Donald Trump's Bold Promise

Donald Trump went to speak at Liberty University today, where he made a promise to the student body:

    "Donald Trump took the stage at Liberty University on Monday, drawing comparisons between himself and its iconic founder, Jerry Falwell, and vowing to "protect Christianity."

    The front-running GOP presidential candidate spoke to 13,000 people attending the speech at the Virginia school, after a glowing introduction from the late founder's son, Jerry Falwell Jr., who said the politically incorrect real estate mogul reminded him of his father.

    The speech was broadcast on Newsmax TV.

    "I knew his father a little bit," Trump said. "To be compared to his father is really an honor for me. I want to thank Jerry for saying that."

    Trump drew one of his biggest applause responses for denouncing the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

    "We're going to protect Christianity," he declared. "I asked Jerry and some of the fold, 2 Corinthians 3:17: 'Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty'," he said. "It is so true … so representative of what's taken place."

    "Christianity is under siege," he added. "Very bad things are happening … Somehow we have to unify, we have to band together, we have to do really in a really large version what they've done at Liberty ... You band together, you've created one of the great universities, colleges anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world, and that's what our country has to do around Christianity."

It's a speech that's sure to assuage the concern of voters who might be leaning towards Ted Cruz in the wake of last week's showdown.

SOURCE

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Life under an iron fist

Federal government overseers threaten property and livelihoods of hardworking westerners

Paul Driessen

Activists protesting federal land mismanagement and the imprisonment of Dwight and Steven Hammond recently occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters building in Oregon. Some facts, context and perspective may help people understand what’s really going on here.

At its core, this is about the often callous, iron-fisted hand of the federal government being slammed down on American citizens. Examples abound – from the IRS targeting 200 conservative groups, to the seizure of cars and bank accounts of innocent business owners, to heavily armed Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) agents bursting into Gibson Guitar facilities over phony exotic wood violations, to EPA destroying tens of thousands of coal industry jobs to “prevent climate chaos.” Making these outrages even more intolerable, those responsible are almost never held accountable, much less liable for damages.

Problems like these can become exponentially worse for people in one of the twelve western states where the federal government controls 30% (Montana), 49% (Oregon) or even 85% (Nevada and Alaska) of all the land. These government lands total 640 million acres: 28% of the entire 2.27-billion-acre United States.

Though they are often, incorrectly called “public” lands, the “public” has no fundamental right to enter them or utilize their water and other resources. They are federal government reservations, administered and controlled by agencies that increasingly want economic, motorized and many other activities prohibited and eliminated – under laws interpreted, implemented and imposed by officials in the FWS, Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Park Service and other federal agencies.

The feds also exercise effective, often punitive control over millions of acres of state and private lands located next to or in the midst of these government fiefdoms. People living in those areas rely on the federal reserves for forage, water, timber, energy, mineral and other resources that are increasingly made off limits, on the ground that “beneficial uses” might impact wildlife, scenic or environmental values.

However, millions of people do have valid, existing, longstanding, protected rights to these lands and their resources, in the form of “appurtenances” conveyed to them by deed or will from the first settler or miner. The forage, water rights, range improvements, easements, rights of ways, mineral rights and other property interests that the first settlers created or were granted to these western lands are constitutionally protected and have been preserved in every federal land law ever enacted by Congress. Those rights cannot be summarily taken away – though federal agencies increasingly try to do so.

As an 1888 congressional report explained, the original idea for these lands involved use and protection: settlements, harvesting of commercial quality trees, watershed protection, and no land monopolies. Various laws allowed mining, oil drilling, ranching, farming and other activities, to supply food, energy and raw material needs, while early environmentalists wanted certain areas preserved as national parks and wilderness. Of course, modern resource use and extraction methods are far more responsible and environmentally sound than their predecessors, so impacts can be much better limited and repaired.

Nevertheless, “wise use” or “multiple use” is under attack, and such uses are now rare or nonexistent across many western and Alaskan government lands. Landowners who remain are barely holding on.

Imagine the feds owning half of Ohio or Pennsylvania – and gradually, systematically closing off access, taking away water and forage rights, banning economic uses, charging higher fees for remaining rights, forcing landowners into years-long courtroom battles, and refusing to pay up when courts order them to compensate owners for attorney fees and lost income. That’s the situation facing rural westerners.

The Hammonds got in trouble because they started a “backfire,” to burn combustible material, create a “fire break” and protect their home and ranch from a raging fire. They accidentally burned 139 acres of federal land before they put the fire out. Now they are serving five years in prison, even though Senior Federal Judge Michael Hogan felt a year or less was fair and just under the circumstances.

They could have been charged under a 1948 law that provides for fines or jail terms up to five years for setting a fire on government lands without permission. But they were not. Instead, the Obama Justice Department charged them under the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act – as though what they did, in an honest attempt to protect their property, was an act of deliberate terrorism. That law requires a minimum five-year sentence. Judge Hogan’s lighter sentence was thus overruled.

Why would the DOJ do that? Probably because the feds never forget or forgive. Some years earlier, the Hammonds had removed a barrier the BLM had installed to block access to water they thought was legally theirs. Turns out it was. But they had failed to fully adjudicate their rights to the water – an oversight that they then fixed, thus safeguarding their rights. The Hammonds were also the only ranchers who refused to go along with a BLM “cow-free wilderness” plan. The feds were determined to get even.

Why would the Hammonds just give up and go back to prison? Because the DOJ wouldn’t budge, and they could not afford the huge expense of continuing to battle a vindictive federal behemoth. So now a middle-aged mom and elderly grandmother must run their 6,000-acre ranch, pay $200,000 more in fines, and hope they can avoid bankruptcy, which would result in BLM getting the Hammond ranch.

It is absurd, outrageous and infuriating. The Obama DOJ refuses to call Fort Hood, Boston, San Bernardino and other massacres terrorism – but it labels a backfire “terrorism.” But it gets worse.

Harney County, Oregon, where the Hammonds live, is over 6.4 million acres (over 10,000 square miles, ten times the size of Rhode Island), and 72% of it is controlled by the federal government. A 2012 wildfire in the county burned 160,000 acres! A 2015 fire in the county next door burned 800,000 acres!

Still worse, the BLM has often lit fires in Harney County and elsewhere (often on private land) that got out of control, burned extensive private property and even killed cattle. No one can recall the feds ever compensating ranchers for their lost livestock, fences or forage. In 2013, the Forest Service started two “prescribed burns” in South Dakota that blew out of control and torched thousands of acres of federal and private land. No federal employee has ever been prosecuted for any of those destructive fires.

To top it off, many of these fires are ultimately due to lousy management practices that restrict or prohibit tree cutting, tree thinning and insect control. That leaves vast tinderboxes of dry, rail-thin trees and brush ready to explode in superheated conflagrations that immolate wildlife and incinerate soil nutrients and organisms, ensuring that what’s left gets washed away in storms and spring snow melts. So the feds “protect” our treasured national forests from ranchers and miners by letting them go up in smoke.

But despite all these outrages, and not content with its already vast landholdings, the feds are trying to gain absolute control over all private lands still left in Harney County, and elsewhere. As Congressman Greg Walden noted in a January 5 speech, they are trying to drive ranchers and even joggers out of the Malheur Refuge. Failing that, President Obama might turn 2.5 million acres into a national monument.

The twisted saga is reminiscent of travesties under Stalin, Mao, Castro and other dictators. And it is just one of hundreds, some of which I will profile in future articles. It’s no wonder people are frustrated and angry – and some support Ammon Bundy and other activists who took over the Malheur headquarters. History will judge whether that peaceful occupation of federal property was wise, helpful or justified.

But many in the Obama Administration, news media, academia and general public certainly support or justify the seizure of college administrative offices, Occupy Wall Street encampments, and even Black Lives Matter kill-the-cops rants, Ferguson, Missouri riots, Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and Obama BFF Bill Ayers’ criminal activities. John Kerry went so far as to say, with Charlie Hebdo there was “perhaps … a rationale … [and] you could say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.”

So twelve Hebdo staffers murdered by Islamist terrorists is “rational” or excusable, but occupying a federal building is intolerable. We are dealing with a festering, growing, open wound. Congress, the courts and our next president need to heal it, and address the root causes, before things get out of hand.

Via email

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Clinton Supporters Sign Petition to Repeal Bill of Rights

Supporters of Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton eagerly signed a fake petition calling for a repeal of the Bill of Rights, in a video highlighting the mindlessness of the average Clinton voter.

“Hillary Clinton has announced a plan to help repeal the Bill of Rights for the New World Order and progress America and help with the government,” media analyst and social prankster Mark Dice babbles to a curious passerby before pointing to a clipboard and saying, “Just print birthdate, signature to support Hillary’s plan to repeal the Bill of Rights.”

Unaware he’s being filmed, the man signs and verbally endorses the pretend plan to eviscerate the first 10 amendments in the US Constitution, asserting, “She’s gonna lead us.”

“We’re gonna go in the right direction,” he says.

Approaching a couple walking, Dice again inquires, “Support Hillary’s plan to repeal the Bill of Rights to help modernize the New World Order.”

“You probably saw her primary campaign promises to repeal the Bill of Rights, part of the new freedom for the New World Order,” Dice remarks, to which the man signing the petition says, “I did.”

Dice then riffs on the fictitious petition’s premise.

“You know it’s a woman that’s gonna finally repeal the Bill of Rights, we’re hoping, but we still needed some signatures just to show that the people are behind her finally to have someone do that,” Dice says, to which the couple nods in agreement.

While the petition may be fake, Clinton has already proven herself an enemy of the Constitution.

The former secretary of state threw her support behind recent executive orders by the Obama administration toughening firearm background checks, largely seen as infringements on the Second Amendment.

Last November, the Clinton campaign was also accused of going after comedians who poked fun at her in a compilation video uploaded by comedy studio Laugh Factory.

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) and Coral reef compendium. (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 A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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A quiz

Who said:

1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
    A. Karl Marx
    B. Adolph Hitler
    C. Joseph Stalin
    D. Barack Obama
    E. None of the above

2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few, and to replace it with shared responsibility, for shared prosperity."
    A. Lenin
    B. Mussolini
    C. Idi Amin
    D. Barack Obama
    E. None of the above

3) "(We) can't just let business as usual go on, and that means
something has to be taken away from some people."
    A.  Nikita  Khrushev
    B.  Joseph Goebbels
    C. Boris Yeltsin
    D. Barack Obama
    E. None of the above

4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own in order to create this common ground."
    A. Mao Tse Dung
    B. Hugo Chavez
    C. Kim Jong II
    D. Barack Obama
    E. None of the above

5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed."
     A.  Karl Marx
     B. Lenin
     C. Molotov
     D. Barack Obama
     E. None of the above

6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched."
    A. Pinochet
    B. Milosevic
    C. Saddam Hussein
    D. Barack Obama
    E. None of the above

And if you think that Barack Obama said all these things - think again!  All were said by Hillary

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Reflections on Wise and Suicidal Immigration

By Victor Davis Hanson

Legal immigration has historically been classically liberal and a great boon for the United States.  Immigrants often bring in energy and fresh ideas.

In the past, newcomers from around the world were eager for a second start in the United States. They nearly all worked hard, reminding American-born citizens that that they can never rest on their laurels.

Immigrants honed American competition and helped to keep the nation productive.

Immigrants were typically hyper-patriotic. They reminded complacent Americans how lucky they were to be born in the U.S.

No one knew better how uninviting were the alternatives abroad than did those who had been forced to live under fascism, communism, totalitarianism, tribalism, or endemic poverty and corruption. Most immigrants believed that they always had been Americans in spirit, just unfortunately born in the wrong country.

Immigrants characteristically had rejected their native cultures and were eager to adopt a new American identity. So they were not foolish enough to question what had made America attractive to them in the first place: constitutional government, the rule of law, personal freedom, free-market capitalism, and an independent judiciary and press.

Instead, immigrants often enriched that immutable Western core with diverse contributions of food, music, literature, and art.

Through integration and intermarriage immigrants quickly became part of the American dream. The path from Italian to Italian-American to American usually was completed in two generations.

What then were the ingredients of past successful American immigration policy?  Four enlightened rules.

One, immigrants came legally. Breaking the law was a lousy way to start American residency. How can an immigrant continue to respect and follow his adopted country’s legal system when his first act as an American resident is to mock federal law?

Two, immigration was blind and diverse. It did not favor one particular group over another. The more diverse the immigrant blocs, the less likely they were to form lasting separate communities. There were, of course, mass influxes of immigrants in the past, but they were quite diverse: gobs of Germans, hordes of Irish, masses of Italians and Sicilians, huge influxes of Poles and Jews, lots of Japanese and Chinese, large arrivals of Mexicans. But note how diverse and varied were the immigrants’ places of origin and how destined they were to bump into each other upon arrival. Each group was wary of the other trying to use immigration as a crass tool to boost their own political fortunes by bringing in more kin than their rivals.

Three, immigrants usually arrived in manageable numbers; mass arrivals were usually periodic and episodic, not continuous and institutionalized. Only that way could the melting pot absorb newcomers and avoid the tribalism and factionalism that had always plagued so many prior failed multi-ethnic national experiments abroad. To avoid the fate of Austria-Hungary or Yugoslavia, immigrants—geographically, politically, culturally—by needs were soon intermixed and intermingled.

Four, both hosts and immigrants insisted on rapid Americanization. Immigrants learned English, followed all the laws of their host, and assumed America was good without having to be perfect. Otherwise they would have stayed home.

Unfortunately, 21st century immigration policy has forgotten these old rules and become illiberal and tribal. Is it any surprise that foolish immigration practices are proving as reactionary and destructive as wise ones were once enlightened and beneficial?

Immigration is now often in violation of U.S. law. There are somewhere over 11 illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. Breaking the law should be the last not the first act of a new immigrant.

Under political pressure, entire cities have declared themselves immune from federal immigration laws—apparently on the theory that immigrants’ children and those given amnesty will vote for their enablers. Well-connected ethnic elites will have more careerist opportunities if they can pose as self-appointed representatives of masses of the unassimilated and poor.

In recent years, a third of all Texas murders were committed by unlawful immigrants. There are nearly 300,000 aliens in the nation’s state and local prisons.

A staggering one-quarter of all federal inmates are now aliens. There are over 20,000 unlawful immigrants in California prisons alone.

Immigration is growing less diverse. Over half of all immigrants come from a single country, Mexico. Over 70% of all unlawful immigrants come from Central America or Mexico.

Such an absence of diversity shorts immigration aspirations from dozens of other countries. We reward the unskilled who illegally cross into the United States, and punish the doctor or architect who waits patiently for a legal invitation. The lack of variety among immigrants makes integration and assimilation more difficult.

The number of immigrants is at a near-record percentage of the American population. In absolute numbers, there are now nearly 50 million foreign-born residents—the largest in our history. Democrats are not shy in warning their conservative opponents that they have changed the political future of the country—convinced that their sponsorship of government largess and destruction of immigration law will create a permanently indebted ethnic bloc. Such hopes remind us that otherwise, progressives have no agenda that appeals to the majority of American citizens. Therefore, they must impede integration and assimilation in fears that a successful and empowered immigrant is likely not to remain beholden to Democratic pieties.

There were waves of 19th century immigration in the past. But what is different this time around is that the host America has largely given up on the multiracial melting pot for the multicultural salad bowl.

The result is that millions of new arrivals are not meeting enough with others outside their ethnic group. Assimilation, to the degree it is even seen as a positive, is delayed for generations. One in four American residents currently does not speak English at home–the former common tie that helped bind multiracial America. Careers are enhanced by accent marks and hyphenation. Ethnic identity is now essential not secondary to character.

Most immigrants still come to work. But the sheer size of the pool of new immigrants means that those who don’t seek jobs can pose staggering costs on the host. Currently about 30% of all immigrant-headed households are on some form of public assistance. That is not much of a problem when strapped middle-class taxpayers can be dubbed racists and xenophobes for opposing expansions of entitlements in a country $20 trillion in debt.

The mentality of many immigrants has changed as well from one of excitement at becoming an American, to sometimes resentment that the host has not measured up to particular agendas and expectations. When an immigrant is waved through the border without legality, he has less respect for the United States, whose magnanimity earns contempt as weakness not gratitude for caring. Cheering the Mexican national team and booing the U.S flag at a soccer match in Pasadena are what the host now expects of the guest.

Even unlawful immigrants routinely now sue universities to ensure discounted rates of in-state tuition, sue property owners for being in the way of their illegal migration pathways, sue states for not providing them with driver’s licenses, and sue the U.S. government for insufficient services. In contrast, the Mexican constitution prohibits immigration that imperils the ethnic essence of the Mexican people. Is such a racialist worldview shared by illegal immigrants in their eagerness to see racism as the cause for worry over open borders—on the logic of “our racist government does not let in others unlike ourselves, so why would they?”

The classically liberal ideals of legality, moderation, diversity, assimilation and gratitude explain why America’s immigration policies in the past were so beneficial to the growth of the United States.

Likewise, the lack of all that explains the present immigration chaos.

SOURCE

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Affordable Housing Mandates Are Costly and Unfair

The Supreme Court will do homebuyers a world of good if it strikes down a controversial ordinance in San Jose, California, mandating that housing developers sell a portion of their houses at below market prices. Affordable housing mandates-also called inclusionary zoning-are a textbook example of a government policy that does the opposite of what their supporters claim. Rather than make housing less expensive, they raise home prices-usually by tens of thousands of dollars. Their counterproductive effects have been confirmed by numerous studies, as Independent Institute Research Fellow Gary M. Galles explained last week in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.

Studies of the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California, and Massachusetts, Galles shows, all found that after a city enacted affordable housing mandates, construction fell and home prices rose. The reason shouldn't be surprising: restricting supply in the face of growing demand is a sure recipe for pushing up prices. One can blame housing activists who are blind to evidence and logic, and one can blame politicians who seek reelection by repeating noble-sounding rhetoric. But another factor may also be at work.

"Perhaps the reason that inclusionary zoning mandates aren't more widely opposed is that they transfer so much wealth from real estate developers and homebuyers to people who already own property," Galles writes. "The mandates are portrayed as compassionate, but they survive because they have the opposite of the supposed intention, resulting in higher home prices, not lower." But not only do housing mandates benefit homeowners at the expense of homebuyers and developers, they also violate the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the taking of private property without just compensation. The Supreme Court should move quickly to strike them down.

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) and Coral reef compendium. (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 A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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It takes a criminal to know a criminal

Why does the left have such an affinity and affection for criminals? Because deep down they know they are criminals themselves. Lincoln defined slavery as, “you work, I eat.” That is the mantra of the left.

Living off the labor of others is called theft whether the gun is in the hand of a street criminal or an IRS agent.

This is the thesis of Dinesh D’Souza’s book, “Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party.” D’Souza argues philosophical political discussions with liberals are totally pointless since they have no philosophy other than, we want what you’ve got and they will use the government to get it and whatever con they can think of to justify it.dinesh d'souza cpac

In 1974 I was campaign manager for a Republican running for Attorney General of Idaho.  During the race there was a riot at the Idaho State Penitentiary. My candidate pledged that if he won the race he would have a member of his staff interview every guard and inmate to find out what was going on. He won and I did.

My experience with criminals over 40 years ago was quite different than D’Souza’s recent experience as an inmate after his conviction for campaign finance law violations. Whether that difference in attitudes was because of a change in the culture or it was because I represented law enforcement and D’Souza was a fellow inmate I do not know but I suspect the former.

Most of the inmates I interviewed told me they were in prison through no fault of their own.  Their imprisonment was the result of some mix-up, misunderstanding or circumstances beyond their control. While I did not believe their protestations at the time their answers were a tribute to the morality of the times in that the inmates felt the need to deny culpability.

In D’Souza’s experience he was placed in a detention center with thieves, rapists and murderers. None of them felt compelled to deny their evil deeds. They adopted the defense Bill and Hillary used in the mid to late 1990’s. The, “everybody does it,” defense. As you may recall, everybody lies about sex, everybody is immoral just like the Clintons.  The media and the culture accepted this defense and Clinton’s popularity rose (if you believe the polls) while six-year-old children asked their mothers, “Mommy what’s a BJ?”

Now approximately twenty years later D’Souza’s fellow inmates are telling him the culture is corrupt, and that they are no different that the local politician, business person, or government employee other than the fact they got caught and held to a different standard because the establishment types are part of the ruling class and the convicts are not.

D’Souza believes they have a point. Was Solyndra really an effort to build solar panels or was it a criminal enterprise to rip the taxpayers off for millions of dollars? Did anyone go to jail for that?

How does one explain the many office holders who come to Washington, D.C., the state capitols, county court houses, or city halls with modest means and a few years later leave multi-millionaires?

The public seems to catching up to the perceptions of murders, thieves and rapists.  A recent Gallup Poll reveals that 75 percent the public believes that corruption is widespread in the U.S. Government.

Can America recover from this loss of faith?  One can only hope.

SOURCE

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Trump's Trump Card

By Stephen Green

Josh Kraushaar rethinks a presumption or two:

    "The win­ner-take all rules for many of the more mod­er­ate “blue” states on March 15 and bey­ond should fa­vor a more prag­mat­ic Re­pub­lic­an down the stretch — at least on pa­per.

    But these cal­cu­la­tions are based on a premise that I’m hav­ing a bit more trouble ac­cept­ing these days — that blue-state Re­pub­lic­ans are more likely to sup­port the es­tab­lish­ment can­did­ate than their red-state coun­ter­parts. It’s an es­pe­cially shaky as­sump­tion to make with Trump, giv­en the polit­ic­al ped­i­gree of his strongest sup­port­ers. To put it an­oth­er way, many of Trump’s sup­port­ers are self-de­scribed mod­er­ates and view him as the more cent­rist can­did­ate. (Based on his his­tory of hold­ing lib­er­al po­s­i­tions and past dona­tions to prom­in­ent Demo­crats, they have a point.)

    The or­din­ary rules of the polit­ic­al game haven’t ap­plied to Trump so far, and if he lives up to the hype early on, there’s little reas­on to be­lieve he’ll fade as the race moves in­to more mod­er­ate ter­rit­ory. If Trump wins Iowa—the one state where he hasn’t led in many pub­lic polls—it’s hard to see where his mo­mentum stops."

Ted Cruz currently leads in Iowa, and if he fails to win there it's difficult to see how he picks up momentum against Trump's media machine in the bigger, more moderate states. And if Cruz does win Iowa, keep in mind Iowa's long and storied history of picking losers. In seven contested caucuses since 1976, Iowa has correctly picked the eventual nominee three times (Ford '76, Dole '96, Bush 2k) and only one (Bush) went on to win the general election. Iowa has never been all that it's cracked up to be, and yet it's the basket where Cruz has put most of his eggs.

Harkening back to a report of mine from last week, Kraushaar adds:

    "As The New York Times’s Nate Cohn con­cluded, Trump’s strongest voters are “self-iden­ti­fied Re­pub­lic­ans who non­ethe­less are re­gistered as Demo­crats” and are well-rep­res­en­ted in the in­dus­tri­al North and Ap­palachia. There’s a reas­on why Trump spent time last week in Low­ell, Mas­sachu­setts and Bur­l­ing­ton, Ver­mont—in two New Eng­land states that hold primar­ies on Su­per Tues­day. And polls show Trump’s fa­vor­ab­il­ity stead­ily im­prov­ing among GOP voters, coun­ter­ing the wide­spread be­lief that he’ll flame out when the field nar­rows".

If Trump doesn't flame out -- and there's not much time left for that to happen -- then his victory is gonna be yuge.

SOURCE

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What happens to principle in a dying culture?

Bruce Hanify

What happens to principle in a dying culture? I’ve been asking myself that question almost every day for just about 40 years now.

In "A World of Sergeants" I wrote about what it was like to grow up in an America that still had fathers. Just about every adult male I knew during my formative years had served in one of the Armed Forces between 1941 and 1965. Following World War II, it was pretty much expected that you would sign up for service out of high school. If you left home when you were 17, and Vern or Loren from Missouri or North Dakota was your Drill Instructor in basic training, it took the Momma’s Boy out of you and put “grunt” into you.

A noticeable difference in bearing and judgment ensued. When that boy returned to his hometown to get a job and marry his sweetheart, he had “man” written all over him. I’m telling you, whenever I went to to a friend’s house, the guy sitting in the big easy chair was a man’s man. He stood for something and you knew he stood for something and that meant something because that’s how it was — like sinew in a forearm. He didn’t need tattoos or a pony tail or earrings to prove his substance. His substance was in his bearing and his work and his character — his principles. Those kind of guys weren’t impressed by boys who wanted to look like girls. They were impressed by whether you stood for something worth standing for, not pretending to be something you weren’t. About 1970 that culture passed away.

I think America was a better country before people began pretending as much as we do. If you were to ask me my diagnosis for what ails us, I would tell you no one can tell the difference between character and personality. Personality is androgynous. Character is decidedly masculine or feminine, not something vague. That distinction has been lost. With that basic understanding lost (for the moment), principle went out the door.

Because, you know, we are dying. The reasons are multiple — too many for one blog post. We could start with our globalist friends who don’t like national borders and constitutions. They see labor as completely replaceable from any source and will never prioritize patriotism over control of the labor force. In fact, patriotism impedes their control. Whether your computer tech comes from India or Mexico makes no difference to them except insofar as they can put pressure on the American economy.

Our public representatives who serve the banks that serve the investors grow weary of having to think in terms of the America I grew up in, where families and patriotism were the guiding principles — just ask Paul Ryan. And if some foolish Americans believe their government has a duty to protect and enforce the Bill of Rights against any and all schemes to water them down, the political elites and the media immediately start labeling such persons names, from bigoted and xenophobic to racist and even “terrorist.”

It has come to this in America: people who believe in the principles of private property and free enterprise are more likely to be called “terrorists” instead of industrious citizens. You ought to ask yourself, How long can that last? My guess is it will lead to either a complete collapse, followed by chaos, or an outright explosion. Neither outcome seems good to me, yet what is the cause for this insecurity? It is the wanton sacrifice of the principles of family and national economy to personal greed. For want of principle a great nation has to be divided up among vultures and swindlers — under the guise of political correctness? How nutty is that?

From my social contacts both online and in the physical world, it seems likely to me that 45-50% of my fellow Americans are willing to bow to some form of gun control, regardless of what the Second Amendment stands for. That same group sincerely believes the UN needs to ensure that there is “social justice” and “environmental responsibility” imposed upon the United States.

Notice how they never hold Russia or China or any part of the Islamic world to those standards? Why are they so quick to surrender American sovereignty to an outside jurisdiction that clearly targets the United States as a hostile force? Where is their loyalty? Every one of my liberal friends deems it racist to talk about enforcing our southern border. They can’t conceive of leadership such as Calvin Coolidge provided, which prioritized the American family over foreign interests. They just don’t get that, and their lack of understanding is always coupled with gun control! Rather neat piece of brain washing, don’t you think?

If you make what seems an ordinary pitch for border enforcement and pro-American economic policies (leaving aside the Second Amendment momentarily), somehow that means you would have turned away Jewish refugees during World War II? What does border enforcement have to do with World War II? How does self-protection and national economic growth become something other than principles of patriotism and loyalty?

How sane can a country be when it’s ruling elites continually harass it with relentless assaults on its educational, medical, and criminal justice resources, then punish it with charges of “racism” when people cry out for relief? Every person I know instinctively feels the need for concentrating on our own infrastructure and our own social fabric at this time.

What is behind this maniacal drive to bring in as many immigrants to our country as we can — people whose religion and cultures are often antithetical to our own? Why is it racist to question the wisdom of those policies? What kind of government would intentionally subject its people to chaos and violence then condemn those who ask questions?

Somewhere in the last 40 years, self-aggrandizement has replaced principle. We have a situation where people often confuse virtue with “niceness.” “Niceness” excuses them from having to stand for something. By denying the principles of loyalty and economy and duty at this crucial period, they risk the safety of themselves, their families — and their country. One can only imagine how things will look by the end of this year. When will we awaken to the power of principle in our lives? What steps will be necessary to restore order to chaos? Sanity to madness?

While I cannot predict specific answers to those questions, I can echo Margaret Thatcher’s observation that The Facts of Life are Conservative. Sooner or later all little boys must become men, and women must step up to their roles as women. You can only pretend for so long before Hell demands its due from a crude and foolish people.

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) and Coral reef compendium. (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 A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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It's a Three-Man Race



Donald Trump may just win the Republican presidential nomination. Thursday night’s debate made clear that this is at most a three-man race between the real-estate mogul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. And Trump pretty clearly came away stronger than anyone, not because he had the best or most well-thought-out answers, but because he keeps proving his very presence can dominate the stage. His supporters are now itching for the chance for him to take on Hillary Clinton.

Chris Christie had his moments, and Jeb Bush and John Kasich weren’t bad. Ben Carson once again, unfortunately, seemed entirely out of his depth. It’s tough to see a way up for any of these four.

So we’ll highlight three exchanges between the trio we view as the strongest contenders.

First, the “birther” controversy over Cruz’s eligibility to run for president. Cruz addressed it head-on:

“Back in September, my friend Donald said that he had had his lawyers look at this from every which way, and there was no issue there. … Now, since September, the Constitution hasn’t changed. But the poll numbers have. And I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa. But the facts and the law here are really quite clear. Under longstanding U.S. law, the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen.

"If a soldier has a child abroad, that child is a natural-born citizen. That’s why John McCain, even though he was born in Panama, was eligible to run for president. If an American missionary has a child abroad, that child is a natural-born citizen. That’s why George Romney, Mitt’s dad, was eligible to run for president, even though he was born in Mexico.

"At the end of the day, the legal issue is quite straightforward, but I would note that the birther theories that Donald has been relying on — some of the more extreme ones insist that you must not only be born on U.S. soil, but have two parents born on U.S. soil. Under that theory, not only would I be disqualified, Marco Rubio would be disqualified, Bobby Jindal would be disqualified and, interestingly enough, Donald J. Trump would be disqualified — because Donald’s mother was born in Scotland. She was naturalized.”

After some cross-talk, Cruz redirected the focus, saying, “You’re an American, as is everybody else on this stage, and I would suggest we focus on who’s best prepared to be commander in chief, because that’s the most important question facing the country.”

Trump didn’t concede anything and neither will his supporters or those who insist Cruz isn’t eligible, but in our estimation Cruz won the debate exchange handily.

He did not, however, come out so well on the question of “New York values.” Having previously hit Trump with that phrase, Cruz was asked to define his terms.

“I think most people know exactly what ‘New York values’ are,” he replied. Prompted for more, he answered, “There are many wonderful, wonderful working men and women in the state of New York, but everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal, are pro-abortion, are pro-gay-marriage, focused around money and the media. … Not too many years ago, Donald did a long interview with Tim Russert. And in that interview, he explained his views on a whole host of issues that were very, very different from the views he’s describing now. In his explanation, he said, ‘Look, I’m from New York. That’s what we believe in New York. Those aren’t Iowa values.’”

For the record, in that 1999 interview Trump said he was “very pro-choice,” which he conceded was probably “a little bit of a New York background.” And in his 2000 book, “America We Deserve,” Trump wrote, “I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun.”

Cruz is right that the values of the leftist elite don’t jive with conservative ones, but he whiffed on the formulation, as Trump’s rebuttal clearly illustrated.

“He insulted a lot of people,” Trump said of Cruz. “When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York,” Trump recalled. “You had two 110-story buildings come crashing down. Thousands of people killed. And the cleanup started the next day, and it was the most horrific cleanup. … And the people in New York fought, fought and fought. … We rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers.”

Trump clearly won this round with his heart-felt appeal, and it left even Cruz applauding.

Finally, on immigration, an issue many conservatives view as “make-or-break” for their votes, Rubio came away still looking weak and untrustworthy. Asked to explain his work to expand legal immigration, Rubio argued that the issue has changed: “First and foremost, this issue has to be more than anything else about keeping America safe. And here’s why: There’s a radical jihadist group that is manipulating our immigration system, and not just green cards. They’re recruiting people that enter as doctors, and engineers, and even fiancées. They understand the vulnerabilities we have on the southern border. They’re looking to manipulate the visa waiver countries to get people into the United States. So our number one priority must now become ensuring that ISIS cannot get killers into the United States.”

He added, “The issue is a dramatically different issue than it was 24 months ago. Twenty-four months ago, 36 months ago, you did you not have a group of radical crazies named ISIS burning people in cages and recruiting people to enter our country legally.”

He’s right that it’s a national security issue, but it always has been. And Cruz hit back hard: “Radical Islamic terrorism was not invented 24 months ago. Twenty-four months ago, we had al-Qaida, we had Boko Haram, we had Hezbollah, we had Iran putting operatives in Central America, South America. It’s the reason why I stood with Jeff Sessions and Steve King and led the fight to stop the Gang of Eight amnesty bill. It was clear then like it’s clear now that border security is national security.”

Another win for Cruz. Frankly, immigration is possibly a deal-breaker for conservatives and Rubio, despite his conservative record on almost every other issue. Neither Rubio nor Cruz is always forthright about his position — past or present — but there’s one thing voters will remember: Rubio helped write the Gang of Eight bill; Cruz opposed it. End of story.

To sum up, the “establishment” is coalescing around Rubio (which is rather ironic given that he was part of the first Tea Party wave elected to Congress, and defeated a liberal Republican in a primary to win his seat.) Mainstream conservatives are rallying around Cruz’s banner. And those who simply wish a pox on both houses believe Trump is their man. One thing’s for sure, this race is as interesting as any in recent memory.

SOURCE

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Obama's "fundamental" changes have been economically incompetent and destructive

When Barack Obama campaigned for president in 2008, he pledged to strengthen the economy, create jobs and restore confidence in America. On Tuesday in his final State of the Union Address, he tried to convince America that he had succeeded. But after seven years of watching the White House operate outside the realm of reality, no one is fooled.

Obama set the stage by preemptively insulting anyone who would attempt to unravel the spin he was about to spew, stating, “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” Of course, someone who lives in a world of fantasy, where a jump in the national debt from $10.6 trillion in 2009 to $18.8 trillion today is “economic progress,” can hardly be trusted to judge fact and fiction.

In the land of reality, Obama’s economy is a downright failure. First, as The Daily Signal explains, while Obama touted lower unemployment and more jobs, the fact is that the 5% unemployment rate today is worse than the 4.4% rate under George W. Bush in May of 2007. And the unemployment rate doesn’t count the millions who have left the workforce during Obama’s reign. Indeed, the labor participation rate today is the lowest since 1977, standing at just 62.6%. What’s more, the average unemployed worker has been jobless for more than six months, longer than at any time between 1945 and Obama’s inauguration.

As for those new jobs? Job creation has mostly kept pace with population growth. While treading water is better than the alternative, it’s hardly worthy of a medal.

And let’s not forget the $80 billion (per year) in new regulations under Obama that have wreaked financial havoc on business and individuals alike — ObamaCare being the prime example. Obama said Tuesday that “there are outdated regulations that need to be changed, and there’s red tape that needs to be cut,” but under his watch Americans have inherited 184 new major rules. Meanwhile, just 17 federal rules have been scaled back. That red tape seems to be sticking pretty close to Obama.

Then there’s Obama’s claim that government spending on renewable energy has brightened the economic landscape. “On rooftops from Arizona to New York,” he said, “solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills and employs more Americans than coal — in jobs that pay better than average.” Well, remember all those regulations? They’re killing thousands of better-than-average-pay coal jobs. Meanwhile, solar energy, while growing thanks to taxpayer-funded subsidies, remains one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity. So if there are more solar jobs than coal ones, it’s because Obama put his foot on the scale.

Finally, while Obama claimed over the last seven years that progress toward the goal of “a growing economy that works better” for everyone, those facing declining incomes under his watch might disagree. As the Signal notes, “Between 2007 and 2011 (the most recent data available) labor income for non-elderly households in the middle quintile dropped roughly 10 percentage points.”

While no amount of rhetoric can spin all this into a booming economy, Obama still tries. As The Wall Street Journal observes, “Obama’s legacy project is already in high gear. This includes Tuesday night’s State of the Union, which is best understood as the start of a campaign to persuade Americans that the last seven years have been better than they believe. He needs to start early because this reality makeover won’t be easy.”

Indeed, Obama prepares to exit office with a limping U.S. economy, an economic slowdown in China that could make the limp more pronounced, and falling oil prices that might bring relief at the pump but are hitting the U.S. drilling industry hard.

It’s little wonder that the Democrat presidential candidates lining up to take Obama’s place are far from enthusiastic about the economic legacy they’re simultaneously running on and against.

Who can blame them? Obama’s economic legacy will be one of change minus the hope. And no lies intermittently augmented by nearly 15 minutes of applause can change that.

SOURCE

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Another "anti-obesity" measure flops



The nice thing about the free market is that it allows lots of different people to try lots of different solutions to the same problem.

Take Walmart. Five years ago, when everyone in the public sector was still focused on making restaurants add calorie counts to their menus-which it turns out doesn't work-the company decided to launch a healthy eating initiative of its own design.

Instead of pinning their hopes on numbers-based nutritional labels, Walmart designed a simple front-of-package 'Great for You' logo to be attached to a small number of food items.
It also reduced prices on fresh fruits and vegetables and reformulated recipes for some of its home brand products to reduce sodium and sugar content.

These were great, innovative ideas-and it turns out they don't work either.

According to a new study, the initiative had no effect on the ongoing shift toward healthier eating that has been observed among Walmart customers since 2000. Calories, sugar density, and soda consumption were already trending down. The healthy eating initiative did not make them trend down any faster.

Walmart should not be criticised for this. It's good that they tried something new, and a failure can teach you as much as a success-if you are willing to learn from it.

Unfortunately, the public health academics behind the evaluation study would prefer to double down: "These results suggest that food retailer-based initiatives ... may not suffice to improve the nutritional profile of food purchases. More systemic shifts in consumers' characteristics and preferences may be needed."

If obesity prevention programs are really about evidence and not an ideological commitment to the nanny state, it would make sense to get things right at the "retailer-based initiative" scale before attempting something "more systemic." But that's a big if.

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) and Coral reef compendium. (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 A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The case for isolationism

Isolationism was the traditional stance of American conservatives.  America was led into WWI, Korea and Vietnam by Democrat Presidents, even though America had not been attacked. And it has long been held that FDR provoked an attack from Japan in order to take America into WWII.  Conservatives held that America should go to war only if America had been directly attacked -- which explains the invasion of Iraq under GWB.   Economic historian Martin Hutchinson draws on history to make a case below for a revival of isolationism

Saudi Arabia and Iran lurched into a dangerous situation last week, with Saudi Arabia executing a Shia cleric and Iranian militants the attacking the Saudi embassy, which has now been closed. The United States is inevitably involved, with troops in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it's difficult to see what vital U.S. interests are at stake, now that fracking has made the country more or less independent of the Middle East as a source of energy. Isolationism is used as a term of abuse in U.S. politics, but may well represent the best way of protecting U.S. interests in a difficult world.

The term "isolationism" got a bad reputation in U.S. politics in 1939-41, when those fearing another world war failed to take a stand against the threats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Once war came, the isolationists' reputation was destroyed, as was that of the British "appeasers" who had similarly attempted to keep the country out of the coming inferno in 1936-39. Yet the stance of both isolationists and appeasers was at least arguable, and the mess of the late 1930s was a unique one, caused by huge policy errors in previous decades.

The century of Pax Britannica showed examples in both directions on the question of isolationism. At one extreme, Robert, Lord Salisbury, late in the century, coined the term "splendid isolation" and used it to describe a policy in which Britain had no strong attachments on the Continent of Europe, and acted purely defensively to defend its gigantic empire. Since the country also pursued a policy of unilateral free trade, its isolationism was at the same time internationalist; there were no tariff or other barriers cutting off Imperial markets from foreign competition, or favoring British goods.

Britain's abandonment of Salisbury's isolation proved fatal. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, quite strongly pro-British but an unstable personality, feared above all else the encirclement of Germany by her enemies. The 1907 Triple Entente, by which Britain aligned with France and Russia and held secret (from the British Cabinet, but not from the Kaiser, whose spies were typically efficient) military conversations on how to resist a German attack on France, convinced the Kaiser and the belligerent German military brass that encirclement was happening and that Germany should act before Russian strength was built up. Hence the disaster of 1914.

At the other extreme, Henry, Lord Palmerston in 1850 propounded the principle of "Civis Romanus sum" by which "As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say "Civis Romanus sum," so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him from injustice and wrong." In practice, the manic interventionism to which this policy would have led was rejected by the House of Lords at the time and was scaled back by Palmerston himself in 1863-64, when he failed to protect Denmark's Schleswig-Holstein against the advances of the powerful Prussia.

The originators of the two streams of British 19th Century foreign policy were Robert, Lord Castlereagh and George Canning, in the years after 1815. Castlereagh sought to preserve good relations with the major powers and to intervene only on a multilateral basis, when the good order of Europe was threatened, and then only to prop up existing regimes (under the principles of the 1820 Troppau Protocol.) Canning went to the other extreme; he dissolved Castlereagh's relations with the major "autocratic" powers of Europe and meddled in liberation movements in South America and Greece, seeking to impose British ideas of free institutions on polities that lacked the preconditions for them.

Turning from this discussion of the 19th century to the problems of the 21st, it is immediately clear that the United States is not currently in anything like as strong an economic, political or moral position as was Palmerston's Britain for a few short years around 1850. In the 1990s, when the U.S. economy was at its peak of innovation and success, it enjoyed the same global position as did Britain's economy in the peak years of the Industrial Revolution around 1850, when its industrial output, built up by innovation and successful policies in the years since 1815, was many times that of its competitors. Morally also, the U.S. in the 1990s like Britain in 1850 enjoyed the prestige of victory in a global war (albeit a "cold" one). Further, as with Britain in 1850 it appeared that rival powers were both generally friendly and much more limited than itself in geopolitical potential.

Today, the U.S. economic, political and military position is much closer to the declining and threatened global position that Britain occupied in the 1890s under Salisbury. Industrial supremacy, so effortless in the U.S. in 1999 and in Britain in 1850, has been threatened by poor subsequent policies (unilateral free trade in Victorian Britain, over-regulation and both monetary and fiscal folly in today's U.S.) New economic and geopolitical rivals have sprung up or turned more hostile: Germany, Russia and the United States for 1890s Britain; China, Russia, India and ISIS for today's U.S.

Just as Palmerston himself discovered after 1860 that unlimited interventionism was too expensive and indeed reckless a strategy for the no longer invincible Britain to follow, so today the United States is reassessing its foreign policy in the light of new threats and diminished power. It is no longer possible to follow the "Civis Romanus Sum" approach, in which like George Canning's Britain and George W. Bush's U.S., the country plunged into difficult situations worldwide under the na‹ve belief that insults to British/U.S. interests should always be avenged, while British or U.S. values and political structures could easily be imposed on different cultures.

Instead an approach like Salisbury's is much more appropriate. Under this approach, the U.S. would remain in isolation, splendid or otherwise, avoiding as far as possible all military entanglements and with no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, preserving its moderate strength and economic power while other countries perhaps dissipate theirs in fruitless adventures. The difficulty in Salisbury's isolation is that it was not permanent and it gave Britain a false sense of security while the country persisted with unilateral free trade and its power, economic and otherwise, steadily diminished even as events like the Diamond Jubilee regatta proclaimed its supremacy to the world. Eventually, when Britain was faced with its first real military test in the Boer War, its decline became evident to its competitors. British policymakers' chosen solution to this problem, the Triple Entente, was disastrous, but after the Boer War even if Salisbury had lived Britain would have been very vulnerable to an attack by a combination of its competitors.

For Britain, the correct policy after Salisbury came to power in 1885 would have been that proposed by Joseph Chamberlain in 1903 and finally implemented by his son Neville in 1932: one of Imperial Preference, in which a modest common tariff among Britain's Empire and Dominions would have provided a modest blockade against tariff-protected foreign imports and a large enough market for British heavy industry to achieve economies of scale to achieve optimal economies of scale. By such a means, Britain's relative industrial decline could have been reversed and its strength preserved for the challenges of the 20th Century.

Similarly for the United States today a policy of isolation must thus be combined with a rectification of the economic mistakes that have caused U.S. economic power to diminish so sadly since the 1990s. The jungle of over-regulation, which has reduced U.S. productivity growth from 2.8% per annum in 1948-73 to 0.6% in 2011-15, must be slashed back with the most draconian of machetes, or preferably torched. The fiscal deficits must be eliminated; they have caused U.S. public debt to soar and its financial position to become vulnerable to any rise in interest rates. Immigration, both legal and illegal, must be reduced to a level which the economy can easily absorb, and skewed towards the higher-skill labor that adds value to the economy. Above all, the insane policy of negative real interest rates must be reversed, so that U.S. savings can once again recover, the country's elderly have a sufficiency to retire on, its young people be weaned off state welfare and loan schemes, and its small businesses capitalized as they should be with accumulated private savings.

Salisbury recognized in 1885 that Britain's relative power had diminished sufficiently so that, while the country's military strength should be rebuilt after the depredations of Gladstonian economy, it could no longer afford to intervene, whether to promote British values or otherwise. Had he possessed the political power to rebuild Britain's economic strength at the same time (he was dependent on the free-trading votes of the Liberal Unionists), his successors might not have felt forced to enter into fatally entangling alliances with other powers.

Similarly, a wise U.S. administration will disentangle itself from the Middle East (in which the energy self-sufficient U.S. has no vital interests) and will rectify its economic errors to rebuild its power. Otherwise, within the next decade or so it will find itself so economically and militarily enfeebled that it will feel forced to enter into an entangling alliance - at which point a new and even more devastating 1914 will most likely be only a few years away.

Isolation may not be splendid, but it is sometimes necessary. The U.S. no longer has the strength to pursue an interventionist policy effectively, and should learn from its own 21st Century follies and Britain's 19th Cen

SOURCE

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Potential for new border crisis prompted immigrant raids

Clinton Opposes Obama's Immigration Policies

A spike in families and children arriving at the US southern border from Central America has prompted fears of another crisis like the one that dominated national news during the summer of 2014. That could roil an already tumultuous presidential race, giving more momentum to Republican front-runner Donald Trump while creating problems for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and President Obama.

The number of Central American families and unaccompanied minors arriving at the border this fall more than doubled from the year before, according to the most recent figures. The numbers could go even higher beginning in February and early spring, when arrivals traditionally increase, potentially eclipsing the levels that produced the 2014 crisis.

Such concerns helped prompt the Department of Homeland Security, with the close involvement of the White House, to initiate crackdowns on migrants in several states over the holidays, picking up 121 people for deportation. In some instances, people were detained during surprise early morning home raids that have infuriated the president's Democratic allies.

Clinton broke with Obama on the issue at an Iowa forum Monday night, calling for an end to the raids that she said "have sown fear and division in immigrant communities across the country."

"We have laws and we must be guided by those laws, but we shouldn't have armed federal officers showing up at people's homes, taking women and children out of their beds in the middle of the night," she said in a statement.

Such images remain vivid to policymakers, and avoiding a repeat is a priority. This time it would come in the middle of a presidential campaign where immigration is already a fraught topic, with Trump insisting he would deport everyone here illegally while senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida exchange barbs about who has the stronger record on this issue.

And officials defend the controversial raids, which have been denounced by the other Democratic presidential candidates in addition to Clinton while drawing praise from Trump, who also took credit for them. Although Democrats question whether such crackdowns will deter desperate women and children, White House officials said the tactics are in line with new deportation policies outlined by the Obama administration that prioritize criminals and recent arrivals. All those targeted had arrived after 2014 and had exhausted their legal options.

"Our desire to make clear that individuals should not embark on the dangerous journey from Central America to the Southwest border, that's a case that we've tried to tell in a variety of ways," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.

"It was only after individuals had exhausted the legal remedies available to them . . . was a decision made to remove them," he said.

Several of the detention raids were conducted in Georgia, and stories are circulating about immigration officials banging on doors and rounding up families.

"People are very confused; they don't know what's going on," Nicholls said. "We are not happy with Obama."

Obama himself had pleased many Latinos by issuing executive actions in 2014 sparing millions from deportation, though that plan is now being challenged in court. It was a turnaround after he was labeled "deporter-in-chief" earlier in his administration for presiding over record removals, seen as an effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to win over Republicans to enact comprehensive immigration legislation.

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) and Coral reef compendium. (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 A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Satirical site debunks Snopes.com

I have over the years had various gripes with the Leftward lean of Snopes.com (e.g. here and   here and   here and   here).  They do a useful job of debunking myths, hoaxes and legends but they are far too quick to brand something favorable to conservatives as either false or undetermined.  They even have their own contemptuous word for a sentimental story favorable to conservatives.  They call it a "glurge".

So I was delighted to read the latest from The People's Cube -- a well-known satirical site run by Oleg Atbashian, a former Soviet citizen. And with that background it is easy to understand that Oleg skewers Leftism savagely.  I read most of his posts and have occasionally quoted them.

The gist of his latest is that Snopes have apparently taken some of his posts seriously.  Although his posts are perfectly transparent (they would not be good satire otherwise) they fooled the humorless Leftists running Snopes!  Talk about being hoist with your own petard!  Snopes did however eventually  wake up but continued their debunking of Oleg's "dangerous" humor.  For a while they gave the People's Cube as the source of the story but now they give no source at all.  The whole thing has tickled Oleg's funnybone and below is an excerpt fom his latest post in which he half-seriously lists his gripes with Snopes:


Snopes falsely described us as "a clickbait web site known for spreading malware," which is slanderous misinformation.

While our satire was clearly a response to Zakaria's asinine article gloating over the premature deaths of white males, which we extrapolated to the extermination of white females through Jihad, rape, and sex slavery, the Snopes's "debunking" omits this point entirely, stating only that "There was nothing to the report" and that "it was just another fake news item that apparently originated with a clickbait web site known for spreading malware."

At the very bottom of the page, however, the Snopes article is tagged as "satire" and "The People's Cube," while none of these words appear in the body of the article, which is what most people will read. Thus, Snopes was well aware that this was satire and who the author was, but it knowingly withheld this information from its readers, which is called "intentional misleading."

For a self-described fact-checking website that claims to be "the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation," such biased, slanderous, and intentionally misleading misinformation constitutes malpractice, as it violates public trust.

In addition to being unprofessional, slanderous, and misleading, this under-debunking was also plain stupid: if you want to lie about something, at least make sure you flush the evidence and wash your hands afterwards.

The author of the article is listed as one Jeff Zarronandia, "an American author and journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for numismatics in 2006 and was one of four finalists for the prize in 2008. He was also the winner of the Distinguished Conflagration Award of the American Society of Muleskinners for 2005."

While this is obviously an attempt at a joke, this joker seems to deny the right to a joke to others. Besides, the very idea of listing made-up prizes, awards, and societies as his credentials on a fact-checking resource surpasses unprofessionalism and approaches imbecility. Perhaps Snopes should do some fact-checking on its authors before it attempts fact-checking satirical fiction.

SOURCE

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Donald Trump’s big tent

The GOP should stop fooling itself. Trump is reaching more than just undereducated, angry white men

Republicans explain away their unwelcome poll-leader by dismissing his supporters as a loud but narrow network of angry white men and celebrity chasers.

It’s not true. A POLITICO review of private and public polling data and interviews with GOP pollsters shows a coalition that certainly begins with conservative, blue-collar men now extends to pro-choice Republicans, independents and even registered Democrats unnerved, primarily, by illegal immigration.

Indeed, the uncomfortable truth, for the pundits and fellow Republicans who turned their noses up at Trump, is that his appeal has spread over seven months so far beyond a rabble-rousing, anti-establishment rump to encompass the very elements of the American electorate the GOP has been eager to reach. And while it’s no majority, it’s a bigger group than anything the rest of the fragmented Republican field has galvanized.

“His coalition is not all angry working white males,” said Adrian Gray, a Republican pollster. “It’s all stripes. It’s a pretty big coalition. And among other demographics where he’s doing worse, he’s still leading or in the top two.”

Certainly, non-college-educated men have formed his base. Every one of 10 recent Iowa, New Hampshire, and national polls of Republicans shows Trump with more male support than female support and significantly more support from non-college graduates than those with degrees.

Trump’s robust performance with this group, however, has deflected attention from the breadth of his coalition. Though Trump has less support with women and educated men, he’s still at or near the top of the GOP field in those categories. And, exposing the depth of the GOP establishment’s misunderstanding of Trump’s support network, his coalition includes far-right conservatives as well as people who hardly register on Republican radar.

Trump’s supporters skewed significantly against the GOP grain on abortion, for instance, in an internal poll of Iowa caucus-goers conducted for a rival presidential contender last summer. Respondents who identified themselves as “pro-choice” were three times more likely than “pro-life” voters to support Trump, according to a Republican strategist with knowledge of the survey.

One large dataset shows Trump excelling above all with voters who call themselves Republicans even though they aren’t officially registered as Republicans.

Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm founded by veterans of President Barack Obama’s campaigns, built a model based on over 11,000 phone interviews with self-identified Republicans in 2015, part of a wider polling project. The data, first reported by The New York Times, shows Trump getting the support of 29 percent of registered Republicans but 36 percent of registered independents and 43 percent of registered Democrats, who in some states can still participate in GOP primaries.

The Civis data projects Trump’s support by congressional district, showing that Trump is especially strong in the rare pockets of the country where Obama performed worse while winning the 2008 presidential election than John Kerry did while losing in 2004, according to a POLITICO analysis.

In the Civis’ model, Trump runs ahead of his 33-percent national average in 30 of the 40 districts where Kerry matched or exceeded Obama’s performance, even though Obama ran about 5 points ahead of Kerry nationally.

Those districts are largely contained in a band running through Appalachia, from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, and then across the Deep South to Arkansas and Oklahoma. Once Democratic strongholds, voters there have sloughed off the party in recent decades — a trend that accelerated rapidly under Obama. Now, Trump is giving a voice to some of their protectionist concerns about immigration and trade.

“Essentially, the old base of the Democratic Party, non-college whites in the Midwest and Appalachia, have been cut loose and are floating like an iceberg in the middle of the electorate,” said one Republican strategist supporting another presidential candidate. “And they’ve glommed onto the Republicans because it’s a two-party system. But they have no affection for the Republican Party as an institution.”

Now, they form a key piece of the Trump puzzle.

The pro-Trump crowd’s varied background is matched by equally diverse reasons for supporting him. But even though it has faded in intensity as an issue since Trump burst on the political scene this summer with an incendiary announcement speech, immigration is still driving a core base of voters into Trump’s camp.

In WBUR’s most recent poll of the New Hampshire primary, Trump’s favorability numbers jumped from 46 percent overall to 62 percent among those who said that illegal immigration posed a “major threat” to “you and people you know.” While 27 percent of all respondents said they plan to vote for Trump in New Hampshire’s February primary, his support rose to 35 percent among the GOP voters most concerned about immigration.

In Iowa, where Cruz has caught or even surpassed Trump in many recent Republican caucus polls, Trump still maintained a double-digit lead over Cruz among “immigration voters” in the most recent Quinnipiac University survey there. Among everyone in the poll, though, the two were essentially tied (28 percent for Cruz to 27 percent for Trump).

“There’s a segment of the population, white working middle-aged men, that has felt three big changes in America — globalization, technology, and demographics — that are changing everything we do on a daily basis,” said Gray. “In a lot of ways, this group has felt left behind by each of those.”

But “even people above the median income feel insecure, sometimes financially insecure because of these changes,” Gray continued. “That’s what builds the coalition beyond low-income and downscale.”

Trump also runs particularly well with people looking for a “strong leader.” While Cruz dominated among Quinnipiac poll respondents in Iowa who wanted a candidate who “shares your values,” Trump got 40 percent of those looking for a strong leader. Fox News’ most recent Iowa poll showed Trump getting 39 percent of those voters, too.

Focus groups of GOP voters help explain how and why. One such exercise, conducted by Data Targeting, a GOP consulting firm in Florida, recently interviewed a uniformly downcast group of Republicans about the direction of the country and its government. Two gave replies of “stagnant” when asked to describe it. Other replies included “mess,” “weak,” and “bought.”

The focus group illustrated how some typical political responses to government dysfunction have lost currency, opening a door into the presidential campaign that Trump barged through. When one participant said, “Democrats and Republicans need to work together,” another immediately replied, “That’s my worst nightmare!” “They’re all puppets,” another participant chimed in.

“Nearly every candidate running on the Republican side has made an effort to present themselves as not of Washington,” said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster. “No one has a more credible message on that than Donald Trump. When he says it, it’s really true. It’s tough to out-anti-Washington Donald Trump.”

This makes for an uncomfortable truth for the GOP. But there’s enough discomfort to go around. For Trump’s camp, it’s unclear just how many of his supporters will actually cast a ballot for him — or anyone else — when caucuses and primaries finally begin next month.

Almost uniformly, GOP political professionals have discounted Trump’s chances of turning the full measure of his support into actual primary and caucus votes, and later delegates to the Republican National Convention. Public polls, they argue, are vastly oversampling nonvoters caught up in the mania surrounding Trump, distorting the picture of a more traditional Republican electorate that does not back him as heavily.

“It’s one thing to have support from people in all these different groups,” said Mark Stephenson, a Republican data and analytics expert who was the chief data officer on Scott Walker’s presidential campaign. “It really is another thing to turn them into a Trump voter, or especially a Trump caucus-goer, on election night.”

Trump’s most natural supporters are some of the people most disillusioned with politics. In the run-up to the 2014 elections, the Pew Research Center asked a broad group of Americans to rate their financial security on a sliding scale. As whites fall from the highest levels of financial security to the lowest levels, their support for Republican candidates plummeted from 51 percent to 21 percent. (Democrats’ support stayed constant around one-third.)

The remainder shifted almost fully into the “other/not sure” category, rather than moving into the Democratic column. Nearly all said they did not plan to vote that year. Trump’s candidacy may have activated a group of them, but converting them into voters remains difficult.

Meanwhile, the Civis Analytics data showing Trump at his strongest with registered voters who are not registered Republicans won’t be a barrier in every state primary, but it is a real obstacle nevertheless, starting in the first caucus state of Iowa. Only a small number of first-time participants usually join every four years, though Trump’s campaign is aiming to drive a generation of first-time caucus-goers and GOP primary voters into the process starting this February.

In a recent survey conducted for a different presidential campaign, Trump still ran ahead of Ted Cruz in Iowa — but only among voters who both could caucus in 2016 and have never actually shown up to one before. Past Republican caucus-goers, on the other hand, gave Cruz a solid first-place finish. One reason Trump’s polling lead in New Hampshire has proven more durable is that the state has an open primary system, instead of Iowa’s closed (and complicated) caucus.

Trump has been overcoming supposedly insurmountable obstacles since his presidential campaign began. But now that he has amassed these supporters, converting them from Trump fans into Trump voters may be the biggest one yet.

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) and Coral reef compendium. (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 A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Fascism in America



Mussolini prophesied that the 20th century would be the century of Fascism -- and libertarians believe that came true.  Fascism was just a Leftist sect and modern-day Leftists have put a straitjacket on what Americans can and must do that is very reminiscent of what Mussolini did.  And the picture above symbolizes that.  It is of course a picture of the platform in the House of Representatives from which Obama will give his State of the Union address imminently.

Note that there are Roman Fasces (bundles of rods) on either side of the picture.  Mussolini too used that symbolism, which is why his political party came to be called the Fascist party.  Obama is as Fascist as any democratic leader today in his endeavour to rule like a king so it is very fitting that he will deliver his speech between two Fasces.

Background on Italian and American Fascism here and here.

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Uproar on Trump’s Muslim ban; silence on Abbas’s Jewish ban

A major uproar exploded across the political scene recently when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Conversely, there has been a remarkable, deafening silence on the official position proclaimed by Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas: “If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it.”

“Israeli,” of course, means “Jew.” Abbas has no problem with Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship living in a Palestinian state. This is purely a racist policy aimed at ensuring the absence of Jews, because they are Jews. And Abbas is in power; Trump is not, so Abbas’s statement has real meaning.

This Palestinian policy has been reiterated by senior figures like PA top negotiator Saeb Erakat (who recently refused to address a New York conference unless the flag of Israel, the country he claims to recognize and with which he asserts in English a desire to live in peace, was removed).

It has also been reiterated by former PA ‘prime minister’ Ahmad Qurei; PLO ambassador Maen Areikat; and putative moderate academic Sari Nusseibeh, who even went so far as to explicitly urge that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the eastern half of Jerusalem.

Many, ourselves included, think Trump’s suggestion to exclude any and all Muslims from coming to America excessive and ill-conceived. For all that, some proportion is in order. Trump was speaking of a major security threat and was proposing an explicitly temporary measure (“until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”).

After all, the refugees pouring out of Syria pose a national security problem.

According to FBI Director James Comey and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, the minority of Islamic State hardened jihadists and ISIS supporters among them are largely undetectable.

Unlike Trump’s proposal, this Palestinian policy is not proposed as a temporary measure. Nor is it about responding to security threats. It’s about excluding Jews, about a future state of Palestine being judenrein.

In short, the PA policy is one of unadulterated Jew-hatred.

The same glaring anti-Israel contradiction emerges in other guises. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated during his 2015 election campaign that a Palestinian state couldn’t be created under current conditions, the international outcry, including from President Barack Obama, was loud and relentless.

Compare that to Obama’s reaction in March 2014, when Abbas told Obama that he will neither accept Israel as a Jewish state, nor conclude a comprehensive peace if it means signing an ‘end of claims’ clause. How did Obama react? He praised Abbas for having “consistently renounced violence... consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side, in peace and security.”

Or again, compare that to this past September, when Abbas told the UN that the Oslo Accords were dead. There was no sputtering of outrage, no dressing-down from Obama, no threat to curtail US aid to the PA. There was none again this week, when the State Department was informed of PA pensions to Jew-murdering terrorists and their families. Rather, it ignored this, saying that the need to “calm current tensions” somehow required leaving open the PLO’s Washington office, even as the PA is funding and promoting the murder of Jews.

Compare too, the international silence over Abbas’ incitement of the recent wave of Palestinian violence and terror attacks in Israel.

Abbas not only falsely alleged that Jews were conducting a “fierce attack … against al-Aksa Mosque,” but also urged Palestinians to prevent Jews visiting Judaism’s holiest, site, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, saying “The al-Aksa [Mosque] is ours ... and [the Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet ... We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem ... blood spilled for Allah.”

Last week, Abbas described the daily onslaught of stabbings, car-rammings and other murders, claiming the lives of 24 Jews, as “justified popular unrest.”

Had Abbas’ words, suitably adjusted, been uttered by an Israeli leader, newspapers around the world would carry detailed reports on their front pages; parliaments around the world would vote to condemn him and the society that tolerated such words; human rights organizations would organize petitions and rallies condemning Israel; international leaders would issue statements of condemnation and the United Nations would surely be called into special session to consider formally condemning Israel in the harshest terms.

Today, however, we rail on Trump’s temporary immigration proposals while ignoring the vilest anti-Semitic hate speech and Muslim supremacism of the PA, which receives over $500 million annually from the US tax-payer.

Such is the combination of indifference and acquiescence to Jew-hatred and fear of offending Muslims in which we debate vital matters. Presumably, we will still be arguing in this vein when terrorists strike next, here and in Israel.

SOURCE

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MY! How the worm turns!

I have been saying statins do more harm than good for many years -- in the face of official denials. Below is another recent report in support of that. What will it take for the government position to crumble?  Your government will NOT protect you!

Statins, which are designed to help protect people from heart failure, can actually increase the risk of a heart attack according to a new study.

Researchers say the drugs, which are taken by around 12 million patients in the UK, are more likely to cause calcium deposits in the arteries, which can lead to a heart attack.

Statins were developed to lower cholesterol, but they also block a molecule needed to produce vitamin K, which prevents calcification of the arteries.

The author of the report, published in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, says there is 'no evidence to support people taking statins', which opponents say also cause other health issues including skeletal weakness and muscle pain.

Professor Harumi Okuyama, of Nagoya City University, Japan, told the Sunday Express:'We have collected a wealth of information on cholesterol and statins from many published papers and find overwhelming evidence that these drugs accelerate hardening of the arteries and can cause, or worsen, heart failure.'

Similarly, Dr Peter Langsjoen, a heart specialist based in Texas who is co-author of the study, said: 'These drugs should never have been approved for use. The long-term effects are devastating.'

However, there is plenty of support for statins within the medical profession and the drugs are considered to generally lower cholesterol levels by 25 to 35 per cent.

The medications Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor and other statins have been the standard treatment for lowering cholesterol for more than 20 years.  Those pills work by curbing the production of cholesterol in the liver.

Statins have also long been recommended for people who already have heart disease and have been credited with helping to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.

A spokesman for MHRA, the Government drug regulator, said: 'The benefits of statins are well established and are considered to outweigh the risk of side effects in the majority of patients.'

Last year, NHS watchdog NICE encouraged GPs to prescribe the cholesterol-busting drugs to anyone with a 10 per cent chance of having a heart attack.  That change has resulted in 17million adults - nearly all people over the age of 40 - now being eligible to take the drugs.

SOURCE  

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N.Y. Restaurant Owners Plead for Mercy as Gov. Cuomo Tightens Screws on Wages

More than 100 restaurant owners in the state of New York are begging Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) not to force them to pay their waiters and waitresses $15 an hour. But it’s doubtful he heard them over the roar of union workers at rallies Jan. 4 supporting Cuomo’s call for a statewide $15 an hour minimum wage.

Melissa Fleischut, president and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association, can see the $15 an hour wage coming, but she’s hoping for a five-year moratorium for people who make their livings on tips.

She said her organization’s members would be crushed by a $15 an hour wage mandate, on top of the 50 percent increase in wages for what are known as "tipped workers" that went into effect the last day of December 2015.

The cash wage for tipped employees was raised from $5.00 to $7.50 on Dec. 31.

“The industry needs time to adjust to this dramatic increase,” Fleischut said.

She warned that if Cuomo follows the Dec. 31 raise with a mandate to double wages for tipped workers, the same people Cuomo says he wants to help are going to lose their jobs.

Fleischut said restaurant owners were already looking for ways to cut back because of the Dec. 31 wage edict, like telling customers they no longer need tip servers to replacing wait staff with tablets at every table.

“It’s hard to imagine any business giving half of their labor force a 50 percent raise overnight, but that’s the reality the hospitality industry is facing at the moment,” said Fleischut. "Any further increase will just exacerbate these problems.”

American Action Forum economists Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Ben Gitis believe job losses in New York’s restaurants could be just the beginning of a boomerang nightmare of unintended consequences.

They warned the state of New York could lose as least 200,000 jobs if a statewide $15 an hour minimum wage is imposed. Other economists warn the state could see close to 600,000 people thrown out of work.

But none of those scenarios is playing into Cuomo’s thinking.

SOURCE

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Obama should look in mirror on gun enforcement

"If Obama's contention is that he is merely enforcing the law as written with his so-called executive action on firearms, and that he believes doing so can prevent more shootings, then Obama must be admitting that his apparent failure to enforce existing law makes him culpable for gun-related murders. Of course, Obama should enforce existing laws. He's the President after all.

"Unfortunately, Obama's record is of declining enforcement actions against illegal firearm dealers with only his Justice Department only generating about 200 convictions a year of illegal unlicensed gun sales. There is no loophole that prevents federal law enforcement officials from going after illegal unlicensed gun trafficking, otherwise, there would not be any convictions at all. Obama should urge the Department of Justice to aggressively investigate and prosecute real gun trafficking crimes involving real criminals and stop the politicized rhetoric against law-abiding gun owners.

"What is even more distressing is that while Obama blames law-abiding gun owners for violence, he hypocritically is releasing tens of thousands of felons from federal prisons, increasing the risk of repeated crimes. It would seem that with his tepid prosecution record and his felon release program that all Obama needs to do to find out who's at fault is look in the mirror."

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) and Coral reef compendium. (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 A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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