Wednesday, May 07, 2014
It is not possible to get leftists to feel embarrassment or shame
Typical of psychopaths
Various members of the White House staff, mostly fresh-faced twenty or thirty-something leftists, have been out there lately demonstrating that they have no capability to admit error or feel the slightest bit of shame in mistakes made by this administration.
They quite literally act as if they just don’t see the problem. “Dude, this was like two years ago.” Four people were killed, and around here, we all believed at the time that incompetence was covered up for political purposes. Every piece of information that comes out confirms it.
But leftists are now in permanent “deny, deny, deny” mode. Bill Clinton taught them well. If you never admit mistakes or problems, you effectively reduce your opponents to sputtering frustration. If you never show shame or embarrassment no matter how silly you look, it’s never necessary to admit that your opponents have any valid points whatsoever.
The only thing you need is the willing cooperation of the legacy media so that you get first shot at persuading the legions of rationally ignorant people who don’t much like politics. If the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN all refuse to call you on it, or do so way after the fact so that editors can just say “old news, move on”, then you’ll get away with it.
I’ve long thought that people such as this ass Veitor literally don’t see the mistakes. Their post-modern training allows them to believe that whatever they convince the media and the people to believe is the truth. It doesn’t matter what facts contradict it. It doesn’t matter what the negative long-term effects are. It doesn’t even matter if it dissolves the bonds that hold civil society together. By post-modern axioms, the consensus narrative is the truth. It must be advanced.
Post-modernists don’t feel shame because they don’t think they’re lying. You could probably hook up Veitor to a lie detector and get no indication whatever that he thinks he’s lying. He believes it’s impossible to lie in support of leftist policies and practitioners. Leftism is right by axiomatic certainty, so anything that supports it must be true and right.
No doubt such people would, if pressed hard enough, admit that there are other viewpoints and details that support them. But they would simply say that the human mind can be irrational, blah, blah, blah, and none of it matters. The idea that they might be irrational in support of collectivism never, ever enters their mind.
They are very much like fundamentalists who see the will of God in everything that happens. No religious fundamentalist is capable of feeling shame about believing in God, or shame in the outcomes of what they claim are God’s works. It’s just all part of a grand plan that we can’t see.
Similarly, leftists see the validation of leftism is everything. They are cognitively incapable of seeing the facts and realities that dispute leftism. They are incapable of believing that anyone who denies leftism is interacting in good faith.
They can only see the narrative that upholds leftism. Only that can be true. It doesn’t matter how preposterous it is to someone connected to reality. For them, leftism is reality.
But, as kennycan said in a comment over at Daily Pundit concerning the Ukraine spokesbint, some realities are more real than others. Ezra Klein’s “reality” that the federal government cannot run out of dollars is just a comfortable fantasy in support of leftism. It doesn’t even pass basic logical analysis. For example if that were true, there would never be any reason to collect taxes! If the government can’t run out of dollars, those taxes are not needed.
That’s obviously preposterous. Even more preposterous is the idea that an exponential curve can continue its natural shape indefinitely. As Herb Stein said, what can’t go on forever will stop.
But, if leftists can use their post-modern approach to deny that Obamacare is a disaster and that Benghazi was a horrible, botched mistake that was covered up, or that the IRS is engaging in politically targeted harassment, then why should we believe they will be any different when the debt mountain collapses? They will come up with some narrative that blames Republicans for talking bad about the debt and spooking the financial markets, or whatever.
Using the “never let a crisis go to waste” mentality, they’ll demand that the rich have to just give up everything they own for the sake of society – why do you think they’re pounding so hard right now on the income inequality thing? They’re setting the stage to have options to advance leftism, no matter what happens.
This explains why arguing with them is fruitless. Remember the conversational dictum that you don’t discuss religion in polite company? That is what you are doing when you discuss collectivism with a leftist. (Though their concept of politeness is pretty far degraded from mine.)
Make your case to the muddled middle if you must, but trying to convince a leftist that he has to give up his post-modern, collectivist religion is no more likely to succeed than trying to convince a fundamentalist that his wife’s death in a car accident is evidence of either a cruel God or that God had nothing to do with it. They both have constructed elaborate mental models of how the world satisfies their religion, and there is no talking them out of it.
SOURCE
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Benghazi. Again. Still.
I am not generally a conspiracy believer, but last week, as the result of a Freedom of Information action by Judicial Watch -- a conservative legal organization -- at least one email was released that directly linked the White House to the immediate reaction to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the American Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
The Benghazi attacks took place on September 11, 2012. The Obama Administration's first response -- and it was a significant response -- was that the attack on the American compound in Benghazi was a reaction by "extremists" to a video that had been released that Muslims felt mocked the Prophet Mohammed.
According to the Los Angeles Times: The email, sent by Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security advisor, help prepare Susan Rice, for a round of interviews on Sunday TV talk shows...He urged Rice "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."
Susan Rice, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, went on the shows to make that exact point: That the attack was spontaneous and, therefore, neither the State Department nor the Defense Department were in a position to offer aid to those under attack.
According to the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact.com, that was inaccurate. According to a posting on its website yesterday: "In a series of interviews on the Sunday news shows in 2012, Rice stressed that the violence was a reaction to an anti-Muslim Internet video and not part of an organized terrorist assault."
In spite of Cokie Roberts' attempts to bail out Susan Rice on ABC's This Week, on the issue of the video being the catalyst, Politicfact.com says that when Roberts said: "Rice stressed protests related to the anti-Muslim video and downplayed suggestions that the attacks were planned."
Politifact.com stated that claim was "mostly false" because Rice used the word "extremists" - suggesting these were spontaneous demonstrators - and not "terrorists" which would have suggested a planned attack - on that September 11.
This point was at issue during the October 16, 2012 President debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney when Obama asked debate moderator, Candy Crowley, whether the Administration had said terrorists had been involved.
She said, from the moderator position, that it had use the word "terrorists", but months later, on her CNN Sunday show she said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack the Administration had not blamed it on terrorists, that only 17 days later did they admit it was a terrorist attack.
White House press secretary Jay Carney tried to deflect attention from the newly released email by saying Ben Rhodes' note was not specifically about Benghazi but was about the broader protests that were taking place across the Middle East at the time.
That, in spite of the fact that, according to the Real Clear Politics, ABC's Jonathon Karl sparred with Carney over the impact of this email. At one point, Karl asked:
"Ambassador Rice went on those shows, and she said that the attack in Benghazi was rooted in protests over an Internet video. We now know that that was not true, that, in fact, former [CIA] Director Morell just testified last month that quote, "when she talked about the video, my reaction was, that's not something the analysts have attributed this attack to."
From the transcript of the White House briefing:
KARL: Why did it take a court case for you to release this - (inaudible) -
MR. CARNEY: Jon, I can say it again and again, and I know you can keep asking again and again. This document was not about Benghazi.
KARL: It was her prep for the - for the Sunday shows.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) has announced his intention to bring to the House floor a resolution to form a select committee - bi-partisan - to look into - a throwback to the Watergate hearings - what members of the Obama Administration knew and when they knew it.
I am not a conspiracy guy, but the White House has some explaining to do and all the bluster by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) will not change that fact.
SOURCE
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Why Occupational Licensing Is Unjust, Unneeded, and Increases Income Inequality
Employment gives people earned satisfaction and upward mobility. It can be especially fulfilling when a person is employed in their preferred field. But government policies often deprive some people of these benefits by establishing artificial barriers to employment.
One such barrier is occupational licensure that prohibits employment in a specific occupation unless a would-be worker obtains government permission by first satisfying various licensing requirements. These requirements are typically enacted in the name of “protecting public health and safety,” but their true purpose is to stifle competition from aspiring workers and businesses.
The common perception is that occupational licenses are required primarily of doctors, dentists, nurses, and other high-skill occupations where an unqualified practitioner could do serious harm to a customer. But many government licenses are required of relatively low-skill jobs, and these requirements eliminate the bottom rungs of the economic ladder for many poor and less-educated people.
The Institute for Justice examined licensing requirements for 102 low- and moderate-income occupations such as barber, florist, makeup artist, massage therapist, preschool teacher, shampooer, and tree trimmer in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The report found that five of the six states that impose the heaviest licensing burdens in the country are in the West (see the graphic below on the 20 worst states). Consider, for example, the nation’s most populous state of California, ranked second worst.
California licenses 62 of the 102 occupations studied—the 3rd highest. The average state licenses 43 of the occupations.
California charges its aspiring workers an average fee of $300 in the occupations it licenses, and imposes an average education-and-experience requirement of 549 days. Would-be workers must also pass one exam in the licensed occupations. The average state requires $203 in fees and 307 days in education and experience.
A year and a half of education/training, $300 in license fees, and one passed test might not sound like a heavy burden in California, but to a poorer or less-educated person these can be roadblocks to entry into their preferred field. Time spent in education is typically time spent not earning income, so the opportunity cost of the education requirements alone, in terms of foregone income, can be prohibitively expensive.
The report also found that California:
Is one of only a few states that license tree trimmers, landscape workers, dietetic technicians, psychiatric aides, still machine setters, funeral attendants, dental assistants, and farm labor contractors.
Requires tree trimmers and landscape contractors to hold a contractor’s license, requiring four years of training—the most burdensome requirements in the nation for those jobs.
Imposes four years of education-and-experience requirements with fees and examinations on would-be construction workers. Many states either require no education or experience or do not license this occupation at all.
Is the only state besides Florida to require farm labor contractors to pass a test.
Has the longest education-and-training requirement—a full two years—for teachers’ assistants.
California’s heavy licensure burdens make it harder for people to get hired or start new businesses that create jobs. The barriers are especially harmful to poorer people aspiring to climb out of poverty, those with less education, and minorities. People with means and education are little affected by licensure rules, while the poor and minorities can be shut out of entry points into the job market. This is unjust and regressive.
People have strong incentives to obtain the education they need to be qualified for employment in their preferred field. Businesses have strong incentives to screen prospective employees for minimum qualifications and to provide needed on-the-job training for employees. Professional and occupational associations often maintain certification standards. Customers often share bad experiences through word of mouth and social media. They also have strong incentives, encouraged by personal injury lawyers, to sue if they are damaged. These multiple layers provide sufficient protection of “public health and safety.” Government licensure is unneeded.
The real reason for government licensure is to artificially restrict entry into occupations to increase the wages of current practitioners. In the 1950s, one out of 20 U.S. workers were required to obtain a government license. Today that number is nearly one out of every three workers, according to economists Morris Kleiner and Alan Krueger.
Licensure increases the wages of current practitioners by 15 percent by erecting barriers to outside entrants. And these barriers disproportionately exclude the poor from jobs. Occupational licensing requirements, therefore, tend to artificially increase income inequality—a hot topic among progressives these days.
Lawmakers should eliminate occupational licensing requirements, which harm people of modest means the most.
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Tuesday, May 06, 2014
French Islamic Congress Sinks into Anti-Semitic Hate Fest
In some deep corner of hell, Hitler is smiling. One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Muslims gathered in Paris to attend the Union of Islamic Organization’s Thirty First Congress. It was advertised as a gathering about immigration, assimilation, and culture, but it soon descended into an anti-Semitic hate fest.
When the “Jew” was cast into the convention’s spotlight, the crowd was whipped into frenzy with as much emotion as Albert Speer could have ignited from his Nazi rallies orchestrated with cascading lights and burning torches. The atrocities in Syria, the bloodbaths in the streets of Cairo, the barbaric behavior of Boko Haram in Nigeria, and all the evil and wanton cruelty in the Islamic world that daily leap out at us from television, print, and the Internet, all of this was explained as being guided by an invisible hand, the Jew.
Hatred is the great unifier of mass movements. Hitler dressed millions of compliant Germans in uniforms and marched them to their deaths to fight the international Jew. He convinced the Germans they were Aryan superman. The ideal version of which was blond, tall, and slim. So, consider, here was Hitler with dark hair; Goering who was morbidly obese; and Goebbels who was a dwarf, all preaching the genetic virtue of the blond, slim, and tall Aryan superman. And the incongruity escaped mass detection because hatred is also the enemy of rational thought.
In Paris, Hani Ramadan (brother of Tariq) took his place in the pantheon of Jew haters while spewing the irrational to an overly enthusiastic audience, who suspended disbelief. Does any rational human being believe that all the evil in the world, all the violence and barbarism in the imploding Islamic world, and all the backwardness of Islam is due to the all powerful Jew, who is clinging to a sliver of land the size of Rhode Island in a region that is one huge cesspool, whose peoples, like those meeting in Paris, are seeking eagerly to return to the seventh century?
Ramadan’s words, like Speer’s torchlight parades, echo manifestations of violence in the streets. Ilan Halimi, in 2006, was the first Jew killed in France since World War II for simply being a Jew. He was grotesquely tortured, beaten, set on fire, and left to die. His killers were Muslims steeped in anti-Semitism. Andrew Hussey, the British cultural biographer and expert on France, investigated Halimi’s murder and found that people in the Muslim neighborhood where he had been held knew where he was. Yet, they chose to do nothing, even finding convenient justification for the kidnapping because Halimi was Jewish.
Halimi was not the last Jew to die in France because he was Jewish. In 2012, a rabbi and two children were slaughtered in Toulouse as part of a hate crime. Again the murderer was Muslim, and elements of the Muslim community have not only justified in the crime; they cheered it.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, the Muslim French comedian, who is said to be the progenitor of the popular reverse Nazi salute, the quenelle, is obsessed with making Holocaust denial -- a crime in France -- mainstream. Dieudonne, of African origin, apparently is ignorant of the special hatred the Nazis held for blacks, whom they considered animals.
Anti-Semitism, embedded in the pages of French history, has taken on new life with the vast immigration of Muslims. A Jew can no longer go out on the streets of Paris dressed like a Jew. Europe’s largest Jewish community is faced with whether to remain amid the rising Islamic-fueled hatred or leave. The numbers that are leaving increase from year to year. French Jews buy second homes in Tel Aviv as a safety valve. And French Hasids have moved entire congregations to Brooklyn.
“If we do not stop these words that kill and that tear apart our society, there will be other Ilan Halimis,” former French Interior Minister Manuel Valls warned. Of course, as Hani Ramadan has shown, the words will not stop, and they will be received with the same passion that Albert Speer was able to choreograph at a torchlight ceremony in Nazi Germany.
Words do kill where there is a clear and present danger. They just need time and opportunity to incubate. One hundred and fifty thousand Muslims in their hate-fest frenzy are the creators of France’s future brown shirts.
SOURCE
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Poverty, not inequality, is the source of (some) social ills
By Shikha Dalmia
Conservatives are upset that Pope Francis' recent tweet “inequality is the root of social evil” was meant as a nod to French economist Thomas Piketty's 500-plus page controversial bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which warns that Western capitalist countries are headed for ever-widening inequality.
That the Pope is on Piketty's side is hardly a revelation given that he has previously blamed “unfettered” capitalism for perpetuating oppression, tyranny and every other ill on God's great planet. But he was wrong then, and wrong now.
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Setting aside the irony that this sweeping condemnation of inequality is being offered by the head of the most hierarchical organization in the world, there isn’t much empirical evidence for the Pope’s claims.
For example, the rap against rising inequality is that it slows economic growth and leads to bad health and social outcomes for the poor. But Harvard University’s Christopher Jencks found little impact of inequality on the poor’s standard of living, life expectancy, violent crime, political participation or even happiness.
Consumers in America, the most unequal of all Western countries, he found, “do better than their counterparts in other large democracies.”
Indeed, after looking for all the ills that liberals attribute to rising inequality in Western countries for over a decade, he has come up with so little that he has abandoned his book plans, he told New York Times' Eduardo Porter last week. (He feared headlines like, “Professor Doesn't Know What he is Talking About.”)
Jencks’ findings sound counterintuitive, but they aren’t. Why? Because the real issue is not inequality but poverty: If the rising income gap between the rich and the poor stemmed from the poor losing ground, Jencks would have found the dreaded ill effects. But even Piketty doesn’t claim that the poor are getting poorer in America or the West – only that the rich are getting richer faster. He expects this trend to grow because advanced capitalist economies offer bigger returns on capital investments (rich people's main asset) over labor (poor people’s main asset).
But even if inequality due to the rising income of the rich doesn’t affect economic and social outcomes of the poor, it is still possible that it is inherently corrupting for society. That’s because rich people can be arrogant jerks. Being vastly better off makes them feel that they are better: smarter, more talented, more virtuous and therefore more entitled. Such attitudes erode social bonds and trust.
Indeed, research by University of California’s Paul Piff found just that last year. He conducted lab experiments in which rich people consistently demonstrated an “empathy gap.” Even when their wealth resulted from pure chance, they became less generous and ethical.
That might be true. But my experience with rich people in a rich country like America and rich people in a poor country like my native India suggests that India’s rich are bigger jerks than America’s on all those counts. Whereas in America, expensive cars and designer clothes define a rich person’s style, in India they define his status and worth. India’s wealthy classes are far likelier to blame not the system and its lack of opportunities for rampant poverty, but the poor themselves. Conversely, they are more likely to attribute their success to their own superiority, not good fortune.
Why?
Because the scarcity of wealth elevates its social importance, making it a far more important metric for judging people. Since abject poverty has been more or less eliminated in America, wealth itself has become something of a lifestyle choice. Plenty of Americans opt for modest lifestyles not because they are losers; it’s because they cherish some other value -- leisure or family time or intellectual/artistic pursuits -- over extra income.
This undermines the notion that wealth is the sole measure of success, tempering the pathologies of wealth. This is one reason why America’s rich are far more apologetic – and less flamboyant – than their more in-your-face Indian counterparts.
All of this suggests that the Pope needs to bear in mind that not all inequalities are equal: Inequality that stems from prosperity isn't nearly as big a problem as that resulting from poverty. Wealth, paradoxically, is its own cure.
SOURCE
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DOJ's 'Operation Choke Point' May Be Root of Porn Star Bank Account Closings
Despite being in good financial standing, adult film performers and others in the porn industry have had bank accounts abruptly terminated—and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may have had something to do with it.
Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included payday lenders, ammunition sales, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia, and online gambling sites.
"Operation Chokepoint is flooding payments companies that provide processing service to those industries with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands," wrote Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, at The Hill.
"The theory behind this enforcement program has superficial logic: increase the legal and compliance costs of serving certain disfavored merchant categories, and payments companies will simply stop providing service to such merchants. And it’s working—payments companies across the country are cutting off service to categories of merchants that—although providing a legal service—are creating the potential for significant financial and reputational harm as law enforcement publicizes its activities.
Thus far, payday lenders have been the most frequent target. ... And if payday lenders are today’s target–what category will be next and who makes that decision?"
I'm not sure who made the decision, but it seems the next big targeted category is the adult film industry. Last week, adult film actress Teagan Presley and an unknown number of others in the porn industry received notices that their Chase Bank accounts were being abruptly terminated.
Layton Benton/TwitterLayton Benton/Twitter"When Presley went to the bank in person to ask why, she was told it’s because she’s considered 'high risk,'" according to VICE News. VICE's Mary O'Hara was the first to note a likely link between the porn bank account closings and Operation Choke Point. The DOJ did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.
For years, various government initiatives have been aimed at reaching the "unbanked" and "underbanked." Federal officials claim to want to help these individuals avoid high fees and other downsides of nontraditional financial services, but it's hard not to suspect these efforts have at least as much to do with wanting a record of everyone's financial goings-on. If the unbanked were such a real concern, why would federal agencies be simultaneously encouraging banks to drop more customers?
Targeting porn performers or not, Operation Choke Point represents an incredible abuse of regulatory power. In a recent American Banker op-ed, former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman William M. Isaac called it "a direct assault on the democratic system and free-market economy."
In a March 2013 hearing before a Senate Banking subcommittee, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) pointed out the obvious: that DOJ has "no statutory authority" to be doing this. But why bother with statutory authority when you can just secretly strong-arm highly regulated businesses into doing what you want? I've never been much of a cryptocurrency evangelist myself, but I'm beginning to come around...
SOURCE
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The prison door keeps revolving
by Jeff Jacoby
Longer sentences are the only thing that reduces crime
THE UNITED STATES jails more prisoners than any nation on earth — about 2.3 million, or more than 1 percent of all American adults. Our gigantic penal system is regularly characterized as a national disgrace. I've applied the label myself.
Plainly there is something deeply disquieting about a democratic superpower locking up so many people that 25 percent of the world's reported prisoners are housed in US cells. How can a country with an incarceration rate of 716 inmates per 100,000 residents, roughly five times the global average, think of itself as "The Land of the Free?"
Yet whether America's vast prison population really represents such a scandalous failure depends on what prison is supposed to do. In that light, consider a trove of data released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the US Department of Justice.
In the first major federal study of recidivism since 1994, BJS statisticians tracked nearly 405,000 inmates in 30 states who were released from prison in 2005. Within six months, 28 percent of those freed prisoners had been arrested for a new crime. After three years, 68 percent had been arrested. By the end of the five years (the period covered by the study), the percentage had grown to a whopping 77 percent.
The report breaks down these new crimes by category. Five years after regaining their freedom, 29 percent of the prisoners had been arrested for a violent offense, 38 percent for a property crime, 39 percent for a drug offense, and 58 percent for public-order offenses. (Many released inmates were arrested on multiple charges.) Only 23 states could provide researchers with complete data on inmates who returned to prison; but among the released prisoners in those states, more than half — 55 percent — ended up behind bars once more.
The Justice Department's earlier recidivism study, though organized and presented differently, came to similar findings. It found that 67 percent of former inmates released from prisons in just 15 states had been rearrested for at least one serious new crime within three years. Those included, the bureau noted, "2,900 new homicides, 2,400 new kidnappings, 2,400 rapes, 3,200 other sexual assaults, 21,200 robberies, 54,600 assaults, and nearly 13,900 other violent crimes."
In April 2011, meanwhile, the Pew Center on the States issued its own report on recidivism. Its conclusion: "More than four out of 10 adult American offenders … return to prison within three years of their release."
Such recidivism rates are terrible. It is heartbreaking and alarming that so many criminal offenders emerge from prison only too ready to offend again. Too many inmates come out hardened and more antisocial than they went in. For decades, scholars, policy makers, social workers, and public-safety experts have searched for the holy grail of rehabilitation and effective sentencing that would give us a more humane corrections network — one less congested, less expensive, less unfair, and less of a revolving door for the addicted and the unstable.
The problem with holy grails is that they are more easily sought than found. Bill Keller of The New York Times recently described a range of seemingly promising strategies for addressing what has become "the hottest subject in criminal justice," the US system of mass incarceration. Among them: Easing mandatory-minimum sentences and three-strikes laws. Diverting nonviolent drug offenders to specialized courts focused on treatment. Counseling for inmates about to be paroled. Repeal of rules that bar felons from getting many kinds of occupational licences.
But would they work? Prison reform and rehabilitation programs have been earnestly advanced for decades, but that holy grail remains elusive — and recidivism remains sky-high. American sociologist Robert Martinson made waves 40 years ago with an influential essay that concluded: "With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism." Decades later, reformers are still trying to figure out what works.
Prison is awful, there's no question about it. It doesn't turn criminals into model citizens. It can't be expected to cure dysfunction whose roots go back to a broken home or a lousy school.
But one thing we know prison can do: It can isolate criminals from society, and thereby make society safer. In the 1980s we began locking up more convicts for longer terms. Now we have the largest prison population on earth — and crime rates at 30-year lows. When it comes to crime and punishment, there's always a trade-off. At least until we find that holy grail.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
******************************
In some deep corner of hell, Hitler is smiling. One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Muslims gathered in Paris to attend the Union of Islamic Organization’s Thirty First Congress. It was advertised as a gathering about immigration, assimilation, and culture, but it soon descended into an anti-Semitic hate fest.
When the “Jew” was cast into the convention’s spotlight, the crowd was whipped into frenzy with as much emotion as Albert Speer could have ignited from his Nazi rallies orchestrated with cascading lights and burning torches. The atrocities in Syria, the bloodbaths in the streets of Cairo, the barbaric behavior of Boko Haram in Nigeria, and all the evil and wanton cruelty in the Islamic world that daily leap out at us from television, print, and the Internet, all of this was explained as being guided by an invisible hand, the Jew.
Hatred is the great unifier of mass movements. Hitler dressed millions of compliant Germans in uniforms and marched them to their deaths to fight the international Jew. He convinced the Germans they were Aryan superman. The ideal version of which was blond, tall, and slim. So, consider, here was Hitler with dark hair; Goering who was morbidly obese; and Goebbels who was a dwarf, all preaching the genetic virtue of the blond, slim, and tall Aryan superman. And the incongruity escaped mass detection because hatred is also the enemy of rational thought.
In Paris, Hani Ramadan (brother of Tariq) took his place in the pantheon of Jew haters while spewing the irrational to an overly enthusiastic audience, who suspended disbelief. Does any rational human being believe that all the evil in the world, all the violence and barbarism in the imploding Islamic world, and all the backwardness of Islam is due to the all powerful Jew, who is clinging to a sliver of land the size of Rhode Island in a region that is one huge cesspool, whose peoples, like those meeting in Paris, are seeking eagerly to return to the seventh century?
Ramadan’s words, like Speer’s torchlight parades, echo manifestations of violence in the streets. Ilan Halimi, in 2006, was the first Jew killed in France since World War II for simply being a Jew. He was grotesquely tortured, beaten, set on fire, and left to die. His killers were Muslims steeped in anti-Semitism. Andrew Hussey, the British cultural biographer and expert on France, investigated Halimi’s murder and found that people in the Muslim neighborhood where he had been held knew where he was. Yet, they chose to do nothing, even finding convenient justification for the kidnapping because Halimi was Jewish.
Halimi was not the last Jew to die in France because he was Jewish. In 2012, a rabbi and two children were slaughtered in Toulouse as part of a hate crime. Again the murderer was Muslim, and elements of the Muslim community have not only justified in the crime; they cheered it.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, the Muslim French comedian, who is said to be the progenitor of the popular reverse Nazi salute, the quenelle, is obsessed with making Holocaust denial -- a crime in France -- mainstream. Dieudonne, of African origin, apparently is ignorant of the special hatred the Nazis held for blacks, whom they considered animals.
Anti-Semitism, embedded in the pages of French history, has taken on new life with the vast immigration of Muslims. A Jew can no longer go out on the streets of Paris dressed like a Jew. Europe’s largest Jewish community is faced with whether to remain amid the rising Islamic-fueled hatred or leave. The numbers that are leaving increase from year to year. French Jews buy second homes in Tel Aviv as a safety valve. And French Hasids have moved entire congregations to Brooklyn.
“If we do not stop these words that kill and that tear apart our society, there will be other Ilan Halimis,” former French Interior Minister Manuel Valls warned. Of course, as Hani Ramadan has shown, the words will not stop, and they will be received with the same passion that Albert Speer was able to choreograph at a torchlight ceremony in Nazi Germany.
Words do kill where there is a clear and present danger. They just need time and opportunity to incubate. One hundred and fifty thousand Muslims in their hate-fest frenzy are the creators of France’s future brown shirts.
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Poverty, not inequality, is the source of (some) social ills
By Shikha Dalmia
Conservatives are upset that Pope Francis' recent tweet “inequality is the root of social evil” was meant as a nod to French economist Thomas Piketty's 500-plus page controversial bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which warns that Western capitalist countries are headed for ever-widening inequality.
That the Pope is on Piketty's side is hardly a revelation given that he has previously blamed “unfettered” capitalism for perpetuating oppression, tyranny and every other ill on God's great planet. But he was wrong then, and wrong now.
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Setting aside the irony that this sweeping condemnation of inequality is being offered by the head of the most hierarchical organization in the world, there isn’t much empirical evidence for the Pope’s claims.
For example, the rap against rising inequality is that it slows economic growth and leads to bad health and social outcomes for the poor. But Harvard University’s Christopher Jencks found little impact of inequality on the poor’s standard of living, life expectancy, violent crime, political participation or even happiness.
Consumers in America, the most unequal of all Western countries, he found, “do better than their counterparts in other large democracies.”
Indeed, after looking for all the ills that liberals attribute to rising inequality in Western countries for over a decade, he has come up with so little that he has abandoned his book plans, he told New York Times' Eduardo Porter last week. (He feared headlines like, “Professor Doesn't Know What he is Talking About.”)
Jencks’ findings sound counterintuitive, but they aren’t. Why? Because the real issue is not inequality but poverty: If the rising income gap between the rich and the poor stemmed from the poor losing ground, Jencks would have found the dreaded ill effects. But even Piketty doesn’t claim that the poor are getting poorer in America or the West – only that the rich are getting richer faster. He expects this trend to grow because advanced capitalist economies offer bigger returns on capital investments (rich people's main asset) over labor (poor people’s main asset).
But even if inequality due to the rising income of the rich doesn’t affect economic and social outcomes of the poor, it is still possible that it is inherently corrupting for society. That’s because rich people can be arrogant jerks. Being vastly better off makes them feel that they are better: smarter, more talented, more virtuous and therefore more entitled. Such attitudes erode social bonds and trust.
Indeed, research by University of California’s Paul Piff found just that last year. He conducted lab experiments in which rich people consistently demonstrated an “empathy gap.” Even when their wealth resulted from pure chance, they became less generous and ethical.
That might be true. But my experience with rich people in a rich country like America and rich people in a poor country like my native India suggests that India’s rich are bigger jerks than America’s on all those counts. Whereas in America, expensive cars and designer clothes define a rich person’s style, in India they define his status and worth. India’s wealthy classes are far likelier to blame not the system and its lack of opportunities for rampant poverty, but the poor themselves. Conversely, they are more likely to attribute their success to their own superiority, not good fortune.
Why?
Because the scarcity of wealth elevates its social importance, making it a far more important metric for judging people. Since abject poverty has been more or less eliminated in America, wealth itself has become something of a lifestyle choice. Plenty of Americans opt for modest lifestyles not because they are losers; it’s because they cherish some other value -- leisure or family time or intellectual/artistic pursuits -- over extra income.
This undermines the notion that wealth is the sole measure of success, tempering the pathologies of wealth. This is one reason why America’s rich are far more apologetic – and less flamboyant – than their more in-your-face Indian counterparts.
All of this suggests that the Pope needs to bear in mind that not all inequalities are equal: Inequality that stems from prosperity isn't nearly as big a problem as that resulting from poverty. Wealth, paradoxically, is its own cure.
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DOJ's 'Operation Choke Point' May Be Root of Porn Star Bank Account Closings
Despite being in good financial standing, adult film performers and others in the porn industry have had bank accounts abruptly terminated—and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may have had something to do with it.
Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included payday lenders, ammunition sales, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia, and online gambling sites.
"Operation Chokepoint is flooding payments companies that provide processing service to those industries with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands," wrote Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, at The Hill.
"The theory behind this enforcement program has superficial logic: increase the legal and compliance costs of serving certain disfavored merchant categories, and payments companies will simply stop providing service to such merchants. And it’s working—payments companies across the country are cutting off service to categories of merchants that—although providing a legal service—are creating the potential for significant financial and reputational harm as law enforcement publicizes its activities.
Thus far, payday lenders have been the most frequent target. ... And if payday lenders are today’s target–what category will be next and who makes that decision?"
I'm not sure who made the decision, but it seems the next big targeted category is the adult film industry. Last week, adult film actress Teagan Presley and an unknown number of others in the porn industry received notices that their Chase Bank accounts were being abruptly terminated.
Layton Benton/TwitterLayton Benton/Twitter"When Presley went to the bank in person to ask why, she was told it’s because she’s considered 'high risk,'" according to VICE News. VICE's Mary O'Hara was the first to note a likely link between the porn bank account closings and Operation Choke Point. The DOJ did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.
For years, various government initiatives have been aimed at reaching the "unbanked" and "underbanked." Federal officials claim to want to help these individuals avoid high fees and other downsides of nontraditional financial services, but it's hard not to suspect these efforts have at least as much to do with wanting a record of everyone's financial goings-on. If the unbanked were such a real concern, why would federal agencies be simultaneously encouraging banks to drop more customers?
Targeting porn performers or not, Operation Choke Point represents an incredible abuse of regulatory power. In a recent American Banker op-ed, former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman William M. Isaac called it "a direct assault on the democratic system and free-market economy."
In a March 2013 hearing before a Senate Banking subcommittee, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) pointed out the obvious: that DOJ has "no statutory authority" to be doing this. But why bother with statutory authority when you can just secretly strong-arm highly regulated businesses into doing what you want? I've never been much of a cryptocurrency evangelist myself, but I'm beginning to come around...
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The prison door keeps revolving
by Jeff Jacoby
Longer sentences are the only thing that reduces crime
THE UNITED STATES jails more prisoners than any nation on earth — about 2.3 million, or more than 1 percent of all American adults. Our gigantic penal system is regularly characterized as a national disgrace. I've applied the label myself.
Plainly there is something deeply disquieting about a democratic superpower locking up so many people that 25 percent of the world's reported prisoners are housed in US cells. How can a country with an incarceration rate of 716 inmates per 100,000 residents, roughly five times the global average, think of itself as "The Land of the Free?"
Yet whether America's vast prison population really represents such a scandalous failure depends on what prison is supposed to do. In that light, consider a trove of data released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the US Department of Justice.
In the first major federal study of recidivism since 1994, BJS statisticians tracked nearly 405,000 inmates in 30 states who were released from prison in 2005. Within six months, 28 percent of those freed prisoners had been arrested for a new crime. After three years, 68 percent had been arrested. By the end of the five years (the period covered by the study), the percentage had grown to a whopping 77 percent.
The report breaks down these new crimes by category. Five years after regaining their freedom, 29 percent of the prisoners had been arrested for a violent offense, 38 percent for a property crime, 39 percent for a drug offense, and 58 percent for public-order offenses. (Many released inmates were arrested on multiple charges.) Only 23 states could provide researchers with complete data on inmates who returned to prison; but among the released prisoners in those states, more than half — 55 percent — ended up behind bars once more.
The Justice Department's earlier recidivism study, though organized and presented differently, came to similar findings. It found that 67 percent of former inmates released from prisons in just 15 states had been rearrested for at least one serious new crime within three years. Those included, the bureau noted, "2,900 new homicides, 2,400 new kidnappings, 2,400 rapes, 3,200 other sexual assaults, 21,200 robberies, 54,600 assaults, and nearly 13,900 other violent crimes."
In April 2011, meanwhile, the Pew Center on the States issued its own report on recidivism. Its conclusion: "More than four out of 10 adult American offenders … return to prison within three years of their release."
Such recidivism rates are terrible. It is heartbreaking and alarming that so many criminal offenders emerge from prison only too ready to offend again. Too many inmates come out hardened and more antisocial than they went in. For decades, scholars, policy makers, social workers, and public-safety experts have searched for the holy grail of rehabilitation and effective sentencing that would give us a more humane corrections network — one less congested, less expensive, less unfair, and less of a revolving door for the addicted and the unstable.
The problem with holy grails is that they are more easily sought than found. Bill Keller of The New York Times recently described a range of seemingly promising strategies for addressing what has become "the hottest subject in criminal justice," the US system of mass incarceration. Among them: Easing mandatory-minimum sentences and three-strikes laws. Diverting nonviolent drug offenders to specialized courts focused on treatment. Counseling for inmates about to be paroled. Repeal of rules that bar felons from getting many kinds of occupational licences.
But would they work? Prison reform and rehabilitation programs have been earnestly advanced for decades, but that holy grail remains elusive — and recidivism remains sky-high. American sociologist Robert Martinson made waves 40 years ago with an influential essay that concluded: "With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism." Decades later, reformers are still trying to figure out what works.
Prison is awful, there's no question about it. It doesn't turn criminals into model citizens. It can't be expected to cure dysfunction whose roots go back to a broken home or a lousy school.
But one thing we know prison can do: It can isolate criminals from society, and thereby make society safer. In the 1980s we began locking up more convicts for longer terms. Now we have the largest prison population on earth — and crime rates at 30-year lows. When it comes to crime and punishment, there's always a trade-off. At least until we find that holy grail.
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Monday, May 05, 2014
Black NBA Owner Held Black Only Party, Whites Turned Away; NBA Did Nothing
By Debbie Schlussel
In the wake of this week’s NBA proposed lifetime ban and $2.5 million fine for Donald Sterling, a longtime reader reminded me that I’d written about another NBA owner, a Black man, who held a party in which Whites were refused entry and turned away. And, yet, the NBA did nothing.
As I’ve already pointed out, Black racism and bigotry against Whites, Jews, Mormons, and gays is tolerated by the NBA. But a private racist conversation by a White owner is not. And here is an instance of a Black then-NBA owner whose public, deliberate racism was tolerated and ignored. Jay-Z a/k/a Shawn Carter was an owner of the Brooklyn Nets, an NBA Team, from 2003 through mid-April 2013. But, as I noted on this site, in February 2010, Jay-Z held a lavish party at the Merah club in central London, and banned White people from attending. The party, for music industry executives, reporters, and other Jay-Z ass-kissers was for Blacks only. Bouncers were instructed to refuse entry to Whites.
Reader Chris reminded me that I’d written about this, and noted:
"Wasn’t Jay-Z part owner of Brooklyn/New Jersey Nets when he threw that racist party you wrote about? I don’t remember any NBA controversy over that."
I don’t either, but here’s a reminder from my 2010 post, “More Obama ‘Post-Racialism’ Courtesy of Jay-Z“:
"Jay-Z was caught up in a race row when bouncers at his BRITs after-show party “banned” white people from boozing with the star. Chart legend Jay-Z threw a lavish bash but music industry executives, journalists and revellers were turned away from the roped-off area because of the colour of their skin.
Minders were spotted banning clubbers from the private event because they were not “of colour”. . . . One clubber said: “The security guards were happy to let in all party-goers apart from the white people."
Again, this was a deliberate, public, racist act by a Black NBA owner, as opposed to a private telephone conversation. I wonder how many current NBA owners would keep their teams if we heard everything they say in private. Probably none.
And remember, this is Jay-Z, who was a drug dealer, shot his own brother, and stabbed a record executive in 1999. He was indicted in 2000 over the stabbing and was given a plead deal in which he was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor.
Yet, the NBA had no problem with this racist, violent thug owning a team. Because, hey, he’s Black!
Did Donald Sterling (who is a jerk, but so is Jay-Z and so are many NBA owners) ever stab anyone? Shoot anyone? Deal drugs? Ban Blacks from his NBA games with security guards turning them away based on skin color?
Nope.
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Neither Bundy nor Sterling are racists
Just like the Senator McCarthy inspired communist witch hunts in the 1950’s many Americans today are engaging in the wholly irrational activity of racist witch hunting. Some see a racist behind every bush and these morons are eager to scream for blood when they think they’ve found one.
Of course there are certainly vestiges of personal racism in the minds of some folks. Racism, however, is a matter of degree.
On the one hand we still have an extremely tiny minority of people who actually harbor violent, venomous and irrational hatred for others simply because of the color of their skin. Those kinds of racists are often dangerous criminals and deserve to be dealt with and punished by society accordingly.
On the other end of the spectrum are those who simply can’t seem to eliminate all of the common age old racial stereotypes from their consciousness. That often causes them to innocently make irrational judgments or say things which might seem bigoted and shameful but are clearly not motivated by any amount of hatred, personal animosity or violence.
I would not call this latter type of person a racist. It’s not fair. If they are racists then we must logically conclude then that just about everyone at some time or another is a racist. We would have to conclude that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and yes, even Abraham Lincoln were racists. Every one of the founding fathers and every great historical American figure that we admire today were racists by that definition of racist.
The folks who demand racial preferences based upon race are racists. The ones who today are screaming for the blood of people they deem to be racists -- the ones who see racists behind every bush -- are themselves racists by that broad definition of the term racist. Everywhere they look they see racists, even when they look in the mirror.
Poor Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher involved with the federal government standoff over grazing rights for his cattle has been savagely vilified as a racist by the American racist witch hunting mob for simply using the term “Negro” when referring to blacks. That man doesn’t hate blacks. He’s not a racist.
Need I remind anyone that the great Dr. Martin Luther King used the term “Negro” all the time. I doubt if he ever said “African American” once in his entire life. I guess that means that Dr. King was a racist by today’s ridiculous cultural standards. I’ll wager money that the term “African American” will one day have users of it branded as racists.
What the hell is an African American anyway? Is a white skinned person born in South Africa and naturalized as an American citizen an African American? No he is certainly not. Why; because he’s not black, that’s why. The white guy is an American but the black guy is an African American. It’s ridiculous.
What the hell is a “Native American” anyway? I was born in America. Doesn’t that make me a Native American? I think it does. I’m a Native American. I’m not a European American. I’ve never even been to Europe. I’m an American just like any black person born in America is an American. It insults those people to call them African Americans.
And now the savage pack of American racist witch hunters have viciously descended upon 80-year-old Los Angles NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling for saying in a private conversation taped without his knowledge -- in private mind you -- that he was disappointed with his former mistress for consorting openly with “black people.” For this unforgivable transgression, Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, has banned him from the NBA for life.
The whole nation wants his blood. But this guy doesn’t hate black people. He pays black people millions of dollars to play basketball on his team. He invites black people to his daughter’s wedding. He’s just burdened with a few negative stereotypes about blacks. He may be bigoted to some extent but he’s no racist. He probably doesn’t have a violent thought in his mind about blacks.
The people who want his blood are the ones who are un-American.
They’re guilty of American racist witch hunting.
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What's going on in Egypt?
Since the coup of July 3, 2013, Egypt's de facto ruler Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has pursued a clear and uncompromising policy toward the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's Islamists.
Sisi has blocked any return to politics for the Brotherhood, instead seeking to maneuver them into open confrontation with the authorities. He has dismissed any genuine distinction between the Brotherhood and the more extreme and openly insurgent jihadist currents.
In so doing, Sisi and his colleagues upturned what had slowly become conventional wisdom in the West and part of the region – namely, that the Muslim Brotherhood was a legitimate political organization, and that their rise was possibly benign, and probably inevitable.
So far, Sisi's policy has been relatively successful. It has provoked a campaign of mass civil disobedience by the Brotherhood and its supporters, as its instigators probably knew it would. The authorities in Cairo are also dealing with an ongoing problem of terrorism in northern Sinai. The jihadist groups sometimes manage to strike west of the Suez Canal.
But in terms of power, none of this poses any threat to the field marshal's continued rule.
In recent days in Egypt, a series of developments have further reflected the stark and uncompromising nature of Egypt's counter-revolution.
On Monday, a court in the town of Minya passed death sentences against 683 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and the government of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. Among the condemned were Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie. Badie, as the most senior official of the Brotherhood in Egypt, was arguably the most powerful man in the country during the rule of the Brotherhood.
He and 682 others were convicted on Monday of attacking a police station in Adawa on August 14, 2013, and killing a police officer, Mamdouh Kotb Mohamed Kotb, following the breakup by the Egyptian authorities of the Brotherhood protest at the Rabaa Square in Cairo.
The verdicts must be ratified by Egypt's grand mufti before they can be carried out. June 21 has been set as the deadline for ratification. It is likely that a large proportion of the death sentences will be commuted. Of 529 death sentences handed down in March against supporters of the Brotherhood, 37 were this week confirmed.
In addition, Egyptian authorities this week ordered the banning of the April 6 youth movement.
Established in 2008, the group played a prominent role in the toppling of former president Hosni Mubarak in January 2011.
The Court for Urgent Matters confirmed the ban on the group's activities, charging it with engaging in "espionage and defamation of the state." The April 6 movement is set to appeal the ban.
Presidential and parliamentary elections in Egypt are scheduled to take place in the coming months.
Sisi is likely to be elected president in polls set for May 26-27. Parliamentary elections will take place later in the year. The Tamarod movement, which supported the coup, has said that it will run as a party in the elections.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood's campaign of civil disobedience continues to fizzle on. One man was killed in clashes between supporters of the movement and police at a funeral in the Nile Delta. Brotherhood supporters also tried to block a main highway in the greater Cairo area, leading to 12 arrests.
Western countries are expressing concern at the draconian measures adopted by Sisi. US Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, has refused to sign off on military aid to Egypt following the announcement of the 683 death sentences this week. Germany summoned the Egyptian ambassador to Berlin to protest the sentences.
Certainly, Sisi's approach is paradigmatically different from the Western response to the "Arab Spring" unrest of 2011-12.
Former US secretary of defense Robert Gates, in his recent book of memoirs Duty, describes how President Barack Obama overrode the advice of his most senior national security officials when the unrest against Mubarak began.
Concerned, Gates contends, not to appear on the "wrong side of history," and influenced above all by security advisers Denis McDonough, John Brennan and Ben Rhodes, the president called Mubarak to demand his resignation.
This act made Mubarak's fall inevitable. It also set the tone for what then became received wisdom on the inevitability and desirability of this fall, and set in motion the events that led to the Muslim Brotherhood's subsequent triumph.
Sisi and his colleagues, by contrast, have taken the view that with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, politics must mean the continuation of war by other means.
This conclusion is shared by Sisi's key regional backers – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – and by Israel. It derives from the understanding that the Brotherhood itself, like other totalitarian movements, regards politics as a method of waging war by other means, and therefore any effective response to the movement must involve a similar approach.
The new political dispensation set to emerge this year will not represent a shining example of democracy for the Arab world. It is likely to combine authoritarian and representative elements, and to be accompanied by a smoldering Islamist attempt at insurgency.
It will, however, conclusively draw a line under the possibility of the emergence of a Sunni Iran on the Nile. For this, Sisi will continue to enjoy the quiet gratitude of opponents of Iran in Jerusalem, Riyadh and elsewhere in the region.
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Sunday, May 04, 2014
Are pills or psychology best for treating mental illness?
JAMA, a major medical journal, has just published a review of reviews which tries to answer that question. They found a slight edge in favour of psychology, somewhat surprisingly. Excerpt of results below:
Efficacy of Pharmacotherapy and Psychotherapy for Adult Psychiatric Disorders: A Systematic Overview of Meta-analyses
By Maximilian Huhn et al
Findings
The search yielded 45 233 results. We included 61 meta-analyses on 21 psychiatric disorders, which contained 852 individual trials and 137 126 participants. The mean effect size of the meta-analyses was medium (mean, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.41-0.59). Effect sizes of psychotherapies vs placebo tended to be higher than those of medication, but direct comparisons, albeit usually based on few trials, did not reveal consistent differences. Individual pharmacotherapy trials were more likely to have large sample sizes, blinding, control groups, and intention-to-treat analyses. In contrast, psychotherapy trials had lower dropout rates and provided follow-up data. In psychotherapy studies, wait-list designs showed larger effects than did comparisons with placebo.
JAMA Psychiatry. Published online April 30, 2014.
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Inequality isn't a problem: it's a driver of progress
Is there a genuine "issue of inequality"? I say no. There are (or at least may be) genuine issues of poverty, market and regulatory failure in the financial sector, or how best to raise taxes to fund public services. Very often discussions of "inequality" are either disguised discussions of one of these things or else inequality is seen a symptom of problems elsewhere (e.g. bonuses in the banking sector seen as a symptom of poor regulatory risk management oversight).
But once we strip out these other potential issues all that is left of the "inequality" discussion is this: is it bad if some folk are rich? And in truth, almost no-one claims that it is.
Try this thought experiment. Suppose each of us lived on our own desert island, like Robinson Crusoe, with identical resources and skills – so we're all perfectly equal - and get our food in the form of fish from the teeming oceans (there is no scarcity of fish). Then suppose one of us works out a way to fish better, so inequality increases. Is everyone else somehow worse off? Clearly the answer is that everyone else is not worse off unless the better fisherman makes fish scarcer for them. The one person's riches do not come at others' expense.
Obviously this is a rather abstract thought experiment, but it points at something simple and important: almost all inequality in developed economies does not arise by the wealth of almost anyone else declining. (That does happen in less socially and politically developed societies, in which wealth arises from political control of resources or access to corruption.) In modern developed economies inequality arises when someone – a Gates or Zuckerberg or Cowell or Ronaldo or Rowling or just an ordinary businessman or professional – finds some way (some skill or invention or investment) that adds considerable value, and that value is not then shared equally.
In our modern globalised economy, the gains from a new idea or skill can now be leveraged over enormously more people. Instead of your new and better mousetrap being sold just to the fair folk of Wolverhampton, the whole world beats a path to your door. In such a world, improved added value creates large inequalities. But that is precisely because the added value of a Windows or Facebook or awesome evening's football skill benefits so enormously many people – even if each only benefits a little compared with the huge aggregate benefits benefits taken by the value-creator.
Many of those preaching the evils of inequality will at this point start to deny that this is actually how high inequality arises. They might claim that remuneration of executives or in the financial sector do not come from added value but, rather, from market failure. I would probably disagree, but at least they would then be talking about something interesting – the alleged market failure – rather than something of no intrinsic policy concern (the fact that some folk are rich).
Others will start telling you of the terrible social problems associated with inequality – the depression, violence, low life expectancy and so on. Well, insofar as these arise from poverty, we can debate how much to alleviate poverty. But then poverty is the issue, not inequality.
"Ah," say the evils-of-inequality purists, "but you miss the point that some of these social problems are psychologically connected to the fact that there are very rich people, not simply the result of the poverty itself." If that is the case offered, then my response is that you are either talking of aspiration or of envy.
Aspiration – being discontent in your current circumstances and hoping to improve your lot and that of those you love – is a driver of progress. Obviously some will fail in their aspiration, and may suffer psychological consequences. But are we really saying it would be better if no-one aspired at all, than for some to aspire and not succeed?
Others may not simply aspire, but may instead envy the success of those that have done better or who were luckier to begin with. It's hardly controversial that envy exists or that it may have negative consequences – that is, after all, presumably why it's one of the Seven Deadly Sins?
If someone said: "Women with beautiful eyes should cover them up to avoid inciting lust in others" we would say that's silly or oppressive. It's the luster's problem, not the person lusted after. Yet in the case of envy, somehow we're supposed to believe it's the envied person that's the bad one, not the envier? No. Envy may be harmful, but to the very limited extent it's a policy concern the correct response is to teach people not to envy.
Others say "In studies, unequal societies have lower social mobility". But that wouldn't be surprising if either low social mobility were a cause of high and persistent inequality (which it might be) or if the same forces that drove low social mobility also drive high returns (e.g. if societies are already highly meritocratic, social mobility is likely to be low, because children are likely to be similar in innate talent to their parents, and returns are likely to be high, because meritocracy is efficient).
The intellectual case that inequality is a concern in itself collapses fairly rapidly under probing, and always has done. Yet the political concern is remarkably durable. I suspect that is because an important element in the inequality discussion is actually a disguised and somewhat incoherent discussion about something else – namely, unearned income.
Truly unearned income can be an issue for Right-wingers as well as the left. Right-wing thinkers tend to subscribe to the Lockean theory of property, according to which property (as opposed to mere possession) arises from combining work with the "common treasury". For example, if you find a stick in the road, the stick is part of the common treasury and thus far your possession but not your property. But if you sharpen the end of the stick to make it a spear, that spear is your property.
Now, think about investment income. According to the Capitalist theory of lending at interest, the return on investment arises from two forms of work (risk-taking and investment project analysis) and one of sacrifice (giving up other opportunities to use the money). That means no investment income is strictly "unearned".
But now suppose, instead, that the way things worked were this: the wealthy lend money at interest, which grows systematically faster than wages, and the money lent is at no risk of loss, because if there is any risk of loss the State will intervene to bail the project out (e.g. by bailing out failed banks). Under that sort of system, it would be difficult to provide a justification for that element of wealth growth that was then truly unearned. Under the Lockean theory it isn't even the property of the wealthy person – who has done no work to produce it! It's mere possession and control of riches, not property at all.
Now 19th-century radicals, and radicals such as Thomas Piketty today, appear to me to have a rather pessimistic and fatalistic conception of politics. They believe it is inevitable that the wealthy will use their political influence to defend their wealth in this way. Consequently, the recommendation is that the wealthy be charged by the state in the form of wealth taxes – which we can see as a kind of payment to the state for defending their riches. Furthermore, it seems pretty obvious that once one started to charge the wealthy such wealth taxes, the political and moral pressure to bail them out to defend their position would be overwhelming – otherwise, what are the wealth taxes being paid for?
I would prefer a system in which the wealthy were allowed to lose their money if their investments go bad, in which the state does not intervene in the economy to keep the rich rich. I grant that we do not have such a political system now – the bank bailouts of 2008 and since have made that clear to everyone, and things like deposit insurance have become even more extensive in recent years. But I am optimistic that one day we can achieve a politics, society and economy in which investment capital is always genuinely at risk and the state does not think it is its job to keep the rich rich. It's nice to dream that, anyway…
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Churchill, Hitler and Islam
The English patriot Paul Weston, chairman of the party Liberty GB, was arrested by the police on April 26 2014 in his native Britain… for the crime of quoting Winston Churchill, Britain’s Prime Minister during the Second World War. Yes, it has come to that.
The passage quoted by Weston was published in 1899. It focuses on Churchill’s negative observations about Islam while serving during the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of the Sudan. The young man commented on the repressive and warlike nature of Islam and concluded that “ No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”
As the commentator Daniel Hannan noted: You may or may not agree with these comments, which Mr. Weston cited. That does not change the fact that this was a political arrest. A British political candidate running for elections was arrested in mid-speech simply for publicly addressing potential voters by quoting a former Prime Minister.
For this, Paul Weston was arrested and put in a cell for some hours. He was suspected of having committed a “racially aggravated crime under Section 4 of the Public Order Act.” I’m not quite sure what that is, but it sounds very much like something George Orwell might have invented in one of his novels.
Reality has moved beyond parody. Britain, once a champion of political liberty, is no longer a free country. It is now a Monty Python sketch — except it’s not funny — or a banana republic without the bananas.
Sadly, it’s not the only European country that could be classified as such these days. From Hamburg to Helsinki, from Marseille to Stockholm and from Barcelona to Brussels, the natives have to endure seeing their heritage being dismantled and being turned into strangers in their own cities.
In this atmosphere, saying negative things about Christianity is not merely allowed, but in certain quarters actively encouraged. At the same time, saying negative things about Islam may end your career, trigger violent threats and maybe even get you arrested by the police.
The supreme irony in all of this is that if Paul Weston had quoted Adolf Hitler’s favorable views on Islam instead of Winston Churchill’s unfavorable views, he would presumably have encountered no problems. That’s because Hitler’s positive view of Islam is more in line with that of today’s ruling Multiculturalists.
There is a tendency in the mass media to portray opposition to Islamization as something “far-Right,” at the same time as they portray Nazis as far-Right. This is questionable. The political terms “Left” and “Right” date back to a random seating arrangement in France in the late eighteenth century.
Perhaps we need a new political vocabulary, more in tune with the realities of the twenty-first century. For example, some of the established so-called “right-wing” parties are every bit as much in favor of mass immigration and open borders as the “left-wing” parties are, if not always for the same reasons. That fact now undermines the very fabric of the Western democratic system. Many Western citizens do not want mass immigration to their countries, but they get it, anyway.
Nevertheless, to the extent that you talk about Left vs. Right, you could argue that the national Socialists (Nazis) formed a part of the political Left, just like other Socialist parties and movements. It was Vladimir Lenin and his followers, not Adolf Hitler, who founded the first major totalitarian state of the twentieth century. The Nazis copied tools of propaganda and methods of repression pioneered by the Communists. People are often led to forget that today.
There is arguably a direct line from the revolutionary terror of the Jacobins during the French Revolution to the revolutionary terror of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, from the political mass murders under Robespierre in the 1790s to the political mass murders under Lenin after 1917. Most (some might even claim all) of the mass-murdering totalitarian movements in the modern world have come from the political Left. It is therefore strange that to be “left-wing” is now seen as something neutral or positive, whereas to be “right-wing” is seen as suspect. Viewed in the light of history, it should be the other way around.
The Dutch politician Geert Wilders has been criticized and branded an “extremist” for comparing the Koran to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”). Yet as Wilders notes in his book Marked for Death, no lesser man than Winston Churchill, who led the fight against Hitler and the Nazis, did the same.
Churchill did this in his six-volume history The Second World War, which partly earned him the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature. In it, the conservative British statesman called Mein Kampf “the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.” [Original quote by Winston S. Churchill in The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm, page 50.]
Hitler openly lamented the fact that the Franks had defeated the invading Arabs in AD 732. “Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers,” Hitler told his inner circle, “then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone.” [Original statement by Adolf Hitler, 28 August 1942. Quoted in page 667 of Hitler’s Table Talk; 1941-1944, translated by N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens, Enigma Books (1953)]
Albert Speer wrote in his diary that Hitler regretted that Islam had not conquered Germany, as it was much more compatible with Nazism. “It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” he told Speer. “Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?” [A quote from Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, chapter 6]
Hitler repeatedly expressed his great respect and admiration for Islam and his contempt for silly Christian notions of compassion. Similarly, Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS and the Gestapo and by extension one of the most feared men in Germany and Europe, was full of admiration for Islam. He was sad that the combined Polish, German and Austrian troops of King Sobieski of Poland had halted the invading Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1683.
Himmler told Felix Kersten, his personal masseur and confidant, that Islam with its concept of Jihad and promises of beautiful women and instant rewards in the afterlife if you fall in battle was a wise religion, well-suited as a male warrior creed. [Source: Felix Kersten’s memoirs, Totenkopf und Treue, page 203.] The SS leadership for the same reason considered Islam to be a practical religion for soldiers.
The admiration between Islam and Nazis was often mutual, and sometimes still is. Scholars such as Andrew G. Bostom have meticulously documented this fact.
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Friday, May 02, 2014
Leftist Hate-Crime Hysteria
Democrats' new plans to monitor hate speech and racial bias in law enforcement.
Two Democratic Congressman and Attorney General Eric Holder are spearheading equally disturbing efforts to monitor and control the behavior of Americans – even if the Constitution and the truth get trashed in the process.
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have introduced a bill known as the The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014. It would require a relatively obscure government agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), to “update a report on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet in the commission of hate crimes.”
“We have recently seen in Kansas the deadly destruction and loss of life that hate speech can fuel in the United States, which is why it is critical to ensure the Internet, television and radio are not encouraging hate crimes or hate speech that is not outside the protection of the First Amendment," said Senator Markey. "Over 20 years have passed since I first directed the NTIA to review the role that telecommunications play in encouraging hate crimes. My legislation would require the agency to update this critical report for the 21st century.”
Jeffries heartily concurred. “The Internet has proven to be a tremendous platform for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. However, at times it has also been used as a place where vulnerable persons or groups can be targeted,” he said. “I commend Senator Markey for his longstanding leadership with respect to combating Hate Crimes in America. He understands that in the digital era it is important to comprehensively evaluate the scope of criminal and hateful activity on the Internet that occurs outside of the zone of First Amendment protection. With the introduction of Senator Markey’s bill, we have taken a substantial step toward addressing this issue."
As it is with so many leftist agendas, it remains up to the bureaucrats at the NTIA to determine what constitutes unacceptable speech that falls outside the purview of First Amendment protections. The bill leaves such interpretations up to the Justice Department (DOJ) and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who will "analyze information on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts and the commission of crimes of hate.”
Civil liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate clarifies the agenda here. “This proposed legislation is worse than merely silly. It is dangerous,” he explained. “It is not up to Sen. Markey, nor to the federal government, to define for a free people what speech is, and is not, acceptable.”
One might think it is also unacceptable for the federal government to define racial bias based on the number of police stops and arrests of Hispanic and black Americans relative to those of whites. One would be wrong. On Monday, the Eric Holder announced the DOJ would begin collecting data on such police activity in five American cities in order to address possible racial bias within the criminal justice system.
“This overrepresentation of young men of color in our criminal justice system is a problem we must confront – not only as an issue of individual responsibility but also as one of fundamental fairness, and as an issue of effective law enforcement," Holder said in a video address released Monday. "Racial disparities contribute to tension in our nation generally and within communities of color specifically, and tend to breed resentment towards law enforcement that is counterproductive to the goal of reducing crime." Thus, the DOJ has aligned itself with the the NAACP and the ACLU both of whom contend that higher arrest rates for blacks and Hispanics demonstrates racism.”
Holder cites familiar statistics to back up his claim, noting that half of black American men have been arrested at least once by the age of 23 and that black men were 6 times more likely, and Latino men were 2.5 times likely, to be imprisoned than white men in 2012.
Unsurprisingly, as is often the case with Holder and his ongoing efforts to use the DOJ to advance an agenda, truth is the first casualty. The reason blacks and Hispanics are arrested and imprisoned at higher rates than their white counterparts is because they commit crimes at much higher rates. For example, black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicides at ten times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined.
If Holder wants to collect data, he might begin with data already collected by the NYPD using their crime fighting analytical tool known as CompStat. In 2010, when civil rights activists began complaining about the disproportionate amounts of pedestrian stops of black New Yorkers relative to the representation in the population – 55 percent stops in a community that comprises 23 percent of the city’s population – CompStat data popped a giant hole in the activists' balloon, when the kind of statistics Holder cherishes revealed what occurred in the Big Apple in 2009. From the New York Times:
Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults. And the vast majority of the victims of violent crime were also members of minority groups.
Non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, committed 5 percent of the city’s violent crimes in 2009, 1.4 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies.
Stats released for the city of Chicago’s 2011 homicide rates tell a similar story. In the Windy City that year, 94.8 percent of homicides were committed by blacks and Hispanics – and 94.2 percent of their victims were black and Hispanic as well.
Furthermore in 2012, the year Holder cites as the impetus behind his agenda, even more inconvenient realities are revealed. According to the FBI’s 2012 Uniform Crime Reports, black Americans committed more than 49 percent of all homicides, and 55 percent of all robberies, despite representing less than 13 percent of the nation’s overall population. This compares to 48 percent of homicides and 43 percent of robberies perpetrated by whites and Hispanics combined.
None of this matters to racialist bean-counters like Eric Holder. Thus he will proceed with launching a new National Center for Building Community Trust and Justice, a $4.75 million pilot program funded by taxpayers that essentially starts out with the assumption that police are being over-zealous (read: biased) in their efforts to combat crime.
Tellingly Holder’s real agenda is revealed by what he contends motivated him to undertake this initiative: the not guilty verdict for George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murder for fatally shooting teenager Trayvon Martin. “Last July, following the verdict in the case involving the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, President Obama spoke out about the need to promote better understanding between law enforcement and young men of color,” Holder stated. “ He specifically directed the Justice Department to work closely with state and local law enforcement agencies to develop training and other innovative tools that can help to reduce discord and restore trust.”
Such discord and distrust is regularly ginned up by race hustlers like Al Sharpton, who played a major role in turning the death of Trayvon Martin into a national referendum on race. One so transparently dishonest, it required the media to label George Zimmerman a “white Hispanic” to maintain the fiction. Even Zimmerman’s subsequent acquittal was insufficient to blunt the DOJ’s agenda: more than a year and a half after they began investigating him, Zimmerman remains in the agency’s cross-hairs for possible civil rights prosecution connected to the case.
The thinking behind both of these efforts is clear. Democrats and the Obama administration believe there is nothing wrong with using the federal government as a club to advance a progressive agenda that threatens free speech on one hand, and the ability to effectively fight crime on the other. In a time when the American left is attempting to promote the idea that America is cesspool of hate and racism – due in large part to “white privilege” – the public might be forgiven for being highly suspicious of how the NTIA might determine when the Internet is being used to commit hate crimes, and how they would prioritize their pursuit of ostensible violators. As for Eric Holder, he has made it painfully clear he is willing to use the DOJ to pursue a racialist narrative, even when the facts get in the way.
Republicans need to make it clear that another hate crimes bill has no chance of passing. Americans need to make it clear they are tired of an Attorney General willing to call them a “nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race, even as his latest effort implies that America’s top law enforcement official believes his fellow law enforcement officials are motivated by racial prejudice, rather than the pursuit of crime.
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A Democrat brain-fart: Let's Amend the Constitution to Limit Political Speech
Team Townhall has been all over this morning's distressing economic news, which makes for an ugly pairing with the latest figures on the health spending explosion under Obamacare. Brit Hume cuts to the core of the juxtaposition in less than 140 characters:
"GDP growth slows to .1 % in first quarter as health spending spikes 9.9% in same period. Congressional Dems could hardly get worse news."
Not that things were going swimmingly for them to begin with. Anemic economic growth coupled with the largest quarterly spike in healthcare costs in 34 years is very bad news for the American people, and a full-blown political emergency for Democrats -- who own this "recovery," and who promised Obamacare would bend the health spending cost curve down. Time to fire up the distraction jalopy. In addition to their job-killing minimum wage push, Senate Democrats are proposing a number of measures that would scale back and chill political speech. Exhibit A:
"Senate Democrats will schedule a vote this year on a constitutional amendment to reform campaign finance as they face tens of millions of dollars worth of attack ads from conservative groups. The Senate will vote on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would overturn two recent court cases that have given corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals free rein to spend freely on federal races. “The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections. That needs to stop, and it needs to stop now,” said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who announced the plan. “The only way to undo the damage the court has done is to pass Senator Udall’s amendment to the Constitution, and Senate Democrats are going to try to do that,” he said...The amendment has little chance of becoming a part of the Constitution anytime soon because Republicans generally support the high court’s decisions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. FEC."
This is what "bereft of ideas" looks like. But as far as political theater goes, it ain't half bad. Dems know this thing has no chance of passing, but it gives them a chance to preen about money in politics and scratch their Kochsteria itch -- all while continuing to rake in huge money from loaded liberal donors.
Sen. Mark Udall, who's introducing this quixotic amendment, has already benefited from television ads paid for by "out of state billionaires." He bucked public opinion in opposing the keystone pipeline to placate one of his political benefactors, environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer."
At last report, the Left was running far ahead of the Right in the 2014 outside money race, but why complicate a solid victimhood narrative? "Robber barons and dark money!" Incidentally, Democrats' Koch Derangement Syndrome may be paying dividends among their top contributors, but it isn't breaking through to the American people. Average citizens may wonder why Democrats are focused so intently on limiting campaign contributions, rather than fixing the US economy and keeping their promises on Obamacare.
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Some good "Right Hooks" from Patriot Post
GDP Slows to a Crawl
"If we expect another pivot from the White House, don't expect it to be on the economy," writes Hot Air's Ed Morrissey. That's because first quarter GDP came dragging in at just 0.1% -- barely a heartbeat. That's a significant slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2013, when GDP grew 2.6%. We expect further evidence of economic stagnation when April's jobs numbers are released Friday. Some economists point to the rough winter weather as the reason for the slowdown, and that may be true to a point, but it's far more likely that small business owners finally got their now-higher Obama tax bills. Combined with the other form of taxation -- regulation -- a slowdown is the natural result of Obama's policies.
Another $121M on Healthcare.gov
The Department of Health and Human Services has already doled out roughly $677 million on Healthcare.gov, and they're ready to spend another $121 million between now and January 2015 to fix remaining issues. Contractor Accenture Federal Services, which took over CGI Federal's massive failure on building the website, now says the price tag will be $30 million higher than the original $90 million estimate. Meanwhile, HHS is soliciting applicants for next year's contractor services. By the time 2015 rolls around, at least $800 million (by this administration's count) will have been spent on the federal exchange. Brought to you by the "Affordable" Care Act.
The NBA and Racism
The NBA has banned LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life and fined him $2.5 million for racist remarks he made in private but that were released publicly (that's another story). Meanwhile, the NAACP, which withdrew Sterling's lifetime achievement award he was set to receive this week, said they're willing to "forgive" him -- if he makes some strategic donations. But here's something else to ponder: How many recordings are there of black NBA players making off-color racist remarks? And if they emerge will the NBA take similar action? We suggest a lifetime ban for the man who said this: "I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites." That was Barack Obama in his book, "Dreams from My Father."
Biden's 'Basic Bargain'
"This is not your father's Republican Party," said Joe Biden. "Folks, we're losing something profound when we break the basic bargain that built his country ... that made us the greatest economic powerhouse in the history of the world," he added, pointing to the recent story of the troubles of the middle class. The problem, he says, is Republicans. "This massive shift is being largely driven by this incredibly narrow mindset that presumes that wealthy investors are the sole drivers of the economy. ... That's what today's Republican Party is all about." One need not be wealthy to invest. In fact, though investment is down since the Great Recession, still more than half of Americans own stock, including about 50% of the middle class. And what built this country was hard work and self-reliance -- the very antithesis of the wealth distribution schemes of Biden and his boss.
WI Voter ID Struck Down
Wisconsin's Voter ID law was nullified Tuesday after federal district judge Lynn Adelman ruled that "virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin." This is just the latest state to fall victim to leftist charades -- Arkansas' Voter ID law was voided last week, and Eric Holder's DOJ is taking action against North Carolina and Texas over similar laws. The ACLU's Dale Ho declared, "This is a warning to other states that are trying to make it harder for citizens to vote. This decision put them on notice that they can't tamper with citizens' fundamental right to cast a ballot. The people, and our democracy, deserve and demand better." Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker said of the decision, "We believe the voter ID law is Constitutional and will ultimately be upheld. We're reviewing [the] decision before deciding on potential action."
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Thursday, May 01, 2014
It's time to defy health-care mandates issued by bureaucrats not in the healing profession
There is a huge loss of medical manpower to time spent on compulsory paperwork and data entry
By DANIEL F. CRAVIOTTO JR.
In my 23 years as a practicing physician, I've learned that the only thing that matters is the doctor-patient relationship. How we interact and treat our patients is the practice of medicine. I acknowledge that there is a problem with the rising cost of health care, but there is also a problem when the individual physician in the trenches does not have a voice in the debate and is being told what to do and how to do it.
As a group, the nearly 880,000 licensed physicians in the U.S. are, for the most part, well-intentioned. We strive to do our best even while we sometimes contend with unrealistic expectations. The demands are great, and many of our families pay a huge price for our not being around. We do the things we do because it is right and our patients expect us to.
So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dictates that we must use an electronic health record (EHR) or be penalized with lower reimbursements in the future. There are "meaningful use" criteria whereby the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells us as physicians what we need to include in the electronic health record or we will not be subsidized the cost of converting to the electronic system and we will be penalized by lower reimbursements.
Across the country, doctors waste precious time filling in unnecessary electronic-record fields just to satisfy a regulatory measure. I personally spend two hours a day dictating and documenting electronic health records just so I can be paid and not face a government audit. Is that the best use of time for a highly trained surgical specialist?
This is not a unique complaint. A study commissioned by the American Medical Association last year and conducted by the RAND Corp. found that "Poor EHR usability, time-consuming data entry, interference with face-to-face patient care, inefficient and less fulfilling work content, inability to exchange health information between EHR products, and degradation of clinical documentation were prominent sources of professional dissatisfaction."
In addition to the burden of mandated electronic-record entry, doctors also face board recertification in the various medical specialties that has become time-consuming, expensive, imposing and a convenient method for our specialty societies and boards to make money.
Meanwhile, our Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have significantly declined, let alone kept up with inflation. In orthopedic surgery, for example, Medicare reimbursement for a total knee replacement decreased by about 68% between 1992 and 2010, based on the value of 1992 dollars. How can this be? Don't doctors have control over what they charge for their services? For the most part, no. Our medical documentation is pored over and insurers and government then determine the appropriate level of reimbursement.
I don't know about other physicians but I am tired—tired of the mandates, tired of outside interference, tired of anything that unnecessarily interferes with the way I practice medicine. No other profession would put up with this kind of scrutiny and coercion from outside forces. The legal profession would not. The labor unions would not. We as physicians continue to plod along and take care of our patients while those on the outside continue to intrude and interfere with the practice of medicine.
We could change the paradigm. We could as a group elect not to take any insurance, not to accept Medicare—many doctors are already taking these steps—and not to roll over time and time again. We have let nearly everyone trespass on the practice of medicine. Are we better for it? Has it improved quality? Do we have more of a voice at the table or less? Are we as physicians happier or more disgruntled then two years ago? Five years ago? Ten years ago?
At 58, I'll likely be retired in 10 years along with most physicians of my generation. Once we're gone, who will speak up for our profession and the individual physician in the trenches? The politicians? Our medical societies? Our hospital administrators? I think not. Now is the time for physicians to say enough is enough.
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The instinct for free speech is fading worldwide
Mark Steyn
In Australia, they're trying to get rid of Section 18c, which is (roughly) the equivalent of Canada's late and unlamented Section 13 thought-crime law, which was finally repealed last year. The Aussie campaign is not going well. "There is a danger that the Coalition resolve to repeal Section 18C will weaken further," warns The Independent Australian, saying there's an "urgent need to submit your views on 18C amendments by April 30th" - which is round about right now in Oz time.
What's going on? Well, in the western world today, there are far more lobby groups for censorship - under polite euphemisms such as "diversity", "human rights", "hate speech" - than there are for freedom of expression. If you attempt to roll back a law like Section 18c, you'll be opposed by the aboriginal lobby, the Muslim lobby, the Jewish lobby, the LGBT lobby, the higher-education lobby.... And you'll be supported by ...hardly anyone, save for me and Andrew Bolt and the usual suspects.
That's the hard political arithmetic of defending free speech in western chancelleries today: There aren't a lot of takers for it, and the opposition to it is very organized. A government minister with an eye to his press clippings has to believe in it an awful lot for it to be worth taking on.
What's happening in Britain is the next stage. On Saturday, Paul Weston of Liberty GB, a candidate in next month's European elections, was speaking on the steps of Winchester Guildhall and quoting Winston Churchill on the matter of Muslims (from The River War, young Winston's book on the Sudanese campaign). He was, in short order, arrested by half-a-dozen police officers, shoved in the back of a van and taken away to be charged under a "Section 27 Dispersal Notice". I had charitably assumed this was a more severe equivalent of the parade licensing that American municipalities use to discourage public participation by disfavored groups - ie, Mr Weston was arrested because he did not have his paperwork in order. I dislike such laws, but in America their use testifies at least to a certain squeamishness about directly punishing someone for the content of his speech.
Not so in Britain. The coppers dropped the Section 27 Dispersal business, and instead charged Mr Weston with a "Racially Aggravated Crime" - in other words, he's being charged explicitly for the content of that Churchill passage, and the penalty could be two years in jail. This is remarkable, and not just because Islam is not a race, as its ever more numerous pasty Anglo-Saxon "reverts" will gladly tell you. For one thing, the police have effectively just criminalized Liberty GB's political platform. There are words for regimes that use state power to criminalize their opponents and they're not "mother of parliaments" or "land of hope and glory".
More to the point, if Mr Weston is found guilty of a "racially aggravated crime" for reading Churchill's words, then why is the publisher of the book not also guilty and liable to two years in jail? Why is Churchill himself not guilty? Should he not be dug up from the churchyard in Bladon and re-interred in the cell next to Mr Weston?
Well, no. That's a bit dramatic. Civilized societies prefer to lose their liberties incrementally. It seems more likely that Sir Winston's River War will simply disappear from print, but so discreetly you won't even notice it's gone. Personally, while we're criminalizing Churchill, I'm in favor of banning that "Fight on the beaches" speech, on the grounds that all that "we will never surrender" stuff is very culturally insensitive, not to mention increasingly risible.
But, as in Australia, note how few takers there are - among everyone who matters in Britain, including those bozo cops - for the cause of free speech.
Next stop, America. The other day John Hinderaker wrote at Powerline:
"Mark Steyn believes (this is my characterization, not his) that he is engaged in an Armageddon of sorts; that free speech in America is under serious attack; and that the future of our mostly-free society hangs in the balance. Many consider such fears overblown."
Which I think is John's polite way of saying I'm a bit of a loon. But then he saw this Rasmussen poll:
"Fifty-five percent (55%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe the government should be allowed to review political ads and candidates' campaign comments for their accuracy and punish those that it decides are making false statements about other candidates. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 31% oppose such government oversight. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided."
Or to put it another way: fewer than a third of those polled give a hoot about the First Amendment.
John Hinderaker professes to be surprised by this result. But why? Two generations of Americans have been raised in an educational milieu that thinks, to pluck a current example at random, that using the phrase "Man up!" ought to be banned. If you've been marinated in this world from kindergarten, why would you emerge into the adult world with any attachment to the value of freedom of speech?
As I say, in Britain, Australia and America, free peoples are losing the habits of free speech, and thereby will lose their freedom.
Turning to my own current preoccupation, readers and commentators assume that I see the Mann vs Steyn trial as a free speech case simply because I think I have the right to say what I said about his "fraudulent" hockey stick. That's correct, but there's a bigger reason why I believe it's a free-speech battle: Climate science as a whole urgently needs to be wrested away from the thuggish control of Michael Mann and his climate mullahs and restored to vigorous, honest scientific inquiry. I have been, frankly, shocked by the stories I've been told of young scientists scared to speak out against Mann's "settled science" for fear that their careers will be ruined. This is the "consensus" of the longshoremen's union.
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Men Who Work Full-Time Earn Less Than 40 Years Ago
An ever expanding bureaucracy eats up all efficiency gains
The real median income of American men who work full-time, year-round peaked forty years ago in 1973, according to data published by the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 1973, median earnings for men who worked full-time, year-round were $51,670 in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars. The median earnings of men who work full-time year-round have never been that high again.
In 2012, the latest year for which the Census Bureau has published an estimate, the real median earnings of men who worked full-time, year-round was $49,398. That was $2,272—or about 4.4 percent—below the peak median earnings of $51,670 in 1973.
In 1960, the earliest year for which the Census Bureau has published this data, the median earnings for men who worked full-time, year-round were $36,420 in 2012 dollars. Between 1960 and 1973 that increased $15,250—or about 41.9 percent.
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Cruz: 'Words Matter'; Kerry Should Resign Over Israel/Apartheid Comment
Secretary of State John Kerry should resign over his reported comment that Israel risks becoming an “apartheid” state if it does not make peace soon, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on Monday.
“Secretary Kerry has long experience in foreign policy, and he understands that words matter,” Cruz said on the Senate floor. “ ‘Apartheid’ is inextricably associated with one of the worst examples of state-sponsored discrimination in history.”
“There is no place for this word in the context of the State of Israel.”
Kerry on Monday defended his support for Israel, saying he didn't mean it was an “apartheid” state, but admitting her shouldn't have used the word:
“I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a misimpression, even when unintentional,” he said in a statement. “And if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two-state solution.”
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Elections: Actions Have Consequences
Democrats are putting on a brave face to hardcore supporters, imploring them to help the party retake the House and restore Nancy Pelosi as speaker, but, privately, Democrat strategists are far more worried about losing control of the Senate.
Fundraising for Republicans is strong to the point that Democrats warned in a recent fundraising email that “all hope is lost.” Conservative groups, led by Americans for Prosperity, are pouring millions into these races. But even contributions from the Democrats' favorite bogeymen, the Koch brothers, are less effective now, given that some big business competition is supplying millions to leftist advocacy groups. For example, Tom Steyer is a billionaire hedge fund manager who’s heavily invested in renewable energy projects, and he’s supplying millions to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline Barack Obama has dithered on for years.
Moreover, polls show support of ObamaCare is the new “third rail” of electoral politics, and Democrats' huge success in 2008 leaves them with many more incumbents to defend than Republicans, with several of them in swing states that backed Obama before his signature health care plan clumsily rolled out. Incumbent Democrats in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana and North Carolina are all having difficulties in their races, and several open seats are already thought to be in the GOP column.
Unfortunately for Republicans, six months is a lifetime in politics and any number of gaffes, mistakes and misstatements seized upon by a partisan media are possible – just ask Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. It’s also likely that the White House spin machine will do whatever it takes to either make ObamaCare look like a success or push the pain past the November elections, just as they originally decided to delay making most of it effective until the president’s second term.
Since the Democrats can’t win on the issues, their strategy going forward seems to be one of trying to turn out their base with incessant “war on women” and minimum wage pandering while goading the GOP to depress their own turnout with “bipartisan” deals on issues like immigration. Avoiding that siren song and giving the conservative base a reason to vote for Republicans by advocating for Liberty and limited government rather than just against Democrats is the key to victory, and the other side knows this, too.
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.
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