Americans have just suffered a dangerous loss of liberties
Though what SCOTUS will say about it remains to be seen
The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011 (PDF) may sound like a landscaping measure, but it is also being called the Trespass Bill, the Anti-Occupy Bill, and the First Amendment Rights Eradication Act. Under this bill, it is a felony to protest at or in the vicinity of a venue or event that is attended by anyone who has Secret Service protection. H.R. 347 passed the House on February 27th by a vote of 388–3. The Senate version (S. 1794) passed unanimously. With President Obama's signature, the Act became law on March 8.
The bill has caused a furor among advocates of civil liberties. Justin Amash, one of the three “no” votes in the House, dubbed the bill the “First Amendment Rights Eradication Act.” Calling it “this administration's latest assault on our civil liberties,” he explains on his Facebook page that “criminalizing legitimate First Amendment activity — even if that activity is annoying to those government officials — violates our rights.”
The left-leaning Daily Kos states, “Protesting will be a felony — where is the outrage?”
Meanwhile, the bill is being ignored by the mainstream media as uncontroversial. Supporters of the act dismiss its critics as hysterical or ill-informed. Michael Mahassey, the communications director for Rep. Thomas J. Rooney, who sponsored H.R. 347, called the backlash, "a whole lot of kerfuffle over nothing. This doesn’t affect anyone’s right to protest anywhere at any time. Ever.”
Who is correct? And why is there such a deep schism on H.R. 347?
The American Civil Liberties Union warns against H.R. 347. Nevertheless, the ACLU observes, “It's important to note — contrary to some reports — that H.R. 347 doesn't create any new crimes, or directly apply to the Occupy protests. The bill slightly rewrites a short trespass law, originally passed in 1971.”
Section 1752 of title 18 in the United States Code is entitled “Restricted Building or Grounds.” This 1971 bill was intended to prevent assassination, kidnapping, or other attempts to harm the political elite, especially the president. The section of title 18 that immediately precedes it, section 1751, is entitled “Presidential and Presidential Staff Assassination, Kidnapping, and Assault; Penalties.”
Thus, section 1752 restricts people from entering or blocking access to or from public areas that have been cordoned off by the Secret Service for the protection of a person (or for a “special event of national significance,” which could range from the Olympics to a political convention). The penalty for violating section 1752 includes a possible one-year jail term; if a “dangerous weapon” is involved, then the jail term rises to a possible ten years.
In recent years, the 1971 bill has been interpreted beyond its intent in order to crack down on peaceful protesters. Moreover, as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has amply demonstrated, the definition of a “dangerous weapon” has been expanded at the discretion of law enforcement to include such items as nail clippers.
Thus, the controversy over the current revision, H.R. 347, revolves around two issues. First, is H.R. 347 part of a trend toward vagueness in legislative wording, which can be later exploited and expanded by authorities in order to violate civil liberties? Second, how legally “slight” is the change of wording in this revision?
Consider the first question. Gene Howington, a guest blogger at Jonathan Turley's legal-analysis site, writes: "it seems to be a trend that vague or overly broad language could be fairly described as being purposefully adopted allowing “wiggle room” for Federal authorities to potentially abuse civil and human rights under the color of authority. This is a dangerous practice."
Howington refers to a recent example of legislative vagueness — the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gives Obama the power to indefinitely detain citizens without trial if they are accused of terrorism. Some politicians, notably Senator Carl Levin, argued that the NDAA did not allow such arrests and, so, soothed his worried compatriots while dismissing the bill's critics. Nevertheless, even Obama acknowledged his new power after the bill passed, saying, “I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.”
No wonder legal scholars now scrutinize with a skeptical eye every word that appears in potentially menacing legislation.
As to the second question, to determine how “slight” the revisions of H.R. 347 truly are, it is necessary to review them. One change has or could have deep significance. The original text reads,
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person or group of persons—
(1) willfully and knowingly to enter or remain in any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting.
***
Four additional paragraphs, (2) through (5), begin with the words “willfully” and “knowingly.”
The revised text of paragraph (a)(1) in H.R. 347 reads,
(1) knowingly enters or remains in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so.
The four additional clauses in the original are compressed to three, each of which now begins with the word “knowingly” only.
Why is deleting the word “willfully” so significant? Because it removes the need for a prosecutor to prove that a protester had the intent to violate the statute, for example, through blocking an egress. All that needs to be proven is that the protester knew he was accessing a restricted area. His intent may have been nothing more than to exercise freedom of speech; blocking the exit may have been inadvertent. But under H.R. 347, his mens rea — that is, that aspect of his state of mind — becomes legally insignificant.
In Latin, “mens rea” means “guilty mind” or guilty intention. Within Western law, an act has traditionally required a guilty mind for that act to become criminal behavior. That is why defendants who are found to be mentally incompetent are not placed on trial; they are not deemed capable of mens rea. The Latin legal phrase, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea — “the act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty” — is often invoked in such cases.
Writing in the periodical In These Times, Daniel Hertz encapsulates the impact of removing “willfully” from the statute, “In other words, Congress removed a hurdle in enforcing the law without actually adding any new restrictions to the First Amendment.”
They simply changed the rules of enforcement to remove what is often the most difficult element of the crime to prove: namely, intent. Indeed, since both the original text and H.R. 347 allow the arrest of someone who is merely in “proximity” to a restricted area, proving intent could be close to impossible. How could you prove that person was walking near a politician's hotel with the intent of causing harm or blocking the egress?
As Gene Howington observes, “in addition” to lowering the threshold for mens rea***, H.R. 347 defines: "the term “restricted buildings or grounds” to mean virtually any place in proximity to or place proper [where] a government function or an “event of national interest” is taking place. This would allow for the arrest of protesters just about anywhere. Outside political rallies, near the hotels of visiting foreign dignitaries, outside sporting or other public events like the Super Bowl … you get the idea."
H.R. 347 may well make the arrest and conviction of peaceful protesters much easier.
Conclusion
It is criminally naive to believe that the police and courts will not eventually use the expanded latitude granted by H.R. 347. The Occupy movement frightened and angered the authorities it yanked control away from. For years, “free speech zones,” in which protesters speak from behind barred walls, as though in cages, contained dissenters and kept them far from government officials. They were allowed to protest only where the elite and the mainstream media would not hear them.
Occupy changed that. And the authorities have struggled to find ways to contain dissent ever since; they never want to lose control again. And, especially in this election season, politicians are eager to avoid a repeat of the public outrage that surrounded the 1968 Democratic convention, when police were filmed brutally beating peaceful demonstrators in the street.
The elites are losing patience with civil rights. This January, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed through two anti-protest ordinances that were widely termed “sit down and shut up” measures. The online periodical and voice of Occupy, the Dissenter, describes two of several repressive new requirements.
Ahead of demonstrations, “organizers would be required to provide the City with a list of all signs, banners, sound equipment or ‘attention-getting devices’ that require more than one person to carry them,” creating “a license for the city to ‘ding’ organizers with absurd fines.”
All downtown protest marches would be required to get $1 million insurance coverage to “indemnify the city against any additional or uncovered third party claims against the city arising out of or caused by the parade.” They would have to “agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or city property arising out of or caused by the parade.”
Clearly, Emanuel is determined that the upcoming NATO/G8 meetings in his city will go smoothly. Emanuel and his ilk would not hesitate to use the free hand provided by H.R. 347 to prosecute “offenders.” And god help them if the protesters are found to be in possession of a pair of nail clippers, small scissors, or any other item that could be construed as a “dangerous weapon.” The penalty could then rise to ten years imprisonment for young people still idealistic enough to believe they have free speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition officials with their grievances.
SOURCE
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Obamacare Costs More Than Twice As Much As Obama Claimed; Stimulus Creates Debt, Not Jobs
Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law’s core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That’s because we now have estimates for Obamacare’s first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn’t overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then. Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we’re likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.”
Obamacare will harm the health care system and reduce employment. The Dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Flier, noted that Obamacare will harm life-saving medical innovation. Obamacare is causing layoffs in the medical device industry. Obamacare will raise the cost of insurance by at least 55 percent in Ohio, according to one study. It taxes medical devices and cosmetic surgery, arbitrarily discriminates against certain hospitals, and raises taxes starting in 2013 on investors. The Associated Press and others have noted that it breaks a number of Obama campaign promises. Earlier, CEI filed an amicus brief against the health care law on behalf of Minnesota and North Carolina legislators.
Bloomberg News features an interesting column by Ramesh Ponnuru, “Obama’s Stimulus Helped Grow Debt, Not Economy,” which debunks some frequently-repeated claims about stimulus jobs and job projections. Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron argued that the $800 billion stimulus package wasn’t even designed to stimulate the economy, but rather to benefit special-interest groups, since it ignored even old-fashioned Keynesian policy prescriptions about how to revive the economy. Obama claimed the stimulus was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline” in the economy, even though the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy “in the long run.” The Congressional Budget Office, ignoring the stimulus package’s flaws, argues that the stimulus has boosted the economy in “the short run.” But even the CBO concedes that the stimulus will shrink economic output in “the long run” by increasing the national debt and thus crowding out private investment.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
MS: Remaining five inmates in pardons controversy freed: "All five remaining inmates held in the Mississippi pardons controversy have now been released from prison. Mississippi's Supreme Court last week upheld the controversial pardons of more than 200 convicts that former Gov. Haley Barbour granted on his way out of office, rejecting a challenge by the state's attorney general."
France: Sarkozy defies Europe with protectionist push: "President Nicolas Sarkozy, recasting himself as France's saviour from low-cost competition and high immigration, threatened to disregard European limitations on protectionism as he sought to give his re-election campaign a second wind on Sunday. Going out on a limb that risks angering France's European partners, Sarkozy said it was time to support local companies and stop the uncontrolled influx of immigrants and cheap imports that demonstrate Europe's lack of protectionist controls."
Imaginary due process: "According to the Attorney General of the United States, the United States Constitution Bill of Rights, specifically the due process requirements, no longer applies to some American citizens if the president arbitrarily chooses to suspend them. In short, the president can have you assassinated if he thinks it’s a good idea."
Israel, Islamic Jihad agree to Gaza truce: "Israel and militants in Gaza agreed to cease hostilities Tuesday after Egypt brokered a 'mutual truce' following four days of bloodletting which left 25 Gazans dead. Under the agreement, which came into force at 1:00am (2300 GMT on Monday), both Israel and militants from Islamic Jihad -- responsible for the lion's share of rockets targeting southern Israel -- agreed to hold their fire, an Egyptian intelligence official told AFP. Israeli officials and Islamic Jihad both confirmed that a deal was in place."
TSA thugs threaten media outlets: "Jonathan Corbett is suing the TSA for its unconstitutional body scanners and pat-down methods. He's also demonstrating that the TSA simply doesn't work. ... the pornoscanners actually put passengers at GREATER RISK -- and the TSA knows it! Even worse, the TSA issued threats against mainstream media outlets that wanted to interview Corbett!"
Not the messiah: "I caught about 30 seconds of some Republican forum last night and heard someone ask Newt Gingrich about what he was going to do to lead the nation back to God. I am a religious person. I think Godliness is a good thing. But the right answer to that question should be to say that it is not the job of the President of the United States or in in the skill set of the President of the United States to lead the nation back to or toward God."
Property rights are human rights: "One of the left's most effective canards has been its alleged distinction between property rights and human rights. The fact is that property rights are human rights. My right to my computer -- my property -- is not my computer's right to itself. It's my right, and I'm human. So when I see someone who is on record as being a defender of human rights and that someone defends, however haltingly, her property right as a human right, that's progress."
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Thursday, March 15, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Lord Monckton on Obama's computer-generated "Birth certificate"
I have watched Sheriff Arpaio's press conference in AZ and have examined some of the evidence directly. It is clear - as Alex Jones rightly said on the day when Obama first put up his faked "long-form birth certificate" on the White House website - that a fraud has been committed, and that, absent a valid official record of Obama's birth or a very good explanation of the anomalies in the published version, he is not qualified to stand for re-election as President.
The main point of the fraudulent "birth certificate" is that it is layered in such a way that all four of the rubber stamps (three dates and one recording officer's certification) are on separate layers, allowing them to be moved about on the document at will. A scanned document could not behave this way, and there is no way this could have happened accidentally. However, Sheriff Arpaio has some reason to fear that the Hawaiian authorities are in Obama's pocket.
There are two other pieces of impressive testimony. First, when the Sheriff's office asked the National Archives to produce the immigration records of flights into the US, and specifically into Hawaii, for five years either side of Obama's alleged birth date (4 August 1961), the one week in 1961 in which the records were unavailable was the week of -- you guessed it - 1-7 August. This is beginning to look like a widespread, high-level fraud.
Secondly, the White House had previously told enquirers from the media that no long-form birth certificate existed: all they had was a certification from Hawaii that there was a birth certificate on file.
The Sheriff plainly has enough evidence to warrant further investigation by the appropriate authorities (presumably the FBI), but he seems to be genuinely terrified of how far the corruption might have spread, and does not seem to know where to go or what to do next. A lawyer whom I have consulted says that no public authority or court will move against a sitting president who has been elected, but it seems to me that the evidence of malfeasance is now strong enough to overcome this objection.
Received via email
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Another foundation of Obamacare crumbles
Electronic health records have long been touted by Democrats and Republicans alike as a sure-fire way to lower health spending. When doctors have easy electronic access to a patient's records, advocates argue, they are less likely to order the duplicative and unnecessary tests that drive up the cost of health care in America.
But that assertion is not necessarily proving to be true. Doctors who use EHRs may actually order more diagnostic testing, and therefore make health care even more expensive, according to a study published in the the journal Health Affairs.
Researchers found that office-based physicians were actually 40 to 70 percent more likely to order an imaging test if they had access to computerized imaging results. The study is based on data from the 2008 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey of 28,741 patient visits to 1,187 physicians.
EHRs may be yet another example of a health care solution that looks great on paper, but "when you actually try to implement it in real world settings with real patients" it may have some "unintended consequences," says lead author Danny McCormick, a primary care physician and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
EHRs have been estimated to save $77.8 billion annually, largely by avoiding imaging such as MRIs and lab tests. Doctors can view a patient's previous tests in real time, and can use this information to determine whether another test is really needed. In addition, software in the EHRs can help a doctor make this decision.
But EHRs also make diagnostic images easier to order and easier to review. Imagine a doctor sitting with a patient, says McCormick. If the doctor orders an MRI on one of these systems, he "knows with certainty the report will show up the next day on [his] computer screen with no hassle. But without a computer record, [he] might have to struggle to get it," requiring an investment in staff time to request a fax of the study, which may then be difficult to read.
This "convenience effect" may subtly shift the doctor's incentives, encouraging him to order diagnostic tests more liberally.
While EHRs may still improve health care quality and efficiency, says McCormick, the study results do not bode well for the federal government's multibillion dollar plan to save money by encouraging doctors to adopt health information technology.
The study "should prompt us perhaps to look elsewhere for answers to the cost crisis plaguing the U.S. health care system," McCormick adds.
SOURCE
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Afghanistan: It Was Only a Matter of Time Before One of Our Men Broke Down under impossible conditions
by Ralph Peters
On Sunday, just before dawn, an American staff sergeant walked away from his post in the badlands of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, went into a nearby village, and methodically murdered sixteen civilians, including women and children. This didn’t happen in the confusion of a firefight amidst the “fog of war.” It was the brutal act of a veteran who cracked. The deed cannot be excused. But I believe it can be explained.
For a final analysis we’ll have to wait until all of the facts come in, but it appears that a soldier who had served honorably during multiple tours in Iraq broke down and went mad in Afghanistan. We should not be surprised that this happened. We should be surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner and more often: The shock of this incident after a decade of hopeless, meandering efforts that have thrown away the lives and limbs of our troops while ambitious generals lie about progress, seek promotion, and engage in military masturbation is actually a tribute to our men and women in uniform out on the front lines (to the extent that “front lines” exist).
That staff sergeant—who turned himself in after the killings—is guilty of murder in a degree yet to be determined, but the amazing thing is how disciplined, patient and tenacious our troops have been. Given the outrageous stresses of serving repeated tours in an environment a brand-new private could recognize as hopeless (while his generals fly back and forth congratulating themselves), it’s remarkable that we have not seen more and even uglier incidents. The problem in Afghanistan isn’t our troops—although craven generals routinely insist that everything is the fault of “disrespectful” soldiers—it’s a leadership in and out of uniform that is bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of ethics, bankrupt of moral courage—and rich only in self-interest and ambition.
If there’s a “battle cry” in Afghanistan, it’s “Blame the troops!” Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to “respect Afghan culture.”
But generals don’t have a clue about Afghan “culture.” They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing. The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women. When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to “respect Afghan culture,” they must want to puke up their rations.
When I was a young officer in training, we mocked the European “chateaux generals” of the First World War who gave their orders from elegant headquarters without ever experiencing the reality faced by the troops in the trenches. We never thought that we’d have chateaux generals of our own, but now we do. Flying down to visit an outpost and staying just long enough to pin on a medal or two, get a dog-and-pony-show briefing and have a well-scripted tea session with a carefully selected “good” tribal elder, then winging straight back to a well-protected headquarters where the electronics are more real than the troops is not the way to develop a “fingertips feel” for on-the-ground reality.
Add in the human capacity for self-delusion, and you have a surefire prescription for failure.
Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind).
What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.
Now we’re told that we have to stay to build the Afghan military and police. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! And Allah’s knickers, too! We’ve been training and equipping the Afghan army and the Afghan cops (and robbers) for ten years. In World War II, we turned out a mass military of our own in a year or so. The problem in Afghanistan isn’t that we haven’t tried, but that the Afghans are not interested in fighting for the exuberantly corrupt Karzai regime. Right now, our troops are dying to preserve a filthy Kabul government whose president blatantly stole the last election and which has no hope of gaining the support of its own people. Meanwhile, despite repeated claims that the Taliban is on its last legs, the religious fanatics remain the home team backed by Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority. (If the people didn’t back them, the Taliban would, indeed, have been long gone—we need to face reality.)
Recently, another friend, who clings to (now-retired) General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency notion that, if we just hang on and give the Afghans enough free stuff, they’ll come around to the American way of life, told me, yet again, “You should hear the intercepts we get from the low-level Taliban fighters…they’re in a panic…”
That’s the old Vietnam line: “We win every firefight!” Sure, we whip the Taliban every time we catch them with their weapons (if they’re not holding weapons, we can’t engage, even if they just killed Americans). But we dare not attack the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, where it’s protected by our “allies.” And no matter how many Taliban we kill, they still attract volunteers willing to die for their cause. The Afghans we train turn their guns on us.
It appears that the staff sergeant who murdered those Afghan villagers had cracked under the stresses of a war we won’t allow our troops to fight. But the real madness is at the top, in the White House, where President Obama can’t see past the November election; in Congress, where Republicans cling to whatever war they’ve got; and in uniform, where our generals have run out of ideas and moral courage.
That staff sergeant murdered sixteen Afghans. Our own leaders have murdered thousands and maimed tens of thousands of our own troops out of vanity, ambition and inertia. Who deserves our sympathy?
In war, soldiers die. But they shouldn’t die for bullshit.
SOURCE
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Voter ID Laws: Racist or Reasonable?
Both the Left and Right have expressed concern over potential abuse in America’s current voting process. But as the rhetoric flies, what are the facts? And is the Department of Justice heeding all concerns?
There’s been much said lately about election integrity and voter identification laws. Both sides of the American political spectrum have raised concerns over polls and potential abuses in the American voting process. In fact, due to the serious voter registration irregularities identified by groups like True the Vote in Texas, along with the numerous voter fraud convictions across the nation involving workers from politically motivated groups like the failed organization ACORN, many states are pursuing photo identification as a means of addressing such assaults on election integrity. Texas, South Carolina and Florida have all taken steps to mandate photo identification as a requirement for voting. ...
Take, for example, Harris County, the county encompassing Houston, Texas. The irregularities in voter registration in this jurisdiction have raised serious concerns over election integrity through the investigative efforts of nonprofits and Harris County agencies alike.
True the Vote, a nonpartisan, Houston-based nonprofit focusing on electoral integrity has revealed some startling information. Their effort, which started out of a small tea party group, focused on volunteering as poll workers in their local 2009 elections. According to the group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, what started as a simple effort to exercise civic duty and get involved brought them face to face with what she referred to as frightening and gross incompetence on the part of some election and county workers at the polls. Engelbrecht pointed out in her interview with Townhall that even though Texas law allowed 11 different forms of identification to be used at that time to verify identity, which was required to vote, she and her 70 election volunteers noticed that many voters were being allowed to vote without any identification at all. Texas has since passed voter identification laws which require the use of a photo identification card.
Engelbrecht’s volunteers ultimately submitted 800 signed affidavits outlining problems they encountered, including having overheard some election judges telling people who they should and should not vote for. After these experiences, the group decided to form True the Vote and to investigate how citizens could help ensure voter integrity and what processes existed to report abuses or irregularities. Engelbrecht says these efforts revealed even more frightening examples of degradation to the election process.
Engelbrecht’s True the Vote organization then decided to look at the actual registry and not just the new registrations. The group obtained the nearly 2,000,000-person Harris County Voter Registry Role. The group subdivided the registry by congressional district due to the size of the data.
After the registry was divided into the seven congressional districts which Harris County encompasses, True the Vote needed a starting point to isolate red flags for possible irregularities. They decided to start looking at registrations that had addresses six or more people were registered to.
The group found the seven congressional districts had four that were predominantly Republican and three that were predominantly Democratic. The four predominantly Republican districts had a range from 1,973 to 3,300 addresses with six or more people registered to them. The three predominantly Democratic districts had much higher numbers. Though this could possibly be attributed to variations in socioeconomic factors between the predominantly Republican and predominantly Democratic districts, what the group found next was alarming. The predominantly Democratic districts themselves had large variations between them in the number of addresses with six or more registered voters. The first had 7,560, the second 8,981, and the third—the district of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, the prominent, outspoken Democratic congresswoman—had 19,596 instances with six or more voters registered at one address.
True the Vote then compared the socio-economic demographics of the three predominantly Democratic congressional districts in an effort to explain why Jackson Lee’s district could have such a high number in comparison. Engelbrecht told Townhall the group had found no significant difference to explain such a drastic variation in the numbers.
The group began doing research into the abnormalities in Jackson Lee’s district. They took the first 3,800 registrations of the flagged 19,596 homes with six or more registrants and began to investigate further. The group visited addresses and scoured property tax records. The group found many of the addresses were vacant lots or business addresses. Thirty-nine were registered at businesses and 97 of the addresses were nonexistent. One hundred six of the registrations revealed the same registrant registered more than once, and 207 of the addresses turned out to be vacant lots. Meanwhile, 595 registrations had registrants with driver’s license addresses not matching the registration, and many were voting in a district they did not live in. Of the random 3,800 registrations from Jackson Lee’s predominantly Democratic district, 25 percent had critical errors which Engelbrecht believes could result in an erosion of election integrity.
Excerpt from the March Townhall magazine received via email
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
I have watched Sheriff Arpaio's press conference in AZ and have examined some of the evidence directly. It is clear - as Alex Jones rightly said on the day when Obama first put up his faked "long-form birth certificate" on the White House website - that a fraud has been committed, and that, absent a valid official record of Obama's birth or a very good explanation of the anomalies in the published version, he is not qualified to stand for re-election as President.
The main point of the fraudulent "birth certificate" is that it is layered in such a way that all four of the rubber stamps (three dates and one recording officer's certification) are on separate layers, allowing them to be moved about on the document at will. A scanned document could not behave this way, and there is no way this could have happened accidentally. However, Sheriff Arpaio has some reason to fear that the Hawaiian authorities are in Obama's pocket.
There are two other pieces of impressive testimony. First, when the Sheriff's office asked the National Archives to produce the immigration records of flights into the US, and specifically into Hawaii, for five years either side of Obama's alleged birth date (4 August 1961), the one week in 1961 in which the records were unavailable was the week of -- you guessed it - 1-7 August. This is beginning to look like a widespread, high-level fraud.
Secondly, the White House had previously told enquirers from the media that no long-form birth certificate existed: all they had was a certification from Hawaii that there was a birth certificate on file.
The Sheriff plainly has enough evidence to warrant further investigation by the appropriate authorities (presumably the FBI), but he seems to be genuinely terrified of how far the corruption might have spread, and does not seem to know where to go or what to do next. A lawyer whom I have consulted says that no public authority or court will move against a sitting president who has been elected, but it seems to me that the evidence of malfeasance is now strong enough to overcome this objection.
Received via email
*************************
Another foundation of Obamacare crumbles
Electronic health records have long been touted by Democrats and Republicans alike as a sure-fire way to lower health spending. When doctors have easy electronic access to a patient's records, advocates argue, they are less likely to order the duplicative and unnecessary tests that drive up the cost of health care in America.
But that assertion is not necessarily proving to be true. Doctors who use EHRs may actually order more diagnostic testing, and therefore make health care even more expensive, according to a study published in the the journal Health Affairs.
Researchers found that office-based physicians were actually 40 to 70 percent more likely to order an imaging test if they had access to computerized imaging results. The study is based on data from the 2008 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey of 28,741 patient visits to 1,187 physicians.
EHRs may be yet another example of a health care solution that looks great on paper, but "when you actually try to implement it in real world settings with real patients" it may have some "unintended consequences," says lead author Danny McCormick, a primary care physician and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
EHRs have been estimated to save $77.8 billion annually, largely by avoiding imaging such as MRIs and lab tests. Doctors can view a patient's previous tests in real time, and can use this information to determine whether another test is really needed. In addition, software in the EHRs can help a doctor make this decision.
But EHRs also make diagnostic images easier to order and easier to review. Imagine a doctor sitting with a patient, says McCormick. If the doctor orders an MRI on one of these systems, he "knows with certainty the report will show up the next day on [his] computer screen with no hassle. But without a computer record, [he] might have to struggle to get it," requiring an investment in staff time to request a fax of the study, which may then be difficult to read.
This "convenience effect" may subtly shift the doctor's incentives, encouraging him to order diagnostic tests more liberally.
While EHRs may still improve health care quality and efficiency, says McCormick, the study results do not bode well for the federal government's multibillion dollar plan to save money by encouraging doctors to adopt health information technology.
The study "should prompt us perhaps to look elsewhere for answers to the cost crisis plaguing the U.S. health care system," McCormick adds.
SOURCE
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Afghanistan: It Was Only a Matter of Time Before One of Our Men Broke Down under impossible conditions
by Ralph Peters
On Sunday, just before dawn, an American staff sergeant walked away from his post in the badlands of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, went into a nearby village, and methodically murdered sixteen civilians, including women and children. This didn’t happen in the confusion of a firefight amidst the “fog of war.” It was the brutal act of a veteran who cracked. The deed cannot be excused. But I believe it can be explained.
For a final analysis we’ll have to wait until all of the facts come in, but it appears that a soldier who had served honorably during multiple tours in Iraq broke down and went mad in Afghanistan. We should not be surprised that this happened. We should be surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner and more often: The shock of this incident after a decade of hopeless, meandering efforts that have thrown away the lives and limbs of our troops while ambitious generals lie about progress, seek promotion, and engage in military masturbation is actually a tribute to our men and women in uniform out on the front lines (to the extent that “front lines” exist).
That staff sergeant—who turned himself in after the killings—is guilty of murder in a degree yet to be determined, but the amazing thing is how disciplined, patient and tenacious our troops have been. Given the outrageous stresses of serving repeated tours in an environment a brand-new private could recognize as hopeless (while his generals fly back and forth congratulating themselves), it’s remarkable that we have not seen more and even uglier incidents. The problem in Afghanistan isn’t our troops—although craven generals routinely insist that everything is the fault of “disrespectful” soldiers—it’s a leadership in and out of uniform that is bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of ethics, bankrupt of moral courage—and rich only in self-interest and ambition.
If there’s a “battle cry” in Afghanistan, it’s “Blame the troops!” Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to “respect Afghan culture.”
But generals don’t have a clue about Afghan “culture.” They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing. The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women. When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to “respect Afghan culture,” they must want to puke up their rations.
When I was a young officer in training, we mocked the European “chateaux generals” of the First World War who gave their orders from elegant headquarters without ever experiencing the reality faced by the troops in the trenches. We never thought that we’d have chateaux generals of our own, but now we do. Flying down to visit an outpost and staying just long enough to pin on a medal or two, get a dog-and-pony-show briefing and have a well-scripted tea session with a carefully selected “good” tribal elder, then winging straight back to a well-protected headquarters where the electronics are more real than the troops is not the way to develop a “fingertips feel” for on-the-ground reality.
Add in the human capacity for self-delusion, and you have a surefire prescription for failure.
Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind).
What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.
Now we’re told that we have to stay to build the Afghan military and police. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! And Allah’s knickers, too! We’ve been training and equipping the Afghan army and the Afghan cops (and robbers) for ten years. In World War II, we turned out a mass military of our own in a year or so. The problem in Afghanistan isn’t that we haven’t tried, but that the Afghans are not interested in fighting for the exuberantly corrupt Karzai regime. Right now, our troops are dying to preserve a filthy Kabul government whose president blatantly stole the last election and which has no hope of gaining the support of its own people. Meanwhile, despite repeated claims that the Taliban is on its last legs, the religious fanatics remain the home team backed by Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority. (If the people didn’t back them, the Taliban would, indeed, have been long gone—we need to face reality.)
Recently, another friend, who clings to (now-retired) General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency notion that, if we just hang on and give the Afghans enough free stuff, they’ll come around to the American way of life, told me, yet again, “You should hear the intercepts we get from the low-level Taliban fighters…they’re in a panic…”
That’s the old Vietnam line: “We win every firefight!” Sure, we whip the Taliban every time we catch them with their weapons (if they’re not holding weapons, we can’t engage, even if they just killed Americans). But we dare not attack the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, where it’s protected by our “allies.” And no matter how many Taliban we kill, they still attract volunteers willing to die for their cause. The Afghans we train turn their guns on us.
It appears that the staff sergeant who murdered those Afghan villagers had cracked under the stresses of a war we won’t allow our troops to fight. But the real madness is at the top, in the White House, where President Obama can’t see past the November election; in Congress, where Republicans cling to whatever war they’ve got; and in uniform, where our generals have run out of ideas and moral courage.
That staff sergeant murdered sixteen Afghans. Our own leaders have murdered thousands and maimed tens of thousands of our own troops out of vanity, ambition and inertia. Who deserves our sympathy?
In war, soldiers die. But they shouldn’t die for bullshit.
SOURCE
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Voter ID Laws: Racist or Reasonable?
Both the Left and Right have expressed concern over potential abuse in America’s current voting process. But as the rhetoric flies, what are the facts? And is the Department of Justice heeding all concerns?
There’s been much said lately about election integrity and voter identification laws. Both sides of the American political spectrum have raised concerns over polls and potential abuses in the American voting process. In fact, due to the serious voter registration irregularities identified by groups like True the Vote in Texas, along with the numerous voter fraud convictions across the nation involving workers from politically motivated groups like the failed organization ACORN, many states are pursuing photo identification as a means of addressing such assaults on election integrity. Texas, South Carolina and Florida have all taken steps to mandate photo identification as a requirement for voting. ...
Take, for example, Harris County, the county encompassing Houston, Texas. The irregularities in voter registration in this jurisdiction have raised serious concerns over election integrity through the investigative efforts of nonprofits and Harris County agencies alike.
True the Vote, a nonpartisan, Houston-based nonprofit focusing on electoral integrity has revealed some startling information. Their effort, which started out of a small tea party group, focused on volunteering as poll workers in their local 2009 elections. According to the group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, what started as a simple effort to exercise civic duty and get involved brought them face to face with what she referred to as frightening and gross incompetence on the part of some election and county workers at the polls. Engelbrecht pointed out in her interview with Townhall that even though Texas law allowed 11 different forms of identification to be used at that time to verify identity, which was required to vote, she and her 70 election volunteers noticed that many voters were being allowed to vote without any identification at all. Texas has since passed voter identification laws which require the use of a photo identification card.
Engelbrecht’s volunteers ultimately submitted 800 signed affidavits outlining problems they encountered, including having overheard some election judges telling people who they should and should not vote for. After these experiences, the group decided to form True the Vote and to investigate how citizens could help ensure voter integrity and what processes existed to report abuses or irregularities. Engelbrecht says these efforts revealed even more frightening examples of degradation to the election process.
Engelbrecht’s True the Vote organization then decided to look at the actual registry and not just the new registrations. The group obtained the nearly 2,000,000-person Harris County Voter Registry Role. The group subdivided the registry by congressional district due to the size of the data.
After the registry was divided into the seven congressional districts which Harris County encompasses, True the Vote needed a starting point to isolate red flags for possible irregularities. They decided to start looking at registrations that had addresses six or more people were registered to.
The group found the seven congressional districts had four that were predominantly Republican and three that were predominantly Democratic. The four predominantly Republican districts had a range from 1,973 to 3,300 addresses with six or more people registered to them. The three predominantly Democratic districts had much higher numbers. Though this could possibly be attributed to variations in socioeconomic factors between the predominantly Republican and predominantly Democratic districts, what the group found next was alarming. The predominantly Democratic districts themselves had large variations between them in the number of addresses with six or more registered voters. The first had 7,560, the second 8,981, and the third—the district of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, the prominent, outspoken Democratic congresswoman—had 19,596 instances with six or more voters registered at one address.
True the Vote then compared the socio-economic demographics of the three predominantly Democratic congressional districts in an effort to explain why Jackson Lee’s district could have such a high number in comparison. Engelbrecht told Townhall the group had found no significant difference to explain such a drastic variation in the numbers.
The group began doing research into the abnormalities in Jackson Lee’s district. They took the first 3,800 registrations of the flagged 19,596 homes with six or more registrants and began to investigate further. The group visited addresses and scoured property tax records. The group found many of the addresses were vacant lots or business addresses. Thirty-nine were registered at businesses and 97 of the addresses were nonexistent. One hundred six of the registrations revealed the same registrant registered more than once, and 207 of the addresses turned out to be vacant lots. Meanwhile, 595 registrations had registrants with driver’s license addresses not matching the registration, and many were voting in a district they did not live in. Of the random 3,800 registrations from Jackson Lee’s predominantly Democratic district, 25 percent had critical errors which Engelbrecht believes could result in an erosion of election integrity.
Excerpt from the March Townhall magazine received via email
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Tuesday, March 13, 2012
The problem of the dumb voter
A strong argument for minimum government
Be warned: This column probably will offend just about everyone.
We start with news of offensive research at Cornell University. Researchers have challenged the assumption that most citizens can recognize the best political candidate when they see him.
A “growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies,” reports LiveScience.com.
“Why is that?” you might ask.
It's because incompetent people are incapable to judge the competence of others, or even the quality of their ideas, according to a Cornell University research team. For example, if voters lack expertise on tax reform, how do they identify a candidate who knows what he is talking about when it comes to tax reform? They simply lack the mental tools to make such judgments, say researchers.
This may explain how Americans chose a community activist devoid of executive skills to be the nation's chief executive, and how voters before that unfortunate selection picked his predecessor, among whose accomplishments was managing an unprofitable oil company, in Texas yet.
Think about it. Who would deem such people competent to hold the office of the world's most powerful person? Voters of similar – or less – intellectual competence, that's who, according to the Cornell research. Dumb and dumber.
The researchers concluded that it won't matter how much information or how many facts voters are given. The inherent inability of many of them to make sense of the data means arriving at a smart conclusion will be a long shot. In short, they wouldn't recognize a good idea if it hit them upside the head.
“We always want the best man to win an election,” mused folksy political sage Will Rogers. “Unfortunately, he never runs.”
But, according to Cornell researchers, how would we know?
There was a day in the U.S.A. when we erred on the side seemingly endorsed by the Cornell research, allowing only the best and brightest, or at least that's what they insisted they were, to vote and to hold office. But within short years of 1776, suffrage broadened throughout the land. Bars to holding office were lowered. Larger segments of the population beyond property-owning white guys were permitted the franchise. Nevertheless, Cornell researchers make a case that allowing nearly any sentient human being to vote hasn't helped much, if at all.
Are we offended yet? Stay tuned, it gets worse.
Large percentages of Americans regard the four remaining Republican presidential candidates unfavorably, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll last week. That, in the words of a Post reporter, is “a sobering reminder for the party that the extended primary season has damaged the brand.”
It seems that the more those perhaps not-so-bright (according to Cornell) voters are exposed to those apparently less-than-impressive candidates, the less they like them.
The upshot? “The Post/ABC poll suggests that move to the ideological middle can't happen soon enough for Republicans.”
Let's now consider yours truly's pet political peeve. Elections almost always are determined by what charitably may be called “the muddled middle,” many of whom are unmoored to ideological anchors, such as political parties. These are people, who for as long as 47 months and three or four weeks of every election cycle, remain “undecided,” apparently incapable of discerning the best of available options. We suspect one reason for the indecision may be the point made by Cornell researchers.
But let's consider the flip side of that equation. What's compelling about any of the candidates?
All three GOP frontrunners' track records while in and out of office belie their campaign rhetoric. Each has advocated and even profited from the very kind of government-as-solution bailout, mandate and interference that they unconvincingly now ask voters to believe they oppose. Despite their posturing, these men are not Reaganesque. Over the years they have acted not as if “government is the problem.” They have behaved as if “government is the solution.”
To sum up, candidates who have failed to inspire even the most committed voters, who are more likely to have convictions to help them sort wheat from chaff, now are facing increasing pressure to appeal to the muddled middle, who apparently have fewer convictions and less ability to discern.
That's offensive. What comes next is simply depressing.
Of those the Post identifies as “independent voters,” no Republican candidate last week had higher than a 38-percent favorable rating, and that was Ron Paul, whose chances of winning the nomination are about as good as Rush Limbaugh's. The GOP frontrunner, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, trailed with a dismal 32 percent favorable score, and that was 16 points lower than the 48 percent of independents who viewed Romney unfavorably.
Let's recap. Voters may not be the best judge of competence in presidential candidates, and virtually no Republican candidate for president appears acceptable to “independent” voters, who probably will decide the outcome.
Is it any wonder that the candidate who will emerge as president will be no better than a pig in a poke?
There's another dimension to this perplexing problem. In an age of news saturation and 24/7 campaigning, it seems familiarity indeed breeds contempt. We offer as evidence the recent campaign to sell Americans on the incumbent president's controversial mandate that a morning-after abortifacient pill must be provided by all employers, or their insurance companies.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a poll on the Obamacare mandate had 53 percent support and 33 percent opposed. But when people were asked about applying the mandate to religiously affiliated hospitals and colleges with the insurer paying the cost, support dropped sharply to 38 percent. When the morning-after pill was specifically mentioned concerning Catholic institutions, support for the mandate dropped further, to 34 percent.
“In other words,” Journal columnist James Taranto deduced, “the less you know about the Obamacare mandate, the more likely you are to support it.”
The devil, they say, is in the details. If exposure brings more awareness of issues, it certainly must have the same effect on candidates, who are nothing if not bundles of issues. Gratuitous sound-bites and glamour photos give way over a year-long campaign to a lot of up-close-and-personal inspection. There are a lot of warts up close.
In other words, the less you know about candidates, the more likely you are to support them.
Here's a glimmer of hope that Cornell's researchers seem to have overlooked. Even if people are too dumb for democracy, that ignores more important factors, such as good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, freedom vs. slavery.
If voters, dumb or smart, paid closer attention to those criteria, the outcome probably would be better than it has been in recent years.
It doesn't require much smarts to make those choices. Weighing candidates against the golden standard of their humility and devotion to mercy and justice does require wisdom, however.
Wisdom recognizes that it is not charity to forcibly take from one in order to give to another, even under color of authority. Robin Hood was not charitable. He was a thief. It is not justice to infringe on one person's God-given rights to property, religion and speech in order to provide benefits to another. Our nation's principles stem from 1776, not 1984.
So, the question as we proceed down the stretch in the primary and then the general election is whether voters will be wise enough, even if they aren't smart enough, and then whether any candidate can emerge as worthy enough, rising out of the muck of endless recriminations, perhaps at a brokered convention.
Unfortunately, given the circumstances, George Washington probably couldn't be elected today. If that doesn't offend you, nothing will.
SOURCE
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The Great TARP Cover-Up
Some folks want to pretend government intervention never happened.
In one of his reportedly few sober moments, the legendary statesman and tippler Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) is rumored to have said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Weirdly, the lack of definitive sourcing for that quotation only confirms its essential validity. But what happens when the facts seem so different to different people that there is virtually no common ground for conversation, much less resolution of basic differences?
I thought a lot about that question—not to mention drinking—while reading Thomas Frank’s new book, Pity the Billionaire, which he describes as “a chronicle of a confused time, a period when Americans rose up against imaginary threats and rallied to economic theories they understood only in the gauziest of terms.” A University of Chicago–trained historian who co-founded the hip left-wing journal The Baffler and did a stint as the token liberal on The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages, Frank has written a series of books about American culture and politics, most famously What’s the Matter With Kansas? (2004). He now occupies the “Easy Chair” column at Harper’s, a centuries-old seat of curmudgeonly, anti-capitalist editorializing once held by Lewis Lapham.
To Frank, fears that debt-fueled spending and government intervention in the economy helped cause and perpetuate the financial crisis are plainly “imaginary.” He believes the economic “theories” America is currently embracing are hardcore austerity measures ripped from the playbook of Herbert Hoover, circa 1929. “The revival of the Right,” says Frank, “is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.”
Where to begin separating facts from opinions? For starters, it’s simply wrong to claim, as Frank does, that “the main political response to [the financial crisis of 2008] is a campaign to roll back regulation, to strip government employees of the right to collectively bargain, and to clamp down on federal spending.”
Certainly the Tea Party, a handful of people in Congress (most of them with the last name Paul), and some policy wonks would welcome such moves. But far from being powerbrokers, these folks are little more than marginalized dreamers, as likely to be attacked by their allies as by their enemies. The toughest fight that Tea Party favorite Rand Paul had in becoming the junior senator from Kentucky in 2010 came not from his Democratic opponent but from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who did everything he could to keep Paul from gaining office.
Lest we forget, the major response to the financial crisis in 2008 was the bailing out of Wall Street and the auto companies under a conservative Republican president and the implementation of an $840 billion stimulus plan promoted by a Democratic president. That’s not to mention a massive overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations and a health care reform package that was routinely described as “historic” and “transformational” at its passage. Ironically, such immediate, massive and—in the case of the stimulus—ineffective actions are in keeping with Herbert Hoover’s policies.
That’s because, contrary to Frank’s claims, Hoover was never a fan of government austerity (at least while in office). According to Florida State University economist Randall G. Holcombe, Hoover increased federal expenditures in real terms by 88 percent between 1929 and 1933.
Perhaps the major interventions of the last few years sneaked through under the wire because too many of us were traumatized by the collapse of Bear Stearns. But in fact, spending and regulations ballooned tremendously all through George W. Bush’s presidency—and still show no sign of slowing down.
In constant 2010 dollars, the federal government spent about $2.3 trillion in 2001. By 2010 the total was around $3.6 trillion. And although the federal government has not passed (and will not pass) a budget for a third straight year, the two plans currently on the table envision spending either $4.7 trillion or $5.7 trillion in 2021. The lower figure comes from the budget that passed the GOP-controlled House last spring. The higher number comes from President Barack Obama’s budget proposal.
If austerity is the new black, the news has yet to reach the people who actually wield power in the capital. And if the Washington elite aren’t serious about cutting spending, they sure aren’t hell-bent on cutting red tape and regulations either. For self-evident reasons, George W. Bush and the Republicans soft-pedaled the fact that over the course of his presidency he hired 90,000 net new regulators; signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which radically complicated corporate accounting practices; passed a record number of “economically significant” regulations, costing the economy $100 million or more per year; and, according to economist (and reason columnist) Veronique de Rugy of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, spent more money issuing and enforcing federal regulations than any previous chief executive. Obama is continuing the trend, increasing employment at regulatory agencies by more than 13 percent and issuing 75 major rules in his first two years.
All this happened during what Frank calls “the golden years of libertarianism.” So I have difficulty understanding what he is talking about when he issues dicta such as “free-market theory has proven itself to be a philosophy of ruination and fraud.”
Frank is surely correct that many anti-government types conveniently minimize the role that private-sector bad actors at banks, financial houses, and elsewhere played in causing the financial crisis. But he also never provides a compelling response to the argument (common among libertarians) that the root of the problem is implicit and explicit bailout guarantees that socialize the costs of irresponsible risk taking. When it comes to free markets, I feel like quoting Gandhi’s answer when asked how he felt about Western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”
Pity the Billionaire suffers not just from a lack of engagement with what I consider reality. It dismisses out of hand those with whom the author disagrees. Members of the broadly defined right, says Frank, “blow off the facts when they feel like it; they swipe symbols from the other side.” I hear him, and I even have some sympathy when he cries in exasperation, “What kind of misapprehension permits the newest Right to brush off truths that everyone else can see so plainly?”
We live in an era of “beer summits,” diplomatic “resets,” and a screwed-up economy in which inflated housing prices are not allowed to fall to the depressingly low levels they might actually be worth. In ways he surely didn’t intend, Frank’s Pity the Billionaire helps explain why so many of us seem to be talking past each other.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
A great artificial hysterical fuss: "It turns out, of course, that Fluke is not some dewy-eyed college coed as she was first advertised to be by her press agents -- the press themselves -- but a hard-faced, grim-jawed 31-year old Marxoid operative, a socialist parasite, a Nancy Pelosi in training, for whom 'slut' represents only the mildest of calumnies. She seeks to be a lawyer, which says it all: a career of gnawing at the bones of human misery."
DoJ blocks Texas voter ID law: "A controversial new Texas law requiring voters to present personal identification before going to the polls has been blocked by the Obama administration. In a letter Monday to state officials, the Justice Department said the legislation could have a discriminatory effect on Hispanics and other minorities."
Switzerland: Voters reject six-week vacation mandate: "Swiss polls closed Sunday on several national referendums, including one pushed by a union to raise the minimum holiday from four weeks to the standard used in Germany, Italy, Russia and other European nations. ... Swiss public broadcaster SSR said two-thirds of voters and each of the nation's 26 cantons (states) had rejected the measure, which required majority approval of all federal and cantonal voters."
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
A strong argument for minimum government
Be warned: This column probably will offend just about everyone.
We start with news of offensive research at Cornell University. Researchers have challenged the assumption that most citizens can recognize the best political candidate when they see him.
A “growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies,” reports LiveScience.com.
“Why is that?” you might ask.
It's because incompetent people are incapable to judge the competence of others, or even the quality of their ideas, according to a Cornell University research team. For example, if voters lack expertise on tax reform, how do they identify a candidate who knows what he is talking about when it comes to tax reform? They simply lack the mental tools to make such judgments, say researchers.
This may explain how Americans chose a community activist devoid of executive skills to be the nation's chief executive, and how voters before that unfortunate selection picked his predecessor, among whose accomplishments was managing an unprofitable oil company, in Texas yet.
Think about it. Who would deem such people competent to hold the office of the world's most powerful person? Voters of similar – or less – intellectual competence, that's who, according to the Cornell research. Dumb and dumber.
The researchers concluded that it won't matter how much information or how many facts voters are given. The inherent inability of many of them to make sense of the data means arriving at a smart conclusion will be a long shot. In short, they wouldn't recognize a good idea if it hit them upside the head.
“We always want the best man to win an election,” mused folksy political sage Will Rogers. “Unfortunately, he never runs.”
But, according to Cornell researchers, how would we know?
There was a day in the U.S.A. when we erred on the side seemingly endorsed by the Cornell research, allowing only the best and brightest, or at least that's what they insisted they were, to vote and to hold office. But within short years of 1776, suffrage broadened throughout the land. Bars to holding office were lowered. Larger segments of the population beyond property-owning white guys were permitted the franchise. Nevertheless, Cornell researchers make a case that allowing nearly any sentient human being to vote hasn't helped much, if at all.
Are we offended yet? Stay tuned, it gets worse.
Large percentages of Americans regard the four remaining Republican presidential candidates unfavorably, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll last week. That, in the words of a Post reporter, is “a sobering reminder for the party that the extended primary season has damaged the brand.”
It seems that the more those perhaps not-so-bright (according to Cornell) voters are exposed to those apparently less-than-impressive candidates, the less they like them.
The upshot? “The Post/ABC poll suggests that move to the ideological middle can't happen soon enough for Republicans.”
Let's now consider yours truly's pet political peeve. Elections almost always are determined by what charitably may be called “the muddled middle,” many of whom are unmoored to ideological anchors, such as political parties. These are people, who for as long as 47 months and three or four weeks of every election cycle, remain “undecided,” apparently incapable of discerning the best of available options. We suspect one reason for the indecision may be the point made by Cornell researchers.
But let's consider the flip side of that equation. What's compelling about any of the candidates?
All three GOP frontrunners' track records while in and out of office belie their campaign rhetoric. Each has advocated and even profited from the very kind of government-as-solution bailout, mandate and interference that they unconvincingly now ask voters to believe they oppose. Despite their posturing, these men are not Reaganesque. Over the years they have acted not as if “government is the problem.” They have behaved as if “government is the solution.”
To sum up, candidates who have failed to inspire even the most committed voters, who are more likely to have convictions to help them sort wheat from chaff, now are facing increasing pressure to appeal to the muddled middle, who apparently have fewer convictions and less ability to discern.
That's offensive. What comes next is simply depressing.
Of those the Post identifies as “independent voters,” no Republican candidate last week had higher than a 38-percent favorable rating, and that was Ron Paul, whose chances of winning the nomination are about as good as Rush Limbaugh's. The GOP frontrunner, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, trailed with a dismal 32 percent favorable score, and that was 16 points lower than the 48 percent of independents who viewed Romney unfavorably.
Let's recap. Voters may not be the best judge of competence in presidential candidates, and virtually no Republican candidate for president appears acceptable to “independent” voters, who probably will decide the outcome.
Is it any wonder that the candidate who will emerge as president will be no better than a pig in a poke?
There's another dimension to this perplexing problem. In an age of news saturation and 24/7 campaigning, it seems familiarity indeed breeds contempt. We offer as evidence the recent campaign to sell Americans on the incumbent president's controversial mandate that a morning-after abortifacient pill must be provided by all employers, or their insurance companies.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a poll on the Obamacare mandate had 53 percent support and 33 percent opposed. But when people were asked about applying the mandate to religiously affiliated hospitals and colleges with the insurer paying the cost, support dropped sharply to 38 percent. When the morning-after pill was specifically mentioned concerning Catholic institutions, support for the mandate dropped further, to 34 percent.
“In other words,” Journal columnist James Taranto deduced, “the less you know about the Obamacare mandate, the more likely you are to support it.”
The devil, they say, is in the details. If exposure brings more awareness of issues, it certainly must have the same effect on candidates, who are nothing if not bundles of issues. Gratuitous sound-bites and glamour photos give way over a year-long campaign to a lot of up-close-and-personal inspection. There are a lot of warts up close.
In other words, the less you know about candidates, the more likely you are to support them.
Here's a glimmer of hope that Cornell's researchers seem to have overlooked. Even if people are too dumb for democracy, that ignores more important factors, such as good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, freedom vs. slavery.
If voters, dumb or smart, paid closer attention to those criteria, the outcome probably would be better than it has been in recent years.
It doesn't require much smarts to make those choices. Weighing candidates against the golden standard of their humility and devotion to mercy and justice does require wisdom, however.
Wisdom recognizes that it is not charity to forcibly take from one in order to give to another, even under color of authority. Robin Hood was not charitable. He was a thief. It is not justice to infringe on one person's God-given rights to property, religion and speech in order to provide benefits to another. Our nation's principles stem from 1776, not 1984.
So, the question as we proceed down the stretch in the primary and then the general election is whether voters will be wise enough, even if they aren't smart enough, and then whether any candidate can emerge as worthy enough, rising out of the muck of endless recriminations, perhaps at a brokered convention.
Unfortunately, given the circumstances, George Washington probably couldn't be elected today. If that doesn't offend you, nothing will.
SOURCE
*****************************
The Great TARP Cover-Up
Some folks want to pretend government intervention never happened.
In one of his reportedly few sober moments, the legendary statesman and tippler Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) is rumored to have said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Weirdly, the lack of definitive sourcing for that quotation only confirms its essential validity. But what happens when the facts seem so different to different people that there is virtually no common ground for conversation, much less resolution of basic differences?
I thought a lot about that question—not to mention drinking—while reading Thomas Frank’s new book, Pity the Billionaire, which he describes as “a chronicle of a confused time, a period when Americans rose up against imaginary threats and rallied to economic theories they understood only in the gauziest of terms.” A University of Chicago–trained historian who co-founded the hip left-wing journal The Baffler and did a stint as the token liberal on The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages, Frank has written a series of books about American culture and politics, most famously What’s the Matter With Kansas? (2004). He now occupies the “Easy Chair” column at Harper’s, a centuries-old seat of curmudgeonly, anti-capitalist editorializing once held by Lewis Lapham.
To Frank, fears that debt-fueled spending and government intervention in the economy helped cause and perpetuate the financial crisis are plainly “imaginary.” He believes the economic “theories” America is currently embracing are hardcore austerity measures ripped from the playbook of Herbert Hoover, circa 1929. “The revival of the Right,” says Frank, “is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.”
Where to begin separating facts from opinions? For starters, it’s simply wrong to claim, as Frank does, that “the main political response to [the financial crisis of 2008] is a campaign to roll back regulation, to strip government employees of the right to collectively bargain, and to clamp down on federal spending.”
Certainly the Tea Party, a handful of people in Congress (most of them with the last name Paul), and some policy wonks would welcome such moves. But far from being powerbrokers, these folks are little more than marginalized dreamers, as likely to be attacked by their allies as by their enemies. The toughest fight that Tea Party favorite Rand Paul had in becoming the junior senator from Kentucky in 2010 came not from his Democratic opponent but from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who did everything he could to keep Paul from gaining office.
Lest we forget, the major response to the financial crisis in 2008 was the bailing out of Wall Street and the auto companies under a conservative Republican president and the implementation of an $840 billion stimulus plan promoted by a Democratic president. That’s not to mention a massive overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations and a health care reform package that was routinely described as “historic” and “transformational” at its passage. Ironically, such immediate, massive and—in the case of the stimulus—ineffective actions are in keeping with Herbert Hoover’s policies.
That’s because, contrary to Frank’s claims, Hoover was never a fan of government austerity (at least while in office). According to Florida State University economist Randall G. Holcombe, Hoover increased federal expenditures in real terms by 88 percent between 1929 and 1933.
Perhaps the major interventions of the last few years sneaked through under the wire because too many of us were traumatized by the collapse of Bear Stearns. But in fact, spending and regulations ballooned tremendously all through George W. Bush’s presidency—and still show no sign of slowing down.
In constant 2010 dollars, the federal government spent about $2.3 trillion in 2001. By 2010 the total was around $3.6 trillion. And although the federal government has not passed (and will not pass) a budget for a third straight year, the two plans currently on the table envision spending either $4.7 trillion or $5.7 trillion in 2021. The lower figure comes from the budget that passed the GOP-controlled House last spring. The higher number comes from President Barack Obama’s budget proposal.
If austerity is the new black, the news has yet to reach the people who actually wield power in the capital. And if the Washington elite aren’t serious about cutting spending, they sure aren’t hell-bent on cutting red tape and regulations either. For self-evident reasons, George W. Bush and the Republicans soft-pedaled the fact that over the course of his presidency he hired 90,000 net new regulators; signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which radically complicated corporate accounting practices; passed a record number of “economically significant” regulations, costing the economy $100 million or more per year; and, according to economist (and reason columnist) Veronique de Rugy of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, spent more money issuing and enforcing federal regulations than any previous chief executive. Obama is continuing the trend, increasing employment at regulatory agencies by more than 13 percent and issuing 75 major rules in his first two years.
All this happened during what Frank calls “the golden years of libertarianism.” So I have difficulty understanding what he is talking about when he issues dicta such as “free-market theory has proven itself to be a philosophy of ruination and fraud.”
Frank is surely correct that many anti-government types conveniently minimize the role that private-sector bad actors at banks, financial houses, and elsewhere played in causing the financial crisis. But he also never provides a compelling response to the argument (common among libertarians) that the root of the problem is implicit and explicit bailout guarantees that socialize the costs of irresponsible risk taking. When it comes to free markets, I feel like quoting Gandhi’s answer when asked how he felt about Western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”
Pity the Billionaire suffers not just from a lack of engagement with what I consider reality. It dismisses out of hand those with whom the author disagrees. Members of the broadly defined right, says Frank, “blow off the facts when they feel like it; they swipe symbols from the other side.” I hear him, and I even have some sympathy when he cries in exasperation, “What kind of misapprehension permits the newest Right to brush off truths that everyone else can see so plainly?”
We live in an era of “beer summits,” diplomatic “resets,” and a screwed-up economy in which inflated housing prices are not allowed to fall to the depressingly low levels they might actually be worth. In ways he surely didn’t intend, Frank’s Pity the Billionaire helps explain why so many of us seem to be talking past each other.
SOURCE
***************************
ELSEWHERE
A great artificial hysterical fuss: "It turns out, of course, that Fluke is not some dewy-eyed college coed as she was first advertised to be by her press agents -- the press themselves -- but a hard-faced, grim-jawed 31-year old Marxoid operative, a socialist parasite, a Nancy Pelosi in training, for whom 'slut' represents only the mildest of calumnies. She seeks to be a lawyer, which says it all: a career of gnawing at the bones of human misery."
DoJ blocks Texas voter ID law: "A controversial new Texas law requiring voters to present personal identification before going to the polls has been blocked by the Obama administration. In a letter Monday to state officials, the Justice Department said the legislation could have a discriminatory effect on Hispanics and other minorities."
Switzerland: Voters reject six-week vacation mandate: "Swiss polls closed Sunday on several national referendums, including one pushed by a union to raise the minimum holiday from four weeks to the standard used in Germany, Italy, Russia and other European nations. ... Swiss public broadcaster SSR said two-thirds of voters and each of the nation's 26 cantons (states) had rejected the measure, which required majority approval of all federal and cantonal voters."
***********************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
Monday, March 12, 2012
A coverup to make Nixon seem like a piker
Media bans more Evidence that Obama Holds U.S. Presidency unlawfully
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio , a five-time elected Sheriff, and former federal narcotics agent who served in several foreign countries hit the front pages in Europe with evidence that may fatally wound the political career of the current incumbent of America's highest public office.
However, the most likely "killer evidence" against the president comes not from Arpaio but from a 19th Century U.S. Supreme Court ruling that makes the issue of the alleged forgeries almost superfluous. But that clear cut federal court decision is being systematically "disappeared" from mainstream archives.
Critics ask why would this be if the Obama conspiracy theories were just that - theories without substance. Legal analysts hold that this particular federal ruling confirms that Obama is not eligible for the highest public office because, even if he was born in Honolulu as he claims, he cannot have the status of "natural born citizen."
This legal hurdle is not widely understood because "natural born citizen" is defined under law as someone with BOTH parents born in the United States. Obama's father is from Kenya.
Under law there is only one test of what constitues a 'natural born citizen' and it is enshrined in the crucial judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court in Minor V. Happersett (88 U.S. 162) of 1875. The 'Minor-v-Happersett' case clearly defines Natural Born Citizen as someone who can show that both of their parents were born in the United States, which obviously excludes Obama on his father's side.
Minor V. Happersett has been cited and held true in dozens of cases over the last 138 years. However, despite it's importance, this landmark judgment is strangely being expunged from Internet archives by supporters of Obama. Critics say this apparent fascist revisionism of American legal history seems to have begun in earnest after Obama's rousing 2004 speech at the Democrat National Convention when he first was hotly tipped for the presidency.
The very fact that Obama's father was not born in the United States means that under the law, as enshrined within Minor V. Happersett , Barack Obama can never lawfully hold the Office of President of the United States of America. But mainstream outlet won't reveal this case when addressing "conspiracy theories" over this matter. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, forbids inclusion of the Minor-v-Happersett ruling in it's entry about the Obama "conspiracy theory." Yet Wikipedia does have a separate entry for the case (but no mention of Obama).
Justia.com the prime free legal internet research site for decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States, has gone out on a limb to scrub Minor V. Happersett from it's server. This is despite almost every other Supreme Court case in American history being on their search engine. Justia.com is owned by wealthy Obama supporter Tim Stanley so follow the money. The controversy is now dubbed " JustiaGate ."
More HERE (See the original for links)
*************************
The fried brains of a prominent Leftist
Robert Reich, a Democrat Party economic standard bearer, has just published a book entitled "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future". It is filled with absurd theories and economic incomprehensions, some of which are tackled by Ray Kraft below.
But first an apercu of the book:
Reich's premises are so distorted it makes his conclusions absurd. He must have taken economics at Princeton along with Paul Krugman. Then again he may just be another mathematically- challenged lawyer.
Structural Problem. Reich concludes that America has a structural problem having nothing to do with the Democrats running up $130 trillion in funded and unfunded government debt but rather the concentration of wealth in the top 1% of the population. No mention of the regulatory sand government throws in our gas tank to cripple our economic engine.
Economic Stimulus. If it wasn't the common misunderstanding among the masses suffering under media-induced deception no one in their right mind would posit that that the money the top 1% invest doesn't stimulate the economy. Were it not for their investment there would be NO ECONOMY.
Money Under the Mattress. Reich claims that money invested in the stock market and banks is somehow not invested in the economy but supposedly hidden under the mattress. What kind of a wet dream did he have to have to arrive at that conclusion? All that money is capital invested in our Founder's free market capitalist system. The yearly net income therefrom is used to invest in new ideas, new products, new services and new jobs.
Consumption Drives the Economy. Reich is a Keynesian and mistakenly believes that consumption is the engine of economic growth. Obviously Reich didn't get Keynes's memo. Keynes reversed himself and most of demand-side economics in favor of the supple-side principle that investment triggers economic growth. A Steve Jobs and a Bill Gates comes before consumption - bet on it.
Trickle Down Economics. Here Reich gets hilarious. Ever since man walked upright he has operated under trickle-down economics. The king, dictator or the likes of the Roman Senate always take the economic cream off the top and let the masses just survive. If Reich's 1% assertion is correct then how does he plan to change that dynamic? Well he can't and as a dues-paying liberal he just calls what he does not understand a "myth." You get that man has been operating under the trickle-down theory since time in memoriam and Reich calls it a myth. He should get the Nobel Economics prize for that.
Delusional Madness. Reich goes on to solve the problem by:
Increasing people's incomes - How Robert?
Closing our trade deficit - How Robert?
Closing our energy deficit - How Robert?
How Wrong the Method - How Right the Complaint. Robert Reich is right that we have a massive structural problem with the American government. In addition most Americans are losing purchasing power. His solution to all of these problems is to tax the rich. That would be all right except the rich don't have that kind of money.
Bill Gates is worth $59 Billion. If the government would confiscate all his wealth it would run the government for 5 days. (59/4200 x 365 days). Of course it would destroy one of America's greatest economic engines - Microsoft. The entire wealth of the Forbes 400 couldn't finance the government for even a quarter of a year.
So ask yourself how stupid or misinformed are the American people for buying into this class warfare lie perpetrated by Democrat politicians and the likes of Robert Reich? And let's not get into the idiot-in-chief - he doesn't have any familiarity with the facts much less the mathematical skill to understand them. We need a do over.
Received via email from Dick McDonald
************************
On "balance" in the boardroom
An email from Christopher J. Hoey, responding to this
I was the senior Labor and Employment Counsel for the F W Woolworth Co. from 1967 to 1994. In 1973, while Eleanor Holmes Norton (currently Congressional Representative from DC) was Chair of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, she was responsible for bringing a systemic discrimination case against the company, which was headquartered in NYC. One of the demands made was that the company restructure its Board of Directors to reflect the demographics of the City, both in race and sexual representation. The investigator was unfazed by the fact that it was then a multi national corporation with world wide operations, and that less than 2500 of the 120,000 plus total employees were located in the city.
On the first day of t he hearing on the complaint the hearing officer found from the bench that he did not have the authority to tell a corporation how to select the entrepreneurs who would be responsible for running the corporation. The hearing on other issues dragged on, but the company prevailed in the overall attack.
it is amazing how bureaucrats have no sense of the operations of complex businesses, but are convinced they alone are the possessors of the knowledge of what is necessary to make them compliant with their perception of how things should be.
(Our German subsidiary did have an employee representative on its Board but he knew the need to keep a business successful and was never a thorn in its side.)
*************************
New Poll Shows Both Romney and Santorum Beating Obama in Head-to-Head
Why are Republicans so gloomy? The latest Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows the two leading Republican candidates for president each beating President Obama in a head-to-head this November:
"With the perception growing that he will be the GOP nominee, Romney leads President Obama by five points in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. Today's numbers show Romney at 48%, Obama at 43%. That's Romney's largest lead since December. Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).
If Santorum is the Republican nominee, he is up by one point over the president, 46% to 45%. This is the second time since polling began in 2011 that Santorum has had a slight lead over Obama. Romney is the only other candidate to lead the president more than one time in the polls."
The strong showing for Romney and Santorum may come as a surprise considering the positive jobs report released from the Labor Department Friday showing the economy added 227,000 jobs in February, a performance expected to boost the president's case for reelection. The Washington Post reports that Republicans reacted to the jobs report as the economy recovering "in spite of" the Obama administration's policies.
During an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt" airing this weekend, Rick Santorum said the administration "has consistently seen, you know, bad job reports because of bad policies that have led to those job reports," he said. "And eventually, you know, the economy does recover, in spite of the headwinds that this administration has put in its place."
A Gallup report Thursday showed that U.S. unemployment, as measured without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.1 percent in February from 8.6 percent in January and 8.5 percent in December.
The Rasmussen poll released Saturday also showed that only 25 percent of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way President Obama is performing, in comparison to 44 percent who Strongly Disapprove. As for Tuesday's upcoming primaries, the poll showed the GOP race in Alabama essentially a three-way tie, and Mitt Romney retaining control in Mississippi ahead by eight. Nationally, Romney now leads Rick Santorum by 12 points. Regardless of who they want to win, Rasmussen notes 80% of Republican Primary Voters nationwide believe Romney will be the party's nominee.
SOURCE
***************************
Why Westerners are free-thinking and the Chinese love conformity: It's all in the genes claim scientists
Cultural stereotypes may be deep rooted in our genetic makeup, say scientists. Common traits like British individualism and Chinese conformity could be attributed to genetic differences between races according to a new study.
The study, by the department of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois, suggests that the individualism seen in western nations, and the higher levels of collectivism and family loyalty found in Asian cultures, are caused by differences in the prevalence of particular genes.
'We demonstrate for the first time a robust association between cultural values of individualism-collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene,' said Joan Chiao, from the department of psychology at Northwestern University.
Chiao and her colleagues combined data from global genetic surveys, looking at variations in the prevalence of various genes. The findings were matched with other research which ranked nations by levels of individualism and collectivism.
The team focused their attentions on the gene that controls levels of serotonin, a chemical in the brain which regulates mood and emotions.
Their studies found that one version of the gene was far more common in western populations which, they said, was associated with individualistic and free-thinking behaviour.
Another version of the same gene, which was prevalent in Asian populations, they said was associated with collectivism and a greater willingness to put the common good first. People with this gene appeared to have a different response to serotonin.
If they are confirmed, the findings made by Chiao and her colleagues would suggest that races may have a number of inherent psychological differences - just as they differ in physical appearances.
Chiao suggests that the version of the gene predominating in Asian populations is associated with heightened anxiety levels and increased risk of depression. She adds that such populations respond by structuring their society to ward off those negative effects. The success of such social structures would then ensure that the gene would spread.
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
***********************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
Media bans more Evidence that Obama Holds U.S. Presidency unlawfully
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio , a five-time elected Sheriff, and former federal narcotics agent who served in several foreign countries hit the front pages in Europe with evidence that may fatally wound the political career of the current incumbent of America's highest public office.
However, the most likely "killer evidence" against the president comes not from Arpaio but from a 19th Century U.S. Supreme Court ruling that makes the issue of the alleged forgeries almost superfluous. But that clear cut federal court decision is being systematically "disappeared" from mainstream archives.
Critics ask why would this be if the Obama conspiracy theories were just that - theories without substance. Legal analysts hold that this particular federal ruling confirms that Obama is not eligible for the highest public office because, even if he was born in Honolulu as he claims, he cannot have the status of "natural born citizen."
This legal hurdle is not widely understood because "natural born citizen" is defined under law as someone with BOTH parents born in the United States. Obama's father is from Kenya.
Under law there is only one test of what constitues a 'natural born citizen' and it is enshrined in the crucial judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court in Minor V. Happersett (88 U.S. 162) of 1875. The 'Minor-v-Happersett' case clearly defines Natural Born Citizen as someone who can show that both of their parents were born in the United States, which obviously excludes Obama on his father's side.
Minor V. Happersett has been cited and held true in dozens of cases over the last 138 years. However, despite it's importance, this landmark judgment is strangely being expunged from Internet archives by supporters of Obama. Critics say this apparent fascist revisionism of American legal history seems to have begun in earnest after Obama's rousing 2004 speech at the Democrat National Convention when he first was hotly tipped for the presidency.
The very fact that Obama's father was not born in the United States means that under the law, as enshrined within Minor V. Happersett , Barack Obama can never lawfully hold the Office of President of the United States of America. But mainstream outlet won't reveal this case when addressing "conspiracy theories" over this matter. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, forbids inclusion of the Minor-v-Happersett ruling in it's entry about the Obama "conspiracy theory." Yet Wikipedia does have a separate entry for the case (but no mention of Obama).
Justia.com the prime free legal internet research site for decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States, has gone out on a limb to scrub Minor V. Happersett from it's server. This is despite almost every other Supreme Court case in American history being on their search engine. Justia.com is owned by wealthy Obama supporter Tim Stanley so follow the money. The controversy is now dubbed " JustiaGate ."
More HERE (See the original for links)
*************************
The fried brains of a prominent Leftist
Robert Reich, a Democrat Party economic standard bearer, has just published a book entitled "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future". It is filled with absurd theories and economic incomprehensions, some of which are tackled by Ray Kraft below.
But first an apercu of the book:
Robert Reich on the structural problems that have developed in the US economy . . . as the growth of wealth is concentrated at the top, the consumer base at the bottom degrades . . . for a very simple reason. People in the top 1% save and invest most of their money, but this does not stimulate the economy. It's money in the bank, or stashed in unrealized capital gains in millions or billions of dollars' worth of stocks.
Most people in the bottom 90% spend most of their money fairly quickly, which drives consumption, which is the engine of economic growth . . . contrary to the mythology of trickle-down economics.
If we want a more robust economy, there is only one possible solution . . . and this is to increase real income growth for the 99% . . . and this is going to be a big problem, as computerization and automation increasingly do things far more cheaply and quickly than humans used to . . . this raises income for the 5% in hi-tech, and it depletes jobs for the 95% in low tech. Job depletion equals consumption depletion equals weaker growth.
The BIG CHALLENGE for America over the next decade, generation, is going to be to figure out how to keep as many Americans as possible employed, and how to keep their incomes - and spending power - growing.
There is one and only one way to make this happen, and that is to re-industrialize America until our Trade Deficit vanishes, and to develop nuclear power until our Energy Deficit vanishes. Now, our Trade and Energy deficits total more than $1 trillion a year, and that money spent in America for American manufacturing and American energy production would generate 20 million jobs at an average (mean) of $50,000 per year per job.
Reich's premises are so distorted it makes his conclusions absurd. He must have taken economics at Princeton along with Paul Krugman. Then again he may just be another mathematically- challenged lawyer.
Structural Problem. Reich concludes that America has a structural problem having nothing to do with the Democrats running up $130 trillion in funded and unfunded government debt but rather the concentration of wealth in the top 1% of the population. No mention of the regulatory sand government throws in our gas tank to cripple our economic engine.
Economic Stimulus. If it wasn't the common misunderstanding among the masses suffering under media-induced deception no one in their right mind would posit that that the money the top 1% invest doesn't stimulate the economy. Were it not for their investment there would be NO ECONOMY.
Money Under the Mattress. Reich claims that money invested in the stock market and banks is somehow not invested in the economy but supposedly hidden under the mattress. What kind of a wet dream did he have to have to arrive at that conclusion? All that money is capital invested in our Founder's free market capitalist system. The yearly net income therefrom is used to invest in new ideas, new products, new services and new jobs.
Consumption Drives the Economy. Reich is a Keynesian and mistakenly believes that consumption is the engine of economic growth. Obviously Reich didn't get Keynes's memo. Keynes reversed himself and most of demand-side economics in favor of the supple-side principle that investment triggers economic growth. A Steve Jobs and a Bill Gates comes before consumption - bet on it.
Trickle Down Economics. Here Reich gets hilarious. Ever since man walked upright he has operated under trickle-down economics. The king, dictator or the likes of the Roman Senate always take the economic cream off the top and let the masses just survive. If Reich's 1% assertion is correct then how does he plan to change that dynamic? Well he can't and as a dues-paying liberal he just calls what he does not understand a "myth." You get that man has been operating under the trickle-down theory since time in memoriam and Reich calls it a myth. He should get the Nobel Economics prize for that.
Delusional Madness. Reich goes on to solve the problem by:
Increasing people's incomes - How Robert?
Closing our trade deficit - How Robert?
Closing our energy deficit - How Robert?
How Wrong the Method - How Right the Complaint. Robert Reich is right that we have a massive structural problem with the American government. In addition most Americans are losing purchasing power. His solution to all of these problems is to tax the rich. That would be all right except the rich don't have that kind of money.
Bill Gates is worth $59 Billion. If the government would confiscate all his wealth it would run the government for 5 days. (59/4200 x 365 days). Of course it would destroy one of America's greatest economic engines - Microsoft. The entire wealth of the Forbes 400 couldn't finance the government for even a quarter of a year.
So ask yourself how stupid or misinformed are the American people for buying into this class warfare lie perpetrated by Democrat politicians and the likes of Robert Reich? And let's not get into the idiot-in-chief - he doesn't have any familiarity with the facts much less the mathematical skill to understand them. We need a do over.
Received via email from Dick McDonald
************************
On "balance" in the boardroom
An email from Christopher J. Hoey, responding to this
I was the senior Labor and Employment Counsel for the F W Woolworth Co. from 1967 to 1994. In 1973, while Eleanor Holmes Norton (currently Congressional Representative from DC) was Chair of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, she was responsible for bringing a systemic discrimination case against the company, which was headquartered in NYC. One of the demands made was that the company restructure its Board of Directors to reflect the demographics of the City, both in race and sexual representation. The investigator was unfazed by the fact that it was then a multi national corporation with world wide operations, and that less than 2500 of the 120,000 plus total employees were located in the city.
On the first day of t he hearing on the complaint the hearing officer found from the bench that he did not have the authority to tell a corporation how to select the entrepreneurs who would be responsible for running the corporation. The hearing on other issues dragged on, but the company prevailed in the overall attack.
it is amazing how bureaucrats have no sense of the operations of complex businesses, but are convinced they alone are the possessors of the knowledge of what is necessary to make them compliant with their perception of how things should be.
(Our German subsidiary did have an employee representative on its Board but he knew the need to keep a business successful and was never a thorn in its side.)
*************************
New Poll Shows Both Romney and Santorum Beating Obama in Head-to-Head
Why are Republicans so gloomy? The latest Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows the two leading Republican candidates for president each beating President Obama in a head-to-head this November:
"With the perception growing that he will be the GOP nominee, Romney leads President Obama by five points in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. Today's numbers show Romney at 48%, Obama at 43%. That's Romney's largest lead since December. Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).
If Santorum is the Republican nominee, he is up by one point over the president, 46% to 45%. This is the second time since polling began in 2011 that Santorum has had a slight lead over Obama. Romney is the only other candidate to lead the president more than one time in the polls."
The strong showing for Romney and Santorum may come as a surprise considering the positive jobs report released from the Labor Department Friday showing the economy added 227,000 jobs in February, a performance expected to boost the president's case for reelection. The Washington Post reports that Republicans reacted to the jobs report as the economy recovering "in spite of" the Obama administration's policies.
During an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt" airing this weekend, Rick Santorum said the administration "has consistently seen, you know, bad job reports because of bad policies that have led to those job reports," he said. "And eventually, you know, the economy does recover, in spite of the headwinds that this administration has put in its place."
A Gallup report Thursday showed that U.S. unemployment, as measured without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.1 percent in February from 8.6 percent in January and 8.5 percent in December.
The Rasmussen poll released Saturday also showed that only 25 percent of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way President Obama is performing, in comparison to 44 percent who Strongly Disapprove. As for Tuesday's upcoming primaries, the poll showed the GOP race in Alabama essentially a three-way tie, and Mitt Romney retaining control in Mississippi ahead by eight. Nationally, Romney now leads Rick Santorum by 12 points. Regardless of who they want to win, Rasmussen notes 80% of Republican Primary Voters nationwide believe Romney will be the party's nominee.
SOURCE
***************************
Why Westerners are free-thinking and the Chinese love conformity: It's all in the genes claim scientists
Cultural stereotypes may be deep rooted in our genetic makeup, say scientists. Common traits like British individualism and Chinese conformity could be attributed to genetic differences between races according to a new study.
The study, by the department of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois, suggests that the individualism seen in western nations, and the higher levels of collectivism and family loyalty found in Asian cultures, are caused by differences in the prevalence of particular genes.
'We demonstrate for the first time a robust association between cultural values of individualism-collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene,' said Joan Chiao, from the department of psychology at Northwestern University.
Chiao and her colleagues combined data from global genetic surveys, looking at variations in the prevalence of various genes. The findings were matched with other research which ranked nations by levels of individualism and collectivism.
The team focused their attentions on the gene that controls levels of serotonin, a chemical in the brain which regulates mood and emotions.
Their studies found that one version of the gene was far more common in western populations which, they said, was associated with individualistic and free-thinking behaviour.
Another version of the same gene, which was prevalent in Asian populations, they said was associated with collectivism and a greater willingness to put the common good first. People with this gene appeared to have a different response to serotonin.
If they are confirmed, the findings made by Chiao and her colleagues would suggest that races may have a number of inherent psychological differences - just as they differ in physical appearances.
Chiao suggests that the version of the gene predominating in Asian populations is associated with heightened anxiety levels and increased risk of depression. She adds that such populations respond by structuring their society to ward off those negative effects. The success of such social structures would then ensure that the gene would spread.
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
***********************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Blood pressure drug 'reduces in-built racism'
This is another dubious exercise with the IAT. The test detects "racism" in people who are often vehemently anti-racist so the simple conclusion from that is that it is not valid. It does not measure what it purports to measure. To say it measures "implicit" racism is just faith and contrary to the evidence
What actually happened in the study below could have been that the drug slowed people down mentally and made them more inaccurate or sloppy in their sorting task.
I threw together some time ago a collection of skeptical academic comments on the IAT here. The test may measure something but we cannot be sure what. It could even measure caution about being racist. Journal abstract included below
A common heart disease drug may have the unusual side-effect of combating racism, a new study suggests. The beta-blocker drug can reduce 'subconscious' racism, the Oxford University study found.
Researchers found that people who took propranolol scored significantly lower on a standard test used to detect subconscious racial attitudes, than those who took a placebo.
Propranolol is most often used to reduce high blood pressure by lowering the heart rate, as well as angina and irregular heartbeat. It is also used to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety, and control migraine.
It is thought to work by blocking activation of the peripheral 'autonomic' nervous system, and in areas of the brain involved with formulating emotional responses, including fear, called the amygdalae.
The researchers believe propranolol reduces racial bias because such subconscious thoughts are triggered by that autonomic nervous system.
Their small study took 36 white student volunteers, gave half a single 40mg dose of propranolol and half a placebo, and asked them all to undertake the Implicit Association Test - designed to test "subtle and spontaneous biased behaviour" - two hours later.
The test requires participants to visually sort particular words like 'joy' ,'evil', 'happy' and 'glorious', as well as black and white faces, into the correct categories.
Sylvia Terbeck, lead author of the study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, said: "Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.
"Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality. "Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest."
Professor Julian Savulescu, of the university's Faculty of Philosophy, and a co-author of the study, said: "Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis.
"Biological research aiming to make people morally better has a dark history. And propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have 'moral' side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are."
But Dr Chris Chambers, from Cardiff University's School of Psychology, said the results should be treated with "extreme caution". He said: "We don't know whether the drug influenced racial attitudes only or whether it altered implicit brain systems more generally. And we can't rule out the possibility that the effects were due to the drug incidentally reducing heart rate.
"So although interesting, in my view these preliminary results are a long way from suggesting that propranolol specifically influences racial attitudes."
SOURCE
*************************
An American Auto Bailout – For France?
Attention U.S. taxpayers: You now own a piece of a French car company that is drowning in red ink. That’s right. In a move little noticed outside of the business pages, General Motors last week bought more than $400 million in shares of PSA Peugeot Citroen – a 7 percent stake in the company.
Because U.S. taxpayers still own roughly one-quarter of GM, they now own a piece of Peugeot.
Peugeot can undoubtedly use the cash. Last year, Peugeot’s auto making division lost $123 million. And on March 1 – just a day after the deal with GM was announced – Moody’s downgraded Peugeot’s credit rating to junk status with a negative outlook, citing “severe deterioration” of its finances. In other words, General Motors essentially just dumped more than $400 million of taxpayer assets on junk bonds.
GM has said the deal is designed to give GM access to Peugeot’s expertise in small car and hybrid vehicle technology and ultimately allow both GM and Peugeot to save money by pooling their resources. But auto industry analysts find the deal mystifying.
An analysis by auto industry consultants IHS said it is “somewhat baffling that GM is willing to get involved in an alliance that it frankly does not need for size or complexity, while still avoiding any public plan to rationalise its European production, cut costs, or deal with labour rates.”
The deal will allow the Peugeot family to reduce its share of the family business. The family, which Forbes estimated to be worth more than $2 billion, still owns about 30 percent of the company. The Peugeots declined the opportunity to buy a piece of GM.
GM’s European operations have not enjoyed the same kind of rebound as its US operations. In fact, GM’s European operations, primarily the carmaker Opel, lost more than $700 million last year.
SOURCE
**********************
The ObamaCare death spiral continues
No one in the Administration has a clue what’s happening
Last week, after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claimed the private insurance market was in a “death spiral” long before ObamaCare came along, I pointed out that ObamaCare itself is the paramount modern example of a high-speed death spiral. Whatever one might say about the structural deficiencies of private health insurance – which are, in no small part, due to government interference – it’s taken decades for them to reach their current state. ObamaCare, by contrast, began falling apart the minute it passed. Literally billions of dollars have been dropping from its leprous bulk with every passing month.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) of the Senate Budget Committee had the same idea, and decided to question Our Lady of the Death Spiral about it when she appeared before the Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, leading to the following hilarious and terrifying exchange:
In the course of a few minutes, Sebelius – who will become one of the most powerful officials on Earth, once ObamaCare is fully up and running - concedes that ObamaCare’s funding mechanisms are collapsing, its costs are ballooning out of control, and it has driven the cost of insurance for American families up instead of reducing them, and she has absolutely no idea what it’s going to do to the federal budget deficit.
Give Obama four more years, and his team will do even more wonderful things that nobody understands, at a cost no one can calculate!
SOURCE
*************************
Top Democrat can't convince her own family about Obama's sincerity over Israel
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), the chairman of the DNC and one of the president’s most prominent Jewish backers, is apparently having trouble convincing her own friends and family that President Obama is a friend of Israel.
While defending Obama’s record in an op-ed published today in the Florida Jewish Journal, Wasserman Schultz admits that her friends and family members routinely forward her emails raising doubts about the president’s support for the Jewish state.
“I hear the rumors, too,” Wasserman Schultz wrote in the piece titled “No Smearing a True Friend.” “I receive the dubious email forwards from friends and family.”
Wasserman Schultz’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the precise nature of these allegedly false email messages.
Wasserman Schultz also made the case that Obama has been exceedingly tough on the Iranian regime, although that country appears resolved to continue its drive for a nuclear weapons capability.
Wasserman Schultz wrote that the ultimate goal of economic sanctions and Obama’s tough rhetoric “is to stop any sinister elements of the Iranian nuclear program and compel Tehran to comply with their obligations under international law.”
When asked which elements of Iran’s nuclear program are “sinister” and which are not, Wasserman Schultz’s office again did not respond.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has no doubt about Iran’s disputed nuclear program, stating in a speech recently that “Responsible leaders should not bet the security of their countries on the bet that the world’s most dangerous regimes won’t use the worlds most dangerous weapons.”
SOURCE
************************
The Real 'Entitlement Mentality' That Is Bankrupting America
Many Republicans talk of an entitlement mentality that threatens the character and finances of the United States. In their view, the problem is that too many voters feel entitled to goodies provided by the government and financed by taxpayers.
The effort of politicians to pin the blame on voters diverts attention from the real entitlement mentality that threatens to bankrupt the nation: A political class that feels entitled to rule over the rest of us. Government spending has gone up in every years since 1954 because political leaders have pursued their own agenda rather than listening to voters.
Over the past 58 years, voters have consistently elected presidents, senators and congressman who promised to cut government spending, but it has never happened, not even once. As shown in my new book, "The People's Money," voters are ready to support the kind of long-term thoughtful changes needed to balance the budget and eliminate the federal debt. The only thing standing in the way of a solution is the nation's political leaders from both parties.
While most voters view excessive government spending as the problem, those who feel entitled to rule over the rest of us see the voters as the problem. And that's the real entitlement crisis facing the nation today. The political class wants to govern like it's 1775, a time when kings were kings and consent of the governed didn't matter.
SOURCE
**************************
The defender of the constitution has become an habitual violator of it
When President Obama took the oath of office three years ago, he swore to defend the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of all Americans. There were no asterisks denoting exceptions for health care providers, religious employers, service members, or military chaplains. More than three years later, his inaugural words fail to match his actions and those of his administration.
President Obama gave America a preview of his warpath against organized religion and people of faith when he undid parts of a President Bush Executive Order protecting health care providers from being required to perform, participate in, or provide a medical procedure with which they had religious or moral objection.
But in the past month alone the Obama Administration has gone guns-a-blazing, full-force against both religion and the Constitution.
First, President Obama and his “Catholic” Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius finalized a rule that will require Catholic employers to cover and pay for contraception – including abortion drugs – and sterilization. The fact that the Catholic teaching excludes artificial contraception or abortion matters not a single bit to President Obama. HHS argued that a one-year exemption is all religious organizations need in order to comply with this law. What President Obama and Secretary Sebelius do not get is that religious organizations and people of faith do not need time to renounce their faith; they need their First Amendment views to be protected.
Second, President Obama’s Secretary of the Army – a political appointee – silenced Catholic chaplains from speaking out against this HHS rule attacking religious freedom. If you are Catholic you heard in your Sunday Mass a message from your Bishop that “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.” But not if you were serving in the military defending the freedoms of other Americans. Instead, the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains attempted to censor the reading of the letter from Archbishop of Military Services Timothy Broglio. After a conversation between Archbishop Broglio and Army Secretary McHugh, it was decided that line would be eliminated.
Non-Catholics, those not in the military, and even those who support the use of abortion drugs and contraception should take offense at and be outraged by the actions of the Obama Administration. It could just as easily be something other than sterilization or abortion drugs next time. This HHS rule requiring religious entities to act in contravention of their teachings is a clear violation of their rights to exercise freely their religions. The gag order on Catholic chaplains amounts to an obvious violation of free speech. Who or what is next?
SOURCE
***********************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
This is another dubious exercise with the IAT. The test detects "racism" in people who are often vehemently anti-racist so the simple conclusion from that is that it is not valid. It does not measure what it purports to measure. To say it measures "implicit" racism is just faith and contrary to the evidence
What actually happened in the study below could have been that the drug slowed people down mentally and made them more inaccurate or sloppy in their sorting task.
I threw together some time ago a collection of skeptical academic comments on the IAT here. The test may measure something but we cannot be sure what. It could even measure caution about being racist. Journal abstract included below
A common heart disease drug may have the unusual side-effect of combating racism, a new study suggests. The beta-blocker drug can reduce 'subconscious' racism, the Oxford University study found.
Researchers found that people who took propranolol scored significantly lower on a standard test used to detect subconscious racial attitudes, than those who took a placebo.
Propranolol is most often used to reduce high blood pressure by lowering the heart rate, as well as angina and irregular heartbeat. It is also used to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety, and control migraine.
It is thought to work by blocking activation of the peripheral 'autonomic' nervous system, and in areas of the brain involved with formulating emotional responses, including fear, called the amygdalae.
The researchers believe propranolol reduces racial bias because such subconscious thoughts are triggered by that autonomic nervous system.
Their small study took 36 white student volunteers, gave half a single 40mg dose of propranolol and half a placebo, and asked them all to undertake the Implicit Association Test - designed to test "subtle and spontaneous biased behaviour" - two hours later.
The test requires participants to visually sort particular words like 'joy' ,'evil', 'happy' and 'glorious', as well as black and white faces, into the correct categories.
Sylvia Terbeck, lead author of the study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, said: "Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.
"Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality. "Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest."
Professor Julian Savulescu, of the university's Faculty of Philosophy, and a co-author of the study, said: "Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis.
"Biological research aiming to make people morally better has a dark history. And propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have 'moral' side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are."
But Dr Chris Chambers, from Cardiff University's School of Psychology, said the results should be treated with "extreme caution". He said: "We don't know whether the drug influenced racial attitudes only or whether it altered implicit brain systems more generally. And we can't rule out the possibility that the effects were due to the drug incidentally reducing heart rate.
"So although interesting, in my view these preliminary results are a long way from suggesting that propranolol specifically influences racial attitudes."
SOURCE
Propranolol reduces implicit negative racial bias
By Terbeck S et al.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Implicit negative attitudes towards other races are important in certain kinds of prejudicial social behaviour. Emotional mechanisms are thought to be involved in mediating implicit "outgroup" bias but there is little evidence concerning the underlying neurobiology. The aim of the present study was to examine the role of noradrenergic mechanisms in the generation of implicit racial attitudes.
METHODS: Healthy volunteers (n=36) of white ethnic origin, received a single oral dose of the β-adrenoceptor antagonist, propranolol (40 mg), in a randomised, double-blind, parallel group, placebo-controlled, design. Participants completed an explicit measure of prejudice and the racial implicit association test (IAT), 1-2 h after propranolol administration.
RESULTS: Relative to placebo, propranolol significantly lowered heart rate and abolished implicit racial bias, without affecting the measure of explicit racial prejudice. Propranolol did not affect subjective mood.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that β-adrenoceptors play a role in the expression of implicit racial attitudes suggesting that noradrenaline-related emotional mechanisms may mediate negative racial bias. Our findings may also have practical importance given that propranolol is a widely used drug. However, further studies will be needed to examine whether a similar effect can be demonstrated in the course of clinical treatment.
SOURCE
*************************
An American Auto Bailout – For France?
Attention U.S. taxpayers: You now own a piece of a French car company that is drowning in red ink. That’s right. In a move little noticed outside of the business pages, General Motors last week bought more than $400 million in shares of PSA Peugeot Citroen – a 7 percent stake in the company.
Because U.S. taxpayers still own roughly one-quarter of GM, they now own a piece of Peugeot.
Peugeot can undoubtedly use the cash. Last year, Peugeot’s auto making division lost $123 million. And on March 1 – just a day after the deal with GM was announced – Moody’s downgraded Peugeot’s credit rating to junk status with a negative outlook, citing “severe deterioration” of its finances. In other words, General Motors essentially just dumped more than $400 million of taxpayer assets on junk bonds.
GM has said the deal is designed to give GM access to Peugeot’s expertise in small car and hybrid vehicle technology and ultimately allow both GM and Peugeot to save money by pooling their resources. But auto industry analysts find the deal mystifying.
An analysis by auto industry consultants IHS said it is “somewhat baffling that GM is willing to get involved in an alliance that it frankly does not need for size or complexity, while still avoiding any public plan to rationalise its European production, cut costs, or deal with labour rates.”
The deal will allow the Peugeot family to reduce its share of the family business. The family, which Forbes estimated to be worth more than $2 billion, still owns about 30 percent of the company. The Peugeots declined the opportunity to buy a piece of GM.
GM’s European operations have not enjoyed the same kind of rebound as its US operations. In fact, GM’s European operations, primarily the carmaker Opel, lost more than $700 million last year.
SOURCE
**********************
The ObamaCare death spiral continues
No one in the Administration has a clue what’s happening
Last week, after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claimed the private insurance market was in a “death spiral” long before ObamaCare came along, I pointed out that ObamaCare itself is the paramount modern example of a high-speed death spiral. Whatever one might say about the structural deficiencies of private health insurance – which are, in no small part, due to government interference – it’s taken decades for them to reach their current state. ObamaCare, by contrast, began falling apart the minute it passed. Literally billions of dollars have been dropping from its leprous bulk with every passing month.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) of the Senate Budget Committee had the same idea, and decided to question Our Lady of the Death Spiral about it when she appeared before the Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, leading to the following hilarious and terrifying exchange:
In the course of a few minutes, Sebelius – who will become one of the most powerful officials on Earth, once ObamaCare is fully up and running - concedes that ObamaCare’s funding mechanisms are collapsing, its costs are ballooning out of control, and it has driven the cost of insurance for American families up instead of reducing them, and she has absolutely no idea what it’s going to do to the federal budget deficit.
Give Obama four more years, and his team will do even more wonderful things that nobody understands, at a cost no one can calculate!
SOURCE
*************************
Top Democrat can't convince her own family about Obama's sincerity over Israel
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), the chairman of the DNC and one of the president’s most prominent Jewish backers, is apparently having trouble convincing her own friends and family that President Obama is a friend of Israel.
While defending Obama’s record in an op-ed published today in the Florida Jewish Journal, Wasserman Schultz admits that her friends and family members routinely forward her emails raising doubts about the president’s support for the Jewish state.
“I hear the rumors, too,” Wasserman Schultz wrote in the piece titled “No Smearing a True Friend.” “I receive the dubious email forwards from friends and family.”
Wasserman Schultz’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the precise nature of these allegedly false email messages.
Wasserman Schultz also made the case that Obama has been exceedingly tough on the Iranian regime, although that country appears resolved to continue its drive for a nuclear weapons capability.
Wasserman Schultz wrote that the ultimate goal of economic sanctions and Obama’s tough rhetoric “is to stop any sinister elements of the Iranian nuclear program and compel Tehran to comply with their obligations under international law.”
When asked which elements of Iran’s nuclear program are “sinister” and which are not, Wasserman Schultz’s office again did not respond.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has no doubt about Iran’s disputed nuclear program, stating in a speech recently that “Responsible leaders should not bet the security of their countries on the bet that the world’s most dangerous regimes won’t use the worlds most dangerous weapons.”
SOURCE
************************
The Real 'Entitlement Mentality' That Is Bankrupting America
Many Republicans talk of an entitlement mentality that threatens the character and finances of the United States. In their view, the problem is that too many voters feel entitled to goodies provided by the government and financed by taxpayers.
The effort of politicians to pin the blame on voters diverts attention from the real entitlement mentality that threatens to bankrupt the nation: A political class that feels entitled to rule over the rest of us. Government spending has gone up in every years since 1954 because political leaders have pursued their own agenda rather than listening to voters.
Over the past 58 years, voters have consistently elected presidents, senators and congressman who promised to cut government spending, but it has never happened, not even once. As shown in my new book, "The People's Money," voters are ready to support the kind of long-term thoughtful changes needed to balance the budget and eliminate the federal debt. The only thing standing in the way of a solution is the nation's political leaders from both parties.
While most voters view excessive government spending as the problem, those who feel entitled to rule over the rest of us see the voters as the problem. And that's the real entitlement crisis facing the nation today. The political class wants to govern like it's 1775, a time when kings were kings and consent of the governed didn't matter.
SOURCE
**************************
The defender of the constitution has become an habitual violator of it
When President Obama took the oath of office three years ago, he swore to defend the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of all Americans. There were no asterisks denoting exceptions for health care providers, religious employers, service members, or military chaplains. More than three years later, his inaugural words fail to match his actions and those of his administration.
President Obama gave America a preview of his warpath against organized religion and people of faith when he undid parts of a President Bush Executive Order protecting health care providers from being required to perform, participate in, or provide a medical procedure with which they had religious or moral objection.
But in the past month alone the Obama Administration has gone guns-a-blazing, full-force against both religion and the Constitution.
First, President Obama and his “Catholic” Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius finalized a rule that will require Catholic employers to cover and pay for contraception – including abortion drugs – and sterilization. The fact that the Catholic teaching excludes artificial contraception or abortion matters not a single bit to President Obama. HHS argued that a one-year exemption is all religious organizations need in order to comply with this law. What President Obama and Secretary Sebelius do not get is that religious organizations and people of faith do not need time to renounce their faith; they need their First Amendment views to be protected.
Second, President Obama’s Secretary of the Army – a political appointee – silenced Catholic chaplains from speaking out against this HHS rule attacking religious freedom. If you are Catholic you heard in your Sunday Mass a message from your Bishop that “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.” But not if you were serving in the military defending the freedoms of other Americans. Instead, the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains attempted to censor the reading of the letter from Archbishop of Military Services Timothy Broglio. After a conversation between Archbishop Broglio and Army Secretary McHugh, it was decided that line would be eliminated.
Non-Catholics, those not in the military, and even those who support the use of abortion drugs and contraception should take offense at and be outraged by the actions of the Obama Administration. It could just as easily be something other than sterilization or abortion drugs next time. This HHS rule requiring religious entities to act in contravention of their teachings is a clear violation of their rights to exercise freely their religions. The gag order on Catholic chaplains amounts to an obvious violation of free speech. Who or what is next?
SOURCE
***********************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Now in Power: 1960s Radicals
Alumni from radical 1960s groups are now teaching your children, influencing legislation and trying to re-elect Obama
Buildings were bombed, bras burned and raising two fingers in a “V” became a symbol for peace, not a signal for ordering two. Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” won the Grammy in 1961, but the Fifth Dimension’s win for “Aquarius” in 1969 was symbolic of the decade of tumult that birthed Students for a Democratic Society and its offshoot Weathermen.
But unlike tie-dye shirts and platform shoes, the Marxist or Maoist or socialist SDS politics never went dormant. Former leaders of the original SDS and also its splinter Weatherman group—labeled “a domestic terrorist group” by the FBI—are installed in academia, organized labor, advocacy organizations and in the highest levels of the Obama administration.
In fact, the '60s college-campus political phenomenon seeded today’s new Left. Now the “repackaged” people and policies of the original SDS/Weathermen have been quietly injected into the mainstream by academia, labor unions, advocacy organizations and private enterprise, waiting for a political host. Have they found it under the Obama administration?
President Barack Obama may characterize 1960s Weatherman radical Bill Ayres as just a man he knows from Chicago’s Hyde Park. But what about Rev. Jim Wallis, Obama’s spiritual advisor and a SDS alumni? Surely Obama knew Wade Rathke, head of ACORN where Obama was employed, was an SDSer. How about SDS founder Tom Hayden, once married to Vietnam War opponent Jane Fonda? Obama must have known Hayden had been a big SDS name when Hayden founded Progressives for Obama in 2008. Was Obama unaware of Michael Klonsky’s radical SDS allegiance when Klonsky’s education blog was featured on Obama’s 2008 campaign website? Someone eventually did. Klonsky’s posts were later “scrubbed” from the website, as reported on the blog Gateway Pundit. Or take Marilyn Katz, a SDSer who once touted using “guerrilla nails” to attack police and also helped organize a 2002 anti-war rally where she takes credit for Obama “coming out … as a public speaker,” reports In These Times. Katz, a 30-year friend of Obama strategist David Axelrod, was on Obama’s 2008 national finance committee and was a fundraising “bundler,” according to Obama’s campaign website.
And the moneyman for much of the complicated network is George Soros. There’s no evidence that the wealthy financial speculator was himself an SDS member. But Soros’ espoused Marxist, one-world vision fits the SDS theology that’s aged with the 20-something radicals now portrayed as 60-something mainstream figures.
Students for a Democratic Society was born in Michigan, the offspring of the League for Industrial Democracy, a socialist educational organization. In 1960, a handful of University of Michigan students bonded over views of war, the nuclear threat, racial discrimination and economic inequality; they rejected mainstream opposition to communism. In 1962, the group’s Port Huron Statement advocated national defense based on deterrence and arms control rather than “peace through strength.” It demanded the Democratic Party embrace the issues of “disinherited” groups and universities advance social change by inserting social issues into the curriculum. SDS supported North Vietnam, the Palestinians and Colombians. It opposed “male supremacy,” calling for no legal or financial restrictions on abortion and birth control and demanding “day-care centers, public and free laundries, food centers and other facilities necessary to free women from their status as household drudges.”
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” lyrics from a song that came to be associated with the Weathermen, signaled that a more radical splinter group was forming out of the SDS with Weather Underground members, Maoists, Marxists, the Worker Student Alliance and some Black Panthers. Mainline SDS faded in the 1970s and the Weathermen went underground as members sought to avoid prosecution for acts of terrorism. But their acceptance of communism or socialism economic redistribution and the use of academia to prime the social, economic and political pumps were nurtured in the intervening decades.
Many names from the golden age of SDS never disappeared. Instead, in the Obama administration, it seems everything old is new again.
Excerpt from March issue of Townhall magazine received by email
***********************
American taxes deliver results that Communists would envy
Note: There is no double taxation of company dividends in Australia, which is why Australian companies generally pay substantial dividends twice a year
The communist revolutions in the 20th century sought to nationalize the wealth generated by privately held industries back to the "exploited" workers on whose backs the profits were supposedly derived. America has made the rejection of this idea and its support of free market principles the centerpiece of its economic narrative. However, as a result of our current and proposed tax policies towards corporate shareholders, our government collects a portion of industrial output that would inspire envy in even the most rabid Bolshevik.
The purpose of a corporation is to generate profits for owners (all other functions are secondary to this goal). Public corporations distribute these profits through dividends. But as a result of America's system of double taxation, where income is taxed on the corporate level and then again on the personal level, government receives a much bigger share of corporate income than the owners themselves. I also address this topic in my latest video blog .
Suppose a publicly held U.S. corporation made one million dollars in income over the course of a year. Currently its profits would be taxed at a 35% level (for the purpose of this example I will not factor in the lower rate that is applied to its first $100K of profits), meaning that the company would have to pay $350,000 directly to the government (assuming it earned its income without special tax breaks). Of the $650,000 that remained, the typical dividend-paying corporation might distribute 40 percent to shareholders (this is known as the "payout ratio" and the actual average is slightly below 40%). So in this instance the company would pay $260,000 (40% of $650,000) to shareholders. The remaining $390,000 would typically be held as "retained earnings," and would be used to maintain and replace depreciating equipment, make capital investments, fund research and development, and expand operations. If the company did not make such investments it would be impossible for it to survive and its ability to perpetuate profit distributions would be limited.
These retained earnings still represent assets to shareholders, but their primary purpose is to generate future profits and higher dividends. However, shareholders do not directly benefit from those retained earnings until future distributions are paid. Sure they can sell their shares at a gain, paying a capital gains tax in the process, but this merely transfers those deferred benefits to the new buyer.
When received by shareholders, the $260,000 in dividends are taxed again at a rate of 15 percent (according to current law). As a result, shareholders receive just $221,000 of the million dollar profit. The $39,000 in dividend taxes are added to the $350,000 "off the top" corporate tax to bring the government's total take of the company's profits to just a shade under $390,000. In other words the government gets about 75% more cash flow from the company than the actual owners. Looked at in a slightly different way, the government gets about 65% of the non-retained earnings while shareholders, who put up the money and take all the risk, get 35%. Does this seem fair?
This level of taxation puts American corporations at a noticeable disadvantage vis-a-vis companies in the countries against which we are most keenly competing. In China, the slicing of the pie is much more favorable to owners. There, corporations are taxed at a rate of 25% and dividends at 10%. Using these numbers (and the same payout ratio used for the U.S. corporation), the Chinese government gets 51% of distributed corporate profits and shareholders get 49%. In Hong Kong (which is part of Communist China), the situation is even better. There, the corporate tax rate is 16% and the personal dividend rate is zero. If you do the math there, the government gets 33% and the shareholders get 67%.
This comparison raises an interesting point. If shareholders in communist China are allowed to keep more of their earnings than shareholders in capitalist America, which nation is more communist and which more capitalist?
Late last month the Obama Administration and Mitt Romney offered competing proposals on corporate tax reform that both politicians say would make U.S. corporations more competitive. Romney's plan lowers the corporate tax rate to 25% while maintaining the dividend tax at 15%. This makes things slightly better, sending 54% of distributed earnings to the government and 46% to shareholders (not quite as generous as Communist China). Not surprisingly however the Obama plan will make things much more difficult.
Although the President proposes lowering the corporate tax rate to 28% he also wants to scrap the dividend tax and instead tax the distributions as ordinary income. In practice, the vast majority of individual recipients of dividends fall into the higher end of the income spectrum. Which means a very large chunk of these dividends will be taxed at the highest personal rate of 39%. But Obama also wants to subject these high earners to a surtax to pay for his health care initiative, which means that many of the recipients will be taxed at a rate of 44% (this also accounts for the phase out of personal deductions for higher earners!) So for these high-income earners, using our current example, the new distribution split with the government under Obama's proposals will be about 70/30 in favor of the government. This is actually worse than the status quo.
But it's actually much worse than that. The corporate income tax is just one of the veins that corporations open for government. Think about all the other taxes that corporations pay, such as the payroll taxes and sales taxes. Sure they pass those taxes on to their employees and customers, but the revenue flows 100% to the government with shareholders getting nothing but a bill for the cost of collection.
Then there are all of the taxes paid directly by the employees themselves on their wages and salaries. Sure, this money belongs to employees and not shareholders, but if not for the profit-making activities of corporations, those wages and salaries, and resulting taxes, could not have been paid. And while employees derive benefits from those after tax distributions too, shareholders get nothing. When all of these channels are factored in, think about how much more the government derives in taxes from corporate activity than its owners receive in dividends. Who knows how high this figure is, but I'm sure the government's take is many multiples of what shareholders receive.
Back in the 19th Century, America really was a capitalist country. We had no corporate tax and no personal income tax. Shareholders got 100% of distributed corporate income. As a result of this structure, U.S. corporations grew rapidly and helped spark the fastest economic expansion the world had ever seen. But that was then, this is now.
Given the current numbers, even if our leaders were dyed-in-the-wool Marxists, what would be their motivation to nationalize Fortune 500 companies? If they already receive the lion's share of profit distributions, what would be the point? Such a move risks upsetting the management structures and destroying the remaining profit motive. It would risk killing the goose that lays the golden egg. If government nationalized a company, it would also have to manage it. Does anyone think bureaucrats would make better decisions than private owners? What's worse, if those decisions produced losses rather than profits, the government would have to absorb them. Under the current systems, the government gets the lion's share of the profits, but private shareholders are stuck with 100% of the losses.
There is actually a name for our present system: fascism. While fascism and communism are both forms of socialism, at least the fascists are smart enough to know that if the means of production are nationalized, employees and owners won't work as hard, and the government will lose revenue.
It's a shame that the country that was once the beacon of freedom and economic liberty no longer has the ability to recognize what capitalism actually looks like. Unless corporate owners are appropriately rewarded for their risks, U.S. corporations will not regain their lost dominance, Americans will not regain their lost liberty, and our standard of living will continue to fall. As it stands now, the United States has become a people of the government, by the government and, most importantly, for the government.
SOURCE
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Senators Paul, Lee and DeMint Introduce Plan to Balance Budget in 5 Years--Eliminate Departments of Education, Energy, Housing, Commerce
This would be an excellent start in the right direction
Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R.-Utah) and Jim DeMint (R.-S.C.) introduced a budget plan on Thursday that would balance the budget in five years and pay down $2 trillion of the national debt in 10 years. The plan includes spending cuts, entitlement reforms and tax reforms.
Paul said that the “Platform to Revitalize America” is the only plan consistent with the balanced budget amendment Republican advanced in the U.S. Senate because that amendment requires that Congress balance the budget in five years.
The plan eliminates the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Energy. “By eliminating departments we don’t have to make as significant of cuts in other areas,” Paul said.
“So entitlement reform could be more gradual because we eliminate some departments that we think should be done by the states and the localities,” he continued.
Other comprehensive steps to scale back the size of the federal government include selling off excess federal properties and land and defunding duplicative agencies.
On the regulatory side, the plan eliminates the president’s health care law and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
On the energy side, besides eliminating the Department of Energy, the plan proposes to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration and permits the Keystone XL Pipeline project.
Tax reform includes a 17 percent flat tax for individuals and corporations. “We think if the country would pass a flat tax like this that would eliminate a lot of the loopholes and special interest that lowers the rate for everybody, we think you’d see an economic boom in this country like you’ve never seen before,” Paul said.
Through the Congressional Health Care for Seniors Act, Medicare reform will allow seniors to receive the Congressional Health Care plan. Social Security reform is achieved through increasing the retirement age and means-testing the benefits.
It also allows defense spending to rise at a rate faster than increases under the current sequester and eliminates the fiscal year 2013 sequester cuts.
“So there have been some saying they want to avoid the Budget Control Act and the sequester on military spending,” Paul said. “I have said that is a bad idea unless we find savings elsewhere, but in our budget we find savings elsewhere and still allow spending to rise above the sequester,” he continued.
The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sen. Jim Demint (R-S.C.).
Paul said that they have been talking to House members about his budget plan and will try to get it introduced in the House. “It’s easier to get a vote in the Senate, so we’ll probably get a vote in the Senate. I don’t know if they will in the House,” Paul said.
DeMint said that they need to emphasize what he thinks a lot of their colleagues are missing: “a genuine and very real sense of urgency that our country is in very deep financial trouble and well on the way to look like Greece in a few years.”
DeMint said that any member of Congress who thinks the debt is unsustainable must look at balancing the budget within 10 years. “What we are going to wait to see is how many members of Congress have the courage of their convictions,” Demint said.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
Alumni from radical 1960s groups are now teaching your children, influencing legislation and trying to re-elect Obama
Buildings were bombed, bras burned and raising two fingers in a “V” became a symbol for peace, not a signal for ordering two. Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” won the Grammy in 1961, but the Fifth Dimension’s win for “Aquarius” in 1969 was symbolic of the decade of tumult that birthed Students for a Democratic Society and its offshoot Weathermen.
But unlike tie-dye shirts and platform shoes, the Marxist or Maoist or socialist SDS politics never went dormant. Former leaders of the original SDS and also its splinter Weatherman group—labeled “a domestic terrorist group” by the FBI—are installed in academia, organized labor, advocacy organizations and in the highest levels of the Obama administration.
In fact, the '60s college-campus political phenomenon seeded today’s new Left. Now the “repackaged” people and policies of the original SDS/Weathermen have been quietly injected into the mainstream by academia, labor unions, advocacy organizations and private enterprise, waiting for a political host. Have they found it under the Obama administration?
President Barack Obama may characterize 1960s Weatherman radical Bill Ayres as just a man he knows from Chicago’s Hyde Park. But what about Rev. Jim Wallis, Obama’s spiritual advisor and a SDS alumni? Surely Obama knew Wade Rathke, head of ACORN where Obama was employed, was an SDSer. How about SDS founder Tom Hayden, once married to Vietnam War opponent Jane Fonda? Obama must have known Hayden had been a big SDS name when Hayden founded Progressives for Obama in 2008. Was Obama unaware of Michael Klonsky’s radical SDS allegiance when Klonsky’s education blog was featured on Obama’s 2008 campaign website? Someone eventually did. Klonsky’s posts were later “scrubbed” from the website, as reported on the blog Gateway Pundit. Or take Marilyn Katz, a SDSer who once touted using “guerrilla nails” to attack police and also helped organize a 2002 anti-war rally where she takes credit for Obama “coming out … as a public speaker,” reports In These Times. Katz, a 30-year friend of Obama strategist David Axelrod, was on Obama’s 2008 national finance committee and was a fundraising “bundler,” according to Obama’s campaign website.
And the moneyman for much of the complicated network is George Soros. There’s no evidence that the wealthy financial speculator was himself an SDS member. But Soros’ espoused Marxist, one-world vision fits the SDS theology that’s aged with the 20-something radicals now portrayed as 60-something mainstream figures.
Students for a Democratic Society was born in Michigan, the offspring of the League for Industrial Democracy, a socialist educational organization. In 1960, a handful of University of Michigan students bonded over views of war, the nuclear threat, racial discrimination and economic inequality; they rejected mainstream opposition to communism. In 1962, the group’s Port Huron Statement advocated national defense based on deterrence and arms control rather than “peace through strength.” It demanded the Democratic Party embrace the issues of “disinherited” groups and universities advance social change by inserting social issues into the curriculum. SDS supported North Vietnam, the Palestinians and Colombians. It opposed “male supremacy,” calling for no legal or financial restrictions on abortion and birth control and demanding “day-care centers, public and free laundries, food centers and other facilities necessary to free women from their status as household drudges.”
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” lyrics from a song that came to be associated with the Weathermen, signaled that a more radical splinter group was forming out of the SDS with Weather Underground members, Maoists, Marxists, the Worker Student Alliance and some Black Panthers. Mainline SDS faded in the 1970s and the Weathermen went underground as members sought to avoid prosecution for acts of terrorism. But their acceptance of communism or socialism economic redistribution and the use of academia to prime the social, economic and political pumps were nurtured in the intervening decades.
Many names from the golden age of SDS never disappeared. Instead, in the Obama administration, it seems everything old is new again.
Excerpt from March issue of Townhall magazine received by email
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American taxes deliver results that Communists would envy
Note: There is no double taxation of company dividends in Australia, which is why Australian companies generally pay substantial dividends twice a year
The communist revolutions in the 20th century sought to nationalize the wealth generated by privately held industries back to the "exploited" workers on whose backs the profits were supposedly derived. America has made the rejection of this idea and its support of free market principles the centerpiece of its economic narrative. However, as a result of our current and proposed tax policies towards corporate shareholders, our government collects a portion of industrial output that would inspire envy in even the most rabid Bolshevik.
The purpose of a corporation is to generate profits for owners (all other functions are secondary to this goal). Public corporations distribute these profits through dividends. But as a result of America's system of double taxation, where income is taxed on the corporate level and then again on the personal level, government receives a much bigger share of corporate income than the owners themselves. I also address this topic in my latest video blog .
Suppose a publicly held U.S. corporation made one million dollars in income over the course of a year. Currently its profits would be taxed at a 35% level (for the purpose of this example I will not factor in the lower rate that is applied to its first $100K of profits), meaning that the company would have to pay $350,000 directly to the government (assuming it earned its income without special tax breaks). Of the $650,000 that remained, the typical dividend-paying corporation might distribute 40 percent to shareholders (this is known as the "payout ratio" and the actual average is slightly below 40%). So in this instance the company would pay $260,000 (40% of $650,000) to shareholders. The remaining $390,000 would typically be held as "retained earnings," and would be used to maintain and replace depreciating equipment, make capital investments, fund research and development, and expand operations. If the company did not make such investments it would be impossible for it to survive and its ability to perpetuate profit distributions would be limited.
These retained earnings still represent assets to shareholders, but their primary purpose is to generate future profits and higher dividends. However, shareholders do not directly benefit from those retained earnings until future distributions are paid. Sure they can sell their shares at a gain, paying a capital gains tax in the process, but this merely transfers those deferred benefits to the new buyer.
When received by shareholders, the $260,000 in dividends are taxed again at a rate of 15 percent (according to current law). As a result, shareholders receive just $221,000 of the million dollar profit. The $39,000 in dividend taxes are added to the $350,000 "off the top" corporate tax to bring the government's total take of the company's profits to just a shade under $390,000. In other words the government gets about 75% more cash flow from the company than the actual owners. Looked at in a slightly different way, the government gets about 65% of the non-retained earnings while shareholders, who put up the money and take all the risk, get 35%. Does this seem fair?
This level of taxation puts American corporations at a noticeable disadvantage vis-a-vis companies in the countries against which we are most keenly competing. In China, the slicing of the pie is much more favorable to owners. There, corporations are taxed at a rate of 25% and dividends at 10%. Using these numbers (and the same payout ratio used for the U.S. corporation), the Chinese government gets 51% of distributed corporate profits and shareholders get 49%. In Hong Kong (which is part of Communist China), the situation is even better. There, the corporate tax rate is 16% and the personal dividend rate is zero. If you do the math there, the government gets 33% and the shareholders get 67%.
This comparison raises an interesting point. If shareholders in communist China are allowed to keep more of their earnings than shareholders in capitalist America, which nation is more communist and which more capitalist?
Late last month the Obama Administration and Mitt Romney offered competing proposals on corporate tax reform that both politicians say would make U.S. corporations more competitive. Romney's plan lowers the corporate tax rate to 25% while maintaining the dividend tax at 15%. This makes things slightly better, sending 54% of distributed earnings to the government and 46% to shareholders (not quite as generous as Communist China). Not surprisingly however the Obama plan will make things much more difficult.
Although the President proposes lowering the corporate tax rate to 28% he also wants to scrap the dividend tax and instead tax the distributions as ordinary income. In practice, the vast majority of individual recipients of dividends fall into the higher end of the income spectrum. Which means a very large chunk of these dividends will be taxed at the highest personal rate of 39%. But Obama also wants to subject these high earners to a surtax to pay for his health care initiative, which means that many of the recipients will be taxed at a rate of 44% (this also accounts for the phase out of personal deductions for higher earners!) So for these high-income earners, using our current example, the new distribution split with the government under Obama's proposals will be about 70/30 in favor of the government. This is actually worse than the status quo.
But it's actually much worse than that. The corporate income tax is just one of the veins that corporations open for government. Think about all the other taxes that corporations pay, such as the payroll taxes and sales taxes. Sure they pass those taxes on to their employees and customers, but the revenue flows 100% to the government with shareholders getting nothing but a bill for the cost of collection.
Then there are all of the taxes paid directly by the employees themselves on their wages and salaries. Sure, this money belongs to employees and not shareholders, but if not for the profit-making activities of corporations, those wages and salaries, and resulting taxes, could not have been paid. And while employees derive benefits from those after tax distributions too, shareholders get nothing. When all of these channels are factored in, think about how much more the government derives in taxes from corporate activity than its owners receive in dividends. Who knows how high this figure is, but I'm sure the government's take is many multiples of what shareholders receive.
Back in the 19th Century, America really was a capitalist country. We had no corporate tax and no personal income tax. Shareholders got 100% of distributed corporate income. As a result of this structure, U.S. corporations grew rapidly and helped spark the fastest economic expansion the world had ever seen. But that was then, this is now.
Given the current numbers, even if our leaders were dyed-in-the-wool Marxists, what would be their motivation to nationalize Fortune 500 companies? If they already receive the lion's share of profit distributions, what would be the point? Such a move risks upsetting the management structures and destroying the remaining profit motive. It would risk killing the goose that lays the golden egg. If government nationalized a company, it would also have to manage it. Does anyone think bureaucrats would make better decisions than private owners? What's worse, if those decisions produced losses rather than profits, the government would have to absorb them. Under the current systems, the government gets the lion's share of the profits, but private shareholders are stuck with 100% of the losses.
There is actually a name for our present system: fascism. While fascism and communism are both forms of socialism, at least the fascists are smart enough to know that if the means of production are nationalized, employees and owners won't work as hard, and the government will lose revenue.
It's a shame that the country that was once the beacon of freedom and economic liberty no longer has the ability to recognize what capitalism actually looks like. Unless corporate owners are appropriately rewarded for their risks, U.S. corporations will not regain their lost dominance, Americans will not regain their lost liberty, and our standard of living will continue to fall. As it stands now, the United States has become a people of the government, by the government and, most importantly, for the government.
SOURCE
***********************
Senators Paul, Lee and DeMint Introduce Plan to Balance Budget in 5 Years--Eliminate Departments of Education, Energy, Housing, Commerce
This would be an excellent start in the right direction
Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R.-Utah) and Jim DeMint (R.-S.C.) introduced a budget plan on Thursday that would balance the budget in five years and pay down $2 trillion of the national debt in 10 years. The plan includes spending cuts, entitlement reforms and tax reforms.
Paul said that the “Platform to Revitalize America” is the only plan consistent with the balanced budget amendment Republican advanced in the U.S. Senate because that amendment requires that Congress balance the budget in five years.
The plan eliminates the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Energy. “By eliminating departments we don’t have to make as significant of cuts in other areas,” Paul said.
“So entitlement reform could be more gradual because we eliminate some departments that we think should be done by the states and the localities,” he continued.
Other comprehensive steps to scale back the size of the federal government include selling off excess federal properties and land and defunding duplicative agencies.
On the regulatory side, the plan eliminates the president’s health care law and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
On the energy side, besides eliminating the Department of Energy, the plan proposes to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration and permits the Keystone XL Pipeline project.
Tax reform includes a 17 percent flat tax for individuals and corporations. “We think if the country would pass a flat tax like this that would eliminate a lot of the loopholes and special interest that lowers the rate for everybody, we think you’d see an economic boom in this country like you’ve never seen before,” Paul said.
Through the Congressional Health Care for Seniors Act, Medicare reform will allow seniors to receive the Congressional Health Care plan. Social Security reform is achieved through increasing the retirement age and means-testing the benefits.
It also allows defense spending to rise at a rate faster than increases under the current sequester and eliminates the fiscal year 2013 sequester cuts.
“So there have been some saying they want to avoid the Budget Control Act and the sequester on military spending,” Paul said. “I have said that is a bad idea unless we find savings elsewhere, but in our budget we find savings elsewhere and still allow spending to rise above the sequester,” he continued.
The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sen. Jim Demint (R-S.C.).
Paul said that they have been talking to House members about his budget plan and will try to get it introduced in the House. “It’s easier to get a vote in the Senate, so we’ll probably get a vote in the Senate. I don’t know if they will in the House,” Paul said.
DeMint said that they need to emphasize what he thinks a lot of their colleagues are missing: “a genuine and very real sense of urgency that our country is in very deep financial trouble and well on the way to look like Greece in a few years.”
DeMint said that any member of Congress who thinks the debt is unsustainable must look at balancing the budget within 10 years. “What we are going to wait to see is how many members of Congress have the courage of their convictions,” Demint said.
SOURCE
**************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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