I'm back!

Just out of hospital. I lost a coupe of bits that I rather miss while I was in there but it was nothing life-threatening so I expect to live to help celebrate Mr Trump's second inauguration

Should be normal posting tomorrow
JR

Hiatus

I go into hospital later today for an operation that will require me  to spend around two days in hospital to have my recovery monitored. So I will be hors de combat until some time on the weekend.  I expect to be back to normal after that.

Brexit: Is There a British Strategy?

For the last 3 years British political news has been dominated by the interminable debate of Brexit.  It has made any reading of the British serious papers unutterably boring and I have mostly ignored it.  Now that things are at last coming to a head, however, I thought it time to put something explanatory up.  So I reproduce below a recent talk by Sean Gabb, a British libertarian and long-time keen observer of the British political scene.

He sees the whole controversy as akin to Trump's war on the "Swamp". The British swamp is just as powerful and undemocratic as the American one.  I think however that it is much less united than Sean says.  Sean would say that it IS united deep down. If Sean is right, Boris Johnson should have no difficulty leading the UK out of the EU, probably without a "deal"


The subject of my speech is whether there is a British Strategy for Brexit – that is, for leaving the European Union. There is a clear strategy, but it is not the strategy you will read about in the British media, and that is now being analysed by the governments of the other member states of the European Union. This strategy – this misunderstood strategy – can be summarised in the words of a hostile British observer. Martin Fletcher writes for The New Statesman magazine in London, and is a former Foreign Editor for The Times. His view is that the Conservative Party, and therefore, the British Government, has been captured by a group of right-wing extremists. Their intention, he says, is to leave the European Union without any Withdrawal Agreement except one written on their own terms. They care nothing for the political and economic harm such an unagreed withdrawal will have on Britain. They are deaf to the voice of reason.

This is a dangerous misunderstanding of the new British strategy. It is dangerous because even political extremists can be made to hear “the voice of reason.” You may think that, if the European Union and its member governments continue to insist on the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated with Theresa May, these people will eventually give in, just as Theresa May did. The result will then be a general election or another referendum, after which you will hear no more of Brexit. If that is what anyone in this room, or anyone following this speech, believes, let me assure him that it is very dangerous misunderstanding.

Europe: A Peripheral Issue in British Politics

Considered purely in itself, membership of the European Union has never been an important issue in British politics. The European Union is a free trade area with a customs and regulatory union. Except in terms of trade and some regulations, membership does not constrain any member state from doing what its ruling class really wants to do. The Hungarians and Poles do largely as they please in matters of immigration and what Western leftists call “human rights.” The French have never worried too much about the Maastricht Convergence Criteria in fiscal and monetary policy. The British are outside the Euro and outside the Schengen Area.

Of course, there has been a vocal opposition in Britain to membership ever since we first joined in 1973. But the number of people interested in theoretical matters of sovereignty has always been limited, and these people were generally ignored during the first twenty-five years of our membership. The gathering crisis over our membership that we can date perhaps to the election of the Blair Government in 1997 is best compared to the referred pain you see in a human body. You have a shooting pain in your left arm. You take it to a doctor. If he is any good, he will not tell you to rub cream on your arm. Instead, he will put a stethoscope to your chest. That is, I suggest, a good analogy for our debate over membership of the European Union.

Euroscepticism as Transferred Opposition

Ever since about 1997 – perhaps for some time before – the British ruling class has been engaged in a project of transformation. I will not bother to call these people bad. They believe they are supremely enlightened – so enlightened that they have the right, by whatever means they find convenient, to make us share the enlightenment. Many of my fellow countrymen, however, do not see this Transformation as enlightened in any reasonable meaning of the word. There will be the appearance of a multicultural love feast in which billionaires and Moslems and transsexuals join hands and dance. The reality will be a working and middle class destroyed by managed flows of global trade and services, and atomised and thereby made unable to resist by managed flows of migrants. The new world that many of my countrymen see waiting is one in which we look from the windows of our microscopic and rented high-rise flats, while they are driven about in bullet-proof cars, and armed police push other vehicles out of the way.

Because making our views plain on the Transformation is either illegal or unwise in Britain, we have complained instead about the European Union. That has remained an open issue, and has been used to its fullest extent. The UK Independence Party grew big by talking about the European Union, but whispering about the Transformation. At first, UKIP did well only in elections to the European Parliament, which is a body of no practical importance. Then, in the 2010 general election, UKIP won no seats, but gained enough otherwise Conservative votes to deny the Conservative Party an overall majority. Then UKIP won the 2014 European elections in Britain. By the 2015 general election, the Conservatives were frightened that UKIP would again deny them an overall majority. Therefore, David Cameron promised that a Conservative Government would offer a referendum on membership of the European Union. This promise was just enough for him to win a small overall majority. But 3.9 million people still voted UKIP, and UKIP came second in 120 constituencies.

I will pass over the mistakes that David Cameron made in the 2016 Referendum. What matters is the margin of victory for the leave side. You will have heard that the margin was small – 52-48 per cent to leave. The important truth is that around two thirds of the English voted to leave. The narrow overall margin is because of the Scottish and ethnic minority votes, and these are not important. Officially, the Referendum was about membership of the European Union. Unofficially, it was a vote of confidence in the Ruling Class and its project of Transformation, and the English voted that they had no confidence.

This is the background to the chaos that followed the Referendum. Just as for much of the population, membership of the European Union was a peripheral issue for the Ruling Class. The main agenda for this class is the Transformation that I have mentioned. The details of a customs and regulatory union are less important than control of education, the media and the criminal law. This being said, membership is useful so far as it blurs the lines of accountability. It is also an article of belief among some elements of the Ruling Class. For this reason, the verdict of the 2016 Referendum was unwelcome. It meant a diversion of effort from the main agenda. It upset various important people. The obvious solution was to give us a minimal departure that would satisfy us, but would keep in place those elements of the European Project that really are important to the Ruling Class.

Government by Conspiracy?

Here, I come to a digression on the nature of how Britain is governed. My country is not particularly democratic. At the same time, there is no cabal of evil persons directing all events and appointments from behind the scenes. This is generally not how ruling classes operate. A more realistic model can be taken from Ian Kershaw’s analysis of the National Socialist revolution in Germany. This proceeded with limited central direction. Before 1939, the leaders were concerned mostly with foreign policy, after that with fighting a big war. Instead, the revolution was decentralised. Reliable men were put in key positions and told to “work towards the Fuhrer” – that is, to act in any situation as they might imagine Hitler himself would act. The result was often administrative chaos. The benefit was that the leadership could concentrate on what it saw as the essentials, and more local knowledge could be used in the overall revolution than would otherwise have been possible.

This is largely how things work in Britain. Our own Transformation is not driven by detailed orders from the Shadowy-Ones-on-High, but by creating a bias within every useful institution to those who are broadly in favour of the Transformation. The benefit is a constrained diversity of approaches that can be presented as a genuine diversity of opinion. The disadvantage is that executive power lies in this country where it has since 1701 – that is, in the hands of the Ministers of the Crown, who are accountable to the House of Commons. If the Prime Minister turns out to be a fool, and the other ministers are too cowardly to stab him in the back, there is no easy way to remove him.

The New British Government: There to Rescue the System

I come at last to the Brexit strategy of the new Government. These people are not right-wing extremists who can eventually be forced to give in. Just like Theresa May, they see Brexit as a problem that needs to be solved. If they could wave a magic wand, they would roll back the calendar to 2016 and make sure that Remain won the Referendum. Or they would roll it back a little farther and make sure the Referendum was not called that year, or at all. But they cannot. Instead, they have to deal with the effects of leaving a political fool in charge for three years of the Brexit process.

Theresa May had one job after 2016. This was to produce the minimal departure I have mentioned. Instead, she negotiated a Withdrawal Agreement that caused a storm of outrage among the English. The details of what this Withdrawal Agreement contained are, again, unimportant. What does matter is that the Withdrawal Agreement was published in English on the European Commission website, and millions of us read its 585 pages. We may not have been that interested in the details of our membership. But the details of our “withdrawal” were unacceptable. She tried three times to force it through the House of Commons. Each time, a majority of some very trashy people were terrified to be seen supporting it. Anyone else less stupid would have tried something else. Instead, Theresa May treated us with open contempt. Whether or not we really cared about it, we had been asked if we wanted to remain in the European Union. Having voted “No!” we expected some show of respect for our clear instructions. We did not welcome a Brexit-in-Name-only.

At first, the damage was confined to the possibility of a Labour Government. Then, with the rise of the Brexit Party, the system as a whole moved towards a crisis of legitimacy. The European elections of the month before last were seen as the second Referendum the Remainers had demanded. It was won by the Leavers. The Conservative were crushed. Labour was humiliated. It seemed that a general election would, for the first time, produce a bloc in the House of Commons of Members opposed not only to the peripheral issue of the European Union, but also to the Transformation.

So Theresa May had to go, and she was replaced by Boris Johnson. His own inclination, I have no doubt, is to get a few cosmetic changes to the existing Withdrawal Agreement, and then tell us he is a diplomatic genius. His problem is that this will no longer do. Theresa May has left too much poison in those waters. Brexit must now be more meaningful than was at first projected. Last week, there was an election in Wales to fill a vacancy in the House of Commons – a bye-election. This should have been won by the Conservatives. Instead, the Brexit Party took enough Conservative votes to give the seat to one of the opposition parties – not the Labour Party, which did badly. The political arithmetic is that anything less than a No-Deal Brexit or a diplomatic triumph will mean a collapse of the Conservative vote at the next general election. And this will not mean a Labour Government, but political chaos and a crisis of legitimacy.

What the British Government Now Wants from Europe

Now to the British strategy on Brexit. The new Government must have a diplomatic triumph. That means something like the following:

We want to be outside the customs and regulatory union, and not subject to any of the European institutions. At the same time, we want privileged access to the Single Market and continued participation in those areas of the European project that suit our convenience. We are willing to pay money for this, but nothing more. In other words, we want most of the benefits of membership of the European Union and none of its costs.

You may think this a most unreasonable demand. You are probably right. But that is what the British Government has no choice but to demand. If it does not get this, it will walk away without any withdrawal agreement. Any economic consequences can be dealt with as and when they arise – and there may not be that many of these. This is not a government of right-wing extremists. But it is ready and willing to cut taxes and deregulate to offset any dislocations caused by withdrawing from nearly half a century of economic integration.

And this is not the whim of a group of right-wing extremists. It is now the settled opinion of much of the British Ruling Class. Anything less than I have said will bring on a political crisis in Britain. This is the only thing that now matters to these people. It is now a matter of saving their Transformation. Just as the Stalin Regime in 1941 suddenly revived Russian nationalism to save its Revolution, so our own rulers now will wrap themselves in a Union Flag that they have long despised, and tell us that they are our most devoted servants. Do not expect Brexit to be stopped by any coalition of Remainers. Do not hope for any “voice of reason.” The Ruling Class has made the political calculations, and it has decided that it must either give us Brexit and possibly lose the Transformation, or deny us Brexit and almost certainly lose the Transformation. This is what matters. As for Boris Johnson, all he wants is an easy life as Prime Minister. He is clever enough to know that there is only one path to getting his easy life.

A Closing Threat to Our European Partners

Following from this, do not expect Britain after leaving without any agreement to be a friendly partner. We are the only great military power in Europe. We have one of the main financial centres. We have a close relationship with the Americans, the Indians and the Chinese, among others. It we showed willing, we could have a close relationship with the Russians. For the past five hundred years, we have specialised in making life difficult for anyone who wanted a united Europe. If we choose, we can make like very difficult indeed for what is left of the European Union. This, I will add, is not some threat made by an observer without power to influence events. It is instead a prediction of how the British Ruling Class is likely to act now that its position is under domestic threat.

If you have followed me so far, I am not sure I have need of a conclusion. But I will give you one. You are not dealing with Boris Johnson and a group of right-wing extremists who have inexplicably gained supreme power in Britain, and who can be pushed out or brought to a different view of what they want. You are dealing with a British Ruling Class that no longer cares to frustrate the will of the people in the peripheral matter of the European Union. We want, I will repeat, most of the benefits of remaining in the European Union and none of the costs. The European Union has a choice. It can make the leaving process easy for us or hard for itself. For domestic reasons, the new British Government has no choice but to mean exactly what it says to the European Commission and, by extension, to the other member states of the European Union.

SOURCE 

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Australian PM takes inspiration from Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”< /b>

Scott Morrison today launched his own version of Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”, with a sharp offensive against public servants and lobbyists.

It was the prime minister’s bid to deflate the Canberra “bubble”, which he claims contains priorities alien to the concerns of most voters.

Just as the US president portrayed government insiders as part of a powerful, unaccountable elitist “swamp” that had to be emptied, Mr Morrison today accused public servants of ignoring middle Australia from the comforts of a bubble.

“The best teams are the ones where everyone knows what their job is and they do it well,” Mr Morrison said. And of course, he had a three-word slogan: “Respect and expect.”

Whether or not his attacks improve public service performance, they have four potential political benefits for Mr Morrison.

The speech today to the Institute of Public Administration was an obvious attempt to again appeal to what he calls the ‘Quiet Australians’, who he argues don’t get the attention or acclaim they deserve. It also was a deft ploy of blame-shifting, which exonerates his government. Blame those cocooned bureaucratic tribes instead.

And it cost nothing, a vital factor as the Morrison government puts all its actions through the wringer of delivering a $7 billion Budget surplus.

It’s important for the government to appear to be doing something as long as it adds to the Budget.

Plus, it might look prescient. The government expects the review of the public service by businessman David Thodey to be with the PM soon.

It too might contain an unfriendly assessment of the public service.

A bit of public service bashing isn’t an original idea, even for Donald Trump. But the federal government has been able to force its agenda through the bureaucracy or changing bureaucrats.

When John Howard took the Coalition into government in 1996, he introduced himself to the public service by sacking six department secretaries.

In 1999, the Federal Court upheld the government’s powers of hire and fire, following the dismissal of Defence Secretary Pail Barratt. The court found a prime minister did not require cause to sack a department chief.

Scott Morrison didn’t question the priorities of public servants alone. He took aim at lobbyists by saying those ordinary Australians didn’t stay in Canberra’s Hyatt hotel, or dine at the highly regarded Ottoman restaurant or relax in the Chairman’s Lounge at Canberra airport.

“There are many highly organised and well-resourced interests in our democracy,” he said in a section of his speech that read like a warning of an encroaching menace rather than just the usual circus which forms when parliament sits.

“They come to Canberra often. They are on the airwaves and the news channels. They meet regularly with politicians, advisers and departments to advance policy ideas and causes on behalf of those they represent.

“Some will be corporate interests. Some will be advocating for more welfare spending or bigger social programs. Many will be looking for a bigger slice of government resources.”

He wanted to identify a cohort of public service and private enterprise players who ignored the comfort of middle Australia while looking after their own.

It could be middle Australia doesn’t get into those plush venues Mr Morrison listed because they are packed out with MPs on travel allowances.

But Mr Morrison didn’t want to touch on that issue. In fact, he seemed to free politicians such as himself as innocents in the bubble.

“There is strong evidence that the ‘trust deficit’ that has afflicted many Western democracies over recent years stems in part from a perception that politics is very responsive to those at the top and those at the bottom, but not so much to those in the middle,” Mr Morrison 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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90% of the Racism in America Comes from the Democratic Party and the Left

This 2015 article is even more pertinent today

Roger L. Simon

Ninety percent of the racism in America today comes from the Democratic Party and the Left.  They live off it and exploit it.  It is unconscionable to the degree they do this, ruining the lives and futures of the very people they say they are helping in the process.

I am uniquely positioned to say this because I spent most of my life on the Left and was a civil rights worker in the South in my early twenties. I was also, to my everlasting regret, a donor to the Black Panther Party in the seventies.

So I have seen this personally from both sides and my conclusion is inescapable.  The Left is far, far worse. They are obsessed with race in a manner that does not allow them to see straight.  Further, they project racism onto others continually, exacerbating situations, which in most instances weren't even there in the first place.  From Al Sharpton to Hillary Clinton, they all do it.

Barack Obama is one of the worst offenders in this regard.  Recently, in reaction to the horrid actions of the deranged, but solitary racist Dylann Root, the president claimed racism is in our DNA.

How could he possibly utter such nonsense and who was he talking about?  The majority of Americans are from families that came to this country after slavery existed.  Many of those were escaping oppression of their own.  In my case my family was fleeing  the pogroms of Eastern Europe.  Many of the members of my family who stayed behind ended up gassed in Auschwitz or exterminated in Treblinka.

Is Obama telling me that racism is in my DNA?  What a wretched and insulting statement.  If he means that, he should tell it to me face-to-face.

If he does, I will tell him what I think.  The racial situation in this country has gotten decidedly worse since he took office.  And he is a great deal to blame.  Ever since the beer summit it was obvious he was disingenuous and harmful on the subject of race, seeking to stir the pot when it was actually empty or nearly.  His claim that if he had had a son he would look like Travyon Martin was ridiculous and self-serving in the extreme.  Barack Obama is a product of the fanciest private school in Hawaii and his children go to Sidwell Friends, the fanciest school in D. C.  He takes vacations on Oahu and his wife parties in Switzerland. He had as much in common with Trayvon as I do with the queen of Spain.

And speaking of foreign lands, I've spent time abroad and speak Spanish and French and if Mr. Obama thinks the U.S. is a racist country, he ought to do a little bit of traveling not on Air Force One.  Try sitting at a French dinner table for twenty minutes and listening to the casual conversation if you think America is racist.

The truth is the USA is remarkably un-racist for a country its size.  We weren't always that way, obviously, but we walked the walk and we are now.  Or were.  The Democrat Party and its assorted media hacks are trying to take us backwards.  They suffer from nostalgia for racism for the glorious days when they could assert their moral superiority.  Sorry, those days are over.  The only way to stop remaining racism is to stop it, not talk about it, impute racism to people who don't have it and generally do everything possible to divide the American people from themselves.

And, Democrats, above all if you care about black people, stop it.  All you're doing is making their lives worse.

SOURCE 

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'Red Flag' Laws Are a Scam

Seizing guns from those disputably deemed more likely than not to be a threat is a hazardous slippery slope. Democrat officials could well use the process to disarm conservtives

“We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government — even the Third Branch of Government — the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all.” —The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on the Second Amendment

Following the three mass shootings in El Paso Texas, Dayton, Ohio, and Gilroy, California, Democrats are yet again exploiting tragedy to push for gun control. And this time weak-kneed Republicans, and possibly President Donald Trump, will join them in adopting a federal grant program aimed at encouraging states to embrace so-called “red flag” laws that would take guns away from people believed to be dangers to themselves or others.

Believed by whom? “State laws vary, but most stipulate that only specific people — usually family or household members — may petition a court for an extreme risk protection order,” the Associated Press reports.

Not exactly. In Colorado, which became the 15th state to adopt such a law — without a single Republican vote — family, household members, or law-enforcement officials can petition a court to have guns seized or surrendered based on a “preponderance of the evidence.” That is a civil standard whereby the individual whose guns are being seized is deemed more likely than not to be a threat.

Eagle County, Colorado, Sheriff James van Beek, who slammed the law, explains the implications. “In other words, there is just over a 50/50 chance of accuracy,” he writes, further warning that someone’s guns could be seized even without a mental-health professional making a determination of any kind. “Like the flip of a coin. Couldn’t that apply to just about anything a person does?”

It gets worse. A subsequent court hearing could extend a gun seizure for as long as 364 days. To prevent that from happening, gun owners must demonstrate the much higher standard of “clear and convincing evidence” they are not a threat.

Thus, gun owners are “guilty until proven innocent,” van Beek asserts.

Denver-based physician Brian C. Joondeph, M.D. makes it even clearer. “These laws usurp the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Sixth Amendment’s right of the accused to a speedy and public trial,” he states.

Moreover, unlike so many of his fellow Americans who simply want to do something that amounts to little more than virtue signaling, he sees the long-term agenda of an American Left well versed in employing incrementalist tactics to get its way. “How long will it take before states, or the federal government, if a red flag law becomes nationalized, start to view any and all Trump supporters as ‘posing a danger’ based on their skin color, gender, religion, and opposition to open borders?” he asks.

Fordham University professor Mark Naison knows the answer. “We are a country with a few million passionate white supremacists — and tens of millions of white supremacists by default,” he told CNN in 2017 following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

And despite President Trump condemning that violence, the mainstream media took a single phrase from his speech — “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides” — and used it to propagate one of the most contemptible hoaxes in modern history to paint the president and his followers as white supremacists.

A hoax it’s still pushing two years later.

The racist viewpoints of white supremacists are abhorrent. But are they sufficient, solely in and of themselves, to precipitate the confiscation of guns based on a preponderance of evidence? If so, what other political viewpoints would trigger such a law? In 2016, Bill Nye, the so-called “Science Guy,” expressed an openness to jailing people who didn’t believe in climate change.

Should so-called “science deniers” be targeted for confiscation?

Presidential candidate Corey “Spartacus” Booker doesn’t think red-flag laws go far enough. “We need far more bolder action to make our nation safe,” he asserts. “Red-flag laws, yes, they’re important, but they’re nowhere near enough to stop these rising levels of mass shootings.”

America certainly needs bolder action to make it safer. But that would require addressing the nation’s genuine problems with regard to gun violence — of all kinds, not just mass shootings. It would require addressing the reality that it is virtually a way of life in American cities like Chicago, where seven people were killed and 46 others were wounded in a single weekend, and Baltimore, where the murder rate is higher than the nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — despite the fact that both cities have strict gun-control laws.

Such action might also require addressing the uncomfortable and oh-so-inconvenient correlation between gun violence and fatherlessness, courtesy of a Democrat-led “war on poverty” that eviscerated the nuclear family, or the seemingly orchestrated indifference toward the number of mass murderers on, or just coming off, psychiatric medications.

It might also require solutions based on hard evidence, such as the reality that data obtained between 1970 and 2017 revealed that red-flag laws “had no significant effect on murder, suicide, the number of people killed in mass public shootings, robbery, aggravated assault, or burglary,” or that countries such as France, Finland, Russia, and Switzerland, many of which have much stricter gun-control laws than America, have higher murder rates from mass public shootings.

Yet what America will be subjected to instead is exemplified by a quote courtesy of former Obama administration chief of staff and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

An opportunity to eviscerate the Constitution, perhaps?

Regardless, red-flag laws have their conservative defenders. “If legislatures compose red-flag laws with sufficient due process rights, it would be unreasonable to oppose them,” asserts Andrew McCarthy.

Why? Because “if reasonable action is not taken, it will become increasingly difficult to stave off unreasonable restrictions — which are favored by many Democrats and much of the judiciary,” he adds.

It’s precisely that kind of organized unreasonableness that precipitated the inalienable right to self-defense codified by the Founding Fathers, Mr. McCarthy — all the “interest balancing” efforts of a fascist-wannabe, exploit-a-crisis American Left and its GOP collaborators notwithstanding.

SOURCE 

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Leftmedia brands Trump a racist

Notwithstanding the cockamamie idea of impeaching Donald Trump, there are two primary strategies Democrats are using in the lead-up to the 2020 election: seeding a politically induced recession, and personifying Trump as an unmistakable racist.

The Washington Post went full throttle this week with the latter method, unashamedly asserting that Trump "is vexed by a branding crisis of his own: how to shed the label of 'racist.'" The Post pontificates, "As the campaign takes shape about 15 months before voters render a verdict on his presidency, Trump's Democratic challengers are marking him a racist, and a few have gone so far as to designate him a white supremacist." The article then claims:

Throughout his career as a real estate magnate, a celebrity provocateur and a politician, Trump has recoiled from being called the r-word, even though some of his actions and words have been plainly racist. Following a month in which he used racist remarks to attack four congresswomen of color, maligned a majority-black Baltimore district as a "rat and rodent infested mess" and saw his anti-immigrant rhetoric parroted in a statement that authorities believe was written by a mass shooter, the risk for Trump is that the pejorative that has long dogged him becomes defining. ... Trump recently called himself "the least racist person anywhere in the world," but his history is littered with racist and racially charged comments and actions. [Emphasis added.]

Importantly, the Post isn't accusing Trump of having used racist language. It's effectively saying with certitude that he has and is using racist language. Which effectively makes him a racist. We won't debunk every incident provided by the Post, but some reflection on the first assertion — that Trump "used racist remarks to attack four congresswomen of color" — provides all we need to know about its universal lack of impartiality.

Recall that Trump stated, "Why don't [Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib] go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came[?] Then come back and show us how it is done." To which our Nate Jackson responded, "Trump said what he said poorly, leaving himself wide open for the very assault he's facing. He said what we think he meant far better in defending himself later. 'These are people that hate our country,' he said. 'If you're not happy in the U.S., if you're complaining all the time, very simply, you can leave.'"

Jackson concluded: "Buried under Trump's garbled prose is a legitimate point, and it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with loving or hating America and the political party guilty of the latter." But the Post isn't interesting in making that point, nor are any of the other Leftmedia outlets whose only agenda is portraying Trump as a racist to bolster support for Democrats in 2020 — the same strategy that's behind the Left's seeding a politically induced recession.

Amazingly, the Post in a separate piece claimed, "From race to plastic straws, Trump dials up culture wars in divisive play for 2020 votes." It was the Left that dialed up the culture wars to obtain more votes. And it's now steadfastly using the "racist" label to obtain even more votes.

SOURCE 

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Republican failure

I want to start with a rebuke to elected Republicans. In 2010, the Tea Party brought the House under your control in response to President Barack Obama’s overreach in shoving policies like ObamaCare down the throat of Americans. Instead of countering the overreach, you marginalized the new representatives. You told us we had to win the Senate to really make a difference. We won the Senate and you said we need to win the White House. We did. You did nothing.

For whatever reason, with the House, Senate, and White House, you did nothing, such as failing to repeal and replace ObamaCare as you promised for seven years. You did nothing to secure the southern border, so you lost the House in 2018. Voters are not stupid. You promised but did not deliver. Maybe you thought President Trump wouldn’t hold up against all the slanted media, or you just didn’t like his style. Whatever reason you used to do nothing, you missed the boat.

Due to the way the nation is going and the very extremes the far Left wants to take us to, you “may” have a chance to win the House in 2020. But I believe there will be no tolerance if you win and do nothing. I also believe your time in political power will be very short.

To my Democrat friends, I have to ask if you are comfortable with the changes that have taken place in recent years. President Obama said marriage was between a man and a woman. Then same-sex marriage was thrust upon us with his full support. President Bill Clinton said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Now, the New York Legislature stood and cheered when legislation approved abortion right up to the moment of birth. Other states discussed abortion being possible even after a child is born.

I know you hate President Trump. You don’t like his style. He’s arrogant (though I remember a very recent president who couldn’t make a speech without referring to himself dozens of times and in longer speeches, hundreds of times). He tweets too much. On some of these points I can agree with you completely. But then I look at what he actually has done, not like so many of our politicians said they would do! He keeps his campaign promises. Who knew that would be such a popular process?

Our Founding Fathers never envisioned a professional political body. If our nation has any chance of surviving the disaster that is our current political state, we need to elect those who have a track record of integrity and character. We need Republicans and Democrats who want the best for the country and leaders who have a proven track record; not those who make lofty promises that have no chance of becoming reality. That is where the far Left wants to take us. I don’t believe my Democrat friends really want to go that far left.

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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Bald faced lies from two leading Democrats -- for political gain

Leftists normally have an uneasy relationship with the truth but this was egregious.  Leftist commentators argue that the lies from Warren and Harris were simply a matter of unimportant linguistics.  They were not.

The word "murderer" applied to an innocent man was wrong, not because of linguistics but because the action concerned was not a murder. Words differ because what they describe differs.  By using the word murder for a particular event that was not a murder, the Democrat lovelies accused an an innocent man of a grievous act that he did not do and which they know he did not do


The big stink this week, "largely ignored" by the Mainstream Media, is over false claims by United States senators and Democratic presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris that Michael Brown was "murdered" by a white policeman five years ago.

The legal definition of murder is "the killing of a human being by a sane person, with intent, malice aforethought (prior intention to kill the particular victim or anyone who gets in the way) and with no legal excuse or authority." Or murder in the second degree, which "is such a killing without premeditation."

Brown, a young black man shot to death by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, was not murdered. Wilson, as the facts eventually made plain, fired in self-defense while under attack by Brown. That's a legally justified killing, which is pretty much the exact opposite of murder.

You'd think that for a fact-checking organization, this would be an open-and-shut case. And for at least two lefty publications, it was.

But apparently all that's not good enough for PolitiFact's Louis Jacobson, who chose instead to muddy the waters with his so-called "fact check."

Now if it were me running a fact-check site, I'd look at the claim ("he was murdered") and the facts ("the law says that a legally justified shooting isn't murder"), and tell my readers whether the claim stood up to the facts. Which seems to me not-at-all-unreasonable for a fact-checker.

But here's Jacobson's not-quite just-the-facts-ma'am take:


"In discussing the case with legal experts, however, we found broad consensus that "murder" was the wrong word to use — a legal point likely familiar to Harris, a longtime prosecutor, and Warren, a law professor.

In fact, two other Democratic senators with law degrees now running for president — Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand — more accurately referred to it as a killing.

That said, experts who have studied police-related deaths and race relations said that focusing too much on the linguistics in controversial cases comes with its own set of problems."


Let me parse that for you. Jacobson admits that Brown was not murdered, but then goes on to argue that "murder" might be a good word to use anyway, because doing so fits a particular agenda.

Jacobson then quotes Jean Brown, a communications instructor (not a legal scholar) at Texas Christian University arguing, "I don’t know if the legalistic distinction intensifies the anger, but it does feel like an attempt to shift the debate from a discussion about the killing of black and brown people by police." Which is a fancy way of saying, "Brown wasn't murdered, but it suits my agenda to say that he was." And that's a fancy way of saying, "I'm not going to let the facts get in the way of stoking racial hatred."

"Quite frankly," she says, "it’s a distraction that doesn’t help the discussion."

Precisely, although perhaps Brown admitted more than she meant to.

Muddying the waters further, Jacobson says that "some legal experts argued that there’s a difference between being legally precise and using language more informally."

SOURCE 

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Federal Court Orders Maryland to Produce Voter Registration List Data to Judicial Watch

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court has ordered the State of Maryland to produce voter list data for Montgomery County, the state’s biggest county. The court ruling comes in the Judicial Watch lawsuit filed July 18, 2017, against Montgomery County and the Maryland State Boards of Elections under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Baltimore Division (Judicial Watch vs. Linda H. Lamone, et al. (No. 1:17-cv-02006)). The decision follows NVRA-related Judicial Watch successes in California and Kentucky that could lead to removal of up to 1.85 million inactive voters from voter registration lists. The NVRA requires states to take reasonable steps to clean up its voting rolls and to make documents about its voter list maintenance practices available to anyone who asks.

Judicial Watch had sought the Maryland voter list data after discovering that there were more registered voters in Montgomery County than citizens over the age of 18 who could register. U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander rejected Maryland’s objections to providing the voter list information under Section 8(i) of the National Voter Registration Act:

If Judicial Watch had submitted requests for voter registration data, corresponding to the thousands of Montgomery County voters, the State would have been required to produce each record, pursuant to Section 8(i). Instead, Judicial Watch merely submitted a single request for a voter list containing and compiling the same information about the thousands of voters in Montgomery County. Although both scenarios seek the same information, defendants believe that the NVRA would require compliance with only one of them. Rejecting Judicial Watch’s request based on semantics would be tantamount to requiring Judicial Watch to make thousands of separate requests. Neither the NVRA, the Court, nor common sense can abide such a purposeless obstruction.

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Organizations such as Judicial Watch have the resources and expertise that few individuals can marshal. By excluding these organizations from access to voter registration lists, the State law undermines Section 8(i)’s efficacy. Accordingly, [Maryland election law] is an obstacle to the accomplishment of the NVRA’s purposes. It follows that the State law is preempted in so far as it allows only Maryland registered voters to access voter registration lists.

The dispute over the voter registration list arose from an April 11, 2017, notice letter sent to Maryland election officials, in which Judicial Watch explained Montgomery County had an impossibly high registration rate. The letter threatened a lawsuit if the problems with Montgomery County’s voter rolls were not fixed. The letter also requested access to Montgomery County voter registration lists in order to evaluate the efficacy of any “programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of Maryland’s official eligible voter lists during the past 2 years.”

Democrat Maryland officials, in response, attacked and smeared Judicial Watch by suggesting it was an agent of Russia.

“Now that the court has cleared the way for Judicial Watch to obtain the Montgomery voter data, our efforts to force the State of Maryland to comply with the NVRA and clean up its voter rolls may proceed,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “After our successful efforts to bring Kentucky, California, Ohio and Indiana into compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, it’s time for Maryland politicians to stop the politics, see the light, get right with the law and clean up the State’s voter rolls. If they don’t, we’ll see them in court again.”

Judicial Watch is the national leader in enforcing the provisions of the NVRA, having also filed a successful NVRA lawsuit against Indiana, causing it to voluntarily clean up its voting rolls. Judicial Watch also settled successfully with Ohio.

SOURCE 

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National Review: 'There Will Be No Republican Challenger to Trump Because the Right is Satisfied'

BY MICHAEL VAN DER GALIEN

National Review has, from the very start of the Trump phenomenon, been one of the conservative outlets most critical of the man who ended up a) the Republican presidential nominee and b) president. Many writers of the magazine have explained in recent years why they can't support the man and why they believe he is no friend to traditional conservatism.

Even NR has to admit now, however, that former Congressman Joe Walsh is delusional if he thinks that there will be a Republican challenger to Trump. As the magazine's roving correspondent Kevin D. Williamson explains:

Walsh has gone one way since 2016, and the Republican party has gone another. There were a lot of heaving sighs and melancholy little gestures of resignation in 2016 — “It’s Trump or the commies!” they told us. A lot of people seemed to think that the word “binary” offered a smart-sounding way out of that. That was then. But unless I grievously misread the mood of Republicans, that’s not really the case anymore. The Republican party has embraced not only Trump but also Trumpism. It is his party now. There is not likely to be any challenge to Trump from the right because the Right is, by all indicators, satisfied with him.
That's exactly right. Back in 2016, I wasn't exactly a Trump fan. Quite the opposite, even: I was highly critical of the man. The main reason for this attitude of mine toward Trump was that I was afraid he was lying about his views in order to get nominated and, after that, elected. He would, I was almost sure, rapidly transform into a moderate Democrat once in office.

I'm happy to admit that I was wrong. Okay, sure, Trump hasn't been as conservative as president as, say, Ted Cruz would've been, but he has certainly done a very decent job. He was elected as a Republican and he has governed as one. That's all we could've asked for... and he has clearly delivered. At the same time, he's constantly bringing it to Democrats in a way that we could only have dreamed of a few years ago, with the willy-nilly, weak Republican leadership.

Trump has made America respected again on the world stage. The economy is booming. In Gorsuch and Kavanaugh he has added solid constitutionalist judges to the Supreme Court. And we get some anti-Democrat red meat thrown at us every single day. What more could we have possibly hoped for (in a president whose name isn't Ted Cruz)?

It should be obvious, then, that Williamson is 100 percent correct. There will not be a serious challenger to Trump from within the Republican Party. Trump is doing quite well. You'd have to be an utter fool as a Republican to risk dividing the party and, by doing so, handing the White House over to the Democrats, who have truly gone insane with all their SJW crap.

SOURCE 

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Senior citizens for Trump

They’re out there, in their millions—President Trump’s base.

But it is the older members of that constituency—senior citizens—that will put 45 over the top in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Trump’s older voters generally support his policies and proposals, but it's his leadership and performance on the economy that has inspired the most abiding faith. These seasoned Americans, people that the hard left hopes will die off soon, are watching and listening. They’re watching their children and grandchildren do better. They’re seeing a country freed from dependence on foreign oil. They see new international respect for the stars and bars, and a country that is no longer being taken advantage of in the global marketplace.

They’re biding their time until Election Day.

Now, with the clock ticking, Mueller crashed and burned, and the anti-Trump “racist” epithet thrown so often as to have become meaningless, the Democratic Socialist left now turns to its last-best scare-tactic: There’s going to be a recession!

On Wednesday, a panel of nervous-nellies on CNN, having come out in solidarity with comedian Bill Maher, are unable to mask their destructively partisan interest in ginning up a looming recession. Their latest conniption fit is focused on the assertion that Trump’s “trade war” with China will somehow result in a global economic meltdown that will have dire impact on the United States. How convenient, as we approach peak election season.

But something happened—is still happening-- on the way to CNN and MSNBC’s Great Recession II. Something they never report on, but can’t make go away. Trump’s boomer allies know a strong economic vision when they see one.

While the left harangues about the wealthy paying their “fair share,” duplicitously omitting the fact that in 2018 the top one percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent), Trump’s elder demographic sees that the president has actually done something about real imbalances in the fair-share arena.

China One-Ups Trump in Trade War as Beijing Suspends All Imports of U.S. Farm Products
The president is getting NATO to pay up, and has stripped regulations that yoked U.S. corporations and businesses to an unequal playing field. On the campaign trail, he minced no words when calling out American companies that would repay the greatest capitalist infrastructure on earth with a “see ya later,” only to call back from across the border, or the ocean, with a sales pitch. With exceptions, they came into line.

He’s worked tirelessly to ensure that nation-busting trade deals like NAFTA got consigned to that dusty repository where humankind’s bad ideas are archived. As part of that accomplishment, in his resolve to reverse years of $500-billion-dollar trade deficits with China, Trump is taking our most adversarial global competitor to the precipice.

To repay the president for all he has done to strengthen the homeland’s economic outlook, Trump’s aging troopers plan to sit tight. They’ve been to a few political rodeos They won’t fall prey to Anderson Cooper’s hysteria. They know that the globalist schematic that has been foisted on the nation has been evolving for decades, and cannot be undone in a heartbeat. Like with Britain’s Brexit, there are short-term exigencies to be accounted for, status quo disruptions to absorb.

To appropriate an old Merrill-Lynch tag line, Trump’s scrappy oldsters are bullish on America. At the same time, they’re savvy enough to recognize that along with the winning, there will be the need for sacrifice.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) appeared on Fox News Sunday a few weeks ago to field questions from Chris Wallace about the economic jitters farmers are experiencing as a result of Trump’s tariff crackdown on China’s unfair trade policies and practices. Cotton patriotically introduced the concept of sacrifice, a point he’s been making since at least May of this year.

To extrapolate from Cotton’s argument, he believes that to right marketplace wrongs and ensure prosperous sailing for our economic ship of state, Americans may have to ride out some storm-tossed waters. He hopes that farmers hit by the disruption of trade policies that have stripped the nation of jobs and intellectual property will look at the big picture: that the globalist trade environment Trump inherited is not in the long-term interest of the United States.

Here’s a direct Cotton quote from the CBS interview linked above: "There will be some sacrifice on the part of Americans, I will grant you that," said Cotton, who served in the U.S. Army in both Afghanistan and Iraq from 2005 to 2009. "But also, I will say that sacrifice is pretty minimal compared to the sacrifices that our soldiers make overseas, that our fallen heroes who are laid to rest in Arlington make."

Trump’s senior citizen brigades are ready to make that sacrifice. And they’ve been around long enough to know that sacrifice must go hand-in-hand with strategy.

They realize that when the president makes a trade policy adjustment, like ordering a delay of new tariffs on certain Chinese products until December 15, it is not a sign of weakness, but an indication of flexibility, a reflection of reprised vigor on trade policy, as differentiated from the lock-step, kowtowing of previous leaders, who seemed never to have met a lousy trade deal they wouldn’t sign.

As an unprecedented investigatory regime has shown, to the confounded disappointment of his leftist, Deep State, and complicit media adversaries, Trump has come out free and clear. Russian collusion has become a punchline. Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign is amassing record-setting amounts of money for the coming struggle.

He’s bullish on America too, but his campaign is loaded for bear.

America First isn’t something that can be wished into being. Trump’s Gray Column understands this, and, seeing what they’ve seen, and knowing what they know, will vote to stay the course.

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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I think the image below is meant to be derogatory but there are a lot of fine people in America who think along similar lines



There is nothing irrational about distrusting the government

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Google whistleblower reveals tech giant DOES blacklist right-wing news sites and says the company called police when he leaked the evidence, leaving him 'fearing for his life'

A Google engineer has spoken on the record to say the web giant does blacklist certain news sites and has an 'editorial agenda'.

Whistleblower Zachary Vorhies spoke to Project Veritas after claiming the company called police in San Francisco to perform a 'wellness check' on him when he originally leaked files on their activity.

Senior software engineer Vorhies, who worked for the company for eight years, says he added a 'dead man's switch' which would activate the files in case he was 'killed or assassinated'.

Among the hundreds of documents leaked by Vorhies to Project Veritas is a document called 'news black list site for Google Now' which he claims shows a list of the web pages Google restricts.

It includes a number of conservative leaning websites such as The National Enquirer, Media Matters and Infowars.

Vorhies says the company's actions are 'hypocritical at the least and it's perjury at the worst' after CEO Sundar Pichai testified to Congress to say they do not promote left-leaning, Democratic news over that of more Conservative outlets or merely outlets it does not rate.

The insider said he spoke out amid fears the 'entire election system was going to be compromised forever by this company that told the American public that it was not going to do any evil'.

Vorhies told Project Veritas: 'This particular black list is showing which news sites aren't going to show up underneath the search bar when people are searching on their Android phone.

'And what they are doing is that they are saying "ok, well, you know, Newsbusters, the Gateway Pundit, National Enquirer, Media Matters, Infowars, they're not going to appear on their search results".

'And they are telling people that they don't have any blacklists, they don't have any political ideology, they don't have any political bias but it's really clear that they do.

'If Google wants to have political bias and if they wanna say they have political bias that is their right as a company.

'But for them to go under oath and say that theses blacklists don't exist, well employees like me are able to just search through the internal search engine of the company and see that they do, it is hypocritical at the least and it's perjury at the worst.

'If people don't fall in line with their editorial agenda then their news articles get deboosted and deranked. 'And people do fall in line with their editorial agenda then it gets boosted to the top.'

Another file appears to show ranking classifier to 'define channel quality'.

In his interview Vorhies adds: 'When they see the documents themselves they are going to be shocked and they are going to terrified. They are going to be like how can Google so blatantly lie to the American public and lie to Congress when there is a pile of evidence showing that what they are saying is untrue.'

Images shared with Project Veritas show Vorhies walking towards officers with his hands in the air after he says Google found out he leaked the files.

He told the site: '[The police] started banging on my door. 'They called in the FBI, they called in the SWAT team. And they called in a bomb squad. '[T]his is a large way in which [Google tries to] intimidate their employees that go rogue on the company.'

Vorhies claims he was targeted on Twitter by an undercover employee who outed him as the leaker as well as being sent a 'threatening' letter 'containing several demands'.

He added: 'Attorneys told me this is the first step in having your life ruined. They are going to come after you. 'Google is not who they say they are.'

SOURCE 

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Have Republicans Learned These Crucial Lessons from Obamacare?

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period,” President Obama promised during the Obamacare sales pitch to America almost 10 years ago. But as the American people know all too well by now, the gulf between Obamacare's marketing and reality is vast.

There was “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” but that didn’t work out either. The Washington Post's fact-checkers rated that one the Lie of the Year in 2013. The fallacy behind that falsehood was that Obamacare specified exactly what health care plans would have to cover to satisfy the Obamacare individual and employer mandates.

Millions of Americans lost their health plan when the insurance companies had to cancel them because they were not in compliance with the Obamacare mandates. That problem should have been foreseeable.

Then there was the Obamacare promise that Obamacare would reduce health insurance costs by $2,500 per family per year. In reality, because of all the new regulations, the cost of health insurance soared once Obamacare was fully phased in. This is particularly true for the terribly over-regulated individual health insurance plans that the American people had to buy on their own. The American people had no choice but to buy plans with enormous deductibles of thousands of dollars a year. This made health insurance worthless for most Americans, whose average health costs per year became less than their deductibles.

Finally, there was the Obama promise that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.  But the real problem under Obamacare was whether your doctor would want to keep you, under the cost burden Obamacare regulations imposed on doctors. So many Americans lost their doctors when their health insurance was cancelled, or their doctors retired because of the cost of Obamacare regulations.

Now these problems of unintended consequences are threatening Americans' health insurance again. The federal government is considering new legislation involving costly federal regulations to address the issue of “surprise medical billing.” Surprise billing results when insured Americans suffering a medical emergency are taken to a hospital out of their insurers’ network. The trouble is that when they recover, they have a financial crisis on their hands.

Because the hospital was out of their insurance company’s network, the insurer often refuses to pay for the bill. So, the patient then gets the whole bill, which is beyond what most Americans – most of which cannot afford an out-of-pocket $400 expense – can pay without help from their health insurance. President Trump wants to address this issue. But the Senate Committee on Health Insurance, called the HELP Committee, is not offering effective help. "We're from the government, and we're here (not to) help..."

The Committee is considering the Lower Health Costs Act. This would impose price controls on doctors and hospitals, requiring them to accept the average cost that Medicare pays for the health care services received.

As the long history of price controls shows, when the price is held below costs, demand increases. But bureaucrats’ price floors always reduce supply, resulting in shortages of the service. In this case, it will be emergency health care that gets cut. That would not be good for the American people.

The problem of surprise medical billing can be and has been successfully addressed without price controls with the market incentives of arbitration. New York of all places has treated the issue this way.

Under arbitration, both parties submit an offer to an independent arbiter, and then the arbitrator picks the one that seems most reasonable. Each side has an incentive to put their best foot forward, so they both try to compromise to the extent they can.

Even the hard-nosed New York regulators report that since this process was adopted, they have rarely seen complaints. They notated that, by and large, the problem seems to have been resolved with no hardship imposed on anyone.

Competition, not more of the Obamacare status quo, is the solution to America’s healthcare problems. If liberals in New York can recognize that, so too should Republicans in Congress.

Fellow conservatives: rather than help the left dance one step closer to socialized medicine, let’s move the limited government ball down the field on this issue.

SOURCE 

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The Left Eats Its Own: NYT Editor Demoted After Tweets Attacking 'The Squad' and Justice Democrats

The New York Times has demoted its former deputy editor, Jonathan Weisman, after he pointed out a distinction between city and rural voters and after he called out a liberal group for mustering a primary challenge to a black Democratic congresswoman. He also sent angry emails to author and Times contributor Roxane Gay demanding "an enormous apology" for her attacks against him. Perhaps he thought his Jewish heritage protected him from accusations of racism from the left. If so, he was dead wrong. Gay denounced him for having the "audacity and entitlement of white men."

"Jonathan Weisman met with [Times executive editor Dean Baquet] today and apologized for his recent serious lapses in judgment," the newspaper announced in a statement. "As a consequence of his actions, he has been demoted and will no longer be overseeing the team that covers Congress or be active on social media. We don't typically discuss personnel matters but we're doing so in this instance with Jonathan's knowledge."

Weisman, who wrote a book rightly condemning the alt-right and wrongly condemning the Trump administration for supporting anti-Semitism, drew the ire of the left by accusing various Congressmen of not truly representing their districts.

First, he responded to Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, who attempted to shoot down former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). In explaining her loss to Josh Hawley, McCaskill said, "Free stuff from the government does not play well in the Midwest."

Attempting to defeat McCaskill's argument, Shahid argued that Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) are from the Midwest, and that "Medicare and Social Security are both technically 'free stuff' and they play very well."

To this, Weisman replied, "Saying [Rashida Tlaib] (D-Detroit) and [Ilhan Omar] (D-Minneapolis) are from the Midwest is like saying [Rep. Lloyd Doggett] (D-Austin) is from Texas or [Rep. John Lewis] (D-Atlanta) is from the Deep South. C'mon."

Weisman was clearly trying to make a political point about the differences between representing a liberal urban area and representing a typically conservative rural area. In areas like the Midwest, the Deep South, and Texas, rural areas carry a state's electoral votes — and often other state-wide elections. Tlaib, Omar, Doggett, and Lewis could be said to represent islands of blue in seas of red.

But Weisman's good point does not come across, partly because the left has demonized any attacks on "The Squad" as racist, but also partly because Weisman chose Lewis — beloved as a Civil Rights hero — as an example. He later deleted that tweet "because I realize I did not adequately make my point."

Weisman's other unforgivable sin involved calling out Justice Democrats, a far-left group seeking to primary sitting members of Congress for being insufficiently progressive. "Justice Democrats has backed another primary challenger, this one seeking to unseat an African-American Democrat, Joyce Beatty, who represents Columbus," the Times deputy editor tweeted.

Morgan Harper, the candidate Justice Democrats endorsed in order to challenge Beatty, responded with a brief tweet: "I am also black, [Jonathan Weisman]." Weisman replied that the Justice Democrats endorsement "included a photo."

Justice Democrats compared Weisman's tweets to Trump's "go back" tweets, which it characterized as racist. "We must fundamentally change the idea that people of color can't exemplify the region — or the nation — in which we live," the group added, interpreting Weisman's deleted tweet as racist, rather than a discussion of political representation.

Roxane Gay interpreted Weisman's answer to Harper as a suggestion that Harper is not really black. The author suggested he was utterly unqualified for his job.

"Any time you think you’re unqualified for a job remember that this guy, telling a black woman she isn’t black because he looked at a picture and can’t see, has one of the most prestigious jobs in America. Shoot your shot," Gay tweeted.

In response, Weisman emailed Gay, her assistant, and her publisher, demanding "an enormous apology." Gay shared screenshots of the emails, tweeting that "the audacity and entitlement of white men is f**king incredible."

Weisman claimed Gay "misconstrued my rather innocuous tweet, willfully or mistakenly, accused me of racism, and incompetence, seemed to want me fired."

Racism and incompetence are serious charges, and conservatives feel a somewhat justified schadenfreude when they see a liberal accused of racism in the same way so many liberals baselessly accuse conservatives of the same charge.

"This is amazing. Weisman wrote an entire ridiculous book smearing the GOP as a bunch of Nazis, but is demoted for offending Ilhan Omar's fans," David Harsanyi, senior editor at The Federalist, tweeted.

Indeed, it seems Weisman may be experiencing some comeuppance for claiming that Trump — whose administration has heavily favored Israel and who himself is very proud of his Jewish daughter and son-in-law — harbors anti-Semitism.

Conservatives may enjoy double schadenfreude as The New York Times is struggling with accusations of racism — for reporting verbatim Trump's words condemning racism. Sadly, the Times seems to be immediately caving to the left, with no regard for the real meaning behind things denounced as racist.

SOURCE 

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The Left Responds to new immigration rules

As we reported yesterday, the Trump administration issued new rules defining what a public charge is under our immigration laws. As we also noted, this is not a new concept.

It has been part of U.S. immigration law since the 1880s and was revived during the Clinton years. The problem is that it was never seriously enforced. (By the way, the new rule also benefits immigrants who are proficient in English.)

Predictably, the left’s reaction to these reasonable rules is over the top.

For example, The Washington Post warns that the Trump administration is ramping up its “war on legal immigration,” while The Nation declares that the “war on immigrants just got a whole lot worse.” Numerous progressive politicians and special-interest groups are vowing to sue to overturn the rule.

What the left is describing as a “war on immigrants” is actually cover for the left’s war on the American taxpayer. We taxpayers are a very diverse group of people. Taxpayers include immigrants, as well as people of all races, religions, and backgrounds.

The progressive reaction is also very telling because it exposes yet again how the left goes out of its way to promote the interests of noncitizens over the interests of American citizens.

We are told over and over that immigrants pay taxes and are a boon to society. Well, to the extent that they are productive members of society and do pay taxes, that’s true. And that is why most conservatives are strong proponents of legal immigration.

But that assumes we have an immigration system that is making commonsense decisions about who gets in. That has not been happening.

We know that because Reuters tells us that “some experts say [the new rule] could cut legal immigration in half,” which means that half of legal immigrants meet the definition of “public charges."

According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), "63 percent of households headed by non-citizens use at least one welfare program, including an astonishing 80 percent of non-citizen households with children."

CIS research also found, "The average household headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) costs taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare benefits.”

Thankfully we have an administration that is fighting for the taxpayer. Voters who are uneasy with Trump’s style or his tweets will get a rude awakening if the left takes power and there is nothing standing in between them and their wallets.

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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Conservatives buck Trump over worries of 'socialist' drug pricing

Conservatives are growing increasingly uneasy with the Trump administration's new drug pricing policy.

President Trump is desperately seeking an elusive political win in his efforts to lower prescription drug costs, but he faces a hard sell to conservative groups and GOP lawmakers as he touts ideas traditionally favored by Democrats and presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

In a rare break with Trump, conservatives are now pushing back against key administration policies and accusing the president of supporting what they call Sanders-style socialism.

The president has embraced importing drugs from Canada, as well as an international pricing policy that would bar Medicare from paying more than other countries for prescription drugs.

The moves are designed to co-opt Democratic talking points and position Trump as a populist champion of the free market.

Trump has made lowering drug prices a top priority of his presidency, but he has suffered some high-profile setbacks in recent weeks.

Drug importation and the international pricing caps proposal are the only remaining policies remaining that the White House can use to make a splash heading into 2020.

Trump has frequently railed against “global freeloading” and said he doesn’t think it’s fair that the U.S. subsidizes research and development in other countries.

Last year he went to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and announced the plan to cap U.S. payments for expensive drugs, over the objections of some White House advisers. Those objections later spread to include conservative groups.

Facebook ads this year from FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group, urged people to tell HHS Secretary Alex Azar to oppose “socialist-style price controls.” Another ad warned the administration against “importing socialist European drug prices in America.”

Separately, a website sponsored by the American Conservative Union rails against the administration’s pricing index, calling it an experiment “directly out of the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton government health care takeover playbook.”

In the GOP-controlled Senate, a bill backed by the administration is facing Republican opposition over a provision that would impose a limit on drug price increases in Medicare’s Part D prescription drug program. The legislation would force drug companies to pay money back to the government if their prices rise faster than inflation.

The Senate Finance Committee approved the measure late last month in a 19-9 vote — all Democrats voted for it, and all nine “no” votes came from Republicans. Some GOP senators said they were concerned because they think the Medicare Part D provision violates traditional free-market principles.

The bill faces long odds of making it to the Senate floor without substantial changes. “I'm not comfortable with putting price controls on drugs,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a member of the Finance Committee, told The Hill.

Toomey offered an amendment to strip out the provision, which failed on a tie vote of 14-14. All but two Republicans voted for his amendment.

Aside from capping drug payments, Trump has also softened his stance on importing drugs from Canada. The administration last week announced a proposal that would set the groundwork for states or wholesalers to launch pilot programs to safely import drugs.

Shipping in drugs from abroad has long been a goal of progressives like Sanders, but has also won the support of libertarian-leaning conservatives like GOP Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Ted Cruz (Texas) and Mike Lee (Utah).

But with Trump looking for a win on drug pricing, political analysts and health experts argue he doesn’t necessarily care about gaining the support of conservatives.

“This is ... the administration throwing down a wild card,” said health care consultant Alex Shekhdar, founder of Sycamore Creek Healthcare Advisors. “In order to win in 2020, they need to take into consideration independents and anyone else who thinks drug prices are an issue.”

Joe Antos, a health care expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said it doesn’t matter if the policies Trump is embracing are traditionally Democratic ones. “Just because Democrats endorsed it in the past, doesn’t mean Trump can’t take ownership and call it his idea. He might not call them Republican ideas, but he’ll call them Donald Trump ideas,” Antos said.

But some GOP senators cautioned against letting Democrats play too much of a role.

After the Finance Committee advanced the drug-pricing bill, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters that Republicans don’t want Trump negotiating with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

A competing bill from House Democrats is far more sweeping than the Senate’s, and includes direct Medicare negotiation on drug prices. “It seems to me that the Grassley-Wyden approach is a very moderate approach to what could come out,” Grassley said, referring to the bill backed by him and Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee.

But a stalled bill could still work to Trump’s advantage, according to Antos, who said the president doesn’t necessarily need to lower drug prices, he just needs to convince the public he is trying.

In that sense, Antos argued, Republicans haven’t offered anything better, and they will eventually support whatever the administration does. “Republicans don’t have any alternative ideas,” Antos said. “Trump has full control of Republicans in Congress, so there’s just not going to be any response other than going along with what comes along.”

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Top 10 Reasons Seniors Are Benefiting From The Trump Economy

The U. S. economy made history at the end of July by sustaining the longest expansion period on record. While the benefits of this prosperity have impacted all different groups and demographics, the benefits to our American senior population in particular are considerable. Here are several ways U.S. economic growth is enabling citizens over 55 to drive even greater economic success.

1. In 2018, Americans aged 55 and older gained almost 49% of the 2.9 million jobs created in the workforce. This is the largest share of any age group, even exceeding the 25-54 age demographic, according to an analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Older managers are valuable because they have a wealth of experience and cost businesses less in terms of health care, as they qualify for Medicare at 65 yrs, according to TLRanalytics. USA Today recently noted that 39.2% of Americans 55 and older were working at the end of 2018, the highest level since 1961.

Sarah Chaney of the Wall Street Journal points to an OECD study indicating there is considerable employment upside left in this equation. For example, Japan, according to the data, continues to defy economic odds: 77% of Japanese aged 55 to 64 were active in the labor force in 2018, up from 68.2% in 2011.

2. Investment returns have flourished in the Trump administration — great news for senior and future senior retirement investments. The S&P 500 Index has returned 38%, including dividend reinvestment, and the Nasdaq has generated over 53% returns during the past two-and-a-half years.

3. The U.S. continues to offer the best environment for entrepreneurs. According to the 2018 FreshBooks report, an estimated 27 million Americans will leave the traditional corporate workforce in favor of full-time self-employment by 2020. Kauffman Index of Start-up Activity has found the highest rate of U.S. entrepreneurial activity is currently among the 55 and 64 age group. Rising life expectancy, insufficient retirement savings, as well as desire to maintain productive activity are all playing a role.

4. A Babson College study, The State of Small Business in America, confirms more than half of U.S. small business owners are now aged 50 and older. This trend could accelerate as the regulatory environment eases administrative burdens that caused great harm to mom-and-pop enterprises.

5. Senior entrepreneurs propel economic expansion and contribute more than $120 billion in federal taxes annually to support fiscal programs, thus reducing dependency on entitlements.

6. A strong economy offers more opportunities to a wider range of our population. Only 26% of small business owners have a bachelor’s degree, according to a CNBC/Survey Monkey survey — yet that hasn’t held them back from success. Five years after a business opens, 60% to 70% of ventures established by senior entrepreneurs remain in operation, compared to 28% of enterprises started by younger entrepreneurs. Skills and determination define success — and it also seems that experience that comes with age helps

7. Healthy environments boost start-up activity, and we now see venture funding geared toward our older demographic accelerating. As longer lifespans unfold, we desperately need new, low-cost technologies in areas such as caregiving, assisted-living support and end-of-life care — technologies seniors are uniquely equipped to develop and implement.

8. Only in growing economies do cities and communities have an opportunity to make infrastructure improvements. Retiring boomers will no longer accept the isolated housing options of the past. Paul Irving, chair of The Center of the Future of Aging and the Milken Institute, contends that productive integration of aging communities into housing, recreation, and transportation, to name a few areas, will not only benefit older Americans, but present new business opportunities for everyone.

9. The “longevity economy” will be a remarkable transformation in the U.S., according to an Oxford Economics report. We have 106 million people over the age of 50 responsible for $7.6 trillion of annual economic activity.

10. Finally, this unprecedented economic expansion increases the range of “purposeful activity” among retired seniors, such as volunteering, educational programs and mentoring. Pursuits like these are shown to maintain health, happiness and potentially deter or delay the onslaught of dementia, Alzheimer’s and other conditions.

It’s easy to forget the contributions of senior citizens. Our culture’s obsession with youth and novelty leads us to overlook the power of experience and continuity. But if these numbers show anything, it’s that the elderly still have the power to push us further along the path to prosperity.

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Disagreement over primaries for next presidential election

As California Democrats try to keep President Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot next year, Republicans in other states are pondering plans to cancel or modify their own 2020 presidential nominating contests and essentially affirm the party’s support for Mr. Trump before voters head to the polls.

A new California law requiring candidates to disclose five years of tax returns has raised fresh legal and constitutional questions on ballot access, while nascent proposals to scale back Republican nominating contests in states such as South Carolina and Nevada have drawn criticism from William F. Weld, the most prominent Republican challenging Mr. Trump in 2020.

Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member from California, called his state’s law a “political farce” and predicted it would be struck down “by Christmas, if not sooner.”

He said there is merit to simply allowing voters to express their will and that “competition’s always good,” denting the notion of state parties moving to quash dissent and save Mr. Trump from having to dispatch any primary challengers.

“I’m not worried about Trump in any way. … A lot of Republicans that were not enthusiastic for him three years ago — and there was a lot in California — they’re all on board because his production has been beyond anybody’s expectation,” Mr. Steel said. “So there is no real primary threat in any way that I can see, and my answer is, ‘Who cares?’ Trump’s going to come out looking good no matter what.”

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee sued soon after Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed the tax return ballot measure into law last month. The lawsuit argues that the requirement infringes on Mr. Trump’s free speech rights.

Mr. Trump, citing an ongoing IRS audit, has broken with long-standing precedent since his 2016 campaign by declining to release his tax returns. He is fighting a separate legal battle with congressional Democrats, who have sued to try to get their hands on the president’s tax information.

Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican National Committee member whose law firm is representing the RNC in its case against California, said the implications of the state law stretch beyond the presidential contest.

“If the president isn’t there, there will be a lot of Republicans who say, ‘I’m not going to bother to vote. I’m boycotting voting this year,’ ” Ms. Dhillon said. “Which means that in potential congressional races they potentially end up in Democrat-on-Democrat races because of our top-two system.”

Mr. Newsom has defended the law by saying the U.S. Constitution leaves it to the states to determine how their presidential electors are chosen.

Rocky De La Fuente, a perennial candidate challenging Mr. Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination, also sued over the California law — even as he said he plans to release his past five years of tax returns voluntarily.

“If voters want a candidate to release their tax returns, voters are free to withhold their vote from candidates who do not,” Mr. De La Fuente said. “All Republicans must stand united in demanding that state officials be held to account when they threaten fundamental rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.”

Regardless of the court outcome, the law likely won’t have much practical effect on Mr. Trump’s status as the all-but-assured Republican presidential nominee next year — though it would be notable if an incumbent president fails to get his name on the primary ballot in the country’s most populous state.

Still, Republicans in other early presidential states are weighing plans to modify or even cancel their presidential nominating contests next year and declaring their support for Mr. Trump before voters have a chance to express their choices in a primary or caucus.

In South Carolina, the party’s executive committee will decide next month whether to hold a presidential preference primary, said Cindy Costa, a Republican National Committee member from the state, which is famous for holding the first-in-the-South presidential primary.

“Democrats didn’t hold one when they had the White House in 2012 or 1996, and Republicans didn’t hold one in ‘04 or ‘84, so there is a strong precedent that the party that holds the presidency doesn’t normally have a primary,” Ms. Costa said.

Republican parties in Nevada and Kansas are also weighing plans to modify or cancel their caucuses next year.

The Nevada Republican Party is slated to decide next month whether to simply have the state central committee decide on committing delegates to Mr. Trump. The party said the move could allow them to divert resources elsewhere.

Mr. Weld, a former Massachusetts governor, said the president is trying to turn the Republican Party “into yet another of his private clubs.”

“We don’t elect presidents by acclamation in America,” Mr. Weld said in a statement to The Washington Times. “The idea that any incumbent, especially this one, should be allowed to bypass facing voters in a primary or party caucus is an insult to the Republican Party and to the millions of voters who would be disenfranchised.”

Though Mr. Weld is the most prominent Republican challenging Mr. Trump for the nomination, scores of lesser-known candidates routinely file with the Federal Election Commission to run for president every cycle and could be affected by the changes.

Mr. Trump’s campaign said it is taking no position on whether state parties should opt out of primary contests and direct the money elsewhere.

“Regardless, the President will dominate whomever has the wrong-headed idea to challenge him in whatever contest is put in front of him,” said Sarah Matthews, a spokeswoman for the president’s reelection campaign.

The RNC passed a resolution supporting Mr. Trump this year after members toyed with the idea of taking more far-reaching steps to block potential primary challengers.

“Since when do Republicans oppose competition?” Steve Duprey, a Republican National Committee member from New Hampshire, wrote this year in the New Hampshire Union Leader. “If the party starts favoring incumbents over primary challengers, then what is the case for having the first-in-the-nation primary? Who would come here to compete in a rigged system when Iowa and South Carolina offer fair contests?”

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