Florida Senator Bill Nelson (D) Confronted about his Support for Iran Nuke Deal

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A concerned Floridian confronts Sen. Bill Nelson about his SUPPORT of the Obama Iran Deal in Reagan National Airport, on the day after the Stop Iran Deal Rally in Washington, D.C.

Watch his reaction.

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Saudi Arabia refuses to take Syrian refugees, but offers to build 200 mosques in Germany

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This tells you all you need to know about the “refugee” crisis in Europe. It is, as I said, a hijrah: a migration for the sake of Allah, to plant Islam in a new land. If they were really refugees, the Saudis would take them. But no, they are invaders, and the Saudis are offering to make things easier for them by providing them with facilities for the invasion — remember, four separate studies since 1998 have shown that 80% of Saudi-funded mosques in the U.S. teach hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity to replace the Constitution with Sharia.

“Saudi Arabia Offers to Build 200 Mosques for Syrians in Germany,” by Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage, September 10, 2015:

Saudi Arabia, which doesn’t permit the construction of churches but finances a mosque construction spree in the land of the infidel, will not be taking in Syrian refugees. Even though they are fellow Muslims. It will however offer to build 200 mosques in Germany for their use.

It’s a kind offer. The only proper way for Europe to reciprocate would be to send a million soccer hooligans to Saudi Arabia and then offer to build facilities to teach them of the importance of trashing the country and abusing any native they come across.

Of course the Saudis aren’t stupid enough to fall for that one. Not even if the soccer hooligans bring along the occasional woman and child to use as emotional human shields while battering their way into a country they hate in every possible way aside from its social services.

Only Westerners are stupid enough to fall for that one.

Saudi mosques have played a key role in the rise of Islamic terrorism in the West. Just think of the explosive wonders that something short of a million migrants and all the mosques they can Allah Akbar in will accomplish in Germany.

Maybe the next Caliph of the Islamic State will even shout Allah Akbar while beheading some local infidel with a German accent. Maybe that Islamic State will even be in Hamburg.

Why is it that so few people ask themselves why the Saudis are willing to build 200 mosques for these “poor, desperate refugees”, yet won’t take a single one in?

It’s the same answer to the question of why so many Muslims claim to care about “Palestinians” to the point of genocide, yet won’t take them in and give them citizenship.

These aren’t refugees. They’re armies.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Turkey’s Erdogan, the man more popular among German Muslims than he is among his own oppressed people. Here’s the poem that the formerly secular Turkish state sent him to jail for, before it became an Islamist hellhole of minarets, Erdogan palaces and crumbling shopping malls.

“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

Saudi Arabia just offered to build 200 barracks for the 800,000 soldiers invading Germany.

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“Gender-neutral” Bathrooms, the Mixed-up Kid and Homosexual Dad

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The big news out of San Francisco last week was that it would register another first: a city elementary school is going to switch to all “gender-neutral” bathrooms. The idea is, as the Daily Mail put it, to “accommodate young students who don’t fit into gender norms.” Of course, this apparently means that normal students who might like those supposedly antiquated single-sex bathrooms can just go to Hell (I mean, the Hell that isn’t San Francisco).

The scene of this enlightened step into the brave new world is Miraloma Elementary. Now, you might think a San Fran school would have a couple of hundred sexually confused kids, but, actually, the change is in deference to six to eight children (and to liberal dementia) who “range from tomboys to transgender,” reports SFGate.com. Hey, don’t you know? The whims of the few outweigh the good of the many.

But what really caught my attention was this passage from the Mail:

‘I think most people don’t think about how difficult it can be, going to the bathroom for someone like my son,’ said a woman named Jae, who refused to give her last name to protect her son.

Her son, a first-grader, is a boy who identifies as a boy but prefers to dress and style his hair like a girl.

‘He was just struggling with it quietly,’ the mom added. ‘[Now] he can just use the restroom without thinking about it.’

Ari Braverman, 6, says he too is happy about the bathroom change since he likes to dress like a girl and doesn’t discriminate between boys’ and girls’ toys.

‘I think it’s nice because then people don’t have to be separated just to go into bathrooms,’ Ari said. ‘It’s just easier to go to the bathroom if there’s just a bathroom.’

Ari’s dad, Gedalia Braverman, agreed, saying, ‘As parents, you eventually realize it’s not your job to change your child’s personality. It’s not my job to identify and pigeonhole my children’s genders, and certainly it’s not the school’s.’

There’s a lot here to take issue with. For instance, one could also imagine the following: “Ari Braverman, 6, says he too is happy about ice cream for dinner since he likes ice cream and doesn’t care for meat and vegetables.” Then there’s, “Ari Braverman, 6, says he too is happy about replacing math with video-game time since he likes video games and doesn’t discriminate between education and fooling around.” What a six-year-old thinks about social norms is only taken seriously by someone (such as, let’s say, Jimmy Carter) who would cite in a debate his little daughter’s views on nuclear-weapons policy, or a president who’d say his flip-flop on marriage was influenced by his kids. (Of course, Barack Obama was for faux marriage in 1996, so it’s more likely dad influenced Sasha and Malia.)

Speaking of influence, restroom Luddite that I am I got the feeling from the Mail piece that parents who are new-age bathroom reformers probably didn’t give their kids a normal start to life. So I did some sleuthing. Finding information on the secretive “Jae” was unlikely, but there couldn’t be more than one Gedalia Braverman in the U.S. And lo and behold, while this isn’t mentioned by the Mail, I learned that Braverman is actually a single homosexual father. Moreover, read the following, from a blog describing “Gedalia’s Journey”:

His twins were born thanks to the modern technology of assisted reproduction, and with the help of his friends.

In last June’s newsletter for Pacific Fertility Center, the clinic that helped Braverman become a parent, he describes the story of his journey.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child. In my case it took a village to create a child. Thanks to a loving gestational surrogate, and longtime friends as both egg and sperm donors, my dream of parenting has come true,” he writes.

Question: Does it take a village idiot to raise a really mixed up child?

Of course, I’m sure Ari’s Little Journey is just an anomaly. We know that homosexuals aren’t any more likely to raise homosexual or maladjusted children than are average parents. We know this because the Left has told us so, again and again, citing “studies” all the way through. And it’s bigotry to think otherwise (or even to think. Emote now, will ya’?).

Except for one thing. We also know that little children model the behavior of those around them; they could not do otherwise. While Braverman says it isn’t his “job” to change his child’s “personality” or pigeonhole his “gender,” the reality is that he’s shaping his children’s personalities whether he realizes it or not. You influence your child by what you choose to be (which determines the example you set), by what you say, how you act, and by what you don’t say. In fact, “values are caught more than they’re taught”; it’s what’s assumed that is learned best.

Moreover, this Rousseau-esque notion of just letting your child be what he is “naturally” is pure and utter nonsense. Naturally, a baby is a barbarian, illiterate, bereft of morals and manners, and quite likely a sociopath. Just as how children have to be taught math or biology, they have to taught (trained in, actually) morals and civility. That’s how they become civil-ized.

This gets at the contradiction inherent in the “I’m not going to put my child in a gender straitjacket” fad. (Note: “gender” once only referred to words, and it shouldn’t be used with people.) Why stop at “gender”? Psychobabblers diagnose “gender dysphoria,” the sense that you’re stuck in the body of the wrong sex. But there’s also “species dysphoria,” the sense that you’re stuck in the body of the wrong species. As to this, a young Texas woman going by the name “Wolfie Blackheart” insisted in 2010 that she was a canine.

So why suppress your child’s “true personality” by putting him in a species straitjacket? Yet we do. We teach children language, manners, our human society’s norms (mostly), how to use human-birthed technology and a whole host of other things beyond the average mammal’s capacities. We do this because the child is human; we thus assume that a human-specific upbringing is a better idea than raising him like a ferret.

But just as this is indicated by biologically determined species, so does his biologically determined sex indicate the wisdom of a sex-specific upbringing. This gets at a once universally recognized truth:

Contrary to modern myth, sex stereotyping is actually a good and necessary thing.

It’s not the application of a “straitjacket” any more than is providing musical instruction to a music prodigy. Rather, in the same vein, it is the process of recognizing the characteristic strengths and roles of each sex and providing teaching that will augment those strengths in preparation for those roles. Just as targeted training can help turn that musical rough diamond into a maestro, it can turn girls and boys into women and men.

On the other hand, we could just continue down the “gender identity” road and turn the whole nation into San Francisco.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of First grade twins Ari Braverman (left), and Ella Braverman (right), both 6 years old, show first grade gender neutral bathrooms at Miraloma Elementary school in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, September 2, 2015. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle. To contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Welfare benefits causing Muslim migration to Europe and U.S.

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Click on the image for a printable copy of the policy analysis.

The CATO Institute’s Michael D. Tanner and Charles Hughes in their comprehensive policy analysis titled “The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off: Europe” report:

If welfare benefits become too generous, they can create a significant incentive that encourages recipients to remain “on the dole” rather than to seek employment. Benefits in European Union (EU) countries vary widely, but in many of them, benefits are high relative to what an individual could expect to earn from a low-wage or entry-level job. For example, for a single parent with two children in 2013—

  • Welfare benefits in nine EU countries exceeded €15,000 ($18,200) per year. In six countries, benefits exceeded €20,000 ($24,300). Denmark offers the most generous benefit package, valued at €31,709 ($38,558).
  • In nine countries, welfare benefits exceeded the minimum wage in that country.
  • Benefits in 11 countries exceeded half of the net income for someone earning the average wage in that country, and in 6 countries it exceeded 60 percent of the net average wage income.
  • In Austria, Croatia, and Denmark, the effective marginal tax rate for someone leaving welfare for work was nearly 100 percent, meaning that a person would gain virtually no additional income from working. In another 16 countries, individuals would face an effective marginal tax rate in excess of 50 percent.
  • Benefits in the United States fit comfortably into the mainstream of welfare states. Excluding Medicaid, the United States would rank 10th among the EU nations analyzed, more generous than France and slightly less generous than Sweden. Thirty-five states offer a package more generous than the mean benefit package offered in the European countries analyzed.

Many European countries have recognized the problem and have begun to reform their welfare systems to create a better transition from welfare to work. In fact, the United States is falling behind some European countries with regard to welfare reform.

Countries that are serious about reducing welfare dependency and rewarding work should consider strengthening work requirements, establishing time limits for participation, and tightening eligibility. Perhaps more important, countries should examine the level of benefits available and the effective marginal tax rates their welfare systems create, with an eye toward reducing disincentives and encouraging work.

Read the full policy analysis buy clicking here.

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More Muslim terror cases in U.S. in 2015 than in any year since 9/11/2001

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Clearly the jihadis are more emboldened than ever. Clearly the Islamic State’s declaration of the caliphate has been an impetus for renewed jihad terror activity in the West. That there has been and can be no honest public discussion of why this is happening only ensures that it will continue, and grow more virulent.

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“There Have Been More Jihadist Terror Cases in U.S. in 2015 Than in Any Year Since 9/11,” by Michael W. Chapman, CNS News, September 4, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

(CNSNews.com) – The “Terror Threat Snapshot” for August 2015, released by the majority staff of the House Homeland Security Committee, states the terror threat level in America is high and “getting steadily worse,” and that there have been “more U.S.-based jihadist terror cases in 2015 than in any full year since 9/11.”

The “Terror Threat Snapshot” also reported that the Islamic State “is fueling the Islamist terror” globally; that Islamist terrorists “are intent on killing law enforcement” officers and U.S. troops, as well as civilians; and that 25,000 fighters from 100 countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State.

In addition, more than 250 Americans have traveled, or attempted to travel, to Syria to fight with the Islamists.

“The terror threat level in the U.S. homeland is high, and the situation is getting steadily worse,” said the report. “There have been more U.S.-based jihadist terror cases in 2015 than in any full year since 9/11.”

In 2015 so far, there have been 30 U.S.-based jihadist cases, the committee informed CNSNews.com. In 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, there were only two U.S.-based jihadist cases uncovered that year, the committee said.

One of those cases involved Jose Padilla, also known as Abudullah al-Muhajir, a U.S. citizen convicted on multiple counts of criminal conspiracy related to jihadist terrorism; the second case was the Portland Seven, a group of American Muslims who were attempting to join Al Qaeda but were thwarted by the FBI.

For the August 2015 “Terror Threat Snapshot,” the majority staff of the Homeland Security Committee reported that, “In July alone, a terrorist murdered U.S. service members in Chattanooga, and authorities arrested extremists seeking to live-stream a terrorist attack on a college campus and planning to kill U.S. vacationers on the beaches of Florida.”

“The number of U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists has gone from 38 in July 2010 to 122 today—a three-fold increase in just five years,” reads the Snapshot….

The Snapshot further reported that since early 2014, “there have been 55 planned or executed ISIS-linked terror plots against Western targets, including 14 inside in the United States.”

In addition, “[t]here have been nearly twice as many ISIS-linked plots against Western targets in the first seven months of this year (35) than in all of 2014,” reported the committee.

The “Terror Threat Snapshot” can be read in its entirety here.

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A Deadly Caution: How the FDA’s Precautionary Principle Is Killing Patients by Alexander Tabarrok

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I have long argued that the FDA has an incentive to delay the introduction of new drugs because approving a bad drug (Type I error) has more severe consequences for the FDA than does failing to approve a good drug (Type II error).

In the former case, at least some victims are identifiable and the New York Times writes stories about them and how they died because the FDA failed. In the latter case, when the FDA fails to approve a good drug, people die but the bodies are buried in an invisible graveyard.

In an excellent new paper (also here), Vahid Montazerhodjat and Andrew Lo use a Bayesian analysis to model the optimal tradeoff in clinical trials between sample size, Type I and Type II error.

Failing to approve a good drug is more costly, for example, the more severe the disease. Thus, for a very serious disease, we might be willing to accept a greater Type I error in return for a lower Type II error. The number of people with the disease also matters. Holding severity constant, for example, the more people with the disease the more you want to increase sample size to reduce Type I error. All of these variables interact.

In an innovation, the authors use the US Burden of Disease Study to find the number of deaths and the disability severity caused by each major disease. Using this data, they estimate the costs of failing to approve a good drug. Similarly, using data on the costs of adverse medical treatment, they estimate the cost of approving a bad drug.

Putting all this together the authors find that the FDA is often dramatically too conservative:

We show that the current standards of drug-approval are weighted more on avoiding a Type I error (approving ineffective therapies) rather than a Type II error (rejecting effective therapies).

For example, the standard Type I error of 2.5% is too conservative for clinical trials of therapies for pancreatic cancer — a disease with a 5-year survival rate of 1% for stage IV patients (American Cancer Society estimate, last updated 3 February 2013).

The BDA-optimal size for these clinical trials is 27.9%, reflecting the fact that, for these desperate patients, the cost of trying an ineffective drug is considerably less than the cost of not trying an effective one.

(The authors also find that the FDA is occasionally a little too aggressive, but these errors are much smaller: for example, the authors find that for prostate cancer therapies the optimal significance level is 1.2% compared to a standard rule of 2.5%.)

The result is important especially because, in a number of respects, the authors underestimate the costs of FDA conservatism.

Most importantly, the authors are optimizing at the clinical trial stage assuming that the supply of drugs available to be tested is fixed. Larger trials, however, are more expensive, and the greater the expense of FDA trials, the fewer new drugs will be developed. Thus, a conservative FDA reduces the flow of new drugs to be tested.

In a sense, failing to approve a good drug has two costs: the opportunity cost oflives that could have been saved and the cost of reducing the incentive to invest in R&D.

In contrast, approving a bad drug, while still an error, at least has the advantage of helping to incentivize R&D (similarly, a subsidy to research incentivizes R&D in a sense mostly by covering the costs of failed ventures).

The Montazerhodjat and Lo framework is also static: there is one test and then the story ends.

In reality, drug approval has an interesting asymmetric dynamic. When a drug is approved for sale, testing doesn’t stop but moves into another stage, a combination of observational testing and sometimes more RCTs — this, after all, is how adverse events are discovered. Thus, Type I errors are corrected.

On the other hand, for a drug that isn’t approved, the story does end. With rare exceptions, Type II errors are never corrected.

The Montazerhodjat and Lo framework could be interpreted as the reduced form of this dynamic process, but it’s better to think about the dynamism explicitly because it suggests that approval can come in a range for forms — for example, approval with a black label warning, approval with evidence grading, and so forth. As these procedures tend to reduce the costs of Type I errors, they tend to increase the costs of FDA conservatism.

Montazerhodjat and Lo also don’t examine the implications of heterogeneity of preferences or diseases morbidity and mortality. Some people, for example, are severely disabled by diseases that on average aren’t very severe — the optimal tradeoff for these patients will be different than for the average patient. One size doesn’t fit all.

In the standard framework, it’s tough luck for these patients. But if the non-FDA reviewing apparatus (patients/physicians/hospitals/HMOs/USP/Consumer Reports, and so forth) works relatively well — and this is debatable, but my work on off-label prescribing suggests that it does — this weighs heavily in favor of relatively large samples but low thresholds for approval.

What the FDA is really providing is information, and we don’t need product bans to convey information. Thus, heterogeneity (plus a reasonable effective post-testing choice process) mediates in favor of a Consumer Reports model for the FDA.

The bottom line, however, is that even without taking into account these further points, Montazerhodjat and Lo find that the FDA is far too conservative, especially for severe diseases. FDA regulations may appear to be creating safe and effective drugs, but they are also creating a deadly caution.

Hat tip: David Balan.

A version of this post first appeared at the Marginal Revolution blog.

Alex Tabarrok
Alex Tabarrok

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He blogs at Marginal Revolution with Tyler Cowen.

And now there are three: Two judges join Kim Davis’ stand against gay marriage

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County Clerk Kim Davis mugshot.

Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who has repeatedly refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has now been joined by two judges using different arguments.

Judge Vance Day from Marion County, Oregon when a federal court ruling in May 2014 made same-sex marriage legal in Oregon, instructed his staff to refer same-sex couples looking to marry to other judges. Judge Day no longer does marriages.

Jeffrey M. Atherton from Hamilton County, Tennessee refused to divorce of a straight couple who wanted to split, claiming straying allegiances and irreconcilable differences. According to The Washington Post Judge Atherton stated, “The Tennessee Court of Appeals has noted that Obergefell v. Hodges … affected what is, and must be recognized as, a lawful marriage in the State of Tennessee. This leaves a mere trial level Tennessee state court judge in a bit of a quandary. With the U.S. Supreme Court having defined what must be recognized as a marriage, it would appear that Tennessee’ s judiciary must now await the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court as to what is not a marriage, or better stated, when a marriage is no longer a marriage.”

Presidential candidate and former governor, Mike Huckabee recently tweeted: “Kim Davis In Federal Custody Removes All Doubts About The Criminalization Of Christianity In This Country.”

Image-1Texas Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz said of Davis’ sentencing, “Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny.” He called on “every believer, every constitutionalist, every lover of liberty to stand with Kim Davis.”

Jailed Kentucky clerk Davis argues from her jail cell that marriage licenses issued without her authority Friday to gay couples in Rowan County are void and ‘not worth the paper they are written on’ because she didn’t signed off on them, her lawyer said.

Has the Religious Freedom Revolution begun?

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Washington State Supreme Court Rules Against Backpage.com for Sex Trafficking

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Recently, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in favor of three young women who sued Backpage.com after they were sex trafficked as minors on the website. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) praises this decision, which allows the lawsuit to proceed to trial.

After the lawsuit was originally filed, Backpage filed a motion to dismiss it, arguing it isn’t responsible for the actions of subscribers or users under the federal Communications Decent Act. However, the Washington Supreme Court justices said that this act does not shield Backpage from state lawsuits because there are allegations that the company did not merely host the ads but that they also helped develop the content.

This decision marks an important step forward in the growing movement to hold Backpage accountable for its willful facilitation of human trafficking and prostitution. The Washington Supreme Court’s decision is a wake-up call to Backpage that it must stop promoting and profiting from sexual exploitation.

Backpage is the leading U.S. website for prostitution advertising, generating nearly 80% of all the online prostitution advertising revenue. For these reasons, the website is on NCOSE’s Dirty Dozen list.

To learn more, visit: DirtyDozenList.com.

Trump to Deliver National Security Address at Veterans for a Strong America Event

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. /PRNewswire/ — Donald J. Trump will join Veterans for a Strong America (VSA) Chairman Joel Arends and VSA board members, dignitaries and supporters for a major national security address aboard the battleship USS Iowa Tuesday, September 15, 2015 in Los Angeles, California on the eve of the CNN presidential debate focused around national security.

Arends, a decorated veteran of the war in Iraq, said, “Donald Trump is a long standing supporter of veterans and the military and we are honored that he has chosen our organization and event for his major national security address.”

The “Make America’s Military Great Again” event will focus on topics of concern for our veterans, the military, and their families. Public opinion polls show that national security issues are among the top concerns for all age groups of Americans. VSA’s 500,000 supporters nationwide are particularly vocal about reforming a broken and corrupt VA Health Care system, rebuilding our military after six years of drastic budget cuts, defeating ISIS and preventing the rise of a nuclear Iran.

Arends continued, “Donald Trump has stated very clearly he supports an American military that is so powerful it will be challenged by no one, and that he equally supports caring for veterans when they return home by providing them with the healthcare and treatment they deserve. Mr. Trump knows what America’s military and veterans community needs and he is prepared to fight to achieve it. It’s an honor to host Mr. Trump for this historic address.”

Jonah Goldberg, AEI fellow writes, “There are many reasons the non-politicians — Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina — are doing so well, but near the top is the fact that they haven’t internalized the language of political consultants and pundits.”

ABOUT VETERANS FOR A STRONG AMERICA

Veterans for a Strong America is an Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organization dedicated to mobilizing Americans to communicate the importance of a robust national defense and to ensuring that America remains a strong nation by advancing liberty, safeguarding freedom and opposing tyranny.

Iran: U.S., British flags ‘Satanic symbols’

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“Satanic symbols.” The Iranian regime makes no secret of its hatred and contempt for the U.S., even after the “peace deal” has been made — showing how hollow that deal really is.

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“Iran clothing with US, British flags sparks arrests,” AFP, September 1, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Iranian police have arrested merchants for selling clothing that featured the flags of the United States and Britain, two longtime foes of the Islamic republic, local media reported Tuesday.

Garments imprinted with “Satanic symbols” were also seized from stores in Tehran, city police chief General Hossein Sajedinia was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying.

Sajedinia said reports about the activity had been received in the past two weeks, leading to surveillance and detentions.

“This morning we took these clothes off leading distributors,” he said, noting that any stores that sell such items “will be closed.”

The move underlined the fractious attitude from some authorities regarding the United States.

Washington broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran in 1980 after students seized its embassy and took dozens of hostages during the Islamic revolution the previous year.

However, a July 14 deal between Iran and six powers led by the US over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme was met by celebrations in the capital, particularly among youths keen to end Iran’s isolation.

Despite the warmth toward the deal on the streets, Iran’s senior leaders have said nothing will change in their approach toward the US.

The leader of the Islamic revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, dubbed the United States the “Great Satan” on account of its policies and support for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last royal ruler before the Islamic republic was founded….

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Bernie Sanders Is Wrong: Trade Is Awesome for the Poor and for America by Corey Iacono

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential hopeful, is no fan of free trade. In an interview with Vox, Sanders’ made his anti-trade position clear: “Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for the American people.”

He also noted that he voted against all the free trade agreements that were proposed during his time in Congress and that if elected President he would “radically transform trade policies” in favor of protectionism.

Sanders and his ilk accuse their intellectual opponents of promoting “trickle-down economics,” but that is precisely what he is advocating when it comes to trade. The argument for protectionism ultimately relies on the belief that protecting domestic corporations from foreign competition and keeping consumer prices high will somehow benefit society as whole.

However, the real effect of protectionism is to increase monopoly and consequently reduce overall economic welfare. In fact, according to a paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, “Government policies…such as tariffs and other forms of protection are an important source of monopoly” that lead to “significant welfare losses.”

In contrast to Sanders’ assertion that the expansion of free trade has been a disaster for the American people, there is a near unanimous consensus among economists that the opposite is true.

An IGM Poll of dozens of the most renowned academic economists found that, weighted for each respondent’s confidence in their answer, 96 percent of economists agreed, “Freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment.”

When the vast majority of economists of all sorts of ideological stripes agree that free trade is a good thing, maybe, just maybe, they’re onto something.

In fact, they surely are. Using four different methods, economists at the Petersen Institute for International Economics estimated the economic benefits from the expansion of technology that facilitates international trade (such as container ships), as well as the removal of government imposed barriers to international trade (such as tariffs). Since the end of World War II, they generated “an increase in US income of roughly $1 trillion a year,” which translates into an increase in “annual income of about $10,000 per household.”

This result is mostly driven by the fact that foreign businesses produce many goods which are used in the production process at a lower cost than their domestic competitors. Access to these low-cost foreign inputs allows American businesses to decrease their production costs and consequently increase their total output, making the nation as a whole much wealthier than it otherwise would have been.

Moreover, contrary to common conjecture, the benefits of international trade haven’t simply accrued to the wealthy alone. Low and middle income individuals tend to spend a greater share of their income on cheap imported consumer goods than those with higher incomes. As a result, international trade tends to benefit these income groups more so than the wealthy.

Indeed, according to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, middle income consumers have about 29 percent greater purchasing power as a result of international trade.

In other words, middle income consumers can buy 29 percent more goods and services as a result of the access to low-cost imports from foreign countries.

Low income consumers see even greater gains with 62 percent higher purchasing power as a result of trade. In contrast, the top 10 percent of income earners only saw an increase in purchasing power of 3 percent as a result of trade.

On top of that, international trade has provided benefits by bringing new and innovative products to American consumers.

According seminal research by Christian Broda of the University of Chicago and David E. Weinstein of Colombia University, the variety of imported goods increased three-fold from 1972 to 2001. The value to American consumers of this import induced expanded product variety is estimated to be equivalent to 2.6 percent of national income, about $450 billion as of 2014. That’s not exactly small change.

The spread of free trade has also made considerable contributions to environmental protection, gender equality, and global poverty reduction. As a result of the spread of clean technology facilitated by freer trade, “every 1 percent increase in income as a result of trade liberalization (the removal of government imposed barriers to trade), pollution concentrations fall by 1 percent,” according to the Council of Economic Advisers.

The CEA also has found that “industries with larger tariff declines saw greater reductions in the [gender] wage gap,” suggesting that facilitating foreign competition through trade liberalization reduces the ability of employers to discriminate against women.

In regards to global poverty reduction, research has shown that in response to US import tariff cuts, developing countries, such as Vietnam, export more to the US, leading to higher incomes and less poverty.

Despite the large gains from trade America has already reaped, there is still room for improvement (contrary to Sen. Sanders’ accusations of “unfettered” free trade). The PIIE economists estimate that further trade liberalization would increase “US household income between $4,000 and $5,300 annually,” leading the them to conclude that, “in the future as in the past, free trade can significantly raise income — and quality of life — in the United States.”

Ultimately, the conclusion that most economists seem to reach is that, from being a disaster, the expansion of free trade has been a tremendous success, and that further trade liberalization would most likely make Americans, and the rest of the world, considerably better off.

Don’t let fear-mongering about foreigners and China scare you: free trade benefits everyone, especially the poor, while protectionism benefits only the politically powerful.

Corey Iacono

Corey Iacono is a student at the University of Rhode Island majoring in pharmaceutical science and minoring in economics.

VIDEO: Planned Parenthood Executive Explains how to Hide the Profits from Selling Aborted Baby Bodies

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 from Eagle Rising reports:

It breaks my heart to have to continue reporting on the latest information flowing out from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) about the crimes being covered up inside of Planned Parenthood (PP). However, this may be the most important news story of the last few decades and it is vital that we report on it… because the mainstream media is doing their best to ignore the scandal.

Already this week the CMP has released two videos that should be leading every newscast across the country. Sadly, the media continues to cover for PP and has chosen to report on the videos as little as possible.

But we won’t hide the truth from you. We invite you to watch both of the recently released videos (as well as the unedited versions which will be at the bottom of this article), then spread them to anyone who’ll watch. It is vital that we spread news of PP’s crimes to anyone who will listen.

Read more.

Latest Center for American Progress Videos:

RELATED ARTICLE: McConnell Plans to Fund Planned Parenthood

President to decide on Muslim refugee quota for FY2016 NOW! Will Congress lift a finger to protect America?

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It is September and as we speak, the Obama Administration (US State Department) is putting its final touches on their annual Determination Letter and accompanying report to Congress.

The new fiscal year begins on October 1 and by the 30th of this month Obama will send to Congress for “consultation” a document which states how many refugees and from what regions of the world we will be “welcoming” refugees to America.

This so-called “consultation” with Congress is a legal requirement. However, it is common knowledge that the House and Senate Committees responsible for analyzing this information have in the past been silent.

In fact, Ken Tota (who recently served as the interim director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement) was overheard saying that “in his entire almost 30-year career, Congress has never questioned the numbers.”

State Department scoping meetings

For our many new readers, this year there was no US State Department hearing on the “size and scope” of the refugee program (or, LOL! they kept it very secret!).  We can only assume that was because in the three previous years they heard testimony that they didn’t like from citizens that were concerned about the program.  Here is one post of dozens on the topic.  Readers of RRW had flooded the State Department with negative testimony about the program.  In fact, we testified that there should be a moratorium on the program.  See my 2014 testimony here.

I mention this because the Presidential Determination being prepared now is the culmination of the annual process that began with those late spring ‘hearings’ (and again there was no public opportunity to comment this year that we were aware of).

Also, regular readers know that we have been discussing, and attempting to obtain, R & P abstracts the subcontractors located around the country prepare for Washington—those are part of the process as well. Just as taxpaying citizens had no opportunity to testify to the State Department this year, taxpaying citizens have no input in the abstract preparation process either.

Presumably one final check in the system to protect America is the “consultation” with Congress in September of each year.

However, if this year is like all others, our elected representatives in Washington will not lift a finger to question the size and scope of this year’s proposed refugee quota!

And, this could be the year that plans to resettle tens of thousands of Syrians will be announced!

Click here for last year’s Presidential Determination, and here for the lengthy report which was sent to Congress on September 18th last year. The report begins:

This Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2015: Report to the Congress is submitted in compliance with Sections 207(d)(1) and (e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The Act requires that before the start of the fiscal year and, to the extent possible, at least two weeks prior to consultations on refugee admissions, members of the Committees on the Judiciary of the Senate and the House of Representatives be provided with the following information….

Note that the report goes to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.  Chairmen of the full committees are Bob Goodlatte and Chuck Grassley respectively.  Subcommittee Chairmen responsible for Refugee Resettlement are Trey Gowdy and Jeff Sessions.

Will those chairmen help protect America this year by holding hearings when the Presidential Determination for FY2016 arrives on the Hill which by law should be in about two weeks!  Or, will they (yet again!) simply rubber stamp what Obama wants?

RELATED ARTICLE: States with large number of mosques correlates with top refugee resettlement states

Liberalism Created the WDBJ Killer

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Barack Obama won’t be saying, “If I had a psycho son, he’d look like Vester Lee.” But he might as well. Because Vester Lee Flanagan II, the bigoted maniac who murdered the WDBJ reporter and cameraman Wednesday on live TV, was a philosophical offspring of the Left.

It’s well known now that Flanagan was a professional victim, nurturing grudges against all and sundry based on his “status” as a homosexual black man. He had an axe to grind with white women because they supposedly made racial statements to him, and against black men because they supposedly directed anti-homosexual remarks his way. And it didn’t seem as if he liked anyone very much.

Of course, most of the bigotry he perceived from others was in his head, a function of his own prejudice, inculcated via decades of liberal indoctrination. When you dislike others, you view them through tinted lenses and ascribe negative motivations to everything they do. Where a fair-minded individual might interpret a comment as innocuous, simply a misunderstanding or an example of the issuer merely having a bad day, you see malice. “Of course it was racial! That’s the way white people are.” And, “That had to be ‘homophobic’ in this society, which macro and microaggresses against everything that I am!” (of course, certain things are supposed to be stigmatized). These notions, again, were put in Flanagan’s mixed-up head by liberals and liberals alone. They disgorge hateful, pure and utter nonsense such as microaggression theory, “white privilege,” critical-race theory and 1000 other things designed to divide with lies. It is evil.

Flanagan had described himself as “human powder keg,” but what was he so angry about? He lived in the most prosperous nation in the most prosperous time in man’s history; he could walk into any supermarket and avail himself of thousands of delicious foods from the world over at reasonable prices, a luxury that would have made the jaws of people existing in former ages drop. He was living, as we all do, in Shangri-la. But his attitude was hardly inexplicable.

To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, “Goods look a lot better when they come wrapped as gifts.” Everything is a gift, but the Left teaches just the opposite: to have a sense of entitlement, to believe you’re owed, to ever and always view our very large glass as half empty. Some have asked, quite naively, how it is that despite Flanagan’s pathetic performance as a reporter, he was hired by more than one media outlet and given chance after chance to right the ship. Well, golly gee, Cletus, it’s a mystery.

Flanagan was clearly an affirmative-action hire, enjoying the daily-double victim status of being black and homosexual. And that was part of the problem: too much was given to him on a silver platter — because of liberalism.

There have been many articles in recent years about how college graduates today enter the workforce with unrealistic expectations about their economic self-worth and starting salary. We hear about how so many of them can’t tolerate criticism and rejection; act as if their own feelings are inordinately important and should command respect; and how they lack a sense of propriety, a grasp of their place in a workplace’s hierarchy. As a consequence, they may barge into an office to vent their feelings, even if it’s neither the time nor the place.

This is all the result of liberal parenting, of the psychobabble disgorged by the likes of Dr. Benjamin Spock. It’s no wonder many young people today have little sense of just hierarchies — their permissive liberal parents didn’t establish a just hierarchy in the home. Instead, they acted as if their family was a dysfunctional democracy and junior a special-interest group that political correctness dictated must be coddled and catered to. Junior seldom heard the word “No!” uttered in exclamatory fashion; junior seldom had to delay gratification; junior got participation trophies just for showing up. He was treated as a little prince around whom the world revolved. He was marinated in “self-esteem” pap in schools, telling him how great and special he was. The result? Junior and many of his peers (not that he imagined he had any peers) grew up to be narcissists.

As for Flanagan, it has been reported that his refrigerator was covered with pictures of himself. We know what this means. A mother may display numerous pictures of her children because she loves her children. And a man would display numerous pictures of himself because…?

It all reminds me of the Satan character’s line in the film The Devil’s Advocate: “Vanity is my favorite sin.” “Pride” is probably even more accurate. But it all gets at the matter’s heart. We don’t need some hard and fast psychological diagnosis here. Whether Flanagan was most correctly characterized as a “narcissist” or just a self-centered, entitled jerk, the bottom line is that his state was attributable to a philosophical disease, a disordered way of thinking that masquerades under an ideological banner:

Liberalism.

Of course, liberals will blame guns. This is partially because, unlike with Dylann Roof, they can’t blame Confederate flags or 19th-century statues. But it’s also because they’re incapable of putting the blame where it really belongs: the man in the mirror.

Guns don’t kill people. Liberalism does.

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EDITORS NOTE: You mAY contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

World’s Poor: “We Want Capitalism” by Iain Murray

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In the forests of India, something exciting is going on. Villagers are regaining property taken from them when the British colonial authorities nationalized their forests. Just as exciting, in urban Kenya and elsewhere, people are doing away with the need for banks by exchanging and saving their money digitally. All over the world, poor people are discovering the blessings of bottom-up capitalism.

Sadly, though, developed country governments and anti-poverty activists ignore this fact and insist that developing nations need a paternalistic hand up. Both are missing an opportunity, because there are billions of capitalists in waiting at the bottom of the pyramid.

Next month, the United Nations will formally announce the successors to its Millennium Development Goals, the global body’s approach to poverty alleviation since the year 2000. These new goals will be touted as “sustainable.” The event will coincide with a visit by the pope, at which he is expected to concentrate on climate change and materialism as the greatest threats to the welfare of the people of the developing world.

Don’t expect to hear much on the way people in the Western world lifted themselves out of poverty: free-market capitalism.

The phrase “the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid” was coined by the late C.K. Prahalad, building on the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In his groundbreaking 1999 work, Development as Freedom, Sen pointed out that one of the most important aspects of development is freedom of opportunity, a vital part of which is access to capital and credit. Capital and credit, however, appear nowhere in the draft UN goals.

When capital is sufficiently available, would-be entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid have demonstrated a willingness to launch new ventures and invest in their futures — that is, to embrace free-market capitalism to the benefit of all concerned.

There are several ways to ensure access to capital in the developing world, but the most important approach is to unlock the productive potential of the capital already available there.

Land Titling

In many countries, people could possess access to capital by virtue of the real estate they already occupy, but they are unable to prove ownership of the land due to inadequate land-titling systems or because of traditional forms of property ownership where everything belongs to the village chief. As Hernando de Soto explained in his book, The Mystery of Capital, land-titling reforms significantly benefit the poor, enabling

such opportunities as access to credit, the establishment of systems of identification, the creation of systems for credit and insurance information, the provision for housing and infrastructure, the issue of shares, the mortgage of property and a host of other economic activities that drive a modern market economy.

De Soto estimates that up to $10 trillion of capital worldwide is locked away unused because of inadequate titling systems. A recent study by the Peru-based Institute for Liberal Democracy (ILD), which De Soto heads, estimated Egyptian workers’ real estate holdings to be worth around $360 billion, “eight times more than all the foreign direct investment in Egypt since Napoleon’s invasion.”

Similarly, many local assets around the world remain in common ownership — in reality, owned by no one. Initiatives such as India’s privatization of forest resources seek to address this problem by enabling the titling of assets by indigenous peoples, who can then tap into those resources for access to credit to open up new opportunities. Estimates suggest that similar initiatives could be extended to 900 million plots of land across the developing world.

There are also exciting opportunities that could arise for the public recording and utilization of such capital through the distributed public-ledger system known as the blockchain, best known for its role in the development of bitcoin. Development of the blockchain for property recording and titling would significantly reduce both the transaction costs and the widespread corruption  associated with government-controlled titling systems. Significantly, De Soto’s ILD is promoting these initiatives.

Microfinance

Recent innovations have enabled the development of microfinance — access to small amounts of credit for specific purposes. Today, microfinance institutions all over the developing world provide small loans, access to savings, and microinsurance to families or small businesses.

By giving them access to proper investment capital and affordable financial institutions, microfinance providers help small- and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries to grow. Often, these businesses are so small that they can neither afford the interest rates on bank loans nor come up with the capital they need on the their own. When implemented correctly, microfinance loans empower their customers to invest, grow, and be productive, all of which contribute to diminishing poverty within communities.

One of the most prominent examples of microfinance is Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank, first established in Bangladesh. According to a RAND Corporation study, areas where Grameen Bank offers programs saw unemployment rates drop from 31 percent to 11 percent in their first year. Occupational mobility improved, with many people moving up from low-wage positions to more entrepreneurial ones. There is evidence of increased wage rates for local farmers. Women’s participation in income-generating activities also rose significantly.

The Consumers at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Access to capital and credit enable new markets to spring up where none existed before. Entrepreneurial activity is unleashed. Consider one of Prahalad’s case studies of Nirmal, a small Indian firm that sold detergent products designed for rural village uses, such as in rivers. The products came in small packages at low prices suitable for Indian villagers’ daily cash flow. The company soon found itself with a market share equal to that of consumer-goods giant Unilever’s Indian subsidiary. Unilever responded by introducing similar products, thereby growing this new market. In the process, more environmentally friendly products were invented and sold, too.

As Prahalad points out, over four billion people in the world lived on an annual income of $1,500 or less (in 2002 dollars), with one billion living on less than a dollar a day. Nevertheless, based on purchasing power parity, this market represents an economy of $13 trillion or more, not that far off from the entire developed world.

The underdeveloped world is ripe for capitalism. The “unemployed” protestors of the Arab Spring were, in fact, small businessmen who were pushed to the breaking point by continually having their capital and profits expropriated by corrupt government officials, as De Soto points out. So, while the Western media portrayed the protests as being mostly about politics and freedom of expression, they were as much — if not more — about the freedom to do business.

Kenya: Mobile Phones and Payments

Despite corruption and bureaucracy, strong markets have grown up in developing countries. Kenya is a case in point. It leapfrogged the Western world’s development process for mobile communications technology. Kenyans went from having few telephones to virtually everyone having a mobile phone without needing the stage of landline infrastructure in between. A similar process is now taking place in personal finance.

Vodafone, along with its Kenyan subsidiary, Safaricom, developed m-pesa, a mobile payment and value storage system to be used on its phones. Transactions are capped at about $500, but crucially can be person-to-person, acting as digitized cash. Introduced in 2007, it had 9 million users — 40 percent of Kenya’s population — just two years later. By 2013, 17 million Kenyans were using it, with transactions valued at over $24 billion — over half of Kenya’s GDP.

M-pesa has in turn improved access to capital even more, and technology businesses are thriving all over Kenya as a result.

Kenya is not alone. The phenomenon is spreading to other African countries and to some South American countries such as Paraguay.

Environment, education, and health all benefit from wealth creation. Perhaps the real mystery of capitalism is that neither the United Nations nor the pope recognize the benefits it can bring to four billion of the world’s poor. Free enterprise and human welfare boom where governments allow new markets with access to capital and credit. That is all it takes to meet the UN’s development goals.

Iain Murray
Iain Murray

Iain Murray is vice president at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.