Government Ignoromics Harms Workers

California governor Jerry Brown has approved legislation that hikes the current minimum wage of $8.00 an hour to $10.00 an hour by 2016. Supporters of the legislation say this “moral imperative” will help workers and their families but it’s more likely to harm them.

As Thomas Sowell notes, 90 percent of American economists find that minimum wage laws increase the rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers. Such laws do that by pricing low-skilled inexperienced workers out of a job. That is the likely result of the hike, according to the California Restaurant Association, and the California Chamber of Commerce called the measure a “job killer.” Sowell recalls that killing jobs is sometimes the intention of those promoting minimum wage laws.

For example, the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, the first federal minimum wage law, targeted companies using non-union black workers who were able to outbid white union members. In South Africa under apartheid, “white labor unions urged that a minimum wage law be applied to all races, to keep black workers from taking jobs away from white unionized workers by working for less than the union pay scale.” In similar style Australia’s early minimum wage law targeted the Chinese.

Politicians now believe that those working in, say, fast-food jobs should stay there for life. As politicians see it, if hiking the minimum wage increases unemployment, that can only be due to malevolent business interests. Whatever the result, hiking the minimum wage allows politicians to indulge the illusion that their actions help workers prosper, not the workers’ own productivity, experience, and efforts toward self-improvement. A business-friendly environment is also important. If minimum wage hikes were the key factor, why not raise the wage to $100 an hour for everyone? And don’t forget free hors d’oeuvres in every bar.

Alas, the world does not work that way and command economies have a record of failure. Politicians should know that too but they prefer their own brand of ignoromics over reality. One notes that their own budgetary efforts are not very businesslike, that they run up fathomless debt, and that they prefer double standards. In their own precincts politicians are fond of paying salaries much higher than in the private sector, and with much better benefits that embattled taxpayers can expect. The ruling class takes care of its own in fine style.

SOURCE

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Destroying Household Jobs

Thomas Sowell

Despite evidence from around the world that minimum wage laws can price low-skilled workers out of jobs, the U.S. Department of Labor is planning to extend minimum wage coverage to domestic workers, such as maids or those who drop in from time to time to do a few household chores for the sick and the elderly.

This coverage is scheduled to begin in January 2015 -- that is, after the 2014 elections and nearly two years before the 2016 elections. Politicians show a lot of cleverness in protecting their own interests, even if they show very little wisdom as far as serving the public interest.

If making household workers subject to the minimum wage law is expected to produce good results, why not let those good results begin early, so that voters will know about them before the next election?

But, if this new extension of the minimum wage law opens a whole new can of worms -- as is more likely -- politicians who support this extension want to insulate themselves from a voter backlash. Hence artfully choosing January 2015 as the effective date, to minimize the political risks to themselves.

The reason this particular extension of the minimum wage law is likely to open a can of worms is that both household workers and those who employ them will face more complications than employers and employees in industry or commerce.

First of all, ill or elderly individuals who need someone to help them from time to time are not like employers who have a business that regularly hires people and may have a personnel department to handle all the paperwork and keep up with all the legal requirements when government bureaucrats are involved.

Often the very reason for hiring part-time household workers is that some ill or elderly individuals have limited energy or capacity for handling things that were easy to handle when they were younger or in better health. Bureaucratic paperwork and legal technicalities are the last thing they need to have to add to their existing problems.

The people being hired to do household chores also have special problems. Often such people have limited education, and may also have limited knowledge of the English language.

Why make it harder for ill or elderly people to get some much-needed help in their homes, and harder for low-skilled people to get some much-needed jobs?

Despite all the talk about how we need more people with high-tech skills, there is also a need for people who can help clean a home or carry groceries or do other things that need doing, and which do not require years of schooling. As the elderly become an ever growing proportion of the population, there will be a growing demand for such people.

More precisely, there would be more jobs for such people if the government did not step in to complicate the hiring process and price potential workers out of jobs, with minimum wages set by third parties who do not, and cannot, know what the economic realities are for either the ill and the elderly or for those whom the ill and the elderly wish to hire.

Minimum wage laws in general are usually set with no real knowledge of the economic realities and alternatives for either employers or employees. Third parties are simply enabled to indulge themselves by imagining what is "fair" -- and pay no price for being wrong about the actual economic consequences.

That is why countries with minimum wage laws usually have much higher rates of unemployment than those few places where there have been no minimum wage laws, such as Switzerland or Singapore -- or the United States, before the first federal minimum wage law was passed in 1931.

Government interventions in labor markets have already created needless complications, and not just by minimum wage laws. The welfare state has already taken out of the labor market millions of people who could perform work that would be well within the capacity of inexperienced young people or people with limited education.

With welfare, such people can stay home, watch television, do drugs or whatever -- or else they can hang out in the streets, often confirming the old adage that the devil finds work for idle hands.

SOURCE

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The Late, Great Middle Class

Obama promised to restore the middle class. In truth, he has enacted the very policies that have done it the most damage in years. That paradox may explain why his base of support remains the very rich and the very poor. Goldman Sachs, federal bureaucrats and aid recipients are helped in a way that the strapped hardware store owner, Starbucks barista and part-time welder are not.

For all the talk of infrastructure or stimulus, the latest $6 trillion in federal borrowing seems to have been wasted on bailing out insider banks and green companies, growing the federal workforce, regulating the private sector into stasis, and subsidizing those who are not working.

The Federal Reserve still keeps interest rates at near zero. That mostly helps Wall Street, where money flows madly in search of any sort of return.

Most real interest rates for consumer purchases somehow remain exorbitant. Banks obtain their money cheaply and lend it out expensively. No wonder that so many Wall Street and banking executives -- Timothy Geithner, Jack Lew, Peter Orszag, Gene Sperling, Larry Summers -- revolve in and out of the highest levels of this "no revolving door" administration.

Middle-class workers see little chance of retiring when their meager savings earn almost no interest, so they are apt to stay on the job longer. In circular fashion, their continuance only makes unemployment rates for young entry-level workers even worse.

Obama always threatened higher taxes on the well-off. He achieved that goal with a new 39.6 percent federal rate on upper incomes -- well apart from state and payroll taxes. Yet such steep taxes do not much affect the super-rich. Their income is often exempted through sophisticated tax-avoidance or, more often, earned through less taxed capital gains.

Small employers in many states have no such recourse and now pay more than half their incomes in assorted federal, state and local taxes. Naturally, they are hiring fewer people and making fewer capital investments.

That greater tax hit might have been worth it had the new rates been part of a balanced-budget agreement like the Bill Clinton-Newt Gingrich deal of 1997 that froze spending levels and for a time stopped our ruinous borrowing.

Not this time. We end up with the worst of all worlds: once again a 39 percent top tax rate, but now with out-of-control federal spending and more multibillion-dollar budget deficits.

By virtually shutting down gas and oil leases on federal lands, the administration has declined the chance to create millions of new energy jobs and to lower fuel prices. For now, cheaper power bills and gasoline prices, and the creation of more jobs in energy, depend entirely on those who drill on private lands -- despite, not because, of federal efforts.

Even the many sires of Obamacare now deny their past parentage. Unions want out of it. Congress demands exclusion from it. Well-connected businesses won exemption from it.

The poor who mostly do not pay federal income taxes will get a largely free, bureaucratized federal health-care system. Many of the rich praise Obamacare but will quietly use their own money to avoid it. The middle class will see their premiums soar and the quality of their coverage erode.

These are surreal times. Wealthy elites who help to shut down jobs in energy, timber and mining are deemed liberal -- but not always so the middle classes, who suffer the consequences in lost jobs and higher prices.

Universities voice progressive bromides, but they care mostly for the tenured and the technocrat, not the part-timer and the indebted student. Despite soaring tuition, campus is now the haunt of the very wealthy who can afford exorbitant tuition and the very poor who are often exempted from it. The less romantic middle class goes $1 trillion into debt for their high-interest student loans.

Never has it been so good to be invested in a vastly expanding federal government -- either to distribute or receive federal subsidies. Never has it been so lucrative to work in banking or on Wall Street. And never has it been so bad to try to find a decent job making something real.

To paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus, where we have made a desert of the middle class, we call it a recovery.

SOURCE

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$9 Gas and $3800 Gold coming?

Although the analysis below is from a gold bug, it is conventional economics.  The only real question is WHEN the greenback will drastically lose its purchasing power.  China is buying everything it can worldwide while their big store of greenbacks will buy something

Now that the Fed has announced they will not taper their enormous stimulus program, it's more obvious than ever that a few powerful men have hijacked our economic, financial and political structure.  And here's a news flash:  They aren’t socialists or capitalists.  They’re criminals.  The Fed's decision to continue buying $85 billion worth of toxic banking assets and U.S. debt per month means the money-printing factory has just gone into high gear. Not only can you say goodbye to your paper-based savings and retirement, but the Fed just guaranteed $9 gas and $3800 gold.

Every month in 2013, the Fed has been increasing its balance sheet by $85 billion, consisting of $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion in 10-30 year treasuries. The Fed is on pace to monetize roughly half of the US budget deficit in 2013. Putting it all together, the Fed's balance sheet will increase to $4 trillion on December 25, 2013. A total increase of $1.17 trillion in one year!

The Fed has been promising to taper their stimulus program pending the improvement of the labor market.  But as the labor market continues to stagnate, now the Fed has reversed course and announced that they will continue their reckless stimulus program (a.k.a "money printing") for the foreseeable future.

They call it “Quantitative Easing," or QE.  The reason QE is like the gift that keeps on giving for a holder of gold is because it blatantly debases the U.S. dollar.  Allow me to illustrate:

Round one (QE1) started November 25, 2008 and ended March 31, 2010.  During that 17-month period, a gallon of gas rose from $1.75 to $2.75 and gold rose from $725/oz. to $1125/oz.

QE2 was started Nov 3, 2010 and lasted seven months until June 30, 2011.  During the seven months of QE2, gas prices rose from $2.80 to $3.60 and gold from $1325 to $1700.   QE2 was also marked by massive global food inflation and global riots.   QE2 ended June 30, and we have had no further ‘major’ balance sheet expansion until mid-September 2012.

In the last few weeks leading up to QE3 and the week after, gold rose 15%.  During the summer of 2013, when the Fed starting backing off their "tapering" talk, gold rose a staggering 13% in a matter of months.  The proof is in the numbers.

This policy is complete insanity.  By 2018 when the debt peaks, gas will be over $9 per gallon!  These same factors put gold at $3800 by 2018! It debases the U.S. dollar significantly at a time when we need fiscal responsibility more than ever.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The kneejerk reflex of the liberal mind



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O'Bagy Shows The Road to Success: Lie for Obama, Kerry, and McCain on Syria

Barry Rubin

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
--T.S.  Eliot

For one who has made a career as an international political analyst this is the equivalent to the end of the world.
Elizabeth O’Bagy was a Georgetown University graduate student. She wrote an article for Atlantic Monthly saying that most Syrian rebels are radical Islamists.

Of course. Everyone knows that, even the Syrian rebels.

But then O’Bagy got two new jobs. One was for a consulting firm that promoted the Syrian rebels-- Institute for the Study of War--who did not want to be thought  of as radical Islamists since it would hurt their chances of getting U.S aid. hich gets U,S. State Department dollars from an Obama Administration which wanted to give the money so they paid only if they were portrayed as moderates.

The other was at a advocacy group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force. By the way, the group is run by someone who also supports Hamas. Might it be a Muslim Brotherhood front?

This is a conflict of interest.  But wait. There’s more. She then wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal that said the Syrian rebels are moderates.

The Wall Street Journal knew about the conflict of interest but said nothing. Why? Because they supported the Syrian rebels.

Now O’Bagy is all over the television news. Truth isn’t important it is simply what policy people support.  And then she is taking Senator McCain on a visit to Syrian rebels, organized by a man who supports Hamas with two al-Qaida participants attending.

Then Secretary of State John Kerry says he depends on O’Bagy’s lying and corrupt statements. Well, after all he paid for them!

But a small group of people with memories expose the lies. By the way, while O’Bagy has presented herself as a PhD, she wasn’t even accepted for the PhD program! So because she is exposed as a liar, she is fired.  But what about the lies she told?  Nothing.

What about the  State Department taking advice from a Hamas supporter?  Nothing.

What about U.S. policy being based on the lie that Syrian rebels are moderate?  Nothing.

What about U.S. policy being made by Kerry and McCain without confronting the lie?  Nothing.

What’s the new act in the saga of O’Bagy?

Not does anyone pay any price.  On the contrary, she is rewarded for being a serial liar and a friend of the Muslim Brotherhood (at your taxpayer expense) by being hired in McCain’s office. The senator says she is a good researcher.

When the history of this era is written—maybe by crayon—this saga will be the perfect example to use.

SOURCE

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More Great News About Obamacare: provisions will allow ‘forced’ home inspections by gov’t agents

Citing the Heath and Human Services website, a report posted Wednesday at the Freedom Outpost says that under Obamacare, government agents can engage in “home health visits” for those in certain “high-risk” categories.

Those categories include:

 *  Families where mom is not yet 21;
 *  Families where someone is a tobacco user;
 *  Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities, and
 *  Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.

According to HHS, the visits fall under what is called the “Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program” allegedly designed to “help parents and children,” and could impact millions of Americans.

Constitutional attorney and author Kent Masterson Brown said that despite what HHS says, the program is not “voluntary.”

“The eligible entity receiving the grant for performing the home visits is to identify the individuals to be visited and intervene so as to meet the improvement benchmarks,” he said. “A homeschooling family, for instance, may be subject to ‘intervention’ in ‘school readiness’ and ‘social-emotional developmental indicators.’ A farm family may be subject to ‘intervention’ in order to ‘prevent child injuries.’ The sky is the limit.”

Joshua Cook said that while the administration would claim the program only applies to those on Medicaid, the new law, by its own definition, has no such limitation.

“Intervention,” he added, quoting Brown, “may be with any family for any reason. It may also result in the child or children being required to go to certain schools or taking certain medications and vaccines and even having more limited – or no – interaction with parents. The federal government will now set the standards for raising children and will enforce them by home visits.”

According to Cook, the program will require collection of a massive amount of private information including all sources of income and the amount gathered from each source.

One of the areas of emphasis mentioned by HHS is the “development of comprehensive early childhood systems that span the prenatal-through-age-eight continuum.”

Last session, Cook added, South Carolina State Rep. Bill Chumley introduced a measure that would make the forced home visitations illegal in his state. The measure passed in the House but died in the Senate.

SOURCE

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The Terrible Ten: A Century of Economic Folly

New Independent Institute book charts nation’s worst economic blunders – and how to avoid them in future

2013 is the 100th anniversary of the income tax and the Federal Reserve Act but American taxpayers should not be celebrating, according to The Terrible 10: A Century of Economic Folly, a new book from the Independent Institute.

“American taxpayers are victims of a century of disastrous government policies that cost trillions of dollars in wasted resources, created mass unemployment, and kept millions of people in poverty who otherwise would have participated in the nation’s growing prosperity,” said author Burton A. Abrams, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Director of the Institute's Government Cost Calculator (MyGovCost.org), and Professor of Economics at the University of Delaware.

* The Terrible 10 charts the blunders chronologically, beginning with Prohibition, “a massive, precedent-setting governmental intervention in personal freedom,” that wasted resources, aided criminals and corrupted public officials and ordinary citizens alike.

* Joining this “miserable failure” was monetary policy during the Great Depression.  The Federal Reserve was created to prevent the widespread runs on banks that plagued the U.S. economy. But the biggest banking panic in U.S. history was in the making, and “the Fed’s failure to act decisively was one of the most costly economic policy errors in the past 100 years.”

* The Republican-sponsored Hawley-Smoot Act, signed over the objections of more than 1,000 economists, touched off a trade war and helped set the stage for World War II. President Ronald Reagan called Hawley-Smoot “the most destructive trade bill in history.”

* The Terrible 10 portrays Social Security as “the second largest Ponzi-type scheme sponsored by the U.S. government,” a “non-transparent welfare program that redistributes enormous amounts of wealth, often in ways that most Americans would find undesirable.”

* The income tax has become “excessively complicated, non-transparent, and costly” and “hides more than a trillion dollars in hidden subsidies that distort economic decision-making and produce economic waste.”

* According to The Terrible 10, Medicare is “the single worst Ponzi-type scheme in the government’s arsenal” and “$20 trillion to $30 trillion dollars in the red and in far worse shape than Social Security.”

* Abrams shows how Republican president Richard Nixon pressured Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns to overheat the U.S. economy prior to Nixon’s reelection bid. This launched the Nixon-Burns Political Business Cycle, “a decade of inflation that required three recessions to extinguish.”

* Nixon also created the Environmental Protection Agency and now, says Abrams, “Wasteful environmental regulations are the rule, not the exception, and usually they benefit special-interest groups while harming society at large.”

* Paternalistic policies by Democrats and Republicans fostered the Great Real Estate Bubble, followed by Government Failure and the Great Recession. “The economic damage to the young and less fortunate added another cruel dimension to the economic catastrophe.”

* Abrams notes the rapid and unprecedented peacetime run-up in the nation’s public debt that threatens to sink the economy. So irresponsible deficit spending, is a major part of the problem. But the author also provides key lessons to help the nation avoid repeating such policy mistakes in the future.

“Government decision-makers, regardless of political party, tend to favor short-run benefits for friends while imposing costs on current and later generations,” said Abrams. If national leaders want to steer a course toward prosperity and economic growth for the next 100 years, they need to avoid these destructive tactics:

(1) caving in to special-interest groups; (2) treating adult citizens like the government’s children; (3) allowing electoral majorities to take advantage of the rest of society; (4) obsessing about the short run – what Abrams calls immediosis; (5) choosing to stay ignorant about the deeper ramifications of government policies; and (6) rationalizing bad policies on the grounds of their “plausible acceptability.

SOURCE

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The Dodgy New HHS Report on Obamacare Premiums

How much will insurance plans cost on Obamacare’s exchanges? This has been a big, and contentious, question since before the law was passed. Late last night, we got some new information: the Department of Health and Human Services released selected details on plan prices for insurance premiums in the federally run exchanges that will operate in the majority of states.

Administration officials are spinning the new numbers as good news for Obamacare. “The prices are affordable,” Gary Cohen, a top HHS official, told The Wall Street Journal. The White House is happily declaring that the premiums are “lower than expected.” And multiple news reports on the numbers are following suit, running headlines on the “lower than expected” premiums coming under Obamacare.

But “lower than expected” is, of course, not the same as lower than they are currently. That’s not the comparison the administration wants to make. "Because of the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance that people will be buying will actually cover them in the case of them getting sick. It doesn't make sense to compare just the number the person was paying, you have to compare the value people are getting," HHS official Cohen told the Journal. Accordingly, there are no comparisons in the report to current premiums. All that lower than expected really means, then, is that premiums won’t go up as much as the Congressional Budget Office initially estimated.

It's also worth noting that the HHS report isn’t comprehensive. It focuses on two thin slices of the insurance market—lowest cost premiums for 27-year-olds who make $25,000 annually, and four-member families with $50,000 incomes. As Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute writes at Forbes, it’s a safe bet these two slices weren’t picked accidentally; most likely they represent demographics best served by the law.

What about everyone else? As a Politico piece on the release notes, “the report doesn’t actually reveal very much about what most people will pay.” Instead, it “gives lots of examples of the kinds of people who will get good prices — but everyone else will remain in the dark until at least next Tuesday, when Obamacare is supposed to open its doors.”

Nor did the administration want reporters digging too much into the data before writing stories today. “The report was issued to news organizations on Tuesday under a strict embargo, with specific instructions not to share the information with anyone else, like outside health insurance experts who might be able to provide more analysis of the numbers," Politico reports.

The report leaked out anyway, but the embargo guidelines suggest that HHS was wary of early scrutiny of the numbers. And along with the selective reporting, it does make one wonder whether HHS is anxious about premium levels when enrollment begins next week. If a comprehensive report on premiums could stand up to outside scrutiny, wouldn’t HHS be putting out a fuller picture, and courting outside analysis?

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Greek ruling parties arrest their political opponents  (Greece is ruled at the moment by a Left/Right coalition)

Greece is sliding into Fascism. And the Fascism is not coming from the alleged Fascists. It's thoroughly  Fascist to  arrest your political opponents on trumped-up allegations.

Despite various accusations, Golden Dawn is primarily an anti-illegal-immigrant party,  which makes you "Fascist" or "Nazi" to the Left dominated media.  Golden Dawn describe themselves as patriotic socialists. See here. Greece shares a border with the Muslim world so is heavily impacted by illegal immigration.  Greek dislike of that gives Golden Dawn its support

The arrests are plainly unconstitutional.  There is a technical exception in the Greek Constitution that allows for the arrest of MPs for flagrant crimes but how a crime  committed by a supporter acting alone falls into that category is obscure to say the least.  The arrests present Greek democracy in a very poor light.  Anything is better than sending illegals back whence they came, apparently.  Australia is doing so but it seems to be the only country with bipartisan support for such a policy

Greek police arrested the leader and more than a dozen senior members of the far-right Golden Dawn party early on Saturday after the killing of an anti-fascist rapper by a party supporter triggered outrage and protests across the country.

The arrests, which are the most significant crackdown on a political party in Greece since the fall of a military dictatorship in 1974, are the biggest setback to Golden Dawn since it entered parliament on an anti-immigrant agenda last year.

"Nothing can scare us!" shouted a handcuffed Ilias Kasidiaris, spokesman of the party, as he was transferred to the prosecutors' office flanked by hooded anti-terrorism police officers carrying machineguns.

Kasidiaris and the party's leader, Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, three other lawmakers and 13 other members of the party were arrested on Saturday on charges of founding and participating in a criminal organization.

Police also confiscated two guns and a hunting rifle from Mihaloliakos' home, saying he did not have a license for them.

Ranked as Greece's third most popular party, Golden Dawn is under investigation for the murder of rapper Pavlos Fissas, who bled to death after being stabbed twice by a party sympathizer last week.

The party has denied any links to the killing of Fissas.

The anti-terrorism force, which is handling the case, was looking for one more senior party official and lawmaker, police spokesman Christos Parthenis said. Two police officials were also arrested on Saturday, he added.

Late in the evening, the detainees were taken under high security to the prosecutors' office and charged officially on evidence linking the party with a string of attacks, including the stabbing of the rapper on September 17 and the killing of an immigrant earlier this year, court officials told Reuters.

Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias hailed the arrests as "a historic day for Greece and Europe."

"I want to assure Greek citizens that the investigation will not end here," Dendias said. "There is no room for criminal organizations in Greece."

Mihaloliakos has warned that Golden Dawn could pull its 18 lawmakers from parliament if the crackdown does not stop.

If potential by-elections were won by the opposition, as some polls indicate, Greece's fragile two-party coalition would become politically untenable, Mihaloliakos has argued. But a government official said Greece might be able to avoid such by-elections depending on how the constitution is interpreted.

The party called on its website for protests in solidarity with its jailed leader and members.

Several hundred of its supporters gathered outside police headquarters waving Greek flags and chanting: "Long live the leader!" and "Blood, Honour, Golden Dawn". About 200 protesters unfurled a banner reading: "Golden Dawn" outside the party's headquarters in Athens.

"Golden Dawn is here. It will not back down. You cannot jail ideas," Golden Dawn MP Artemis Mattheopoulos, who is not among those detained, told reporters.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras' government has so far resisted calls to ban the party, fearing it could make it even more popular at a time of growing anger at repeated rounds of austerity measures. It has instead tried to undermine the party by ordering probes that could deprive it of state funding.

Samaras ruled out snap elections after the arrests. The government has also played down talk of political instability and promised all Golden Dawn members would receive a fair trial.

Golden Dawn controls 18 of parliament's 300 seats and had so far appeared immune to accusations of violence and intimidation, scoring 14 percent in opinion polls before the stabbing. Two polls this week showed support had fallen to as low as 6.7 to 6.8 percent.

Greek lawmakers do not lose their political rights or seats unless there is a final court ruling against them. But the government has proposed a law that could block state funding for Golden Dawn if police find links to Fissas' murder.

The party, whose emblem resembles a swastika, rose from obscurity to enter parliament last year after promising to mine Greece's borders to prevent illegal immigrants from entering. Its members have been seen giving Nazi-style salutes and its leader has denied the Holocaust. The party rejects the neo-Nazi label.

Human rights groups have accused the party of being linked to attacks on immigrants, but this is the first time it is being investigated for evidence linking it to an attack.

It is not the first time its leader is being prosecuted. In 1979, Mihaloliakos was convicted of possessing explosives.

Mihaloliakos' daughter rushed to kiss her father as he entered the court, on his way to the prosecutors' office.

"I'm proud of my father, like any child would be if its father faced such political charges," Ourania Mihaloliakou told reporters. "We are stronger than ever."

SOURCE

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Democratic Party Loves Ill-Informed Voters

Larry Elder

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is worried.  In a recent speech at Boise State, O'Connor said: "Less than one-third of eighth-graders can identify the historical purpose of the Declaration of Independence, and it's right there in the name. ... The more I read and the more I listen, the more apparent it is that our society suffers from an alarming degree of public ignorance."

This is good news for the left.  The ill-informed are more susceptible to emotional arguments. They are more likely to see life as a zero-sum game. They are more likely to believe that the prosperous become so only at someone else's expense.

Take my Twitterverse "discourse" on the proposal to increase the minimum wage:

Elder: Obama said a higher minimum wage is vital to "a rising, thriving middle class." Switzerland has no national minimum wage. Its unemployment is 3 percent.... U.S. had no minimum wage 'til 1938. How did it become so powerful?

Twitter respondent: America wasn't close to the super power it is until after World War 2 -- in 1939. And you're supposed to be a journalist?

Elder: The U.S. became a "superpower" because of minimum wage? Adjusted for inflation the first minimum wage would be $4. And I'm not a journalist -- I'm a commentator.

Twitter respondent: You asked how we're a super power. We don't recover from the Great Depression without military production in World War II and paying workers.

Elder: I repeat, prior to the 1938 introduction of minimum wage -- which today would be $4 -- how do you account for America's growth?

Twitter respondent: I guess you didn't go to high school like the rest of us to know there was no "growth" in the '30s due to the unemployment rate.

Elder: So far, I've politely asked questions. Before the '30s, we had a decade known as the "Roaring '20s" -- no minimum wage. Explain.

Titter respondent: We were "roaring" with a slave class. I don't accept that as good policy.

Once people resort to terms like "slave class" in a discussion on minimum wage, it's time to call the waiter and get the check.

Check out the "discourse" following my tweets on Aaron Alexis, the black man responsible for the Navy Yard killing spree. Did Alexis, as with killers Major Nidal Hassan of the Fort Hood massacre and former Los Angeles Police Department cop Christopher Dorner, receive  LESS scrutiny from authorities out of fear of being called anti-Islamic or racist?

Twitter respondent: There is no dearth of pathetic Negroes like (at)larryelder willing to spout unsupported race-based guesses!

Elder: In your world is calling someone a "pathetic Negro" a brand of argumentation?

Twitter respondent (compilation): Pathetic Negro, a definition: To pander to racists using unsupported, fact-less race-baiting, eg. Your statement "in my world" is another Negro dog whistle to his masters, proving my point. "In my world" facts matter and your baseless suppositions of what others thought do not. Further, Negroes like you are always on hand with "observations" that "legitimize" Fox News views. Unless you're lying about your background, I'm not from the ghetto, gangs or criminal, what "world" do you mean?

Elder: I mean in the world of people who don't know how to craft an argument and instead resort to taunts and name-calling. That world.... Interesting that even the term "your world" disturbs you. Yet calling people with whom you disagree silly names is not disturbing.

Twitter respondent: I typically don't waste time with Negro amateur journalists promoting (at)FoxNews race-baiting narrative. You have my opinion.

Elder: Are you so ill-informed that you don't know the difference between a "journalist" and a commentator? As for my "race-baiting" narrative, here's exactly what I wrote and said. (I gave him a link to my last column on the Navy Yard killer).

Twitter respondent: "Pathetic Negro" is not a taunt, it's a term that describes Negros who fit their behavior to racist audience expectations.

Elder: Use whatever term you want for "pathetic Negro," it is not argumentation. I attempted to engage you, but you'd rather name-call.

Twitter respondent: Let's be clear. I do not "disagree" with you, Your "report" was base conjecture used as basis for race baiting "conclusion."... Your term, "your world," does not "disturb me" in the least. Like I said, I identified it for what it is, a Negro dog whistle.... You are neither and whatever you think you are, you are a pathetic Negro used by @FoxNews for "cover."

Elder: This is what passes for discourse? I make an argument. You attack the commentator. And you don't even realize it.

Democrats win because their narrative works on an emotional level -- us against them. Bad, selfish people -- known as Republicans -- want to stop the good and the decent -- known as Democrats -- from their right to health care, right to a job, right to a job with a "livable wage" and the right to not only enjoy one's own lifestyle but to brand critics as racists, sexists or homophobes.

Former Justice O'Connor is worried. We all should be.

SOURCE

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Al Gore goes off at the deep end -- and loses support

In his address to the liberal Brookings Institution, Al Gore used the term  "Political Terrorism" to refer to GOP threats to shut down the government and default on the U.S. debt in order to block  Obamacare

"Now I’m going to talk about the potential for a shutdown in just a moment, but I think that the only phrase that describes it is political terrorism. ‘Nice global economy you got there… Be a shame if we had to destroy it. We have a list of demands… If you don’t meet them all by our deadline, we’ll blow up the global economy’… How dare you. How dare you.”

"Why does partisanship have anything to do with such a despicable and dishonorable threat to the integrity of the United States of America?" Gore also asked

Laurence Jarvik of PBS was offended and heads a blog post:  "Al Gore's Brookings Hate Speech Made Me Quit Email List".  He  unsubscribed himself from Brookings saying:

"Shame on Brookings for passing on Al Gore's uncivil remarks, without condemnation.

Does Brookings want to arrest "political terrorists" now? Call in drone strikes? This rhetoric is simply beyond the pale of civilized discourse, a slippery slope of political dehumanization of the opposition.

As you know, Vice President Al Gore and the Republic survived a shutdown in the Clinton administration very nicely. There were shutdowns in the Carter administration, as well.  It is called the congressional power of the purse.

After reading this email, I no longer have confidence in Brookings' rationality, nor its commitment to civil political discourse."

 SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The liberal "logic" never stops



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Book Review of 'David and Goliath' by Malcolm Gladwell.  Review by Christopher Chabris, a psychology professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y



I have some previous comments on Malcolm Gladwell here and here.   Gladwell too often presents as proven laws what are just intriguing possibilities and musings about human behavior.  I think his reputation as a serious thinker owes more to that bush of African hair on his head than anything else. "Affirmative" racism is a most pervasive poison in American discourse  -- JR

David Boies is the super-lawyer who represented IBM against the U.S. government, the U.S. government against Microsoft, Al Gore against George W. Bush and gay marriage against California's Proposition 8. A man at the top of his profession, presiding over a firm of 200 lawyers, he would seem to be a metaphorical Goliath. But Malcolm Gladwell sees this literal David as a figurative David too, because Mr. Boies came from humble origins and faced mighty obstacles to success.

We learn in Mr. Gladwell's "David and Goliath" that Mr. Boies grew up in rural Illinois, where he was an indifferent student. After he graduated high school, he worked construction. He went to college mainly because his wife encouraged him to. But the small university he attended near Los Angeles happened to have one of the country's premier debate programs. Mr. Boies traveled more than 20,000 miles to participate in debate tournaments. He left college early to start law school at Northwestern, became editor in chief of its law review and transferred to Yale, where he received his law degree.

One of Mr. Gladwell's best sellers, "Outliers" (2008), was about how outsize success results from arbitrary advantages and disciplined practice. Bill Gates was lucky enough to have a computer terminal in his high school when personal computers didn't yet exist; the Beatles laboriously honed their craft in Germany before hitting the London scene. So is the story of David Boies just another case like these—of a guy who stumbled into a rigorous debate program that inculcated the skills and provided the training he would need to out-argue his law-school peers and reach the top?

Not in this book. The overarching thesis of "David and Goliath" is that for the strong, "the same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness," whereas for the weak, "the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty." According to Mr. Gladwell, the secret of Mr. Boies's greatness is neither luck nor training. Rather, he got where he did because he was dyslexic.

You read that right. In a section on what Mr. Gladwell calls "the theory of desirable difficulty," he asks: "You wouldn't wish dyslexia on your child. Or would you?" You might if you were aware that Mr. Boies himself attributes his success to his dyslexia, as do Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, and Brian Grazer, the Hollywood megaproducer. Examples like these are the main source of evidence Mr. Gladwell marshals for the claim that dyslexia might actually be a desirable trait. Difficulty reading is said to have forced Mr. Boies to compensate by developing skills of observation and memory, which he exploited in the courtroom. It's an uplifting story; what seems on the surface to be just a disability turns out, on deeper examination, to be an impetus for hard work and against-all-odds triumph.

Mr. Gladwell enjoys a reputation for translating social science into actionable insights. But the data behind the surprising dyslexia claim is awfully slim. He notes in passing that a 2009 survey found a much higher incidence of dyslexia in entrepreneurs than in corporate managers. But this study involved only 102 self-reported dyslexic entrepreneurs, most of whom probably had careers nothing like those of Mr. Boies or his fellow highfliers. Later Mr. Gladwell mentions that dyslexics are also overrepresented in prisons—a point that would appear to vitiate his argument. He addresses the contradiction by suggesting that while no person should want to be dyslexic, "we as a society need people" with serious disadvantages to exist, for we all benefit from the over-achievement that supposedly results. But even if dyslexia could be shown to cause entrepreneurship, the economic analysis that would justify a claim of its social worth is daunting, and Mr. Gladwell doesn't attempt it.

To make his point about the general benefits of difficulty, Mr. Gladwell refers to a 2007 experiment in which people were given three mathematical reasoning problems to solve. One group was randomly assigned to read the problems in a clear typeface like the one you are reading now; the other had to read them in a more difficult light-gray italic print. The latter group scored 29% higher, suggesting that making things harder improves cognitive performance. It's an impressive result on the surface, but less so if you dig a bit deeper.

First, the study involved just 40 people, or 20 per typeface—a fact Mr. Gladwell fails to mention. That's a very small sample on which to hang a big argument. Second, they were all Princeton University students, an elite group of problem-solvers. Such matters wouldn't matter if the experiment had been repeated with larger samples that are more representative of the general public and had yielded the same results. But Mr. Gladwell doesn't tell readers that when other researchers tried just that, testing nearly 300 people at a Canadian public university, they could not replicate the original effect. Perhaps he didn't know about this, but anyone who has followed recent developments in social science should know that small studies with startling effects must be viewed skeptically until their results are verified on a broader scale. They might hold up, but there is a good chance they will turn out to be spurious.

This flaw permeates Mr. Gladwell's writings: He excels at telling just-so stories and cherry-picking science to back them. In "The Tipping Point" (2000), he enthused about a study that showed facial expressions to be such powerful subliminal persuaders that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings made people vote for Ronald Reagan in 1984 just by smiling more when he reported on him than when he reported on his opponent, Walter Mondale. In "Blink" (2005), Mr. Gladwell wrote that a psychologist with a "love lab" could watch married couples interact for just 15 minutes and predict with shocking accuracy whether they would divorce within 15 years. In neither case was there rigorous evidence for such claims.

But what about those dyslexic business titans? With all respect to Messrs. Boies, Cohn and Grazer, successful people are not the best witnesses in the cases of their own success. How can Mr. Boies, or anyone else, know that dyslexia, rather than rigorous debate training, was the true cause of his legal triumphs? His parents were both teachers, and could have instilled a love of studying and learning. He also had high SAT scores, which indicate intelligence and an ability to focus. Maybe his memory was strong before he realized he had trouble reading. Perhaps it's a combination of all these factors, plus some luck. Incidentally, Mr. Boies's SAT scores and debate training aren't mentioned in "David and Goliath." I learned about them from his 2004 memoir, "Courting Justice."

In Mr. Cohn's case, dyslexia is said to have made him willing to take risks to get his first job in finance, as an options trader. Suppose he weren't dyslexic—isn't it likely that he would have still been a bit of a risk-taker? I know of no scientific evidence for a correlation between risk-taking and reading difficulty, and even if there were one, taking risks might just as well lead to bad outcomes (like those prison sentences) as to good ones.

A theorem of mathematics implies that in the absence of friction, any knot, no matter how complicated, can be undone by pulling on one end of the string. The causes of success in the real world are nothing like this: Resistance abounds, and things are so tangled up that it is virtually impossible to sort them out. Mr. Gladwell does no work to try to loosen the threads. Instead he picks one and, armed with the power of hindsight, just keeps yanking on it. Why are the Impressionist painters renowned today? Because they set up their own exhibitions to gain greater visibility in the 19th-century Paris art scene. "David and Goliath" discusses no other possibilities. Why did crime go down in Brownsville, Brooklyn over the past decade? Because the local police worked hard to increase their legitimacy in the minds of the community members. Nothing else is seriously considered.

None of this is to say that Mr. Gladwell has lost his gift for telling stories, or that his stories are unimportant. On the contrary, in "David and Goliath" readers will travel with colorful characters who overcame great difficulties and learn fascinating facts about the Battle of Britain, cancer medicine and the struggle for civil rights, to name just a few more topics upon which Mr. Gladwell's wide-ranging narrative touches. This is an entertaining book. But it teaches little of general import, for the morals of the stories it tells lack solid foundations in evidence and logic.....

One thing "David and Goliath" shows is that Mr. Gladwell has not changed his own strategy, despite serious criticism of his prior work. What he presents are mostly just intriguing possibilities and musings about human behavior, but what his publisher sells them as, and what his readers may incorrectly take them for, are lawful, causal rules that explain how the world really works. Mr. Gladwell should acknowledge when he is speculating or working with thin evidentiary soup. Yet far from abandoning his hand or even standing pat, Mr. Gladwell has doubled down. This will surely bring more success to a Goliath of nonfiction writing, but not to his readers.

More HERE

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Can We Finally Start Talking About The Global Persecution Of Christians?

Wealthy Kenyans and Westerners bustled about Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi on Saturday. Families ate lunch in the food court. A radio station targeting Kenyan Asians was hosting a children’s event on the roof of the parking lot.

Around noon, armed gunmen stormed the mall and exploded grenades. Thousands of terrified people dropped to the floor, fled out of exits and hid in stores. The gunmen began lining people up and shooting some of the five dozen people they would slaughter and 240 people, ages 2 to 78, that they would wound.

Al-Shabaab, which is claiming credit for the attack, is reported to have singled out non-Muslims. “A witness to the attacks at Nairobi’s upscale mall says that gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave and that non-Muslims would be targeted,” according to the Associated Press.

To weed out the infidels, according to news reports, the terrorists asked people for the name of Muhammad’s mother or to recite a verse from the Quran.

And that wasn’t even the worst terrorist attack of the weekend.
The Washington Post reported that one British mother and her young children survived when captors who shot her allowed her to leave on the condition she immediately convert to Islam. The siege of the mall, which included the taking of hostages, lasted four days. Three floors of the mall collapsed and bodies were buried in the rubble.

And that wasn’t even the worst terrorist attack of the weekend.

The next day, two suicide bombs went off as Christians were leaving Sunday services at All Saints Anglican Church in Peshawar, Pakistan.

“There were blasts and there was hell for all of us,” Nazir John, who was at the church with at least 400 other worshipers, told the Associated Press. “When I got my senses back, I found nothing but smoke, dust, blood and screaming people. I saw severed body parts and blood all around.”

Some 85 Christians were slaughtered and 120 injured, the bloodiest attack on Christians in Pakistan in history. The hospital ran out of beds for the injured and there weren’t enough caskets for the dead.

“I found nothing but smoke, dust, blood and screaming people. I saw severed body parts and blood all around.”
The situation for Christians in Egypt has also gone from bad to worse. August saw the worst anti-Christian violence in seven centuries. Sam Tadros, a Coptic Christian and author of Motherland Lost, says that there has been nothing like this year’s Muslim Brotherhood anti-Christian pogrom since 1321, when a similar wave of church burnings and persecution caused the decline of the Christian community in Egypt from nearly half of Egypt’s population to its current ten percent.

The violence of just three days in mid-August was staggering. Thirty-eight churches were destroyed, 23 vandalized; 58 homes were burned and looted and 85 shops, 16 pharmacies and 3 hotels were demolished. It was so bad that the Coptic Pope was in hiding, many Sunday services were canceled, and Christians stayed indoors, fearing for their lives. Six Christians were killed in the violence. Seven were kidnapped.

Maalula, Syria, is an ancient Christian town that has been so sheltered for 2,000 years that it’s one of only three villages where people still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Until September 7, when Islamist rebels attacked as part of the civil war ripping through the country.

An eyewitness to the murder of three Christians in Maalula—Mikhael Taalab, his cousin Antoun Taalab, and his grandson Sarkis el Zakhm—reported that the Islamists warned everyone present to convert to Islam. Sarkis answered clearly, Vatican news agency Fides reported: “I am a Christian and if you want to kill me because I am a Christian, do it.”

Sister Carmel, one of the Christians in Damascus who assist Maalula’s many displaced Christians, told Fides, “What Sarkis did is true martyrdom, a death in odium fidei.”

In recent weeks, we have Muslims killing Christians in Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan and Syria. Again.

It’s time to ask an important question that many of us have successfully avoided for far too long:

Can we finally start talking about the global persecution of Christians and other non-Muslims?

Finally? Please?

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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EU: What’s Fine for Spain Is Unacceptable for Israel

Recent news reports from Spain beautifully illustrate why nobody should take the European Union’s pretensions to moral superiority seriously–and especially not when it comes to Israel. Spain is now committing virtually every “abuse” the EU sanctimoniously accuses Israel of, without a peep of protest from its European peers.

For instance, Spain recently erected checkpoints along its border with Gibraltar that are creating real hardship. The checkpoints have lengthened travel times from 45 minutes to two hours for cross-border commuters and also increased costs, since people who used to drive now combine foot travel and taxis to reach work on time. These are precisely the complaints Europeans routinely level at Israeli checkpoints: that they undermine the Palestinian economy by increasing the time and expense of commuting to work or moving cargo.

But unlike the Spanish checkpoints–which blatantly violate the EU’s open-border rules–Israeli checkpoints are perfectly legal under international law, even if you accept the EU’s definition of the West Bank as “occupied territory” (which Israel doesn’t; it considers the area disputed territory). Under the laws of belligerent occupation, an occupying army is entitled to take reasonable military measures within the occupied territory to ensure its country’s security; it isn’t restricted to operating along the border. And Israel’s checkpoints were established to stop Palestinian suicide bombers.

Spain’s checkpoints, in contrast, are officially there to stop cigarette smuggling, though Gibraltar claims they are pure retaliation for its efforts to curb Spanish overfishing in its waters. By any standard, stopping suicide bombers is a stronger justification. Yet the same European officials who vociferously condemn Israel’s checkpoints have nothing to say about the Spanish ones.

Then there are the hundreds of thousands of Catalonians who formed a 250-mile human chain this month to demand independence from Spain. Catalonians also gave an absolute majority to pro-independence parties in last year’s provincial elections. Yet Spain adamantly refuses to let the province hold a referendum on secession.

By any standard, Israel has more justification for caution about Palestinian statehood than Spain does about Catalonian statehood. Catalonia has never threatened Spain in any way, nor is there any Catalonian terrorism. In contrast, large swathes of Palestinian society still call for Israel’s destruction, and every previous Israeli cession of land to the Palestinians has produced a security nightmare: nonstop rocket fire from Gaza, and endless suicide bombings and shooting attacks from the West Bank (until Israel reoccupied it). Indeed, of the roughly 1,800 Israelis killed by terrorists since Israel’s founding in 1948, fully two-thirds–about 1,200–were killed after Israel began ceding land to the Palestinians under the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Yet the European officials who repeatedly demand Israel’s immediate withdrawal from the West Bank haven’t said a word to support Catalonia. Apparently, Catalonians have no right to self-determination.

Then there are the Basques, whose oft-proclaimed desire for independence can’t be tested in a vote because Spain repeatedly bars pro-independence parties from running on the grounds of alleged ties to the Basque terror group ETA. That also doesn’t bother anyone in Europe, even though Europe objects vociferously when Israel refuses to talk to Palestinian parties that actively support terror, like Yasser Arafat’s PLO during the second intifada. Nor was Europe troubled when Spain severed peace talks with ETA at the very first terror attack, which killed exactly two people, though it condemned Israel viciously for halting talks with Arafat over repeated terror attacks that killed more than 1,000 people.

In short, Europe denounces Israeli actions as unacceptable even as it deems the exact same actions by Spain unexceptionable. There’s a name for such double standards, and it isn’t “human rights.” It’s known as hypocrisy.

SOURCE

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Syria’s Refugee Problem and the West

Refugees from Syria should be hosted by Middle Eastern countries

By Daniel Pipes
 
The lull in the chemical-weapon crisis offers a chance to divert attention to the huge flow of refugees leaving Syria and to rethink some misguided assumptions about their future.

About one-tenth of Syria’s 22 million residents have fled across an international border, mostly to neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. Unable to cope with the numbers of refugees, the governments of these countries are restricting entry, prompting international concern about the Syrians’ plight. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, suggests that his agency (as the Guardian paraphrases him) “look[s] to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in countries better able to afford to host them,” recalling the post-2003 Iraqi resettlement program, when 100,000 Iraqis resettled in the West. Others also look instinctively to the West for a solution; the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for example, has called on Western states “to do more” for Syrian refugees.

The appeal has been heard: Canada has offered to take 1,300 Syrian refugees and the United States 2,000. Italy has received 4,600 Syrian refugees by sea. Germany has offered to take (and has begun receiving) 5,000. Sweden has offered asylum to the 15,000 Syrians already in that country. Local groups are preparing for a substantial influx throughout the West.

But these numbers pale beside a population numbering in the millions, meaning that the West alone cannot solve the Syrian-refugee problem. Further, many in Western countries (especially European ones such as the Netherlands and Switzerland) have wearied of taking in Muslim peoples who do not assimilate but instead seek to replace Western mores with the sharia. Both German chancellor Angela Merkel and British prime minister David Cameron have deemed multiculturalism, with its insistence on the equal value of all civilizations, a failure. Worse, fascist movements such as the Golden Dawn in Greece are growing.

And many more Muslim refugees are likely on their way. In addition to Syrians, these include Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, Egyptians, Somalis, and Algerians. Other nationals (e.g., Yemenis and Tunisians) might soon join their ranks.

Happily, a solution lies at hand.

To place Syrians in “countries better able to afford to host them,” as Guterres delicately puts it, one need simply divert attention from the Christian-majority West toward the vast, empty expanses of the fabulously wealthy Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as the smaller but in some cases even richer states of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. For starters, these countries (which I will call Arabia) are much more convenient to repatriate to Syria from than, say, New Zealand. Living there also means not enduring frozen climes (as in Sweden) or learning difficult languages spoken by few (such as Danish).

More important, Muslims of Arabia share deep religious ties with their Syrian brothers and sisters, so their settling there avoids the strains of life in the West. Consider some of the haram (forbidden) elements of life in the West that Muslim refugees avoid by living in Arabia:

Pet dogs (of which there are 61 million in the United States alone)

A pork-infused cuisine and an alcohol-soaked social life

State-sponsored lotteries and Las Vegas–style gambling emporia

Immodestly dressed women, ballet, swimsuit beauty contests, single women living alone, mixed bathing, dating, and lawful prostitution

Lesbian bars, pride parades, and gay marriage

A lax attitude toward hallucinogens, with some drugs legal in certain jurisdictions

Blasphemous novels, anti-Koran politicians, organizations of apostate Muslims, and a pastor who repeatedly and publicly burns Korans

Instead, Muslims living in Saudi Arabia can rejoice in a law code that (unlike Ireland’s) permits polygamy and (unlike Britain’s) allows child marriages. Unlike France, Arabia allows wife-beating and goes easy on female genital mutilation. Unlike in the United States, slaveholding does not entail imprisonment and male relatives can kill  their womenfolk for the sake of family honor without fear of the death penalty.

The example of Syrians and Arabia suggests a far broader point: Regardless of the affluence of the host countries, refugees should be allowed and encouraged to remain within their own cultural zone, where they most readily fit in, can best stay true to their traditions, least disrupt the host society, and from whence they might most easily return home. Thus, East Asians should generally resettle in East Asia, Middle Easterners in the Middle East, Africans in Africa, and Westerners in the West.

U.N. take note: Focus less on the West, more on the rest.

SOURCE

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Shot Down, Twice

Shot down over Laos in 1969, the bodies of two MIA Vietnam era Air Force aviators were recovered and returned home for burial at Arlington National Cemetery this week. Major James Sizemore and his navigator Major Howard Andre were buried at Arlington National Cemetery, laid to rest side by side, just the way they flew.

However, the Air Force refused the traditional ceremonial flyover to honor these men. Captain Rose Richardson noted, “The Air Force is unable to support the flyover request for Major Sizemore due to limited flying hours and budget constraints.” In other words, this is the latest entry in Obama's “blame the Republican sequester” charade. However, volunteer pilots with the Warrior Flight Team stepped into the gap and provided a flyover, including a Douglas A26 Invader of the type Sizemore and Andre were flying when they were shot down 44 years ago. The Invader was joined by P51 Mustangs off its wings.

The Patriot Post has now written about Obama's moratorium on honor flights several times since his sequestration cuts began, and each time we have noted that, while these flights have been denied, Barack Obama continues to use Air Force One and its entire contingent of additional Air Force aircraft and support crews to commute to political fundraisers, stump speeches and vacations. It's not that we think Obama should book his flights on Expedia, but the fact that the commander in chief continues to use this most costly Air Force asset for purely political or pleasure trips while denying honor flights. And he should be called out by the national media. Even the conservative Beltway media have not seen fit to mention this unmitigated hypocrisy once.

SOURCE

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Sliding Farther Down the Freedom Scale



It's becoming an annual lament: Once the United States was among the most economically free nations on the planet, but now we barely crack the top 20. According to the 2013 Economic Freedom of the World report, now co-published by the Cato and Fraser Institutes, we rank not only behind the usual leaders Hong Kong and Singapore, but Jordan and the United Kingdom as well. Jordan? Are you kidding us?

Apparently they're serious, and a key reason for the decline is the ever-growing role of our government in shaping the economy. At the turn of the century, the United States was generally just behind Hong Kong and Singapore atop the rankings, but that was before the size and scope of government grew thanks to the 9/11 terrorist attack and its resulting “enhanced” security measures, new and exploding entitlement programs, and – particularly in the last five years – a new regulatory state in response to economic crisis. “I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system,” said George W. Bush in 2008, and with that our economic freedom continued its plunge.

One piece of good news, if any can be found, is that the U.S. has stabilized its ranking at 19th after plunging eight spots from 10th to 18th between 2009 and 2010 – the current edition of Economic Freedom of the World is based on 2011 data, which is the latest available. The value assigned by the study showed we actually improved our lot from a 7.70 score (out of a possible 10) in last year's report to 7.74 this time. But that's a long way from the 8.65 rating we attained in the year 2000, and it may be at least a half-decade before we claw our way back over the 8-point barrier.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

French socialists vow “unprecedented” spending cuts:  "France vowed 'unprecedented' cuts in public spending to rein in its deficit without compromising much-needed growth, as it unveiled its draft 2014 budget on Wednesday. The pledge came as new figures showed the number of registered job seekers in France fell for the first time in more than two years. But critics on either side of the political spectrum remained sceptical that the cost-cutting would alleviate hardship in the Eurozone’s second largest economy, which is grappling with record-high unemployment, limited investment and low consumer spending."

Equality and the American public< /a>:  "One of the reasons why our nation has prospered is that we have been able to capitalize on our individual abilities, abilities that are diverse and unequal. It’s the differences and 'disparities' between people that allows for innovation, invention, new technology, growth, prosperity and progress. To enforce equality upon the populous is not only unnatural (equality does not exist in nature), but it prevents the very prosperity we all desire, resulting in class warfare." 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Media Blackout: Group Arrested For “Hunting Whites”



On Monday, police in Cincinnatti arrested a group of teenagers who reportedly terrorized folks in the downtown area, in a series of violent assaults.  All of the beatings and robberies took place between June 1 to July 4.

Cortez Baker, 16, Randolph Jones, 16, and Kentrelle Aldridge, 16, have all been charged with several counts of robbery and assault, and more charges are likely to be filed.

WKRC reported:

"Police say the teens essentially hunted their victims. One says the suspects were passengers on his bus when they targeted him. “They didn’t ask me for anything.”

Chad Laumann was beaten and robbed on East Fourth Street last month while on his way to work. Though outnumbered, the 23 year-old says he outsmarted his attackers by intentionally staying in view of the surveillance camera. “So as they’re attacking you, you tell them there’s a camera. Yes, I tell them there’s cameras. And what did they say? They didn’t say anything. They just took off running.”

Two of the assailants can be seen kicking and punching Laumann, while a third rifles through his pockets.

In fact, it was that same surveillance footage which was essential in the teens’ capture.  A Cincinnatti bike patrol officer recognized one of the suspects by the distinctive shirt he was wearing, which he also wore on the night of the attack.

In all, police believe the gang is responsible for at least four equally vicious attacks.

Cincinnatti Police Capt. Paul Broxterman described the string of assaults to WLWT, as “a pack of lions hunting down a wounded zebra.”

On Tuesday, another victim came forward, whose attack was also caught on video.

All three alleged assailants live in a group home operated by Kelly Youth Services and had been given an outside pass for ‘good behavior,’ the night Laumann was so brutally assaulted.

Of course, not one national media outlet has seen fit to give these racially-charged attacks any coverage, while providing nearly around-the-clock coverage to the George Zimmerman trial.

SOURCE

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He Votes



Snopes tried to debunk this but could not

She votes



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Would you like to fall into the hands of someone with this mentality?

Gaza man suspends animal that ate his salary by limbs and posts image on Facebook



A Palestinian man has retaliated against a mouse that chewed through some of his wages by suspending the animal by its limbs and posting an image on Facebook.

The man, who lives in Gaza but is originally from the city of Hebron in the West Bank, tied the mouse to ropes to avenge the mouse’s actions in sneaking into the Palestinian’s closet and eating 3 banknotes of 200 Israeli Shekels each (Dh200) of the man’s pay.

The man claimed he had just received his weekly salary and had hidden it from view for safety.

SOURCE

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Forget Cyprus.  What about Poland?

Are we sure "It can't happen here"?

While the world was glued to the developments in the Mediterranean in the past week, Poland took a page straight out of Rahm Emanuel's playbook and in order to not let a crisis go to waste, announced quietly that it would transfer to the state - i.e., confiscate - the bulk of assets owned by the country's private pension funds (many of them owned by such foreign firms as PIMCO parent Allianz, AXA, Generali, ING and Aviva), without offering any compensation. In effect, the state just nationalized roughly half of the private sector pension fund assets, although it had a more politically correct name for it: pension overhaul.

By way of background, Poland has a hybrid pension system: as Reuters explains, mandatory contributions are made into both the state pension vehicle, known as ZUS, and the private funds, which are collectively known by the Polish acronym OFE. Bonds make up roughly half the private funds' portfolios, with the rest company stocks.

And while a change to state-pension funds was long awaited - an overhaul if you will - nobody expected that this would entail a literal pillage of private sector assets.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said private funds within the state-guaranteed system would have their bond holdings transferred to a state pension vehicle, but keep their equity holdings.  The funds would effectively be left with only the equities portions of their assets, even this would be depleted, and there will be uncertainty about the number of new savers joining.

But why is Poland engaging in behavior that will ultimately be disastrous to future capital allocation in non-public pension funds (the type that can at least on paper generate some returns as opposed to "public" funds which are guaranteed to lose)? After all, this is a last ditch step which no rational person would engage in unless there were no other option. Simple: there were no other option, and the driver is the same reason the world everywhere else is broke too - too much debt.

SOURCE

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Chef Geoff: Wage hike would 'wipe me out'

Chef Geoff says that if tipped restaurant workers get a minimum pay raise to $8.25 or more an hour, it would "wipe me out"

Among the bevy of minimum wage hike bills introduced by D.C. Council members Tuesday is one that may destroy Chef Geoff.  So wrote Geoffrey Tracy, aka Chef Geoff, in a letter to Councilman Vincent Orange, D-At large, whose proposed legislation would raise the minimum wage for tipped restaurant employees from $2.77 to $8.75 within five years.

That hike, wrote Tracy, owner of two D.C. restaurants (one downtown and another at 3201 New Mexico Ave. NW) would cost him $494,000 a year.

“Without getting into the specifics of my finances,” Tracy wrote, “that would wipe me out. Many politicians, when posed with this will say ‘Just raise prices.’ Please, if I could have raised prices to make an extra half million, I would have done it. People already complain about prices.”

Specifically, Orange’s bill calls for a hike to D.C.’s minimum wage from $8.25 to $12.50 an hour by January 2018. The tip employee minimum, Orange said, would increase to 70 percent of the city’s standard minimum wage, or $8.75 an hour.

Tracy is chairman of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. He told me Tuesday that restaurant employee compensation works differently than other, traditional businesses. Employees are guaranteed to earn a minimum wage, he said, either through salary plus tips, or, if tips fall short, through additional employer pay. Most workers, he said, “make a lot more than that.”  “That’s how the system works,” Tracy said.

Kathy Hollinger, RAMW president, said the industry "recognizes there needs to be a modest increase in the minimum wage," but Orange's tipped worker boost, she said, is “a little extreme.” “It’s not a 50 percent increase,” Hollinger said. “It’s significant. This was not thoughtful at any level. How are you going to do this at a 190 percent increase?”

As he introduced the bill, Orange touted the measure as a means of lifting families out of poverty. He made the same argument for the living wage bill that Mayor Vincent Gray successfully vetoed.

“The time is right for the District to raise its minimum wage,” Orange said. “The city is in the midst of unparalled prosperity and citizens who weather the bad times should also be able to afford the opportunity to enjoy the good times.”

But restaurants, Hollinger said, are generally small businesses, and at more than $8 an hour, they’ll be destroyed.

SOURCE

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Why Has Mahmoud Abbas Given the Nod to "Lone Wolf" Palestinian Terror?

No word of condemnation has come from any Palestinian leader for the murders of two Israeli soldiers two days apart by West Bank Palestinians: Saturday, September 21, Sgt. Tomer Hazan, 20, from Bat Yam, was found murdered in a water hole near the West Bank town of Qalqilya.

Sunday, another 20-year old, 1st Sgt. Gal Koby from Tirat Hacarmel, was killed by a single Palestinian sniper’s bullet while on guard at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron

The silence from Ramallah is well-orchestrated, a signal that Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, is in favour of picking off Israeli soldiers every few days, so as to boost his hand in the US-sponsored negotiations with Israel.

Those talks have not advanced an inch, since the parties remain entrenched in their widely separate positions.

Three months into the talks initiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni [pictured below] and Yitzhak Molcho for Israel and the Palestinian Saeb Erekat have not even agreed on an agenda.  On September 8, Livni proposed a working agenda of 17 items. The Palestinians countered with an agenda of six items, all them relating to the most contentious “core issues” of the dispute.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Key official in IRS tea party controversy resigns:  "Lois Lerner, a key official in the IRS’s tea party controversy, resigned Monday morning, according to the agency. Lerner submitted her resignation as an IRS accountability board was preparing to call for her removal on the basis of 'neglect of duties,' according to congressional aides from the House Ways and Means Committee. It is unclear whether Lerner’s resignation has already taken effect. The IRS said it could not comment further on the matter due to federal privacy rules."

States move ahead with food stamp cuts:   "Some states are already embracing deep cuts to the food stamp program similar to those passed by House Republicans in Washington, ending the food subsidy for tens of thousands of low-income Americans regardless of what Congress does. Spurred by the ballooning cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the GOP-dominated House voted Thursday 217-210 to cut $39 billion in the food assistance program over 10 years. Among the changes: Ending waivers for states that during the recession allowed as many as 4 million people to collect food stamps who otherwise would not have qualified." [Note: These allegedly "deep" cuts are a whopping 5% and would take food stamp spending back to those bare-bones, small-government days of mid-2011]

Switzerland: Referendum voters choose to keep conscription:  "Swiss voters want to keep the country's compulsory military service, exit polls from the latest national referendum on the topic have suggested. Voting trends indicated a large majority of Swiss rejected plans to abolish conscription. Correspondents say the Swiss Army is regarded as costly and many young men complain that their time is wasted. But older voters say obligatory duty in the armed forces remains the best way to defend the neutral country."

Former FBI agent to plead guilty to informing public:  "The Justice Department says it’s solved one of the most significant leak cases in recent memory: disclosure of an Al Qaeda airliner-bombing plot last year that had reportedly been penetrated by western intelligence services. Former FBI agent Donald Sachtleben, 55, admitted in court papers Monday that he disclosed classified information about the plot to a journalist. The court filings don’t identify the reporter or the news outlet, but a federal law enforcement official who asked not to be named told POLITICO the leaks in question were to the Associated Press."

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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American Banana Republic

The decay of a free society doesn’t happen overnight, but we’re getting there

By Mark Steyn

‘This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.”

He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems to come round earlier every year. “This is not a deadbeat nation,” President Obama continued. “We don’t run out on our tab.” True. But we don’t pay it off either. We just keep running it up, ever higher. And every time the bartender says, “Mebbe you’ve had enough, pal,” we protest, “Jush another couple trillion for the road. Set ’em up, Joe.” And he gives you that look that kinda says he wishes you’d run out on your tab back when it was $23.68.

Still, Obama is right. We’re not a banana republic, if only because the debt of banana republics is denominated in a currency other than their own — i.e., the U.S. dollar. When you’re the guys who print the global currency, you can run up debts undreamt of by your average generalissimo. As Obama explained in another of his recent speeches, “Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” I won’t even pretend to know what he and his speechwriters meant by that one, but the fact that raising the debt ceiling “has been done over a hundred times” does suggest that spending more than it takes in is now a permanent feature of American government. And no one has plans to do anything about it. Which is certainly banana republic-esque.

Is all this spending necessary? Every day, the foot-of-page-37 news stories reveal government programs it would never occur to your dimestore caudillo to blow money on. On Thursday, it was the Food and Drug Administration blowing just shy of $200 grand to find out whether its Twitter and Facebook presence is “well-received.” A fifth of a million dollars isn’t even a rounding error in most departmental budgets, so nobody cares. But the FDA is one of those sclerotic American institutions that has near to entirely seized up. In October 1920, it occurred to an Ontario doctor called Frederick Banting that insulin might be isolated and purified and used to treat diabetes; by January 1923, Eli Lilly & Co were selling insulin to American pharmacies: A little over two years from concept to market. Now the FDA adds at least half-a-decade to the process, and your chances of making it through are far slimmer: As recently as the late Nineties, they were approving 157 new drugs per half-decade. Today it’s less than half that.

But they’ve got $182,000 to splash around on finding out whether people really like them on Facebook, or they’re just saying that. So they’ve given the dough to a company run by Dan Beckmann, a former “new media aide” to President Obama. That has the whiff of the banana republic about it, too.

The National Parks Service, which I had carelessly assumed was the service responsible for running national parks, has been making videos on Muslim women’s rights: “Islam gave women a whole bunch of rights that Western women acquired later in the 19th and 20th centuries, and we’ve had these rights since the seventh century,” explains a lady from AnNur Islamic School in Schenectady at the National Park Service website, nps.gov. Fascinating stuff, no doubt. But what’s it to do with national parks? Maybe the rangers could pay Dan Beckmann a quarter-million bucks to look into whether the National Parks’ Islamic outreach is using social media as effectively as it might.

Where do you go to get a piece of this action? As the old saying goes, bank robbers rob banks because that’s where the money is. But the smart guys rob taxpayers because that’s where the big money is. According to the Census Bureau’s latest “American Community Survey,” between 2000 and 2012 the nation’s median household income dropped 6.6 percent. Yet in the District of Columbia median household income rose 23.3 percent. According to a 2010 survey, seven of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties are in the Washington commuter belt. Many capital cities have prosperous suburbs — London, Paris, Rome — because those cities are also the capitals of enterprise, finance, and showbiz. But Washington does nothing but government, and it gets richer even as Americans get poorer. That’s very banana republic, too: Proximity to state power is now the best way to make money. Once upon a time Americans found fast-running brooks and there built mills to access the water that kept the wheels turning. But today the ambitious man finds a big money-no-object bureaucracy that likes to splash the cash around and there builds his lobbying group or consultancy or social media optimization strategy group.

The CEO of Panera Bread, as some kind of do-gooder awareness-raising shtick, is currently attempting to live on food stamps, and not finding it easy. But being dependent on government handouts isn’t supposed to be easy. Instead of trying life at the bottom, why doesn’t he try life in the middle? In 2012, the top 10 percent were taking home 50.4 percent of the nation’s income. That’s an all-time record, beating out the 49 percent they were taking just before the 1929 market crash. With government redistributing more money than ever before, we’ve mysteriously wound up with greater income inequality than ever before. Across the country, “middle-class” Americans have accumulated a trillion dollars in college debt in order to live a less comfortable life than their high-school-educated parents and grandparents did in the Fifties and Sixties. That’s banana republic, too: no middle class, but only a government elite and its cronies, and a big dysfunctional mass underneath, with very little social mobility between the two.

Like to change that? Maybe advocate for less government spending? Hey, Lois Lerner’s IRS has got an audit with your name on it. The tax collectors of the United States treat you differently according to your political beliefs. That’s pure banana republic, but no one seems to mind very much. This week it emerged that senior Treasury officials, up to and including Turbotax Timmy Geithner, knew what was going on at least as early as spring 2012. But no one seems to mind very much. In the words of an insouciant headline writer at Government Executive, “the magazine for senior federal bureaucrats” (seriously), back in May:

“The Vast Majority of IRS Employees Aren’t Corrupt”

So, if the vast majority aren’t, what proportion is corrupt? Thirty-eight percent? Thirty-three? Twenty-seven? And that’s the good news? The IRS is not only institutionally corrupt, it’s corrupt in the service of one political party. That’s Banana Republic 101.

What comes next? Government officials present in Benghazi during last year’s slaughter have been warned not to make themselves available to congressional inquiry. CNN obtained one e-mail spelling out the stakes to CIA employees: “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”

“That’s all very ominous,” wrote my colleague Jonah Goldberg the other day, perhaps a little too airily for my taste. I’d rank it somewhere north of “ominous.”

“Banana republic” is an American coinage — by O. Henry, a century ago, for a series of stories set in the fictional tropical polity of Anchuria. But a banana republic doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a sensibility, and it’s difficult to mark the precise point at which a free society decays into something less respectable. Pace Obama, ever swelling debt, contracts for cronies, a self-enriching bureaucracy, a shrinking middle class preyed on by corrupt tax collectors, and thuggish threats against anyone who disagrees with you put you pretty far down the banana-strewn path.

SOURCE

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Obamacare will Question Your Sex Life

‘Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?"

Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it's the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you're seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.

"This is nasty business," says New York cardiologist Dr. Adam Budzikowski. He called the sex questions "insensitive, stupid and very intrusive." He couldn't think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information - but he knows he'll be pushed to ask for it.

The president's "reforms" aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients' records confidential.

Embarrassing though it may be, you confide things to a doctor you wouldn't tell anyone else. But this is entirely different.

Doctors and hospitals who don't comply with the federal government's electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments now; starting in 2015, they'll face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion for these incentives.

Dr. Richard Amerling, a nephrologist and associate professor at Albert Einstein Medical College, explains that your medical record should be "a story created by you and your doctor solely for your treatment and benefit." But the new requirements are turning it "into an interrogation, and the data will not be confidential."

Lack of confidentiality is what concerned the New York Civil Liberties Union in a 2012 report. Electronic medical records have enormous benefits, but with one click of a mouse, every piece of information in a patient's record, including the social history, is transmitted, disclosing too much.

The social-history questions also include whether you've ever used drugs, including IV drugs. As the NYCLU cautioned, revealing a patient's past drug problem, even if it was a decade ago, risks stigma.

On the other end of the political spectrum is the Goldwater Institute, a free-market think tank. It argues that by requiring everyone to have health insurance and then imposing penalties on insurers, doctors and hospitals who don't use the one-click electronic system, the law is violating Americans' medical privacy.

The administration is ignoring these protests from privacy advocates. On Jan. 17, HHS announced patients who want to keep something out of their electronic record should pay cash. That's impractical for most people.

There's one question they can't ask: Thanks to the NRA, Section 2716 of the ObamaCare law bars the federal government from compelling doctors and hospitals to ask you if you own a firearm.
But that's the only question they can't be told to ask you.

Where are the women's rights groups that went to the barricades in the 1980s and 1990s to prevent the federal government from accessing a woman's health records? Hypocritically, they are silent now.

Patients need to defend their own privacy by refusing to answer the intrusive social-history questions. If you need to confide something pertaining to your treatment, ask your doctor about keeping two sets of books so that your secret stays in the office. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath seriously and won't be offended.

Are such precautions paranoid? Hardly. WikiLeaker Bradley Manning showed how incompetent the government is at keeping its own secrets; incidents where various agencies accidentally disclose personal data like Social Security numbers are legion. And that's not to mention the ways in which commercial databases are prone to hacking and/or exploitation.

Be careful about sharing your medical secrets with Uncle Sam.

SOURCE

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Racism isn’t Right Wing

The article below refers to the British National Party, primarily an anti-immigration party

Why are groups such as the BNP exclusively labelled as far-right or right wing for their racist views?

Racism isn’t Right Wing. Nor is it Left Wing. Racism does not adhere to any specific typeset ideologue. Racism is just that, racism.

Looking through the BNP’s 2010 General Election manifesto they have significantly more policies in common with a hard line Left Wing party like the Socialist Workers Party than they do with any that sit on the Right Wing.

A BNP led Government would call for the re-nationalisation of vital services in “Britain’s interest”. The polar opposite to the approach of a Right Wing Government who by nature would seek success through Privatisation. It’s simply inaccurate to refer to the BNP as Right Wing, even more so as the label seems to be predicated entirely on their anti-immigration stance.

Similar “far-right” labels have been placed at the feet of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party who tried to rid pre-war Germany of Capitalism and the societal inequalities he perceived it to yield.  It seems again the only “Right Wing” traits in Hitler’s Germany are again based upon race. Hitler was a Lefty.

Extremist politics tend to always look the same. State, and a lot of it. The real far right is almost exclusively dominated with Libertarians and Neo-Conservatives. The debate is no longer one of Left Wing and Right Wing, but Authoritarian against Libertarian. Those who would further impose the state, versus those who would repeal it.

Incorrectly labelling groups like the BNP as Right Wing is lazy journalism, and doing so creates an undeserved stigma around the Right Wing and this clouds the real issue.

The BNP are statists, and statists are the real enemy of freedom.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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