How can top Democrats run the economy with no business skill?

The market news today must be especially worrisome for the field of Democratic presidential candidates. The latest jobs report turned out much better than expected, with 266,000 additional payrolls created, propelling the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its strongest trading session in two months and marking the “best numbers of our lives.”

That, of course, will not stop the rhetoric from the candidates. For all of the talk of the Green New Deal, most of the focus of Democrats is not on the economic health of the middle class. To a certain extent, however, you cannot even blame them. Top tier candidates Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders have no point of reference on what makes the free market work. Moreover, none of the three can claim credit for creating a single private sector job in the last 50 years. Instead, they are ignorant of the processes that create job growth. Our economy is at full employment for the first time in two full decades. Why would the nation jeopardize this for candidates who have close to zero experience in the free market?

Despite platitudes about being “Middle Class Joe,” Biden has never had business leadership. Perhaps the closest thing he holds in private sector experience was his time as a teenage lifeguard, fending off gang leaders named “Corn Pop.” Biden spent a few years working as an attorney before getting elected to the Senate back in 1973. His time as a senator and vice president spanned more than 40 years. While he often touted his poverty relative to many of his political colleagues, Biden owes his current wealth to his time in office, notwithstanding the business schemes of his son.

Warren also has scarce private sector experience, limited to waiting a few tables and some legal work. The senator promises trillion dollar programs like “Medicare for All” and universal free college, which would likely raise taxes on working people and cripple the economy. Indeed, her proposals would translate into a “100 percent recession,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared. Moreover, the language surrounding her government plan for “economic patriotism” is almost Orwellian in its falseness. But I guess it is more understandable coming from someone worth $12 million writing missives from her comfortable $3 million mansion in Cambridge.

Even her first claim to fame, a coauthored 1989 treatise on middle class debt, was derided by Rutgers University professor Philip Shuchman as having serious errors and “repeated instances of scientific misconduct.” The closest thing to a private sector job that Warren could have created would have been an editor to create a revised version of the book, which she herself declined to pen. It remains eminently difficult for Warren to pitch a government plan for an economy that she misjudged for years.

Sanders certainly comes with the least experience in the real world. Never one to hold down a private sector job, he was kicked out of a commune for laziness in 1971. Even counting his time in public service, Sanders had never worked a full time job until he was almost 40 years old. Since then, he has made a career of telling others how to live their lives, serving four terms as the mayor Burlington then almost four decades in Congress.

As I have written before, federal taxpayers have financed Sanders to the tune of more than $4.5 million. The economic plans of the Democratic socialist include tax hikes on everyone making more than $29,000 a year and company owners compelled by the force of government to create worker cooperatives. Tax increases and government control will only destroy what has been built over the last three years. With 3.5 percent unemployment, why would voters choose to mess up what is working?

To these candidates, private money comes from public sector action, not the other way around. None of the factions of the Democrats has offered any proposals that would strengthen the economy, and their government plans would be to the detriment of workers. From Biden and his bridge to back toward a dire economy, to Warren and her grating corporatism, to Sanders and his refusal to admit the Soviet Union experiment did not work, each sorely lack the private sector experience to run the nation.

As we pull into Reaganesque economic good times, the worst thing that Americans can do now is to take the candidates at their own words and jeopardize the compelling job and wage growth. Main Streets across the nation prove that the free market works. Let us allow Democrats to either moderate their message or relegate their socialist ideas to the dustbin of history where they belong. Next time you are willing to discount their lack of business experience, just ask yourself, is it worth losing your job over?

SOURCE 

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

Lindsey Graham Promises Impeachment Will Die Quickly in Senate

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made himself clear on Sunday during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“The whole process [against President Donald Trump] is illegitimate in the House,” said the senator.

“It’s not just the whistleblower. You don’t want to create a situation where an anonymous person can start impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States. You can’t get a parking ticket based on that anonymous allegation.”

“The hearings were held behind closed doors,” he continued. “The [House] Intel Committee gathered all the facts. The president’s lawyer was never allowed to participate. They asked to call witnesses in the [House] Judiciary Committee. They had one hearing in the committee with four law professors and [after that] [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi said, ‘We’re going to move forward with articles of impeachment.'”

“This is a joke of a process.” “It’s dangerous to the country,” added Graham.

He also said, “This is being driven by [Rep. Adam] Schiff [of California] and [Rep. Jerry] Nadler [of New Jersey], Pelosi — partisan people.”

“I think it’s going to meet a quick end in the Senate,” he also predicted.

Democrats appear to be eyeing a vote on articles of impeachment before Christmas, as The Hill noted — so the House Judiciary Committee “could move as soon as later next week” on sending those articles to the floor for consideration.

Bartiromo asked Graham that if the matter does wind up going a trial in the Senate, “Who are some of the people you are going to want to hear from?” She added, “And will the president get a fair trial? Are you going to demand that people like the whistleblower, Adam Schiff, Alexandra Chalupa [a former DNC contractor and staffer], Fusion GPS — are these some of the people or organizations you’re going to want to question?”

Graham said that there are “two ways to do this. In the trial you can have the president present a defense to prove, in fact, that maybe the [county of] Ukraine was interfering in our election. The Russians stole the emails, not the Ukraine — but there’s articles suggesting Ukrainian officials met with Democratic operatives in 2016.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” he went on, “but here’s what I’m going to do with the trial. I’m going to try to get this over as quickly as possible, listen to … the House case, let them present their case, and if there’s nothing new and dramatic, I would be ready to vote and we can do all this other stuff through congressional oversight.”

“So, are you saying you’re not going to have people come down and testify?” Bartiromo asked in a follow-up.

Graham replied, “I am saying that I’m going to end this as quickly as I can for the good of the country. When 51 of us say we’ve heard enough, the trial is going to end. The president’s going to be acquitted. He may want to call Schiff. He may want to call Hunter Biden. He may want to call Joe Biden. But here’s my advice to the president. If the Senate is ready to vote and ready to acquit you, you should celebrate that — and we can look at this other stuff outside of impeachment.”

“Impeachment is tearing the country apart. I don’t want to give it any more credibility than it deserves.”

Later on in the interview, Graham also said, “Because I’m not going to participate in things I think will destroy the country. I’m not going to call a bunch of House members to come to the Senate as part of oversight. Now, if you’re a House member and you participated, you’re not subject — you’re not above the law, but we’re not going to turn the Senate into a circus, and I would tell Schiff what you’re doing is very dangerous for separation of powers here.”

He added, “Adam Schiff is doing a lot of damage to the country and he needs to stop. Mueller spent two years and $25 million looking at Trump. This whole Ukrainian stuff is a joke. They got the money [meaning the military aid]. They got the meeting with the president. They didn’t investigate Joe Biden or Hunter Biden.”

“There is no ‘there’ there.”

SOURCE 

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

"Chevron deference" (deference to the bureaucracy) is a joke in the era of the swamp

Cleta Mitchell is an excellent attorney who has been retained by FreedomWorks organizations for nearly a decade. She makes an excellent argument for overturning “the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, in which the court articulated a principle that federal agency decisions should receive deference in federal litigation because of the ‘expertise’ of the federal agency in matters involving the agency. Known popularly as Chevron deference, it presupposes that the agency and its employees are not only experts, but are philosophically neutral in the discharge of their duties.”

Cleta continues; “What we’ve seen during the Rep. Adam Schiff hearings is that ‘experts’ in federal agencies exhibit bias and political philosophies of their own. They are not neutral.”

Cleta knows from years of being involved with federal agencies that bureaucrats crave and cherish the compulsory powers of government: “It isn’t just that these people form the backbone of the resistance to President Trump. The reality is that no conservative, smaller government, pro-America president will ever be allowed success by these partisans who command and control the direction, actions, and decisions of the federal government.”

“If we learn nothing else from the impeachment inquiry, it should be abundantly clear that the federal workforce is a political party of its own, and does not deserve judicial deference of any kind.”

Most definitely, the Supreme Court should reconsider Chevron deference, and will hopefully reverse that decision.

Unfortunately, what Cleta has stated not only applies to State Department employees, but to all employees of federal agencies. Cleta opined that “the federal workforce is a political party of its own.” A more accurate assessment would be that the federal workforce is a major component of the Democratic party, and both the bureaucrats and the Democrats continuously promote more government. The federal government has more than four hundred agencies and nearly 2 million employees. The vast majority of the employees philosophically and politically support more government. In return the federal employees receive good salaries, job security, and excellent retirement and healthcare benefits.

The bureaucrats have a favorite saying when talking about their relationship with politicians: “We be here, when you be gone.” In other words, bureaucrats are safe, secure, and satisfied in their jobs; politicians are normally seeking higher political positions and power.

Then add all the multitude of state and local government employees with similar philosophies and perks, and you increase the power of the Democrats enormously. This is a major reason for more government regulations, incompetent management, and increasing government debt.

Cleta is absolutely correct. The Supreme Court must reverse the Chevron decision. And “We the People” need to reduce the size and power of the federal, state, and many local governments, which is much more difficult than convincing the Supreme Court.

SOURCE 

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

Good news about the media

While the Trump Economy is working great for most people, one industry hasn't been enjoying the boom: the media. According to Business Insider, the media industry is continuing to cut jobs this year.

The media industry continued to execute cuts in December and November as Gannett, Highsnobiety, and the CBC reduced headcounts. The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.

The massive cuts this year represent a recent trend in media that has seen upstart companies and newspapers alike shrinking and disappearing.

It's not just print media that's not feeling the love. Buzzfeed experienced layoffs this year. An attempt to relaunch Gawker failed. HuffPost laid off 13 in its video department. ThinkProgress shut down in September.

Even television media is experiencing a slow bleed. NBCUniversal laid off 70 employees in two rounds in August and September.

In September, NBCUniversal announced that it would be laying off 45 more employees from E!, Oxygen, Bravo, and other properties, according to MediaPost.

In August, E! announced that as part of its decision to move it's "E! News" show from LA to New York, it would be laying off 20 to 25 LA employees, Variety reports.

CNN also let go about 100 employees in the spring as part of a "corporate restructuring" effort.

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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

How can top Democrats run the economy with no business skill?

The market news today must be especially worrisome for the field of Democratic presidential candidates. The latest jobs report turned out much better than expected, with 266,000 additional payrolls created, propelling the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its strongest trading session in two months and marking the “best numbers of our lives.”

That, of course, will not stop the rhetoric from the candidates. For all of the talk of the Green New Deal, most of the focus of Democrats is not on the economic health of the middle class. To a certain extent, however, you cannot even blame them. Top tier candidates Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders have no point of reference on what makes the free market work. Moreover, none of the three can claim credit for creating a single private sector job in the last 50 years. Instead, they are ignorant of the processes that create job growth. Our economy is at full employment for the first time in two full decades. Why would the nation jeopardize this for candidates who have close to zero experience in the free market?

Despite platitudes about being “Middle Class Joe,” Biden has never had business leadership. Perhaps the closest thing he holds in private sector experience was his time as a teenage lifeguard, fending off gang leaders named “Corn Pop.” Biden spent a few years working as an attorney before getting elected to the Senate back in 1973. His time as a senator and vice president spanned more than 40 years. While he often touted his poverty relative to many of his political colleagues, Biden owes his current wealth to his time in office, notwithstanding the business schemes of his son.

Warren also has scarce private sector experience, limited to waiting a few tables and some legal work. The senator promises trillion dollar programs like “Medicare for All” and universal free college, which would likely raise taxes on working people and cripple the economy. Indeed, her proposals would translate into a “100 percent recession,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared. Moreover, the language surrounding her government plan for “economic patriotism” is almost Orwellian in its falseness. But I guess it is more understandable coming from someone worth $12 million writing missives from her comfortable $3 million mansion in Cambridge.

Even her first claim to fame, a coauthored 1989 treatise on middle class debt, was derided by Rutgers University professor Philip Shuchman as having serious errors and “repeated instances of scientific misconduct.” The closest thing to a private sector job that Warren could have created would have been an editor to create a revised version of the book, which she herself declined to pen. It remains eminently difficult for Warren to pitch a government plan for an economy that she misjudged for years.

Sanders certainly comes with the least experience in the real world. Never one to hold down a private sector job, he was kicked out of a commune for laziness in 1971. Even counting his time in public service, Sanders had never worked a full time job until he was almost 40 years old. Since then, he has made a career of telling others how to live their lives, serving four terms as the mayor Burlington then almost four decades in Congress.

As I have written before, federal taxpayers have financed Sanders to the tune of more than $4.5 million. The economic plans of the Democratic socialist include tax hikes on everyone making more than $29,000 a year and company owners compelled by the force of government to create worker cooperatives. Tax increases and government control will only destroy what has been built over the last three years. With 3.5 percent unemployment, why would voters choose to mess up what is working?

To these candidates, private money comes from public sector action, not the other way around. None of the factions of the Democrats has offered any proposals that would strengthen the economy, and their government plans would be to the detriment of workers. From Biden and his bridge to back toward a dire economy, to Warren and her grating corporatism, to Sanders and his refusal to admit the Soviet Union experiment did not work, each sorely lack the private sector experience to run the nation.

As we pull into Reaganesque economic good times, the worst thing that Americans can do now is to take the candidates at their own words and jeopardize the compelling job and wage growth. Main Streets across the nation prove that the free market works. Let us allow Democrats to either moderate their message or relegate their socialist ideas to the dustbin of history where they belong. Next time you are willing to discount their lack of business experience, just ask yourself, is it worth losing your job over?

SOURCE 

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

Lindsey Graham Promises Impeachment Will Die Quickly in Senate

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made himself clear on Sunday during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“The whole process [against President Donald Trump] is illegitimate in the House,” said the senator.

“It’s not just the whistleblower. You don’t want to create a situation where an anonymous person can start impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States. You can’t get a parking ticket based on that anonymous allegation.”

“The hearings were held behind closed doors,” he continued. “The [House] Intel Committee gathered all the facts. The president’s lawyer was never allowed to participate. They asked to call witnesses in the [House] Judiciary Committee. They had one hearing in the committee with four law professors and [after that] [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi said, ‘We’re going to move forward with articles of impeachment.'”

“This is a joke of a process.” “It’s dangerous to the country,” added Graham.

He also said, “This is being driven by [Rep. Adam] Schiff [of California] and [Rep. Jerry] Nadler [of New Jersey], Pelosi — partisan people.”

“I think it’s going to meet a quick end in the Senate,” he also predicted.

Democrats appear to be eyeing a vote on articles of impeachment before Christmas, as The Hill noted — so the House Judiciary Committee “could move as soon as later next week” on sending those articles to the floor for consideration.

Bartiromo asked Graham that if the matter does wind up going a trial in the Senate, “Who are some of the people you are going to want to hear from?” She added, “And will the president get a fair trial? Are you going to demand that people like the whistleblower, Adam Schiff, Alexandra Chalupa [a former DNC contractor and staffer], Fusion GPS — are these some of the people or organizations you’re going to want to question?”

Graham said that there are “two ways to do this. In the trial you can have the president present a defense to prove, in fact, that maybe the [county of] Ukraine was interfering in our election. The Russians stole the emails, not the Ukraine — but there’s articles suggesting Ukrainian officials met with Democratic operatives in 2016.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” he went on, “but here’s what I’m going to do with the trial. I’m going to try to get this over as quickly as possible, listen to … the House case, let them present their case, and if there’s nothing new and dramatic, I would be ready to vote and we can do all this other stuff through congressional oversight.”

“So, are you saying you’re not going to have people come down and testify?” Bartiromo asked in a follow-up.

Graham replied, “I am saying that I’m going to end this as quickly as I can for the good of the country. When 51 of us say we’ve heard enough, the trial is going to end. The president’s going to be acquitted. He may want to call Schiff. He may want to call Hunter Biden. He may want to call Joe Biden. But here’s my advice to the president. If the Senate is ready to vote and ready to acquit you, you should celebrate that — and we can look at this other stuff outside of impeachment.”

“Impeachment is tearing the country apart. I don’t want to give it any more credibility than it deserves.”

Later on in the interview, Graham also said, “Because I’m not going to participate in things I think will destroy the country. I’m not going to call a bunch of House members to come to the Senate as part of oversight. Now, if you’re a House member and you participated, you’re not subject — you’re not above the law, but we’re not going to turn the Senate into a circus, and I would tell Schiff what you’re doing is very dangerous for separation of powers here.”

He added, “Adam Schiff is doing a lot of damage to the country and he needs to stop. Mueller spent two years and $25 million looking at Trump. This whole Ukrainian stuff is a joke. They got the money [meaning the military aid]. They got the meeting with the president. They didn’t investigate Joe Biden or Hunter Biden.”

“There is no ‘there’ there.”

SOURCE 

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

"Chevron deference" (deference to the bureaucracy) is a joke in the era of the swamp

Cleta Mitchell is an excellent attorney who has been retained by FreedomWorks organizations for nearly a decade. She makes an excellent argument for overturning “the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, in which the court articulated a principle that federal agency decisions should receive deference in federal litigation because of the ‘expertise’ of the federal agency in matters involving the agency. Known popularly as Chevron deference, it presupposes that the agency and its employees are not only experts, but are philosophically neutral in the discharge of their duties.”

Cleta continues; “What we’ve seen during the Rep. Adam Schiff hearings is that ‘experts’ in federal agencies exhibit bias and political philosophies of their own. They are not neutral.”

Cleta knows from years of being involved with federal agencies that bureaucrats crave and cherish the compulsory powers of government: “It isn’t just that these people form the backbone of the resistance to President Trump. The reality is that no conservative, smaller government, pro-America president will ever be allowed success by these partisans who command and control the direction, actions, and decisions of the federal government.”

“If we learn nothing else from the impeachment inquiry, it should be abundantly clear that the federal workforce is a political party of its own, and does not deserve judicial deference of any kind.”

Most definitely, the Supreme Court should reconsider Chevron deference, and will hopefully reverse that decision.

Unfortunately, what Cleta has stated not only applies to State Department employees, but to all employees of federal agencies. Cleta opined that “the federal workforce is a political party of its own.” A more accurate assessment would be that the federal workforce is a major component of the Democratic party, and both the bureaucrats and the Democrats continuously promote more government. The federal government has more than four hundred agencies and nearly 2 million employees. The vast majority of the employees philosophically and politically support more government. In return the federal employees receive good salaries, job security, and excellent retirement and healthcare benefits.

The bureaucrats have a favorite saying when talking about their relationship with politicians: “We be here, when you be gone.” In other words, bureaucrats are safe, secure, and satisfied in their jobs; politicians are normally seeking higher political positions and power.

Then add all the multitude of state and local government employees with similar philosophies and perks, and you increase the power of the Democrats enormously. This is a major reason for more government regulations, incompetent management, and increasing government debt.

Cleta is absolutely correct. The Supreme Court must reverse the Chevron decision. And “We the People” need to reduce the size and power of the federal, state, and many local governments, which is much more difficult than convincing the Supreme Court.

SOURCE 

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

Good news about the media

While the Trump Economy is working great for most people, one industry hasn't been enjoying the boom: the media. According to Business Insider, the media industry is continuing to cut jobs this year.

The media industry continued to execute cuts in December and November as Gannett, Highsnobiety, and the CBC reduced headcounts. The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.

The massive cuts this year represent a recent trend in media that has seen upstart companies and newspapers alike shrinking and disappearing.

It's not just print media that's not feeling the love. Buzzfeed experienced layoffs this year. An attempt to relaunch Gawker failed. HuffPost laid off 13 in its video department. ThinkProgress shut down in September.

Even television media is experiencing a slow bleed. NBCUniversal laid off 70 employees in two rounds in August and September.

In September, NBCUniversal announced that it would be laying off 45 more employees from E!, Oxygen, Bravo, and other properties, according to MediaPost.

In August, E! announced that as part of its decision to move it's "E! News" show from LA to New York, it would be laying off 20 to 25 LA employees, Variety reports.

CNN also let go about 100 employees in the spring as part of a "corporate restructuring" effort.

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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

House Democrats have not convinced additional voters that President Trump should be impeached, new poll shows

A new poll suggests that Democrats have failed to garner broad support for their case for impeaching President Donald Trump.

The Yahoo News/YouGov poll, conducted from December 4 to 6, found that televised impeachment hearings did not move the needle for voters on the impeachment question.

Today, 47 percent of registered voters are in favor of impeaching Trump in the House, compared to 37 percent who are opposed, according to the poll. The first number is virtually unchanged from last month, while the opposition has dropped from 45 percent.

Since the last poll in late November, voters have grown more polarized. Among Democrats there's been a net swing of seven percentage points in favor of impeachment, and Republicans swung 11 points in the opposite direction — but independents remain virtually unchanged.

The poll shows that a slight majority, 52 percent, agree that Trump was 'primarily acting in his own personal and political self-interest' in regard to Ukraine.

However, that number remains unchanged from the last poll, despite this being the central finding of the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment report.

Trump on Saturday blasted Democrats in remarks to reporters on the White House lawn. 'The impeachment thing is a total hoax. The numbers have totally swung our way. They don't want to see impeachment. Especially in the swing states they've swung our way. I've never seen a swing like this,' he said.

On Saturday, the House Democrats issued a lengthy report drawing on history and the Founding Fathers to lay out the legal argument over the case against President Donald Trump's actions toward Ukraine.

The findings from the House Judiciary Committee do not spell out the formal charges against the president, which are being drafted ahead of votes, possibly as soon as next week.

Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong. 'Witch Hunt!'the president tweeted Saturday morning. He implored his millions of followers to 'Read the Transcripts!' of his telephone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to judge for themselves. 

SOURCE 

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

Trump Administration to Close Food Stamp Eligibility Loopholes for Able-Bodied Adults

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is expected to announce a finalized rule Wednesday to promote self-sufficiency for able-bodied adults without children who receive food stamps.

The rule aims to close loopholes used by states that frequently grant broad exemptions for recipients to remain on food stamps longer without actively seeking a job or work training.

The Department of Agriculture’s final rule on food stamps—formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—would affect able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who do not have dependents. The rule wouldn’t apply to parents with minor children, the elderly, or disabled people.

The Agriculture Department notes that with the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years, “work-capable” Americans can find employment more easily. The unemployment rate is currently 3.6% with 7 million job openings in the United States, according to the Labor Department.

So, the USDA contends, now is the opportune time to promote entry into the workforce, because the longer someone is out of work, the more difficult it becomes to get hired.

The agency contends the food stamp program is intended to be for assistance in difficult times, rather than a way of life.

The existing statute already limits adults aged 18 to 49 with no children or other dependents to three months of benefits in a three-year period. The exceptions come if the recipients work or participate in work training for at least 20 hours per week.

However, the law allows states to apply for waivers of this time limit due to economic conditions. For some states, that has turned into a loophole. Some counties with an unemployment rate as low as 2.5% were included in waived areas, according to the USDA.

The statute says states may grant waivers for areas with a 10% unemployment rate. However, the USDA and states have been flexible and creative in interpreting the waivers, according to research by the Foundation for Government Accountability. 

Officials in 33 states waived rules for parts or all of their states. Illinois exempts 101 of 102 counties, even though none has the 10% or higher unemployment rate mentioned in the statute.

Some states also group together regions with varying unemployment rates to inflate the numbers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Georgia exempts 66 counties. California exempted 55 of its 58 counties, including wealthy Marin County, which has had an unemployment rate below 3%.

The final rule still allows states to have flexibility to waive the time limit in areas of high unemployment. But states will have a responsibility to assess individuals as work-capable and will have to focus on helping food stamp recipients find a path to self-sufficiency, such as job-training programs.

SOURCE 

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

The Left Hates The Salvation Army. That's All You Need to Know About the Left

We all know some individuals who are so obviously good and kind that we are certain if anyone were to dislike them, that's all we would need to know about the person. We would immediately assume he or she is a bad person. To hate the manifestly good is a sure sign of being bad.

Such is the case regarding the left's hatred of The Salvation Army. You don't have to be a Christian -- I am not -- to appreciate the goodness of the people who run and work for The Salvation Army. They devote their lives to helping the poorest, the saddest, the loneliest and the most troubled among us -- completely irrespective of race, gender, transgender identity, faith or no faith. And they do it for almost no money. They do it because of their Christian faith.

They provide these downtrodden people with not only food and shelter but also human warmth and love. And they offer the people they care for the one thing most likely to get them out of their predicament: meaning. They offer it; they do not coerce it. And while the vehicle for this meaning -- Christian faith -- may not be your faith or mine, so what? It takes a truly narrow-minded bigot to want to deprive people of meaning just because that meaning is rooted in faith or in a faith other than their own.

Yet, leftists -- most especially LGBTQ groups, which spread a remarkable amount of hate in the name of "love" -- seek to crush The Salvation Army. They threaten and pressure whoever supports The Salvation Army. "British pop singer Ellie Goulding," the Wall Street Journal recently reported, "threatened to cancel an appearance at the Dallas Cowboys' Thanksgiving halftime show, which will celebrate the army's red-kettle campaign, unless it made a 'pledge or donation to the LGBTQ community.' She backed down after the Salvation Army assured her it serves needy members of that community."

SPLC Targets Franklin Graham for 'Hate Group' Speech
Most depressing of all, Chick-fil-A, a business owned by a Christian and heretofore run according to Christian principles, caved in to LGBTQ organizations' pressure and stopped funding The Salvation Army, while it has also donated to a left-wing group that hates the good, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I never thought I'd see the day when The Salvation Army would be hated by a substantial number of Americans or lose the support of a Christian-run business.

But given the left's loathing of virtually all things good -- such as America, Israel, traditional Christianity and Judaism, the Boy Scouts, the nuclear family ideal, Thanksgiving and America's founders -- it is not surprising.

As I have said for years, the left destroys everything it touches: music, art, Christianity, Judaism, economies, universities, high schools, late-night comedy, pro football, women's likelihood of finding happiness, men's likelihood of maturing, the Boy Scouts and the innocence of children (think "Drag Queen Story Hour" for 5-year-olds at libraries), to cite some of the more obvious examples.

And while it destroys good institutions, the left never builds a viable replacement. Is there a left-wing equivalent to the Boy Scouts, a left-wing institution that helps mold boys into responsible men? Of course not. The left destroys, but it builds nothing -- except state power. Or, to take the present example, is there a left-wing equivalent to The Salvation Army? No, there isn't.

"We believe we are the largest provider of poverty relief to the LGBTQ+ population," The Salvation Army said in a statement after Chick-fil-A announced its decision. As the Wall Street Journal concluded, "Considering it serves nearly 25 million people every year, that's likely true."

But all the good The Salvation Army does means nothing to the left. The left judges people or institutions not by their behavior but by their beliefs. And The Salvation Army believes -- as has every civilization in recorded history, and as former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did until a few years ago -- that marriage should be defined as the union of a man and a woman. To the left, that belief outweighs helping 25 million people including married gays.

One of the great puzzles in contemporary American life is whether there is anything the left could do to make Americans understand how destructive it is. If suppressing free speech at colleges and on the internet, fomenting interracial anger, supporting those who wish to annihilate Israel, allowing (and even encouraging) teenage girls to have their healthy breasts surgically removed if they think they are a boy and trying to crush The Salvation Army don't do it, probably nothing will.

SOURCE 

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House Democrats Pass Bill to Fight Voter ID Laws Nationwide

They NEED voter fraud

While the country is being distracted by the Democrats' bogus impeachment, House Democrats passed H.R. 4, the so-called Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, on a mostly party-line vote. Democrats claim the legislation is about fighting voter suppression—because when Democrats lose elections it can only be because of voter suppression, obviously. "Action is urgently needed to combat the brazen voter suppression campaign that is spreading across America," Nancy Pelosi claimed at a press event Friday before the bill's passage.

The bill, if signed into law, would require states to obtain "preclearance" from the Justice Department in order to make changes to voter laws—a blatant infringement of states' rights. Why would Democrats want such a law in place? According to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, "is a good step to right the wrongs that've dismantled the fundamental right to vote through Voter ID laws, purging voter rolls & closing majority-minority polling places."

The number one target of this legislation is clearly Voter ID laws. Many states passed Voter ID laws during the Obama administration and they were subsequently challenged in the courts. If this law had been in place during the Obama years, Eric Holder or Lorretta Lynch would have had the power to stop states from passing those laws.

It's obvious what this legislation is really about. Democrats are fighting efforts to ensure the integrity of our elections. “This bill would essentially federalize state and local election laws when there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that those states or localities engaged in any discriminatory behavior when it comes to voting,” said Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.). "The Supreme Court has made clear that this type of federal control over state and local elections is unconstitutional, because Congress can only do that when there’s proof of actual discrimination, which is what this bill is supposed to be about," he added.

Collins also believes the problem Democrats claim to want to fix isn't actually a problem. "Voting rights are protected in this country, including in my own state of Georgia, where Latino and African American voter turnout has soared. Between 2014 and 2018, voter turnout increased by double digits for both men and women in both of these communities."

As scary as this legislation is, it won't go anywhere in the U.S. Senate. But, make no mistake about it, Democrats oppose every attempt to ensure the integrity of our elections, and they won't stop.

SOURCE 

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Battleground Ohio: Investigation Uncovers Hundreds of Illegally Registered Non-Citizen Voters

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced on Wednesday that an investigation by his office has uncovered hundreds of illegally registered non-citizen voters, 77 of whom cast ballots in the November 2018 election.

In a letter to Attorney Dave Yost on December 4, LaRose, a Republican, explained, "As a result of our review, my office has identified 277 individuals who registered to vote in Ohio and 77 individuals who cast a ballot in an Ohio election and who appear to be legally present, noncitizens."

The Secretary of State said the review "utilized a cross-matching of the voter rolls in the Statewide Voter Registration Database with the list of individuals who have Ohio driver licenses or state identification cards." He noted that while the state does not maintain a "comprehensive database" of non-citizens in Ohio, Bureau of Motor Vehicles records do indicate the citizenship status of individuals who apply for driver's licenses or state identification cards.

The 277 individuals who registered to vote and the 77 who cast a ballot "each provided the BMV with documentation identifying themselves as non-citizens on at least two occasions, once before their voter activity and once after," LaRose said.

More HERE 

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Donald Trump hails 'GREAT' jobs report as economy booms with 266,000 new jobs in November and 50-year low unemployment

Lots of good numbers

Donald Trump hailed a 'blowout' job creation record in November as the Labor Department said employment expanded by 266,000 in the month - blasting past economists' expectations.

Trump tweeted 'GREAT JOBS REPORT!' and the verdict of Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo, who has become one of his main media allies, that is was 'a blowout.'

Hiring in the United States jumped last month to its highest level since January as U.S. employers shrugged off global trade conflicts.

The unemployment rate declined to 3.5% from 3.6% in October, matching a half-century low, the Labor Department reported Friday. And wages rose a solid 3.1% in November compared with a year earlier.

Bartiromo called manufacturing a 'blowout,' with 54,000 new jobs, although 44,000 of those were GM workers returning from their strike; other surveys have shown manufacturing activity contracted in November.

The healthy job gain runs against a widespread view that businesses are struggling to find workers with unemployment so low.

Persistent hiring should help keep consumers spending - a key engine of growth as businesses have cut their investment spending and exports have stalled.

Monthly job growth has in fact accelerated since this summer, averaging 205,000 over the past three months, up from just 135,000 in July.

Steady hiring has helped reassure consumers that the economy is expanding and that their jobs and incomes remain secure, which, in turn, has helped fuel spending.

Consumer spending has become an even more important driver of growth because the Trump administration's trade conflicts have reduced exports and led many businesses to cut spending.

Employment growth was also boosted by a gain of 60,200 healthcare workers. That lifted job growth well above its monthly average of 180,000 this year.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls rising by 180,000 jobs in November.

The economy was also found to have created 41,000 more jobs in September and October than previously estimated.

The 40-day strike by about 46,000 workers at GM plants in Michigan and Kentucky restricted employment gains to 156,000 jobs in October.

Manufacturing activity contracted for a fourth straight month in November. The factory malaise has been blamed on the Trump administration's 17-month trade war with China, which has bruised business confidence and undercut capital expenditure.

Though Washington and Beijing are working on a 'phase one' trade deal, the United States has ratcheted up tensions with other trade partners including Brazil, Argentina and France. President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States was having meetings and discussions with China 'that are going well.'

Economic growth estimates for the fourth quarter are converging around a 1.8% annualized rate. The economy grew at a 2.1% pace in the third quarter. Economists estimate the speed at which the economy can grow over a long period without igniting inflation at between 1.7% and 2%.

The surge in November payrolls defied an Institute for Supply Management survey showing a measure of manufacturing employment contracted in November for the fourth straight month. It also confounded the ADP National Employment report showing a sharp deceleration in private payrolls growth last month and consumers' perceptions of the labor market were less upbeat.

But cooler-than-normal temperatures in November curbed hiring at construction sites and mines.

Though the labor market remains resilient despite the business investment downturn, hiring has slowed from last year's average monthly gain of 223,000 because of ebbing demand and a shortage of workers.

Renewed concerns that trade will continue to hamper the U.S. economy drove stock prices lower earlier this week, after President Donald Trump said he was willing to wait until after the 2020 elections to strike a preliminary trade agreement with China.   

With the two sides still haggling, the administration is set to impose 15% tariffs on an additional $160 billion of Chinese imports beginning Dec. 15.

Both sides have since suggested that the negotiations are making progress, but there is still no sign of a resolution.

Hiring in the United States has remained mostly healthy this year despite the trade war. Even so, Trump's combative use of import taxes, combined with retaliatory tariffs by China and Europe, has stalled job growth in manufacturing.

Employers have been hiring at a solid enough pace to absorb new job seekers and to potentially lower the unemployment rate, though the pace of job growth is down from last year.

The holiday shopping season has begun later this year compared with previous years, a fact that some economists think might have delayed hiring by retailers and shipping firms last month.

With tariffs hobbling manufacturing, the job market this year has underscored a bifurcation in the economy: Service industries - finance, engineering, health care and the like - have been hiring at a solid pace, while manufacturers, miners and builders have been posting weak numbers.

Despite the raging trade tensions, most analysts say they remain hopeful about the economy and the job market.

The economy grew at a 2.1% annual rate in the July-September quarter, and the annual pace is thought to be slowing to roughly 1.5% to 2% in the final three months of the year - sluggish but far from recessionary.

Consumer confidence has slipped in recent months but remains at a decent level, helping boost sales of expensive purchases, such as autos and appliances.

With inflation surprisingly low, the Federal Reserve has cut its benchmark short-term interest rate three times this year.

Those rate cuts have helped support the housing market. Sales of existing homes have risen nearly 5% in the past year. Sales of new homes have soared by one-third. 

SOURCE 

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Impeachment Is Destroying CNN

If Democrats and their media allies thought that the impeachment of President Trump would be his undoing, I've got bad news for them: it's actually undoing them. The Democrats' favorite (fake) news channel CNN is suffering from a three-year low in ratings.

According to Disrn, CNN "reached a three-year low in ratings over the Thanksgiving holidays, averaging 643,000 primetime viewers. The news outlet also saw its worst week for viewers among the 25-43 demographic." In that group, CNN only pulled 138,000 viewers. That's pathetic.

Fox News, on the other hand, "posted higher ratings than CNN and MSNBC combined, averaging nearly 2.2 million viewers during primetime last week. The network also pulled in 303,000 viewers ages 25 to 54," which is the most important target group for advertisers.

In other words, Fox News is utterly and completely destroying the competition. Now, there's nothing new about that in itself, but what is new is CNN's complete and utter irrelevance in the news world. If you're thinking to yourself, "CNN? I never watch it!", you're not only talking for yourself but for just about every single American. There's literally just about nobody watching any of its programs -- let alone those scheduled outside of primetime.

How deep the once mighty have fallen. It's unbelievable. CNN was once an example to be followed. And now? Not one self-respecting real journalist, with ambition, would want to work for them.

There's just one way for CNN to turn this around. They've got to do something that hasn't been tried in decades. We have Fox News which is pro-Republican. We have MSNBC which is pro-Democrats. CNN's attempt to imitate MSNBC is destroying the channel. The way forward is for CNN to actually hire real journalists to -- and this is going to shock a lot of people -- do real journalism. Be proudly neutral. Don't air any shows by "commentators." Don't mix opinion with news. You bring the news, and that's it. When you have talk shows, you can invite guests who are not objective, but the presenter has to be absolutely, 100 percent neutral.

This is the only way for CNN to save themselves. If they don't choose this path going forward, they're doomed.

SOURCE 

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Impeachment Is Great for Trump: Approval Rating Rises to 52%

Thursday was a fantastic day for President Donald Trump. The reason? Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced Democrats will proceed with articles of impeachment against him. While that may normally be less than great for a president, in Trump's case it's absolutely delightful. In recent days, his approval rating among American voters has risen to 52%. And it's all because of the impeachment sham.

Rasmussen Reports' daily presidential tracking poll for Thursday shows that 52% of likely U.S. voters approve of the president's job performance. Forty-seven percent, on the other hand, disapprove. That's a three-point improvement compared to Wednesday.

What's more, 52% is the highest daily approval rating measured in two months' time. As usual, his approval ratings are especially driven by men. Fifty-nine percent of men approve, only 40% disapprove.

As for minority support: the daily tracking poll shows 31% approval for President Trump among likely African American voters. With regards to all other minorities, 61% of them approve, while a mere 38% disapprove. Those are stunning numbers for a Republican president -- especially in this extremely partisan age.

It goes to show that this entire impeachment hoax has been an absolute disaster for Democrats. The American people see straight through their attempts to rid themselves of a duly elected president only because they disagree with his policies and dislike him personally.

A lot of voters may not like Trump personally either. But he did win the 2016 election. Americans understand that impeachment can and should only be used as a last resort and only against a president who has actually committed a crime. In the case of Trump, it's clear that although the man himself is not exactly "likable," there is not even a shred of evidence that he's guilty of any "high crimes and misdemeanors."

In other words, it's all a sham. And everybody knows it.

The result is, rather logically, that Trump's approval rating rises. Americans will always stand by those who are treated unfairly. It's in the American DNA.

So, for Trump, it would be great if this impeachment hoax continues for as long as possible. Let Democrats push this, day in, day out. The end result can only be a Trump reelection and a Republican Senate and House.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

MEANWHILE... Trump's tax cuts reduce U.S. burden to one of the lowest in the world (Fox Business)

STRATEGY: How House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and his team tamed impeachment (Washington Examiner)

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Mueller witness bragged about access to Clintons secured with illegal campaign cash, says Justice Department (Yahoo News)

MOVING TO THE LEFT: A sign of just how far left Democrats have moved under Trump: "Moderate" Joe Biden wants tax hikes twice as big as what Hillary Clinton proposed in 2016 (Reason)

FOX LAWSUIT: Playboy model Karen McDougal sues Fox News for defamation over alleged Trump affair (NBC News)

SEEKING COMMITMENTS: Texas Democrats urge Pelosi to press for border security as part of USMCA deal (National Review)

UPRISING: State Department Iran envoy calls protests "the worst political crisis the regime has faced in its 40 years" (National Review)

POLICY: We do not need to expand Social Security (National Review)

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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George Zimmerman SUES Trayvon Martin's family and Florida prosecutors for $100MILLION, claiming they engineered false evidence in his homicide trial for shooting dead the black teen in 2012

Zimmerman was certainly the target of a political prosecution.  There was nothing above-board about it

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who was acquitted in the 2012 fatal shooting of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin, is suing Martin's family and Florida prosecutors, claiming that they engineered false evidence in the homicide trial. 

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Polk County Circuit Court seeks $100million in civil damages for defamation, abuse of civil process and conspiracy.

It alleges that the prosecution's key witness in Zimmerman's 2013 murder trial, Rachel Jeantel, was an imposter coached by the family and their lawyers.

The lead defendant in the suit is Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother. Fulton became a nationally-acclaimed advocate for social justice and reducing gun violence in the wake of her son's death, and is now running for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission.

The second defendant is the family's attorney, Ben Crump. He is accused of defamation and attempting to 'deprive Zimmerman of his constitutional and other legal rights'.

The lawsuit also names Harper Collins, accusing the publisher of defaming Zimmerman by publishing Crump's book, Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People, 'with actual malice knowing the untruth or at a minimum a reckless disregard for the truth'.

Crump responded to the lawsuit on behalf of himself and Martin's parents in a statement Wednesday.

'This plaintiff continues to display a callous disregard for everyone but himself, revictimizing individuals whose lives were shattered by his own misguided actions,' he said.

Soon after reports of the lawsuit emerged, the hashtag #IStandWithSybrina began trending on Twitter as users expressed support for Martin's mom.

Zimmerman, 36, is being represented by high-profile conservative legal crusader Larry Klayman.  Klayman released the full legal complaint to the media on Wednesday before it was officially filed. 

The complaint alleges that the Sanford Police Department thoroughly investigated the February 2012 shooting and closed the case as self-defense the following month. 

One week later, the suit claims, Crump produced a recording of 'Diamond Eugene', who he said was Martin's 16-year-old girlfriend who was on the phone with the victims minutes before the confrontation with Zimmerman. 

Two days after that, 18-year-old Jeantel, Eugene's half sister, appeared before the court and 'provided false statements to incriminate Zimmerman based on coaching from others'.

The suit alleges that Martin's cell phone records prove Jeantel was not on the phone with him before the altercation, and that she 'lied repeatedly to cause Zimmerman's arrest and to try to send him to prison for life'.

It charges that Eugene was Martin's real girlfriend and did speak with him prior to the shooting, but that Eugene asked Jeantel to pretend to be her so that she didn't have to testify. 

Klayman said several defendants in the suit 'have been proven to know about the switch to the imposter witness' - including Fulton, Crump and Florida prosecutors Bernie de la Rionda, John Guy, Angela Corey. 

The attorney said the allegations did not emerge at the trial and that 'the fraud was perpetuated on the court'. 'It was a complete travesty of justice which destroyed my client's life,' Klayman said. 'People are destroyed and smeared and they have to start fighting back.'

Klayman said the allegations in the new lawsuit are based on shocking evidence exposed in a book and documentary by film director Joel Gilbert, called The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America.

The attorney, a former US Department of Justice prosecutor, is the founder of watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch.

SOURCE 

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Don't price workers out of their jobs

“Black Friday” sounds dire but is actually a cause for celebration. For most of the year, retail stores are fortunate just to break even. But the beginning of the holiday shopping season finally brings profit margins wide enough to carry them out of the red and into the black.

The day after Thanksgiving, and the coming days before Christmas, thus remind us of the importance of seasonal spending on our economy. They also provide a constant warning that the success of the retail industry depends on operating as efficiently as possible to keep up employment and production.

Yet just as the holiday season spikes job creation from brick-and-mortar department stores to warehouses for online retailers, Christmas carols also sound the tune of socialist sad-sacks demanding that state and city governments pass ordinances raising the minimum wage to $15 — no, $20! — per hour.

Companies such as Costco and Amazon are probably even wise to pay their workers a minimum of $15 per hour voluntarily. That they do so, and that only 2.3% of all jobs in the United States pay the actual minimum wage, is evidence that employers generally wouldn't and couldn't pay people less if there were no minimum wage at all.

But not all businesses are created equal. Department stores such as Macy’s have seen their profit margins slump asymptotically, and others, such as Sears, have gone back into the red seemingly for good. Given the mounting cost of deliveries and online competition for shoppers, there exist many stores, especially small businesses, that could not keep their doors open if they had to pay workers significantly more than our current federal minimum wage of $7.25.

For struggling stores and small businesses, holiday sales are a godsend. Even more welcome are the hundreds of thousands of jobs created. Retailers created more than 700,000 jobs during the holiday season last year. That includes not just hundreds of thousands from profitable juggernauts such as Target, but also 80,000 from Macy’s and 90,000 from Kohl’s. The labor market has continued to tighten, meaning companies that can afford higher wages will be forced by the market to provide them, or else lose competent, honest, and reliable workers.

Holiday-season workers comprise a little less than one-fifth of total retail sales workers, whose median wage was $11.70 per hour last year. With companies such as Piaggio now selling retail robots, automation is threatening the livelihoods of many retail workers. This will get worse if the government artificially increases the cost of hiring them with a $15 or $20 minimum wage, plus the additional employer payroll tax that comes with it. This is especially true given today's low inflation. Put it all together, and a sudden doubling of the minimum wage would make the option of outsourcing such jobs to robots all the more attractive.

Businesses could instead simply close, or stop hiring workers (especially younger workers) who do not produce $15-20 of value each hour. The workers worst hit would be those trying to pay for school or at the start of their careers.

Contrary to fears about robots and immigrants taking jobs, automation will create millions of skilled and semi-skilled jobs in coming years. But lower-income and younger workers in retail and manufacturing have the most to lose in the process of creative economic destruction. Take away low-wage jobs and you throw them out of work.

If your aim is to help low-income workers, there are much better ways to do it than to crank up the minimum wage. Oren Cass has argued for an expansion of earned income tax credits. Andrew Yang argues for a need-blind universal basic income. Whatever the merits of these proposals, at least neither one will mess up opportunities for willing, low-skilled workers.

That’s what matters most. Although a minimum wage increase sounds compassionate, making workers too expensive for their jobs is anything but. It is cruelty masked as sympathy.

SOURCE 

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Congress bans short-term lending, the poor pay a high price

Washington do-goodism almost always fails to help the people it is supposed to because politicians ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences. Nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to a congressional plan to put payday lenders and other short-term lending institutions, such as the burgeoning online lenders, out of business.

These are lenders that provide the service of last-minute or emergency loans –- typically of between $100 and $600 — to mostly low-income Americans or those with poor credit scores cash. Liberal “consumer advocacy groups” and liberals in Congress demonize these companies as modern day Shylocks, the nefarious lender in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” who demands a pound of flesh if loans aren’t repaid on time. 

Rep. Jesus Garcia, Illinois Democrat, and Rep. Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Republican, are the cosponsors of a bill called the Veterans and Consumer Fair Credit Act, (the VFCA bill has nothing to do with veterans and several veteran groups have written to complain of this ruse). It would cap interest rates on short-term and emergency loans at 36 percent. Critics of short-term lenders say they “target” low-income and minority Americans. The left says this new law would “save” low-income Americans between $5 billion and $10 billion a year. 

No one forces anyone to go to these stores or use online lenders. They do so because these folks feel it’s the best and most convenient option for them. There’s no shortage of customers on a Thursday or Friday afternoon as workers line up to get an advance on their paychecks so they have spending money for the weekend or can pay their grocery bills.

It’s the same reason that tens of millions of more affluent Americans are willing to pay a $3.50 fee to get a $100 cash withdrawal from an ATM machine –- a convenience that many in Congress also want to prohibit.

The VFCA would make it illegal for a lender to provide someone with a $250 cash advance and then pay back the “loan” a week later with a $10 fee. But why? Can’t consenting adults make up their own mind about whether they want to engage in this transaction? Or is it really true that the left is so contemptuous of the poor that they think their voters are incapable of making sound every day decisions on their own?

Perhaps it is the Washington politicians who are the ones who are financially clueless here. Well more than half of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck today. Often times these workers have poor credit scores, so they can’t get a traditional loan or consumer credit from a bank. About one-in-five Americans can’t get a credit cards, or if they do have one, the alternative to a short-term payday or online loan when they are scrapped for cash, is to ring up debt on their Visa card, which is far more expensive than the charge on a payday loan.

According to a 2019 Federal Reserve Board study, almost 4-of-10 Americans today “lack the savings to cover an emergency expense of $400.”

For Americans tangled in these kinds of financial tight spots, payday lenders are saviors, not devils. The $5 to $20 fee for an emergency cash loan is a small price to pay. Except that many in Congress don’t think so. They complain that a $10 or $15 fee for a $200 loan paid back in two weeks can have an annual percentage rate interest or up to 400 percent. But an APR is a totally irrelevant statistic on a 10- or 14-day cash advance. The Wall Street Journal has calculated that the APR for a bounced check or a late credit card payment can sometimes exceed 1,300 percent. Are we going to eliminate credit cards too?

One vital on-the-street reality that the consumer advocates and politicians fail to take into account is that payday and online lenders have actually helped low-income areas in an important way: They have largely replaced loan sharks. The interest rate on an unpaid loan to the loan shark isn’t a $10 or $20 fee, but a broken arm.

It also speaks volumes of the motivation of the Fair Credit Act and its supporters that the law would exempt credit unions. These are tax-exempt institutions that are direct competitors to the payday and online short-term lenders –- and they’d like nothing better than to run the competition out of town –- just like McDonald’s would love to shutter Burger King. Credit unions are also major funders of many of the consumer interest groups hammering payday lenders. So it might be too charitable to even say that VFCA supporters are primarily driven here by a misguided concern for the financial well-being of lower-class Americans.

But the motives really don’t matter here — the results do. Run short-term lenders out of business, as some states have already done, and the victims are the people who can no longer use the convenience of these services that were once down the street. There is evidence that many Americans living near a state border, drive out of the state without payday lenders into the states that have them. If Reps. Garcia and Grothman have their way, Americans won’t even have the option of doing that anymore. It’s a law that only the loan shark could love.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Husband of Democrat in impeachment hearings took $700K from firms tied to Ukrainian oligarch "accused of ordering contract killings" (The Daily Wire)

GOOD COP, BAD COP: Georgia governor appoints Kelly Loeffler to Senate in defiance of Trump (National Review)

INTOLERANCE: Army says faith-based group can no longer put Bible verses on dog tags after complaint (Fox News)

HISTORIC CONTRACT: "Generational leap": Navy to pay $22 billion for nine nuclear-powered submarines (The Washington Times)

PUSHBACK: Hospital groups sue to block price-transparency rule (The Wall Street Journal)

POLICY: Hong Kong shows Taiwan what unifying with China really means (Hudson Institute)

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Here are Four Pieces of Great News for America and President Trump

Thanks to the noise of the Democrats’ divisive and destructive impeachment drive, hardly anyone is noticing just how good we have it right now. We’re in a Golden Age. Here are four pieces of great news that benefit all Americans.

Unemployment

Unemployment stands at a historic low – just 3.6%. To a degree not seen in previous strong economies, all boats are truly being lifted by the rising tide. Black and Hispanic unemployment are shattering records. You don’t have to listen to me or to President Trump. This is CNN:

The unemployment rate for black women fell to a record 4.4% from 5.2% in July. The unemployment rate for black men crept up to 5.9% from 5.8%. But the previous month's rate was a record, so the rate is still near its historic low.
Unemployment among workers who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino also fell in August to 4.2%, which matched a record low set earlier this year.

Minority unemployment has been tracked by the Labor Department since the early 1970's. Both black and Hispanic or Latino unemployment numbers have traditionally been higher than white unemployment, and it remains so today. White unemployment was 3.4% in August, up from 3.3% previously. But this is the smallest gap on record between the respective unemployment rates for blacks and whites.

This "is the smallest gap on record...” Wow. But you’d never know it from the blaring headlines. They’re all about impeachment and the myth that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t radically overhaul our economy and turn hardcore socialist. Of course, the main reason we’re not hearing about the triumph of the Trump economy is that it’s an existential threat to the Democrats. Minorities benefiting from a Republican president’s policies, and especially this Republican president’s policies, could pull enough minority voters away from the Democrats to render them a coastal, elitist and irrelevant party.

Affordable Energy

What’s driving the low unemployment? Two things come readily to mind: attitude and policy. President Donald Trump is not openly hostile to economic development and job creation. He cut taxes. He encourages growth and doesn’t scold creators by saying “You didn’t build that.” Trump has also encouraged U.S. energy development and that’s paying off. The United States is now the world’s top energy producer and a net petroleum exporter for the first time in about 70 years.

Again, wow.

Drive around any American town or city at night and behold the impact. The lights are on. Stores are open and they’re hiring. Gas prices don’t require you to take out a second mortgage to fill up your tank.

America's First Black Billionaire Gives Trump an 'A+,' Says Dems Are Moving 'Too Far Left'

Violent Crime Is Down

Here’s something else good that we’re not hearing about. Violent crime rates are down. In fact, American streets have rarely been safer than right now. And again, you don’t have to listen to me, here’s Pew Research on the subject:

Using the FBI numbers, the violent crime rate fell 51% between 1993 and 2018. Using the BJS data, the rate fell 71% during that span. The long-term decline in violent crime hasn’t been uninterrupted, though. The FBI, for instance, reported increases in the violent crime rate between 2004 and 2006 and again between 2014 and 2016. Violent crime includes offenses such as rape, robbery and assault.
To listen to the Democrats, “gun violence” is spiking and will soon claim us all in a bloodbath. Millennials have been misled to believe there are 35,000 or so gun-related deaths in American each year. Total actual murder, most of which isn’t committed using so-called “assault weapons,” is less than half that number. The fact is, mass shootings remain rare and aberrant while overall gun-related and other violent crime is down, along with property crime too. This is good news! Why aren’t we celebrating?

Pew has an answer for that:

Opinion surveys regularly find that Americans believe crime is up nationally, even when the data shows it is down. In 18 of 22 Gallup surveys conducted between 1993 and 2018, at least six-in-ten Americans said there was more crime in the U.S. compared with the year before, despite the generally downward trend in national violent and property crime rates during most of that period.
That’s the power of media to shape opinion at work. Americans hear the bleeding lead stories if they bother to watch local news, we see incessant coverage of every awful criminal tragedy if it serves an anti-gun or other anti-liberty agenda, and Americans believe crime is spiking when it’s actually falling.

We’re Defeating Terrorism

Also falling is transnational terrorism. The Islamist radical who recently attacked London was a recycled terrorist. He had been caught and imprisoned on terrorism charges, released by a foolish criminal justice system without being reformed in any way, and launched an attack on innocent civilians as soon as he could. The fact that he was a recycled terrorist and the fact that civilians were able to take him down with a big, sharp narwhal tusk demonstrates another piece of good news: We have largely won the war on terrorism. The enemy are reduced to the dregs of recruitment. President Trump has led the way in crushing ISIS and killing their leadership. Terrorism isn’t fully defeated and probably never will be, but it’s certainly not showing signs of the sophistication it had prior to or in the years immediately after 9-11.

What do the media do with this good news? The New York Times tries its hand at destroying America from its foundations with its insidious and dishonest 1619 Project. The alleged paper of record didn’t bother consulting actual historians on the matter. The national media trumpet every twist in the impeachment saga. They rail at Trump’s tweets. And they ignore the fact that we’re awash in good news: the economy is strong, energy prices are low, crime is down and we’re defeating terrorism.

SOURCE 

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New FDA Commissioner, Same FDA Problem

President Trump has nominated (and fired) numerous individuals to governmental positions while in office. Arguably, his most popular nominee was Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. As a Modern Healthcare article notes, “Dr. Scott Gottlieb accomplished a rare feat during his two-year tenure as head of the Food and Drug Administration—he earned praise from Republicans and Democrats alike.”

Although popular, Gottlieb considerably expanded the power and regulatory oversight of the FDA. For example, he took unprecedented steps in regulating tobacco markets and began a “historic crackdown” of the vaping industry. He also established the agency’s first board to regulate homeopathic drugs, an expanding component of the healthcare field.

To the surprise of many, Gottlieb abruptly resigned last March, leaving many of these expansions of power unfinished. In his absence, President Trump named Ned Sharpless as interim Commissioner. Sharpless’ time at the FDA was brief (210 days). Consequently, his impact on health policy was minimal.

Most recently, President Trump nominated Dr. Steven Hahn to be the next FDA Commissioner. Many believe this leaves the agency in capable hands. Hahn’s credentials and background in oncology provide him a wealth of experience to oversee new drug approvals for cancer. Since the United States frequently lags behind other countries in approving cancer treatments, an oncologist as commissioner could be just what the doctor ordered.

But President Trump and other political figures expect more. Recently, Hahn was asked whether he would ban several vaping products to halt teenage vaping. Although Hahn pledged “aggressive action,” he also expressed the need to better understand available information before deciding on definitive policy actions.

His caution earned him considerable backlash. One senator accused Hahn of being “more swayed by the tobacco industry and politics than by children’s health.” Others accused him of side-stepping questions. It seems the new commissioner is off to a rough start in what many consider a “critical time” for the agency.

But Hahn was right to exercise caution. His detractors seem to forget that restrictions on vaping were addressed at the state level well before the FDA became involved in 2016. Once the FDA introduced national vaping regulations, vaping rates among minors increased. Correlation is not causation, however; the agency’s previous attempts to mitigate teen vaping have clearly fallen short.

We should also note that states and cities continue to initiate their vaping regulations. San Francisco and nearby Livermore, California, banned the sale of electronic cigarettes. Oregon recently banned the sale of flavored e-cigarette juices. Although I believe such policies will be unsuccessful, these efforts demonstrate there are alternative ways to battle public health problems.

Political calls for more FDA oversight go well beyond regulating vaping products. A recent STAT article provides twelve “hard-hitting questions” for the new commissioner. These questions concern how the FDA will lower drug prices, make gene therapies more affordable, combat the rise in Alzheimer’s disease, and better regulate stem cell labs. Addressing these healthcare woes will only expand the agency’s evolving regulatory powers further. And that could be more dangerous than any issue the agency attempts to resolve.

Hahn certainly faces considerable challenges in his new position. But the greatest challenge he faces now is to exercise caution amidst the temptation to satisfy politically popular, but harmful, requests. The most beneficial regulations he can implement, by far, will be restrictions on the FDA itself.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED: DHS still can't identify all separated families from zero-tolerance border fiasco (The Washington Times)

JUSTICE SERVED? Mexican authorities make arrests in killings of American Mormons (The Washington Post)

RETAIL NUMBERS: Black Friday shopping at brick-and-mortar stores dropped by 6% as consumers spent record online (CNBC)

RAINBOW MAFIA: Hallmark Channel holiday movies under fire from the diversity police (Hot Air)

SEXUAL MISCONDUCT?: New scandal hits Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador involved in impeachment hearings (The Daily Wire)

BRUTAL CRACKDOWN: Iran kills hundreds of unarmed protesters as Quran expert warns it may kill thousands (The Daily Wire)

KNOWN ASSAILANT: London Bridge attacker had been jailed for terror crimes; two fatally stabbed (The Washington Times)

POLICY: The middle class always pays: Europe shows how the Warren-Sanders agenda really works (The Wall Street Journal)

POLICY: How UK free-riding on U.S. drug innovation is affecting Brexit (The Federalist)

AG LEERY: William Barr reportedly doubts inspector general's finding on Russia inquiry (The New York Times) But Sen. Lindsey Graham says to "be wary" of Leftmedia rumors.

DIGITAL-TAX FALLOUT: Trump administration proposes tariffs on $2.4 billion in French goods (The Hill)

PASSING THE BATON: Senate confirms Dan Brouillette as Trump's pick to replace Energy Secretary Rick Perry (Fox News)

PAYBACK: Trump campaign bans Bloomberg News from events over "troubling and wrong" decision to investigate Trump but not his political opponents (Fox News)

"ETHICAL LAPSES": Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson fired by Mayor Lori Lightfoot a few weeks before his planned retirement (Fox News)

GUILTY: California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter says he will plead guilty to corruption charges (The Mercury News)

DRAINING THE SWAMP: Betsy DeVos has cut 600 staff positions at the Department of Education (Washington Examiner)

NO DENYING IT: Iran admits to murdering protesters in cities across the country (Townhall)

POLICY: The London terrorist attack shows rehabilitative justice doesn't work (The Federalist)

POLICY: An agenda for the intangible economy (City Journal)

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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The Supreme Court finally takes up another gun case.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York. This will be the first Second Amendment case the High Court has heard in nearly 10 years following its landmark rulings in Heller (2008) and McDonald (2010). The case involves New York City's passage of a gun-control law banning gun-owning residents from transporting their firearms outside their homes and outside city limits, except to select gun ranges within the city and only then provided their handguns are unloaded, locked up, and separate from ammunition. In other words, paper weights that are useless for self-defense.

The draconian and obviously unconstitutional law was immediately challenged by Second Amendment advocates. In a move clearly demonstrating that New York officials knew their law violates the Second Amendment, they sought to prevent the issue from being taken up by the Supreme Court by changing the law to allow gun-owning residents to transport their firearms outside city limits provided it was "directly to and from" a second home or shooting range.

However, this "voluntary cessation" didn't stop the justices from deciding to hear the case, as they rightly note that the issue at stake is the Second Amendment's protection of individuals' right to bear and not merely possess arms. Furthermore, New York officials are clearly seeking to undermine the Heller decision, which protects the right to bear firearms for the "core lawful purpose of self-defense," as well as "learning to handle and use [arms]" and "hunting." By limiting a gun owner's right to bear firearms only in his place of residence, New York was effectively attempting to gut Heller, which is likely why the justices are keen to take up this case to reassert the Court's judicial authority. Clarence Thomas, for one, has been particularly vocal about the erosion of the Second Amendment by municipalities and lower courts.

Predictably, the anti-gun crowd isn't happy. Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) warned the Court that if it did not drop the case, he and his fellow Democrats would work to "restructure" the Court. "The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it," Whitehouse ridiculously asserted. He added, "Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be 'restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.' Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal." Oh, the irony. Who exactly is seeking to inject "the influence of politics" into the Court in order to eliminate Americans' Second Amendment rights? It certainly isn't the NRA or Republicans.

If the Court follows the precedent it set with Heller, it's likely that the ruling will come down to a 5-4 decision. No wonder anti-Second Amendment activists are so upset over the Court's decision to hear the case.

SOURCE

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Where Have All the Alphas Gone?

For some time now I have watched the immensely popular HGTV as a window on the culture—a large picture window letting in “lots of natural light,” as the rather silly and predictable house hunters are fond of saying—providing a cameo on the conventions of middle-class society. One notices, with few exceptions, that the wives tend to be voluble and bossy; they speak first, far more often, more insistently and more authoritatively. Their needs and desires are clearly predominant. The husbands, for their part, are mostly bland and subservient, almost leguminous in comparison, generally deferring to their wives with only the occasional mewl of protest.

One notes, too, the lack of genuine taste, the utter preoccupation with trivialities, and the cloying banality of conversation among the often obese participants. They are obviously hewing to script, but the ideas, habits, physical attributes, speech patterns, attitudes and expectations on display are close enough to the cultural norm to seem authentic. People recognize themselves and their aspirations in these TV episodes. Although the self-indulgence and broadly decorticate behavior one observes is certainly off-putting, the absence of gender parity, in favor of the wives, is perhaps the most conspicuous quality that affirms itself.

One might dismiss these observations as making too much of a mere reality TV show, but HGTV does let in a lot of natural light on a culture grown flaccid and critically disoriented. The ascendancy of the now-dominant, rule-giving female and the attendant decline of the proud and assertive male is the order of the day. The male essence is not a privilege but a fact of nature—that is, when nature is allowed to take its course. Yet, everywhere we look men are surrendering their right to be men—to be strong, confident, honest, unashamed and productive. I do not blame the vindictive and self-righteous feminists for the debacle. I blame the men who have allowed a social disaster to come to pass. We now see the gradual disappearance, or at least the alarming paucity, of alpha males in the social mix accompanied by the rising tide of beta males—apologists for their “toxic” nature, Michael Kimmel types— who are complicit with the feminist agenda.

In an important talk delivered at the ICMI conference held in Chicago in October 2019, the video of which is soon to be released, former vice-chair of the Maryland Commission for Men’s Health Tom Golden pointed out that testosterone levels are markedly declining among Western males. As is well known, testosterone is a male sex hormone that stimulates the production of sperm and the growth of muscle mass. But it is less well known that testosterone is also genetically engineered for status-seeking. University of Zurich neuroscientist Christoph Eisenegger in a major research paper, “The role of testosterone in social interaction,” suggests that testosterone “might be best conceptualized as bringing motives for social status to the fore.” Eisenegger showed that those who maintain that high level of testosterone lead only to corruption, aggression and emotional sterility have not adequately considered the evidence; such studies have been “clearly refuted.” Testosterone is the chemical engine for risk-taking, reciprocity, generosity and competitiveness.

Writing in Forbes, Neil Howe alludes to several analytic reports showing that “men’s testosterone levels have been declining for decades.” Among the many complex factors involved in the downward trend, a crucial element seems to hinge on “dismantling age-old ideas about masculinity and triggering real anxiety over changing gender roles.” There is no doubt that the economy is shifting away “from jobs that favor men [and] toward sectors dominated by women.” Howe is plainly a man of leftist sympathies—Donald Trump is “old-fashioned, overtly macho,” plenty of testosterone there. Nonetheless, while admitting that he might prefer “a less testosterone-laden world [which] might be less aggressive and more emotionally expressive”—as Eisenegger indicates, a thoroughly mistaken notion—Howe remains concerned that America, a once “‘pro-testosterone’ nation: restless, striving, and rowdy…is losing the dynamism, mobility, and enterprise that made it special.”

In other words, testosterone is an alpha hormone. When men strive not to excel and triumph but to conform and acquiesce, to blend in safely with majority sentiment, to not rock the boat (even if it is leaking), to go along in order to get along, and to accept the deformed image of masculinity with which they are daily bombarded, it is a sign that the testosterone pool is drying up, as Tom Golden fears and research has borne out. What is cause and what is effect is an open question. “Has testosterone declined in response to a changed world,” asks Howe, “or has the world changed to accommodate less virile men? Or is it both?” Whatever the answer, the result is the emergence of the beta man.

Of course, I am using the Greek alphabet somewhat loosely. Status is to a large degree context-dependent and social prestige may not arise exclusively from the alpha hierarchy. But the distinction between alpha and beta, despite the many shades of gray between them, is a useful one and one that is commonly understood. As psychologist Scott Kaufman informs us, “The most attractive male is really a blend of characteristics, including assertiveness, kindness, cultivated skills and a genuine sense of value in this world. The true alpha is fuller, deeper, and richer.” It follows that the true beta is emptier, shallower, and poorer.

I’ve had occasion to write in a previous article about the posturing feminist firebrand, Mona Eltahawy, who urges the weekly killing—she calls it “culling”—of men. Eltahawy cites a local instance of her determination to resist the patriarchy and her fierce courage in fighting it, referring to an episode in a Montreal club in which she physically beat up a man who groped her. I am willing to bet the story is apocryphal. Yet her fable limns a social truth, if only metaphorically, for the straw man in Eltahawy’s fevered imagination is the fictive representative of the actual beta male who has permitted, and even abetted and cultivated, the travesty of his unmanning. Though exacerbated and more than ever extensive, this development is by no means a novel phenomenon. It has its history.

As far back as 1913, E. Belfort Bax in The Fraud of Feminism framed the issue with his characteristic insight and precision. He is worth quoting at length. “In any conflict of interest between a man and a woman,” he writes, “male public opinion…sides with the woman, and glories in doing so.” Bax finds himself baffled by “the intense hatred which the large section of men seem to entertain toward their fellow-males…and their eagerness to champion the female in the sex war.” It is undeniable, he continues, that the Woman’s Movement, unassisted by “a solid phalanx of the manhood of any country, could not possibly make any headway.” The members of the phalanx—legislators, judges, parsons, magistrates—“all vie with one another in denouncing the villainy and baseness of the male person…To these are joined a host of literary men and journalists…who contribute their quota to the stream of antimanism…the design of which is to paint man as a base, contemptible creature.” Thus “the anti-man cultus has been made to flourish [with] the whole of the judiciary and magistracy acting as its priests and ministrants.” Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Bax could have been writing at this very moment.

These men may have acted from motives of chivalry or principles of moral virtue. They were not necessarily weaklings or beta males, but the consequences of their actions led to a dilution of the male spirit and temper and to the formation of a class of sexual herbivores who took the path of least resistance. They are our contemporaries, men who may believe they act from high ethical considerations but in reality are feminized creatures who have sold their masculine birthright for a mess of saccharine pottage. In short, they are beta-men. “Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back,” said former feminist Doris Lessing at the 2001 Edinburgh Book Festival. And she was right.

As poet Robert Bly writes in his 1990 bestseller Iron John, begging forgiveness for being a man, in violation of natural male vigor and energy, is a form of psychological suicide. It is a function, says Bly, of male naïveté, increasingly prominent in the modern era. “We see more and more passivity in men,” he writes, “but also more and more naïveté. The naïve man feels a pride in being attacked. If his wife or girlfriend, furious, shouts that he is a ‘chauvinist,” a ‘sexist,’ a ‘man,’ he doesn’t fight back, but just takes it.” In fact, he will offer to carry a woman’s pain before he checks with his own heart to see if this labor is proper in the situation…He rarely fights for what is his; he gives away his eggs, and other people raise the chicks.” (Italics mine.)

In Bly’s analysis of the Western tragedy pitting the sexes against one another, “Powerful sociological and religious forces have acted in the West to favor the trimmed, the sleek, the cerebral, the noninstinctive, and the bald”—Bax’s  “judges and magistrates”—who are the progenitors of the beta men we see all about us today. The beta man is the source of the cultural decrepitude and social dysfunction brought about by the feminist assault on the psychic and biological boundaries that differentiate the sexes. Beta men are committed to resisting what they regard as their raw and turbulent masculinity. They believe that masculinity as historically conceived and as feminists insist is demonic.

For Bly, the antidote to this febrile declension is the Wild Man of myth and folklore—pagan, classic, Celtic—who has been injured in his sexuality and who must return in all his strength, “in touch with God and sexuality, with spirit and earth,” that is to say, with himself. A man must rediscover his “Zeus energy.” And this not only for his own sake but for the sake of woman as well, whose fecund and magnanimous nature “has suffered tremendously,” as a consequence not only of her own resentments and illusions but also of the favonian influence of compliant men. “The goddess Aphrodite,” as he puts it, “alive inside the female body, is insulted day after day.” Regrettably, the Wild Man, or his contemporary avatar the alpha male, whom the mateless woman and the disaffected feminist secretly crave, is very much a minority species. (Interestingly, Neil Howe recognizes that “Millennial women yearn for guys who can ‘man up’ and take care of business,” but there are not enough of them around.)

Bly has been mocked by critics who find his thesis one-sided, expressing a return to the primitive, and risibly “phallocentric,” a reproof that many would apply to cult hero and magister Jordan Peterson. There is much misunderstanding in this position, for Bly accentuates the virtues of male sobriety and duty and Peterson those of competence and responsibility. In his recently published 12 Rules for Life, Peterson, with his considerable authority as a renowned clinical psychologist and an erudite thinker, elaborates the argument for the retrieval of healthy masculinity in a feminist age.

Following psychoanalytical pioneers C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann, Peterson points out that consciousness, “always symbolically masculine, even in women…is constantly tempted to sink back down in dependency…and to shed its existential burden. It is aided in that pathological desire by anything that opposes enlightenment, articulation, rationality, self-determination, strength and competence”—in effect, the beta capitulation to the triumphant female, the renunciation “of order and of the Logos” by men who have become feminized and submissive.

For such convictions Peterson has been denounced as a muddled thinker, a chauvinist, a huckster, a phallocrat, a misogynist, a fascist—you name it. But Peterson’s strength and manliness is evident in his ability to soldier on, to rise above such mean-spirited attacks, to lift his voice against the meretricious orthodoxy of the day, and to turn the tables on his detractors, furnishing an example of the alpha sensibility at work.

In economist Tyler Cowen’s terms, America is suffering from a “low-hanging fruit” mentality. We need high-reachers, innovators, motivators and stubborn achievers to renew a lost momentum; in other words, alpha men. Cowen writes from a leftist perspective, with a hefty dose of social justice theory, and focuses mainly on economic parameters over the last two-to-three centuries. But the concept of making do with low-hanging fruit fits the beta man with a strange perfection. These low-hanging fruit are the ideas, attitudes, compulsions, platitudes and opportunities associated with the feminist movement, which serve the appetite for conformity and approval—until, that is, the tree is bare. For a great reckoning is approaching unless we can learn once again to struggle upward where the best fruit can be found.

“It is surely time,” writes Duncan Smith in The Vast and the Spurious, to redefine “the state of gender relations.” It is time “for some major gaslighting, some alternate ways of viewing social life,” to explode the “feminist racket” and educate its male collaborators. This will be a monumentally difficult task. The beta male (aka the “soyboy”) is now the Western model of masculinity to be emulated by all right-thinking men. Unfortunately, Nancy Sinatra’s boots are walking all over him. After all, “you keep samin’ when you oughta be a’changin’”—though, indeed, he is a’changin,’ and at breakneck speed, under the stiletto heels of the Gorgonocracy. The feminist shrew is not the shrew of Shakespeare’s play; she will not be tamed, for there are precious few Petruchios around to right the balance and equally few Katherines who are “meet and amiable.”* As Kate says in her concluding speech: “I am ashamed that women are so simple/To offer war where they should kneel for peace.”

Of course, The Taming of the Shrew is only a play, just as HGTV is a piece of fiction. But the former articulates a longstanding domestic ideal whereas the latter inadvertently discloses a bitter social truth. The house may feature an open concept, three bathrooms, a kitchen island, marble countertops, a tiled backsplash, stainless steel appliances, a butler’s pantry and plenty of space to “entertain.” A profusion of wows, amazings, awesomes, and omigods lard the premises. The man whose great passion in life is outdoor grilling has to settle for indoor sizzling. “Happy wife, happy life,” goes the adage. But there is no rhyme for husband. In Reality Culture, the wife will keep the house, the kids and the assets if or when she tires of her husband. What to do as the house of Western civilization collapses and the culture self-immolates? “Men have to toughen up,” says Peterson. “And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” And that is something we are seeing with every passing day.

The Western world of discoveries, technologies, amenities and unprecedented wealth, which feminism abuses and exploits to its advantage, is the achievement of an alpha civilization. It is time for the so-called “patriarchy” to man up and celebrate its creation.

SOURCE 

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here

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