never had that before. I used to watch it. It’d be like a rocket ship when I put out a beauty. Like when I said, remember I said somebody was spying on me? That thing was like a rocket. I get a call two minutes later: “Did you say that?”

I said, “Yeah, I said that.”

“Well, it’s exploding. It’s exploding.”

I turned out to be right. I turned out to be right. We turned out to be right about a lot of things. But I never had it.

On Setting the News Cycle

I said watch, I’m going to do this. And I said, “We recognize the Golan Heights as being part of Israel.” It was a big thing. I go, watch this: boom! I press it, and within two seconds: “We have breaking news.” John Roberts of Fox was over. He said, “We have breaking news. Please, break it up.” Doesn’t matter what they’re talking about, John does it. He breaks it up.

Now, that’s Twitter. That’s social media. I call Twitter a typewriter. That’s what I really call Twitter, because it goes onto Facebook automatically. And it goes onto Instagram, and it goes on to television—moreso Fox than it does CNN. If it’s something bad, they’ll put it on.

If I have a spelling deal, they will put it on. “Donald Trump spelled the word ‘the’ wrong.” You know? “He doesn’t know how to spell ‘the.’ He spelled it t-h-i.” You know? I couldn’t care… Any kind of a punctuation mistake, they put it on. So I’m very very careful. I, really… I’m actually a good speller, but every once and… The fingers aren’t as good as the brain.

But, but it is true. And it’s incredible what it does. I put out a social media statement, and I was telling Kellyanne the other day. I said, “You know, I used to put out, like, a press release.” Right? And people would pick it up, sort of, you know. The next day, two days, they’d find it sitting on a desk. If I put out… We hardly do press releases anymore, because if I put out on social media, a statement, like I’m going to in a little while on something totally unrelated (but a very important statement—now they’re going crazy, “What is it? Tell me,” but it’s very important), but if I put that out in a press release, I’m telling you, Kevin. People don’t pick it up. It’s me, same. If I put it out on social media, it’s like an explosion. Fox, CNN, crazy MSNBC.

On NBC in General

They’re stone cold crazy. I made them a lot of money with The Apprentice, and I gave them a top show when they were dying on NBC. But they don’t like me too much. They wanted a big extension. They used Arnold Schwarzenegger instead. Big movie star. You know what? He died. He died.

I was there 12… 12 years, 14 seasons, and then they pick a movie actor. And he dies on us.

You know, I own that with Mark Burnett and some people. And I said, they said, “Would you rather have him had been, like, this tremendous massive success? You own it, so you benefit financially. Or would you rather have him die, so that you say you did it for 14 seasons, 12 years.”

I said, “I think I’d rather have him die at it.” That means you don’t need the money. I’d rather have him die at it. Anyway, but with amazing creativity and determination, you’re bypassing the corrupt establishment.

On the Loyalties of Tech Execs

So you know, they’re playing with a lot of minds and they’re playing unfairly. And the funny thing is that, in theory, they shouldn’t be liking the other side. They shouldn’t be liking the other side. They should be really liking our side, because we’re the ones that won freedom. Far more.

You see what’s happening up on the debate stand. You see what they’re doing to each other. You’re seeing the hatred that they have up there, and it’s a very different philosophy. It’s a very different thought.

On Whether There’s a Word Called “Communism”
Because what they’re looking at is pure socialism, or worse than socialism. You know, there’s a word called “communism,” too. There’s a word—they don’t like to use it. Very rarely do you hear that. But there’s a word called “communism,” and they’re trying to get socialism over the line. But these people are… This is beyond socialism, to a large extent. And I think that we’re going to have a tremendous success.

On Types of Weather

We had, on the Mall just the other day, 4th of July, a tremendous success. It was pouring. The weather was just… It was beautiful in one way. They learned it was my real hair that day, because I was drenched. Well, that is the one good thing. I ran, and they learned it’s my hair.

Because I’ve been through every windstorm, sandstorm. Let’s go over here. Let’s go. This one, that one. This desert. Let’s go to this ocean, and get out of the plane, sir. The wind is blowing at about 70 miles an hour. I said, “Boy, it’s gotta be… It’s gotta be mine.”

But, uh, but we’ve seen it all. We’ve seen it all.

On Platform Biases

But we run out of here… Shadow-banned, a hundred percent. You look at what’s going on. You know, I could go… The blocking, just the basic blocking of what we want to get out. The fact that they don’t let them join. They don’t. There was…. There’s no doubt in my mind that I should have millions and millions…

I have millions of people, so many people I wouldn’t believe it. But I know that we’ve been blocked. People come up to me, and they say, “Sir, I can’t, I can’t get you. I can’t follow you. They make it impossible.” These are people that are really good at what they do. They say they make it absolutely impossible. And you know we can’t have it. We’re not going to let it happen.

Josh, we’re not going to let it happen. And you know, if they did it on both sides, if it were done to the other side, to the other group… And I’m representing everybody. I do, I represent everybody. I fully understand liberal. I fully understand Democrat. We want to get along. We want to make sure that everybody loves each other, if that’s possible. And maybe, I really believe it is.

On the Infamous China/Farmer Feud

And you know, the farmers say, “We just want a level playing field, sir.” I love the farmers. They’re patriots. And China, as you know, targeted the farmers, because they think they could get to me by hurting the people that I love and that we take care of. And, it had no impact. I would watch—even on networks that don’t exactly like me—and I’d watch as they interview farmers, and they’d have ten or 12 people sitting. They’d say, “We don’t care. The president’s right. We’ve been ripped off for many years. Somebody has to do… Somebody had to do this.” China made over the last ten years hundreds of billions of dollars, you could say four to five hundred billion dollars a year.

On Having Conversations with Silicon Valley CEOs

So one of the advantages of being president is, when you ask for a meeting, you get it generally. I don’t know. I can’t think of too many I haven’t gotten. And you say, “I’d like to see in the Oval Office…” Or you have somebody call “Oval Office.” I’ve been with all of these people, at the highest level, one-on-one. Just recently with Google, just recently with Twitter, the top. All right? And you talk to them, and you swear, they’re like your best friend. “Oh, sir. No. We believe. We… Freedom of speech. Oh yes. Absolutely.” And we go…

So, it’s very interesting to see that. And and the level of, you know, you look at them… The sincerity! And I say, that’s fantastic. And they’ll leave, and then I’ll realize, three or four weeks later, it’s worse. It actually got worse. Because I say, look, I believe in technology. I believe in free markets. I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in all the things. And, and they are super genius. […]

But I tell you what, technologically, it’s unbelievable what they think up. Even Dan and I, when we sat with you-know-who, at Twitter. Number one. We talked about certain things. He said, “Yeah, well we could do this, this this.” I said, that’s really great. You know, this is incredible stuff. China will admit there’s nobody like these brains. But they’re not using that brilliance and they’re not using what we gave them fairly. And they have to do that.

And we don’t want to stifle anything, we certainly don’t want to stifle free speech, but that’s no longer free speech.

On What Else Doesn’t Count as Free Speech

See, I don’t think that the mainstream media’s free speech, either. Because it’s so crooked. It’s so dishonest. So to me, free speech is not when you see something good, and then you purposely write bad. To me, that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech. Somebody came to my office, I won’t say who, but a very big person. And I said OK, you don’t like the term fake news, which I think I get credit for. But I’m sure, if I said I get credit, they’ll say, “Thirteen years ago somebody came up with a term.”

I think I get credit—I’d be very proud to take it.

But I think I get credit. Now by the way, the worst fakers of all are using fake news. I saw the other day, on CNN—total fakes—I see on CNN, they go, “Fake news media has reported…” No, no, THEY’RE fake news media. They’ve turned it around. They’ve turned it around.

SOURCE 

*************************************

Consumer Comfort at 18-Year High

Americans’ comfort with the U.S. economy reached an 18-year high in late June, according to Bloomberg News, which maintains a Consumer Comfort Index. Consumer sentiment was up, said the news group, and contributed to “increased optimism about the U.S. economy, personal finances and the buying climate.”

"The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index advanced 1.8 points in the week ended June 23 to 63.6, the highest since December 2000," reported the news service. "A gauge of views about the economy was the strongest since early 2001, while a measure of household finances improved to an almost 19-year high." In related news, the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all achieved record highs against a disappointing global stock market.

Also, CNBC reported that the unemployment rate remained at a consistent 50-year low.

The White House website lauded the positive economic news, saying that the numbers “[smash] expectations once again.”

President Donald Trump touted the stock numbers on July 6, tweeting, “Our Country is the envy of the World. Thank you, Mr. President!”

Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.) also commented on the strong economy. He tweeted, “@realDonaldTrump continues to defy expectations & deliver results for American workers! Democrats need to explain to everyone with new jobs & higher wages why they want to take that away from them with their job-killing socialist programs & high taxes.”

At the Democratic debate on June 26, Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) remarked, “This president walks around talking about and flouting his great economy, right? My great economy.”

She continued, “You ask him, ‘How are you measuring the greatness of this economy of yours?’ and they point to the jobless numbers and the unemployment numbers. Well, yeah, people in America are working. They’re working two and three jobs.”

SOURCE 

*********************************

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)

**************************

BET founder Robert Johnson praises Trump, says Democratic Party 'moved too far to the left'

Black Entertainment Television founder and longtime Democrat Robert Johnson said in an interview that aired Tuesday that the Democratic Party has become too liberal to defeat President Trump in 2020, unless major changes are made.

“The party in my opinion, for me personally, has moved too far to the left,” Johnson told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble.

Johnson – the country’s first African-American billionaire, according to Forbes – went on to say that because the party has become so liberal, he isn’t supporting a particular 2020 candidate at this time.

“I think at the end of the day, if a Democrat is going to beat Trump, then that person, he or she, will have to move to the center and you can’t wait too long to do that,” Johnson said. “The message of some of the programs that Democrats are pushing are not resonating with the majority of the American people.”

Johnson said the current far-left state of the Democratic Party will work well in the primaries but won’t help in a general election, especially since he feels Trump has his base locked up. The BET founder, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, even praised some of Trump’s recent accomplishments.

“I think the economy is doing great, and it’s particularly reaching populations that heretofore had very bad problems in terms of jobs and employments and the opportunities that come with employment,” Johnson said. “African-American unemployment is at its lowest level…  I give the president a lot of credit for moving the economy in a positive direction that’s benefiting a large amount of Americans.”

Johnson also told CNBC that he thinks tax cuts clearly helped stimulate the economy, whereas partisan politics have gone too far.

“I think business people have more confidence in the way the economy is going,” Johnson said. “If business people are concerned about anything, it’s the clear, clear partisan politics that’s become very wicked and very mean.”

Johnson said he gives Trump an “A+” for the economy but added that divisive politics are “not helping America as a global nation.”

The 73-year-old entrepreneur founded BET in 1980 with a $150,000 loan and sold it for $3 billion in 2001, according to Forbes.

SOURCE 

*********************************

Democratic Socialism Newspeak

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders unveiled his vision of “democratic socialism“ during a recent speech at George Washington University. Unfortunately, he did more to confuse the meaning of democratic socialism than to clarify it.

The words capitalism and socialism have meanings, so let’s get things clear up front. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of property coordinated through voluntary exchange in markets.

Socialism is an economic system that abolishes private property in the means of production—the land, capital, and labor used to make everything—and replaces it with some form of collective ownership. Whenever socialism has been implemented at a national level, collective ownership in practice has meant state ownership, and government plans have replaced markets as the primary mechanism to coordinate economic activity.

Capitalism and socialism can be thought of as two poles of a spectrum. Some countries are more capitalistic, and some are more socialistic, but all fall somewhere between these two poles. This is where Sanders starts mucking things up.

He claims that “unfettered capitalism” is causing economic problems in United States. The reality is that capitalism in the United States is far from “unfettered.” The Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report is the best measure of where on the socialism-capitalism spectrum a country lies. In the most recent rankings, the United States scored an 8.03 out of a possible 10 points, and even a 10-point score would fall short of “unfettered.”

However, this score does rank the United States the sixth most capitalist in the world. The five countries ahead of us—Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Ireland—are all pretty nice places. This fits with research that overwhelmingly finds that greater economic freedom (i.e., capitalism) produces good socioeconomic results.

Meanwhile, Sanders contrasts his democratic socialism with the “movement toward oligarchy,” which he conflates with unfettered capitalism. The problem is that none of the six authoritarian regimes he calls out—Russia (87th), China (107th), Saudi Arabia (102nd), the Philippines (49th), Brazil (144th), Hungary (59th)—is close to the capitalist end of the spectrum.

More disturbingly, he leaves socialist countries off his list of authoritarian regimes. Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela explicitly identify as socialist and come closest in the world today to practicing real socialism. The governments in these countries own and/or control much of the means of production and attempt to direct and plan their economies.

Sanders stated that he faces attacks “from those who attempt to use the word socialism as a slur.” But it is not “red-baiting” to recognize that socialism means a particular form of economic organization and that those authoritarian countries come closest to using that form of organization. I visited them while researching a new book, and they are all economic disasters as well as authoritarian nightmares. It’s incumbent on Sanders to recognize these countries as socialist and explain how his socialism would differ.

So does Sanders want real socialism? The closest he got to specifics was to argue that his democratic socialism would entail an “economic bill of rights,” which would include the right to a decent job that pays a living wage, quality health care, a complete education, affordable housing, a clean environment, and a secure retirement.

But listing aspirations tells us nothing about how he would achieve them. Based on his voting record and advocacy, his program would likely involve massive new interventions that would curtail our economic freedoms and place greater reliance on government planners.

Would those interventions be enough to label them socialist? They would likely make the United States less capitalistic than the Nordic countries that are often labeled democratic socialist. Yet those countries—Denmark (16th), Norway (25th), Sweden (43rd)—all rank high in economic freedom, so they likely don’t represent the right standard. Whatever the answer to my question, a national debate would be more productive if both Sanders and his critics were clearer on the definition of socialism and on whether his policies are, or aren’t, socialist.

SOURCE 

***********************************

Right-to-Try Legislation Helps Patient Battling Bone Cancer

Millennial Natalie Harp has battled stage two bone cancer for most of her life. To make matters worse, a medical error made in 2015 while receiving treatment left her wheelchair-bound and in constant pain. There was no known cure for her condition, and her quality of life was in quick decline.

Natalie was quickly running out of treatment options. Two rounds of chemotherapy failed to eradicate her cancer. Opioids, medical marijuana, and barbiturates were unable to relieve her pain. She was denied entry into numerous clinical trials. As her condition worsened, Natalie was also advised to consider voluntarily stopping all eating and drinking (a method commonly shorted to VSED).

Courageously, she refused, insisting, “No, I just want to get better.” Miraculously, she did.

After receiving access to experimental treatments through right-to-try legislation, Natalie’s condition improved substantially. In her own words, “I’m walking. I am healthy. I am living the quality of life that I always wanted.” She continued, “I’m not dying from cancer any more thanks to President Trump, I’m living with cancer.”

In May 2018, President Trump signed national right-to-try legislation in law. The law provides patients with terminal illnesses access to potentially lifesaving treatment options before the Food and Drug Administration fully approves them. By requiring permission from only the patient, their physician, and the drug provider to administer treatment, right-to-try laws cut the FDA out of the picture. As a consequence, patients are granted more options to prolong their lives with less regulatory barriers.

Natalie is grateful for the opportunities that right-to-try laws have provided. Before right-to-try became national law, she endured four years of being denied treatment options she hoped would help her condition. As she expressed, “it took President Trump going to Washington to be able to get that [more treatment options] for me.”

An unfortunate consequence of government involvement in healthcare is that medicine becomes more political. Despite the testimonies of patients electing to utilize right-to-try laws and being grateful for them, the laws continue to suffer from defamatory comments from political figures. Among the most common attacks are those calling the legislation “false hope” and declaring it hasn’t helped. Natalie’s inspiring conviction to keep fighting for her life, and her remarkable recovery, provide overwhelming evidence otherwise.

As long as the government remains involved in healthcare, the rights of terminally ill patients to try experimental medication to prolong their lives are at risk. Let’s hope stories like Natalie’s work to secure them. With 42 million US citizens suffering from a terminal illness or knowing someone with one, it’s a fight that affects us all.

SOURCE 

*************************************

Trump Compares Ocasio-Cortez To Argeninian Fascist.  She Takes It As A Compliment

For a fuller coverage of Peronism as Fascism, see here

President Donald Trump compared socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to former Argentine first lady Eva Perón — often called "Evita" — in a new book that is set to go on sale in mid-July.

Ocasio-Cortez took the comparison as a compliment, despite the fact that Evita was a Nazi sympathizer who helped her husband, Argentine President Juan Perón, destroy Argentina's economy by implementing socialism and eroded civil liberties in the nation.

Ocasio-Cortez responded to the comparison by tweeting out quotes from Eva Perón, writing: "'I know that, like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.' - Evita Perón".

Ocasio-Cortez added: "'I had watched for many years and seen how a few rich families held much of Argentina's wealth and power in their hands. So the government brought in an eight hour working day, sickness pay and fair wages to give poor workers a fair go.' - Evita Perón".

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Latin America’ aims to highlight a series of little known controversies about leading leftist figures in the history of the continent...

...Mr Peron helped many Nazis fleeing Europe after the Second World War to find a safe haven in Argentina, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele.

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) noted that Eva Perón "demagogued her way to a cult following among those who depended on the favors she dispensed and stepped on anyone who stood in her way. A law which obstructed her ambitions was, in her view, a law to be bent or broken.

Any fair assessment of her must note that she delivered numerous vapid harangues and gave away lots of other people’s money, but she never invented, created or built anything."

SOURCE 

******************************************

It’s Not Robots That Hurt Workers

Education is the job-killer lurking beneath the economy’s surface. Consider an exemplary employer making major investments in training for each of his 100 workers, even covering tuition for those who might benefit from technical courses at a local college. Say the investments have incredible returns, too—by the end of the year, each worker is twice as productive and 50 can do the work that last year required 100. That means 50 jobs have been destroyed.

Does that sound nonsensical? It should. Yet change “education” to “automation” or “technology” and you have the conventional wisdom that countless economists and politicians are spouting. If the employer invests in equipment that allows 50 workers to produce what previously required 100, we are suddenly concerned and upset. No one anthropomorphizes a worker’s enhanced skills, but a robot—well, a robot can “take” and “steal” and “destroy.”

In either case, with training or technology, the effect is to improve productivity—the amount of output per unit of work. Such productivity gains, whatever the mechanism, are the key to rising wages for workers and rising material living standards for society as a whole. We react differently to the two stories because our intuition fills in differently what both stories omit. In each case, worker productivity doubled. But what does the firm do next?

When it comes to training, we probably assume the firm takes advantage of these gains to produce more output. Those 100 workers produce twice as much, sales can rise, profits and wages can rise. When it comes to technology, though, we might assume the firm lays off workers who suddenly seem superfluous. It continues to produce the same level of output, with a workforce half as large.

This question of what happens next is thus central to the economy’s trajectory. Without the productivity gain, nothing happens. Workers able to produce more than before, for whatever reason, is the sine qua non of economic progress. But only if accompanied by rising output are the effects for workers undeniably positive.

Historically, that has been the dynamic. From 1947 to 1972, for instance, economy-wide productivity roughly doubled. But output surged as well and, at the end of the period, the same share of the population was working and men’s wages were up 86 percent. In the manufacturing sector, productivity rose by 3.4 percent annually, but real value added rose by 4.2 percent annually; employment during the period rose by more than three million.

Compare that period to the 21st century, when America has lost nearly five million manufacturing jobs. Was any of this because of extraordinary technological breakthroughs that caused productivity to surge, allowing firms to do much more with many fewer workers? No. In fact, the average rate of productivity growth in manufacturing this century has been 3.1 percent—lower than 1947–72 and no different than 1972–2000. But output growth has been only 1.3 percent, less than a third the rate of the earlier period. We’ve gone from the world where firms use a doubling of productivity to double output, to one where they use it to lay off half their workers. Had output growth this century equaled that of 1950–2000, manufacturing employment today would be near an all-time high.

So when policymakers blame automation for job losses, they are looking in the wrong place. Productivity gains have always been with us—in fact, they used to come faster. If anything, the American economy is suffering from insufficient automation—as reflected in declining productivity growth, stagnant wages, and remarkably little use of robots. American manufacturers use only 200 industrial robots per 10,000 workers, the standard measure of adoption. In both Germany and Japan, that level exceeds 300. In South Korea, it exceeds 700. With greater automation and higher productivity, American firms would likely be more competitive in the international economy.

If firms no longer invest to expand output as they used to, the explanation is not some irresistible technological force but an economic malady—the sort of thing policymakers bear responsibility to address. This means acknowledging the many things they have gotten wrong: imposition of environmental restrictions that make industrial development slow and costly, obsession with college enrollment to the exclusion of the many non-college pathways that might better prepare people for relevant fields, nonchalant tolerance of a massive and widening trade deficit, entrenchment of an outdated system of organized labor that workers and employers both dislike, and so on.

No wonder our politicians prefer throwing robots under the self-driving bus.

SOURCE 

*********************************

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)

**************************

Trump’s bromance with authoritarians

Michael A. Cohen of the neo-Marxist "New School" in NYC writes below.  We have met his hate and unrealism about Trump before.

Given the Leftist trust in force, it is most unlikely that Mr Cohen has not heard of Realpolitik but in his article below he pretends not to.  What Mr Trump has said and done out of diplomatic necessity, Mr Cohen calls a "bromance".  One also wonders if he knows the meaning of that term.

Perhaps we should feel sorry for Mr Cohen.  He sounds a most unhappy soul. He is 52 at the moment so you would think he would have found some peace by now


President Trump has a thing for dictatorial, sociopathic strongmen. But last week during his trip to the Far East for the G-20 summit, he took things to a whole new level — bro-ing out with some of the worst leaders, and worst people, in the world and in the process, further degrading America’s already weakened global image.

At the summit, Trump commended Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “I want to just thank you on behalf of a lot of people, and I want to congratulate you,” he said. “You’ve done a really spectacular job.”

The crown prince has not only presided over a vicious crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia but is also widely believed to have ordered the assassination and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. According to Trump, however, “nobody has directly pointed a finger” at the crown prince for Khashoggi’s death, a rebuttal to the conclusions of the CIA, which determined that he was responsible.

When Trump wasn’t praising the crown prince, he was bonding with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over their antipathy for the news media. Pointing to the journalists covering their meeting, Trump said, “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.”

SOURCE 

***********************************

Thanks to Trump, the healthcare choice is yours

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and many various versions of “Medicare for All” have something in common: they all want to limit your options: From which doctors you can see to the type of treatment you receive, and the kind of coverage you can get, both our current system and the socialized medicine proposed by the Left all depend on taking choices away from patients.

Fortunately, the Trump Administration has a different idea: expanding consumer options to get the insurance, and ultimately the care, that works best for each person or family. Individual empowerment not only makes care more accessible and costs more affordable, but brings the peace of mind Americans want regarding their health.

In 2017, the Trump administration issued an Executive Order to promote healthcare choice and competition across the United States, focusing on three areas for improvement in the near term: Association Health Plans, Short-term Limited Duration Insurance Plans, and Health Reimbursement Arrangements. Final rules have now been issued on all of these options.

Association Health Plans make it easier for small employers and independent contractors to band together and offer the same benefits larger companies have but at a lower cost. According to a study conducted in 2018, “The breadth of benefits had been one of the biggest concerns among detractors of association-based insurance. Yet according to the analysis, no evidence of narrow benefit designs was observed in the new AHP benefit descriptions.” These plans are already working and saving people money.

Short-term insurance plans existed under the ACA and were accepted as good options to offer relief for those in transition. For those that are in-between jobs, just getting out of school, have missed open enrollment periods, or losing coverage following a divorce, short term insurance plans play a necessary role in filling the gaps and not leaving people exposed. But not all gaps last just 12 months. So the Trump Administration’s final rule expands coverage up to 36 months to give people greater flexibility, more time, and better choices to figure out their health insurance needs.

Nonetheless, politicians from both sides of the aisle minimize the benefits and negate the wishes of Americans who choose to purchase short-term insurance plans that work for them, regularly calling them “junk” plans. But they are not “junk” to the people who are paying less and getting better service as they transition from one phase to the next.

The final rule for Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), which is set to become effective on January 1, 2020, proves to be the most meaningful way of improving affordability and access for many Americans. This innovation allows employers to give their employees a set amount of money to buy insurance on the individual market.

Growing the consumer pool purchasing individual plans is projected to bring products back into the marketplace and drive down costs. According to the administration, “the rule will significantly expand worker options since 80 percent of firms that provide insurance currently offer only one type of plan.” This change would greatly reduce the impact of problems associated with pre-existing conditions, as plans would become portable and not necessarily dependent on an employer providing specific coverage.

More popular choices are being reviewed by the administration that will improve affordability while helping others with pre-existing conditions. Sharing Ministries, Medical Cost Sharing models and the fast-growing Direct Primary Care phenomenon have proven to offer more options, decrease costs, and improve satisfaction among their members.

Consumers can also use a combination of these services, depending on their individual needs and preferences. Whether through the solutions outlined in the Choice and Competition report or added as qualified medical expense under the IRS rules, these options are crucial for making healthcare less complicated, less confusing, and more easily accessible for all Americans. Peace of mind and individual empowerment are consistent with putting choice back into the hands of the people.

SOURCE 

*************************************

‘This Is the Liberal Establishment’: As Homelessness Rises in Major Cities, Trump Speaks Out

President Donald Trump says he is working on a plan to address a spike in homelessness in the United States, particularly in several California cities.

During a Fox News Channel interview that aired Monday night, host Tucker Carlson asked the president about homelessness in major urban centers.         

“It’s disgraceful. I’m going to [propose something], maybe, and I’m looking at it very seriously,” Trump told Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “We’re doing some other things that you probably noticed.”

The president added: “This is the liberal establishment. This is what I’m fighting. They—I don’t know if they’re afraid of votes. I don’t know if they really believe that this should be taking place.”

The homeless population in Los Angeles is about 60,000, according to numbers released in June by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority—a 12% increase from last year.

That’s more than one-tenth of the nation’s homeless in a single city.

Nationally, about 553,000 are homeless, according to a December 2018 review by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In other California cities, from 2017 to 2019 homelessness increased by 17% in San Francisco and 43% in Alameda County, which includes Oakland, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Four of the top 10 largest homeless populations are in California, according to a Forbes analysis of the HUD report.

The entire state of California had about 130,000 homeless in 2018.     

“Some of them have mental problems where they don’t even know they’re living that way,” Trump also said during the Fox News interview.

The president commented directly on the nearly 7,000 homeless in Washington, D.C.

“When we have leaders of the world coming in to see the president of the United States and they’re riding down a highway, they can’t be looking at that,” Trump said. “I really believe that it hurts our country.”

“They can’t be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco … so we’re looking at it very seriously,” the president said. “We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up. It’s inappropriate.”

Policy Options Under Review

Homelessness overall has been on the decline by 95,000 since 2007, according to HUD, and the number of homeless military veterans has dropped by 50% since 2010.

“Like many Americans, the president has taken notice of the homelessness crisis, particularly in cities and states where the liberal policies of overregulation, excessive taxation, and poor public service delivery are combining to dramatically increase poverty and public health risks,” White House spokesman Judd Deere told The Daily Signal.

“Last week, the president took action and signed an executive order to confront the regulatory barriers to affordable housing development, a leading cause of homelessness,” Deere said. “President Trump has directed his team to go further and develop a range of policy options for consideration to deal with this tragedy.”

From 2017 to 2018, the homeless population among veterans fell by 5.4%. The number declined by 10% among female veterans.

Homelessness among families with children has fallen by 29% since 2010, and by 2.7% (or 4,000 families) from 2017 to 2018, according to HUD.

A Zillow study found that homelessness rates begin to increase once a city’s average rent reaches 22% of median income; homelessness grows even faster once the average rent surpasses 32% of median income.

In Los Angeles, the average rent paid is 49% of median income. For every 2 percentage points that number increases, an additional 4,227 persons are likely to become homeless.

Government’s Role

There shouldn’t be a real federal government role for addressing homelessness, contends Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific Research Institute’s Center for California Reform.

“I don’t see a federal role at all regarding the homelessness issue, any more than I see a federal role for education and many other places where Washington has become involved,” Jackson told The Daily Signal. “It is a state and local issue, and they already have incentives to do the right thing.”

“If they don’t do the right things, they will lose businesses and they will lose residents, and they will have public health problems that fester,” he said in an email. “Those should … motivate them enough to come up with effective policies.”

Mental illness is assuredly part of the problem, said Joel Griffith, a research fellow in financial regulation at The Heritage Foundation.

“A lot of homelessness comes from cities refusing to involuntarily commit people who are mentally ill,” Griffith told The Daily Signal. “A lot are not seeking proper health care or shelters that are available.”

Homelessness largely stems from problems spurred by local regulations, he added.

“Rent control and density zoning artificially constrains housing supply,” Griffith said. “Well-intentioned laws have unintended consequences. In many ways, governments have caused the affordable housing problem.”

Biggest Homeless Populations

Nationally, almost one-quarter of all homelessness is found in Los Angeles or New York City, according to the HUD report in December, about six months before the increased numbers in Los Angeles released in June.

In more updated numbers, spanning 2017 to 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported a 17% increase in homeless residents of San Francisco.

The city faces problems of “aggressive panhandling and human waste,” the Pacific Research Institute’s Jackson said.

An institute issue brief on San Francisco homelessness called for the city to better engage law enforcement, reform city housing policy to expedite housing permits and reform zoning laws, and require more accountability over how taxpayer dollars are spent on homelessness.

SOURCE 

**********************************

Leftist Fact Checking Site Snopes Has To Admit Obama Built Cages For Immigrant Children

The left-wing bias of popular “fact-checking” sites like Snopes or Politfact has been well documented for years.

So when Snopes took on the task of fact-checking the claim “The Obama administration, not the Trump administration, built the cages that hold many immigrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border,” I expected them to, at the very least, rate it as “Half-True” or “False” and come up with some longwinded explanation with some absurd standard for why the Obama administration was in the clear.

Last year, FactCheck.org couldn’t bring itself to admit that family separations happened under Obama, even though their research proved it did.  But alas, Snopes couldn’t find a way to clear the Obama administration on this one, and had no choice but to rate the claim as true.

"But then Trump stated, “Obama built the cages. I didn’t build them. Obama built them.”

That portion of Trump’s commentary is true. Images of children behind chain-link fencing were widely seen at a site in McAllen, Texas, that had been converted from a warehouse to an immigrant-detention facility in 2014. Social media users who defended Trump’s immigration policies also shared a 2014 image of Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson touring a facility in Nogales, Arizona, in 2014, in which the fencing could be seen surrounding migrants there, too. That image was taken during a spike in the number of unaccompanied children fleeing violence in Central American countries."

Of course when you have two former Obama administration officials (Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, and executive associate director of ICE  Thomas Homan) both on the record on the issue, in addition to media reporting at the timeit’s really hard to claim anything to the contrary.

Last year, Snopes also had to admit that the Obama administration placed immigrant children with human traffickers. I’m sure that wasn’t an easy admission for them either, especially since concerns about human trafficking are why children are separated from adults in the first place.

SOURCE 

*********************************

It looks like Boris Johnson as British PM will get the same hate Trump gets



Once reserved for heinous regimes, embargoes are now deployed on firms with the 'wrong' opinions

Earlier this week, a group of hardline Left-wingers and Remainers chose to channel the fury they usually reserve for metaphorical “gammon” – middle-aged white men – towards something closer to the real thing; Heck, a family firm that manufactures gluten-free sausages. Its crime? Hosting Boris Johnson at its factory.

Just hours after pictures surfaced of the leadership hopeful posing with a string of sausages around his neck, Heck’s Google review rankings had plummeted after being bombarded with one-star ratings from “customers” who had stayed strangely silent before the furore.

SOURCE 

*********************************

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)

**************************