In defence of Trump's trade policies

The orthodox view among economists is that restrictions on trade impoverish a country. And politicians on both sides of the aisle have absorbed that. So with his promise to "bring the jobs back home", Trump flies in the face of a very strong consensus.  

So what will happen? Will Trump increase prices for all Americans?  Do his ideas have no real benefit at all?  The article below considers that and puts up various arguments as to why The Donald is not so silly.  We must remember that Trump is trained as an economist so we can be certain that he will not damage America inadvertently.  He knows the downside of what he proposes.

Economists do acknowledge certain exceptions to the argument for free trade -- the so-called "Australian" case, for instance. And the real world does have a way of upsetting all theories and predictions.  That 19th century America thrived mightily behind high tariff walls is always an embarrassing case, for instance.  So the arguments put forward below are along those lines:  That reality is different.

As a former High School economics teacher myself, I am still rather attached to the consensus view but concede the possibilities mentioned below.  My own view is that Trump will raise tariffs slightly on social grounds.  He thinks that America can afford to pay a small price to avoid social and economic disruption.  And that is a perfectly sensible argument.  Social stability is not guaranteed and may have a price.

And the big costs that Americans bear are from the huge weight of regulations that burden almost all economic activity.  Trump has pledged a heavy attack on such regulations so any price increases due to higher tariffs could be more than outweighed by cuts in regulations.  In other words, reduced regulation could cut prices by a lot more than increased tariffs raise them.  American living standards should resume their long-stalled rise under Trump


THE STRONG DOLLAR AND THE DANGERS of a globalized economy have combined in recent months to favor American manufacturers who sell their products domestically rather than internationally, according to the Wall Street Journal (May 23): "Global industrial giants are struggling under the weight of a strong dollar, reeling commodity markets and weak demand in emerging and advanced economies alike, from Brazil to Europe to China. But domestically oriented U.S. manufacturers are faring better, with steadier business buoyed by the relatively brighter auto, housing and job markets."

As became clear in 2008 (if it wasn't already clear before), interconnectedness in financial markets is a significant part of systemic risk, even though in some cases it ameliorates risk. Global connection within a market, connection across markets and the financialization of all markets bring both opportunity and risk. When sectors of the American economy are heavily connected, whether at the point of manufacture or at the point of sale, with far-flung parts of the globe, every part of their manufacturing and sale process is also made more fragile. It is not always a boon to "antifragility," as the book had it some years ago.

The companies that have weathered the recent turmoil in emerging markets and Europe have been those able to sell their goods domestically regardless of the vagaries of overseas market conditions. The strong dollar has weighed on exporters, but much less so on domestic firms selling their goods locally.

Such news doubtless comes as a shock to those knowing conservatives who knew all along and still know that globalization is the future and get on with it and let's build the future. It's a perplexing stance, in response to which Peter Thiel sensibly noted (in this week's Conversations with Bill Kristol) that the lead stages of globalization are already behind us. Yet the conservative horror at Trump's trade proposals pretends that globalization is all in the future. The Journal's simple report is no longer common sense. Why not?

IT DOES NOT REQUIRE "PRINCIPLES" to recognize that firsthand knowledge of one's countrymen often puts one at a market advantage over those who are from abroad. In making this observation, our purpose is not to argue that trade should only be domestic, or that exporters of products genuinely needed at a foreign market are at a permanent disadvantage. Coffee-growers in Latin America have to export their product to American roasteries, and individual coffee plantations are at no market disadvantage compared to selling on their home markets since in many cases a foreign market is required to move product.

Trading on one's strengths fully comports with the Greatness Agenda outlined by JAG. The Principled crowd for whom free trade is a Principle, however, wrongly assume that the global direction of free trade in many market sectors means that domestically focused manufacturing is increasingly unnecessary or even undesirable. They also wrongly point to the overall glossiness of American manufacturing statistics to excuse the decline in manufacturing employment, as though it doesn't matter if anyone works so long as we've got the things. The problem with elevating free trade into a principle of Principled Conservatism is not that protectionism is the proper opposing principle, but that the application of domestic principles to foreign trade inappropriately hamstrings American policy-makers.

Several years ago, the Harvard Business Review had to remind its readers that the advantages of domestic manufacturing would not necessarily show up in traditional discounted cash flow models designed to compare the costs of locating a plant at home or abroad. "The trouble with this approach," they wrote, "is that DCF typically undervalues flexibility. As a result, companies may end up with supply chains that are lean and low cost as long as everything goes according to plan—but horribly expensive if the unexpected occurs."

Domestic manufacturing has other benefits, as well. Nicholas Ventura, the founder of a small clothing company, employs six hundred people in textile manufacturing across a sixteen-block radius in Los Angeles. By focusing on manufacturing domestically, he wrote in the Washington Post, business owners can avoid the "extreme cost-saving minimums" required for overseas production. "The speed of domestic supply chains," he also noted, "is leaps and bounds quicker than that of overseas supply chains." Similarly, "Forecasting trends in the marketplace is more forgiving with a quick supply chain."

All these points are intuitively obvious, yet they're overlooked when the cultural consensus regarding global capitalism points would-be manufacturers to look abroad. Even if Trump's call to "Make America Great Again" serves no other purpose, it assists however modestly in reorienting potential capital investment domestically. We harbor no illusions about the difficulty in doing so, not least from the pressure brought upon companies as they seek to finance their expanded operations.

The drive toward outsourcing manufacturing, geographically separating design and manufacture, separating production from market, and even separating each part of the manufacturing process are all aspects of culture and not simply market operations. Changes to American trade policy must be preceded by a cultural transformation toward identifying a link between economic production generally and national greatness. The attempts to minimize the phenomenon of Trumpism, to explain it away or to lob cheap (foreign-produced?) insults at its messenger overlook the importance of that simple change.

FORGOTTEN IN THE DISPUTES over Trumpian trade policy is the fact that in the United States, domestic trade is free trade—free across the borders of American states. The drive for free trade within the U.S. was a constituent part of the nation itself and not merely its constitutional settlement. That constitutional permission of trade across state lines formed the American commercial psyche and so formed the nation itself.

Foreign trade, however admirable and important it may be in particular market sectors, does not "form" the nation in the same way. The classical philosophers were regularly concerned about port cities, where citizens could consume foreign ideas and foreign sailors could consume, well, ladies of the night. Plus ça change ...

What distinguishes domestic trade and foreign trade is that foreign affairs are not subject to the same principles which operate in domestic context. Appealing to the "principle" of free trade as a part of the "principles" of Principled Conservatism™ confuses the relationship between conservatism and the American republic as well as the role of "principles" in domestic politics and foreign affairs. The point of the principles of conservatism (at this point, what difference does it make?), is to identify the ways to conserve the American polity. For ourselves, we are neither carte blanche in favor of free trade nor committed to a system such as Fichte's Closed Commercial State. (The matter of the closed commercial state is an important one, however, from the standpoint of identifying the tension between the political forms necessary to achieve domestic goals and those necessary to act effectively in matters of foreign affairs.)

This difference is found in other aspects of American constitutional practice, as well. One cannot say that "liberty of speech" is good such that the American government is equally obligated to protect the liberty of speech of its citizens and that of resident aliens, guest workers, travelers and the like. Similarly, the evident goodness of trade tells us, on its own, not a single thing at all about what our attitude toward Chinese steel dumping should be at a particular moment. (Much to the Cato Institute's chagrin, Reagan violated the principles of free trade on numerous occasions. George W. Bush did, too!) Similarly still, the goodness of living under a representative democratic government in itself tells us nothing about whether to allow some particular immigrant to apply for U.S. citizenship. A sovereign state has the right to close its borders to any group or to open them to any group.

None of these "nothings" tells us that these things are forbidden, either. We may well establish a mutual abolition of tariffs on certain goods with a certain country at a certain time. We may well admit high-skilled workers from European countries, or even Canada, to come to the U.S. and apply for citizenship. Our evaluation of those matters is one of prudence in the interest of American greatness.

Though we disagree with their analysis on other respects, conservatives who link trade policy to foreign policy are at least on the right track. Williamson's argument that "Free men do not have to beg the prince's permission to buy from or sell to whom they choose" is simple obscurantism.

Those who treat free trade as an absolute principle often seem to imagine that America is a very small state with limited national resources, almost entirely dependent on foreign trade to leverage its handful of industries in favor of purchasing basic goods from abroad. Yet the forty-eight contiguous states (and the additional far-flung pair) were gathered in time across a continent rich in natural resources, harboring a variety of climates, and filled with people with a knack for commercial ingenuity. America's commercial ingenuity is part of the strength that it can use for the purposes of preserving and extending national greatness.

A sly comment in National Review's most recent paean to free trade agreements admits that it would be "almost certainly impossible" for the U.S. to pursue protectionist policies even if it wanted to. The reason why is telling. "U.S. manufacturers," writes Scott Lincicome, "have evolved over decades to become integral links in a breathtakingly complex global value chain—whereby producers across continents cooperate to produce a single product based on their respective comparative advantages—that could not be severed without crippling both them and the global economy." The complexity of global manufacturing chains is part of the reality that Lincicome's glossy statistics overlook. Comparative advantages are becoming ever more fungible and easily replaced. Simply occupying a little spot in the global supply chain may not be enough to keep American manufacturers in the supply chain. When the whole supply chain is located domestically (and again, we are not elevating that as a Principle), the matter is different.

How the principle of American greatness became lost and regarded as the antithesis of a principle by Principled Conservatives is the story of conservatism's decline. "There shall be free trade on the part of the United States" is not a Principle but the abdication of political judgment in matters pertaining to American strength. When the Wall Street Journal has to call everyone's attention to the comparative advantage of domestic manufacturing itself, maybe our Principled friends will start to think of ways to shore it up.

SOURCE

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Trump Just Announced His Pick for Attorney General – Hillary’s Worst Nightmare!

Donald Trump has made yet another announcement that will dismay Democrats across the country, and that is his choice for Attorney General. Trump tweeted that his pick for Attorney General is South Carolina conservative Rep. Trey Gowdy, who currently chairs the U.S. House of Representative’s Select Committee on Benghazi.

Gowdy has been a constant thorn in the Obama administration’s side, and has exposed the White House’s incompetence on everything from amnesty to IRS abuses to the illegal deletion of Clinton’s emails.

Trump’s tweet read, “@HillaryClinton’s toast. Dems had better get the”B Team” off the bench. @TGowdySC for Attorney General under President Trump.” This tweet came right on the heels of an announcement that Trump would want Sarah Palin on his Cabinet.

Trump is looking to build a team of influential conservative leaders who have fought against the liberals. He and Gowdy share the same no-nonsense style.

SOURCE

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

* Donald John Trump, was born June 14, 1946.

* He will be 70 years old on election day.

* From the Internet, he is 6'2" or 6'3' and weighs between 195 and 200 lbs.

* He has a full head of blond/brown hair (which is long and elaborately combed) and blue eyes.

* The Internet tells us he wears a size 12 shoe.

* Donald Trump was born the fourth of five children who were born over eleven years.

* The oldest, Mary Ann, was born in 1937 and is currently a Federal Judge.

* His older brother, Fred Jr, died in early adulthood as a result of complications from alcoholism.

* He has another older sister, Elizabeth and a younger brother, Robert.

* Donald Trump has been married three times.

* Trump's first wife, Ivana, was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia and a divorcee who has been married 4 times in her life. She is a life long avid skier and worked in design at the Trump Organization.

* Marla Maples, Trump's second wife is an actress and model

* Trump's third wife, Melania is an immigrant from Slovenia (born in Yugoslavia) and has been a super model.

* Two of Trump's children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, have gone to Penn. Son Eric, went to Georgetown.

* Donald Trump tells us that he is Presbyterian.

* Donald Trump does not appear to have had any interest in occults, mysticism or exotic mythologies.

* Donald Trump's oldest daughter, Ivanka, and her three children are Jewish.

* Trump's oldest daughter, Ivanka, is married to Jared Kushner who is, among other things, a newspaper publisher. The Kushner family is very successful in New York City area real estate.

* Donald's grandmother, mother, first wife, and third wife are all immigrants.
 
* Donald Trump was born and raised in Queens NY

* Though his family was very wealthy, Trump's boyhood home in the Jamaica Estates section of Queens was not a grand mansion. The Trump home was a larger version of the homes Fred Trump was building for his tenants.

* There are no indications that the Trump family lived among the wealthy elites on vacations or country clubs.

* Queens is the largest of New York's five boroughs and the most  ethnically diverse.

* Trump attended a local private day school, the Kew Forrest School, in Queens until about 8th grade.

* His secondary schooling was at New York Military Academy which is about 60 miles north of NYC in Cornwall on the Hudson. He was the class of 1964.

* Trump was never a "Preppie".

* Trump never embraced any aspect of the "Hippie" movement of the time.

* Trump was a very good high school athlete - football, soccer, and especially baseball. He had potential to become a professional baseball player.

* Even in high school - Trump liked women and women liked him

* Trump was generally popular in high school.

* Trump's boarding school room mate liked him.

* He attended Fordham University in NYC for two years and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

* At that time, the Wharton School offered a rare program for Real Estate Business.

* Though he was of age, Donald Trump did not serve in Vietnam.

* He was not drafted due to bone spurs in his heels (4F) and also student deferments.

* Ultimately, in the draft lottery, he drew a high number.

* By all we know, Donald Trump does not smoke, drink or use recreational drugs. He'll be the first President in more than 25 years who hasn't smoked weed.

* BTW: Trump's children don't smoke or drink

* Trump makes it well known that he enjoys sexual interaction with women.

* I am unaware that Donald Trump is a recreational gambler.

* His doctor publicly announced Donald to be in excellent health.

I think that to really know Donald Trump, you must know his family background.

The Trump family story is a very American story.

Trump family history - concise version.

* Donald Trump's grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Alsace  (Kallstadt, Germany) which throughout history has been alternately French and German. The Trumps are German, originally speaking the same German dialect as the Amish of Lancaster County, PA.

* His maternal grandparents lived in Scotland.

* Freiderich (Drumph) Trump made a small but respectable fortune in the late 19th Century in the mining boom towns of the American Northwest.

* He returned to Germany to marry his childhood neighbor, Elizabeth Christ.

* The newly married Trumps resettled in the Borough of Queens NY

* Freidrich was establishing a Real Estate business in Queens when he died suddenly at age 49 (1918).

* In 1920, at the age of 15, Fred Trump (Freiderich's son and Donald's father), started a business partnership with his widowed mother called Elizabeth Trump & Son.

* This business was built upon the real estate holdings that his  father,Frederich, had amassed (worth about $500,000.00 in today's dollars). This is the original "seed money" of the current Trump  Organization.

* Elizabeth & Fred remained close business partners her entire life (she died in 1966).

* In 1936 Fred Trump (age 31) married Mary Ann MacLeod (age 24) of Stornaway Scotland.

* During the depression, Fred Trump built and successfully operated a supermarket (a new concept at the time) which was sold to King Kullen Co. and operates this day.

* Fred Trump made a lot of money building housing for the military during WWII.

* Fred Trump was investigated by the Justice Department for making "excessive profits" from government contracts.

* All (or nearly all) of the building of Elizabeth Trump & Son's non government building was residential property in Queens.

* Fred Trump died in 1999 (age 94) - beloved and worth between $250 million and $300 million. His wife died a year later.

"The Donald's" career

Donald Trump is the greatest career achiever of the "baby boomer" generation.

Donald Trump has reached the zenith in his careers as book author, TV entertainer, sports entertainer, Real Estate developer, and currently politician.
 
* Donald Trump has authored more than 18 books. At least one of them, The Art of the Deal was a top seller.

* Donald says that the Holy Bible is his favorite book. The Art of the Deal is his 2nd favorite book. And The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale is his third favorite book.

* He likes golf. Donald Trump has developed more than 11 golf courses which bear his name.

* Donald Trump has twice been nominated for an Emmy Award

* Donald Trump has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

* Donald Trump has been inducted to the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.

* Donald Trump has appeared in more than a dozen movies such as Home Alone 2, Zoolander, and Little Rascals

* Donald Trump has been a guest actor in more than 6 TV shows such as Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Days of Our Lives, Sex and the City, and others.

* Trump has been the Executive Producer of 7 TV shows.

* Trump has been the guest host of 5 TV shows such as Extra, Larry King Live, and Saturday Night Live and more.

* Donald Trump has been co producer of the longest running reality TV show.

* Donald Trump performed in several WWE wrestling shows.

* Donald performed in Wrestlemania 23 which set attendance records and revenue records up til that time.

* In his first candidacy for public office, Donald Trump received the most popular votes for the President of the United States out of a field of experienced and successful politicians. And in most cases, he achieved this with less money than any of his opponents.

Keeping in mind that 90% of start up businesses fail, Trump's record of enterprise is nothing short of amazing.

Donald Trump has enjoyed success in at least 11 very different  enterprises: Professional football, Ice Skating rinks, Fragrance, Ice, Steaks, Wines, Model management, Airline, blenders, Men's wear, Bicycle races, world class beauty contests, and many others. In some of these, such as model management, his firm has risen to the top of that particular industry.

* There are 31 buildings that bear his name.

* The largest private real estate development in New York is Trump Riverside. Drive down the Henry Hudson Blvd. - you can't miss them.

* There are at least 12 Trump Towers

* There are at least 6 Trump Plazas.

* There are at least 11 Trump Golf Course developments

* And much, much, more in real estate.

* Trump Entertainment, casinos and resorts was recently sold to Carl Ichan.

* Donald Trump's personal managing of the Wollman Ice Skating Rink project in the early 1980's is the quintessential case study for MBA students in Wharton, Harvard, and other business schools. His performance there was phenomenal.

* Donald Trump's privately held businesses have employed more than 200,000 people.

* In the casino business in Atlantic City, Trump had to do business with known mobsters - and he stayed "clean" and alive.

* Aside from his personal investments, Donald Trump has never been a Wall Street "player".

The Political Trump:

About 1967 - 1987 - Democrat (he was a supporter of Ronald Reagan)

1987 - 1999 - Republican

1999 - 2001 - Reform Party (he supported Ross Perot)

2001 - 2009 - Democrat

2009 - 2011 - Republican

2011 - 2012 - Independent

2012 - Present - Republican

Donald Trump was openly supportive of Mitt Romney's candidacy.

Donald Trump does not seem to hold political party organizations in high regard.

For the most part, his political involvement has been for practical reasons.

Donald Trump does not appear to be held to political ideology.

Some of my take aways:

* Trump has an extraordinarily energetic central nervous system much like Teddy Roosevelt but more targeted to industry and enterprise.

* Trump's presidency will be very energetic, transparent, and communicative.

* Trump will be a very hard working President.

* His interaction with his older brother (who everybody loved) tells me that he thinks that everybody is like him - or wants to be - or should be.

* His relationship with his older brother was a hard lesson in tolerance for him.

* Trump is the Babe Ruth of career achievements.

* He is dumb like a fox. When you think he just said something stupid - he didn't. It's just that you were not his target audience.

* Trump knows the people - the folk.

* His son, Donald Jr. is right. Trump is a "Blue Collar Billionaire".

* More than anything, his TV show, The Apprentice, was his passion. He  wants all Americans to have confidence (like he does) to venture.

* Donald Trump is attracted to and marries smart, high achieving women.

* The highest levels of a Trump Administration is certain to have many women - and they will be bright and assertive.

* Donald Trump's children are very important to him. And it shows.

Author unknown

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

Very similar to Hitler's brownshirts

PROTESTS outside a Donald Trump rally in New Mexico turned violent Tuesday night as demonstrators threw burning T-shirts, plastic bottles and other items at police officers, overturned trash cans and knocked down barricades.

Police responded by firing pepper spray and smoke grenades into the crowd outside the Albuquerque Convention Center.

During the rally, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was interrupted repeatedly by protesters, who shouted, held up banners and resisted removal by security officers.

The banners included the messages “Trump is Fascist” and “We’ve heard enough.”

At one point, a female protester was physically dragged from the stands by security.

Other protesters scuffled with security as they resisted removal from the convention centre, which was packed with thousands of loud and cheering Trump supporters.

Trump responded with his usual bluster, instructing security to remove the protesters and mocking their actions by telling them to “Go home to mommy.”

He responded to one demonstrator by asking, “How old is this kid?”  Then he provided his own answer: “Still wearing diapers.”

Trump’s supporters responded with chants of “Build that wall!”

The altercations left glass at the entrance of the convention centre smashed.

During the rally, protesters outside overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear.

They also burned T-shirts and other items labelled with Trump’s catchphrase, “Make America Great Again.”

Tuesday marked Trump’s first stop in New Mexico, the nation’s most Hispanic state.

Governor Susana Martinez, head of the Republican Governors Association and the nation’s only Latina governor, has harshly criticised his remarks on immigrants and has attacked his proposal to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. The governor did not attend the rally and has yet to make an endorsement.

Trump read off a series of negative statistics about the state, including an increase in the number of people on food stamps.

“We have to get your governor to get going. She’s got to do a better job, OK?” he said, adding: “Hey, maybe I’ll run for governor of New Mexico. I’ll get this place going.”

The governor’s office fired back, saying Martinez has fought for welfare reform. “The potshots weren’t about policy, they were about politics,” said spokesman Michael Lonergan. “And the Governor will not be bullied into supporting a candidate until she is convinced that candidate will fight for New Mexicans, and she did not hear that today.”

Trump supporters at the rally said they appreciated his stance on boosting border security and stemming the flow of people crossing the border illegally, but some said they were frightened by the violent protests outside.

Albuquerque lawyer Doug Antoon said rocks were flying through the convention centre windows as he was leaving Tuesday night. Glass was breaking and landing near his feet.

“This was not a protest, this was a riot. These are hate groups,” he said of the demonstrators.

SOURCE

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The filmmakers hoping to take down Hillary Clinton

“DONALD Trump will win in a landslide,” producer of the explosive documentary Clinton Cash, Steven K Bannon, declares to news.com.au.  “It’s going to be a win of Reagan proportions.”

The controversial film, based on the best-selling book by Peter Schweizer, investigates how the Clintons managed to reconfigure their finances, from being “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001 to amassing in excess of $US150 million with $US2 billion in donations to their foundation in only a few years.

The film was recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival to an audience of journalists and theatre distributors glued to their seats.

“What I find shocking is that there’s this thought process that Hillary Clinton is going to be president of the United States, and to even think of Donald Trump is a joke,” Bannon says.

“Journalists think it’s inconceivable that she is not going to be president of the United States. Then they see the film and the first reaction you get is, ‘How come nobody knows this stuff? How come it’s not out in the popular press?’”

The film chronicles the years in which the Clintons and their foundation amassed money and where they got it from, including fees paid to Bill Clinton for speeches while his wife was secretary of state. This includes $US1.4 million he received for two speeches in Nigeria in 2011 and 2012, during the time the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, was under fire for his human rights record.

Peter Schweizer, author of the book of the same name, says: “The political leaders who enriched them and how they have been enriched affects the decisions they make. We should care who is putting money in the pockets of politicians. If you are a cabinet officer in the United States you should not have a foundation that is taking money from foreign governments and foreign entities. We need to have those reforms or this is going to become widespread.”

Bannon is the executive chairman of the politically conservative Breitbart news site and he’s honest about wanting to take the Clintons down.  “Trump is a product of a seething populism and nationalism that is the driving political force,” he says animatedly.

“We were the first guys to give Trump an interview three years ago in May of 2013. The mainstream just laughed at him but I’m a filmmaker and I watch the audience. They were leaning into what Trump said when he talked about making America great again, getting jobs back and stopping immigration.

“I don’t like to prognosticate but I was the very first guy three years ago that said Trump will be the Republican nominee and was mocked and ridiculed.”

Bannon is sipping his morning coffee on the sun-dappled patio of Cannes’ iconic Carlton Hotel, perched on the Mediterranean Sea where the likes of George Clooney, Blake Lively, Justin Timberlake and an endless array of models are milling about.

“George Clooney, who is a moron, came here to Cannes and gave a press conference saying, ‘Under no circumstances will Trump ever be president. Hillary Clinton will be the next president.’ Well, we can’t wait to make George Clooney eat his words. He has a false patina of intellectualism and this is what a hypocrite he is; he talks all this trash about money and politics and global warming but lives up in Italy at the villa [on Lake Como] and flies around in a jet,” he says.

Taking a decidedly no-holds-barred approach, Bannon says of the Clintons, “They are trailer trash. They are grifters.”

And on the age-old question, the subject of many a classic country music anthem, why did Hillary stand by her man? “Because she is possibly about to become the most powerful person in the world, and possibly the first female president of the most powerful nation in the history of the earth,” Bannon says.

Though the documentary is largely seen as a tool for the Republicans during this historic election year, Clinton Cash has also proved to be an aid for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

“It’s a great weapon for Sanders. The polling shows Hillary Clinton’s biggest weakness is not her competence as Secretary of State, as a senator or her stand on women’s issues, it’s that people don’t trust her,” he says, leaning in.

“Particularly when it comes to money. Sixty-five per cent think she’s dishonest, but Bernie hasn’t used that and I think one of the reasons is quite simple: these people roll very hard. The Clintons play smash mouth,” he says. “They will come at you.”

SOURCE

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"Never Trump" does not own conservatism

"He's a mere celebrity whose ignorance will destroy the Republican Party and if, God forbid, elected president, he will start World War III"

But enough about what the Washington Establishment said about Ronald Reagan. That was 40 years ago when he challenged President Ford. Let's talk about now and how the Washington Establishment continues to brush Trump off as a mere celebrity whose ignorance will destroy the Republican Party and if, God forbid, elected president, he will start World War III.

My take is that if a person does not want to vote for Trump, fine. I respect that. If you want to leave the party as a matter of principle, I am OK with that.

However, the Never Trump crowd is another kettle of fish that need to be fried. If you write for the oldest conservative magazine in Washington (National Review) yes, you are are part of the Washington Establishment. That is how it works. If you are a Fox News contributor based in the nation's capital, you are are part of the Washington Establishment. Ditto the Weekly Standard. Ditto a host of think tankers. Stop pretending you are some sort of renegade. You live in the American Versailles. You are part of it.

There is nothing wrong with the Washington Establishment except a $19 trillion national debt, a string of wars, the rise of the Islamic State, the tanking of the economy, borders that are unprotected, and free trade agreements that have forced Wal-Mart to quit its "Buy American" policy.

For all their malarkey about the free market and capitalism, few in the Washington Establishment live in that world. They get huge salaries from tax-exempt corporations that survive on tax-exempt donations.

Their ignorance of how capitalism works showed this year. In the marketplace of ideas, they lost. For all their huffing and puffing, they could not  blow Trump down because his ideas trumped his personality. Got that? The only Cult Of Personality is that of Cruz who frankly is another empty suit, only he comes with a Bible.

His promise of running a constitutional government is laughable. We already do. Congress writes laws, the president carries them out, and the Court decides whether the laws pass constitutional muster. Yes, the Roberts Court upheld Obamacare, but it also struck down DC's gun law and McCain-Feingold. You may disagree with the Court but that does not make the rulings unconstitutional.

Nor does opposition to Trump make you more conservative than me.

Free trade?

Patrick Buchanan pointed out that from Lincoln to Coolidge (and of course, Hoover) Republicans and conservatives stood for protective tariffs.

From Buchanan:

During his presidency, Congress passed and Abe signed 10 tariff bills. Lincoln inaugurated the Republican Party tradition of economic nationalism.

Vermont’s Justin Morrill, who shepherded GOP tariff bills through Congress from 1860 to 1898, declared, “I am for ruling America, for the benefit, first, of Americans, and for the ‘rest of mankind’ afterwards.”

In 1890, Republicans enacted the McKinley Tariff that bore the name of that chairman of ways and means and future president.
“Open competition between high-paid American labor and poorly paid European labor,” warned Cong. William McKinley, “will either drive out of existence American industry or lower American wages.”

To paraphrase Archie Bunker, mister, we could use a man like Bill McKinley again. The economy thrived.

And the reality is that Reagan was less free trade than Trump is. Reagan slapped tariffs on Japan like it was nobody's business to protect Harley Davidson and others.

Trump is about reaching out. Never Trump is about crawling into a shell. So be it. But that is not a high road they are on.

SOURCE

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

The bloodshed and folly of WWI is still horrifying to this day.  It seems that the world went mad at that time. And it happened amid the world's most civilized nations.  ISIS are amateurs compared to the combatants of WWI.

One can detail the processes that led up to it -- and I have done that -- but in retrospect the forces at work do seem insufficient by themselves to explain a vast horror. So the thoughts below by an historian are very relevant.  I will add some further comments at the foot of them:

Jay Murray Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University, where he focuses his research on World War I and its impact on the 20th century.

Reflecting on the causes of the First World War, Jay Winter concludes his six-part video series, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (1996), as follows:

"The war solved no problems. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict"

Summing up his conclusions more recently, he states:

"1938 is a long way from now, but it’s still a puzzle. What was it for? Why? Why all this bloodshed? Why the carnage? Why the violence? Why the cruelty? I can’t pretend to have an answer, but I know it’s a question that we still have to resolve"

After 50 years of research and writing, this great historian cannot tell us why the First World War occurred.

Yet the reason for the war is staring us in the face. The bloodshed contained its own meaning. One does not have to look beyond what it was. Observing the daily carnage in France in 1916, P. H. Pearse—founder of the Irish revolutionary movement—told us everything we need to know (in Kamenka, 1976):

"The last sixteenth months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country"

The First World War occurred so that the earth could be “warmed with the red wine of the battlefield”. It was a form of “august homage” —millions of lives given “for love of country”.

The First World War was a gigantic demonstration of devotion—abject submission— to the nation-state. Societies from throughout the world offered up their young men upon the sacrificial block. They fed the hungry, humungous god, the nation which, like the god of the Aztecs, comes into being —continues to exist— to the extent that it feeds on the body and blood of sacrificial victims.

SOURCE

The above article, apparently written by psychohistorian Richard Koenigsberg, does take us  back rather vividly to the times concerned and does provide a deeper level of explanation for the events concerned.  All explanations open up further questions, however, so we have to ask WHY the bloodlust of that time?  WHY did people see war and sacrifice as glorious?

The answer lies rather clearly in history -- in particular the history that Leftists want us to to forget or never to be told.    There have always been Leftists -- people who are angry at the society in which they live -- but their doctrines have changed greatly over time.  And it so happens that both world wars happened in the "progressive" era -- a time from the late 19th century to the end of WWII -- in which "progressive" thought swept all before it.  Progressivism was culturally dominant.  The dominant thinking of that quite long period was progressive.  It was only the election of Ike in 1953 to the Presidency that called a partial halt to that dominance.

So if we want to understand the strange thinking that Koenigsberg has detailed above, we have to look at the Progressives and what they believed.  They had the basic Leftist inclination to tear down the status quo and upset existing systems that one expects of them -- and there is of course nothing so upsetting to existing life as a war.  Additionally, a war can be used to justify big power grabs that would not be countenanced by the population during peacetime.  And in WWI President Wilson did exactly that sort of grab.

So it was to satiate their desire for destruction and change that the Progressive doctrine included the ghastly thinking that Koenigsberg details.  And there was no-one so representastive of that thinking than Teddy Roosevelt and his battleships.  He too thought war was glorious and a purification of the human spirit.  Hitler thought that too but Roosevelt much preceded him.  Hitler did, after all, grow up in the Progressive era and got most of his ideas from them: racism, eugenics and the virtue of war.

Leftists of today say roughly the opposite of all those things but that is just a matter of convenience.  After the defeat of Hitler, his doctrines fell into disrepute so Leftists turned on a dime and pretended that his doctrines had never been theirs.  But they were.  So it was the bloodlust that Leftists have always exhibited -- from the French Revolution on -- that underlay the terrible deeds of WWI -- JR

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Once again:  Obamacare REDUCES the availability of health care

Mountainous deductibles and now this

An Obama administration proposal to reduce Medicare payments for many prescription drugs has run into sharp bipartisan criticism, suggesting that it is easier to diagnose the problem of high prices than to treat it.

Patients’ advocates have joined doctors and drug companies in warning that the federal plan could jeopardize access to important medications. Every member of the Senate Finance Committee — 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats — and more than 300 House members have expressed concern.

In a letter to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society said the proposal “does not protect cancer patients’ access to the lifesaving drugs needed to treat their disease.”

The plan “focuses more on the potential for cost savings” than on how to preserve and enhance the quality of care, it said.

The administration says Medicare’s current payment formula rewards doctors for prescribing expensive drugs. Burwell has proposed a five-year nationwide test to encourage doctors to prescribe less expensive therapies under Part B of Medicare.

In its proposal, the administration said “we intend to achieve savings” but did not estimate the amount.

The first phase of the new “payment model” could begin as early Aug. 1. In the second phase, which could start as soon as January 2017, Medicare would link payment to a drug’s value.

The government might, for example, pay more for drugs that it deemed more effective in treating or preventing a particular condition. Or it might pay the same amount for drugs that it judged to be “therapeutically similar.”

These drugs — to treat various types of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, macular degeneration, and other conditions — are typically administered in doctors’ offices or hospital clinics. They include drug products that are made from human or animal cells, as well as treatments that mobilize the body’s immune system to fight cancer and other diseases.

Medicare typically pays 80 percent of the cost, and beneficiaries are responsible for the other 20 percent, meaning that they have to pay thousands of dollars a year for some drugs and drug combinations.

Whatever the merits of the proposal, the administration has to date been outmaneuvered on Capitol Hill. Republican lawmakers say President Obama should withdraw the proposal, a step that appears unlikely at the moment. Many Democrats, alarmed at high drug prices, said the administration was making a worthy effort but should not move ahead without doing more to protect beneficiaries.

Representative Lois Capps, a California Democrat and a nurse, said she was concerned about several aspects of the plan. She listed “the nationwide scope of the project, the possible impact on small medical practices in underserved areas, and the potential shifting of patients from provider offices to expensive hospital settings.”

Two dozen House Democrats, including black and Hispanic lawmakers representing large numbers of poor people, said the proposal could disrupt care for their constituents. Doctors practicing in small groups and rural health care providers have less purchasing power, often must pay higher prices for drugs, and will be unable to absorb the “reimbursement cuts,” the lawmakers said.

Another 60 House Democrats, including some of the most liberal members of Congress, signed a separate letter listing even more questions and concerns.

It is not surprising that drugmakers like Amgen, Genentech, and Merck have asked the administration to withdraw its proposal. But some of their concerns seem to resonate with patients desperate for new treatments and cures.

Bari Talente, executive vice president of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said her group opposed the administration’s plan in its current form. The National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group for patients, said the proposal “could limit access to long-acting injectable antipsychotic medications” used to treat schizophrenia and other disorders.

In a letter to Medicare officials, Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, dean of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said, “This experiment puts the care of patients at unnecessary risk.”

SOURCE

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More news from government healthcare: The British experience

Heartless NHS staff ate the food a wife brought into hospital for her cancer-stricken husband, she claims.

Jennifer Sanders, who is suing the hospital over its treatment of her late husband Freddie, also says staff took away his dignity by being rude and not washing him promptly during his 38 days there.

The retired florist said: ‘My Jack Russell dog Riley-Boy was recently treated at a veterinary hospital and he received better care than Freddie.

'I’ve often thought to myself if I put my Freddie in there, instead of that hospital, would he still be here now. His food was taken from a fridge when he was on that ward.

‘I’d bought him Marks & Spencer carrot cake, jelly terrine, vanilla custard, and some Cornish clotted cream and made him up a bowl, trying to encourage him to eat.

‘When I went to get it the following day there was nothing left, except an empty carrot cake wrapper at the bottom of the fridge, the cream and jelly had gone and there was just a tiny blob of custard left.’

Mrs Sanders, 69, added: ‘He was lying there like a bag of bones, he lost nearly eight kilograms over the period of a month from when he had been admitted, yet someone helped themselves.’

Mr Sanders, 66, already had prostate cancer and diabetes when he was admitted to Whipps Cross Hospital, East London, with a severe cough on Boxing Day 2013.

And his widow believes the former council worker was prescribed the wrong medication during his stay, contributing to his eventual death by being given laxatives even though he already had diarrhoea.

Mr Sanders eventually died in November 2014 and his family has now launched legal action against Whipps Cross Hospital.

Mrs Sanders, who now lives in Wickham Market, Suffolk, said: ‘How could a doctor walk past a man’s bed for 38 days when he was in such a state and not notice he shouldn’t have been prescribed a laxative.

'The care he received left me so distraught I considered giving him and myself an overdose of tablets, just so he didn’t have to endure it any more. ‘I love him and I’ve been his wife for 45 years yet I wanted to kill him out of compassion because of what happened there.

‘There were failings in his care – they let him lie crying, covered in his own mess – he lost his dignity and he deserved better than that.’

The case is one of 93 to be highlighted by the Health Service Ombudsman in its latest report into NHS failings.

SOURCE

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

The most interesting discovery of the week was not that IBM, Citigroup and Microsoft were unwittingly running ads on (and therefore providing funds to) an Indonesian jihadi website – though they were – but that Peter Thiel is supporting Donald Trump in his bid to become the next president of the United States.

“Peter who?” I hear you say. Mr Thiel is not exactly a household name in these parts, but in Silicon Valley he’s a big cheese, as a co-founder of PayPal and the first investor in Facebook. He is therefore rich beyond the dreams of avarice. But he is also: a philosophy graduate; a lawyer; a former bond trader; a hedge-fund manager; a venture capitalist; a philanthropist; a far-out libertarian; and an entertaining author. So what is a guy like that doing supporting Trump?

One answer might be that he’s as much of an irritant to the Silicon Valley crowd as Trump is to the Republican establishment. Although the Valley’s tech titans like to portray themselves as non-statist disruptors, in fact most of them are – politically speaking – Democratic party supporters, albeit of an unusual kind. They may detest trade unions, for example, but they’re very keen on immigration – so long as the immigrants have PhDs from elite Indian or Chinese universities. And they’re not opposed to big government, so long as it’s “smart”, whatever that means.

Peter Thiel doesn’t fit this template at all. In 2009, he published an intriguing essay entitled The Education  of a Libertarian. “I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years”, it began: “to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself ‘libertarian’.” But, he confessed, “over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

So what changed his mind? Answer: the 2008 banking collapse, which Thiel describes as “a financial crisis caused by too much debt and leverage, facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts of moral hazards – and we know that the response to this crisis involves way more debt and leverage, and way more government. Those who have argued for free markets have been screaming into a hurricane. The events of recent months shatter any remaining hopes of politically minded libertarians. For those of us who are libertarian in 2009, our education culminates with the knowledge that the broader education of the body politic has become a fool’s errand.”

The emerging theme is that democratic politics is irretrievably broken. “In our time,” Thiel says, “the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms – from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy’. The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it.”

In 2009 Thiel could only see three possible escape routes. The first was cyberspace: “By starting a new internet business,” he wrote, “an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of the internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order.” The second was – wait for it – outer space: “Because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics.” And finally there was what Thiel called “seasteading” – floating islands in international waters run as libertarian paradises, presumably with free copies of Ayn Rand’s books on every bedside table.

Sadly, none of these ideas has – as yet – borne much fruit. The internet has been captured by governments and huge corporations. Colonising Mars and escaping to other galaxies is a proposition only for Hollywood and the Starship Enterprise. And seasteading, though technically less impracticable, remains the fantasy of dreamers and flakes of Cadbury proportions.

Faced with these cruel disappointments, what is a billionaire fantasist to do? Why, hitch his wagon to that of another billionaire fantasist, of course. And Trump and Thiel have more in common than perhaps they realise. In his 2009 essay, for example, Thiel wrote: “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” Trump is hoping to turn that oxymoron into a reality.

SOURCE

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Pittsburgh Insurer Highmark Going to Court in desperate bid  to recover its Obamacare losses

Health insurers have not had much to cheer about lately, when it comes to Obamacare. They have been losing money on exchanges, and there is little hope that will change. So, a large health plan in Pittsburgh has asked judges to give it Obamacare money the Administration promised, but Congress declined to appropriate.

As reported by Wes Venteicher and Brian Bowling of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Highmark lost $260 million on Obamacare exchanges in 2014, and claims it is owed $223 million by taxpayers. Unfortunately, it received only about $27 million. And things are getting worse. To date, Highmark has lost $773 million on Obamacare exchanges.

It is not that Highmark has been singled out by anybody. On the contrary, the Administration announced last year it was only going to pay about 13 cents on the dollar for all insurers’ exchange losses, via Obamacare’s “risk corridors.” This was not the Administration’s preferred course of action. The Administration wanted to pay insurers one hundred cents on the dollar, which it had promised them.

However, it could only pay out monies it had collected from insurers which had profited more on exchanges than expected. Because both the Administration and most insurers badly miscalculated the risk in Obamacare’s exchanges, there were very few winning insurers, and the revenue a fraction of what was expected.

No problem: Taxpayers would cover the rest – or so the Administration and insurers initially claimed. I was among those analysts who recognized Congress needed to appropriate funds to cover the losses. And Congress was not inclined to do so. As a consequence of having dragged Obamacare over the legislative line in 2010, health insurers lost any sympathy from Republican politicians, who now control both chambers in Congress.

No industry which relies on government revenue, which health insurers increasingly do, can afford to be in that position for long. Government-dependent businesses go to great lengths to flatter politicians of both parties in pursuit of so-called bipartisan solutions. When they win, they win big. One recent example is the Medicare “doc fix” of April 2015, through which a broad coalition of health industry lobbyists managed to get near-unanimous Congressional consent for a budget-busting bill that significantly increases the federal government’s control of the practice of medicine.

Health insurance executives likely look back with some regret at their decision to go all-in on Obamacare in 2010 without any Republican support. Once the GOP took over the Congressional majority, its members attacked a number of suspect Obamacare cashflows that were being paid out to insurers, apparently in violation of the law. It was a remarkable development: Republican politicians who opposed the law were demanding it be executed as written, while the Administration and its insurer allies were demanding it be bent, folded, and mutilated to guarantee revenues to insurers in accord with their business plans.

Insurers had a small win last December, when they got a one year delay in a fee levied on employer-based policies, which funds Obamacare.  It can reasonably be expected that the fee will be kicked down the road again this December, and next December, et cetera, as Obamacare becomes just another unfunded liability.

However, insurers also suffered a major loss when a federal judge decided just a few days ago that the Administration was illegally paying insurers from another pot of Obamacare money, so-called cost-sharing reductions. These are subsidies to insurers which enroll Obamacare beneficiaries whose incomes are so low they cannot afford Obamacare’s high deductibles and co-pays, despite tax credits that reduce their premiums. Insurers receive subsidies to reduce these beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket payments.

However, Congress has not appropriated funds to pay out these subsidies, so the Administration cannot pay them, according to the DC Federal District Court. In the wake of this freshly issued judgment, Highmark’s decision to ask a judge to give it taxpayer dollars not appropriated by a Congress which seeks to repeal Obamacare is a real swing for the fences.

On the other hand, taxpayers can be relieved that only Highmark, one other insurer in Oregon, and the Iowa Insurance Commissioner (on behalf of a failed co-operative health plan) have decided to go for a judicial bailout. The rest of America’s health insurers are in the same boat, not having received as much taxpayer money as the Administration promised. Almost all of them have accepted that fact, and moved on from their failed attempts to wring more money out of Congress to prop up Obamacare.

Investors’ Note: UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH), Aetna (NYSE:AET), Anthem (NYSE:ANTM), are among the insurers affected by Congress’ declining to appropriate moneys to subsidize insurers via the Affordable Care Act.

SOURCE

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Class war is making the deficit even worse

This article is about the British situation but the American situation is very similar

There are two very different ways to look at the world. The first is to obsess about inequality, including its psychological impact, and worry endlessly about the fact that some people are doing better than others. The second is to concentrate not on differences but absolutes, and to call for policies that ensure that as many people as possible can earn as much as possible.

For proponents of the first approach, reducing the number of rich people, and cutting their income, is an easy way to make progress. They want the gap between the worse-off and the better-off to shrink, and chopping down the tall poppies can achieve that very quickly. Advocates of the second approach would rather try to make sure that everybody, regardless of their income, can earn more, while helping those who cannot look after themselves.

The first group would prefer the rich to lose 5pc of their incomes even if the poor saw theirs stagnate, or in extremis fall slightly; my camp just wants everybody to have a pay rise, even if that means that the rich are getting richer more quickly. We worry hugely when the poor and middle classes don’t get pay rises, as has been the case at least in part in the US in recent years, but don’t see that as a reason to clobber those who are still enjoying rising wages.

This approach is not just better for the worse-off but also hugely superior for the public finances, as the latest figures on tax payments from HMRC demonstrate. A record 391,000 people earned more than £150,000 in salaries, wages, bonuses and dividends in 2015-16; 347,000 of these paid at least some tax at the 45p top rate (the remainder made use of legitimate tax reliefs). These additional rate taxpayers – approximately equivalent to the top 1pc of income earners – handed over an eye-watering £50.1bn in income tax to HMRC, a sum hugely disproportionate to their earnings as a result of the UK’s progressive tax system.

By contrast, millions of people paid no income tax at all, thanks to the Chancellor’s (sensible) policy of massively increasing the personal allowance. This is good news: it makes no sense to give those on low incomes benefits while simultaneously taxing them. It’s inefficient.

Roughly 19.4m people earned less than £30,000 but more than the personal allowance of £10,600; they paid £30.46bn in income tax. The total amount of income tax collected from the 24.6m basic rate income taxpayers came to £55bn, only just higher than the contribution from the 347,000 highest earners.

Compare that to the 16,000 taxpayers who earned at least £1m last year: they handed over £15.75bn to HMRC, around 40pc of their income. Those on high pay are incredibly useful to the taxman. The 5,000 who earn £2m or more hand over an average of £1.88m each per year in income tax alone.

The answer to the UK’s fiscal problems should therefore be clear: we need those on lower incomes to earn more; and we need a lot more rich people. Imagine if we were able to attract another 16,000 people on £1m or more: at a stroke, that would increase HMRC’s revenues by another £15.75bn, dramatically reducing the deficit. These people would employ staff, invest and boost the economy

in other ways, contributing further to the Exchequer. So why has the Government deliberately put in place policies to chase so many of these people away? Squeezing them may well have reduced the potential tax take from this group, rather than increasing it as planned.

Britain also needs better productivity to allow those stuck on low incomes to make more; and it needs even more upper middle-class jobs. The 4.6m people who earn enough to pay the 40p tax rate contributed £66.2bn in income tax, a massive chunk of the total. The more people earn, the more tax they pay, and the better the state of the public finances.

So forget about inequality. The real challenge is the lack of opportunity facing millions on the lower rungs of the labour market, the sluggish pay rises enjoyed by the middle and the fact that we no longer like hosting top-earners in this country. Simple, really.

SOURCE

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

Ann Coulter at her mocking best:

The New York Times' front-page article last Saturday on Donald J. Trump's dealings with women forced me into a weekend of self-examination. As much as I support Trump, this isn't a cult of personality. He's not Mao, Kim Jong-un or L. Ron Hubbard. We can like our candidates, but still acknowledge their flaws. No one's perfect.

I admit there are some things about Trump that give me pause. I'm sure these will come out eventually, so I'm just going to list them.

First -- and this is corroborated by five contemporaneous witnesses -- in 1978, Trump violently raped Juanita Broaddrick in a Little Rock, Arkansas, hotel room, then, as he was leaving, looked at her bloody lip and said, "Better put some ice on that" -- oh wait, I'm terribly sorry. Did I say Trump? I didn't mean Trump, I meant Bill Clinton.

Hang on -- here we go! Knowing full well about Bill Clinton's proclivity to sexually assault women, about three weeks after that rape, Trump cornered Broaddrick at a party and said, pointedly, "I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate the things you do for him. Do you understand? Everything you do."

No! My mistake! That wasn't Trump either. That was Hillary Clinton. ... But this next one I'm sure was Trump.

In the early 1990s, Trump invited a young female staffer to his hotel room at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, dropped his pants and said, "Kiss it" -- WAIT A SECOND!

I don't know how this keeps happening. That was Bill Clinton. Please bear with me -- it's late at night and my notes are jumbled.

As CEO of an organization, Trump had a female employee, just months out of her teens, perform oral sex on him while he made business calls. That girl's name was Monica Lewin-- No! Wrong again! That was Bill Clinton, too! Please don't stop reading. Let me find my Trump notes ...

What I meant was that Trump was the one who later smeared that girl as a delusional stalker. She may have volunteered for the sex -- at around age 20 -- but Monica Lewinsky didn't volunteer to be slandered! And yet this fiend, this user-of-women, this retrograde misogynist, Donald Trump, deployed his journalist friends, like Sidney Blumenthal, to spread rumors that Monica was a stalker, trying to blackmail the president.

Oh, boy -- this is embarrassing. This must seem very sloppy. That wasn't Trump either; it was Hillary Clinton.

There must be something here that was Trump ... Here! I have one.

When an attractive woman desperately in need of a job came to Trump's office in 1993, instead of helping, he lunged at her, kissed her on the mouth, grabbed her breast and put her hand on his genitals. He later told a mistress that the claim was absurd because the woman, Kathleen Willey, had such small breasts.

Uh-oh -- you're not going to believe this, but -- yep, that was Bill Clinton.

This one, I'm sure was Trump. In January 1992, Trump went on "60 Minutes" to slime nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers, knowing full well she was telling the truth. He implied she belonged in a loony bin, telling millions of viewers "every time she called, distraught ... she said sort of wacky things."

Dammit! I don't know how this keeps happening. That wasn't Trump! That was Hillary, smearing one of her husband's sexual conquests.

Let's just go back to the Times' story, based on months of investigation and interviews with hundreds of women. I'll give it to you straight: When Trump was at the New York Military Academy as a teenager, one person who knew him said -- and this is corroborated by two other witnesses: "Donald was extremely sensitive to whether or not the women he invited to campus were pretty."

I almost threw up reading that. I am physically ill.

SOURCE

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Graduates face a big challenge

When they go into the Real World, college and high school grads will actually have to THINK

Paul Driessen

As they don caps and gowns, endure commencement speeches and take their diplomas, many high school and college graduates face bleak prospects in an economy that grew a dismal 0.5% the first quarter.

The United States added a meager 160,000 new non-farm jobs in April, a paltry 4,000 of them in manufacturing. First quarter 2016 averaged just 203,000 jobs per month. The labor force participation rate remains stuck at an abysmal 63% – meaning 93 million working age Americans are still unemployed.

Many who are working hold multiple jobs to make ends meet, while others are toiling at temporary, part-time or “gig” jobs, at lower pay, with few benefits and little job security.

They and the graduates may be hoping that Donald Trump will “Make America great again,” Hillary Clinton will “revitalize” our ailing economy, or Bernie Sanders will “invest” trillions of tax dollars to train and employ millions of young Americans in a 100% clean energy economy.

Like the candidates, they may be blaming our economic woes on China, climate change, Wall Street, the one percent, Mexico, inadequate supervision of greedy capitalist corporations, unpatriotic companies fleeing to foreign shores, or insufficient tax revenues to support essential government programs.

All are appealing excuses, but the real answer is much closer to home and involves multiple self-inflicted wounds. Most legislators and regulators are loath to admit any responsibility for our economic woes, and most graduates will find it hard to analyze the problem. However, the analytical process is essential.

The difficulty for students and graduates is that most were not taught how to think. Their teachers too often present mostly liberal-socialist ideology as unassailable fact, discourage or prohibit discussion and debate, and shelter sensitive snowflakes via speech codes, safe zones and bans on verbal microagression.

While raking in millions of taxpayer dollars for climate research, a cabal of RICO-20 university professors has gone even further. It has asked US and state attorneys general to launch racketeering prosecutions of anyone who disagrees with alarmist views on “dangerous manmade global warming.”

World-renowned physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman’s admonition has been largely discarded in the halls of academia. “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered,” he said, “than answers that can’t be questioned.” Sadly, answers that none dare question now dominate classroom life.

And so, as you and graduates in your family or circle of friends leave those institutions of rote learning, and go into the Real World, you will have to undertake your greatest challenge: learning to think.

Examining, questioning, discussing and challenging hypotheses, assertions and accepted “facts” are always absolutely essential for scientific, technological and societal progress. In this election year, it behooves us all to demand details from candidates, honestly assess whether their proposals will improve or worsen our economic situation, insist on and participate in rigorous debates, and cast informed votes.

As you try to understand why our economy has been so anemic, why so few jobs are being created, and why one in three young American voters supports socialism as better than free enterprise – here are just a few realities to ponder.

God gave Moses Ten Commandments. The federal government has given us tens of thousands of commandments, enforced by millions of nameless, unelected bureaucrats who have nearly unfettered discretion to interpret and administer their rules. Complying with them costs American families and businesses $1.9 trillion per year. That’s more than the entire Russian economy, more than the IRS collected in corporate and personal taxes in 2015, and $15,000 in hidden costs for every family.

The Obama Administration has been publishing 80,000 pages of new regulations per year – and is preparing to unleash 3,000 more rules before it leaves office. Small businesses are hurt most, as they cannot possibly read, comprehend and comply with this regulatory tsunami. They thus live in fear that any unknown or inadvertent violation will result in massive fines or even jail time. Indeed, more than 4,500 federal rules carry criminal penalties, and lack of knowledge or intent is no defense.

Coupled with the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world, new hourly wage and overtime rules, and mountains of state and local regulations, these federal edicts dramatically impair hiring and growth.

This unintended job and economic destruction has shrunk middle class family incomes by more than $1,000 per year during the Obama era, sent 3 million more families into poverty, and added over 600,000 black Americans to the overall poverty number. The intentional damage is even more insidious.

The Obama EPA’s war on fossil fuels has contributed greatly to the loss of nearly 50,000 coal industry jobs since 2008. Mrs. Clinton has made it clear that she will “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” if she is elected. Like Senator Sanders, she also wants to eliminate most US oil and natural gas production – while ignoring the fact that fossil fuels still provide 82% of all US energy.

That would mean vastly more land-intensive, heavily subsidized wind, solar and biofuel substitutes. It would send electricity and motor fuel prices skyrocketing to levels now found in California and New York, or even in Britain and Germany: double, triple or quadruple what most Americans now pay.

For hospitals, factories, school districts and other major energy users, that would bring thousands to millions of dollars per year in higher costs – and thus countless more lost jobs and closed doors.

President Obama, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Sanders, most Democrats and even some Republicans justify these self-inflicted wounds by saying they are necessary to prevent catastrophic global warming and climate change. But even if plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is a primary culprit – and thousands of scientists say it is not – even shutting down all US fossil fuel use would bring no benefits, amid tremendous pain.

China alone accounts for 80% of the entire world’s increase in coal consumption so far this century. It now consumes as much coal as the rest of the world combined. The 155 new coal-fired power plants it is currently planning to build will burn twice as much coal as all of Germany’s existing plants do. Coal generates 67% of China’s electricity, oil and natural gas 23%, hydro 10%, and wind and solar combined only 2 percent. Nearly a billion Chinese still exist on less than $5 per day, and the Middle Kingdom will be burning fossil fuels for decades to improve their living standards.

India, Indonesia, the rest of Asia, all of Africa and much of Latin America are in the same situation. All are burning coal, oil and natural gas to lift billions out of abject poverty – and will continue doing so.

America’s political classes always protect themselves. It is poor, minority, middle-class and blue-collar families that will suffer – along with most of you graduates – from these all pain/no gain climate policies.

Politicians always like to show they care, by giving other people’s money to worthy causes, their favorite voting blocs and their campaign contributors. They are far less charitable with their own money. Joe and Jill Biden raked in $333,182 in 2009 – and gave just $4,820 to charity; during the previous decade, they averaged $369 annually. Between 2007 and 2014, the Clintons “earned” $139 million; they gave $14,959,450 to charity – but 98.7% of that went to the scandal-ridden Clinton Family Foundation.

Socialist and anti-energy policies boil down to strangling jobs and wealth creation … making the economic pie smaller and smaller … taking money from hard-working taxpayers and giving it to “less fortunate” people who aren’t working but will likely vote for politicians who promise them “free stuff” … and ensuring “more equitable sharing” of ever greater scarcity, poverty and misery (for non-ruling elites).

As to telling poor countries to stop using fossil fuels, it is an unconscionable crime against humanity to impose policies that pretend to protect Earth’s poor, malnourished and energy-deprived masses from hypothetical climate chaos – by perpetuating poverty, malnutrition and disease that kill millions of them every year, right now.

Think about all of this as you take your diploma, evaluate candidates, and head to the polls.

Via email

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

The New York Times proclaimed the results of its six-week "investigation" of Donald Trump's behavior with women on the front page of the Sunday paper. It discovered that Trump is kind of sleazy around women. The Times wants us to know this right now — as opposed to six months ago — when it's clear he will be the Republican nominee running against Hillary Clinton.

No Republican is surprised. The New York Times' shameless partisanship knows no bounds.

When Juanita Broaddrick accused President Bill Clinton of sexual assault in February 1999, the Times was not impressed. It never found her story worth publicizing. Times reporters were first told about Broaddrick's allegation near the end of the 1992 presidential campaign, but they regarded it as partisan "toxic waste."

After former White House volunteer Kathleen Willey accused Clinton of sexually harassing her in the Oval Office, columnist Frank Rich criticized her in a column titled "The Liars' Club."

This is the paper where feminist columnist Anna Quindlen dismissed Paula Jones' sexual harassment case compared to Anita Hill's. She said there was "no reason to let right-wing activists, no friends to either the President, women, or the issue of sexual harassment, shame us into foolish lock step."

This is the paper that published columns written by Hill and journalist Gloria Steinem during the Lewinsky scandal, in which they shredded feminism in defense of President Clinton.

As for toxic waste, this is the paper that proudly put columnist Maureen Dowd on the front page on April 7, 1991, as she slimed President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan when discussing biographer Kitty Kelley's uber-sleazy and uber-unsubstantiated tabloid tales. "The new biography also offers sensational claims that the Reagans practiced a morality very different from what they preached. ...that both the Reagans had extramarital affairs, and that Mrs. Reagan had a long-term affair with Frank Sinatra."

Proof? Who needs proof? The fact that Bantam Books was able to publish Kelley's book without being sued was all the proof this rag required.

Now Trump is being accused of behavior much less severe than that of Clinton with Jones, or Willey or Broaddrick. Keep all the Clinton-defending in mind.

On May 14, Times reporters Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey sneered in print: "Donald Trump and women: The words evoke a familiar cascade of casual insults, hurled from the safe distance of a Twitter account, a radio show or a campaign podium. This is the public treatment of some women by Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president: degrading, impersonal, performed."

They began with an account from model Rowanne Brewer Lane, where she described how Trump asked her to put on a swimsuit at a Mar-a-Lago party in 1990. Barbaro and Twohey reacted: "But the 1990 episode at Mar-a-Lago that Ms. Brewer Lane described was different: a debasing face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and a young woman he hardly knew. This is the private treatment of some women by Mr. Trump, the up-close and more intimate encounters."

The story quickly blew up in their faces. Brewer Lane appeared on Fox News and CNN, trashing the Times' account as a manipulation of her words. She told them Trump was a gentleman (not "debasing") and that she had told the Times she didn't want her story to be a hit piece. CNN told the Times reporters, "Rowanne has asked for an apology. What do you say?" Barbaro refused to give any ground: "I think we really stand by our story. We believe we quoted her fairly and accurately, and that the story really speaks for itself."

Yes, it does.

It's safe to say that Trump is no one's idea of Mr. Manners. His rudeness toward women was summarized by Fox's Megyn Kelly at the first GOP debate. And the way Trump treated her afterward underlined it. But The New York Times now has no right whatsoever to pass judgment on presidential candidates and their treatment of women.

SOURCE

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The mole-hill hunters



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More regulation vandalism

Many businesses operate under very thin profit margins.  So  this typically dumb Leftist attempt to force them to pay their workers more must have bad consequences.  It's most likely effect is to increase unemployment as businesses can no longer make ends meet and thus have to close

The government’s new rules requiring overtime pay for millions of workers have small business owners facing some hard choices.

The regulations being issued by the Labor Department Wednesday would double to $913 a week from $455 the threshold under which salaried workers must be paid overtime. In terms of annual pay, the threshold rises to $47,476 from $23,660. The rules take effect Dec. 1.

Many businesses like restaurants, retailers, landscapers and moving companies will have to transition staffers, many of whom are low-level managers, to hourly pay and limit the number of hours these employees work. That can increase the workload for other staffers, have everyone scrambling to get work done in fewer hours and hurt morale. Some owners say they’ll have to limit hiring, cut services or other costs. Others are turning to technology to try to get work done in less time. And some say they’ll give staffers a raise to get them out of overtime territory.

The new rules, which will be revised every three years, aim to increase pay for an estimated 4.2 million workers, including many who work 45, 50 or more hours in a week without extra pay. Businesses have been on notice about higher overtime costs since last summer, when the government issued proposed regulations. Companies are on the hook not just for time and a-half, but also for higher Social Security and Medicare taxes employers must pay on all of a staffer’s compensation. The rules don’t cover many employees who are office workers, computer programmers or professionals.

Small businesses lack the large revenue streams and credit lines of bigger companies, so they may struggle to afford the additional overtime costs, particularly those already facing higher minimum wages or increased health care costs.

Some owners will decide that it makes sense to give staffers whose pay is close to the $47,476 threshold a raise rather than face an uncertain overtime bill going forward, says Jonathan Sigel, a labor attorney with the law firm Mirick O’Connell in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Money isn’t the only issue. Managers used to staying at work until a task is done may feel demoralized when forced to leave work unfinished, says Midge Seltzer, president of Engage PEO, a human resources provider based in Hollywood, Florida.

“Most of the workplace consists of conscientious employees. It’s going to be difficult for them to just throw their hands up and say, ‘I’m done,’” she says.

Whether staffers will earn more or less under the regulations depends on the hourly wage each company sets. Many companies who expect to pay more are already looking at their budgets for other expenses that can be reduced or eliminated.

SOURCE

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Getting Back to First Principles

Americans still enjoy freedom of religion. But these days, they’re expected to leave their faith in the pew or at home – not allow it to influence their behavior in the public square.

The founding fathers didn’t take that view. "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” George Washington said. “In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.”

Yet many do, in fact, work very actively to undermine these pillars. That’s why I was honored to join the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently at its 40th anniversary event. EPPC’s motto is “defending American ideals since 1976.” But what really makes its contributions so invaluable is that it’s defending ideals that date back two centuries before that.

“We take great pride in the fact that people with differing viewpoints can come to the table and be a part of a larger conversation about these very important and very urgent issues,” according to EPPC Vice President Michael Cromartie. At a time when those who take their faith seriously can feel highly marginalized, EPPC is a necessary advocate.

I’m not just talking about cultural issues, where the role of faith seems more obvious. I’m referring to the whole gamut of issues. As EPPC President Ed Whelan has noted, the Center was founded at the height of the Cold War “to counter the myth of moral equivalence” between the East and the West.

Beyond the missile counts and competing proxy battles in far-flung hotspots lay the oft-overlooked fact that the Soviet Union was based on a godless, morally bankrupt system. The intellectual contributions of EPPC helped Cold War generals such as Ronald Reagan break through the malaise of détente, and achieve what EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel calls “the successful endgame of the Cold War – the victory of freedom over Communism.”

Besides foreign policy, there is a wide range of other important issues to be addressed – and EPPC scholars are there. From stem-cell research and Medicare spending to judicial activism and entitlement reform, they provide legislative testimony, hard-hitting op-eds, and timely reports that flout the superficial analysis so common in our sound-bite culture.

And all from an organization that employs fewer than two dozen people. No wonder Weekly Standard co-founder Fred Barnes has said the Center “punches above its weight.”

The goal, as House Speaker Paul Ryan said in his keynote speech at the EPPC event, is to take what we’ve learned from the great thinkers of the past and apply it to the moment. To the issues at hand. We shouldn’t simply react – we should be making informed decisions that adhere to a clearly defined standard.

Because as much as we’re involved in policy-related, day-to-day issues, we always need to go back to first principles. The team at the EPPC – which includes James Capretta, Mona Charen, Pete Wehner, Stanley Kurtz and so many others – is absolutely central to what is really involved in leading the conservative movement. They put the daily news cycle into a larger context.

Perhaps more importantly, they highlight the need for civil society. You’d never know it from the shouting heads on the cable-news stations and on the op-ed pages, but not everything has to be about politics. EPPC knows that.

President Reagan once honored EPPC “for its singular contribution in clarifying and reinforcing the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the momentous problems that confront the United States.” Here’s hoping its next 40 years is even more productive.

SOURCE

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