What has President Trump done that is good for America?

Answer by Ethan Young, a historian.  He does not like Trump personally but is impressed by how much he has accomplished or enabled already

I suppose I should preface this answer by saying that I was a “Never Trumper” Republican and didn’t vote for him. Now that that’s out of the way…

First, Trump has increased American oil and energy exports. This was already trending before he was elected, but now it’s really gaining steam. Only a decade ago, Americans were concerned about relying too much on the Saudis or other Middle Eastern nations for their energy supply. But today, the US is the third-largest oil producer in the world, it is less dependent on oil imports than at any point in the last 40 years, and it is stealing customers from Russia and Saudi Arabia even with prices as low as $50 per barrel. Even a few years ago, US shale producers would have found it hard to make a profit at that price, but they are succeeding at it now.

President Trump is using this as a powerful card in the game of geopolitics. For example, we have begun shipping liquid natural gas to Eastern Europe with the goal of undercutting Russia’s monopoly and influence there, and the Eastern Europeans are only too happy to diversify their energy portfolio. I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable about relying on someone like Putin for my energy needs.

Second, President Trump is rolling back excessive regulations that hurt American businesses and hamper our economic growth. The Clean Power Plan is a good example of this, because it was government by the administrative state on a scale that has never been attempted before. The EPA took a dubious reading of a portion of the Clean Air Act (Section 111, which arguably prevented the EPA from taking this action rather than empowered it to do so) and used it to mandate that the states adopt far-reaching plans to reduce carbon emissions, under threat of the loss of federal highway funds. And the legal foundation of the Clean Power Plan was so rickety that the Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of blocking its implementation pending all the lawsuits against it. This and other Obama-regulations were examples of gross overreach by the federal government and did more harm in the long run than good.

Third, President Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord, which was a toothless, un-enforceable exercise in virtue-signaling that would have made little impact on carbon emissions even if it had fully implemented.

Indeed, there is one genuinely strong argument for remaining a signatory to the Paris Accord on climate change, but it’s one that the accord’s advocates cannot make: The agreement simply doesn’t do anything. It was doomed before negotiators ever assembled for photographs in December 2015. They were not there to commit each country to meaningful greenhouse-gas reductions; rather, everyone submitted their voluntary pledges in advance, and all were accepted without scrutiny. Pledges did not have to mention emissions levels, nor were there penalties for falling short.

When the Paris Accord was first signed, then-Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that 186 nations in the world came together to submit a plan, all of them reducing their emissions. That was not true. In fact, most of the major developing countries, whose emissions will drive climate change this century, pledged only to continue with business as usual. China, for example, committed to begin reducing emissions by 2030, roughly when its economic development would have caused this to happen regardless. India made no emissions commitment, pledging only to make progress on efficiency at half the rate it had progressed in recent years. Pakistan outdid the rest, submitting a single page that offered to reduce its emissions after reaching peak levels to the extent possible. This is a definition of the word peak, not a commitment.

Since then, the farce proceeded as farces do. Secretary Kerry claimed the Accord would unleash clean-energy investment, but instead, global investment plummeted by 20 percent in 2016 compared to 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The first quarter of 2017 saw another 17 percent decline versus 2016. The volunteer pledges have commanded precisely the respect they deserve. An April report by Transport Environment found only three European countries pursuing policies in line with their Paris commitments and one of those, Germany, has now seen two straight years of emissions increases. The Philippines has outright renounced its commitment. A study published by the American Geophysical Union warns that India’s planned coal-plant construction is incompatible with its own targets. All this behavior is socially acceptable amongst the climate crowd. Only Trump’s presumption that the agreement means something, and that countries should be forthright about their commitments, is beyond the pale.

Somewhat incredibly, Todd Stern, the Obama administration’s lead climate negotiator, took to the Washington Post to explain that the U.S. could even revise downward its own commitment to eliminate any potential burden. “I know,” he seemingly bragged, “because I helped negotiate that flexibility.” Compare this to his defense of the agreement when signed, in which he repeatedly used the word “ratchet” to describe a process where countries would only strengthen their commitments. But rather than see the cocktail hour interrupted, even that last vestige of substance was flung overboard.

So should the U.S. have stayed or gone? To quote another of President Obama’s secretaries of state: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” For the climate, not much of one. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s assessment of the agreement found that even full compliance would only have reduced global temperatures in 2100 by only 0.2 degrees Celsius. Instead, the debate devolved into the kind one otherwise hears about the UN Human Rights Council, a forum no one mistakes for a serious effort to advance human rights. If other countries are going to sit around discussing the climate, shouldn’t we at least attend? This is what some might call the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) defense.

Further, as Stern argued, “withdrawing from the Paris agreement would be a stain on the legacies of both the president and Secretary of State. Other countries would see withdrawal as a slap in the face.” But on which president’s legacy is Paris a stain? The Constitution requires the Senate to ratify treaties by a two-thirds supermajority in part to ensure that the United States speaks with a single, consistent voice on the international stage. It was President Obama who offered the world an unwise commitment for which he got nothing in return. It was Obama who refused to submit that commitment for Senate approval because he knew he did not have it.

Then there is the war against ISIS. When it comes to Trump’s boasts, many Americans—including myself—roll their eyes. But when it comes his boasting about ISIS, it’s hard for even his sternest detractors to gainsay him. ISIS was still largely undefeated and in control of much of the territory of Iraq and Syria when Trump was sworn in before a non-record setting crowd. But only nine months into his administration, the Islamic State’s hold on these countries has dwindled, and after the liberation this week of Raqqa, Syria—the capital of the Islamists’ supposed caliphate—it’s fair to say that the group is being routed after years in which it held its own against coalition forces. In January, ISIS controlled 23,300 square miles. Today it is holding on to about 9,300 square miles.

This has happened because Trump loosened the rules of engagement to allow commanders in the field more authority in day-to-day decisions about fighting the enemy. Under Obama, the White House micromanaged the conflict in a manner that calls to mind the way President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara fought the Vietnam War with similarly dismal results. Whether you like Trump or hate him doesn’t change the fact that ISIS fighters are surrendering in droves because of a change in strategy that Trump personally spearheaded.

In fact, if you prune away the rumors of cabinet shake-ups, “adult in the room” melodramas, tweets, fake-news accounts, and inter-cabinet spats, Trump’s foreign policy consists of the following:

A once-ascendant ISIS now shattered and in full retreat; a new honesty about NATO and its funding; an unsustainable Iran deal now on hold and sent to the Senate where as a treaty it belonged; honesty in describing the threat of both radical Islamic terrorism and Iranian hegemony; greater security on the southern border; a restored relationship with Israel and the Gulf States, and an improving one with Jordan and Egypt as well; a workable and constitutional immigration scrutiny of would-be entrants from war-torn Middle East countries; a growing deterrent stance toward Russia and China rather than the rhetoric of “reset” and the “Asian pivot”; an active and growing allied response to the North Korean threat; the beginnings of an all-out effort on missile defense (rather than the prior open-mic presidential promises of a “flexible” post-reelection efforts to curb it in Eastern Europe); a determination to rebuild the military (slowly, given the still far too large annual deficits); some recent incremental progress in Afghanistan due to new rules of engagement; the real red line that Assad cannot use WMD against civilians; a far more adult stance toward U.N. hypocrisies; improved autonomy abroad through increasing energy independence and trading in natural gas; an out from a Paris climate accord whose goals the U.S. meets anyway through free-market solutions; and the emerging outlines of a comprehensive doctrine of “principled realism” that restores deterrence.

The Trump presidency has also achieved a massive reduction in illegal immigration, arresting nearly 100,000 criminal illegal aliens and deporting over 52,000, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year. Illegal border crossings are down over 41 percent. The unemployment rate has ticked down to its lowest level in more than forty years, the stock market is surging, and the Senate just passed a critical piece of legislation that paves the way for tax reform that could potentially turbo-charge the U.S. economy if it’s done correctly.

For conservatives like myself, there are additional things to like about the Trump presidency. The appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and many other fine conservative judges to lower circuits is a definitely something to feel good about. Nikki Haley is kicking tail at the United Nations, and the Department of Veterans of Affairs has received a much-needed overhaul so it can take better care of those who’ve served our country.

More, Trump has taken a much-needed wrecking ball to political correctness, which has become twisted and weaponized far beyond the purpose for which it was originally intended, to the point where free speech itself is being stifled. Here’s an example: A lot of people think there are only two genders, boy and girl. Now, many other people think they're wrong, or that they should change that opinion. Some might argue that holding such a viewpoint is insensitive to the trans community. You could even argue that it flies in the face of modern social psychology. Fair enough.

But many people still think that there are two genders. And political correctness is the social force that holds them in contempt for that, or punishes them outright for saying so aloud.

Overturning political correctness is probably one of the most valuable and most-overlooked positive aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency, and even I can’t help but admit a certain admiration for his complete irreverence and disregard for its absurdity. In a “you can’t say that!” culture, where certain words and thoughts are no longer allowed, Trump says them, over and over—and then, when challenged, refuses to back down. In a society that has come to accept human frailty and accepts low horizons, Trump called for making the US “great again” and suggested that people can succeed like he has. And in a world where masculinity is now described as toxic, Trump relishes the opportunity to present himself as the tough guy. He simply does not care about political correctness, and more importantly, he’s shown that it’s okay not to care, that you can say what you think and not be afraid to say it. That is a powerful message, and a much-needed one.

SOURCE

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The neutrality of music

I pointed out some time ago that music was very important to the Nazis.  They had inspiring songs that kept the troops marching.  I even translated some of them.  But I want to make what I hope is the obvious point that music is independent of politics.  One could appreciate the Nazi songs without at all endorsing Nazi politics. 

I thought that some good evidence of how music can mean anything politically comes from an excellent American pro-military song of the '60s.  The song was widely appreciated so the tune was re-used in a German popular song that expressed anti-war sentiments.  The same tune was used for opposite purposes!

Below is the American song, sung by its author, Staff Sadler, a very manly man



Below is the German song sung by a popular German singer:



The German song is a little curious because Germany was at that time not involved in any wars. So it presumably refers to German troops in the French Foreign Legion -- operating in North Africa, which was giving France troubles at the time. The term "vogelfrei" (outlawed) in the third line supports the connection to the Foreign Legion and the terrain description fits North Africa. Rather ironically, the majority of troops in the French Foreign Legion are German-speaking, though a lot of Russians have joined in recent times.  Some Germans still relish war, obviously. 

Below are the words of the German song, with translation:

Hundert Mann und ein Befehl

Irgendwo im fremden Land
Ziehen sie durch Stein und Sand,
Fern von zu Haus und vogelfrei,
100 Mann, und er ist dabei.

100 Mann und ein Befehl
Und ein Weg, den keiner will.
Tagein tagaus, wer weiß wohin,
Verbranntes Land, und was ist der Sinn?

Ganz allein in dunkler Nacht
Hast du oft daran gedacht,
Dass weit von hier der Vollmond scheint,
Und weit von hier ein Mädchen weint.

Und die Welt ist doch so schön.
Könnt' ich dich noch einmal seh'n!
Nun trennt uns schon ein langes Jahr,
Weil ein Befehl unser Schicksal war.

Wahllos schlägt das Schicksal zu,
Heute er und morgen du.
Ich hör' von fern die Krähen schrei'n
Im Morgenrot, warum muss das sein?

Irgendwo im fremden Land
Ziehen sie durch Stein und Sand,
Fern von zu Haus und vogelfrei,
100 Mann, und er ist dabei.

In English

A hundred men under one command

Somewhere in a foreign land,
they wander through stone and sand,
far from home and outlawed,
100 men and he’s there as well

100 men and one command
and a path that no one wants,
day in, day out, to who knows where,
burned countryside and what’s the use?

All alone in the dark night,
you have often thought about it,
that far from here the full moon shines
and far from here a young girl weeps.

And the world is still so beautiful.
Could I only see you once more.
We have already been apart one long year
because a command was our fate.

At random fate slams us down.
Today him and tomorrow you.
I hear from afar the crows cawing
in the dawn, why must that be?

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The IRS Stole $59,000 From an Innocent Veteran; Years Later, They Still Won't Return It

Oh Suk Kwon, an immigrant from South Korea who spent four decades serving in the U.S. military, had his life and business destroyed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2011—on nothing more than a hunch.

After getting out of the Army in 2007, Kwon and his wife purchased a gas station in Ellicott City, Maryland. Four years later, the IRS targeted Kwon's station as part of a now-discredited effort at catching money launderers making large cash deposits. The investigators seized more than $59,000 from Kwon, forcing him to shutter his business. His wife died soon after.

"But after the investigation ended, after the gas station went under, and Kwon's wife died amid the stress of it all, after he moved from his neighborhood in shame and the Internal Revenue Service changed its policy so no other small business would get steamrolled this way—the agency won't give Kwon his money back," writes columnist Petula Dvorak in The Washington Post.

What happened to Kwon is a tragedy. That the IRS won't now admit its mistake and return his money is a travesty.

Kwon was one of hundreds of individuals and businesses targeted by the IRS for nothing but a supposedly suspicious pattern of deposits. A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report released in April detailed how the agency seized more than $17 million from innocent business owners as part of an effort at targeting so-called "structuring," in which criminals will make cash deposits of less than $10,000 in order to avoid detecting by federal banking regulators. Under the terms of a 1970 federal law, banks must report all deposits of more than $10,000.

But the IRS's anti-structuring investigations were seriously flawed. In more than 90 percent of the cases, the inspector general found, the seized money turned out to be completely legal. The report also found that investigators violated internal policies when conducting interviews, failed to notify individuals of their rights, and improperly bargained to resolve civil cases.

That seems to be what happened to Kwon. An IRS spokesman told Dvorak that Kwon pleaded guilty to a charge of structuring, even though the agency failed to produce any other criminal charges against him.

There is hope for Kwon. Other victims of the agency's anti-structuring investigations have been made whole, but only after years of legal battles. Last year, the IRS returned $29,500 they had stolen in 2012 from a Maryland dairy farmer. The farmer, Randy Sowers, was represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm, in his challenge to the seizure.

"I couldn't believe...they would just come in and take my money with no prior notice," Sowers told a congressional committee in 2015 during a hearing on the "structuring" crackdown. "I thought the government was supposed to protect me. I didn't think they were supposed to come out and try to put me out of business."

The same thing happened to Carol Hinders, an Iowa woman who ran a small, cash-only Mexican restaurant. In 2013, two IRS agents showed up at Hinder's door and told her the agency was seizing $33,000 from her bank account for structuring violations. She was never accused of a crime. She later became the face of an investigative report by The New York Times that showed how the IRS was targeting innocent Americans and abusing its asset forfeiture powers. After that, she got her money back from the IRS.

"The government is seizing billions of dollars of cash and property from Americans often without charging them with a crime," said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) at the 2015 congressional hearing where Sowers testified. Civil asset forfeiture, he said, "has proven a far greater affront to civil rights than it has a weapon against crime."

In response to public outrage over how the IRS was targeting businesses with anti-structuring investigations, the agency announced in 2014 that it would change how those investigations operated, focusing only on cases where there was actual evidence of criminal activity.

But that's little consolation to Kwon, who is still facing an uphill legal battle to get his money back. Dvorak reports that the IRS refused his most recent request in August.

"There was no good policy purpose for the prosecution. They did it for money, and they destroyed a good and honest man," Kwon's attorney tells Dvorak. "It is shameful."

SOURCE

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Students love Trump's tax plan...when told it's Bernie's

President Donald Trump’s proposal for comprehensive tax reform was almost immediately dismissed as heartless and impractical by his political opponents.

But what would some of those opponents think if they were told the same plan was being proposed by someone they adore—Senator Bernie Sanders?

To find out, we headed to George Washington University to ask students their opinions on Trump’s new tax plan. WIthout much explanation, the students immediately made clear their distaste for the plan.

“It’s not the most efficient, nor beneficial to the general populace,” said one student when asked her opinion of Trump’s plan.

“It’s better for the upper class than anyone else,” added another.

After watching student after student express their disapproval of the plan, we then asked those same students what they thought of Senator Bernie Sanders’ new tax plan.

Immediately, they expressed excitement and support after hearing the details of the plan.

The only problem for them? There was no tax plan for Senator Sanders. The plan they loved was actually President Trump’s.

SOURCE

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Is Liberalism a Dying Faith?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic — and the model for mankind’s future.

Equality, diversity, democracy — this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer.

In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.

The right-wing People’s Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria’s vote, delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!

Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.

South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians are talking of separation.

By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington Post, Babis “makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO’s mission is outdated.”

Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.

To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many may nod at Thomas Jefferson’s line that “All men are created equal,” but they no more practice that in their own nations than did Jefferson in his.

On Oct. 7, scores of thousands of Poles lined up along the country’s entire 2,000-mile border — to pray the rosary.

It was the centennial of the Virgin Mary’s last apparition at Fatima in Portugal in 1917, and the day in 1571 the Holy League sank the Muslim fleet at Lepanto to save Europe. G. K. Chesterton’s poem, “Lepanto,” was once required reading in Catholic schools.

Each of these traditionalist-nationalist movements is unique, but all have a common cause. In the hearts of Europe’s indigenous peoples is embedded an ancient fear: loss of the homeland to Islamic invaders.

Europe is rejecting, resisting, recoiling from “diversity,” the multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual future that, say U.S. elites, is America’s preordained mission to bring about for all mankind.

Indeed, increasingly, the indigenous peoples of Europe seem to view as the death of their nations and continent, what U.S. liberal elites see as the Brave New World to come.

More HERE

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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New Zealand gets its own Donald Trump

New Zealand has an odd electoral system which tends to help  minor parties to get seats in parliament in addition to the two main parties. Which often means that no one party has a majority of seats.  So it is usually necessary for two or more parties to enter into an agreement to govern together. 

After the recent inconclusive election, the support of a small populist party -- chiefly supported by Maori and the elderly --  was crucial to forming a new coalition government.  The populist leader, Winston Peters, has policies very similar to Trump and is determined to implement them. He is however entering into an unlikely coalition with the Leftists and the Greens. His coalition partners wildly disagree with him, however. But they can't do without him. 


Peters.  He is half Maori

So it should be interesting from now on.  We may see Trump-like policies being enacted with the support of Leftists and Greens! He should at least be a restraining influence on Green/Left idiocy.  Some details below
 

SHE’S enjoyed the kind of stardust-scattered rise most politicians only dream of.

Four weeks ago, Jacinda Ardern was at home painting the fence in her trackpants, trying to work off the “nervous energy” of waiting for an election result.

On Thursday, the 37-year-old was crowned Prime Minister-elect following a month of negotiations to form a coalition government with the Greens and New Zealand First.

Like Emmanuel Macron, 39, in France and Justin Trudeau, 45, in Canada, Ardern has ridden a wave of euphoria over her likability, relaxed style and fresh approach to politics.

She shut down radio hosts who asked about her baby plans, took selfies with school kids and even admitted she had been handed a “hospital pass” to the leadership. In seven weeks she reversed Labour’s slide to gain 37 per cent of the national vote, leaving her competing with National’s Bill English on 44 per cent, for the attentions of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to form a coalition government.

The deal struck will offer Peters the role of Deputy Prime Minister and four cabinet posts. However it could also include major policy concessions and become an Achilles’ heel given Peters’ experience as a kingmaker and the party motto of “refusing to accept defeat in any cause we believe in”.

Act Party leader David Seymour said it leaves a “weak Left coalition beholden to a madman on the loose.”

The man whose party scored just 0.5 per cent of the vote said the “perverse marriage” that Labour and the Greens had created threatens millenials, immigrants and businesses.

“The silver lining for the centre right is that the three-ringed circus is likely to fall apart — perhaps even before its three years are up,” he said.

“The Greens and New Zealand First despise each other, and Winston Peters has caused chaos in every government he’s joined. New Zealanders may face an election sooner than they think.”

United Future MP Peter Dunne echoed that sentiment to Green Party leader James Shaw, saying he was now in charge of keeping an “unruly new partner” in line.

Peters said he decided to pair with Labour and the Greens because they offered the best way to mitigate what New Zealand is expected to face in the years ahead.

“It’s time for capitalism to regain its human face,” he said. “Our perception was the people of this country did want change and we’ve responded to that.”

But the political marriage could prove an uneasy alliance for the parties that have starkly different platforms on immigration and business.

Peters wants a ban on foreign ownership of residential and farm land, net migration slashed to 10,000 per year and to create a low tax environment.

In contrast, Labour campaigned on New Zealand being a country “built on immigration” and wants to increase the refugee quota to 1500. It also wants to crack down on foreign property speculators and has planned to build 100,000 new homes across the country.

What's more, at 72 Peters thinks it’s “now or never” to leave a mark on New Zealand after nearly 40 years in politics. “Frankly, of late, I’ve been asking myself that question because we’re coming to an election and I kind of think it’s now or never,” he said in August.

“If we don’t turn it around, and you’ve all got your different views, but if you were remotely neutral and you examined New Zealand — where it once was as a country in the Western world to where it is now ... you’d have to admit we’ve done very badly.”

While supporters celebrate smashing a decade of right-wing rule, if Ardern wants to avoid the popularity slumps seen by Trudeau and Macron since they took office, her greatest political challenge yet may come from within.

SOURCE

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The Trump Nominee Poised to Be Point Man on Draining Government Swamp

President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the federal government’s bureaucracy could be a key player in reforming it, and in keeping the president’s campaign pledge to “drain the swamp.”

“We don’t see any major draining of the swamp with the massive bureaucracy,” Robert Moffit says.

Trump last month nominated Jeff Tien Han Pon, 47, to be director of the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency. Pon served in the administrations of both President Bushes—with jobs in the White House, OPM, and Energy Department—and held information technology and human resources positions in several private companies.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing Wednesday on Pon’s nomination.

Pon is largely unknown to those who seek reform of the civil service, said Robert Moffit, a former OPM assistant director under President Ronald Reagan who is now a senior fellow for health studies at The Heritage Foundation.

“The OPM director has enormous authority and can help the president staff the administration, and would be welcome at a time when we don’t see any major draining of the swamp with the massive bureaucracy,” Moffit told The Daily Signal. “Every day, career bureaucrats are issuing decisions on guidelines and making interpretations of regulations. We need management there to take the bull by the horns.”

Trump’s previous nominee, George Nesterczuk, withdrew in August after relentless opposition from federal employee unions.

However, Pon seems less controversial and gained the backing of the Senior Executives Association, a nonprofit that advocates for top federal government officials. In a letter to the Senate, SEA President Bill Valdez wrote:

While serving at the Department of Energy, I had the privilege of working with Jeff on a project he initiated to improve human capital processes at DOE. The thought leadership he brought to that project is indicative of the skills and experience he will bring to his new role at OPM. Jeff’s expertise in human capital management has only grown since I worked with him in government, as evidenced by senior roles with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), Futures Inc., and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Pon also doesn’t face outright union opposition.

“While it is early in the nomination process and we reserve final opinion, we appreciate the consideration to name a nominee with a diverse and rich professional history in federal human capital,” Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in a statement early last month to the publication Government Executive. “We look forward to learning more about Mr. Pon and we hope that he, if confirmed, will view employee organizations as valuable and significant partners.”

Trump is nine months into his administration without an OPM director, the official charged with managing the federal workforce. Moffit and other conservatives have criticized the president for not filling key political positions, which they contend is how he can control career federal employees who have civil service protections.

However, Trump recently told Forbes: “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be—because you don’t need them. I mean, you look at some of these agencies, how massive they are, and it’s totally unnecessary. They have hundreds of thousands of people.”

Trump’s vanquished Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, recently urged federal employees to stay, asserting: “I don’t want to lose decades—really, if you added it all up, the thousands of years—of experience in the EPA, in the State Department, in the Labor Department. … If [Democrats] can take back one or both houses of Congress in 2018, you will have people you can talk to again.”

Pon has been the chief human resources and strategy officer for the nonprofit professional membership organization Society for Human Resource Management, where he has worked since February 2012.

For about 18 months before that, he was chief operating officer for Futures Inc., which helps members of the military transition into the civilian workforce.

At barely 21, Pon worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison under President George H.W. Bush from 1991 to 1992. He returned to Washington to work for President George W. Bush as deputy director for e-government at the OPM from June 2003 to December 2005. He left to work as chief human capital officer at the Energy Department from January 2006 through August 2008.

In between the two Bush presidencies, Pon worked in information technology and human resource jobs at Federal Express, Williams Sonoma, PetCo, and Burger King. He has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California.

SOURCE

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More Cases of Voter Fraud Pile Up as Liberals Look the Other Way

The Heritage Foundation added another round of cases this week to its ever-growing Voter Fraud Database.

Accounting for these new additions, the database now documents 1,088 proven instances of election fraud, including 949 cases that have resulted in criminal convictions, 48 that have ended in civil penalties, and 75 that have seen defendants enter diversion programs.

Americans should be alarmed, not only because Heritage has compiled so many examples of fraud—impacting nearly every state and elections for all levels of government—but because this figure is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

The Heritage database is not a comprehensive tally of election fraud. That figure would almost certainly be substantially larger.

Most states, after all, lack the robust procedures needed to detect fraud when it occurs. Even when fraud is detected, prosecutors often opt not to pursue cases because their priorities lie elsewhere.

Put simply, American elections are vulnerable and fraudsters know it. Not content to leave their ideological causes or their own careers up to the unpredictable will of voters, many fraudsters choose to act on this knowledge.

MORE HERE

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Another mess that Obama left for Trump to clean up

Bill Nutter was very sick. Not only had he just lost his second leg to diabetes, but he also suffered from a condition that could cause his heart to stop beating without warning.

But his daughter, Brigitte Darton, felt reassured because her mother had found a bed for the ailing Vietnam veteran and retired police detective at the Bedford VA Medical Center. He would be under the watchful eyes of the staff at a hospital ranked by the Veterans Administration as one of its best nationwide.

So Darton went on a long-planned family vacation in July 2016, only to get a shocking call from her mother the next day. “Your father passed away,” Carol Nutter said. “He didn’t wake up.”



A doctor eventually told Carol Nutter that a staff member on the night shift had failed to check on him hourly, as she should have.

But that was not the full story: The aide, Patricia Waible, eventually admitted that she was playing video games on her computer and didn’t check on Nutter at all, according to someone with firsthand knowledge. And when a nurse discovered Nutter dead the next morning, the hospital’s internal report shows she announced it to her boss with a crude gesture signifying a slit throat.

Now, the VA inspector general has launched a criminal investigation, working with the US attorney’s office and the FBI to identify systemic failings that may have led to Nutter’s death.

And after the Globe contacted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin’s office about the case on Sept. 22, the agency suspended Waible with pay from her job in the cafeteria where she had been transferred after Nutter’s death. The secretary’s office plans to seek her permanent removal.

But Brigitte Darton can’t understand why it took the hospital so long to take action — and why she discovered what happened to her father from a journalist.

“I hold the VA responsible for all of this. They’re responsible for their employees,” said Darton. “How many other people did this lady cause issues with?”

Waible has not returned multiple text messages and phone calls from the Globe.

The revelations about Bill Nutter’s poor care threaten to open a Pandora’s box of problems for the Bedford VA Medical Center. Although the hospital has received the highest possible five-star rating from the VA, the Globe reported last month that several employees have come forward to raise serious patient-safety concerns.

Whistle-blowers and families of veterans have claimed that relatively healthy patients deteriorate within months after being admitted to the Bedford VA. Others say that veterans living in long-term care buildings on the campus sometimes go without food for many hours, or they’re left in soiled clothes or bed linens. And buildings are laced with asbestos, a Bedford electrician charges, exposing everyone to the cancer-causing material.

In written responses to some of the whistle-blowers’ complaints and other outside reviews, the Bedford VA leaders acknowledged some of the problems but said they are working to improve conditions, where improvement is warranted. Bedford VA spokeswoman Maureen Heard declined to comment on Nutter’s care.

Shulkin has already demonstrated that he’s willing to take tough action if he believes veterans are not getting high quality care. Within 24 hours of a Spotlight report this summer detailing serious problems at the Manchester, N.H., veterans hospital, Shulkin dismissed the top two administrators.

“Secretary Shulkin has made clear that VA will hold employees accountable when the facts demonstrate that they have failed to live up to the high standards taxpayers expect from us,” said a statement from Shulkin’s spokesman, Curtis Cashour, in late September, citing Waible’s suspension as proof.

In Vietnam, Nutter was a door gunner, shooting at the enemy from the open door of a helicopter. On the ground, Agent Orange, a highly toxic herbicide used to strip foliage from the trees to make it harder for the enemy to hide, poured down like rain, his wife said, and he and his fellow soldiers would seek protection under a tarp. Even then, they feared the chemical was dangerous.

When he returned to the United States in 1969 he was greeted by jeers from anti-war protesters and was so traumatized he would sleep with his arm poised as if he were holding a gun. “He’d literally shake and I’d hold him.” said his wife. “During his last year, he started getting the flashbacks back.”

He channeled his anguish into hard work and enrolled at Northeastern, where he received a degree in criminology and made the dean’s list. He worked as a detective and photographer at the Concord Police Department and started an investigation business on the side.

But after 20 years, the effects of his Agent Orange poisoning surfaced and his health began to deteriorate. He got diabetes, a condition the VA presumes was caused by his exposure to the herbicide. The diabetes, in turn, badly damaged Nutter’s kidneys and forced the amputation of one leg years ago and the second leg in 2016 at the West Roxbury VA. He also suffered severe respiratory problems, which his doctors also attributed to Agent Orange.

But when he was finally stabilized and sent to the Bedford VA in early June, his family thought he had turned a corner.

“He seemed fine, healthy,” said Brigitte Darton. He was just getting out of Lowell General Hospital after fighting off a severe case of pneumonia and his family thought the Bedford VA was the best place for him, in part because Darton was a civilian working with the Air Force and had just returned from a tour of Afghanistan.

“I was hoping the VA would give him the care that non-VA facilities didn’t,” said Darton, who was working nearby at the Hanscom Air Force base and could visit him daily for lunch. “My dad and I were very close.”

But Bill Nutter, 68, was a very vulnerable patient, in danger of cardiac arrest at any given moment due to an arrhythmia. He couldn’t get out of bed on his own, and his hands were so crippled with neuropathy as a result of his diabetes that it was almost impossible for him to press the call button if he was in trouble. Plus, his wife said, his voice was barely a whisper after the surgery, and his roommate was deaf. Even if he could have tried to summon help, no one would have heard him, she said.

His doctors agreed that someone should check on him at least once an hour.

A nurse beginning her morning shift on July 3, 2016, found Bill Nutter unresponsive in his bed, according to the hospital’s report. When she saw her supervisor, she slid her fingers across her throat, indicating he was dead, according to internal hospital reports. “Mr. N9041 is gone,” the nurse explained, using Nutter’s VA patient number.

Carol Nutter recalled that someone from the hospital called that day to tell her that her husband had died, giving her the impression that his heart stopped between one scheduled check and the next, and that his death could not have been prevented.

”They said he went into cardiac arrest and [they] couldn’t do anything about it,” recalled Carol Nutter.

However, a few days later, a doctor called and gave her a better idea of what had actually happened, though he wasn’t specific. Nutter said the doctor was repeating what a woman in the background was telling him.

The woman said “they weren’t doing their job, and if they had done what I told them to, he could have possibly been alive because I told them to check on him once or twice an hour,” Nutter quoted her as saying.

The official medical records described the conversation this way: “Condolences were offered to wife and she was informed that we were calling because we did not believe care was up to our standards.”

Carol Nutter said she heard the words, but didn’t fully grasp what she was being told. Though the report said she was informed of her right to file a “tort claim,” or a potential lawsuit, she insisted she was never given that information.

Bedford VA officials immediately reassigned Waible, who had failed to check on Nutter, while the nurse who made the “cut-throat” sign, still in her probationary period, was terminated. The Office of the Inspector General launched an investigation.

At first, Waible insisted she had made the required checks on Nutter, even initialing paperwork that purported to document her visits. But she eventually confessed when an OIG investigator told her the hospital’s cameras showed she never left her computer for her entire shift, according to someone with direct knowledge. None of these facts were shared with the Nutters, family members said.

Now, Nutter’s family has consulted a lawyer and is trying to figure out whether to take legal action against the VA, after all.

SOURCE

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Dreamers, or the American Dream Killers?

Illegal immigration is an increasing tax burden on Americans, while at the same time undercutting their wages

As Congress considers legislation regarding DACA and the so-called “Dreamers,” it’s worth noting the effect immigration — illegal immigration in particular — has on the American Dream.

Recently the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) released its latest study on the financial cost of illegal immigration on American taxpayers. While the mainstream media often touts illegal immigration as being a boon for the economy, the actual burden of the growing illegal population on Americans is conveniently ignored. FAIR’s study calculates that illegal immigrants are costing taxpayers $116 billion annually even after the economic tax revenues associated with illegal alien labor have been factored in.

These expenses are borne out in three primary areas: Medical care, public education and law enforcement. Another factor often ignored is that state and local governments bear the brunt of these expenses. An estimated $88.9 billion falls on state and local government, while the federal government bears $45.8 billion annually. Once again, the legislators in Washington are insulated from the consequences of their own policies.

Another example of illegal immigrants’ impact on American workers is via the federal government’s immigrant worker permit programs. In fiscal year 2017, the fed doled out nearly two million permits, with approximately 1.5 million going to illegals. Matthew J. O'Brien, research director at FAIR, stated, “This [H-1B worker permit program] creates an incentive for people to accept lower wages in exchange for being in the United States and having a shot at an employment-based green card.” So, both American workers and immigrants are being taken advantage of by these programs, as wages have effectively been driven down. So much for the American Dream, right?

Thus, an increasingly heavy tax burden is being foisted onto the American worker as a result of a growing illegal population while at the same time Americans’ wages are being undercut by the fed granting a massive number of work permits to illegals. Is it any wonder why Americans are so frustrated with their government?

SOURCE

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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New Report: GOP Tax Reform Could Boost Household Income by $4,000

A study released Monday by the president’s Council of Economic Advisers found that congressional Republicans’ tax reform framework would produce thousands of dollars in income growth for American households. 

“Reducing the statutory federal corporate tax rate from 35 [percent] to 20 percent would … increase average household income in the United States by, very conservatively, $4,000 annually,” says the report from the advisory agency within the Executive Office of the President.

Income increases could reach as much as $9,000, according to the report. 

Using 2016 household income as the baseline, these effects translate into an increase in average household income from $83,143 in 2016 to between $87,520 and $92,222, an increase of $4,000 to $9,000 in wage and salary income alone.

According to the nonprofit Tax Foundation, the U.S. “has the fourth-highest statutory corporate income tax rate in the world.” The foundation’s September report continues:

“The U.S. rate of 38.91 percent (comprised of the federal statutory rate of 35 percent plus an average of the corporate income taxes levied by individual states) ranks only behind the United Arab Emirates (55 percent), Comoros (50 percent), and Puerto Rico (39 percent).”

“The main reason that wages increase is that the lower tax rate reduces the total cost of a firm that’s investing in a capital asset, like a machine, here in the U.S., and more assets like machines let workers produce more,” Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in comments released Monday. “And when workers can produce more, businesses can afford to pay their workers more.”

The GOP tax framework presented Sept. 27 by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and other GOP leaders seeks to significantly simplify the tax code.

It calls for roughly doubling taxpayers’ standard deduction (an individual’s first $12,000 of income would become tax-free, as would the first $24,000 for married couples) and for condensing the current seven tax brackets to three.

Depending on their income, individual taxpayers currently are taxed at one of these percentages: 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, 35, or 39.6 percent. The three brackets in the Republicans’ proposed framework are 12 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent.

The GOP tax reform framework slashes the current corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.

“The  increases recur each year, and the estimated total value of corporate tax reform for the average U.S. household is therefore substantially higher than $4,000,” the report says. “Moreover, the broad range of results in the literature suggest that over a decade, this effect could be much larger.” 

Researchers at Boston University found the tax reform framework increases the gross domestic product.

In a report Monday from Boston University scholars Seth G. Benzell, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, and Guillermo Lagarda, “Simulating The Republican ‘Unified Framework’ Tax Plan,” the scholars found the GOP plan would raise the gross domestic product by between 3 percent and 5 percent.

The researchers also found that real wages, the value of wages adjusted for inflation, are expected to rise by between 4 percent and 7 percent. “The Boston University analysis shows that the GOP’s Unified Framework will raise wages by [4 percent to 7 percent], translating into a $3,500 wage increase for an average American household,” says Adam Michel, a tax-policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation.

SOURCE

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DeSantis: Trump Tax Plan Provides 'Immediate Relief' for Families

The rate reductions that are part of President Donald Trump's tax code plan, combined with the call to simplify the tax process, will provide "immediate relief" for American families, Rep. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday.

"The simplicity of the tax code going from 75,000 pages down to a simple system will also give families more time and resources to spend on other things other than tax prep," the Florida Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "By incentivizing companies to locate and stay here, bring profits from overseas back here, I think there will be more employment opportunities for the American people."

DeSantis said he thinks that some of the senators who caused problems with healthcare will also have their own views on tax reform.

"Some of them have opposed tax relief in the past and just really aren't engaged in wanting to cut taxes," DeSantis said. "I think the case needs to be made to them that we're really laying a foundation for sustained growth far into the future. It will have immediate benefits for families."

SOURCE

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ObamaCare Is Still Obama's

While Trump made some welcome changes to the law, its failure still belongs with one party: Democrats.

It’s been said that since ObamaCare became law, the U.S. government is now a health insurance company that fields a military. Sadly, that’s not far off the mark and is an affront to those who understand the Constitution and personal liberty.

Pitifully, a growing population turns first to the government to solve their problems, such as health insurance coverage, despite the enumerated powers laid out by the Law of the Land. Now we have a very large sector of America’s economy that is manipulated by government rules, regulation and control that standardizes inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, not to mention inflates costs.

The good news is President Donald Trump acted last week to halt illegal subsidies paid from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies to cover their losses and, ostensibly, to keep premiums lower. Naturally, the #VeryFakeNews media has been in hyper drive to frame the narrative of the Hateful Republican President who is killing people by taking away their health care through the wrongful use of an executive order.

Let’s apply the truth to the hyperventilating Left and the insurance companies who spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for this failed policy, and who are now trying to cover up the need for billions in taxpayer bailouts — a.k.a. in bureaucratic-ese, cost-sharing reduction payments.

Fact: In the original “Affordable” Care Act, a risk pool of funding was created to pay insurance companies for potential losses and subsidize low-income patients. But, when the losses were totaling hundreds of millions of dollars because young, healthy individuals didn’t take the carrot/stick to pay high premiums for insurance with an enormous out-of-pocket deductible to finance the expansion of Medicaid and artificially lower premium costs for the sick, that risk pool ran dry. This explains the sky-high annual premium increases since ObamaCare took effect.

Fact: Since the risk pool was woefully inadequate to cover losses and to reimburse commercial insurance companies for the mandated low-cost premiums for some, Barack Obama made an appropriation request of the Congress that was not approved. In response, he used his pen to do it anyway — an action deemed illegal by DC district court in 2016. The ruling came after a 2014 lawsuit filed by the House challenging the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments as lacking a specific, legal appropriation.

With his phone and his pen, Obama, the once-constitutional lecturer, overstepped the Constitution’s declaration that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…” The Appropriations Clause, as he should know, enumerates the power of the purse to lie in Congress, not by an imperial attempting to salvage his signature legislation.

Fact: These cost-sharing reduction payments, being illegal, were rightfully halted by President Trump with the issue returned to Congress to address. So, despite the dripping hatred from leftists who cannot get over the loss of their coroneted queen, Trump acted in a constitutional manner to correct a wrong.

Relentless in their aim, the Left parrots false statements to grip the GOP with fear. That includes the usual Democrat/media claims that Republicans hate poor people and are trying to kill them just as the November 1st sign-ups begin for ObamaCare coverage in 2018.

Again, the antidote to a plague of lies is a big dose of truth with the disinfectant of sunshine.

In news accounts that began seeping into the public back in the summer as insurance companies were making premium cost projections, the “uncertainty” of the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments pushed some state insurance regulators to have commercial insurers include in their projected premium cost increases the absence of these subsidies or at least submit two projections — one with the CSR one without.

So, another fact: According to the American Academy of Actuaries July publication, these adjusted projections to address this uncertainty attributed to much of the requested increases already made this year for next year’s premium costs. Get that? States like Tennessee approved premium increases this summer to account for the elimination of the CSR payments.

But here’s the part that really disrupts the narrative of folks like those who penned the Oct. 12 Bloomberg editorial, “Trump’s Healthcare Wrecking Ball.” The hypoxic-inducing tantrums that Trump’s move will hurt the poor by shifting costs to the sickest patients, while schizophrenically declaring in the same article that the healthy subsidize the sick, are simply false.

Back to the July American Academy of Actuaries, which notes, “Although those who receive premium subsidies would be insulated from the full increase in premiums, nonsubsidized enrollees would face the full increase, potentially affecting their enrollment behavior and therefore the morbidity of the risk pool” if the CSR payments were to be eliminated.

While President Trump eliminated the illegal payments from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies, the law still demands that insurance companies offer lower premiums based on income. So, by law, insurance companies must keep prices artificially low for some with the nonsubsidized enrollees paying full price. Again, according to the Actuaries, those forced into buying government-sanctioned insurance with no subsidies “would face the full increase.”

Let’s sum this up. A law empowering government to control health insurance is failed policy and law. Using taxpayer money to make illegal payments to private insurance companies to correct flaws in the law and has rightfully been halted with the issue returned to Congress for action. Failing ObamaCare is still in place despite more than seven years of GOP promises to repeal and replace the law, and despite the president’s smart moves to inject free-market, consumer-driven controls into the health insurance market.

ObamaCare should now be called ObamaScare considering the frightful tactics of the Left to attempt to affix wrongful blame. But notwithstanding attempts to hang it around Republican necks, this law will forever be the dud prize of Obama and Democrats. It’s now up to Republicans to restore the order of a constitutional government and work with a president whose agenda is overwhelmingly supported by Americans to replace a failed law with effective policy.

SOURCE

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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What Progressives Really Want- They Are All Grubers

Newt Gingrich in his excellent book  Understanding Trump has used Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s formulation of IYI (Intelligent Yet Idiot) to describe the class of Elitists, intellectuals and “experts” who typify the heavily credentialed but mostly incompetent policy charlatans, intellectual shamans and academic planners against whom the Tea Party, Brexit, and Trump/Make America Great Again movements have reacted. This is a very useful observation and a good starting point if you want to really understand who Progressives are and what they want.

In the most general sense, they want to rule us and decide everything for us. They want to put their policies into effect, as Jonathan Gruber so aptly put it, by writing their laws in such “tortured” (read: deceptive) ways that the “stupid American voters” would just let them do it. They think we need them because they are educated and knowledgable. They have studied and attained degrees and other credentials that supposedly entitle them to say whatever they feel is necessary to get control of us and our lives. If they really understood what they were doing, it would not be so so bad. All their education has endowed them with a great deal of knowledge about certain things and yet it has not given them (or allowed them to develop) a true understanding.

The great inventor and researcher, Charles F. Kettering once said, “Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.” When Kettering was running the research group at GM, he made a point of retraining any PhD that the company hired. He would train him not to (as most PhDs do) proceed to try to fit the problem to what he already knew but to “,…encounter a problem without preconceptions and to let the problem teach him to both know and understand it. In this way the problem becomes its own solution. The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.” Kettering had a sign hung in the laboratory. It read simply, “Let the problem be the boss.”

But no, the Progressives want to rule us with knowledge not understanding. I don’t want to create the impression that I am picking only on Gruber, its just that he and his guileless truth-telling about his methods and aims give us the perfect example of how disastrous Progressiveism is as an approach to government. Mr Gruber has a complex and subtle knowledge of computer models and economic systems. About human nature and our economic behavior, however, he is as clueless and callous as a robot with Asperger’s Syndrome. Not only does he think we are stupid, he thinks that no matter how abjectly his designed programs fail, he can point to us as the problem- not his failure to understand. When, in 2016 Gruber was questioned on CNN about the incipient failure of the marketplaces he was ready to double down:

“There’s no sense in which it needs to be fixed,” Mr. Gruber said. When questioned further about why the insurance companies were pulling out of the exchanges he blames the companies for not being prepared for a “new kind of insurance market” and goes on to say, “The law is working as designed. However, it could work better. I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that we need a larger mandate penalty. We have individuals who are essentially free-riding on the system. They’re essentially waiting until they get sick and then getting health insurance.”

Which is to say, that he wants to see people bullied with higher penalties to force them into the Obamacare plans. When someone like Gruber refers to “experts”, you can bet that he is talking about PhDs and knowledge mongers like himself.

One last example from Gruber comes from an interview he did with Maria Bartiromo- and this is the quintessential knowledge vs understanding argument. when at 7:30 of this interview Bartiromo tells Gruber that ten CEOs of corporations have told her that, from their personal experience, they know that Obamacare is hurting job growth because they have had to halt hiring in their companies, he replies that they and she are wrong and that Obamacare is not hurting job growth. He claims to have data and equations that disprove it. I am reminded of one of my favorite cartoons by S Harris:



These people are not our “betters” they are smug, self-important fools whom we have allowed too much power in our nation and our lives. On top of it all Gruber has been exposed _ at least by the State of Vermont as a thief and a fraud for over billing and billing for work that he claimed had been done by a (probably) non-existent research assistant.

It is just this kind of bald-faced denial of true understanding- this shoveling of data points and “expert” opinion invalidate the real experience of real people- that has finally alerted so many people here and in Britain, at least, that Progressives don’t want to understand anything they just want to find ways to force us to do what they “know” we should be doing. How do they know that? Well, they are experts. What makes them experts? -Credentials earned in sterile, politically correct universities and experience producing essays, books and research that get approval from journalists, others like themselves and (most importantly) political “buy-in” by politicians who know more about how to get elected and re-elected than they understand about their constituents.

The funny thing is, for all that they call themselves Progressives, “progress” is also something they know but do not understand. If their idea of progress is equality, they do not stop at equality of opportunity. They want to to find ways to insure equality of outcome- and that means socialism at the least and communism at the worst. But then, for decades they have been making policy to foster the economic advancement of racial minorities and the black family has been gravely wounded and inequality of outcome is worse than it ever was.

In spite of all their failure, they want the world to work the way they “know” it “should” work and if it doesn’t they are prepared to bully you for “the common good.” and if bullying fails on the first try they will feel - as Gruber does about mandates- to move to coercion and beyond.

There is a Gruber in your future. The rise of this form of charlatanism has been stalled by President Trump but make no mistake, the Progressives are still coming on. They are not just Democrats the Bush administrations were full of them. Many of them are now in the ranks of the “Never Trumpers”. Emboldened over the thirty years since Reagan’s presidency there are too many academics, PhDs, consultants and authors without understanding who have been elevated with riches, position and praise.

By the way, I understand this myself because for the first few years after I got my Master’s Degree, I worked in the belly of that beast. I was a statistical programmer at, what was at the time, one of the premier social science and public policy research companies in the nation. That was a long time ago - Gruber was still in grade school. Since then, I have been in business for myself in honest, productive work but every time I read or hear what “The Establishment” wants to do or prevent, I recognize it as Progressivism and have come to think of it as The Voice of The Gruber.

They are not all without understanding but if they have never done any real work or had to really solve a problem, they should not be trusted to tell us how to live.  Know him or her for who they are, they are all “Grubers”. As is written in Isaiah 56:11 Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter.

SOURCE

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Hollywood Actors Who Condemn Trump but Were Silent on Weinstein

Just about all of them but here are some examples

Ashley Judd is the absolute worst.

I want to like her, I really do. Sometimes she chooses a good cause, like speaking up for trafficked and abused children. Those are the activities she should stick to. Unfortunately, Judd had to go to the "Women's March," where hundreds of thousands of women wore pink "pussy" hats while claiming to be upset that Trump had used that word once. She performed ridiculous slam poetry, screeching defamatory accusations about the president wanting to have sex with his daughter and about other terrible things about which she had no first-hand knowledge.

But at no time did she ever discuss a man who she did know did horrific things. No "by the way, Harvey Weinstein is a dirtbag who tried to get me to watch him shower for a part." Why didn't that come up?

I find it very difficult to believe Judd is this angry at Donald Trump, a man who has never done anything to her, or provably to anybody, when there is a man who did do something horrible to her whom she could be screeching about. She needs therapy. And possibly tranquilizers.

Jennifer Lawrence was recently interviewed for her epic fail of a movie, Mother, and gave Democratic talking points like "equality for women in the workplace," blamed Trump for hurricanes, and rattled off the same tired Leftist arguments we've heard forever. During another interview, she claimed that she is terrified of Trump and wanted to make a video of herself saying "F*** you!" to him.

Lawrence claimed she felt she could be a spokesperson for women who are underpaid:

I felt like I had a voice, people look at me and listen to me, and to not say anything, that's never sat well with me.
That seems disingenuous, because she kept quiet about the creepy mogul who everyone in Hollywood appears to have known was abusing women. Why stay quiet over that? Don't you have a responsibility to alert other women that there is a serial sexual predator in their midst? Lawrence hasn't alleged any harassment from Weinstein, although she is seen looking awkward in many photos with him while he holds her too close to his massive girth. It wouldn't surprise me if she had first-hand knowledge of his depravity.

Angelina Jolie penned a letter to the New York Times slamming Trump's travel ban because she claimed refugees were victims of terrorism. At the same time, she knew Harvey Weinstein was terrorizing young women trying to make it in the business -- but she said nothing.

Like Paltrow, she is also Hollywood royalty. The daughter of the very well-known Jon Voight should not have been scared into silence by a creep like Weinstein. If either Jolie or Paltrow had come forward, especially together, Weinstein could have been fired years ago. Instead they stayed quiet -- and allowed him to prey on women who didn't have the luxury of saying "no."

SOURCE

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A tax so stupid that it lasted only two months

Almost entirely paid by the poor, who tend to shop locally

On Wednesday, the commissioners of Cook County, Illinois, repealed the controversial soda tax that went into effect in August of this year. December 1, 2017, will be the first day residents of Cook County will no longer be required to pay a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar sweetened beverages—and they’re better off without it. Although some of the costs are irreversible—one vending machine company estimated the tax cost them about $75,000 to reconfigure their machines—Cook County is now on a better path.

At one cent per ounce, Cook County’s soda tax was smaller than many of the soda taxes enacted elsewhere, which range from one and a half cents to two cents per ounce. Still, the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI), an independent but libertarian-leaning think tank, estimates that the tax effectively raises the price of soda by 50 percent. IPI reports that the after-tax price of a 12-pack of soda has risen from $4 to $5.97. That’s more than five times the local tax on beer, a stunning retail price hike confirmed by the professional fact-checkers at Politifact. A well-known principle of public finance is that some of the burden of a tax imposed at any link in the supply chain eventually gets shifted forward to consumers.

Cook County’s officials, like many other politicians, justified the soda tax as a means of improving public health by reducing sugar consumption. Academic research suggests, though, that consumers may not respond to selective excise taxes in the ways soda tax proponents think they will. Consider the soda tax in Berkeley, California. One study found a 10 percent after-tax reduction in soda purchases within the city’s limits. That is the line trumpeted by soda tax advocates, who should, however, read on. The same study also found a nearly seven percent increase in purchases of soda outside of Berkeley’s taxing jurisdiction. Several letters to the editor have chronicled just the same kind of behavior from consumers in Cook County.

From the start, Cook County’s soda tax was unlikely to improve the health of its citizens and was instead just a way of raising revenue on the backs of the poor. People shopping across borders and substituting other unhealthy foods for higher priced soda render such taxes as worse than useless.

SOURCE

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Another squirm about IQ

The Left hate the whole idea of IQ.  It offends against their absurd doctrine that all men are equal.  So when intelligence becomes a topic, they always do their best to denigrate and misrepresent it.  The article below arises from Trump's assertion that he has a higher IQ than Tillerson. It appeared in "LiveScience", which might as well be called "HalfDeadScience".

The whole aim of the article is to show that IQ score is not fixed and does not matter.  But in claiming those things they show how unscientific they are by not looking at the numbers.  Numbers are the inescapable tools of science.  And that matters.  Psychometricians are well aware that the correlations between different measures of ability are not perfect and that some situational factors can influence an IQ score.  But how strong are those influences?  Could the effect of situational factors be entirely trivial, for instance?

To answer that you have to look at the numbers that have emerged from research into IQ.  And they are revealing.  IQ tests are made up of a number of different types of puzzle that are not obviously related to one-another.  And the whole concept of IQ originated from the observation that some people are good at all sorts of puzzles that are not obviously related to one another.

So how strong is that effect?  When scores on the different tests are analysed a very strong first eigenvector arises, which shows that scores on all the different tests are strongly related to one-another.  Correlations between the various puzzles run as high as .70, which is a rare magnitude in psychological research.  So there is a single strong trait in existence that we call IQ and which tells us that a high scorer on an IQ test will be good at solving all sorts of problems.

So IQ is real and important.

What about the various influences described below that can influence an IQ score?  Again the numbers are instructive.  Nutrition, for instance, can have an effect.  A person eating a diet that is seriously deficient in important ways will get a reduced score -- but only by about 5 IQ points.  That is not negligible but it is mostly irrelevant in Western society.  Western diets generally do not harm IQ.  Reduced scores on dietary grounds are generally found in very poorly fed populations in India and Africa.  And IQs in Africa are so disastrously low that no feeding would bring them anywhere near European standards.

Let me look very briefly at some more of the influences trotted out below.  IQ correlates with Birth order.  Yes. It does appear to.  The research is not unanimous but that is probably because the effect is so small:  About 1 IQ point.

The Howard Gardner theory of "multiple intelligences" -- eight of them, would you believe? There is a very clear and simple demolition of the whole Gardner theory here -- which points out that the Gardner theory not only ignores the data but that its criteria for calling something "an intelligence" are so loose that sense of humour, sense of smell, musical ability, athletic ability etc could all be called "intelligences". By adopting similar rules I could say that all cats, dogs and horses are birds -- but that would still not make them so.

I could go on but will finish with one outright misrepresentation below.  An article titled "Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents" is described below as showing that "IQ scores also change with the test taker's level of self-discipline and personal motivation and grit".  But the article did not show that.  It showed only that academic performance, not IQ, was influencible by grit etc.  That hard workers do better at school is hardly news but it does not vitiate the fact that High IQ scorers also perform well academically.

So the article below is an exercise in deception, not science


The IQ, or the intelligence quotient, is a measure of a person's mental age divided by their actual age, multiplied by 100. So, a person who is exactly as "mentally old" as one might expect for that individual's chronological age would score a perfectly average 100. People who deviate from that score in either direction are considered to be of above- or below-average intelligence. These scores can change with age and can fluctuate from one testing session to another, according to researchers.

But intelligence is a many-faceted beast. While it is colloquially associated with math and reasoning skills, psychologists assert that there are many kinds of intelligence, with Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist at Harvard University, classifying seven distinct types, including bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial and linguistic.

Given that it's so hard to pin down exactly what intelligence is, the task of measuring it with a standardized test is particularly difficult, experts say. One of the standard IQ tests used today is called the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (used for adults and older teens), which measures verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills, or as the psychologist who developed the test put it, the ability to "adapt and constructively solve problems in the environment."

Trump might not get the clear-cut result he's hoping for, since this test and others like it, including the Stanford-Binet test, don't present some unified quantity of a person's "smartness."

Test results are affected by several confounding variables, such as smoking habits, hours spent playing computer games and various aspects of one's personality, according to past research. IQ scores also change with the test taker's level of self-discipline and personal motivation and grit — all things that can change from testing session to testing session — according to a 2005 study that surveyed the IQ test results of 140 eighth-graders.

"Indeed, IQ tests are influenced by many factors," Cornell University developmental psychologist Stephen Ceci told Live Science. "For example, schooling affects IQ test performance," he added, explaining that for each year that a student falls short of finishing high school, there is a drop of between 1.8 and 4 IQ points compared to peers who did finish high school.

In Vietnam, Ceci explained, people who had a higher risk of being drafted stayed in school longer as a means to defer service compared to those with safer draft numbers. IQ testing revealed that those who stayed in school longer had higher scores — not because they were smarter, but because they had greater exposure to the conditions that would help them answer IQ test questions such as "who wrote Hamlet," Ceci said.

IQ test scores even correlate with birth order among siblings, according to two 2007 studies, as reported by The New York Times.

Therefore, IQ tests measure not just intelligence (however that is defined), but also the environment and context of one's life.

SOURCE

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Republicans Will Only Succeed if They ‘Get Behind the Trump Agenda’

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) told Breitbart News that Republicans will only succeed in the midterm elections if “they get behind the Trump agenda.”

The congressman said that the Freedom Caucus remains committed to passing a dynamic tax reform package for middle-class families as well as repealing and replacing Obamacare. Meadows also cheered the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed repeal of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. An EPA analysis revealed that repealing the Clean Power Plan will save roughly $33 billion in compliance costs in 2030.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) cheered the EPA’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan. Meadows said, “Well it’s a good day for businesses across the country and not just in coal country when we really look at the compliance costs and economics of compliance a lot of times the cost benefits that was done under the previous administration would take credit for things that the rules and regulations accounted for and yet really didn’t take consideration for the cost and emphasize of that particular administrative action. I look at this repeal as a welcome day not just for coal country but all businesses in making sure that we have proper accounting for the cost-benefit analysis.”

Meadows added, “We should really focus on an American First agenda, and these climate pacts and climate regulations have been designed to not necessarily give American workers and the American environment a head start. It really gives our competition a greater ability to compete internationally and disadvantage American companies. I look forward to a reset that still emphasizes clean air and clean water.”

Meadows told Breitbart News that he remains optimistic about Congress’ ability to pass a tax reform package.

One thing that Washington D.C. does not do well is cut spending. We have to get the economy going again and getting tax cuts to wage earners and make sure that our businesses are competitive again. I’m optimistic that despite the rhetoric that we’re hearing, we’re going to be deliver finally on a major campaign promise that the president made to the American people, and that is to put more money back in Americans’ pockets.” Meadows said. “It is critically important that we deliver on tax reform. I believe it is bold and aggressive it may increase the deficit in the short-run, but over the long-term, the economic growth and the power of unleashing economic power of the American worker will certainly help us balance our budgets that Congress has never been able to do with just cutting the budget and limit the spending.

The House Freedom Caucus chairman then revealed that he and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) will try to find Democrats to work with and who want to pass a tax reform package. The North Carolina congressman explained, “I can tell you that Jim Jordan and I are working to identify a number of Democrats in the House and the Senate to work with that will truly tax reform bipartisan which will put more money in the middle-income wage earner’s pockets. This should be a bipartisan topic. I want to make sure that we have a tax code that makes sure that everyone benefits, including those in poverty and those middle-income wage earners and those that have already lived the American dream as well as making sure that everyone can receive the benefits of a robust economy and not just the select few.”

President Trump worked with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on an executive action that would expand Association Health Plans (AHPs) that would allow small groups, small businesses, and individuals to band together to create their own health insurance pools.

Chairman Meadows cheered Sen. Pauls’ initiative to lower Americans’ health care costs. Meadows told Breitbart News:

Rand Paul has done a very good job of focusing on association plans, and that goes back for eight or nine months. It has been my belief that since we did not get it done through the legislative initiatives that the president through the rulemaking authority that exists under the Affordable Care Act can put forth the ability for associations to provide insurance policy. It will put down real pressure to bring down premiums I applaud the effort and fully support it.

I will tell you that the president is serious about making sure that premiums get lowered so whether it is executive action on association plans or other executive actions, this administration continues to contemplate other actions as a backup in case Congress failed on repeal and replacement efforts.

Breitbart News reported on the “league of extraordinary candidates,” which consists of populist Republican candidates who remain committed to accomplishing the president’s agenda. Meadows argued that the only Republican candidates that will succeed in the midterm elections are those that “are willing to get behind the Trump agenda.”

Meadow told Breitbart News:

The fundamental question for Republican running all across the country is: are you going to stand with the American people like the president campaigned on and won on November 8? Or are you going to just talk about standing with the American people? The American voter is not going to accept talk any longer. It’s time to show the real proof of each candidate is made of and how they will fulfill that promise.

I think that the anger and the frustration that is prevalent still on the main streets across America will have a profound effect on the midterm elections and Republicans will only succeed if they get behind the Trump agenda.

Meadows explained that the Freedom Caucus remains committed to passing tax reform and passing an Obamacare repeal package. Meadows told Breitbart News that some Freedom Caucus members continue to look towards attaching an Obamacare repeal bill in must-pass legislation. Meadows said, “Well we’re obviously focused on tax reform, and we got to push even harder for a repeal and replacement effort, and there’s a number of us that are working on other ways to make sure that we attach repeal bills to must-pass legislation. Another emphasis for the Freedom Caucus is trying to support the president and identifying those regulations that have to be rolled back.”

Meadows concluded, “It’s all about representing the forgotten men and women, to make sure that they have a voice and members of the Freedom Caucus take that very seriously.”

SOURCE 

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

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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