IQ, conservatism and racism

On 22nd January I commented on claims by two Canadian psychologists to the effect that conservatives and racists have low IQs. One look at the study told me that it was brainless so I just reproduced the journal abstract and pointed out two of the things that made it brainless. I didn't see any point in a detailed look at the paper.

The study has however become much celebrated in Green/Left quarters, with the ineffable Monbiot in the vanguard. Monbiot's entry into the discussion has however energized a few ripostes from conservatives, with the most amusing point being that after Leftists telling us for decades that IQ scores are meaningless they suddenly have done an 180 degree turn and treat them as highly meaningful!

I thought I might add something to what I regard as the two best conservative responses to the original article. The first is in The Telegraph and makes a number of good points, all of which are worth reading.

I want to say more about just one of them: The point that IQ was measured during childhood (10 or 11 years of age) and that such measures are unreliable. That is however a matter of degree and of purpose. They are accurate enough to be a useful guide to who will benefit from a selective (more demanding) education, for instance.

An interesting aspect of scores at that age, however, is what I call the chimpanzee effect. In brief, this effect is that dummies mature faster so a relatively high score in childhood can lead to a relatively low score in adulthood. So it is quite possible that the high scorers in the data used by the Canadian authors became relatively low scorers later on. So if the high scorers in that body of data were later found to be liberals, it is quite possible that the same people were dummies in later life! So the data could be said to show the opposite of what the authors claim. The data could be said to suggest that it was the liberals who were the dummies.

That is all just speculation, however, The truth is that the data are incapable of telling us which way around it went at all.

That little point is really just a bit of fun, however. The second article by statistician Briggs is by far the most pointed. Briggs had a strong enough stomach to read the whole article. And when he did, he basically found that the authors had misrepresented their results. The correlations with IQ were in fact negligible. They were statistically significant but statistical significance is only a correction for small sample size and the sample sizes in the data used by the Canadians were large.

So statistical significance is irrelevant. It is other forms of significance we have to look at. Let me put it this way: What the Canadians found was (roughly) that out of 100 high IQ people, 51 would be liberals and 49 would be conservatives. Such a near-even split means of course that IQ is essentially irrelevant to ideology, or is not a socially or scientifically significant predictor of ideology.

Now we come to "racism". The correlations between conservatism and racism were more substantial. Briggs rightly detects the flaw in that. The correlation is between WHAT THE AUTHORS SAY is conservatism and racism and there is no external validation of either measure. So all I want to do is draw attention to something I set out long ago: That even eminent Leftist psychologists have NO IDEA what conservatism is. A much noted paper in the field even identified Stalin, Khrushchev and Castro as conservatives! Can you get any madder than that? So it is no wonder that when they use their questionnaires to predict how people will vote, they find that "conservatives" AS IDENTIFIED BY THEM are just as likely to vote Democrat as Republican (for instance). How clueless can you get? What is going on of course is that Leftist psychologists swallow hook line and sinker of Leftist propaganda about conservatives. They believe that conservatives really are as Leftist propaganda describes them. It would appear that they never bother to talk to any actual conservatives to find out what they really think.

By contrast, I am a conservative so a questionnaire that I devised based on a thorough knowledge of what conservatism actually is, did what the Leftist questionnaires could not: Provided a substantial prediction of vote. See here. So once again the arrogance and ignorance of the Left has led them to a false understanding of reality and scientific work that is futile and useless. The work by the two Canadian authors certainly tells us NOTHING about the correlations with conservatism. I have written more extensively elsewhere about the relationship between conservatism and IQ.

For reference, the Canadian study is: "Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact" by Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri

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The Breivik salute



I did not immediately comment on this because I thought it would be obvious to everyone -- but apparently not. When Breivik last faced court over his massacre he gave a salute as he came into the courtroom. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said was 'some kind of Right-wing extremist greeting.'

It was not, of course. It was a COMMUNIST salute. The Communist salute is a clenched-fist salute while the Fascist salute is with an open hand.

What the significance is we can only speculate. While it is true that he mostly read and cited conservative sources in the buildup to his actions, that was rather inevitable given his dissatisfaction with Muslims. Only conservatives have the guts to call a spade a spade where Muslims are concerned. Breivik's other ideas could perfectly well be Leftist.

And his desire to restore traditional Norwegian society is in keeping with that idea. Norway is a very Leftist place and it was only their failure to deal with the Muslim problem that caused the Social Democrats to lose votes in the last election. We may note, for example, that a doctor was recently denied employment at a Norwegian hospital because he did not believe in the Theory of Evolution. See here. Pretty extreme.

That it was Leftists whom Breivik killed makes no odds. Rival Leftist groupings have a long history of killing one-another. The ice-pick in the head that Trotsky got from Stalin is a case in point.

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If You Got A 'Free' Colonoscopy, Thank Bill Dunphy - He Helped Pay For It

Under ObamaCare, Medicare and private insurers are supposed to eliminate the co-pays for preventive care such as colonoscopies. Politicians and ObamaCare crusaders refer to this as “free preventive care.” Those in the real world call it “shifting the cost to someone else.”

That someone else is Bill Dunphy: Bill Dunphy thought his colonoscopy would be free. His insurance company told him it would be covered 100%, with no co-payment from him and no charge against his deductible. The nation’s two-year-old health law requires most insurance plans to cover all costs for preventive care, including colon cancer screening. So Dunphy had the procedure in April. Then the bill arrived: $1,100.

Dunphy, a 61-year-old Phoenix small-business owner, angrily paid it out of his own pocket because of what some prevention advocates call a loophole. His doctor removed two noncancerous polyps during the colonoscopy. So while Dunphy was sedated, his preventive screening turned into a diagnostic procedure. That allowed his insurance company to bill him.

Now that insurers can no longer charge co-pays for colonoscopies, they have to find a way to make up the cost. They could raise premiums, although that risks losing customers. Far better to require folks like Dunphy whose preventive procedure morphs into a diagnostic one to pay the whole bill. That’s $1,100 the insurance company won’t have to pay. And if the average co-pay for a colonoscopy is $50, Dunphy helped pay for the “free” colonoscopy for 22 patients whose colons were squeaky clean. In short, the sick are helping to pay for the healthy.

Last year IBD noted that Medicare Advantage was dealing with “free” preventive services by charging co-pays on chemotherapy drugs and radiation treatment for cancer patients. We dubbed this “reducing costs on the back end.” That is, to stay in business insurance companies will impose cost-sharing or deny care when patients are sickest and in most need of the protection that insurance is supposed to provide.

We also noted who are the prime beneficiaries of reducing costs on the back end:

This may not fit the needs of patients very well, but it suits the needs of politicians quite well. After all, politicians want to maximize their political survival. They can please voters by giving them lots of “free” stuff, and the more voters you can so please, the better. Lots of voters want free preventive care, so politicians find it worthwhile to force insurers to give it to them. Far fewer voters, however, will develop a serious illness, so protecting them is not nearly as useful for politicians who wish to get re-elected.

The truly insidious thing about it is that politicians will be able to blame others for the problems they have created. They will get on their high horse and excoriate the heartless and cruel insurers like Independence Blue Cross. Politicians excel at obfuscation, making it difficult, as Thomas Sowell says, to trace their fingerprints back to the murder weapon.

SOURCE

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Economic Chaos Ahead

Let's think about the kind of mess that we're in. Federal 2010 Medicare and Medicaid expenditures totaled $800 billion. The projected annual growth of both programs is about 7 percent. Social Security expenditures are more than $700 billion a year. According to the 2009 Social Security and Medicare trustees reports, by 2030, 49 percent of federal revenues will go for Social Security and Medicare payments. The unfunded liability of both programs is already $106 trillion.
But not to worry. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it's possible to sustain today's level of federal spending and even achieve a balanced budget. All that Congress would have to do is raise the lowest income tax bracket of 10 percent to 25 percent and the middle tax bracket of 25 percent to 66 percent and raise the 35 percent tax bracket to 92 percent. That's a static vision that assumes that people will have no response and they'll work just as hard and send more money to Washington. If Congress did legislate such tax increases, it would be the economic equivalent of committing national hara-kiri.

Professor Daniel Klein, editor of Econ Journal Watch, and Professor Tyler Cowen, general director of the Mercatus Center, both based at George Mason University, organized a symposium to promote a better understanding of the U.S. debt crisis. The symposium's title, "U.S. Sovereign Debt Crisis: Tipping-Point Scenarios and Crash Dynamics" (http://econjwatch.org), is a strong hint about the seriousness of our nation's plight.

Professor Cowen introduced the symposium pointing out that in 2011, the major crisis was in the eurozone, where Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland dealt with the risk of default. The survival of the eurozone is now seriously doubted. Cowen added: "When it comes to a sovereign debt crisis, it is no longer possible to say 'it can't happen here.' Right now, we are borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar the federal government spends, and the imbalance has no end in sight."

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, associate professor of economics at San Jose State University, says that a default on Treasury securities appears inevitable. He says that the short-run consequences for the economy will be painful but that the long-run consequences, both political and economic, could be beneficial. That's because an economic collapse is the only way we will come to our senses. That's a tragic statement about the foresight of the American people.

Participant Garrett Jones, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, is a bit more optimistic, seeing default as being less likely. But he argues that "default is still possible, and the GOP offers a uniquely American path to default: an unwillingness to raise taxes."

Dr. Arnold Kling is a member of the Financial Market Working Group at the Mercatus Center and tells us that the "U.S. government has made a set of promises that it cannot keep." He says that the "promises that are most important to change are Social Security and Medicare."

Joseph J. Minarik is senior vice president and director of research at the Committee for Economic Development. He argues that a "U.S. financial meltdown today is eminently avoidable. The wealthiest nation on earth, despite a painful economic slowdown, maintains the wherewithal to pay its bills. The open question is whether it maintains the will and the wisdom."

Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns chair in financial policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He agrees with Kling that "the most likely source of a U.S. sovereign debt crisis ... is a failure of the U.S. political system to address the growth of the major entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."

My translation of the symposium's conclusions is that it is by no means preordained that our nation must suffer the same decline as have other great nations of the past -- England, France, Spain, Portugal and the Ottoman and Roman empires. All evidence suggests that we will suffer a similar decline because, as Professor Cowen says, "the American electorate has dug in against both major tax increases and major spending cuts."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Let us hope that the euro and the EU do collapse: "Now yes, agreed, I am known for my euroscepticism, both of the very EU system and of the currency, thinking them both thoroughly bad ideas from start to finish. But I'd like to point out that there are those not as entirely crankish as I am on the subject who think that the toppling of one or both wouldn't be so bad: could even be desirable."

South Carolina sues DoJ over blocked voter ID law: "The U.S. Justice Department was wrong to block South Carolina from requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote, the state's top prosecutor argued in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. ... The Justice Department in December rejected South Carolina's law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying tens of thousands of the state's minorities might not be able to cast ballots under the new law because they don't have the right photo ID."

CA: 9th Circus rules in favor of homosexual marriage: "A federal appeals panel in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, a decision that could lead to the Supreme Court’s consideration of the controversial social issue. By a 2 to 1 vote, the panel overturned the proposition, which was approved by 52 percent of the state’s voters in 2008 and amended the state’s Constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman." [No surprise. This was always going to go to SCOTUS]

Battle for reform starts in Wisconsin: "If a national symbol exists for the movement to rein in the power of public employee unions, it is Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker. He pushed aggressive measures to curb the power and influence of government unions and now faces a union-funded recall campaign, which, if successful will empower unions and expand their power in Wisconsin and throughout the country, including in California."

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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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Eloquence in Defense of Liberty

Mike Adams

On January 27, 2012, the 6th Circuit issued a landmark opinion in Ward v. Wilbanks. It is the biggest federal court victory for campus First Amendment rights since my own victory before the 4th Circuit last April. What is striking about the Ward opinion is the thread of common sense running through every aspect of its analysis. Even more striking is the eloquence of the 6th Circuit as it defends fundamental religious freedom against a full-frontal assault from the LGBT community.

Julea Ward was one of many counseling students being coerced into affirming homosexuality by a state-run institution. She did not seek to force homosexuals to change their conduct through religious-based corrective therapy. She simply sought to refer homosexual clients to other counselors when those clients demanded affirmation of their conduct. Eastern Michigan University sought to force Julea into a cruel trilemma by accepting one of the following options:

1. Lie to clients by telling them she approved of their conduct, or

2. Abandon her religious beliefs regarding sexuality, or

3. Leave the counseling profession altogether.

Julea’s preference was pretty simple: refer homosexual (and some heterosexual) clients to others more willing to affirm their conduct. For this she was expelled from the counseling program. Then the trial court granted summary judgment preventing Julea from having her day in court.

Julea Ward appealed to the 6th Circuit and won a unanimous reversal. The judges concluded that a reasonable jury could have found that Ward’s professors ejected her from the counseling program because of their own personal hostility toward her speech and faith, rather than a policy against referrals. In other words, that was simply a pretext to punish her for her beliefs.

The 6th Circuit judges wondered out loud just what Julea Ward did wrong. She was willing to work with all clients and to respect the school’s affirmation directives in the process. That is precisely why she asked to refer gay and lesbian clients (and some heterosexual clients) – but only if the conversation required her to affirm their sexual practices. After noting her compliance with the rule, the 6th Circuit raised interesting hypothetical questions. For example, would the ban on discrimination against clients based on their religion require a Muslim counselor to tell a Jewish client that his religious beliefs are correct? Would it require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God?

After suggesting that the answer to both of those hypotheticals would be “no,” the 6th Circuit delivered a line certain to irreparably damage the self-esteem of the Eastern Michigan diversity crowd: “Tolerance is a two-way street. Otherwise, the rule mandates orthodoxy, not anti-discrimination.” In other words, the 6th Circuit accused the institution of promoting intolerance – the very thing it said it was committed to eradicating. Ouch.

The 6th Circuit also noted that many of the faculty members’ statements to Ward raise a similar concern about religious discrimination. They noted that a reasonable jury could find that the university dismissed Ward from its counseling program because of her faith-based speech, not because of any legitimate professional or educational objective. They added, “A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems based on a phantom policy as the price for obtaining a degree.” Government taxation and regulation of religious beliefs is a serious accusation. Now, the issue will go to a jury.

One interesting aspect of the case is that the university did not even argue that its actions could withstand strict scrutiny. The 6th Circuit agreed adding “Whatever interest the university served by expelling Ward, it falls short of compelling. Allowing a referral would be in the best interest of Ward (who could counsel someone she is better able to assist) and the client (who would receive treatment from a counselor better suited to discuss his relationship issues).”

This is all just plain common sense. Everyone was fine except for a handful of professors with too much time on their hands and too little tolerance for the idea that someone, somewhere, somehow did not share their claimed commitment to moral relativism. Or course, Julea Ward’s professors really do not believe in moral relativism. They believe they are morally superior to Julea and have the authority to levy taxes on her “inferior” belief system.

For years, homosexuals have opposed the idea that they are sick, in need of change, and somehow capable of being cured by the counseling profession. Today, homosexuals promote the idea that Christians are sick, in need of change, and somehow capable of being cured by the counseling profession. Fortunately, the 6th Circuit is Warding off their sanctimonious hypocrisy and narrow-minded assault on intellectual diversity.

SOURCE

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Government by Ignoramuses

Abetted by a media that is not much better

The country’s problems, although very serious, aren’t that tough to solve. For anyone with a heartbeat and a healthy does of realism, our biggest problem is government intervention.

This crisis has been brought on by federal intervention in various markets that inject liquidity into too few places that give a sustainable, positive return on investment. Let’s look at three areas where federal dollars dominate: college education; real estate and healthcare.

In college education, the federal government is the only player left. Last year, for the first time ever, student loan obligations exceeded credit card obligations. This year, according to both Heritage and USA Today student borrowing is expected to top $1 trillion.

“Tuition and fees continue to shoot through the roof, now exceeding $17,000 per year, rising on average 8.3 percent at public universities this year,” writes Heritage. “[C]ollege costs have increased 439 percent since 1985, despite a 475 percent increase in federal subsidies such as Pell Grants. In other words, more federal funding hasn’t decreased the cost of attending college.”

In fact, the college inflation rate probably has much to do with the amount of federal aid available to colleges. Colleges, like every other business, raise prices when more money for their products is available.

The cost of a college education is rising so fast that students can’t pay off loans, even with subsidized interest rates from the government. “A recent study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy found that for every borrower who defaults,” writes the New York Times, “at least two more fall behind in payments. The study found that only 37 percent of borrowers who started repaying their student loans in 2005 were able to pay them back fully and on time.”

The government’s solution to the problem of too much money in education is throwing more taxpayer dollars at colleges and universities.

Same is true for real estate. After three decades of subsidizing home ownership in the United States, the federal government helped fuel real estate prices to speculative levels and encouraged the least able to repay to borrow money with government guarantees.

4th quarter foreclosures rates rose again at the end of 2011. “Foreclosure starts…increased this quarter,” write the Mortgage Bankers Association, “the first increase in a year after declining for three straight quarters, and is now back up to the levels of the first quarter of 2011. This is largely driven by loans leaving the loss mitigation process and the ending of state remediation programs and foreclosure moratoria.”

In other words, now that the government has stopped interceding in the private contracts between mortgage holders and home owners, foreclosures are resuming the natural course that they could have taken five years ago. But instead the government has intervened and kept the real estate market and home owners sickly, affecting the whole economy.

According to the FDIC, “The government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the government mortgage insurance program Ginnie Mae together account for more than 95 percent of total MBS [mortgage-backed security] issuance since 2008.”

That hasn’t stopped Obama from proposing the Federal Housing Authority absorb bigger losses or pressuring private banks to make home loans easier to get in continuation of the failed policies of the past. These are the same banks that the federal government is suing for making loans to people who couldn’t afford to repay them.

Remember too big to fail? There are more toxic assets concentrated in fewer and fewer places, most held by the federal government, guaranteed by you and me. And these policies were deliberately crafted by the Obama administration.

The story for healthcare is much the same. The largest customer, insurer and payer for healthcare is the federal government.

And government money, combined with demographics have fueled rising costs for healthcare. “The new numbers are consistent with a trend that from August 2000 to August 2010 has seen healthcare inflation rise 48% while overall Consumer Price Index has risen 26% for the same period, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show,” writes HealthLeaders Media.

Again, Obama’s idea of reform is having the government be the only player in healthcare. You know? Because that worked so well for real estate and student loans.

But the most maddening part in the tale is that financial journalists won’t cover the story. Instead of writing about the deleterious effects of federal involvement in healthcare, real estate, student loans, energy and every other area of our economy that is suffering, they often pose as cheerleaders for the administration.

Covering the latest cooked books from Bureau of Labor Statistic regarding unemployment, Don Lee of the LA Times glosses over the fact that real unemployment is at 11.3 percent rather than 8.3 percent the administration claims. Instead he chooses to take issue with Newt Gingrich’s claim that if people hadn’t dropped out of the labor pool that the “unemployment rate would now be 12% or 13%.”

Well, yeah says Lee. Buuuuuut, “while Gingrich has a point that the latest jobless rate understates the pain among workers, the unemployment figure still wouldn't be as high as he says it would be if workers hadn't dropped out. Rather, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, estimates the unemployment rate today would be 11.3% if the labor force had grown at a ‘normal’ rate since the end of 2007.”

Sure. Gingrich has a point, but his over-estimation of unemployment by seven-tenths of one percent is somehow more dishonest than the administration’s undercounting of unemployment by three full points. You have to go to journalism school to be that intellectually bankrupt?

Those idiot Republicans. Would it really kill Lee to admit that conservatives are r-r-r-r-right on this issue? Probably not. But it would kill something more important to him- his world view.

In fairness to journalists like Lee, they are hobbled by their post-modern desire to live in a world that conforms to their vision rather than having their vision conform to the realities of the world. It’s not their fault. They are just that dumb.

SOURCE

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The Smallest Workforce Since Carter

The recent labor reports certainly have some encouraging news. New jobs in January estimated at 243,000 and a decline in unemployment to 8.3 percent suggests that the economy might be headed in the right direction. But, another key indicator that doesn’t get the attention of the jobs number or the unemployment rate shows that all is definitely not well.

As the following graph courtesy of the Labor Department demonstrates, the Labor Participation Rate (LPR) continues to decline. The LPR measures the number of people employed or looking for work compared to the total of age eligible population. As the graph indicates, the LPR has been on decline since the recession began, and it made another significant move downward to just 63.7 percent in January. That is the lowest since Carter era recession year of 1981.

The declining LPR is a clear indication that more Americans continue to give up on even finding employment as the failed economic policies of Barack Obama infect the market place with anxiety and uncertainty. A higher LPR indicates more people bringing home a paycheck and greater economic output. Until there is a sustained turnaround in the LPR, any talk of “recovery” is premature.



Source (See the original for links)

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The steady decline of Pakistan

For 65 years Pakistanis have been conducting one of modern history’s great experiments: Can a nation conceived as Islamic be free and democratic-- the vision of Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah? Or will Pakistan’s identity be defined by “forces that want us to live in fear—fear of external and internal enemies."

The words quoted above were spoken by Husain Haqqani to the Wall Street Journal’s Mira Sethi. Until November, Haqqani was Pakistan's ambassador to Washington where he was a popular figure, a proud Pakistani patriot and a liberal-democratic Muslim intellectual tirelessly making the case that Pakistan should be seen as an important ally deserving of respect, moral support and material assistance.

Haqqani is now back in Pakistan – a guest in the home of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and, as Sethi phrases it, the “de facto prisoner of the Pakistani generals whose ire he has provoked.” Beyond the doors of Gilani’s Islamabad residence, Haqqani fears, assassins await.

This is not just about one man: If Pakistan has become a nation that can’t tolerate a Husain Haqqani, Pakistan has become an intolerant nation, a nation in danger of becoming what Haqqani’s wife, parliamentarian Farahnaz Ispahani, has called a “militarized Islamist state.” Certainly, it would be time to stop regarding Pakistan as a friend of the United States.

When I was last in Pakistan, two years ago, on a visit sponsored by the State Department, the U.S. Congress had just approved – thanks in large measure to Haqqani’s efforts – a $7.5 billion aid package. To my shock, this elicited little gratitude and much grumbling. Why? Because American envoys were to ensure that American taxpayer dollars would be spent to alleviate poverty and fight terrorists -- not for other purposes. People were angry with Haqqani for having accepted such “conditionality.”

I recall the U.S. ambassador getting grilled on a Pakistani television program and sounding apologetic. I told anyone who asked – and some who didn’t --- that aid is not an entitlement; that we Americans have every right to specify how our money should be spent; that Haqqani was correct not to complain about such commonsensical restrictions; and that if other Pakistanis disagree they can tear up our checks. No hard feelings....

During my last visit, however, Pakistan was different. Over the course of a single week, four terrorist attacks were carried out -- one of them targeting the Pakistani equivalent of the Pentagon where Taliban insurgents, armed with automatic weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers, fought for 22 hours. I expected such violence to outrage Pakistanis – to make them implacable foes of terrorism and the ideologies that drive it. But that was not necessarily the case.

A too-common view: The Taliban that attacks Pakistanis should be condemned but the Taliban that attacks Americans may be condoned. America, after all, had wronged Afghanistan by abandoning it after the Soviet defeat, and then had wronged it a second time by returning. The self-contradiction in these indictments generally went unrecognized.

More HERE

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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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Deep dishonor in America's Leftist academe

The Humanities faculty at Durham's Duke University have demonstrated bigoted anti-white attitudes that are perfectly mainstream among such faculty at American universities. An amazing total of 88 of them signed the now notorious condemnation of the innocent Duke lacrosse players before the players had even appeared in court, let alone been convicted. Their hatred of American society immediately blasted away the centuries of wisdom which said "innocent until proven guilty". And the wisdom of that maxim was shown when the players were found NOT guilty.

So what is still going on at Duke can reasonably be extrapolated to at least the Humanities departments of America's universities and colleges. And that is not pretty.

One of the Lacrosse players who was NOT accused by the pathetic Crystal Gail Mangum was nonetheless caught up in the blast and suspended by the university at roughly the same time as the other players. He is now suing. As you can read here, Ryan McFadyen is arguably the person who behaved with greatest honor in the whole affair. He certainly behaved with greater honor than prosecutor Nifong or Durham police -- who tried to suborn him into giving false evidence. There is another glimpse of his character here.

And when McFadyen refused to be intimidated into giving false evidence, Nifong and the police must have realized that he had put them into a dangerous position. Fabricating evidence is a crime with severe penalties. So they immediately went all-out to blacken his name. And that blackening still shows up today in that he has become something of a hate figure to many.

So he is now suing over that defamation and the illegal and improper behaviour of all concerned in the matter.

The trial has however produced some document disclosures that reveal the full depth of the moral depravity of senior Duke U officials. The documents contain bombshell emails from Duke President Brodhead and others suggesting that Duke's primary concern was to protect its PR, even if that meant sacrificing innocent students.

In documents submitted February 3 by Plaintiffs' lawyers, President Brodhead is quoted in an email sent very early in the case to other Duke staff:

“Friends: a difficult question is, how can we support our lacrosse players at a devastatingly hard time without seeming to lend aid and comfort to their version of the story? We can’t do anything to side with them, or even, if they are exonerated, to imply that they behaved with honor. The central admin can't, nor can Athletics.”

And Joe Alleva, then of the Duke Athletic Dept., also testified during his deposition on January 20, 2012, that he made positive and truthful statements about Plaintiffs and their teammates’ character at the University’s press conference on March 28, 2006.

Mr. Alleva testified that he was “crucified” immediately afterwards for making those statements by President Brodhead himself and in front of the Crisis Management Team, all of whom knew how “off-message” Mr. Alleva’s truthful, positive statements about plaintiffs were.

Alleva was the one who later told Duke lacrosse coach Pressler that "it's not about the truth" any longer; that the case was about the interest groups and the integrity (reputation) of the university. (Hence the title of coach Pressler's book, "It's not about the truth").

Or as Robert K. Steel (then chairman of Duke's Board of Trustees) said in explaining why Duke would not be defending its falsely-accused students: "Sometimes people have to suffer for the good of the organization". More details here

You would think that all the exposure of their moral depravity might have created some caution among Duke faculty about race-related matters. It does not appear to have done so. Just a few days ago I ran a large excerpt (scroll down) from an article which summarized the Arcidiacono affair. I will simply refer readers to there for a treatment of that little explosion of rage and hate. See HERE for the full article. Having their warped view of America threatened is intolerable to Duke's Leftist Mafia.

No Leftist will admit it of course but I cannot see why Duke should be regarded as atypical. I don't think there is anything especially poisonous in the air at North Carolina. I think we have seen coming to the surface at Duke what is smouldering away beneath the surface at most of America's universities and colleges. They are true heirs of Stalin and the ghastly Soviet Union. They are a nest of vipers.

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Nasty Leftists and Wikipedia

I have received the following email from a reader:

You might be interested to hear that I corrected the Right Wing entry on Wikipedia which said that the Right are essentially Fascists.

It was an object lesson (for me) in the sheer nastiness of the Left. I found it very easy to undermine their arguments -- their hatred outruns their knowledge by some distance -- but one person in particular who calls himself THE FOUR DEUCES waged a Wikipedia campaign against me, in alliance with others, deleting my comments, trying to get me banned, saying I was a "sock puppet", deleting any change on the grounds that it was not discussed, that I was using marginal or discredited sources, and so forth, indeed any trick in the book he could think of to have me deleted.

To the credit of Wikipedia his every attempt failed, but I saw close up what I can only describe as the psychopathology of the Left.

Anyway, I mention this because in the Talkpages on the Right-Wing entry somebody the other day was saying that the Right are racists, and I linked to your paper about the Left and Racism.

This was immediately attacked by The Four Deuces who said you were a discredited source, and that it was irrelevant, and to support his case he linked to a paper in which the writers said you were an anti-Semitic Nazi.

It was a stupid paper of course, but I was interested to see that the dispute in question, about the Authoritarian Personality, had a Wikipedia page, from which The Four Deuces had deleted every single reference to your work.

Now you may be right, you may be wrong, but the sheer totalitarian nature of their mentality is a real eye opener for me. Nobody was allowed to hear of your work. It confirmed (to me) what you have been saying about the Left for some time. Totalitarian. Nasty.

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More poisonous Leftism in academe: If you are accused of racism you must not defend yourself

To do so is "Retaliation" and that is an offense itself, apparently. It's a private university mentioned below so no first Amendment protection. A defamation action could succeed, though.

by lawyer HANS BADER

Keeping quiet can seal your fate if you are a professor facing a campus kangaroo court after being wrongly accused of racial or sexual “harassment” based on your classroom speech. Civil-liberties advocates, like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, rely heavily on adverse publicity to save wrongly accused professors from being disciplined and fired by campus disciplinary bodies. They put to good use Justice Brandeis’s insight that publicity deters wrongdoing and helps cure social evils. As Brandeis once noted, “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

But as the plight of Lawrence Connell at Widener University School of Law illustrates, if an accused professor speaks up, resulting in possible adverse publicity for his accusers, he increasingly risks being punished for “retaliation” against them, even when harassment charge is baseless. Connell was convicted of “retaliation” because he and his lawyer denounced meritless racial harassment charges against him over his classroom teaching. Retaliation charges have become a growing threat to academic freedom, fueled by court rulings that provide murky and conflicting guidance as to what speech can constitute illegal “retaliation.”

Professor Connell was charged with racial harassment and removed from Widener’s campus because he discussed hypothetical crimes in his criminal law class, including the imaginary killing of the law school dean, Linda Ammons, who happens to be black. (He was also accused of harassment because he “expressed his philosophical concerns about the fairness and utility of hate crime” laws.)

But Connell did not select the dean for use in these hypotheticals because of her race, nor was there any evidence that he had a racist motive for doing so. (Comments are not “racial harassment” unless they target a victim based on her race, and are severe and pervasive, according to Caver v. City of Trenton, a ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Widener.) Far from being a racist, Connell had spent 15 years successfully working to save the life of a black man who had been sentenced to die after he was convicted of murder by an all-white jury.

Leading law professors filed affidavits in support of Connell pointing out that discussing hypothetical crimes against law deans was standard practice for law professors who teach criminal law. George Washington University’s Orin Kerr noted that ”one of the common ways that law professors keep students mildly entertained in class is by posing hypotheticals involving their professors and the Dean. . . . students just love it. If you teach first-year criminal law,” “that means you spend a lot of time imagining your colleagues meeting horrible fates.” In Bauer v. Sampson, a court ruled that depicting a college official’s imaginary death was protected by the First Amendment.

After Professor Connell was exonerated by a committee of law professors, the charges against him were resubmitted, in Kafkaesque fashion, to a disciplinary panel including Dean Ammons herself, another Widener administrator, and a professor hand-picked by Ammons.

While even this new panel was forced to concede the obvious — that Connell had not committed racial harassment – it found him guilty of two acts of “retaliation”: the first was an e-mail protesting his innocence after he was suspended and banned from campus, and the second was his lawyer’s public statement that he was preparing to sue over the unfounded allegations. The e-mail called the accusations against him “preposterous” and said that they were made by “two unnamed students from my Criminal Law class of spring 2010″ who “falsely” quoted and took “out of context” his classroom “remarks.” The panel deemed the email to be illegal retaliation, even though the e-mail did not even name the accusers, because the e-mail supposedly had the “foreseeable effect of identifying the complainants.” (The e-mail led to students speculating about who the complainants were, and a complainant suspected that others “believed that she was one of the complaining students.”) Connell was then suspended for a year without pay. As a condition of reinstatement, he must undergo psychiatric treatment, and be deemed sufficiently “cured” before he is allowed to return to his classroom.

Much more here (See the original for links)

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Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market


Benito Mussolini. His system has triumphed

When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy,” one is left scratching one’s head. How refreshing it is, then, to hear a prominent establishment economist – a Nobel laureate yet — tell it straight:

The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system . . . is . . . an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.

Columbia University Professor Edmund S. Phelps, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics, and his coauthor, Saifedean Ammous, assistant professor of economics at the Lebanese American University, write that the U.S. economy ceased to be a free market some time ago, yet the free market is blamed for the economic crisis. (The real question is whether the American economy was ever really free.)

Phelps and Ammous condemn corporatism unequivocally.

In various ways, corporatism chokes off the dynamism that makes for engaging work, faster economic growth, and greater opportunity and inclusiveness. It maintains lethargic, wasteful, unproductive, and well-connected firms at the expense of dynamic newcomers and outsiders, and favors declared goals such as industrialization, economic development, and national greatness over individuals’ economic freedom and responsibility. Today, airlines, auto manufacturers, agricultural companies, media, investment banks, hedge funds, and much more has [sic] at some point been deemed too important to weather the free market on its own, receiving a helping hand from government in the name of the “public good.”

State-Chosen Goals

It’s great that their list includes the corporate state’s declaration of goals. Too many people are willing to accept government-set goals (such as energy independence) so long as the “private sector” is induced to achieve them. Regardless of how the goals are achieved, if government sets them, that’s statism.

The cost of corporatism is high, and Phelps and Ammous provide a partial list:

dysfunctional corporations that survive despite their gross inability to serve their customers; sclerotic economies with slow output growth, a dearth of engaging work, scant opportunities for young people; governments bankrupted by their efforts to palliate these problems; and increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of those connected enough to be on the right side of the corporatist deal.

Again, kudos to them for noting the increasing concentration of wealth. The corporate state, after all, is a form of exploitation, the victims of which are workers and consumers, who would have been better off (absolutely and comparatively) without anticompetitive privileges for the well-connected and government-induced recessions.

The authors are optimistic that time will work against the corporate state. Young people coming of age in the Internet’s decentralized and wide-open market of ideas and merchandise can’t be expected to show enthusiasm for a system that protects entrenched corporations from the forces of competition. Moreover “the legitimacy of corporatism is eroding along with the fiscal health of governments that have relied on it. If politicians cannot repeal corporatism, it will bury itself in debt and default….”

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

DC: Police suppress Occupy: "U.S. police officers cleared tents from an 'Occupy' protest site in downtown Washington on Sunday, but demonstrators said even without the camp they would continue to fight for economic equality and other issues. ... The police crackdown in Washington comes after police moved to disband other Occupy sites in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina."

The permanence of e-books: "Hands up, all those who can still read a 5 1/4" floppy disk. I've got a boxful of those disks with old documents and programs on them -- and fortunately, I can still read them, until my last remaining floppy drives wear out. How about an 80-column punched card? Or recall a few years back when NASA couldn't read some of their old data from space missions, because the tape drives that could read the ancient tapes were no longer made. Hard drives fail; CD-Rs and DVD-Rs have a limited shelf life; so too do memory cards. Computer scientists have now been bitten by this often enough that it's an active area of research: digital curation." [I keep an old DOS-based computer up and running]

Hate-filled academics at Britain's Oxford university: "Baroness Thatcher is at the centre of a new row at Oxford University after plans to name a building after Britain's first female Prime Minister were revealed. Some academics are hoping to snub one of the university's most illustrious alumnae again - more than 25 years after protests there led to her being denied an honorary degree. Thatcher became the first Oxford educated Prime Minister since the Second World War to be refused an honorary degree from the University in 1985 following student protests amidst cuts to education. And now 17 years on a new revolt could halt plans to name a new facility after her."

There is a big new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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 REVEALING EPISODE OF LEFTIST VICIOUSNESS AND HATE

Leftists are just not nice people. The continuities with Stalin are very visible. Given the power that Stalin had, the American Left would clearly behave as he did. Three commentaries below

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The Liberal Enforcers

Komen couldn’t be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion

By Mark Steyn

As Senator Obama said during the 2008 campaign, words matter. Modern “liberalism” is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to “celebrate diversity” coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity. Thus, the Obama administration’s insistence that Catholic institutions must be compelled to provide free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. This has less to do with any utilitarian benefit a condomless janitor at a Catholic school might derive from Obamacare, and more to do with the liberal muscle of Big Tolerance enforcing one-size-fits-all diversity.

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: In Sweden, expressing a moral objection to homosexuality is illegal, even on religious grounds, even in church, and a pastor minded to cite the more robust verses of Leviticus would risk four years in jail. In Canada, the courts rule that Catholic schools must allow gay students to take their same-sex dates to the prom. The secular state’s Bureau of Compliance is merciless to apostates to a degree even your fire-breathing imams might marvel at.

Consider the current travails of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This is the group responsible for introducing the pink “awareness raising” ribbon for breast cancer — as emblematic a symbol of America’s descent into postmodernism as anything. It has spawned a thousand other colored “awareness raising” ribbons: My current favorite is the periwinkle ribbon for acid reflux. We have had phenomenal breakthroughs in hues of awareness-raising ribbons, and for this the Susan G. Komen Foundation deserves due credit.

Until the other day, Komen were also generous patrons of Planned Parenthood, the “women’s health” organization. The foundation then decided it preferred to focus on organizations that are “providing the lifesaving mammogram.” Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms, despite its president, Cecile Richards, testifying to the contrary before Congress last year. Rather, Planned Parenthood provides abortions; it’s the biggest abortion provider in the United States. For the breast-cancer bigwigs to wish to target their grants more relevantly is surely understandable.

But not if you’re a liberal enforcer. Senator Barbara Boxer, with characteristic understatement, compared the Komen Foundation’s Nancy Brinker to Joe McCarthy: “I’m reminded of the McCarthy era, where somebody said: ‘Oh,’ a congressman stands up, a senator, ‘I’m investigating this organization and therefore people should stop funding them.’” But Komen is not a congressman or a senator or any other part of the government, only a private organization. And therefore it is free to give its money to whomever it wishes, isn’t it?

Dream on. Liberals take the same view as the proprietors of the Dar al-Islam: Once they hold this land, they hold it forever. Notwithstanding that those who give to the foundation are specifically giving to support breast-cancer research, Komen could not be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion. We don’t want to return to the bad old days of the back alley, when a poor vulnerable person who made the mistake of stepping out of line had to be forced into the shadows and have the realities explained to them with a tire iron. Now Big Liberalism’s enforcers do it on the front pages with the panjandrums of tolerance and diversity cheering them all the way.

In the wake of Komen’s decision, the Yale School of Public Health told the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff that its invitation to Nancy Brinker to be its commencement speaker was now “under careful review.” Because God forbid anybody doing a master’s program at an Ivy League institution should be exposed to anyone not in full 100 percent compliance with liberal orthodoxy. The American Association of University Women announced it would no longer sponsor teams for Komen’s “Race for the Cure.” Sure, Komen has raised $2 billion for the cure, but better we never cure breast cancer than let a single errant Injun wander off the abortion reservation. Terry O’Neill of the National Organization for Women said Komen “is no longer an organization whose mission is to advance women’s health.” You preach it, sister. I mean, doesn’t the very idea of an organization obsessively focused on breasts sound suspiciously patriarchal?

By Friday morning lockstep liberalism had done its job. All that was missing was James Carville to declare, “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through an oncology clinic awareness-raising free mammogram session, you never know what you’ll find.” After 72 hours being fitted for the liberals’ cement overcoat and an honored place as the cornerstone of the Planned Parenthood Monument to Women’s Choice, Komen attempted to chisel free and back into the good graces of the tolerant: As Nancy Brinker’s statement groveled, “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto was unimpressed by the liberal protection racket (Nice little charity you’ve got there; be a shame if anything were to happen to it). As Taranto pointed out, in a real-life protection racket, the victim never pays voluntarily: “The threat is present from the get-go.” By contrast, Komen’s first donations to Big Abortion were made voluntarily. A prudent observer would conclude that the best way to avoid being crowbarred by Cecile Richards is never to get mixed up with her organization in the first place.

It’s not like she needs the money. Komen’s 2010 donation of $580,000 is less than Ms. Richards’s salary and benefits. Planned Parenthood commandos hacked into the Komen website and changed its slogan from “Help us get 26.2 or 13.1 miles closer to a world without breast cancer” to “Help us run over poor women on our way to the bank.” But, if you’re that eager to run over poor women on the way to the bank, I’d recommend a gig with Planned Parenthood: The average salary of the top eight executives is $270,000, which makes them officially part of what the Obama administration calls “the 1 percent.” In America today, few activities are as profitable as a “non-profit.” Planned Parenthood receives almost half a billion dollars — or about 50 percent of its revenues — in taxpayer funding.

A billion dollars seems a lot, even for 322,000 abortions a year. But it enables Planned Parenthood to function as a political heavyweight. Ms. Richards’s business is an upscale progressives’ ideological protection racket, for whom the “poor women”’s abortion mill is a mere pretext. The Komen Foundation will not be the last to learn that you can “race for the cure,” but you can’t hide. Celebrate conformity — or else.

SOURCE

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Big Sister Is Watching You

Totalitarian feminism and the smearing of Susan G. Komen

By JAMES TARANTO

The smear campaign against the breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure appears to have had its desired effect, although this may turn out to be a case in which appearances are deceiving. LifeNews.com, an antiabortion site, quotes the statement by Komen founder Nancy Brinker:

We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.
But Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, parses the statement for LifeNews and finds it actually reflects no change in policy: "We have known and have reported that they are continuing five grants [to Planned Parenthood] through 2012. This is a reference to that. The second clause about eligibility is certainly true. Any group can apply for anything. It does not mean they are going to get anything."

Of course, it also doesn't mean they're not going to get anything. The Daily Caller reports that Komen's donations doubled in the two days after the Planned Parenthood assault began, presumably because lots of people wanted to support its apolitical work against breast cancer but did not want to give money to a group that was subsidizing a group that both performs and advocates for abortion.

If that describes you, you might consider following the advice of our friend Susan Carusi: Give to a local breast cancer support group, "which provides counseling and assistance to women diagnosed with breast cancer. At least this way you know exactly what the money is being spent on."

While our sympathies are with Komen in this whole kerfuffle, we must say that the group has displayed an appalling naiveté in its approach to the matter. It's reminiscent of the last big controversy the group was involved in, which we wrote about in 2009. In that instance, Komen hosted a conference in Alexandria, Egypt, for "international advocates." Komen was sandbagged when Israeli doctors who'd been invited to the event received disinvitations from the Egyptian health minister. The Egyptians backpedaled, but by then it was too late for the Israelis to attend.

In breaking ties with Planned Parenthood, Komen made the same mistake: It failed to understand it was dealing with intolerant fanatics. Planned Parenthood's attitude toward abortion opponents is not unlike that of Egyptian officials in the old regime toward Israelis.

Further, Komen offered a rationale for its decision--a new policy denying grants to groups under governmental investigation--that seemed disingenuous and provided a point of attack for Planned Parenthood and its allies. "I'm reminded of the McCarthy era, where somebody said: 'Oh,' a congressman stands up, a senator, 'I'm investigating this organization and therefore people should stop funding them,' " Politico quotes Sen. Barbara Boxer as saying on MSNBC.

In truth, Komen was under no obligation to fund Planned Parenthood. Its decision not to do so was not punitive and did not even appear to be. The episode is reminiscent of George Orwell far more than Joe McCarthy. Komen's actual aim was to extricate itself from the divisive national battle over abortion by severing its connection with a leading combatant.

The conservative Media Research Center notes that CNN "aired a pretty one-sided piece including statements from Planned Parenthood's president Cecile Richards, evidence supporting her claims of right-wing 'bullying,' and even vitriolic Facebook posts decrying the de-funding." No supporter of Komen's position or critic of Planned Parenthood was included. Even more appalling than that lack of balance, though, was CNN's echoing the charge of "right-wing 'bullying,' " while the network was participating in Planned Parenthood's effort to bully Komen.

The Ministry of Information--sorry, the New York Times--editorializes:

"With its roster of corporate sponsors and the pink ribbons that lend a halo to almost any kind of product you can think of, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has a longstanding reputation as a staunch protector of women's health. That reputation suffered a grievous, perhaps mortal, wound this week from the news that Komen, the world's largest breast cancer organization, decided to betray that mission. It threw itself into the middle of one of America's nastiest political battles, on the side of hard-right forces working to demonize Planned Parenthood and undermine women's health and freedom."

The truth is that Komen blundered into a political battle by supporting Planned Parenthood in the first place and was attempting to back out of it quietly.

The Times's view exemplifies feminism's gradual transformation into a totalitarian ideology. Totalitarianism politicizes everything, so that neutrality is betrayal--in this case, neutrality on abortion is portrayed as opposition to "women's health." As we wrote last year, this is also why purportedly pro-choice feminists can hate Sarah Palin and her daughter for choosing not to abort their children.

Komen would have been better off approaching the matter straightforwardly, by announcing that it wished to opt out of the abortion debate and would not support groups that take a position on either side of the issue, including Planned Parenthood. This would not have averted the smear campaign that followed, for Planned Parenthood and its supporters have internalized the notion that abortion is health, and are determined that everyone else internalize it too. But an honest position would have been easier to defend. No one would have been able to dent Komen's integrity.

SOURCE

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Race for the Smear

A cancer charity gets a brutal lesson in abortion politics

'Politics have no place in health care," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement Thursday. That pronouncement may strike New Yorkers, who've spent a decade complying with Mr. Bloomberg's nanny-state mandates on smoking and trans-fats, as ironic. Most recently, his administration has come under fire for using fake photos of diabetic amputees in subway ads about the dangers of sweetened beverages.

But Mr. Bloomberg was referring to the one area of "health care" that he believes should be left to individual choice: abortion. He announced a personal donation of $250,000 to Planned Parenthood, America's leading abortion provider, in response to a breast cancer charity's decision not to renew its six-figure grants to the group.

Dallas-based Susan G. Komen for the Cure had given Planned Parenthood $580,000 in 2010 and $680,000 in 2011 to provide initial breast cancer screenings, and referrals for mammograms, biopsies and treatment, in 19 of its clinics. Komen attributed its decision not to re-up to its adoption of a policy barring grants to organizations under investigation by any branch of the government. A House subcommittee is looking into whether Planned Parenthood has violated the law by spending government money on abortions.

Planned Parenthood's supporters say the probe is politically motivated. As it is a Congressional investigation, that is a trivial truth. We suspect, in any case, that the investigation was a pretext—that Komen, whose mission is apolitical, dumped Planned Parenthood because it wished to escape involvement with abortion politics. After all, its ubiquitous pink ribbons and "Race for the Cure" marketing invite donations to cure cancer, not to support abortion providers.

Planned Parenthood is not about to let anyone escape without exacting retribution. With the help of allies in politics, the media and other advocacy groups, this week it undertook a vicious campaign against Komen that explicitly urged corporate donors to cut off the charity if it didn't relent. Individual Komen board members have been publicly attacked, as if trying to stay neutral in abortion politics is a crime against women.

Yesterday Komen responded by seeming to back down. "We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants," Komen founder Nancy Brinker said in a statement.

It's unclear whether Planned Parenthood has actually brought Komen to heel. Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute argues that the wording of Ms. Brinker's latest statement reflects no actual change in policy. Komen never planned to revoke existing grants, and eligibility to apply for a grant does not necessarily mean eligibility to receive one. He advises that potential donors to Komen wait and see.

Apart from the brutal lesson in the intolerance of abortion advocates, the larger principle at stake is the right of a charity to donate to whomever it likes, for whatever reason it likes. Mr. Bloomberg is free to do whatever he wants with his money. But it is to his great discredit that he would join a campaign to smear Komen for exercising exactly the same right.

SOURCE

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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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Jobless rate has fallen because of dropouts

The big drop in the unemployment rate in recent months to 8.3 percent from double-digit rates during the recession came at a fortunate time for President Obama, but economists say it as much because of young people dropping out of the labor market as it is the result of businesses adding jobs.

“A dip in the unemployment rate as we head into an election year has to be good news for President Obama,” said Claire Moore, a blogger at High Beam Business. “On the face of it, a lower unemployment rate sounds good,” but the recent declines reflect not only an uptick in job growth but also the exit of thousands of potential young workers from the labor force.

When people stop looking for work, they are no longer counted as part of the labor force or “unemployed.” Evidence suggests that many of the young dropouts, who proved to be instrumental in Mr. Obama’s election in 2008, are continuing their schooling to avoid the tough job market and to increase their skills and chances of eventually securing employment.

“People stop looking for work for various reasons, which might include taking an early retirement, going back to school, or deciding to be a full-time, stay-at-home parent,” Ms. Moore said.

The president isn’t going to make “political hay” when that causes a decline in unemployment, she said, because “if they all decided to start looking for work tomorrow, the jobless rate would skyrocket again.”

While a growing number of baby boomers are also stopping work as they retire, the exit from the workforce has been most the pronounced among teenagers and the so-called millennials, now in their 20s.

The percentage of workers ages 16 to 19 has dropped 4.3 percentage points to 34.2 percent since the end of the recession in 2010, while the share of people between 20 and 24 working has declined 1.6 percentage points to 71.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Participation in the workforce was on the decline among those groups even before the recession, but it accelerated when millions of jobs disappeared.

“This probably has to do with younger workers willfully opting out of the job search process, given today’s tough job market,” said Mark Vitner, an economist with Wells Fargo. “Young people tend to have less financial responsibilities, such as mortgages and food expenses,” than their parents, the baby boomers, who have continued to work at higher-than-usual rates, he said.

Several studies have found that the decline in work among young people closely mirrors a surge in college enrollments in recent years. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys show that the greater a person’s education and training, the better their success at getting good jobs and higher pay.

More HERE

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Barack Obama's reckless and politically foolish war on religion

At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington yesterday, President Barack Obama suggested that his desire to raise taxes on higher-income Americans was rooted in the Bible. 'For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that 'for unto to whom much is given, much shall be required',' he said.

Which prompted Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah (and a Mormon) to comment acidly: 'Someone needs to remind the President that there was only one person who walked on water and he did not occupy the Oval Office. I think most Americans would agree that the Gospels are concerned with weightier matters than effective tax rates.'

It was just the latest example of Obama's tin ear on matters religious. Remember, this is the man who was a member of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago, where sermons about 'God Damn America' and the US being responsible for 9/11 were preached but which remained, in Obama's eyes, a place that was not 'actually particularly controversial'.

Far more serious, however, than Obama's crude attempt to state that the rich should pay higher taxes because Jesus wanted them to (in addition to this being, in VP Joe Biden's view, a patriotic obligation) are his recent actions which amount to a declaration of war on the Roman Catholic church.

On January 20th, as much of the American political class was preoccupied with the impending GOP South Carolina primary, Obama's Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was a requirement for contraceptive services to be offered by insurance policies supported under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

While there were exceptions for places of worship, there was no conscience protections for church-run schools, hospitals and social service agencies. These organisations will be required by law to provide free contraception to employees, even thought that is in violation of church teachings.

The move has been condemned by figures on both the Left and Right. The liberal Washington Post columnist E.J.Dionne lit into Obama. So too did his colleague Michael Gerson, formerly President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter.

Obama's decision was that of a doctrinaire secular liberal trying to use government power to rein in religious freedom. It's not about freedom of the individual - contraceptive services are freely available elsewhere. As Melinda Henneburger puts it, it's about 'forcing nuns to dole out free diaphragms in violation of their religious freedom and the Constitution that guarantees it'.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: 'To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable.'

Why has Obama done this? Firstly, because at core he is a secular liberal. I always thought that he was in a tough position over Jeremiah Wright because in reality he hadn't gone to church much - and doubtless even when he was there he hadn't paid much attention to the sermons.

The reason he became involved in Wright's church was, in standard political fashion, to help him build a political base and put down roots in Chicago. To run for US President or even for the Senate it's a virtual prerequisite to an observant Christian or Jew - Obama was savvy enough to make sure he was no exception.

Obama knows that political power of religion. He has made lofty speeches about the role of faith in a democracy and his own personal faith. He went to Notre Dame University in 2009, where he cited the need to "honour the conscience of those who disagree with abortion".

The second, almost inescapable, reason for Obama decision, as Dionne puts it, to throw his Catholics allies "under the bus", is politics - or, more specifically, Obama's re-election.

It's about shoring up the Democratic base and energising liberal pro-Choice groups - and accepting that those in the middle on the issue will not vote for him. It's yet another indication that Obama believes that his path to re-election is a very narrow one - he's seeking to consolidate the support he already has rather than extending it.

A senior Democrat told Politico: 'Catholics who don’t believe in condoms aren’t going to vote for Barack Obama anyway. Let’s get real.' You don't get a ot more cynical than that.

The trouble is that Obama beat John McCain by nine points among Catholics in 2008 (largely because of Hispanic backing) but that lead over Republicans is much narrower already. Among white Catholics, Mitt Romney currently holds a 13-point lead and Obama's support among white churchgoers is declining steadily. Catholics make up more than a quarter of the electorate and are an important constituency in battleground states.

White House aides were buoyed today by news that 243,000 new American jobs were added in January and unemployment, dropping steadily for months, is now at 8.3 percent. No doubt Obama strategists calculate that the President's chances of re-election are edging upwards because of the improving economy.

But when Newt Gingrich talks of a 'war on the Catholic Church' and Mitt Romnney of an 'assault on religion' they are engaging not in excessive campaign rhetoric but in propagating a message that both resonates and that is based in truth.

Politically, as well as morally and constitutionally, Obama's move seem bone-headed. As Peggy Noonan writes today: 'President Obama just may have lost the election.'

SOURCE

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Barbara Boxer Welcomes You To ‘Magical Pharmaceutical Land’

Yesterday in the Huffington Post, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., taught us an important lesson: Health care can be free!

For example, she wrote, “When President Obama announced that because of health care reform, birth control would soon be available for free in new insurance plans, you would have expected universal approval.” She also wrote, “Finally, (Obama’s) decision will help working families by giving them access to free birth control.”

Now, some of you ignorant rubes may be saying, “Hey, wait a minute. Birth control isn’t free. Someone has to pay for it to be produced, packaged and then shipped to the store. In this context, ‘free’ only means that the consumer isn’t paying any money for it. But those costs still have to be paid, whether it is by taxpayers or people who will now pay higher insurance premiums.” Here’s what Sen. Boxer would say to you:

There is this magical place known as Pharmaceutical Land, where prescription drugs grow on trees and bushes. For years all the pharmaceuticals we wanted and needed were there for the picking.

But years ago evil pharmaceutical companies came in and put up fences around Pharmaceutical Land and put heavy locks on the gates. They paid off Republicans to guard Pharmaceutical Land. Now people had to pay money to get prescription drugs.

But thankfully, Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, and along with visionary senators like me, we passed a health care bill that starts to remove those locks and tear down those fences. The areas in which birth control pills are grown are now open to the public. They are free once more!

We haven’t gotten all of the locks and fences removed yet. There is still much work to be done. But if we can get the evil pharmaceutical companies and obstructionist Republicans out of the way, soon all areas of Pharmaceutical Land will be open to everyone, and prescription drugs will be as free as the air we breathe!

Now that you ignorant rubes have been re-educated, hopefully you won’t be bringing up any more silly nonsense about “costs” or “taxpayers.”

SOURCE

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Unionization rate approaching zero

Big Labor is Fighting UsBig Labor must be in full panic mode. They lost their first Rust Belt state to right-to-work laws yesterday in Indiana. And today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports dismal numbers for the rate of unionization.

How dismal? How about the rate is near zero.

As Mickey Kaus reports at The Daily Caller, “The most significant number in the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics release on unionization is probably this: Only 6.9 percent of private sector workers are in unions. That’s the same percent as last year. In the middle of the 20th century, it was 35%. … The number is significant because it suggests that labor’s much-publicized private sector organizing drives have failed.”

We constantly hear labor unions tell us that without them workers would be in a state of oppression. Well, as time continues to progress we are increasingly seeing that without labor unions “protecting” workers, things are seeming to get better for workers everywhere. Americans everywhere seem to be realizing this fact, if only the labor bosses would come around…

SOURCE

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Worse Than Death Panels

During the debate over ObamaCare, more than one critic charged that government panels would make life and death decisions affecting patient care.

Now it seems the Obama administration is contemplating something that is even scarier: doctors would be given immunity from malpractice lawsuits, but only if they practice medicine according to government guidelines. The pressure would be enormous. Have you ever met a doctor who wanted to be sued?

The original "death panel" charges were not entirely baseless. Former Senator Tom Daschle, who wrote the blueprint for health reform, advocated a "comparative effectiveness" agency that would decide which medical procedures were worthwhile and which ones were not. As a model, Dashiell pointed to the National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness (NICE) in Britain. How are patients faring under that regime? According to the World Health Organization, about 25,000 British patients die prematurely every year because they do not have access to cancer drugs that are routinely available in the United States and continental Europe.

There is no similar agency with comparable powers under ObamaCare. But there are many ways in which the same results can be achieved indirectly. For example, Medicare has announced it will start paying more to hospitals that follow a dozen procedures, including administering antibiotics prior to surgery and anticlotting medication to heart attack patients. It will pay less to hospitals that don’t comply. The same thing is about to happen to doctors. Those who comply on up to 194 different metrics — including adopting electronic medical records — will get higher fees. Those who resist will get lower ones.

These are examples of a much larger trend: Washington telling the medical community how to practice medicine. Even though a recent study finds little relationship between the inputs Medicare wants to pay for and such outputs as patient survival, and even though the latest pilot programs show that paying doctors and hospitals for performance doesn’t improve quality, we are about to usher in the era of big brother medical care.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Countering the assault on capitalism: "Capitalism has been the most successful institution in human history yet it has never gained the legitimacy it merits. As Milton Friedman stated: ‘Everywhere capitalism has been tried, it has succeeded. Everywhere socialism has been tried, it has failed. The lesson learned? We need more socialism!’"

It's dying! "The New York Times Company suffered a net loss of almost $40million in 2011, with its fourth quarter profits falling by 12.2 per cent compared to the same period in 2010. The company is grappling with sinking advertising revenue and a recent change in the top management after losing CEO Janet Robinson, who received a multimillion dollar severance package. They said it continued to add subscribers for its digital products in the fourth quarter. The company's loss was blamed on the terminal decline in print advertising. The problems plaguing newspaper companies are well known. Readers have ditched print for digital, causing circulation and advertising revenue to plummet."

Venerable A-10 Warthog Faces Extinction: "The venerable A-10 tank killer aircraft is taking a hit of its own as part of the Defense Department’s decision to eliminate six of the Air Force’s tactical air squadrons and one training squadron. Air National Guard squadrons will bear the brunt of the losses. Three of the five A-10 squadrons going away will be Guard units. Air Force leaders plan to eliminate one Reserve and one active duty squadron. The Air Force will also decommission one Guard F-16 squadron and one F-15 training squadron. Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. James Winnefeld confirmed the type of aircraft and duty status of each squadron during an editorial board meeting with Gannett Government Media reporters, said Lt. Col. Patrick Seiber, Winnefeld’s spokesman."

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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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Jim Moran, Racist Pig

Michelle Malkin

Congressman Jim Moran is an old white Democrat from Virginia who thinks he can judge whether we minority conservatives are acting sufficiently non-white enough. Moran's an inveterate bully, a brawler, a crook and a bigot. And not one of his civility-preaching liberal colleagues has the courage to call him out.

Responding on cable news to GOP Rep. Allen West's blunt criticisms of President Obama this week, Moran derided the retired U.S. Army colonel, who is black, as "not representative of the African-American community." Moran then launched into the kind of tired race-traitor tirade I've heard from progressives of pallor for more than 20 years.

How dare we "people of color" stray from the left's ideological plantation? If we choose personal responsibility over entitlement, capitalism over statism or self-determination over identity politics, presumptuous white liberals appoint themselves spokespeople for our forefathers and deciders of our true destinies.

To wit: Lt. Col. West "just seems clueless now that he has climbed aboard ship," Moran fumed. "He's climbed this ladder of opportunity that was constructed by so many of his ancestors' sweat, sacrifice, blood, you know, they did everything they could for his generation to be successful. But now that he's climbed on board ship, instead of reaching down and steadying the ladder, he wants to push it off."

West, his father, his mother and his brother all dedicated their lives to military service; four consecutive generations of his family served in the U.S. armed forces. As a freshman congressman, West's message has been a compelling agenda of self-empowerment. For this, he is savaged by a House colleague as a racial saboteur?

But Moran was just warming up. Next, he contrasted conservative West with big-government savior Barack Obama, who he said acted in proper accordance with his ancestors "by reducing college tuition and training our workers, trying to get a decent job for everybody" and leaving a "constructive legacy."

Er, how's the savior's near double-digit unemployment, record food stamp enrollment, re-inflation of the housing and higher-education bubbles, and massive redistribution of wealth from the working class to the Wall Street bundler class working out for you?

Moran hailed Obama as "our Lion King" and compared his Republican detractors to the "hyenas in the background trying to cause trouble" for the White House. This bumbling chief of political correctness apparently is unaware that those hyenas in the Disney movie have been criticized for perpetuating negative stereotypes about blacks and Hispanics. Dog-whistle politics, anyone?

Do Moran's constituents in Virginia's 8th district support his incessant race-baiting? Last year, he accused Tea Party activists of racism for sweeping out entrenched Democrats in the November 2010 midterm elections. It "happened for the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States. It happened because the Southern states, the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery," he ranted to Arabic-language television network Alhurra. "(A) lot of people in the United States don't want to be governed by an African-American, particularly one who is liberal, who wants to spend money and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society."

Yet, only two short years before, this hopelessly racist nation put Obama in the Oval Office with a landslide victory. Logic never was the demagogue's strong suit.

The aptly named Moran, an 11-term incumbent, continues to be rewarded by voters for his extravagant spending habits, self-dealing and diarrhea of the mouth. As I've reported previously:

-- While on the Alexandria (Va.) City Council, he was charged with casting a vote that helped a developer friend win a bid for a lucrative plot of public land. A special prosecutor concluded that Moran had violated the state's conflict-of-interest law. He sobbed as he pleaded no contest to a felony charge of vote-peddling. He received a year's probation for a reduced conflict-of-interest misdemeanor charge and was forced to resign.

-- In 1995, he had to be subdued by Capitol Hill police when he threw a punch at California Republican Rep. Randy Cunningham on the House floor. After the incident, Moran blamed "talk radio" for creating a hostile environment in Washington. That same year, he screamed "I'll break your nose" at Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton during a hearing.

-- In 2002, Moran revealed in financial disclosure statements that he accepted a $50,000 loan in January 2001 from an "old friend," billionaire America Online co-founder James Kimsey. The congressman claims to have paid the business mogul back at 15 percent interest over three months, and his spokesman emphasized the loan came with no accompanying quid pro quo.

-- Kimsey's gift came on the heels of Moran's disclosure that he had received another Big Business-tied loan: $25,000 from "old friend" Terry Lierman, a drug industry lobbyist representing Schering-Plough. After getting that unsecured loan at a lower-than-market interest rate, Moran co-sponsored a bill that would extend the patent on Schering-Plough's allergy medicine Claritin -- and prevent generic drug manufacturers from offering inexpensive alternatives.

Liberal busybodies are an annoyance. Liberal race-card abusers who lambaste patriotic minority conservatives to cover their own dirty deeds make my brown skin crawl.

SOURCE

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TSA agent accused of passenger theft

US police say a Transportation Security Administration agent stole $US5000 ($4690) in cash from a passenger's jacket as he was going through security at John F Kennedy International Airport, the latest in a string of thefts that has embarrassed the agency.

Alexandra Schmid took the cash from the jacket of a Bangladeshi passenger as it went along an X-ray conveyor belt about 8pm on Wednesday, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's police force.

"In viewing the surveillance video, we observed her removing the currency from the victim's jacket pocket," Della Fave said.
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The video showed Schmid wrapping the money in a plastic glove and taking it to a bathroom, he said.

The money hasn't been recovered, Della Fave said. Police are investigating whether Schmid gave it to another person in the bathroom.

The 31-year-old Schmid was arrested on a charge of grand larceny and suspended pending an investigation..

Schmid, who lived in Brooklyn, had worked for the TSA for four-and-a-half years, TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said.

"We do hold our officers to very high standards, and we have a zero tolerance policy for theft in the workplace," Farbstein said.

It's the latest in a series of recent theft allegations against TSA employees:

- Last month, an agent who worked searching checked luggage at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was suspended after the owner of a stolen iPad used the tracking feature on the device to locate it at the agent's home. Police found seven other iPads there.

- Also in January, authorities charged an agent at Miami International Airport with swiping items and luggage and smuggling them out of the airport in a hidden pocket of his work jacket. He was arrested after one of the items, an iPad, was spotted for sale on Craigslist.

- Two other former TSA agents at JFK were sentenced on January 10 to six months in jail and five years' probation for stealing $US40,000 from a piece of luggage in January 2011. The agents, Coumar Persad and Davon Webb, had pleaded guilty to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct.

- Last year, a TSA supervisor and one of his officers pleaded guilty in a scheme that lifted $US10,000 to $US30,000 from passengers' belongings at Newark Liberty International Airport. A federal judge sentenced the supervisor, Michael Arato, to two-and-a-half years in prison and his subordinate, Al Raimi, to six months of home confinement.

SOURCE

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The land of the regulated

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." He was probably correct, although it seems in today's increasingly intolerant society, a large number of people aren't too crazy about other people being entitled to opinions that are different from their own.

And maybe when Mr. Moynihan made that statement, facts were facts, and opinions were opinions, but the lines are kind of blurred today. Nowadays the difference between the two can be decided by a number of factors, often by which side of an issue a person is on. We are getting ready for an election this fall, and we are hearing a lot of claims, usually presented as facts, from all sides of the political spectrum.

In the past couple of weeks, I've read and heard stories claiming that our economy is getting better, and stories that our economy is getting worse. I've also heard that we have more jobs now than we had 3 years ago, along with a few stories claiming that we fewer jobs than we had 3 years ago. Often those stories involve explanations and qualifiers about the differences between then and now, and comparisons between private and public sector jobs.

It's not very often that one of those stories starts or ends with the phrase, "In our opinion".

Over in Indianapolis, our legislators have been spending a lot of time debating the so called "Right to Work" law. There certainly are a lot of different opinions on the law, with Republicans generally holding the opinion that it's a good law, Democrats holding the opinion that it's a bad law, and Libertarians holding the opinion that it's none of the governments business. I think that might be an example of the "opinions" Mr. Moynihan was speaking about.

But the Indiana Chamber of Commerce claimed personal income increased in Right to Work States, and the Economic Policy Institute claimed personal income decreased in Right to Work states. I'm pretty sure both of them considered their claim to be a fact. I'm also pretty sure one of them is mistaken.

I make my best effort not to be offended by other peoples' opinions, even though there are some real crazy ones out there. Admittedly, I would prefer that a lot of people keep some of the crazier ones to themselves, but as long as they don't try to force their opinions on me, I've always figured that we could work out a way to at least be civil to each other.

Unfortunately, mixing opinions and government doesn't usually work out that way. If a group of politicians and bureaucrats are of the opinion that businesses need to be subsidized with your tax dollars in order to improve the economy, you can pretty well bet that their opinion is going to become a law.

Over the years, our government has developed the opinion that it needs to be in control of every aspect of our lives. From how we distribute our income, to how we save for our retirement, to what we eat and drink. Who we marry, how big the windows are in our homes, even who cuts our hair.

Just to make a point, I've asked several people in the last few years to name 3 things that the government doesn't tax or regulate. Most people can't. And that's a fact.

SOURCE

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Reports Of Capitalism’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Klaus Schwab, a German academic and founder of the World Economic Forum, recently proclaimed the death of capitalism as we know it — a curious critique coming from the head of an organization whose motto finds “entrepreneurship is in the global public interest.”

“Capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us,” Schwab declared at the most recent installment of his globalist gathering in Davois, Switzerland, adding that the world’s business and political leaders “have failed to learn the lessons from the financial crisis.”

The latter half of this observation is indisputable. The doctrine of chasing good money after bad has reached dangerous dimensions on both sides of the Atlantic — yet leaders continue to plow ahead with new deficit spending and fresh bailouts regardless.

But is refusing to acknowledge the increasingly-costly failure of this ever-escalating interventionism really an indictment of capitalism? It would be easy to condemn Schwab for conducting a botched autopsy on the capitalist economic model, but what he’s really done is more intellectually dishonest — he has misidentified the “victim.”

Capitalism is far from dead. As proof we need only examine the ongoing rise of the global black market — which employed 1.8 billion people (half of the world’s work force) and did $10 trillion worth of business in 2009. Within a decade, this “shadow economy” will employ two-thirds of the global work force and represent the largest economy on the planet.

More conventionally we ought to consider China — which has embraced free market reforms and seen its economy expand 16-fold over the last 30 years. In the last two decades this rising tide has lifted an estimated 440 million Chinese out of poverty.

Meanwhile in India — another country which has abandoned central planning — an estimated 230 million people have been lifted out of poverty over the last five years alone.

Not only is capitalism very much alive, as long as there is supply, demand and self-interest in the world it cannot be killed. But it can be severely constrained — as we are witnessing.

The fact that the European economy is unable to perpetually prop up an overextended banking system responsible for underwriting the unsustainable expansion of the continent’s sovereign governments is not an indictment of capitalism.

Instead it is an indictment of botched command economic planning and the unchecked expansion of the welfare state — which are conspiring to undermine the ability of the free market to create wealth.

Therein lies Schwab’s fundamental error — the economic system he’s attempting to pen an obituary for isn’t capitalism, its pseudo-socialism.

Rather than permitting the invisible hand of the marketplace to optimally apportion resources — thereby creating a naturally-ascending cycle of innovation, expansion, creative destruction and reinvention — sovereign leaders have chosen to put the doctrine of Keynesian intervention on steroids.

Rather than permitting the free flow of ideas, goods and services within the economy, these leaders create new taxes, new mandates and new activist bureaucracies — all while manipulating currencies and making speculative investments with public money.

On a more fundamental level these leaders have completely shredded the notion of equal opportunity — one of the basic building blocks of the capitalist system — and replaced it with a presumption of entitlement.

The promise of a “fair shake” has been replaced by the expectation of receiving one’s “fair share,” which of course is predicated on government’s desire to redistribute wealth evenly among the masses while simultaneously preserving a well-connected government-financial oligarchy.

So on the one hand we have corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and labor leaders manipulating the welfare state’s purse strings in an effort to expand the reach of the dependence economy.

On the other we have select corporations and global financial institutions eliminating their own risk through a variety of taxpayer-funded guarantees and bailout mechanisms — pocketing the winnings from good investments while passing the debt from bad investments onto the shoulders of already-overburdened taxpayers.

Again, that’s not capitalism, but pseudo-socialism — a system the world has already conclusively discredited.

If Schwab’s organization truly intends to foster entrepreneurship around the globe, then it must first correctly identify the forces that are working against it. Beyond that it must advance policies that seek to reinvigorate the free market as opposed to repressing it further.

SOURCE

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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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