How much would it cost to deport every single illegal alien in the U.S.?

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The pro-amnesty American Action Forum (AAF) found it would cost the federal government $400 to $600 billion to remove all illegal aliens currently living in the United States within a two year period and to prevent all future unlawful entry.

In its research paper, AAF examined the personnel and infrastructure implications of removing all 11.3 million illegal aliens in a two-year time frame. In order to remove all illegals, each each one would have to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and transported to their country of origin. In order to remove all illegals in two years, the U.S. government would have to expand each of those stages of the removal process.

The current annual budget for U.S. Customs and Border Protection is $13.5 billion. This does not include the costs of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies dealing with apprehending, detaining and processing illegals on a daily basis.

Based upon FY 2013 levels it would require:

  • Federal immigration apprehension personnel to increase from 4,844 positions to 90,582 positions;
  • The number of immigration detention beds to increase from 34,000 to 348,831;
  • The number of immigration courts to increase from 58 to 1,316;
  • The number of federal attorneys legally processing undocumented immigrants to increase from 1,430 to 32,445; and
  • A minimum of 17,296 chartered flights and 30,701 chartered bus trips each year.

George Fuller, an expert on immigration issues, notes, “Put in E-Verify and take away Childbirth citizenship and they will self deport. There will be no rounding up necessary. The AAF report is designed to make people think we have to accept them being here because the cost to deport them is high, but that is not true. When they get hungry they will leave. The same goes for visa over stayers!”

The Federation for America Immigration Reform (FAIR) in a 2013 study estimates the annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level to be about $113 billion; nearly $29 billion at the federal level and $84 billion at the state and local level.

The FAIR study also estimates tax collections from illegal alien workers, both those in the above-ground economy and those in the underground economy. Those receipts do not come close to the level of expenditures and, in any case, are misleading as an offset because over time unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers would replace illegal alien workers.

Key Findings of the FAIR study:

  • Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state and local level. The bulk of the costs — some $84 billion — are absorbed by state and local governments.
  • The annual outlay that illegal aliens cost U.S. taxpayers is an average amount per native-headed household of $1,117. The fiscal impact per household varies considerably because the greatest share of the burden falls on state and local taxpayers whose burden depends on the size of the illegal alien population in that locality
  • Education for the children of illegal aliens constitutes the single largest cost to taxpayers, at an annual price tag of nearly $52 billion. Nearly all of those costs are absorbed by state and local governments.
  • At the federal level, about one-third of outlays are matched by tax collections from illegal aliens. At the state and local level, an average of less than 5 percent of the public costs associated with illegal immigration is recouped through taxes collected from illegal aliens.
  • Most illegal aliens do not pay income taxes. Among those who do, much of the revenues collected are refunded to the illegal aliens when they file tax returns. Many are also claiming tax credits resulting in payments from the U.S. Treasury.

Read the FAIR full report here.

It appears from the two reports that the costs of deporting all illegals would be recouped within 4 to 6 years.

The AFF report notes that, “[I]n just two years it would shrink the labor force by 10.3 million workers and reduce real GDP by $1 trillion.” However, this does not take into account the reduction of payments to those not working by the government, who would now be able to back fill those jobs opened by the mass deportation of illegals.

Please leave your comments on this column. There are two options, the status quo or deportation. Which would be better for America and American workers?

UPDATE: Robert A King left the following comment on our Facebook page.

The straw man argument against enforcing immigration laws against illegals already here is that we can’t practically deport some 20 Million, illegal aliens. Poppy cock! Don’t fall for it!

Most illegals would go home of their own accord, without having to physically deport them, if we:

1) Build the fence – the WHOLE fence!

2) Make it illegal to hire an illegal, backed by stiff fines escalating to jail time for repeat/multiple offenses, and with culpability extending to corporate officers and board members;

3) Pass mandatory e-Verify in order to implement 2);

4) Make it illegal to provide educational, health (except for emergency care), or social welfare benefits to illegals, backed by stiff fines escalating to jail time for repeat/multiple offenses, and with culpability extending to corporate officers and board members;

5) Revise the visa system to make location recording and check-in tracking mandatory for all here under the various visas. Once expired and not renewed, require mandatory departure enforced by arrest and deportation for violation.

6) Eliminate the law that allows “Birthright Citizenship”, aka “Anchor Babies”. Congress NEVER intended that a person sneaking over the border to have their baby in the US should be allowed to be granted automatic and immediate citizenship. Amend the constitution, if necessary;

7) Make aiding and abetting an illegal itself illegal, backed by stiff fines escalating to jail time for repeat/multiple offenses, and with culpability extending to all involved, especially corporate officers and board members;

8) Illegals wanting to return to the US must apply under the legal immigration system, and follow the law like all other, legal immigrants;

9) Deport all criminal illegal aliens, whom make up over 30% of the federal prison population.

These things alone would cause most illegals to go home of their own accord, due to lack of “goody” incentives and the inability to work.

Next, we must also:

10) Make English our official language. E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one. It’s our national motto.

No more government voting ballots or other forms in anything other than English.

You want to be here? Become an AMERICAN!

By The Numbers Q&A Edition — The Untold Story of Muslim Opinions & Demographics

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By The Numbers kick started an open conversation about radical Islam. In response to the thousands of questions and comments, Raheel Raza addresses some of the key questions. Can we speak out, are we Islamaphobic for doing so and aren’t you afraid to speak out.

Further to our release of the now viral film By The Numbers, Raheel Raza answers some of the most pressing questions our supporters posed to us about speaking out against radical Islam, Islamaphobia and the fear of those that break the political correctness.

Watch Clarion Projects new film, narrated by Raheel Raza, on radical Islam and the answers we need to know.
The conversation starts here. Be empowered to make rational decisions about our future.

After seeing the film we want to know what you think. Please take the time to send us your thoughts and comments.

Florida Governor Rick Scott’s insightful op-ed on Donald Trump

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Florida’s Governor wrote a very insightful and passionate op-ed for USA Today titled, “Donald Trump has America’s pulse.” The op-ed is not an endorsement. Rather it is the reflections of one political outsider on another political outsider. Governor Scott has been there and done that, so to speak. Governor Scott writes:

Political pundits are shocked that Donald Trump is leading in the polls. The same thing happened in 2010 when I entered the Florida gubernatorial race against the already anointed and establishment-endorsed sitting Republican attorney general. One establishment member even said to me, “How can you be governor? I don’t know you.”

I won the governor’s race in 2010 and many outsiders — some of them business people — continue to shock the political establishment by coming into elected office from careers outside of politics. Attorney Chris Christie was elected governor of New Jersey in 2009; manufacturer Ron Johnson was elected senator of Wisconsin in 2010; businessman Bruce Rauner won the governor’s race in Illinois in 2014; and businessman Matt Bevin won the governorship of Kentucky just a few months ago. Voters have been choosing new ideas and new energy over the old formula of sheer time served in political office.

I know Donald Trump personally, and while I currently have no plans to endorse a candidate before Florida’s March presidential primary, there is no doubt that Donald is a man who speaks and tweets his mind freely. But I don’t think his ability to give the most interesting interviews or speeches is the only thing that has him leading in the polls. I think he is capturing the frustration of many Americans after seven years of President Obama’s very intentional government takeover of the U.S. economy.

Click here to read the entire USA Today op-ed piece by Governor Rick Scott.

Governor Scott has focused his efforts on cutting taxes, job creation, cutting regulation and reducing the size of government. Governor Scott has also opposed bringing Syrian refugees to the Sunshine State.

Sound familiar? It should.

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Moral relativism, moral equivalence, and historical revisionism

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The progressive failure to appreciate Israel’s existential concerns was reflected by the international uproar over the Knesset NGO Transparency bill, which would require Israeli NGOs receiving at least half their funds from foreign governments to register as foreign agents and identify their funding sources.  The liberal Jewish establishment has claimed the law will have a chilling effect on speech, though it does not seem as concerned about entities that support anti-Israel boycotts and lawfare.  It seems strange that advocates for Israel would express greater outrage for legislation mandating disclosure requirements than organizations that may be financed by hostile governments or foreign interests.

fara foreign agents actIf progressives find the law conceptually repugnant, why did they not condemn attempts to target conservative organizations in the United States?  Why was the liberal establishment silent when Obama’s regulatory proxies sought donor disclosure requirements for conservative groups and denied tax-exempt status to pro-Israel nonprofits?  Progressives have never seemed troubled by disclosure laws that have been on the books in the U.S. for the better part of a century.

The “Foreign Agents Registration Act” was passed by Congress in 1938 to require those representing foreign interests in a “political or quasi-political capacity” to disclose their foreign relationships, sources of funding, and organizational activities in order to enable “evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons.”  It was signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal allies never questioned its impact on democracy or free speech.  Though the bill now before the Knesset may differ in certain respects, any concerns over content and scope should be handled through Israel’s legislative process.  Foreign critics cannot seem to accept this, however, and their denunciations seem shrill and disproportionate.

Progressives often reprimand Israel for taking actions to defend her sovereignty or preserve her Jewish character, often reflecting an antipathy for Jewish historical rights that is rooted in the progressive holy trinity of moral relativism, moral equivalence, and historical revisionism.

Moral relativism is often employed by leftists to justify their obsessive criticism of Israel, rationalization of Arab-Muslim rejectionism, and support for Islamists.  They believe that standards of right and wrong are malleable, and that public morality and ethical standards are culturally subjective.  This outlook rejects the concept of universal morality and holds that actions cannot be judged as inherently evil, no matter how egregious.

Islamist terrorism is not considered wrong by moral relativists who deem it a culturally organic reflection of the society that spawns it.  Many on the left take it a step further by ennobling terrorism as a reaction to western provocations.  They see no inconsistency in condemning Israel for defending herself against terrorists who view the mere existence of a Jewish state as offensive.

It seems that in order to be consistent, though, moral relativists should likewise not condemn actions that can be considered organic expressions of Israeli society.  The use of moral relativism to condemn Israel while exonerating terrorists is incongruous, and its proponents often claim their view is really one of moral equivalence.  But this does not explain their unbalanced hatred.

russia foreign agent lawMoral equivalence assumes ethical parity between parties in conflict and holds that their actions cannot be judged out of context from each other.  Justifications for the conduct of one are applied uniformly to all.  This theory is often used to legitimize Arab-Muslim rejectionism.  But whereas true moral equivalence holds all parties in moral equilibrium, terrorism against Israel is seen as justified against her presumed illegality and the false perception of Arab-Muslim victimhood.

Israel’s actions are rarely condoned because she is considered a rogue state, while Islamic radicals are given moral license because they are perceived as redressing genuine grievances.  If such a view were applied to all conflicts, no sovereign nation would ever be able to defend itself from aggressors presumed to be morally justified.

The neutral exercise of moral equivalence is dishonest in its balancing of self-defense with the aggression that provokes the response.  However, the lopsided application that presumes Israeli illegitimacy is even more egregious because it rests on a false narrative that depicts Israel as a colonial state, the Jews as strangers to the Mideast, and the Palestinians as having the most ancient connection to the Jewish homeland.  This narrative requires historical revisionism to create a political mythology that repudiates Jewish history.

Those who portray Arab-Muslim hatred of Jews as an understandable response to historical wrongs evoke a past that never really existed.  Though rejectionism is rationalized as a reaction to Jewish mistreatment of Arabs and Muslims, Judaism has never incited against Islam and Jews have never subjugated Arabs.  Jews have always been the persecuted minority, whose ancestral land was usurped through jihad.  Despite the canard that Israel displaced an ancient nation and culture, it is undeniable that a sovereign state of Palestine never existed and that Palestinian national identity is a modern political creation.

Revisionists are quick to deny the scripturally based anti-Semitism that has existed in Arab-Muslim society for generations and to ignore how Jews have been persecuted, harassed, and massacred since the rise of Islam.  The concept of benign tolerance for “people of the book” in general – and Jews in particular – is inconsistent with the historical reality.  Jews in Islamic society lived a subservient existence as long as they paid the jizya (poll tax) and accepted their lowly status.

Progressive critics tend to obscure the traditional intolerance of “infidels” with false claims of Jewish chauvinism.  Sometimes this reflects ignorance or naïveté, but more often it smacks of anti-Semitism.  Ironically, those who champion the credo “all hatreds are equal” seem to have no problem justifying Jew-hatred as political speech, or blaming Jews for bringing it on themselves.  They deny malicious intent by alleging a false affinity with Jewish values, which they claim actually support their negative views of Israel.

For many Jews on the left, the descent into self-rejection starts subtly – often with a repudiation of traditional values and observance in favor of secular political priorities.  The nontraditional movements have enabled this dynamic by raising progressivism to the level of religious obligation, and by institutionalizing a version of tikkun olam that lends a sympathetic ear to those spouting revisionist narratives and which endorses causes (e.g., Palestinian nationalism) that threaten Israel’s Jewish continuity.

The debate regarding Syrian refugees is indicative of this mindset and reflects a faulty grasp of Jewish history.  Many progressive Jews support President Obama’s plan to bring in thousands of refugees without restriction, even though immigration and intelligence officials admit there is no way to vet them properly or weed out terrorists.  Obama’s Jewish acolytes often claim an ethical obligation to support him because of putative similarities between Syrian refugees today and Jews during the Holocaust, but this comparison is false and misleading.

Jews were not marked for genocide during the Holocaust because of their political affiliations, economic status, or religious beliefs.  Whether rich or poor, capitalist or communist, traditionally observant or heretical apostates, Jews were murdered solely on the basis of blood and ancestry.  In contrast, many Syrians today have left their country because they backed the wrong faction, joined the wrong party, or lost their homes and livelihoods.  Some simply seek escape from a war zone.  However, none are threatened by a government extermination program based on race, ethnicity or nationality.  Though Yazidis and Christians are killed by ISIS if they refuse to convert, they are not among the refugees seeking entry to the U.S., and have actually received little sympathy from the administration.

Progressives also seem to forget that Roosevelt actually did little to rescue Jewish refugees.  In fact, he refused to relax immigration restrictions until far too late, which assured a higher death toll by war’s end.

Some who endorse Obama’s refugee policy also support anti-Israel NGOs and left-wing Jewish groups that encourage boycotts and undermine Israel’s national integrity.  Similarly, progressive post-Zionism falsely claims fealty to Jewish ideals while debasing the foundations of Jewish nationhood.  Neither represents true Jewish principles or priorities.

Those progressives who claim to criticize Israel out of love, respect, or the Jewish spirit of self-reflection are motivated by none of these impulses.  Their bias against Israel is philosophically predetermined and ideologically fixed – regardless of how they justify their preordained conclusions.  Israel should give them no credence, and the Diaspora should recognize their blather as inconsistent with normative Jewish history and values.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in Arutz Sheva (Israel National News).

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz Never Quits Fighting for Second Amendment Rights

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As the last two weeks of the 2016 Legislative Session, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R- Shalimar) is still standing up and fighting to get Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla (R-Miami) to do the right thing and let the Open Carry bill be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As you recall, Sen. Diaz de la Portilla is stonewalling and deliberately refusing to give the committee and the full Senate an opportunity to vote on the bill.

An Opinion Editorial by Rep. Gaetz, calling for the bill to be heard was published today in the North West Florida Daily News.  Read it below and please thank Rep. Gaetz for continuing to fight for your rights. You may contact Rep. Gaetz at: matt.gaetz@myfloridahouse.gov

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R- Shalimar)

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R- Shalimar)

NWFdailynews.com

GUEST COLUMN: Florida Senate should let debate begin on open carry

By REP. MATT GAETZ | Special to the Daily News

Posted Feb. 28, 2016 at 1:00 PM

The organizing principle of my public service is Constitutional liberty. If government constrains itself to the Constitution, free markets, free enterprise and free people can thrive. Otherwise, we get catastrophic consequences like ObamaCare, lawless executive orders and a government that (often corruptly) picks winners and losers.

In a world of uncertainty, the Second Amendment to the Constitution is undeniably clear: The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Today, Florida is one of only five states infringing on the rights of citizens to “openly carry” handguns. That’s right. Open carry is legal in various forms in 45 other states. Florida joins California, New York, Illinois and (oddly) South Carolina as the only states to totally prohibit open carry. Thirty states do not require a license, while 15 do.

Weeks ago the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill I authored allowing Floridians with concealed carry permits to openly carry in a holster. It was a bipartisan 80-36 vote. The bill was endorsed by the Florida Police Chief’s Association, Unified Sportsmen of Florida and the National Rifle Association. The Florida Chamber of Commerce helped draft provisions to allow private property owners to prohibit open carry if they choose.

Then, the Senate Judiciary Chairman killed it. He refused to even allow a vote on open carry, likely because the bill would have passed. No one Senator should have the right to unilaterally block critical legislation from even having a vote – especially when constitutional rights are implicated.

There is no constitutional, statistical or rational basis to disallow open carry in Florida. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s own data, in open carry states you are:

  • 23 percent less likely to be the victim of violent crime
  • 5 percent less likely to be murdered
  • 38 percent less likely to be the victim of armed robbery, and
  • 23 percent less likely to be the victim of aggravated assault.

Open carry is not a Utopian solution to violence. Many factors impact crime rates. But, reasonable people cannot disagree on the statistical fact that open carry does not increase violence.

I find it compelling that concealed carry permit holders are remarkably law-abiding. According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime data, permit holders are six times less likely to commit crimes than law enforcement officers.

If I am elected to serve in the Senate next year, I’ll again file much needed open carry legislation. I’ll also pursue changes to Florida Senate rules to allow for more transparent debate on the issues facing Florida.

Florida should be an open carry state. The Florida Senate should let the debate begin. I’m ready for it.

Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2010 and has been subsequently reelected three times. He is the immediate past Chairman of the Criminal Justice Subcommittee and currently chairs the Finance & Tax Committee.

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VIDEO: Trump’s Great Wall of America

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It is time to build “The Wall” as a symbol to the world that the United States of America is still run by free men and women!

eu pessimists by country chart

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GOP Baffled as Voters Rally to Popular Candidate

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Ann Coulter writes:

Donald Trump’s latest bombshell, claiming the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction to get us into the Iraq War, is just him doing wheelies on the way to the nomination. He’s apparently decided it would be fun to taunt the entire GOP by demonstrating that he can say anything and his voters won’t care.

I wish he’d stop showing off, the little scamp, but maybe the GOP establishment will finally get the message that voters have been waiting a really long time for a candidate who would put Americans first. Not donors, not plutocrats, not foreigners, and certainly not foreign plutocrats (i.e., Fox News).

Trump is the first presidential candidate in 50 years who might conceivably: (1) deport illegal aliens, (2) build a wall, (3) block Muslim immigration, (4) flout political correctness, (5) bring manufacturing home, and (6) end the GOP’s neurotic compulsion to start wars in some godforsaken part of the world.

That’s all that matters! Are you listening yet, RNC?

Read more.

people who hate trump cartoonIn my column “The Trump Insurgency” I noted:

If you Google the words “Trump” and “insurgency” you will get over 650,000 links to articles and commentary. I recently said to a friend that Donald Trump has gone from being a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President to the leader of a movement.

Can this movement be called an insurgency?

The definition of an insurgency is a “rebellion against an existing government by a group not recognized as a belligerent.”

Is it Trump who created an insurgency or is Trump following the lead of a growing insurgency that was already taking place? I have written that Trump leads his followers by following their lead. The movement began during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and continues today. It is a struggle between the individualist and the collectivist.

Ayn Rand wrote a short nineteen page paper asking: What is the basic issue facing the world today? Rand, in her paper makes the case that, “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.” Rand defines these two principles as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.

Donald Trump has tapped into the “Individualism Movement.” Trump’s life is the embodiment of the individualist. Trump has been rich, then poor and then rich again. He has done this not with government handouts, but rather despite the government.

It appears Ann and I agree. The GOPe is baffled, the people are not.

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Britain Bristles, Canada Bows to Islamic Multiculturalism

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Britain appears to be cracking down on deportations of terrorists as well as hard-core criminals, while Canada, with its new liberal administration, dons kid gloves to deal with terrorists. Although in the case mentioned below, it took  the United Kingdom an eternity to wake up.

An article in the Independent reports on the Home Secretary, the British cabinet level position that deals with immigration, citizenship, and crime policy,

“Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is planning to significantly increase her department’s use of legal powers that allow serious criminals with dual nationality to have their British citizenship withdrawn.”

This action is in response to the gang rapes, and assaults perpetrated by what the article claims as “Asian” sex abuse gangs. You have to laugh at the media that will use any  kind of word to describe people from Muslim countries. Yes, Pakistan is part of South-West Asia, but how about just naming the country.

The particular case being discussed in the article deals with a gang of six men and women recently convicted of involvement in rape, prostitution, false imprisonment, and indecent assault. Three brothers with British/ Pakistani citizenship: Arshid, Basharat, and Bannaras Hussain were named in the case. They are not your average Anglo-Saxon names, so I’m assuming they are Muslim. The number of abused in Rotherham England, an area contolled by the culturally  Muslim sensitive Labour Party, 1,400 children over the past 16 years.

According to the Telegraph,

“Men of Pakistani heritage treated white girls like toilet paper. They picked children up from schools and care homes and trafficked them across northern cities for other men to join in the fun. They doused a 15-year-old in petrol and threatened to set her alight should she dare to report them. They menaced entire families and made young girls watch as they raped other children.”

Vinesh Mandalia, the counsel for the Home Office, stated,

“… the hearing that the decision by Home Secretary to deprive the men of their British citizenships was based on the need to express “society’s condemnation of those who have gained the benefits and privileges of British citizenship, but go on to become involved in serious organised crime”

On the flip-side, Canadian Immigration Minister, John McCallum announced new legislation that basically would prevent known terrorists in their country from being deported. No surprise here since the country just elected a “wet behind the ears’  Prime Minister who wants 50,000 Syrian refugees by the end of this year.

According to the National Post,

“…the Liberal plan promises to be controversial in its own right, since it would, if passed, restore the Canadian citizenship of Zakaria Amara — sentenced in 2010 for his role as a member of the so-called Toronto 18.”

So, the very first piece of legislation pushed out by this liberal Canadian government will restore citizenship to the lead al Qaeda terrorist, Amara,  involved in a plot to blow up a large truck bomb parked outside of the Toronto Stock Exchange at rush hour in 2006. In addition, an Ontario military base was also to be attacked, essentially creating their own Canadian 9/11.

Personally, I’m wondering why he is still six feet above ground, but then we have our own Blind Sheik who is being waited on hand and foot at Club Gitmo, awaiting his pardon at the end of the Obama regime. (That is just my opinion.)

The National Post goes on to state,

“In addition, the department will take no further action against nine terrorists who had received notices informing them their citizenship was being revoked. They include an Iranian-Canadian and a Pakistani-Canadian imprisoned for a 2010 plan to bomb military bases in Canada.”

It continues,

“Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian imprisoned in California over his role in a plot to decapitate employees of a Danish newspaper and throw their heads onto the street, will also be allowed to keep his Canadian citizenship.”

What does this legislation say to terrorists worldwide? It is the very same message our government broadcasts to any illegal immigrant desiring to come to our country for numerous reasons.  And that is…Have no fear of prosecution or of being deported. Canada and America are open-wide, multiculturally speaking, to those who intend harm.

Interestingly, Canada just reported a total of 240 of its model citizens are or have been engaged in terror groups fighting overseas. Sixty have returned home with the remaining 180 still abroad. With the administration’s bent, Trudeau may just arrange a ticker tape parade to welcome them all home.

RELATED ARTICLE: Swiss Vote on Expelling Foreigners for Petty Crimes

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left) meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron during a bilateral visit to London, on November 25, 2015.

Bloomberg and Murdoch (rich globalists) working to control your communities

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This morning we learned from a New York Times story that Fox News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch failed in 2013 to persuade you that Marco Rubio’s ‘Gang of Eight’ Amnesty bill would be good for America.

However, having failed through Fox News propaganda, he and other rich globalists (they need cheap labor!) created a new way to change your minds about how, by ‘welcoming’ more immigrants to town, you would benefit and created a special grant program called ‘Gateways to Growth.’

They are coming for you one town at a time!

Here is what I said at American Resistance 2016! a month ago:

Welcoming America and the Partnership for a New American Economy have partnered in a grant giveaway program—Gateways for Growth—designed to get your town or county softened up to accept MORE immigrants and refugees!  [Since I first wrote about this last month, you can no longer see the grant requirements without a password — typical secretive creeps!—ed]

The gist of the program is that Lefty Open Borders groups would ‘partner’ with business interests and local government to create a kind of political juggernaut that would bring Republicans and Democrats together against you, average citizens who do not want to change the social and cultural make-up of your towns, and who believe Americans should get the first shot at well-paying jobs.

The Twin Falls, Idaho target!

Longtime readers know that we have written a great deal about the ‘Pocket of Resistance’ in Twin Falls, Idaho (where Chobani Yogurt has built its largest plant in the world).  Click here for our extensive Twin Falls archive.

So, now check this out!  Here is Murdoch’s (and former NY Mayor Bloomberg’s) Gateways for Growth trying to go operational in Twin Falls.  In order to get the Murdoch/Bloomberg payola, the Open borders advocates must “partner” with the supposed ‘other side’—local government, Chambers of Commerce etc.

This is our first news of how the globalists and the do-gooders are working together in your towns!

Be sure to see ‘Gateways for Growth challenge’ to see what they hope to gain.  It is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about “integration” (not assimilation!).  They will really simply be propagandists.

From Magic Valley.com where we learn that the Murdoch groupies got ahead of themselves and listed the local government on their grant application.

TWIN FALLS | The City Council is entering the refugee issue after unanimously voting Monday to appoint a liaison to a local advocate group.

The Council heard from the Magic Valley Refugee Advocates, a fledgling group that intends to establish services for refugees in Twin Falls if it’s able to land a grant and hire staff.

While council members did not offer support for the group’s efforts — and in fact were opposed to being listed as a “supporter” in a letter of intent for the grant being sought — they agreed an exchange of information with the group was appropriate. It marks the first time the city has formally engaged in a months-long heated debate over refugee resettlement in the Magic Valley.

[….]

Several Council members were not pleased, however, the city was listed as a partner agency in a grant being pursued by the local advocacy group from the Partnership for a New American Economy, an immigration advocacy organization formed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Vice Mayor Suzanne Hawkins noted the Magic Valley Refugee Advocates listed the city as a supporter before it had agreed to be a partner.

More here! Read it all!

The leader of the Magic Valley Refugee Advocates is Erika Willsey.  Here she makes a presentation of her support of the resettlement contractor in Twin Falls—the College of Southern Idaho.  Ms. Willsey is carrying the water for globalists Bloomberg, Murdoch and Hamdi Ulukaya/Chobani Yogurt (whether she knows it or not).

I urge all of you to be on the lookout for a similar attempt being made in your towns to use globalists’ grant money to put the business community in concert with the Leftist do-gooders to change your community and to work against your interests.

By the way, the next time you hear some big company boss moaning that they can’t find American workers—tell them they need to pay a decent wage and they will get them!

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Rupert Murdoch (left) and Michael Bloomberg (Josh Reynolds/AP Photo).

Florida man could get life in prison for mosque bacon attack

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There is no excuse for what Michael Wolfe did. He is guilty of being hateful and stupid, and committing armed burglary and criminal mischief. He should be sentenced accordingly.

In Portland, Mohamed Mohamud attempted to commit jihad mass murder at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. He got thirty years in prison, and his lawyers are claiming that sentence was draconian and should be reduced. Michael Wolfe should get life in prison for bacon while Mohamed Mohamud gets thirty years for attempted mass murder?

This indicates yet again that Muslims in the U.S. are rapidly becoming a protected class, of whom authorities are particularly solicitous. Michael Wolfe deserves punishment. The punishment should fit the crime.

Michael Wolfe

Michael Wolfe

“Mosque bacon attack could get Titusville suspect life in prison,” by J.D. Gallop, Florida Today, February 25, 2016:

An attack on a mosque using raw bacon and a machete could potentially garner a Brevard County man up to life in prison as a result of a recently added hate crime enhancement, authorities say.

An attack on a mosque using raw bacon and a machete could potentially garner a Brevard County man up to life in prison as a result of a recently added hate crime enhancement, authorities say.

Michael Wolfe, 35, was charged with armed burglary of a structure and criminal mischief of a place of worship in connection with the New Year’s Eve break-in and desecration of the Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque in Titusville.

Police said the convicted felon acted alone, broke into the empty mosque with a machete at night, slashing at windows and other property before leaving behind a slab of raw bacon in and around the front door. A surveillance video shows Wolfe, dressed in camouflage pants and carrying a backpack as he stepped into the carport at the mosque.

The attack – one of a several acts of vandalism reported at Islamic centers across the country – drew national attention from advocacy groups like the [Hamas-linked — Ed.] Council on American-Islamic Relations. The incident left many in fear at the small, 50-member congregation.

Wolfe remains held at the Brevard County Jail Complex without bond and is awaiting trial.

“Our charging decisions confirm how seriously we take crimes of this nature. When further investigation shows a crime is clearly hate motivated, it will not be tolerated,” said State Attorney Phil Archer, who could not comment directly on the case.

The state attorney’s office reviewed the case and brought formal charges against Wolf earlier this month. Both charges now carry hate crime enhancements, which means the potential sanctions in the event of a conviction are increased. In the case of the armed burglary charge, Wolfe could now face up to life in prison if found guilty of the charge, although the case and any sentencing still hinges on whether a plea deal is reached, Wolfe’s prior record and the discretion of the judge.

Imam Muhammad Mursi, who oversees a network of mosques in Central Florida. lauded the state attorney’s office’s effort to pursue the case as a hate crime. “We have been hoping for that to happen. It was clearly a hate crime,” Mursi said. “Obviously, we were lucky that no one was there that night. He had a a machete, someone could have been killed.”

“Right now we are trying to recover and reassure people,” Mursi said….

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European Civilization: R.I.P.

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In early September 1999, on a combined business/pleasure trip to Europe, I had my one and only opportunity to cross the English Channel on a hovercraft from Dover to Calais.  However, since the hovercraft Princess Margaret and Princess Anne were temporarily out of service, it became necessary to cross the channel aboard the Seacat Great Britain from Folkstone, south of Dover, to Boulogne on the French seacoast, some 30 miles south of Calais.

Arriving in Calais on a Sunday afternoon, we found the Avis rental car agency at the Calais train station was closed for the day.  However, the manager of Avis’s Calais office was kind enough to interrupt his day off long enough for us to obtain our reserved rental car.  It also gave us a few hours to tour the town centre of that beautifully restored city that was all but leveled during World War II.  But life in Calais has changed dramatically in the past fifteen years and it is unlikely, given local conditions, that Avis or Hertz still maintains rental agencies in Calais.

On January 4, 2016 I published a column questioning whether we are now witnessing the end of European civilization.  In that column, I questioned how people in the U.S. and Europe would respond to the bloodshed that is certain to occur when millions of well-armed muhajirs flood into Europe.  When asked by German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer if ISIS was prepared to kill every Shiite Muslim on Earth, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi scoffed, “One-hundred fifty million or 500 million, we don’t care; it’s only a technical problem for us.  We are ready to do that.”

So if ISIS considers the difference between killing 150 million or 500 million Shia to be a mere “technicality,” how will the people of Europe handle a full-scale onslaught by such people?  Will they be prepared to do whatever is necessary to save European civilization, or are they simply too war weary from having two world wars fought on their soil to even defend themselves?  The answer to that question becomes clearer with each passing day, and nowhere do we see a greater example of European spinelessness than in present-day Calais.  To illustrate, I will quote a recent speech by a French housewife named Simone, a lifelong resident of Calais.  She said:

“My name is Simone, and I live in Calais.  I am a native Calaisienne.  My parents were also… I have always lived there and Calais used to be a very nice town… We had peace, we had security, and there were always a lot of people about in summer and in winter…”

Then she went on to describe how former Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy had decided to close the nearby Sangatte refugee camp, causing the inhabitants to descend upon Calais.  She said, “Even I, at the beginning, I said they are unhappy people.  They are lost. They have nothing.  Maybe we could help them.  And I cannot tell you how it happened from one day to the next, but we soon found ourselves with thousands.  I say thousands of migrants… actually, at the moment, there are 18,000 in what they call the ‘Jungle.’  Yes, 18,000.

“It’s terrible because they really made a city within the city.  They have discotheques, shops,

schools, hairdressers.  They even have… er… no, I cannot say it but I think you understand… for

the needs of the gentlemen, of course.  They made roads; they gave names to these streets.  They elected a mayor.  Yet, the police cannot enter what they call the ‘Muslim part.’  It is prohibited.

“Until then, we could perhaps have been able to bear it, but one cannot bear the unbearable.  When one sees that, incessantly, every day, every night, there are riots.  They come to the town centre… two, three, four thousand, everywhere.  They bash cars with iron rods, they attack people.  They even attack children.  There are rapes, there is theft, it is unimaginable what we suffer.  They enter private houses when people are at home.  They just enter; they want to eat; they help themselves.  Sometimes they also bash the people, stealing what they can, and afterwards, what they cannot take they destroy.  And when we want to defend ourselves we have the police on our backs.  The police have not accepted any complaints for a long time.

“My own son has been attacked.  He was walking quietly in the city centre.  He was listening to his music.  He had the earphones in his ears when someone tapped him on the shoulder.  He turned around, thinking it was one of his friends.  Instead, he was facing three clandestins (illegals) and he took a big blow to the face with an iron bar.  My son is quite strong, so he managed to defend himself and the three took some blows.  But then he heard some noise.  There were about thirty migrants who came to massacre him.  As he is no kamikaze, he fled.  When I saw my son come home like that, frankly, I told myself they could have killed him…

“They attack children when they return from school, or when they go to school or to the college.  They go so far as to take the school buses, enter the school bus with the children.  On January 23rd they started a big riot in Calais.  It was terrible… They went as far as attacking the statue of General De Gaulle.  They wrote on it, ‘F_ _ _ France,’ with the ISIS flag underneath… They demonstrate because of their conditions, but the more one gives them the more they demand…

“I loved very much to go to what I call the ‘grave’ of my son… it’s at the sea.  I lost my son and we put his ashes into the sea.  It was his wish; I respected his wish.  I said to my husband in the evening, ‘Take me to the grave of my son.  I need it.  I cannot do it any longer because even just to cross the town centre of Calais you put yourself in danger.  In the evening, as soon as it gets  dark, one is in danger.  I cannot go there any longer, where I loved to go.  I cannot any more (sobbing), it’s not possible.  I am afraid.  I’m afraid and there are many like us in Calais…

“The government has abandoned us.  They have decided to make of Calais a (wasteland), and if we don’t move we will be burdened with all the migrants of France here and we are finished.  We are dead.  And the Calaisians are like sheep.  I don’t understand them.  Yesterday I was in that (anti-Islam) demonstration; I was in the middle of it with my husband, my son, and friends.  And there was General (Christian) Piquemal…  And what I saw yesterday I won’t hide it from you.  I could not sleep all night because I have reviewed the scene incessantly.  They did not talk about it on the TV, the radio, not even in the newspapers.  We saw him arrested, manhandled like a thief.  He who, after all, is a French icon, an image of France who deserves respect and all the honours due to his rank.  Like a thug, we saw him pushed to the ground.  The policeman put his foot on his neck.  I promise you. We saw it.

“Even the merchants have lost 40-60 percent of their income, whereas before, Calais was a

flourishing city; it was lively, animated, gay.  There were always foreigners during the summer holidays and at the end-of-year celebrations.  Today, there is nothing left.  All the shops that had opened in the centre of town have closed down, one after the other.  Calais is a dead town… And when they come into town armed with their iron bars and their Molotov cocktails, watch out.

“And let’s speak about Madame Bouchart, the Mayor of Calais (hisses and boos).  I will tell you what I call her.  I call her ‘the slug.’  Yes, because the longer it is since she was elected mayor of Calais, the fatter she gets.  And frankly, she does nothing for the residents of Calais.  She got millions of Euros in assistance for the residents of Calais.  It was for helping the Calaisians, to help them in finding employment.  The first thing she organized was the construction of containers to house the migrants.  She had them made in Brittany, not even in Calais.  The only jobs she created in Calais… I know it because I have a friend who was offered one… were fifty jobs to clean up the crap left by the migrants… Voila!  The jobs proposed by Mme. Bouchart.

“And now there is something more: the ‘No Borders’ (organization).  It is the worst rabble you can have because they are the ones who push the illegals we have in Calais to create havoc.  Let’s call it ‘screw things up,’ but it’s much worse than that.  They are at the four corners of town with their walkie-talkies giving orders.  I have seen the riot police retreat before the migrants.  This made me cry because I told myself that’s not normal.  It’s not normal.  We are in our homes, we are in our country, we are in our town.  The riot police should rather order the migrants to step back, and not the reverse.  So they demonstrate because they want €2,000 pocket money per month…  They want a car, and also a house, of course.

“Let’s speak about houses.  When we see that Mme. Bouchart has evicted people from their homes in Calais, which were close to the zone of ‘Les Dunes,’ because it was not viable for them.  Because the migrants were too close, they suffered attacks, theft, and more.  She has evicted them even though they paid their rent.  Even I, they are evicting me from my house next month.  They are taking my house from me, and yet we have always been honest.  But it’s too long a story.  There was a judgment and they will sell my house next month, when there is nothing we can be reproached with.

“My husband is sick; he has cancer… but never mind.  The French have to be crushed, they have to be evicted.  One has to take everything from them to leave the space for the rabble who want to colonize us.  And they tell us these are ‘cultural enrichments’ for us.  I ask myself where their cultural riches are.  Because if it is to sack, to destroy, to steal, to rape, and so on, the French were fully capable of doing it themselves.  One only has to ask…”

With an all-out, no-holds-barred effort by the civilized world, the forces of ISIS can be utterly destroyed.  But even if we are able to achieve that result, we must also understand that this will not be the end of the matter.  Even if Islam is temporarily chastened by the loss of millions, they will lick their wounds for a time and then they’ll be back with even greater bloodlust than before.

The 18,000 Muslims who now clog the French end of the Chunnel at Calais want nothing more than to find their way into England where Islam has a major foothold… a foothold that is nothing more than a jumping off point for the U.S.  What is now happening in Calais will soon happen in U.S. cities such as Dearborn and Hamtramck.  Are we prepared for that, or does political correctness demand that we continue to hope for Muslim “moderation?”

You be the judge.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Next Syrian Refugee Crisis: Child Brides

eu pessimists by country chart

The Myth of Scandinavian Socialism by Corey Iacono

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Bernie Sanders has single-handedly brought the term “democratic socialism” into the contemporary American political lexicon and shaken millions of Millennials out of their apathy towards politics. Even if he does not win the Democratic nomination, his impact on American politics will be evident for years to come.

Sanders has convinced a great number of people that things have been going very badly for the great majority of people in the United States, for a very long time. His solution? America must embrace “democratic socialism,” a socioeconomic system that seemingly works very well in the Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, which are, by some measures, better off than the United States.

Democratic socialism purports to combine majority rule with state control of the means of production. However, the Scandinavian countries are not good examples of democratic socialism in action because they aren’t socialist.

In the Scandinavian countries, like all other developed nations, the means of production are primarily owned by private individuals, not the community or the government, and resources are allocated to their respective uses by the market, not government or community planning.

While it is true that the Scandinavian countries provide things like a generous social safety net and universal healthcare, an extensive welfare state is not the same thing as socialism. What Sanders and his supporters confuse as socialism is actually social democracy, a system in which the government aims to promote the public welfare through heavy taxation and spending, within the framework of a capitalist economy. This is what the Scandinavians practice.

In response to Americans frequently referring to his country as socialist, the prime minister of Denmark recently remarked in a lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government,

I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.

The Scandinavians embrace a brand of free-market capitalism that exists in conjunction with a large welfare state, known as the “Nordic Model,” which includes many policies that democratic socialists would likely abhor.

For example, democratic socialists are generally opponents of global capitalism and free trade, but the Scandinavian countries have fully embraced these things. The Economist magazine describes the Scandinavian countries as “stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies.” Perhaps this is why Denmark, Norway, and Sweden rank among the most globalized countries in the entire world. These countries all also rank in the top 10 easiest countries to do business in.

How do supporters of Bernie Sanders feel about the minimum wage? You will find no such government-imposed floors on labor in Sweden, Norway, or Denmark. Instead, minimum wages are decided by collective-bargaining agreements between unions and employers; they typically vary on an occupational or industrial basis. Union-imposed wages lock out the least skilled and do their own damage to an economy, but such a decentralized system is still arguably a much better way of doing things than having the central government set a one-size fits all wage policy that covers every occupation nationwide.

In a move that would be considered radically pro-capitalist by young Americans who #FeelTheBern, Sweden adopted a universal school choice system in the 1990s that is nearly identical to the system proposed by libertarian economist Milton Friedman his 1955 essay, “The Role of Government in Education.”

In practice, the Swedish system involves local governments allowing families to use public funds, in the form of vouchers, to finance their child’s education at a private school, including schools run by the dreaded for-profit corporation.

Far from being a failure, as the socialists thought it would be, Sweden’s reforms were a considerable success. According to a study published by the Institute for the Study of Labor, the expansion of private schooling and competition brought about by the Swedish free-market educational reforms “improved average educational performance both at the end of compulsory school and in the long run in terms of high school grades, university attendance, and years of schooling.”

Overall, it is clear that the Scandinavian countries are not in fact archetypes of successful democratic socialism. Sanders has convinced a great deal of people that socialism is something it is not, and he has used the Scandinavian countries to prove its efficacy, while ignoring the many ways they deviate, sometimes dramatically, from what Sanders himself advocates.

Corey IaconoCorey Iacono

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

The Bible and Hayek on What We Owe Strangers by Sarah Skwire

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It’s so much easier to sympathize with our own problems and with the problems of those we love than with the problems of complete strangers.

Adam Smith observes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that our ability to sympathize with ourselves is, in fact, so out of all proportion to our ability to sympathize with others that the thought of losing one of our little fingers can keep us up all night in fearful anticipation, while we can sleep easily with the knowledge that hundreds of thousands on the opposite side of the world have just died in an earthquake.

Hayek makes the same point in The Fatal Conceit:

Moreover, the structures of the extended order are made up not only of individuals but also of many, often overlapping, sub-orders within which old instinctual responses, such as solidarity and altruism, continue to retain some importance by assisting voluntary collaboration, even though they are incapable, by themselves, of creating a basis for the more extended order. Part of our present difficulty is that we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within different kinds of orders according to different rules.

It may not be the best part of our humanity, but it is a very human part. We care more about those we see more often, understand more thoroughly, and with whom we share more in common.

And maybe that’s not so bad. We treat family differently, after all. My daughter will get a giant pink fluffy stuffed unicorn from me on her birthday. I don’t believe that I am similarly obligated to provide fuzzy equines for all other eight-year-olds. Different treatment is a way of acknowledging different kinds of bonds between people and different levels of responsibility to them.

All of this is on my mind because the other night, after I gave a talk on liberty and culture, an audience member and I had a discussion about banking, debt, and interest rates during which he carefully explained to me how Jews lend each other money for no interest, but when they lend to Christians, the sky’s the limit. Everyone knows it, because it’s in the Bible.

He was right, sort of. It is in the Bible, sort of.

It’s right there in Deuteronomy 23:

You shall not give interest to your brother [whether it be] interest on money, interest on food, or interest on any [other] item for which interest is [normally] taken. You may [however], give interest to a gentile, but to your brother you shall not give interest, in order that the Lord your God shall bless you in every one of your endeavors on the land to which you are coming to possess.

But textual interpretation is a tricky business. And textual interpretation of a text that has existed for thousands of years and been wrangled with by millions of interpreters — well, it doesn’t get much trickier than that.

But it seems worth noting that the word used here (both in translation and in Hebrew) is literally “brother.” This has been interpreted over the years to mean “fellow Jew.” But the word, as given, is brother.

What I think the passage means to emphasize by using this word — regardless of whether we are talking about literal brothers, or just “brothers” — is the importance and of treating those who are closest to us with particular care and concern. The kind of business relationship that is part of Hayek’s extended order, or that is located in an outer ring of Smith’s concentric circles of sympathy, doesn’t come with extra moral responsibilities to one another. A price is agreed on. A bargain is struck. An exchange is made. Everyone is content. But in an intimate order — with brothers or sisters, husbands or wives, parents or children — we have a responsibility to give more and do more than in the extended order.

And so observant Jews are told that they should not pay or charge interest to brothers — whomever they consider those brothers to be.

Though it has been interpreted uncharitably by many over the years, this passage from Deuteronomy is not a passage about cheating the outsider. This is a passage about taking special care of those who are closest to our hearts. It’s hard to find anything to object to in that.

Sarah SkwireSarah Skwire

Sarah Skwire is the poetry editor of the Freeman and a senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis. She is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

Networks Topple Scientific Dogma by Max Borders

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Science is undergoing a wrenching evolutionary change.

In fact, most of what we consider to be carried out in the name of science is dubious at best, flat wrong at worst. It appears we’re putting too much faith in science — particularly the kind of science that relies on reproducibility.

In a University of Virginia meta-study, half of 100 psychology study results could not be reproduced.

Experts making social science prognostications turned out to be mostly wrong, according to political science writer Philip Tetlock’s decades-long review of expert forecasts.

But there is perhaps no more egregious example of bad expert advice than in the area of health and nutrition. As I wrote last year for Voice & Exit:

For most of our lives, we’ve been taught some variation on the food pyramid. The advice? Eat mostly breads and cereals, then fruits and vegetables, and very little fat and protein. Do so and you’ll be thinner and healthier. Animal fat and butter were considered unhealthy. Certain carbohydrate-rich foods were good for you as long as they were whole grain. Most of us anchored our understanding about food to that idea.

“Measures used to lower the plasma lipids in patients with hyperlipidemia will lead to reductions in new events of coronary heart disease,” said the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1971. (“How Networks Bring Down Experts (The Paleo Example),” March 12, 2015)

The so-called “lipid theory” had the support of the US surgeon general. Doctors everywhere fell in line behind the advice. Saturated fats like butter and bacon became public enemy number one. People flocked to the supermarket to buy up “heart healthy” margarines. And yet, Americans were getting fatter.

But early in the 21st century something interesting happened: people began to go against the grain (no pun) and they started talking about their small experiments eating saturated fat. By 2010, the lipid hypothesis — not to mention the USDA food pyramid — was dead. Forty years of nutrition orthodoxy had been upended. Now the experts are joining the chorus from the rear.

The Problem Goes Deeper

But the problem doesn’t just affect the soft sciences, according to science writer Ron Bailey:

The Stanford statistician John Ioannidis sounded the alarm about our science crisis 10 years ago. “Most published research findings are false,” Ioannidis boldly declared in a seminal 2005 PLOS Medicine article. What’s worse, he found that in most fields of research, including biomedicine, genetics, and epidemiology, the research community has been terrible at weeding out the shoddy work largely due to perfunctory peer review and a paucity of attempts at experimental replication.

Richard Horton of the Lancet writes, “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” And according Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman, writing in Vox,

Another review found that researchers at Amgen were unable to reproduce 89 percent of landmark cancer research findings for potential drug targets. (The problem even inspired a satirical publication called the Journal of Irreproducible Results.)

Contrast the progress of science in these areas with that of applied sciences such as computer science and engineering, where more market feedback mechanisms are in place. It’s the difference between Moore’s Law and Murphy’s Law.

So what’s happening?

Science’s Evolution

Three major catalysts are responsible for the current upheaval in the sciences. First, a few intrepid experts have started looking around to see whether studies in their respective fields are holding up. Second, competition among scientists to grab headlines is becoming more intense. Third, informal networks of checkers — “amateurs” — have started questioning expert opinion and talking to each other. And the real action is in this third catalyst, creating as it does a kind of evolutionary fitness landscape for scientific claims.

In other words, for the first time, the cost of checking science is going down as the price of being wrong is going up.

Now, let’s be clear. Experts don’t like having their expertise checked and rechecked, because their dogmas get called into question. When dogmas are challenged, fame, funding, and cushy jobs are at stake. Most will fight tooth and nail to stay on the gravy train, which can translate into coming under the sway of certain biases. It could mean they’re more likely to cherry-pick their data, exaggerate their results, or ignore counterexamples. Far more rarely, it can mean they’re motivated to engage in outright fraud.

Method and Madness

Not all of the fault for scientific error lies with scientists, per se. Some of it lies with methodologies and assumptions most of us have taken for granted for years. Social and research scientists have far too much faith in data aggregation, a process that can drop the important circumstances of time and place. Many researchers make inappropriate inferences and predictions based on a narrow band of observed data points that are plucked from wider phenomena in a complex system. And, of course, scientists are notoriously good at getting statistics to paint a picture that looks like their pet theories.

Some sciences even have their own holy scriptures, like psychology’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. These guidelines, when married with government funding, lobbyist influence, or insurance payouts, can protect incomes but corrupt practice.

But perhaps the most significant methodological problem with science is over-reliance on the peer-review process. Peer review can perpetuate groupthink, the cartelization of knowledge, and the compounding of biases.

The Problem with Expert Opinion

The problem with expert opinion is that it is often cloistered and restrictive. When science starts to seem like a walled system built around a small group of elites (many of whom are only sharing ideas with each other) — hubris can take hold. No amount of training or smarts can keep up with an expansive network of people who have a bigger stake in finding the truth than in shoring up the walls of a guild or cartel.

It’s true that to some degree, we have to rely on experts and scientists. It’s a perfectly natural part of specialization and division of labor that some people will know more about some things than you, and that you are likely to need their help at some point. (I try to stay away from accounting, and I am probably not very good at brain surgery, either.) But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t question authority, even when the authority knows more about their field than we do.

The Power of Networks

But when you get an army of networked people — sometimes amateurs — thinking, talking, tinkering, and toying with ideas — you can hasten a proverbial paradigm shift. And this is exactly what we are seeing.

It’s becoming harder for experts to count on the vagaries and denseness of their disciplines to keep their power. But it’s in cross-disciplinary pollination of the network that so many different good ideas can sprout and be tested.

The best thing that can happen to science is that it opens itself up to everyone, even people who are not credentialed experts. Then, let the checkers start to talk to each other. Leaders, influencers, and force-multipliers will emerge. You might think of them as communications hubs or bigger nodes in a network. Some will be cranks and hacks. But the best will emerge, and the cranks will be worked out of the system in time.

The network might include a million amateurs willing to give a pair of eyes or a different perspective. Most in this army of experimenters get results and share their experiences with others in the network. What follows is a wisdom-of-crowds phenomenon. Millions of people not only share results, but challenge the orthodoxy.

How Networks Contribute to the Republic of Science

In his legendary 1962 essay, “The Republic of Science,” scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote the following passage. It beautifully illustrates the problems of science and of society, and it explains how they will be solved in the peer-to-peer age:

Imagine that we are given the pieces of a very large jigsaw puzzle, and suppose that for some reason it is important that our giant puzzle be put together in the shortest possible time. We would naturally try to speed this up by engaging a number of helpers; the question is in what manner these could be best employed.

Polanyi says you could progress through multiple parallel-but-individual processes. But the way to cooperate more effectively

is to let them work on putting the puzzle together in sight of the others so that every time a piece of it is fitted in by one helper, all the others will immediately watch out for the next step that becomes possible in consequence. Under this system, each helper will act on his own initiative, by responding to the latest achievements of the others, and the completion of their joint task will be greatly accelerated. We have here in a nutshell the way in which a series of independent initiatives are organized to a joint achievement by mutually adjusting themselves at every successive stage to the situation created by all the others who are acting likewise.

Just imagine if Polanyi had lived to see the Internet.

This is the Republic of Science. This is how smart people with different interests and skill sets can help put together life’s great puzzles.

In the Republic of Science, there is certainly room for experts. But they are hubs among nodes. And in this network, leadership is earned not by sitting atop an institutional hierarchy with the plumage of a postdoc, but by contributing, experimenting, communicating, and learning with the rest of a larger hive mind. This is science in the peer-to-peer age.

Max BordersMax Borders

Max Borders is Director of Idea Accounts and Creative Development for Emergent Order. He was previously the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also co-founder of the event experience Voice & Exit.

Will a ‘Socialist’ Government Make Us Freer? by Jason Kuznicki

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“Socialism” is a weasel word.

Consider that the adjective “socialist” applies commonly — even plausibly — to countries with vastly different ex ante institutions and with vastly different social and economic outcomes. Yet Canada, Norway, Venezuela, and Cuba can’t all be one thing. Does socialism mean substantial freedom of the press, as in Norway? Or does it mean the vicious suppression of dissent, as in Venezuela?

We need more clarity here before we decide whether socialism is a worthwhile social system, and whether, as Will Wilkinson recommends, we ought to support a socialist candidate for president.

An approach that clearly will not do is to apply the term “socialism” to virtually all foreign countries. Shabby as that definition may be, some do seem to use it, both favorably and not. The result is that “socialism” has grown popular largely because a lot of people have concluded that the American status quo stinks. Maybe it does stink, but that doesn’t endow “socialism” with a proper definition.

Let’s see what happens when we drill down to the level of institutions.

Now, we might personally wish that the word “socialism” meant “the social system in which the state owns the means of production and runs the major industries of the nation.”

This is a workable definition: It has a clear genus and differentia; it includes some systems, while excluding others; and it’s not obviously self-referential. It’s also the definition preferred by many important political actors in the twentieth century, including Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin’s definition was not a bad one. But it’s far from the only current, taxonomically proper definition of socialism. As Will Wilkinson rightly notes, socialism also commonly means “the social system in which the state uses taxation to provide an extensive social safety net.”

And yet, as Will also notes, “ownership of the means of production” and “provision of a social safety net” are logically independent policies. A state can do one, the other, both, or neither. Of these four possibilities, there’s only one that can’t plausibly be called a socialism — and not a single state on earth behaves this way!

Better terms are in order, but I know that whatever I propose here isn’t going to stick, so I’m not going to try. Instead I want to look at some of the consequences that may arise from our fuzzy terminology.

One danger is that we may believe and support one conception of “socialism” —only to find that the agents we’ve tasked with supplying it have had other ideas all along: We may want Norway but get Venezuela. Wittingly or unwittingly.

Before we say “oh please, of course we’ll end up in Norway,” let’s recall how eager our leftist intelligentsia has been to praise Chavez’s Venezuela — and even declare it an “economic miracle” — until the truth became unavoidable: The “miracle” of socialism in Venezuela turned out to be nothing more than a transient oil boom. Yet leftist intellectuals are the very sorts of people who will be drawn, by self-selection, to an administration that is proud to call itself socialist.

There’s some resemblance to a “motte-and-bailey” process here: they cultivate the rich, desirable fields of the bailey, until they are attacked, at which point they retreat to the well-fortified motte. The easily defensible motte is the comfortable social democracy of northern Europe, which we all agree is pretty nice and happens to have quite a few free-market features. The bailey is the Cuban revolution.

This motte-and-bailey process does not need to be deliberate; it may be the result of a genuinely patchwork socialist coalition. No one in the coalition needs to have bad faith. An equivocal word is all that’s needed, and one is already on hand.

Even when we look only at one country, the problem remains: We may only want some institutional parts of Denmark — and we may want them for good reasons, such as Denmark’s relatively loose regulatory environment. But what we get may only be the other institutional parts of Denmark — such as its high personal income taxes. (Worth noting: Bernie Sanders has explicitly promised the higher personal income taxes, while his views on regulation are anything but Danish.)

Will thinks that electing someone on the far left of the American political spectrum could be somewhat good for liberty, but I’m far from convinced. Remember what happened the last time we put just a center-leftist in the White House: By the very same measures of economic freedom that Will uses to tout Denmark’s success, America’s economic freedom ranking sharply declined. And that decline was the direct result of Barack Obama’s left-wing economic policies. We got a larger welfare state and higher taxes, but we also got much more command-and-control regulation.

Faced with similar objections from others, Will has already performed a nice sidestep: He has replied that voting for Sanders is — obviously — just a strategic move: “Obviously,” he writes, “President Bernie Sanders wouldn’t get to implement his economic policy.” Emphasis his.

To which I’d ask: Do you really mean that Sanders would achieve none of his economic agenda? At all? Because I can name at least two items that seem like safe bets: more protectionism and stricter controls on immigration. A lot of Sanders’s ideas will indeed be dead on arrival, but these two won’t, and he would be delighted to make a bipartisan deal that cuts against most everything that Will, the Niskanen Center, and libertarians generally claim to stand for. Cheering for a guy who would happily bury your legislative agenda, and who stands a good chance of actually doing it seems… well, odd.

There is also a frank inconsistency to Will’s argument: The claim that Sanders will make us more like Denmark can’t be squared with the claim that Sanders will be totally ineffective. Arguing both is just throwing spaghetti on the wall — and hoping the result looks like libertarianism.

Would Sanders decriminalize marijuana? Or reform the criminal justice system? Or start fewer wars? Or spend less on defense? Or give us all puppies? I don’t know. Obama promised to close Guantanamo. He promised to be much better on civil liberties. He promised not to start “dumb wars” or bomb new and exotic countries. He even promised accountability for torture.

In 2008, I made the terrible mistake of counting those promises in his favor. We’ve seen how well that worked out.

It’s completely beyond me why I should trust similarly tangential promises this time around — particularly from a candidate like Sanders, whose record on foreign policy is already disturbingly clear. None of the rest of these desiderata have anything to do with state control over our economic life, which would appear to be the one thing the left wants most of all. (Marijuana: illegal in Cuba. Legal in North Korea. Yay freedom?)

Ultimately, I think that electing someone significantly further left than Obama will not help matters in any sense at all, except maybe that it will show how little trust we should put in anyone who willingly wears the socialist label. The only good outcome of a Sanders administration may be that we’ll all say to ourselves afterward: “Well, we won’t be trying that again!”

Now, I am prepared to believe, exactly as Will writes, that “‘social democracy,’ as it actually exists, is sometimes more ‘libertarian’ than the good old U.S. of A.” That’s true, at least in a few senses. Consider, for instance, that Denmark isn’t drone bombing unknown persons in Pakistan using a type of algorithm that can’t seem to deliver interesting Facebook ads. (One could say that, as usual, Denmark is letting us do their dirty work for them, with their full approval, but I won’t press the point.)

Either way, that’s still a pretty low bar, no? Meanwhile, there remains plenty of room for us to imitate some other bad things — things that we aren’t doing now, but that Denmark is doing, like taxing its citizens way, way too much. The fact that these things are a part of the complex conglomerate known as northern European social democracy doesn’t necessarily make them good, exactly as remote control assassination doesn’t become good merely by virtue of being American.

In short: Point taken about social democracy. At times, some of it isn’t completely terrible. But that only gets us so far, and not quite to the Sanders slot in the ballot box.

Jason KuznickiJason Kuznicki

Jason Kuznicki is the editor of Cato Unbound.