Amazon hits out at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for saying it pays warehouse workers 'starvation wages' with tech giant saying they pay $15 an hour minimum

Does she ever get anything right?

Amazon fired back at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Monday after she accused the company of paying 'starvation wages' to its warehouse workers and said low pay worker pay helped enrich billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos. She also said the firm underpaid 'every single person' in its workforce.

The Internet shipping giant responded after Ocasio-Cortez blasted the company in an interview on ABC's 'This Week' program Sunday. 

'.@AOC is just wrong,' the company wrote Monday, tagging her roughly 4 million followers on Twitter. 'Amazon is a leader on pay at $15 min wage + full benefits from day one. We also lobby to raise federal min wage,' the firm wrote.

Amazon executive and former Obama White House press secretary Jay Carney chimed in on Twitter: 'More than 42% of all working Americans earn less than the $15/hour Amazon pays entry-level fulfillment center employees. And all our employees get top-tier benefits. I’d urge @AOC to focus on raising the federal minimum wage instead of making stuff up about Amazon,' he fired back.

The firm hiked wages last year after coming under criticism by the gap in pay between warehouse employees and top execs.

This year Forbes magazine listed the Bezos family at the top of its billionaires list (Bezos is getting divorced from wife MacKenzie following revelations he was having an affair), with an estimated $131 billion worth.

A company spokesperson called the charges 'absurd,' adding that 'hourly associates at our Staten Island facility earn between $17.30 and $23 an hour, plus benefits which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance,' Fox Business reported.

'On top of these benefits, Amazon pre-pays 95% of continuing education tuition costs through its Career Choice program for associates who want to pursue in-demand careers. For anyone who wants to know what it's like to work in an Amazon fulfillment center, sign up for a tour today,' said the spokesperson.

Ocasio-Cortez lashed out at Bezos in a Sunday interview with ABC News where told host Jonathan Karl how she thinks Bezos made his trillion dollar company founded in 1994 a success.

She was asked if a true progressive program was put in place, would someone like Bezos still be a billionaire? AOC has made it clear she thinks having billionaires is immoral.

'But if his being a billionaire is predicated on paying people starvation wages and stripping them of their ability to access healthcare…'

She said the amount Amazon workers are paid is 'certainly part of the equation'.

Amazon increased the minimum wage to $15 last November in response to criticism. The federal minimum wages has been $7.25 since 2009.

The company paid no tax to the US in 2018.

'When you have a very large workforce and you underpay every single person and then you also participate in taking billions of dollars of government subsidies, that could be part of it,' the New York Democrat told ABC's This Week.

'Whether Jeff Bezos is a billionaire or not is less of my concern than if your average Amazon worker is making a living wage, if they have guaranteed health care and if they can send their kids to college tuition-free,' she said Sunday.

'And if that's the case, and Jeff Bezos is still a billionaire, that's one thing.'

Bernie Sanders and AOC recently vowed to outlaw a new Amazon credit card designed for people with poor ratings over its high interest rate.

The Vermont senator accused the tech giant of 'greed' over the 28 per cent interest rate on its new card, and said it will only 'make the poor even poorer'. 'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I will outlaw it,' he added, in reference to legislation the pair introduced last month which would cap credit rates at 15 per cent.

Amazon launched its new secured credit card earlier this week. Users pay a deposit - in Amazon's case between $100 and $1,000 - to 'secure' a line of credit which acts as collateral and sets their spending limit.

In Amazon's case, the cards would only be available to those on their $119-per-year Prime package. The deposit would only be repaid when customers upgrade to a regular Amazon Store Card after seven months of on-time payments. Both the secured card and store card can only be used for Amazon purchases.

Sanders and AOC's bill, which was introduced last month, came after Sanders found the average annual salary for an Amazon worker is $28,000 but half of their employees were paid under that amount.

Likening Wall Street lenders to 'loan sharks', they say it is unconscionable that banks borrow at 2.5 per cent while lending at an average rate of 17.7 per cent. Many customers pay a far higher percentage on their loans.

The proposal also would let more than 30,000 post offices provide banking services for low-income Americans who currently don’t have ready access to banks.

With Republicans in control of the Senate, the proposals have virtually no chance of becoming law, but provide Sanders with a stumping tool as he runs for President.

Amazon cancelled plans to build a second headquarters in Long Island City recently after they faced backlash from residents of New York's Queens borough, including AOC, who complained about the negative affect the company would have on the community.

SOURCE   

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Elites Have No One to Blame for Populism but Themselves

Victor Davis Hanson

What is going on with the unending Brexit drama, the aftershocks of Donald Trump’s election, and the “yellow vests” protests in France?

What drives the growing estrangement of southern and eastern Europe from the European Union establishment?

What fuels the anti-EU themes of recent European elections and the stunning recent Australian re-election of conservatives?

Put simply, the middle classes are revolting against Western managerial elites. The latter group includes professional politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, condescending academics, corporate phonies, and propagandistic journalists.

What are the popular gripes against them?

One, illegal immigration and open borders have led to chaos. Lax immigration policies have taxed social services and fueled multicultural identity politics, often to the benefit of boutique leftist political agendas.

Two, globalization enriched the cosmopolitan elites who found worldwide markets for their various services. New global markets and commerce meant Western nations outsourced, offshored, and ignored their own industries and manufacturing (or anything dependent on muscular labor that could be replaced by cheaper workers abroad).

Three, unelected bureaucrats multiplied and vastly increased their power over private citizens. The targeted middle classes lacked the resources to fight back against the royal armies of tenured regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors, and adjustors who could not be fired and were never accountable.

Four, the new global media reached billions and indoctrinated rather than reported.

Five, academia became politicized as a shrill agent of cultural transformation rather than focusing on education—while charging more for less learning.

Six, utopian social planning increased housing, energy, and transportation costs.

One common gripe framed all these diverse issues: The wealthy had the means and influence not to be bothered by higher taxes and fees or to avoid them altogether. Not so much the middle classes, who lacked the clout of the virtue-signaling rich and the romance of the distant poor.

In other words, elites never suffered the firsthand consequences of their own ideological fiats.

Green policies were aimed at raising fees on, and restricting the use of, carbon-based fuels. But proposed green belt-tightening among hoi polloi was not matched by a cutback in second and third homes, overseas vacations, luxury cars, private jets, and high-tech appurtenances.

In education, government directives and academic hectoring about admissions quotas and ideological indoctrination likewise targeted the middle classes but not the elite. The micromanagers of Western public schools and universities often preferred private academies and rigorous traditional training for own children.

Elites relied on old-boy networks to get their own kids into colleges. Diversity administrators multiplied at universities while indebted students borrowed more money to pay for them.

In matters of immigration, the story was much the same. Western elites encouraged the migration of indigent, unskilled, and often poorly educated foreign nationals who would ensure that government social programs—and the power of the elites themselves—grew.

The champions of open borders made sure that such influxes did not materially affect their own neighborhoods, schools, and privileged way of life.

Elites masked their hypocrisy by virtue-signaling their disdain for the supposedly xenophobic, racist, or nativist middle classes.

Yet the non-elite have experienced firsthand the impact on social programs, schools, and safety from sudden, massive, and often illegal immigration from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia into their communities.

As for trade, few still believe in “free” trade when it remains so unfair. Why didn’t elites extend to China their same tough-love lectures about global warming, or about breaking the rules of trade, copyrights, and patents?

The middle classes became nauseated by the constant elite trashing of their culture, history, and traditions, including the tearing down of statues, the Trotskyizing of past heroes, the renaming of public buildings and streets, and, for some, the tired and empty whining about “white privilege.”

If Western nations were really so bad, and so flawed at their founding, why were millions of non-Westerners risking their lives to reach Western soil?

How was it that elites themselves had made so much money, had gained so much influence, and had enjoyed such material bounty and leisure from such a supposedly toxic system—benefits that they were unwilling to give up despite their tired moralizing about selfishness and privilege?

In the next few years, expect more grassroots demands for the restoration of the value of citizenship.

There will be fewer middle-class apologies for patriotism and nationalism. The non-elite will become angrier about illegal immigration, demanding a return to the idea of measured, meritocratic, diverse, and legal immigration.

Because elites have no answers to popular furor, the anger directed at them will only increase until they give up—or finally succeed in their grand agenda of a nondemocratic, all-powerful, Orwellian state.

SOURCE 

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The Left Held National #ImpeachTrump Rallies: ‘almost nobody showed up’

Activists held rallies across America on Saturday in support of impeachment against President Donald Trump. There was just one problem: hardly anyone showed up.

The Blaze Reports:

Who organized the rallies?

The rallies were organized by far-left activist group MoveOn.org, which is pressuring congressional Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump.

“Events will be visible, family-friendly, public gatherings to demonstrate to our representatives that impeachment is the will of the people. Together, we will inform our communities about Trump’s abuses and the process of impeachment, then make plans to convey our support for impeachment to our elected officials,” the group said on its website.

MoveOn partnered with nearly two dozen groups, including the far-left Women’s March, to host more than 130 protest events in cities across the country. Some politicians, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Minn.), even spoke at rallies.

Pictures across social media revealed that just dozens of activists showed up at most rallies, while just a few hundred showed up in larger, more liberal cities.

SOURCE 

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Trump Pushes a Major Win for Hunters and Anglers: Access to Huge Swaths of Previously Off-Limits Land

As part of President Donald Trump’s commitment to open public lands to the public, his administration has proposed expanding access at federally controlled wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries by more than 1.4 million acres.

The proposal is currently up for public comment and could take effect this fall.

“He’s basically said, ‘Git-R-Done,’” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said of Trump in an interview, according to the Washington Examiner.

“The president fundamentally gets that hunters and anglers are the true conservationists in our society. He understands that history and that we need to act in efforts to expand hunting and fishing while at the same time being respectful of private land rights, respectful of state law,” Bernhardt said.

The proposal would increase the number of places managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service that are open for hunting and fishing. Sites in the National Wildlife Refuge System open for hunting will increase from 377 to 382, while sites open for fishing will increase from 312 to 316.

Within the National Fish Hatchery System, 15 sites will be open for hunting or fishing for the first time, according to a statement on the Interior Department’s website. A full list of sites is available through the Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.

“President Trump is committed to expanding public access on public lands, and this proposal is executing on that directive by opening and increasing more access to hunting and fishing by the Fish and Wildlife Service at more stations and across more acres than ever before,” Bernhardt said in a Department of the Interior news release.

“Hunting and fishing are more than just traditional pastimes as they are also vital to the conservation of our lands and waters, our outdoor recreation economy, and our American way of life.

“These refuges and hatcheries provide incredible opportunities for sportsmen and women and their families across the country to pass on a fishing and hunting heritage to future generations and connect with wildlife.”

In the Examiner interview, Bernhardt said access is the first step to appreciation of all America’s outdoors has to offer, and recalled his access to federal lands in Colorado as an example.

“Exposure matters,” he told the newspaper. “Having those opportunities to succeed and fail made me more confident and made me more willing to accept challenges. [If] I lived somewhere where my parents had to drive 300 miles for me to hunt or fish, it wouldn’t have happened at all, though that might have been a lot better for my grades,” he said.

Bernhardt related a comment from former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who told Bernhardt early in his career with the Interior Department to buy a boat.

“He said, ‘You need to get a boat. The great thing about a boat, if you get your kids on one, even if they are with their friends, they’re stuck with you,’” Bernhardt said, noting that his children are now as fond of the outdoors as he is.

In the Examiner interview, Bernhardt said that his staff went through federal regulations and culled a slew of them to simplify life for sportsmen, and that the new rules align federal regulations with state ones to end confusion.

“You’ve got to be a lawyer to figure out if you can hunt or can’t hunt,” he said, describing the current rules-heavy climate that limits access to public land.

“The biggest reason people don’t start or don’t stay hunting or fishing is largely the access to areas. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to expand access,” he said.

The proposal has the support of many groups that support the outdoors. “This announcement will benefit America’s sportsmen and -women by providing access to prime hunting and fishing areas,” Christy Plumer, chief conservation officer for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said according to the Washington Examiner.

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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NYT writes: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

President Trump tweets: "Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country..."

The story gives Russia forewarning that the USA has expert code crackers too and is thus a betrayal.  But the NYT is a firmly Leftist organ so it will of course do anything it can to harm the USA. All of the major bills advocated by the Democratic party in recent months -- such as the "Green New Deal" -- would be hugely disastrous for the American economy and the welfare of ordinary Americans -- but that's a feature, not a bug

Remember the "Affordable Care Act", which made health insurance effectively UNaffordable for many who previously did have insurance?  Again a feature, not a bug


The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said.

In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections.

Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue, after years of public warnings from the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. that Russia has inserted malware that could sabotage American power plants, oil and gas pipelines, or water supplies in any future conflict with the United States.

But it also carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.

The administration declined to describe specific actions it was taking under the new authorities, which were granted separately by the White House and Congress last year to United States Cyber Command, the arm of the Pentagon that runs the military’s offensive and defensive operations in the online world.

But in a public appearance on Tuesday, President Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said the United States was now taking a broader view of potential digital targets as part of an effort “to say to Russia, or anybody else that’s engaged in cyberoperations against us, ‘You will pay a price.’”

SOURCE 

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American prosperity is rolling forward — despite impeachment-obsessed Democrats

By former Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.)

Now that House Democrats are on the verge of plunging the nation into an impeachment crisis, America is about to learn what President Obama was talking about when he lectured frustrated Republicans that “elections have consequences.”

Boy, do they.

A quick comparison of this session of Congress with the last clearly illustrates the point. By any measure, the 115th with about a thousand bills passed out of the House was, as then-Speaker Paul Ryan said, “One of the most productive sessions of Congress in a generation.”

Fast forward a year and there is little in the way of accomplishment, as some of us forewarned, in the 116th Democrat-controlled House. Not even a budget resolution. By contrast, the 115th passed three budget resolutions (I was senior freshman on the Budget Committee), and for the first time in over two decades passed nearly 80 percent of its appropriations on time.

About the only thing the 116th is guaranteeing in next year’s spending bills is a repeal of the Hyde Amendment ban on taxpayer funding of abortion.

Of course, the biggest achievement of the Trump administration and its work with the last session of Congress was a return of 3 percent economic growth with wages growing faster than at any time over the last decade. In fact, it’s been so successful that Joe Biden is trying to take credit for it.

But, as Bill Clinton used to say, that dog won’t hunt.

The truth is the Obama-Biden administration presided over the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression averaging just 1.5 percent annual GDP growth. All the while massively raising taxes and doubling the debt. The Carter-style malaise wasn’t lifted until tax and regulatory reform took place under the Trump administration and the 115th Congress.

Indeed, as important as tax reform was, freeing the economy from the Obama-era regulatory bender of some 600 “major” (having an economic effect of $100 million or more) rules was what really jumpstarted growth. By the end of 2016, there were over 95,000 pages in the Federal Register — the most since 1936, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Even after the election on Nov. 9, 2016, the Obama administration released another 145 regulations, costing more than $16 billion. The total compliance burden was the economic equivalent of the federal income tax costing Americans roughly $15,000 per household.

That’s why in the first 100 days of the 115th Congress we passed, and the president signed, a record 14 Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions successfully overturning these costly federal mandates — immediately saving at least $3.7 billion and 4.2 million hours filling out federal paperwork.

In Minnesota and across the country, this meant a resurgence in mining, logging and manufacturing jobs resulting in the US becoming a net energy exporter for the first time in 75 years. Contrast that with the $93 trillion “carbon tax” known as the Green New Deal seeking to retrofit every building in America and all of a sudden the infamous “bridge to nowhere” starts to look like a bargain.

There’s more work to be done with so-called agency “guidance letters” that have the force of law but get around congressional oversight. I introduced the Reforming Executive Guidance (Reg) Act in the 115th to make these documents subject to the CRA as well as the Administrative Procedure Act and just recently the administration put agencies on notice that all regulatory actions should be subject to review.

Finally, as Democrats refuse to fund border security, their $32 trillion “Medicare for All” scheme aims to provide benefits for undocumented immigrants and remove restrictions on taxpayer funded abortions — even late-term ones. Indeed, on health care, the Pelosi Democrats seem committed to finishing the job of socialized medicine that Obamacare started, even flirting with the idea of eliminating private employer-sponsored insurance.

And in case you thought the 115th was just a partisan exercise, think again. For the first time in decades, criminal justice reform was signed into law with the First Step Act as well as the bipartisan Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018. I was proud to sponsor the latter with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), giving nonviolent offenders a second chance instead of lengthy or lifetime prison sentences.

Again, the contrast is striking with House Democrats now in control obsessed with never-ending investigations and partisan witch-hunts after $25 million, 500 subpoenas and a million-and-a-half documents found no evidence of collusion. Then again, if they really believe they were hired to start a full blown impeachment crisis in the middle of an economic expansion, they should take the vote.

Republicans in 2020 may just be sitting back channeling Clint Eastwood’s famous onscreen line: “Go ahead, make my day.”

SOURCE 

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Bernie Sanders: Americans 'will be delighted to pay more in taxes'

Another Leftist flight from reality



Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, continued to defend Democratic socialism and argued that Americans would be "delighted to pay more in taxes" if his policies are carried out.

On Wednesday, Sanders attempted to sway voters into the ideology of Democratic socialism and argued in favor for what he called an "Economic Bill of Rights," where every American would have a right for items like free health care and education. He also insisted that President Trump is a "corporate socialist" for providing billions in subsidies and tax breaks for corporations.

During an appearance on CNN, the Democratic candidate was asked how he will respond to Trump's attacks on the campaign trail, specifically when the president invokes Venzuela as an example of failed socialism.

"Look, what we have to understand, for example... the United States is the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a right," Sanders explained. "In many countries in Europe, Germany for one, you go to college and the cost of college is zero. I think in Finland they actually pay you to go to college. In most countries around the world the level of income and wealth inequality, which in the United States today is worse than at anytime since the 1920s... that level of income and wealth inequality is much less severe than it is right here in the United States."

SOURCE 

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One year after net neutrality ended, the Internet works better than ever

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement celebrating one year since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended net neutrality:

“One year ago today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wisely ended the Internet regulatory nightmare that was to be net neutrality. Chairman Pai’s action was met by apocryphal cries of doom about the future of the Internet. Well, one year later, the domestic Internet is doing fine with advancements moving ahead which will deliver dramatically faster Internet to more Americans within the next five years.  With 5G and Internet speeds about to become 100 times faster than they already are, technology was always going catch up and rapidly overtake the stated rationale for the Obama era net neutrality regulations. Now that the limits of 3G and 4G infrastructure have been surpassed, the fear of throttling Internet speeds has become a footnote in history.

“Regulating the pipelines that the bits and bytes which make up the Internet might make sense to the 70+ year old philosophical and political leaders of the Democratic Party, but Pai’s vision of creating more and diverse types of pipelines to handle data travelling at ever increasing speeds is what leads us to the Internet of the future. We never needed net neutrality, which was nothing more than an obstacle to the 5G transformation of our digital economy.

“Americans for Limited Government thanks Chairman Ajit Pai and his fellow Commissioners on the FCC for their vision in ending net neutrality and allowing the flourishing of the Internet superhighway.”

SOURCE 

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Another amoral black



A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by former campaign staffer Alva Johnson, saying “the complaint presents a political lawsuit, not a tort and wages lawsuit.”

“If plaintiff wishes to make a political statement or bring a claim for political purposes, this is not the forum,” U.S. District Court Judge William Jung added.

In an interview with MSNBC in February, Johnson said she briefly was with presidential candidate Donald Trump on an RV during a campaign stop in Florida and told him to “go kick ass” before he stepped out to rally a group of campaign interns. She claimed Trump held her hand and began getting closer before kissing her near her mouth.

“I knew it was inappropriate because I worked in human resources. So I knew that it was completely inappropriate. It was gross and creepy. Like I could sometimes still see those lips,” Johnson told MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

Several other people who were present at the time of the alleged incident, including former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, have indicated that it never happened, according to a February report by MSNBC. The White House has maintained that the alleged incident was a fabrication. “This accusation is absurd on its face. This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eyewitness accounts,” Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in February.

SOURCE 

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What happens when and where Judeo-Christian culture prevails

I should like to have taken an anthropologist with me to a small country town in California, USA, where I spent a week with my wife in the home of our granddaughter, Leah.

Camarillo is an unusual place to find a Jewish community, but our grandson-in-law, Rabbi Aryeh Lang, leased a shop in the main centre some years ago and has converted it into a synagogue.

Right next to the main shopping centre - no more than about a dozen shops, a bank, medical centre and supermarket - is a large retirement village accommodating 3,000 retirees who live in separate one- or two-bedroom cottages. It has everything from a golf course to a swimming pool and private TV station.

In addition to the large Jewish retiree population, there are a growing number of young families shifting out from Los Angeles. It is also the centre of a strongly Christian population, the backbone of the USA.

I went with my grandson-in-law to visit Jewish patients at the St John Pleasant Valley Hospital, a five-star hospital in every respect. The rabbi is on easy terms with staff and the Catholic chaplain.

While there, I was told of a patient who had been operated on, but it was thought he would not walk again. However, he did walk down the passage, and the nurses stood in line and clapped. It was this kind of atmosphere that impressed me deeply.

Greeted by strangers

Many times, crossing a road, a car or commercial vehicle, approaching 50 metres away, would brake and stop to allow me to cross. Strangers would greet me.

In a supermarket, at the checkout, the girl asked me for my card which entitles regular customers to a 10 per cent discount. When I explained that I was a visitor, the woman behind me, a complete stranger, put her card through the machine for me. Somewhat dubious about accepting a discount to which I was not entitled, I could only thank her.

When my wife and I needed a doctor, and I explained that we were not covered by insurance in the US, he halved his fee by not charging my wife for her visit. I later learned, from a circular he sent out, that he was a "born again" Christian.

This is what I mean when I talk about societies that remain faithful to the Judeo-Christian cultural tradition, and why those who scoff at it are undermining our society and almost inevitably propelling the West into abject surrender to forces of evil.

SOURCE 

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Insane woman Links Trump to Cancer, Says Climate Change Is Reason Why Biden Can’t Cure Cancer

In psychiatry, such statements would be called thought disorder -- symptomatic of schizophenia

Failure to address climate change was cited by “The View” host Joy Behar this week as a possible reason why Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden might not be able to make good on his pledge to cure cancer.

The former vice president launched the Biden Cancer Initiative to promote research into possible cures.

Behar suggested it will not be Biden’s fault if he fails to deliver.

“I would say that curing cancer is going to be much more difficult when there’s so much climate change and pollutants in the environment. Because a lot of cancer is environmentally caused,” she said.

Behar then took a jab at President Donald Trump.

“This president rolls back anything that will clean the air. They’re working against each other if they don’t also clean up the emissions.”

“He already had a big initiative that he helped the government fund for brain cancer. And I think this should be at the forefront of a platform in every way. I don’t know why curing cancer hasn’t been,” Behar said.

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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Do sweet drinks give you heart attacks?

I haven't had time lately to look at the latest medical research but as soon as I do I find the utter crap below.  It's quite grievous that one finds this in a leading medical journal. There must be an utter drought of good medical research. It's looking like you could wipe off 99% of all published medical research with no loss.  Most of the authors would do more good driving taxis.

Here's what the researchers did: They threw out 85% of their data and did the analysis on the remaining 15%.  Why did they do that?  Because it was the only way they could get the conclusion they wanted. Snobs look down on sweet drinks and, as elitist snobs,  they wanted to prove that such drinks can kill you. Sadly, even with the gross abuse of their data, they still found only the most marginal effect in the desired direction.

Clearly, in their data as a whole the finding was of "no effect" from the deplored drinks.  They would not otherwise have introduced such a great distortion into their statistics. So their research does in fact prove something -- just not what they wanted it to prove.  It proves that sweet drinks are completely harmless.  Drink all you like of them.

Association of Sugary Beverage Consumption With Mortality Risk in US Adults: A Secondary Analysis of Data From the REGARDS Study

Lindsay J. Collin et al.

Abstract

Importance:  Research has linked sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption to coronary heart disease (CHD) risk, but the role of nutritionally similar fruit juice and the association of these beverages with mortality risk is unknown.

Objective:  To assess the association of SSBs and 100% fruit juices, alone and in combination (sugary beverages), with mortality.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  This cohort study is a secondary analysis of data obtained from 30 183 participants in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study. The REGARDS study was designed to examine modifiers of stroke risk. Enrollment took place from February 2003 to October 2007, with follow-up every 6 months through 2013. Overall, 30 183 non-Hispanic black and white adults 45 years and older were enrolled in the REGARDS study. Those with known CHD, stroke, or diabetes at baseline (12 253 [40.6%]) and those lacking dietary data (4490 [14.9%]) were excluded from the current study, resulting in a sample size of 13 440. Data were analyzed from November 2017 to December 2018.

Exposures: Sugar-sweetened beverage and 100% fruit juice consumption was estimated using a validated food frequency questionnaire and examined using categories of consumption that align with recommended limits for added sugar intake as a percentage of total energy (TE; less than 5%, 5% to less than 10%, and 10% to 12-oz serving increments.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  All-cause and CHD-specific mortality were determined from cause of death records and family interviews and adjudicated by a trained team. Multivariable adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated using regression models.

Results Overall, 13440 participants had a mean (SD) age of 63.6 (9.1) years at baseline, 7972 (59.3%) were men, 9266 (68.9%) were non-Hispanic white, and 9482 (70.8%) had overweight or obesity. There were 1000 all-cause and 168 CHD-related deaths during follow-up (mean [SD] follow-up, 6.0 [1.8] years). Mean (SD) sugary beverage consumption was 8.4% (8.3%) of TE/d (4.4% [6.8%] TE/d from SSBs; 4.0% [6.8%] TE/d from 100% fruit juice). Among high (less than 10% of TE) vs low (less than 5% of TE) sugary beverage consumers, risk-adjusted HRs were 1.44 (95% CI, 0.97-2.15) for CHD mortality and 1.14 (95% CI, 0.97-1.33) for all-cause mortality. Risk-adjusted all-cause mortality HRs were 1.11 (95% CI, 1.03-1.19) for each additional 12 oz of sugary beverage consumed and 1.24 (95% CI, 1.09-1.42) for each additional 12 oz of fruit juice consumed. In risk-adjusted models, there was no significant association of sugary beverage consumption with CHD mortality.

Conclusions and Relevance:  These findings suggest that consumption of sugary beverages, including fruit juices, is associated with all-cause mortality. Well-powered and longer-term studies are needed to inform their association with CHD mortality risk.

doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.3121

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Trump or bust: President warns of market crash 'the likes of which has not been seen' if he is not re-elected in 2020

This is more than a boast.  Trump has got his results mainly by reviving business confidence.  There would be a real freeze-up of that if he left

President Donald Trump has said that failure to re-elect him would result in economic disaster.

'The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go....However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREAT,' he said in a tweet on Saturday morning.

The tweet was sent as his motorcade rolled from the White House to Trump National Golf Course in Sterling, Virginia.

Trump officially starts his 2020 campaign on Tuesday with a rally in Orlando, Florida.

He appeared to be gearing up for full campaign mode, testing a message that will highlight economic growth and low unemployment under his administration.

'Despite the Greatest Presidential Harassment of all time by people that are very dishonest and want to destroy our Country, we are doing great in the Polls, even better than in 2016,' he said in another tweet. Trump added: 'will be packed at the Tuesday Announcement Rally in Orlando, Florida.'

Trump has claimed several times this year - and as recently as Friday - that the U.S. stock market would be 5,000 to 10,000 points higher if the Federal Reserve hadn’t raised interest rates four times in 2018.

SOURCE 

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Pompeo: Iran Attacked Those Tankers

Two oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Iran Thursday, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid the blame squarely on Iran.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today," Pompeo declared Thursday. "This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication."

Moreover, Pompeo added, "This is only the latest in a series of attacks instigated by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its surrogates against American and allied interests, and they should be understood in the context of 40 years of unprovoked aggression against freedom-loving nations."

That unprovoked aggression may come with consequences. Pompeo said, "These unprovoked attacks present a clear threat to international peace and security, a blatant assault on the freedom of navigation, and an unacceptable campaign of escalating tension by Iran. ... Iran is lashing out because the regime wants our successful maximum-pressure campaign lifted. No economic sanctions entitle the Islamic republic to attack innocent civilians, disrupt global oil markets and engage in nuclear blackmail."

In any case, Pompeo concluded, "The international community condemns Iran's assault on the freedom of navigation and the targeting of innocent civilians. ... The United States will defend its interests and stand with our partners and allies to safeguard global commerce and regional stability."

As for where this fits in the chronology of recent events, The Wall Street Journal editorial board observes, "The assault on the tankers validates the U.S. decision the past month, met with skepticism at the time, to send the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln into the Gulf along with destroyers and cruisers, in the expectation that Iran was planning an attack in the region. Indeed it was."

And a footnote: One of the responding U.S. Navy vessels was the USS Bainbridge. Students of history will recall that the Bainbridge also hosted the SEALs who killed the Maersk Alabama hijackers. Seems like the Revolutionary Guard is playing with fire — especially considering they're literally caught on video released by U.S. Central Command.

SOURCE 

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Gowdy And Chaffetz Rip Media Hypocrites Over How They Ignored Obama Admin Stonewalling Congressional Investigations

Once again we see the Harry Reid effect.  Leftists change the rules without foreseeing that two can play that game.  But asking a Leftist to think ahead is asking a leopard to change its spots

In an interview of former congressman Trey Gowdy by former congressman Jason Chaffetz, they excoriate the absence of outrage from the media when the Obama administration stonewalled investigations by Congress.

Gowdy praised Chaffetz for trying to speak to the media when he was in Congress, but then decried them for their “duplicity” and unfair “relativism.”

“Hey, how about six years worth of not being able to get information from President Obama’s administration?” he responded.  “I mean, where was the outrage?” he asked rhetorically.

Chaffetz agreed. “Where are the Politico, [The] Hill, Washington Post articles about how outrageous it is the executive branch was not cooperating with legitimate oversight?” he asked.

“You don’t see any of it!” Gowdy exclaimed. “So look I get that our former line of work ain’t that popular,” he continued, “but folks in the media are not trusted as much as we need them to be in a robust, thriving democracy, and at some point, they need to ask themselves, I wonder why we’re not trusted, I wonder why people think we’re in the tank for Democrats?”

Later in the interview, Gowdy also mocked former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe for recent comments where he said that the president should be impeached.

“I really don’t know anyone who gives a damn what Andy McCabe thinks about impeachment and Donald Trump,” said Gowdy. “I really don’t, other than the reporter that asked him!”

SOURCE 

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Mass Homelessness Exposes California’s Political Dysfunction

California’s great wealth only masks its increasing dysfunction. Nothing highlights this quite like the explosion of homelessness in the Golden State.

By any measure, California’s homelessness crisis is reaching epic proportions.

There are now nearly 60,000 homeless people living in Los Angeles County, a 12% increase from the previous year, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Los Angeles is hardly an outlier.

“Other localities in California saw substantial increases compared with 2017, when they last conducted a count,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “In San Francisco, the number rose 17% while Alameda County, which includes Oakland, saw a 43% increase. Homelessness grew 42% in San Jose over the past two years and 31% in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley.”

San Francisco, for all of its radical politics, is a beautiful city by the bay. Yet it’s evolving into a dysfunctional, filthy mess.

“Even in the good old days there was a Skid Row. Now the beggars, drug addicts, and lost souls are all over the city,” wrote San Francisco columnist Carl Nolte.

How bad has it become? Nolte wrote:

The city is out of control. Traffic is a mess, but it’s rare to see a traffic control officer. Trucks are double-parked everywhere. The city is dirty—a friend just back from Mexico City was astounded to find the streets there far cleaner than the ones in her native city. There is so much human waste on the streets of San Francisco the city formed a ‘poop patrol’ where workers are paid $71,000 a year, about same as the average school teacher.

Still, California seems to have more pressing matters to attend to, like banning plastic straws, plastic bags, and paper receipts. Also, providing free health care coverage to illegal immigrants.

California maintains a generous welfare regime, and its temperate and generally pleasant weather make it a natural haven for homeless people.

These populations are growing at a quickening pace, even as cities like San Francisco grow in wealth and opulence. Even worse, diseases that are more associated with medieval times than modernity are quickly spreading.

Los Angeles is currently suffering from an outbreak of Typhus, a flea-borne disease spread by rats. This comes hand-in-hand with the growing homeless community: Filthy conditions and widespread homelessness have aided the spread of this deadly disease, which has affected police officers, city officials, and others around the city.

But as is typical for California, the state’s “remedies” never address the underlying issues and instead try to quell the homelessness problem with more direct welfare methods.

If anything, this has just created a larger incentive for homeless people to come to the state—but not as a means of escaping their situation or to receive the help they need.

California has thrown billions of dollars at the problem, and plans to throw billions more. But that won’t solve the underlying issues. The problem is a culture that has allowed homelessness, filthy streets, and increasingly unlivable conditions to persist.

There are productive measures that can be taken to at least alleviate the crisis.

One step would be to address the problem of mental illness.

The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill en masse has had serious consequences, and there’s no doubt it has contributed to the present surge in homelessness. This is a nationwide phenomenon.

There may be at least some hope in San Francisco, where the City Council recently took an overdue step making it easier to involuntarily commit the mentally ill to institutions. Simply taking these mentally ill individuals off the street helps reduce drugs, crime, and general lawlessness in society, which are all compounded by homelessness.

Some cities have taken other measures that seem to have made progress.

According to City Journal, in Houston “local leaders have reduced homelessness by 60% through a combination of providing services and enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for street camping, panhandling, trespassing, and property crimes.”

Houston’s focus is on making the city a cleaner, more sanitary place for all residents.

These measures often prove more effective than simply reducing housing costs, as City Journal noted, because the high cost of housing, while a burden on the working poor, is rarely the cause of homelessness.

Even so, California could put a dent in its own housing costs by tackling housing regulations that have reduced the amount of housing available and pushed costs upward.

As I wrote last year, “no-growth policies combined with draconian environmental restrictions—such as the California Environmental Quality Act passed in the 1970s—made new building impossible or prohibitively expensive.”

So, three things California could do to start turning this crisis around are: reducing housing prices through deregulation, ensuring that the mentally ill receive necessary treatment and are taken off the street, and strictly upholding the rule of law.

Will the powers that be in California finally get smart?

Probably not, but if they don’t, the crisis—and the embarrassment—will only intensify as middle-class Americans continue leaving the state in droves for greener (or redder) pastures.

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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America is being divided by a fountain of hate from the media

Ever since the Mueller Report was released on April 18th, and as America moves closer to the 2020 presidential election, our country is quickly wrenching itself apart along partisan lines. Disturbingly, the media are enthusiastically throwing gasoline on this rift.

Liberal journalists are not merely playing the role of partisan commentators. It’s bad enough that they are. Could it be as it appears, that some reporters may have actually colluded with entities at various government agencies throughout the ongoing Russia collusion saga?

Indeed the media may be the “enemy of the people.”

According to the Washington Examiner and other media outlets, the  DOJ inspector general's FISA abuse investigation is expected to wrap up sometime in June – possibly even in the next week. Rep. Matt Gaetz has stated of this report that “one of the other nuggets that the inspector general is working on is the corruption that existed between the media and members of the FBI.” Gaetz doubled down on the media’s corruption over the past two years: “where members of the mainstream media were giving concert passes and athletic tickets and other incentives to people in the FBI to leak to them so we’ll be seeing that even before we see the inspector general’s report on how this fraudulent investigation began.”

The media have been, and are to this day, acting as partisans, with some journalists openly encouraging their colleagues to campaign against the president. Liberal journalists blatantly pick sides and by so doing bear great responsibility for tearing apart an already highly divided nation. A February 2019 Pew poll, documents our growing partisan divide: “Republicans and Democrats have grown further apart on what the nation’s top priorities should be.”

This partisan rift is ongoing and dangerous. The media’s partisan bias and the role they have played in dividing America is undeniable.

Major media talking heads resort to the trope that they are merely reporting the facts and letting the public make what it will of their “factual” reporting, but consider the reporting after the Mueller Report came out, whereby the media doubled down on their campaign for the president’s impeachment:

“TV news coverage of President Donald Trump was just as hostile (92% negative) in May as it was in the months immediately before Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his final report in March, according to the latest analysis by the Media Research Center.

“In fact, the Russia investigation now accounts for twice as much of President Trump’s overall evening news coverage as it did prior to the report’s completion.”

According to a 2017 Pew Study, the coverage of this president is more negative than virtually any other president, and more focused on his personality than his policy.

If President Trump is a proxy for the media’s disposition towards conservatives, which he is, then the divisive and partisan nature of the “reporting” is bound to lead to even more division. Consider some recent examples of reporting to date.

A recent State of the Union on CNN with Jake Tapper, where Tapper asked Kellyanne Conway whether President Trump's response to Charlottesville was, as he has said, “perfect.”

Conway forcefully made the case that the President's “very fine people on both sides” comment was clearly in reference to people peacefully opposing the removal of Confederate statues, not to the neo-Nazis. After several back and forths with Conway, Tapper simply wouldn’t drop his criticism of it not being “perfect.” Conway eventually shot back, “It looks like you, and others, looking at 2020, are worried that this guy can't be beaten fairly and squarely.” Obviously, Tapper was employing the racism dog whistle and Kelly Anne was not having any of it.

The problem with such an exchange is not the actual conversation, but the implication. Tapper’s comments were insidious accusations of racism speaking on behalf of the left. By harkening back to Charlottesville, Tapper was drudging up old accusations that the president and his “basket of deplorables” are the worst type of people this nation has to offer – neo-Nazis and racists.

Then there is the May 4th AM Joy show with host Joy Reid, which is also illustrative: the MSNBC host interviewed Malcolm Nance who warned that if Trump is re-elected in 2020, we may not have a "nation" anymore.

In other words, if Republicans and conservatives win in politics, our country as we know it, will cease to exist. According to Reid and her colleagues in the media, it is conservatives, nearly half of the country, who are causing the country to fracture.

Reid and Nance are emblematic of the media’s disposition overall towards the average Trump supporter. And that’s disconcerting considering just how many Americans are part of that base of support. According to the most recent FiveThirtyEight poll, Trump’s approval rating as of the writing of this piece hovers around 42 percent. That is nearly half the country and a cohort of people for whom liberal talking heads at MSNBC, CNN, and other liberal outlets are alluding to when they discuss and opine on the horrors of a possible Trump re-election. It is conservatives, the talking heads on “The View” claim, who are a “cult of mentally crazy people.”

When the media regard nearly half the American people with such disdain, and report the news accordingly – and during an already divided time in our history – the end result may well be a house divided against itself, which cannot stand. If and when it all comes down, the media will have played a pivotal role in bringing our American house down.

SOURCE 

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Trump Policies Lifting Blacks, and They're Noticing

He won 8% of the black vote in 2016, but that may increase in 2020 due to good policies.

Forget the regular Leftmedia polls. The findings of multiple election-prediction models sent shock waves through Democrat ranks recently, with every model predicting President Donald Trump will win reelection in 2020.

Steven Rattner, former economic adviser to Barack Obama, reported on the findings of Yale professor Ray Fair’s model, which correctly predicted Obama’s electoral victories in 2008 and 2012, even forecasting the popular-vote share within 0.6%.

That same model now predicts Trump winning with 56% of the vote in 2020. In a dozen models reviewed by Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, Trump wins in every one.

If that turns out to be the case, it will likely be in part because of an increased percentage of the black vote for President Trump. In 2016, Donald Trump garnered just 8% of the black vote; double the percentage won by John McCain in 2008, and 50% more than Mitt Romney in 2012.

But that was before he took office and began implementing his America-first, economy-boosting policies. These policies are the “magic wand” Obama couldn’t find; policies resulting in the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, and the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded. Prior to President Trump, black unemployment had fallen below 7% just once in U.S. history. As of May, it had been below 7% for 15 straight months.

It was also President Trump who signed the GOP’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, creating Opportunity Zones that incentivize private investment in disadvantaged communities plagued by poverty and crime, populated most often by minority households.

These policies have translated into nearly 1.5 million black Americans gainfully employed who were out of work under Obama — now lifted out of poverty with a chance to thrive, and to take pride in their financial independence.

President Trump has taken action to lift the black community in other ways as well.

He has received bipartisan praise for signing the FIRST STEP Act, a criminal-justice-reform bill spearheaded by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Under the law, nonviolent offenders can qualify for reduced sentences by participating in programs that teach them basic life skills, with the goal of ending the revolving door of repeat offenders.

The bill, now law, has reduced prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders by an average of 29.4%, from an average original sentence of 239 months to an average of 166 months.

And it is black prisoners who have disproportionately benefited from the reforms. Of the 1,051 requests for reduced sentences approved in the first four months since the law was enacted, 91.3% of those were for black inmates, and 98% were men.

But even that does not tell the whole story. At the 2019 Prison Reform Summit, held at the White House in celebration of the FIRST STEP Act, President Trump announced further efforts to help rehabilitate convicts; an initiative to help them find employment and build careers, to reduce recidivism and truly give these former prisoners a shot at being respectable, productive members of society.

With unemployment rates as much as five times higher than the national average, many released prisoners struggle to find employment, which can be demoralizing, and an incentive to return to crime. This law gives them hope for a better future.

In the four months since President Trump signed the bill into law, more than 16,000 inmates have enrolled in drug-treatment programs, and another 500 convicts who received unfair sentences have been released from prison. It should be noted that criminal-justice reform is being enacted at the state level as well, with Republican-led Georgia and Texas leading the way, and Republican-led Florida following suit. Even hard-core progressive and former Obama adviser Van Jones admits conservative Republicans are “now the leaders” on criminal-justice reform.

And while Democrats fight tooth and nail against school choice, keeping poor minority children trapped in failing schools, President Trump fought for a $5 billion federal tax credit on donations that fund scholarships to private schools; this proposal is supported by 64% of black Americans.

President Trump also provided unprecedented levels of federal funding for, and created a Presidential Board of Advisors for, HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). Johnny C. Taylor, President/CEO Of The Thurgood Marshall College Fund, called this “bittersweet,” explaining that the black college community assumed this would have been “easily accomplished” in the eight years under Obama, the first black president; but it never happened. Yet within 45-days of President Trump taking office, all of the HBCU presidents assembled in the Oval Office to watch as Trump signed the executive order making it happen.

So while Democrats continue to accuse President Trump of being a racist, and deny him credit for enacting policies that make the lives of black Americans immeasurably better, many black Americans are taking notice both of Trump’s efforts, and of the Democrat Party’s long history of taking the black vote for granted.

Nse Ufot, executive director of failed Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project (which worked to register minority voters in Georgia), said, “Black voters, voters of color, are often treated as an afterthought [by the Democrat Party]. Persuasion that their vote matters … is not an October conversation.”

He’s absolutely right. So maybe it’s time for black voters to take a look at the Republican Party — the party that freed the slaves, passed civil-rights legislation, and is working hard to make black lives better in myriad ways, rather than the Democrat Party that takes 90%+ of their vote and keeps them downtrodden and dependent.

SOURCE 

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‘Socialist’ Nordic Countries Are Actually Moving Toward Private Health Care

Rising support for socialism in the United States comes at a time when politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., promise a great many “free” services, to be provided or guaranteed by the government.

Supporters often point to nations with large social programs, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Scandinavian states, particularly when it comes to health care.

Never mind that these are not true socialist countries, but highly taxed market economies with large welfare states. That aside, they do offer a government-guaranteed health service that many in America wish to emulate.

The problem for their argument is that, despite these extremely generous programs, some of these countries are seeing steady a growth of private health insurance.

“Medicare for All,” the prominent socialized medicine proposal in the United States, is most similar to the Canadian system in which providers bill the regional office administering the program.

In Medicare for All, there would be no cost-sharing schemes and all coverage would be comprehensive, including prescription drugs, dental, vision, and other services deemed necessary by the secretary of health and human services.

The Scandinavian systems are similar to Medicare for All in the respect that they use regional offices to administer reimbursements to providers.

Yet they differ in critical ways: They employ cost-sharing for certain services, they are less comprehensive in their coverage, and they allow for private health insurance plans to complement or supplement the government system to cover out-of-pocket expenses and to circumvent wait times or rationed access to specialists.

These are precisely the things Medicare for All would abolish. It’s intriguing that while socialists in America would rush to nationalize the health care system, Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes are all gradually increasing their use of private health insurance.

Between 2006 and 2016, the portion of the population covered by private insurance increased by 4% in Sweden, 7% in Norway, and 22% in Denmark.

The increases in Sweden and Norway are modest but noteworthy, considering that most out-of-pocket payments have a relatively low annual limit.

Private plans in Sweden and Norway are mainly designed to supplement the government-run plan.

In addition to covering out-of-pocket costs, these plans also guarantee prompt access to specialists or elective procedures, which the state plans often fail to provide.

Denmark also allows “complementary” insurance plans, which cover services that are partially or not at all covered by the national system, including dental and vision services.

This growing European interest in private health insurance typically stems from dissatisfaction with the state-run systems, which often provide poor or incomplete coverage and long wait times.

By contrast, private plans offer wider coverage, shorter wait times, access to private facilities, and more flexibility in patient choice.

For instance, in a 2009 survey, nearly half of Danes felt waiting times were unreasonable while only about a third disagreed. In 2007, the Danish government enacted a wait time guarantee of one month to receive treatment.

Most of the private health insurance in Denmark, as well as in Sweden and Norway, is employer-based. In Denmark, the increase in private insurance is likely due, in part, to employers seeking to recruit top-tier talent by including health coverage as part of a benefits package.

In turn, private insurers make a strong pitch to employers, informing them that having private coverage minimizes their employees’ time lost to illness and ensures they have prompt access to medical care.

In that 2009 survey, the largest portion of respondents believed the most important factor driving employer-based coverage was that it results in “less sickness absence due to quicker treatment.”

The second and third most popular responses were that it provides access to private hospitals and circumvents long wait times in the public system.

In this way, private options create value for average Danes getting premium health coverage as a perk of employment, for Danish employers who can compete for the high end of the labor market, and for the insurers who are selling this service.

Private insurance plans even create value for the government because it decreases public health expenditure. Roughly half of respondents in the survey had their last hospital visit paid by a private insurer.

Recall: This would all be illegal under Medicare for All. Private health insurance would be abolished for everyone.

Danes are right to deny that they are a socialist country, but their generous welfare programs, and those of the Swedes and Norwegians, are clearly objects of envy for American socialists.

While the Scandinavian health care systems are each different in their own ways, they all offer universal coverage for citizens, and any cost-sharing comes with low annual limits.

They provide nearly everything that a proponent of socialized health care could ask for—and yet each of these countries host a growing private health insurance sector.

It behooves us to ask why this is before we outlaw our own private care.

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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Steve Bannon Demands Joe Biden Release Tax Returns To Prove He’s Not Compromised By China

Two can play the tax return game

President Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon said Sunday that former Vice President Joe Biden must release his tax returns to prove that he’s not benefiting economically from China.

“We have to see Joe Biden’s tax returns because we have to see if Joe Biden was a financial consultant to [the fund] or an adviser. Biden has got to answer some basic questions: if he’s been compromised by the Chinese Communist Party? What was his involvement during the Obama administration?” Bannon told John Catsimatidis on 970 AM in New York.

The New York Post Reports:

The fund Bannon was referring to was Bohai Harvest RST, which was started by Biden’s son Hunter. Hunter Biden struck a deal with the state-owned Bank of China in 2013 to create the fund, which coincided with a trip Hunter Biden took to the country with his father, then the vice president.

“The Bank of China is the Chinese Communist Party’s piggy bank,” Bannon stated.

The timing and ability for such a small firm to win the business has raised eyebrows since.

“Biden has got to be the worst,” Bannon said Sunday. “He’s got this private equity fund his son runs. I believe most of the net worth of his family is tied up in that.”

Bannon pointed to a remark Biden made in early May, just days into his 2020 bid, in which the ex-veep downplayed any threat posed by China.

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” Biden said, pointing to some of China’s problems, including corruption. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not, they’re not competition for us.”

“Biden has got a lot to answer for,” Bannon went on. “And he continues to kind of laugh it off.

He continues to say, ‘Hey, [China is] not really a strategic competitor to us.’ Even people on the Democratic left, even Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, everybody says they’re a totalitarian, mercantilist, surveillance state.”

Bannon also noted that China will be an important issue in the 2020 campaign because “the centerpiece of President Trump’s economic program” is bringing American jobs back from China.

When Biden was running for vice president in 2008 he released a decade’s worth of tax returns and subsequently released his taxes for every year he served in office. He has yet to publicly release his returns from his years outside of government.

SOURCE 

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Why Conservatives Should Take Heart Despite Socialist Upsurge

Socialism is the zombie ideology of our era: It fails everywhere, and yet it keeps rising back from the dead.

Despite embarrassing socialist failures in China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and now Venezuela, the true believers march onward. Good intentions are unassailable. The revolution must go on.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., arguably has done more than any other living American to market socialism to the next generation. And with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., following closely in his wake, rest assured we’ll be contending with socialism for years to come.

A recent Gallup survey shows that their message is resonating with more and more Americans.

While 51% say socialism would be bad for America, 43% say it would be good. And notably, among the 18-34-year-old cohort, 58% favor socialism while 37% disfavor it.

Those numbers hang like a dark cloud over America’s future, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Interestingly, according to Gallup, Americans still favor the free market over government in multiple areas, including technological innovation, health care, and even basic things like wages, distribution of wealth, and the economy overall. And the comparison isn’t even close.

By contrast, Americans favor government over free markets when it comes to protecting consumers’ online privacy and environmental protection.

This creates quite a mixed picture, even a contradictory one. As a matter of simple math, there have to be millions of Americans who say they favor some form of socialism, yet favor the free market in general when it comes to certain aspects of their lives.

How can that be?

As it turns out, Americans define “socialism” in quite different ways. Traditionally, socialism has meant government ownership of the means of production—businesses, factories, etc. But today, only 17% of Americans hold that definition, according to Gallup. Meanwhile, 23% equate socialism with vague notions of social equality. Another 23% have no opinion on the matter.

So, the public meaning of “socialism” today is indeterminate, meaning that public opinion toward “socialism” doesn’t tell us very much about people’s policy preferences.

But even if it did tell us a lot, public opinion isn’t the surest predictor of what will pass in Washington. After all, big-government policies have often passed in spite of public disapproval.

Obamacare is case-in-point here. At the height of the Obamacare debate in 2010, 59% of Americans disapproved of the bill while just 39% approved. That didn’t stop Obamacare from passing with a supermajority in the Senate.

We should also recall that big-government policies have often come in moments of great national crisis. These moments are often exempt from the dominant themes in public opinion.

Polling trends may be stable in a free-market direction, but when a moment of crisis comes, the public often tolerates—and even demands—immediate action from the government.

That usually translates into an expansion of government.

This happened in both the Great Depression and the Great Recession following the 2007 financial crisis. A host of new programs were created that had little to do with immediate economic recovery—yet they became entrenched parts of the federal government and remain with us to this day.

What’s more, Americans have come to assume these programs are legitimate functions of the federal government. The status quo trains us in what is acceptable, so once a policy becomes enshrined in law, it’s very hard to get rid of. That makes staving off such policies in the first place all the more urgent.

Today’s fight over socialism is in large part a branding war. The left constantly rebrands itself. In the mid-20th century, progressives decided to adopt the word “liberal,” since “progressive” had fallen into disrepute. The same thing eventually happened to the word “liberal,” so now, they’re back to the word “progressive.”

We see this with socialism, too. America’s avowed socialists know the word “socialism” is radioactive in America, so they’ve championed their policies in terms of “fairness” and “equality” while allowing socialist ideology to color those terms.

Such is the strategy with Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, a proposal that would allow the government to take over American health care, putting us in league with Canada and the U.K. The bill polls surprisingly well with the public (56% approve) until respondents learn that the bill would abolish private insurance. Then, support plummets to 37%.

That’s why the fight for truth in policymaking is so important—and why the left’s branding tricks are so pernicious.

Americans still have a gut instinct in favor of freedom and the free market, as shown in the details of the Gallup survey. Conservatives should use that to their advantage by dismantling the left’s branding charade.

The truth of each policy proposal must be placed into the light of day—because once such bills pass, America will “find out what’s in it.” Once that happens, yesterday’s fringe view could become the new normal.

SOURCE 

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California to Pay Health Care for Illegal Immigrants

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic legislature have reached an agreement that would insure 90,000 low-income illegal immigrants residing in California with full health care benefits.

The agreement reached would be available to those who are low income, between the ages of 19 and 25, who permanently reside in the state. The 90,000 illegals would be insured through the California Medicaid program, commonly referred to as Medi-Cal.

The Sacramento Bee says the plan would be implemented by January 2020.

“While it’s not all we sought, it will provide a real tangible difference for people, especially for those around and below poverty and for middle income families who don’t get any help under the federal law,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access.

“Indeed, a family of four earning as much as six times the federal poverty level -- or more than $150,000 a year -- would be eligible to get about $100 a month from the government to help pay their monthly health insurance premiums,” Fox News reports.

In order to finance the illegal immigrants, the state has enacted an Obama-era regulation commonly referred to as the “individual mandate” that taxes those who aren’t covered by health insurance.

The final budget must be approved by the state legislature which is expecting to vote on it later this week.

SOURCE 
 
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Why I'm Never Going Back To California

Calfornia's Democrat-controlled government spends its time crafting laws to jail people for using the wrong pronoun while the obscene condition of downtown Los Angeles has become an international disgrace.

A week or so ago, Dr. Drew Pinsky spoke with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade about the horrific conditions on the streets of Los Angeles, America's second-largest city, before making the frightening prediction, “There will be a major infectious disease epidemic this summer in Los Angeles."

Pinsky described to Kilmeade what he believes to be the almost medieval conditions in the City of Angels and compared local politicians to Nero, the infamous Roman Emperor who allegedly fiddled while his nation burned.

"We have tens and tens of thousands of people living in tents. Horrible conditions. Sanitation. Rats have taken over the city. We're the only city in the country, Los Angeles, without a rodent control program. We have multiple rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses, plague, typhus. We're gonna have louse-borne illness. If measles breaks into that population, we have tuberculosis exploding. Literally, our politicians are like Nero. It's worse than Nero," Pinsky said.

Homelessness and trash are a growing problem for residents in Los Angeles and as the garbage piles up, so do the rats, fueling concerns about flea-borne typhus, according to a report this week.

Pinsky said the city's homeless situation and sanitation crisis are out of hand and politicians are doing nothing to stop it. He believes the mentally ill will suffer the most and that officials are not reacting to an eventual epidemic reported Victor Garcia of Fox News.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen in my life," Pinsky said. "I feel like I'm on a train track waving at the train and the train is going to go off the bridge. The bridge is out."

Pinsky added, "Here's what I want to do, I want to take away qualified immunity from the politicians so we can go after them for reckless negligence."

Tammy Bruce recently explained that one glance at the formerly Golden State is a frightening embarrassment. The latest indictment of liberal leadership is the trash heap of Los Angeles. Literally. Despite the emergence of louse-borne typhus, Los Angeles can’t seem to get its act together.

According to Ms. Bruce, Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times reported on the obscene condition of downtown Los Angeles, “A mountain of rotting, oozing, stinking trash … stretching a good 20 yards along a skid row alley. Rats popped their heads out of the debris like they were in a game of Whac-A-Mole, then scampered for cover as a tractor with a scoop lurched toward them. … The trash problem is not confined to any one street, but this particular location on the 800 block of Ceres Avenue is surrounded by food distribution companies that sell to shoppers, vendors, stores and restaurants. I counted seven within a block, so you have to wonder — given the colonies of football-size rats — about the potential contamination of the food supply chain and the spread of disease.”

This disaster did not just thunder into LA like an earthquake – unpredicted and without human causation – it’s been brewing for quite some time, but what have the Democrats who run California and LA been doing the past few years?

On October 4, 2017, California’s then- Governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, signed legislation that would punish health care workers with a fine, and potential jail time, if they decline to use a senior transgender patient's "preferred name or pronouns."

"It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to take any of the following actions wholly or partially on the basis of a person’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status," the bill reads.

Among the unlawful actions are “willfully and repeatedly” failing to use a transgender person’s “preferred name or pronouns” after he or she is “clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.”

The law states that if provisions are violated, the violator could be punished by a fine “not to exceed one thousand dollars” or “by imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed one year,” or both, Brooke Singman of Fox News reported.

So, the California legislature was able to craft an excruciatingly detailed law to make sure people suffering from gender dysmorphia and other mental illnesses are not upset by the use of their non-preferred name or pronoun, but what happens when it is confronted with a trash problem of epidemic proportion?

Tammy Bruce reports “Gov. Gavin Newsom called growing homelessness in California a national disgrace as he announced Tuesday that he is launching a task force to find solutions amid a housing crisis in the most populous state.”

So, instead of dealing with the reality of the problem, Mr. Newsom announced the creation of a task force, the members of which will travel around the state and make recommendations. There’s only one recommendation that will work and will change the state’s fate, says Ms. Bruce: a plea to all California voters to stop electing Democrats.

SOURCE 

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Nikki Haley: Don’t Call Political Opponents ‘Evil;’ ‘I’ve Seen Evil’

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former Governor Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) told attendees at Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership (TPUSA) Summit that American politics are “reaching the point of hate” now that politicians are calling each other “evil,” simply for having policy differences.

Politicians’ passions have become toxic, Haley said Friday during a question and answer session with TPUSA President Charlie Kirk, The Daily Caller reports:

“I believe in being passionate, I do. But when it gets toxic and I say that now it’s getting to where people are calling each other evil. They’re hiding behind anonymous things and they’re saying things that are really reaching the point of hate.”

Haley said it’s wrong to call political opponents evil when they’re just expressing different ideas, because she has seen true evil during her travels with the United Nation:

“When I hear them call each other evil, it bothers me because I’ve seen evil. I’ve been to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they use rape as a weapon of war. I’ve been to South Sudan where they’ve taken babies from women’s arms and thrown them into fires. … That’s evil. What we’re having in our country is a debate of ideas. That’s it.”

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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Thousands in Britain left to go blind due to eye surgery rationing

And the NHS isn't even apologetic.  Aint single payer healthcare grand?

Thousands of elderly people in Britain are left to go blind because of rationing of eye surgery in the National Health Service (NHS), a report revealed on Saturday April 6.

The Times newspaper said a survey by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) found tens of thousands of elderly people are left struggling to see because of an NHS cost-cutting drive that relies on them dying before they can qualify for cataract surgery.

The survey has found that the NHS has ignored instructions to end cataract treatment rationing in defiance of official guidance two years ago.

The RCO said its survey has found 62 per cent of eye units retain policies that require people's vision to have deteriorated below a certain point before surgery is funded.

With more than 400,000 cataract operations carried out each year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded that there was no justification for policies that denied patients cataract removal surgery until they could barely see.

The RCO said that refusal to fund surgery was insulting and called into question the entire system through which the NHS approves treatments.

Ms Helen Lee of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) said: "Cataracts can have a dramatic impact on someone's ability to lead a full and independent life, potentially stopping them from driving and increasing their chance of serious injury by falling. The NICE guidelines make it clear cataract surgery is highly cost effective and should not be rationed. It is nonsensical for clinical commissioning groups to deny patients this crucial treatment."

Ms Julie Wood, CEO of NHS Clinical Commissioners, which represents local funding bodies, defended the restrictions.

She told the Times: "NICE guidance is not mandatory and clinical commissioners must have the freedom to make clinically led decisions that are in the best interests of both individual patients and their wider local populations. The NHS does not have unlimited resources."

SOURCE 

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No, My Study Did Not Find Medicare for All Would Lower US Health Costs By $2 Trillion

Charles Blahous

Last year I published a study with the Mercatus Center projecting that enacting Medicare for All (M4A) would add at least $32.6 trillion to federal budget costs over the first 10 years. After the study was published, some advocates misattributed a finding to it, specifically that M4A would lower national healthcare costs by $2 trillion over that same time period. This misattribution has since been repeated in various press reports. Multiple fact-checking sites have pointed out that the study contains no such finding, as did a follow-up piece I published with e21 last year. However, because the mistake continues to appear occasionally, this article provides additional detail about how and why it is wrong.

First, some brief background on the study itself. The study estimated the federal budget costs of M4A, as this is an important number that would guide Congress’s procedural points of order if such legislation were considered. The study did not focus on aggregate changes to national health spending under M4A, in part because such estimates do not affect Congress’s legislative procedures. Whenever Congress considers legislation with budgetary significance, such as a new federal program or a tax cut, its procedures are affected by what the bill would do to federal spending, revenues, and deficits, but not private-sector spending. For example, no Congress would consider a large tax cut as having zero budgetary effect, based on the irrelevant rationale that the reduction in federal revenues would be offset by an equal gain in taxpayers’ after-tax income.

Accordingly, my study’s estimates, like any performed by the Congressional Budget Office, focused on M4A’s effects on the federal budget rather than on other areas of the U.S. economy. This is a primary reason why neither the $2 trillion figure nor any other such estimate appears in the study.

However, a critical additional reason why the attribution of $2 trillion in savings is wrong is that it is inconsistent with the study’s conclusions. Some have attempted to convert the study’s lower-bound federal cost estimate of $32.6 trillion into an estimate of savings in national health spending, arriving at the $2 trillion number. It is incorrect to do so, as the following analogy may help to explain.

Imagine that members of a family have separate cell-phone data plans that add up to $57 a month. Now imagine the following conversation:

Q: How much would it cost my mother to buy my cell-phone data for me instead of continuing to pay it for myself? I think she’s better than I am at negotiating a good deal.

A: Well, if she buys it and allows you to use it for free, your usage will typically go up. Even if she’s the brilliant negotiator that you say, it’s going to cost her at least another $33 a month on top of her current expenses. Most likely her extra costs would be between $33-$39, possibly more.

Q: But then it wouldn’t cost me anything, right? Don’t you have to think of it in terms of how much money everyone in the family, together, would pay? If she bought it, how much would my family as a whole be paying?

A: Well, she was already paying $22 each month, so altogether the family would pay at least $55, probably between $55-$61, again possibly more.

Q: But otherwise we’d pay $57. So, you’re saying we’ll save $2 a month because of her superior negotiating skills?

A: No, I didn’t say anything about her negotiating skills; you did. Her actual history shows a tendency to overspend. I’m just saying that even under your assumption, it’s going to cost the family at least $55, probably somewhere between $55-$61. It’s actually highly unlikely it would be as low as $55.

Q: Great, so you’re saying we’ll save $2!

Basically, what some advocates have done is the equivalent of the above. They’ve done this by taking my study’s lower-bound federal cost estimate and converting it into a claim of savings relative to currently projected national health spending. The study does indeed emphasize the lower-bound estimate, but it does so only by way of explaining that the federal costs of M4A would be at least $32.6 trillion over 10 years, and more likely substantially higher. The study does not present the $32.6 trillion number in a manner consistent with a finding of $2 trillion in national health cost savings.

The study is clear and explicit that the $32.6 trillion estimate is a lower-bound (best case) estimate, and repeats this caveat throughout the report. This point is made in the study’s abstract, on its first page of text, and in many other passages. To cite but some of the quotes from the study explaining the nature of the lower-bound estimate:

It is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater than these estimates” (Abstract)

 “Conservative estimates” (Abstract); “conservative estimates” (p.3)

“It is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater” (p. 3)

“These cost estimates essentially represent a lower bound” (p. 4)
“Actual savings (from lower drug prices) are likely to be less than assumed under these projections (p. 14)

“This is an aggressive estimate of administrative savings that is more likely to lead to M4A costs being underestimated than overestimated” (p. 14)

 “The resulting implicit estimates of national and federal spending on LTSS should be regarded as conservative” (p. 17)
“This study’s assumption of no net increase in LTSS benefit utilization. . . is an additional factor contributing to these projections’ being more likely to underestimate costs than to overestimate them” (p. 17)

The study does contain a couple of isolated references to scenarios in which national health spending would decrease relative to current projections. One such reference is preceded by a reminder that the actual cost of M4A would likely be “substantially greater” than this “lower bound” estimate, while the other one notes that this decrease would only occur “under the assumption that provider payments for treating patients now covered by private insurance are reduced by over 40 percent,” along with other aggressive assumptions, and that “whether providers could sustain such losses and remain in operation” was a “critically important” unanswered question.

In other words, the study emphasizes that the $32.6 trillion federal cost minimum cannot be accurately converted into a claim of $2 trillion in national health cost savings. Actual costs would likely be substantially greater (specifically, factors such as drug costs, health provider payment rates and long-term care utilization would probably all be greater than assumed in that lower-bound estimate). It is the same principle by which, if someone tells you that something now costing $57 would cost somewhere between $55-$61 after a policy change, it would be incorrect to claim thereafter that the person had concluded you would save $2.

It is not possible to correct every advocate’s mistaken claim that my study found that M4A would lower national health costs by $2 trillion over 10 years. But anyone interested in accurately understanding the study should be aware that it contains no such finding.

SOURCE 

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Leftism Makes People Meaner: Reflections on the Torture of Paul Manafort

BY DENNIS PRAGER

The sadistic treatment of Paul Manafort illustrates something I have believed since I attended graduate school in the 1970s and saw the behavior of left-wing students: Leftism makes people meaner.

There are kind and mean conservatives and kind and mean liberals. Neither liberalism nor conservatism makes people kinder or meaner. But this is not the case with leftism. With the handful of exceptions that accompany every generalization, leftism makes people meaner, even crueler.

Take the transfer of Manafort, the one-time Trump campaign manager, from a federal prison to New York's Rikers Island prison. Rikers Island is universally regarded as a wretched place. As Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote:

The decision to move Paul Manafort ... from the decent federal prison to which he was sentenced to solitary confinement to the dangerous hell hole that is New York City's Rikers Island seems abusive and possibly illegal.
I know Rikers well having spent time there visiting numerous defendants accused of murder and other violent crimes. It is a terrible place that no one should ever be sent to.

Mass murderers and torturers are among those incarcerated at Rikers Island.

Moreover, Manafort, found guilty solely for white-collar crimes, will be placed in solitary confinement -- "for his own safety."

Virtually everyone who has written about solitary confinement, both on the right and the left, deems it torture. Manafort will therefore be tortured after being sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for fraud and, in the words of the Daily Wire, "a little-known law that requires lobbyists to report that they are working on behalf of a foreign government (in Manafort's case, Ukraine)."

Angry over the possibility that Manafort may be pardoned by President Trump, the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, charged Manafort with additional crimes based on state law. That way, if found guilty of state offenses, he cannot be pardoned by Trump, as the president's power to pardon applies only to federal -- not state -- crimes.

Everyone knows this prosecution is politically motivated. Vance hates the president and wants to use solitary confinement in a hellhole with violent criminals to squeeze Manafort into testifying against the president.

As Dershowitz said to me on my radio show, what Vance is doing reminds him of Stalin and Beria -- the infamous state prosecutor, a man Stalin referred to as "my Himmler." Dershowitz, a lifelong liberal Democrat and supporter of Hillary Clinton, does not use Stalin analogies loosely.

To her credit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: "A prison sentence is not a license for gov torture and human rights violations. That's what solitary confinement is. Manafort should be released, along with all people being held in solitary."

I might add that my opposition to Manafort's treatment is not partisan or new. On a number of occasions over the years, I have cited favorably New York Review of Books articles describing the horror of solitary confinement.

Despite its history of opposition to solitary confinement, The New York Times article reporting the plan to relocate Manafort said nothing against the unnecessary transfer but did comment on the expensive suits Manafort used to wear.

Solitary confinement is "basically a deathtrap," former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik wrote when Manafort was placed in solitary at his federal prison. Manafort should never have been sentenced to solitary confinement. But Robert Mueller (and Judge Amy Berman Jackson) sought it for the same political reason Vance has: to break the man.

As former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell wrote:

When a witness or defendant from whom prosecutors want 'cooperation' does not do as they demand, they put him in solitary confinement. And it works. It literally breaks people.
Solitary does have a place in our prison system, but only for those people who are simply too dangerous to be placed around others at all. However, the torture of solitary confinement should never be used as it is now to break people to prosecutors' will -- to torture them until they will say or do anything to get out.

"Solitary is also called the 'hole.' It's a small space, barely large enough to stand, with a slit for light, to which prisoners are confined/caged for 23 hours a day...

Paul Manafort, seventy years old, has endured this torture for eight months. He's now in a wheelchair, while Judge Amy Berman Jackson mocks his rapidly deteriorating health. Where is the outcry from the ACLU?

So, then, what enables Vance, Mueller and Jackson to engage in such evil?

The only answer is their politics -- the politics of the Trump-hating left. Cyrus Vance, Robert Mueller and Amy Berman Jackson may well be good parents, loving spouses, loyal friends and charitable individuals. But leftism has given them permission to act vilely and mercilessly while thinking of themselves as fine people -- just as evil doctrines have done throughout history.

As noted at the beginning of this column, when I was at Columbia, I witnessed this leftist mean-spiritedness firsthand in the personal cruelty of left-wing agitators against professors and others with whom they differed.

Here's a question perhaps millions of parents will be able to answer: If your child returned home from college a leftist, was he or she a kinder or meaner person than before he or she left for college?

The question is rhetorical.

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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