There are only two genders and a global epidemic of social disorders and mental illnesses.
We have been writing about the grooming of children by public schools, colleges and universities to provide sex partners for perverts, pederasts and pedophiles.
But even more onerous are those doctors who swore an oath to “first do no harm” that are profiting from the mutilation of the sex organs of underaged children.
Dr. Scott Mosser says that he has removed the breasts of 13 year old girls and would happily do it to 12 year olds too. https://t.co/WtXc6d6MiS
No one can change their gender! What they can do is mutilate themselves psychologically, spiritually and physically. This is the greatest and most culturally destructive myth of my generation.
It is barbaric and goes against science and all that is right and the truth. Genital mutilation is not healthcare!
What is most disturbing is the number of “pediatric gender clinics”, a.k.a. genital mutilation factories, that have taken root across America since 2007.
The UCLA Gender Health Program’s pediatric practice (Los Angeles, Calif.) includes “puberty suppression therapy” and “hormone replacement therapy.” It also features “gender affirmation surgery.” According to their website, “most surgical procedures are not recommended until adulthood,” which implies that at least some gender transition surgical procedures may be performed prior to adulthood.
The Gender Clinic at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health (Palo Alto, Calif.) treats both minors and “adults 18 years and older,” offering “puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones.” They provide gender transition surgery to “adolescents and young adults,” touting their “innovative surgical techniques” and “state-of-the-art operating suites.” They boldly state their not-so-medical opinion that “everyone deserves to have their physical body reflect their gender identity.”
The Division of Plastic Surgery at Connecticut Children’s Hospital (Hartford, Conn.) “offers surgical options for gender affirmation to adolescents.” Their Gender Program recommends parents contact them “when puberty begins” for a range of treatments including “puberty blockers” and “hormone therapy.” They also link to various gender dysphoria support groups, including a Hartford group for ages 16-26 and a Bridgeport group for ages 13-24. In these support groups, children could develop close, emotional bonds to adults who are not relatives.
The Essence Clinic at St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital (Boise, Id.) offers “hormonal therapy, including puberty blockers” and “surgical consultations and referrals” to “children, adolescents, and young adults.” Two of its five providers specialize in surgery.
The Gender Development Program at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (Chicago, Ill., Westchester, Ill.) offers “gender-affirming surgery referrals” for “children and adolescents,” who may “begin care with us up to age 22.” They say they “work closely with several surgeons who are experienced in this type of care and can provide more information and referrals for patients seeking these services.” However, their 19-member gender development team includes two pediatric surgeons, a pediatric plastic surgeon, and an attending physician of plastic and reconstructive surgery, and one of their three locations is a “surgical treatment center,” making it likely that they perform surgeries in-house.
At the University of Illinois Hospital (Chicago, Ill.), “gender affirming surgery” is systematically interwoven into their surgical department, with no division between surgeons performing gender transition procedures and surgeons performing other types of plastic surgeries, and seemingly no division in care between children and adults. As an example, the program’s director “focuses on the reconstructive needs of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults up to age 25” and “specializes with adolescents and young adults in the realm of chest reconstruction, including asymmetric breasts, oversized breasts (female macromastia and male gynecomastia), and top surgery.”
The Boston Children’s Hospital (Boston, Mass.) has offered “gender-affirming chest surgeries for individuals over 15 years old” (see above).
The Child and Adolescent Transgender Center for Health at Boston Medical Center (Boston, Mass.) provides “access to onsite hormone blockers,” “gender-affirming hormone therapy,” and “referral to … other Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery services” for “children, adolescents, and young adults.” The Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery presents a “unified structure” for all “gender affirming care.” An anonymous testimonial on their website indicates they perform transgender surgeries on minors, “As a parent of a child going through the transgender experience, I have found valuable information on this site. After the surgery, I will be caring for him/her at my home.”
The Gender and Sexuality Service at NYU Langone’s Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital (New York, N.Y.) will perform “gender-affirming medical interventions” on a “child, adolescent, or young adult,” working with health insurers “to obtain approvals for presurgical and surgical procedures.” The sizable “Gender and Sexuality Service Team” of nearly 19 doctors include four who represent plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Golisano Children’s Hospital, associated with University of Rochester Medicine, (Rochester, N.Y.) features “gender health services” to “youth and young adults” including “cross-gender hormone therapy,” “pubertal blockade,” and “surgical services” with three surgeons listed.
Doernbecher Children’s Hospital (Portland, Ore., Beaverton, Ore.) offers “a full range of services for transgender and gender-nonconforming children and teens,” including hormone treatments, surgery, and handouts with tips on how to appear more like the opposite sex. They “evaluate surgery for teens on an individual basis.”
The Gender Clinic at Seattle Children’s Hospital (Seattle, Wash.) accepts “new patients ages 9 to 16.” The services they provide include “puberty blockers,” “gender-affirming hormones,” and “gender-affirming surgery.” While gender transition procedures for minors require parental consent, “Washington state privacy laws limit parent and caregiver access to adolescents’ health information. … The patient chooses whether to consent to releasing medical information.”
The Gender Health Clinic at Children’s Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wisc.) focuses on “children and youth” and “will meet with new patients through age 16.” They offer “puberty-suppressing hormone therapy, gender-affirming hormone therapy, surgical treatments, and speech/voice training.” They refer patients 17 or older to “an adult hormone provider.”
We are saddened that some of our major university medical centers are in the business of doing irreparable harm to underaged children. This is gender mutilation of the worst kind.
This isn’t doing these patients any good to believe that by mutilating their sexual organs they can change their gender. Gender is immutable. Science tells us so.
To perform these types of “therapies” and surgeries is criminal at best.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-08-26 15:07:222022-08-31 16:17:36GENITAL MUTILATION IN AMERICA: List of 13 U.S. Hospitals That Operate on Underaged Children’s Sex Organs For Profit
FBI officials obstructed the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 election by instructing agents not to further examine the laptop, whistleblowers purportedly told Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.
Federal authorities took the laptop from a Delaware computer repair shop in December 2019 after being alerted to its presence by the store owner. However, whistleblowers said local FBI leadership told employees not to look at the laptop for months and declared the FBI would not further change the election outcome, according to a letter Johnson sent Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz Tuesday.
“These whistleblowers stated that local FBI leadership told employees, ‘you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop’ and that the FBI is ‘not going to change the outcome of the election again,” Johnson wrote. “Further, these whistleblowers allege that the FBI did not begin to examine the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election—potentially a year after the FBI obtained the laptop.”
Johnson recounted asking the FBI in October 2020 what it had done after obtaining the laptop.
“The FBI failed to respond to my questions and I led the call for you to examine whether the FBI took appropriate and necessary investigative steps after receiving Hunter Biden’s laptop,” he said. “Four months later, in February 2021, you informed me that your office would not take any actions that could interfere with an ongoing investigation.”
Johnson argued the whistleblowers’ claims “provide even more evidence of FBI corruption and renew calls for you to take immediate steps to investigate the FBI’s actions regarding the laptop.”
The New York Post published a report weeks before the 2020 presidential election about the emails from the laptop that showed Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings with Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, where he was part of the Board of Directors. Former President Donald Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani had given the outlet information about the computer’s hard drive.
The FBI did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-08-26 14:31:282022-08-26 15:29:06FBI Agents Were Told Not To Look Into Hunter Biden’s Laptop, Whistleblowers Say
The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) redacted affidavit relating to the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was released on Friday. The document shows that the DOJ pointed to a number of classified materials already obtained from Trump’s home as reason for the August search warrant request.
Though much of the affidavit was redacted, unsealed portions of it revealed that the latest search came after the FBI reviewed 15 boxes that Trump turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in January, sparking further concern about other potential documents. Fourteen of these boxes had classification markings,” according to the affidavit.
The 14 boxes contained 184 documents – 25 of the documents had “top secret” markings, 92 were labeled “secret” and 67 had a “confidential” warning, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit also notes that the DOJ requested Trump secure the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, pointing out that the department sent a letter to “FPOTUS COUNSEL 1” on June 8, 2022. This letter “reiterated that the PREMISES are not authorized to store classified information and requested the preservation of the STORAGE ROOM and boxes that had been moved from the White House to the PREMISES.”
“As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information,” the letter reads, according to the affidavit. “As such, it appears that since the time classified documents [redacted] were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in au appropriate location. Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until farther notice.”
Multiple media organizations, including CNN and The New York Times, pushed for the affidavit – which would shed light on the reasoning behind the unprecedented raid – to be released because of intense public interest and the unparalleled nature of the situation.
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart – who also signed off on the search warrant used in the FBI’s August 8 raid – ordered the DOJ to submit redactions to the affidavit after formally rejecting the department’s push to keep the document private. Reinhart approved the redactions on Thursday and noted the affidavit would be released by noon on Friday.
In the wake of the FBI’s search, Trump slammed the incident as being politically motivated. He encouraged the “immediate release of documents” relating to the search of his Florida home and, on August 22, filed a lawsuit asking for a “special master” to be appointed to independently oversee the review of various materials that had been taken.
The DOJ on Friday also released a document detailing its proposed redactions to the affidavit and reasons for the redactions – though notably the reasons for keeping portions of the affidavit under wraps were also redacted. In this document, the DOJ noted that the redactions are an effort to protect a “significant number of civilian witnesses.”
The Justice Department's reasons for keeping large portions of its Mar-a-Lago warrant application sealed are themselves sealed. pic.twitter.com/H86pYcnQL2
MORE: Here is "a chart identifying the government's proposed redactions as belonging to different categories of protected information," per the DOJ. But, as you can see, it's really hard to say. https://t.co/nqiAZfIWympic.twitter.com/XgaZOVFojX
— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 26, 2022
Eighty percent of Americans say that, “political correctness is a problem in our country.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, you’ve probably heard of cancel culture.
But what is it? Why do people on the right and left—and libertarians—disagree so vehemently on everything from whether or not it’s a problem, to whether or not it even exists?
This article takes a deep dive into the question of “what is cancel culture?” We’ll go beyond the talking points of both sides and look at:
Does cancel culture exist…or is it just ‘consequence culture’ as many on the left claim?
If it exists, who does it? Is it just one political party, or does every political tribe try to cancel people who disagree with them?
What does cancel culture (or ‘consequence culture’) look like in practice?
Why is trying to silence dissent bad?
Is this just about giving disadvantaged people a voice, and holding the powerful accountable when they abuse their power?
Is Cancel Culture ‘Consequence Culture’?
Some on the left have said that cancel culture doesn’t really exist as a phenomenon. Instead, it would be better to call it ”consequence culture.” Actor and TV personality LeVar Burton, for instance, says, “In terms of cancel culture, I think it’s misnamed, that’s a misnomer. I think we have a consequence culture and that consequences are finally encompassing everybody in the society.”
Writing for Vox, Aja Romano argues that cancel culture has its roots in historically marginalized groups seeking justice against powerful people who abuse their power. In this sense, it’s a tool for social justice.
Anne Charity Hudley, the chair of linguistics of African America at the University of California Santa Barbara, elaborates on this claim: “for black culture and cultures of people who are lower income and disenfranchised, this is the first time you do have a voice in those types of conversation.”
For defenders, canceling is just a new form of boycott. Hudley argues, “When you see people canceling Kanye, canceling other people, it’s a collective way of saying, ‘We elevated your social status, your economic prowess, [and] we’re not going to pay attention to you in the way that we once did. … ‘I may have no power, but the power I have is to [ignore] you.’”
Lisa Nakamura, PhD, Professor and Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, echoes Hudley. She argues that cancel culture is, “a cultural boycott. It’s an agreement not to amplify, signal boost, give money to.”
Under this definition, cancel culture is simply about holding powerful people accountable. For defenders of this new cultural phenomenon, it’s essentially taking the #MeToo movement and applying it on a broader scale. Indeed, when Romano lists celebrities who have been canceled, she cites Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, and Louis C.K., suggesting that she sees the #MeToo movement as a core component of cancel culture.
In this formulation, cancel culture (or consequence culture) has three core components:
1) It’s about accountability, and holding powerful figures like Weinstein accountable for abusing their power
2) It’s primarily exercised by people who have been historically marginalized.
3) A primary consequence is a lack of attention given to the person, which amounts to canceling them.
Framed like that, it doesn’t seem so bad. After all, not a lot of folks of any political ideology opposed locking up Harvey Weinstein. And the right to not to pay attention to people you don’t like is fundamental to our ideal of free expression and a free society.
But when we examine what cancel culture actually looks like in practice, we find some aspects that are deeply troubling.
What Does Cancel Culture Actually Look Like?
When we dig below the rhetoric and look at actual cases, we see five broad trends that, together, seem to define almost all of cancel culture:
#1: Online Mobs
In practice, cancel culture often manifests as online mobs. Someone decides that someone else did something they don’t like, and whips people into a frenzy to go after the offender. The mobs can then take on a life of their own, doxxing people or destroying folks’ lives for minor offenses.
A lot of times, the victims of cancel culture are among the most vulnerable people in society.
In 2019, members of the trans community tried to cancel Dave Chappelle (admittedly not a vulnerable person at this point in his life). A young up-and-coming trans comedian named Daphne Dorman defended Chappelle, and the mob turned on her.
As Chappelle recounts the story in his Netflix special The Closer, “It took a lot of heart to defend me like that. And when she did that the trans community dragged that b**** all over Twitter. For days they were going in on her….”
Six days after the dragging started, Dorman killed herself. To be clear, Dorman suffered from psychological issues including severe PTSD, and it’s unlikely according to her family that the Twitter mob was why she died. But as Chappelle said, “I don’t know if it was them dragging or I don’t know what was going on in her life but I bet dragging her didn’t help.”
Author Lauren Hough became another victim of cancel culture. Her debut novel Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing was a brutally honest story about her growing up in the “Children of God” sex cult. A critic on Goodreads gave the book 4 out of 5 stars. Hough responded snarkily: “Glad to see most of the Goodreads *ssholes still giving 4-star reviews to show they’re super tough reviewers who need to, like, fall in love, you know? Anyway, no one likes you.”
After Hough’s response, the sky fell down on her.
The public backlash was brutal. People flooded to Hough’s Goodreads page and started leaving 1-star ratings and reviews of her book out of spite. As of this writing, the book has 7,922 ratings with an average of 3.19 stars. 32 percent of her ratings are 1 star, many from people who left reviews like, “id [sic] not finish at 0%.” And “its always the white women” (a reaction, it seems, to Hough criticizing her 4-star review).
Here we can see the stark difference between how defenders describe cancel culture (or consequence culture) and how it often looks in real life. First, Hough wasn’t a powerful figure. She was a debut novelist, not Harvey Weinstein. She was a gay woman who dealt with sexual abuse, homelessness, and addiction; who put her experience on the page in novelized form; and then got raked over the coals for a single rude response to a single critic.
There’s another difference, too. Hudley defends cancel culture as simply depriving someone of your attention: “I may have no power, but the power I have is to [ignore] you.” But the Hough example goes much farther. These reviewers weren’t just giving her book a pass, they were actively trying to prevent other people from reading her work. They were working to sabotage her career.
Trans writer Isabel Fall provides another useful example. She wrote a short story in 2020 that depicted gender dysphoria. Fall published under a pseudonym, and critics of the story took the story as transphobic. They harassed her, doxxed her, forcibly outed her, and ultimately drove her offline.
This isn’t about going after powerful people to hold them accountable. Too often, what cancel culture looks like in practice is people from marginalized communities getting dragged and publicly shamed for saying something the online mob doesn’t like.
#2: Getting People Fired For Speaking Out
A second big thrust of cancel culture is getting people fired when they speak out against the far-left orthodoxy.
In 2020, bestselling children’s author Gillian Philip was fired by her publisher. Her crime? She changed her Twitter handle to include the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling (the hashtag is a reference to Rowling’s controversial stance on transgender issues).
As another example, Nick Buckley was fired from Mancunian Way, a charity that he directed and founded. The charity helped disadvantaged youth in Manchester, including thousands of black and minority children. His crime? He wrote a blog post criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement. Days later, he was removed from the charity.
These cases (and there are many more like them) illustrate another key difference between cancel culture and accountability movements like the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement held powerful people accountable for actual sins. Weinstein sexually assaulted dozens of women. Buckley and Philip, on the other hand, simply expressed mainstream political views or made benign social media posts. To say that these firings are about holding people “accountable” is to turn making non-left statements into a crime that requires punishment.
To be fair, there are cases where cancel culture looks exactly like what its supporters envision: a groundswell of people holding the powerful accountable for abusing their power. Michael Richards is a good example of this: the star of the popular sitcom “Seinfeld” went on an objectively racist tirade in 2006. His career subsequently cratered.
#3: Disinviting Speakers
One area where cancel culture manifests offline is on college campuses where students (and sometimes faculty) will hear that someone has been invited to their university to speak, and then mobilize to try to get them uninvited. In extreme (albeit disturbingly frequent) cases, students will even violently protest and shut down the campus to prevent speakers from speaking.
A peaceful disinvitation isn’t as damaging as getting someone fired, because the speaker will simply go on to their next speaking gig. But the core elements of cancel culture are still here: X says something that some people disagree with, so they band together to prevent anyone from hearing from X and attempt to hurt X’s career.
In the past 10 years (2013-2022), 125 disinvitations have been issued to public figures who were invited to speak on campuses.These included Ben Carson, Condoleezza Rice, Ilya Shapiro, George Will, Ben Shapiro, and other mainstream figures.
#4: Self-Censorship
Unsurprisingly, given the consequences for even mild dissent, this new online culture has led many people to preemptively silence themselves.
Heterodox Academy surveyed 445 academics about the state of free inquiry on campus, asking them, “Imagine expressing your views about a controversial issue while at work, at a time when faculty, staff, and/or other colleagues were present. To what extent would you worry about the following consequences?”
One of the hypothetical consequences Heterodox Academy listed was, “my career would be hurt.” How many academics said they would be “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” about this consequence? 53.43 percent.
To put it another way: over half of academics on campus worried that expressing non-orthodox opinions on controversial topics could be dangerous to their careers.
We see the same self-censoring phenomenon among college students. In 2021, College Pulse surveyed 37,000 students at 159 colleges. They found that 80 percent of students self-censor to at least some degree, while 48 percent of undergraduates reported feeling “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” expressing their views on a controversial topic in the classroom.
In a panel on free speech and cancel culture, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen said, “I constantly encounter students who are so fearful of being subjected to the Twitter mob that they are engaging in self-censorship.”
If cancel culture is just about holding powerful people accountable, why is it that young people are so scared of saying something that might put them in the crosshairs?
#5: Governmental Pressure
Unfortunately, legislators and public officials are realizing that they can leverage a version of cancel culture to punish corporations who don’t toe the right line.
In 2022, Florida passed a law revoking the Walt Disney Company’s special tax status. Revoking special government privileges can be good, but the reasoning in this case was disturbing: Florida Republicans are explicitly punishing Disney for opposing Republican-backed Florida House Bill 1557 (the “Don’t Say Gay” bill).
Daily Wire cofounder Ben Shapiro tweeted, “Corporations have an interest in lobbying on issues that directly impact their business. If they choose to engage in politics outside their purview, they will be treated with all the aggression inherent to the political sphere, and they will deserve it.”
In other words, governments can and will target specific companies for speaking out on cultural and political issues.
In 2021, Major League Baseball announced that it would move the 2021 All-Star Game and the MLB draft out of Atlanta in order to protest a voting-ID law that Georgia had passed. Many Republicans were furious, and some sought to punish MLB’s act of dissent. Representative Jeff Duncan said he would work to end baseball’s federal antitrust exception. Former President Donald Trump urged supporters to, “boycott baseball and all of the woke companies.”
Trying to use societal pressure to silence or punish dissenters is almost never a good thing…but it’s even worse when legislators use governmental power to do the punishing.
Why Is Silencing Dissent Bad?
Okay, so cancel culture is real and the consequences can be brutal. On an individual level, it’s obvious why this isn’t a good thing: it would be awful to lose your job and your ability to provide for your family because you changed your Twitter bio.
But on a societal level, why is this bad?
First, we don’t want a society in which people feel like they have to walk on eggshells around each other. That creates a culture of fear and loneliness. It’s inimical to the idea of building genuine connection, which we as humans need.
The second reason that we want to avoid a culture where peoples’ livelihoods can be destroyed for wrongthink is that if dissenters live in fear and don’t speak up, we’ll never learn and grow as a society. None of us has all the answers, because life is complex and as humans we’re inherently flawed. We need to listen to people who disagree with us so that we can all move closer to the truth.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it eloquently in an Atlantic article titled, “Why The Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” He points out that, “People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain.”
By contrast, “People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider, almost as if they are shooting darts into their own brain.”
The third reason we should oppose this kind of culture is…it’s just vicious. We shouldn’t embrace a culture where online mobs can destroy peoples’ livelihoods for small sins or expressing non-orthodox political views.
Is Cancel Culture A Partisan Phenomenon?
Cancel culture is unfortunately not a partisan phenomenon; both the left and the right do it. However, they cancel in very different ways and to different degrees.
So who cancels more? Let’s take a look at the data:
1) Social Media Canceling: Left-Wing (Anecdotally)
Writing for Quillette, Richard Hanania argues that Twitter is far more likely to censor right-wing voices than left-wing voices. He notes, “Of 22 prominent, politically active individuals who are known to have been suspended (from Twitter) since 2005 and who expressed a preference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 21 supported Donald Trump.”
Now maybe all 21 right-leaning individuals deserved to be removed from Twitter. Maybe they said awful things that violated Twitter’s terms of service. But as Hanania points out, liberals who say awful things generally get a pass from the social media giant. Sarah Jeong, former editorial writer for the New York Times, posted lots of Tweets expressing contempt for white people. Sample Tweets include, “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins,” and, “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”
Kathy Griffin demanded that her followers doxx students at Covington High School who were accused of harassing a Native American activist. (For those unfamiliar, doxxing is when you publish private or identifying information about someone, generally with the intent to harm them.)
Neither Griffin nor Jeong were punished by Twitter.
When it comes to silencing people for their political views, social media giants like Twitter seem to prioritize canceling non-liberals.
2) Getting People Fired For Their Political Views: Left-Wing (Data)
A big part of cancel culture seems to be this push to punish people who dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy, and in this case liberals are also leading the charge.
The libertarian Cato Institute, together with YouGov, surveyed 2,300 American adults for its 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey. One of the categories of questions they asked respondents was if a business executive should be fired for expressing certain political views. In every instance, Democrats were more likely than Republicans (and often much more likely) to answer in the affirmative.
Some of these beliefs are horrendous, but others are simply heterodox. For instance, over a third of Democratic responders said a business executive should be fired if they, “believe psychological differences explain why there are more male engineers.” But the psychological differences between men and women, and to what extent these differences affect career selection, is a topic of open debate among psychologists.
The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has been tracking disinvitations to speakers on campus for decades, and they have a robust database that includes who the speaker was, the controversy, and whether the calls to disinvite came from the left of the speaker or the right of the speaker.
In the past 10 years (2013-2022), 125 disinvitations have been issued based on political pressure. Only 28 (22.4%) of these came from the right. The remaining 97 (77.6%) came from the left.
The Cato Institute’s 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey also asked Democrats and Republicans whether a speaker should be allowed to speak at their university if they held certain political opinions (for example, saying that police are justified in stopping blacks at higher rates). In every single hypothetical, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say that the speaker should be disinvited, often by double digits.
Democrats are also much more likely than Republicans to support students who forcibly shut down campus speakers. When Cato asked, “How should colleges handle students who disrupt invited speakers and prevent them from speaking? (Select all that should apply)” Republicans were much more likely to give responses such as, “Require the students pay a fine” or, “Suspend the student for 30 days.” By contrast, 64 percent of Democrats said that the college should, “Listen and address students’ concerns.” (36 percent of Republicans said the same).
When it comes to offline attempts to cancel an invited speaker, Democrats are far more eager than Republicans. And, disturbingly, many Democrats are more willing than Republicans to turn a blind eye to forcible attempts to silence speakers on campus.
4): Using Government to Punish Speech They Don’t Like: Right-Wing (Anecdotal)
Unfortunately, Republicans are learning to embrace cancel culture, and doing it in a very dangerous way: they’re employing the power of the state against companies who take political sides that they disagree with.
Both the Disney example and the Major League Baseball example cited above were Republican-led silencings.
Some liberals try to use social pressure to stop dissenters from speaking or acting in ways that don’t support their agenda. Disturbingly, some Republicans are learning they can use governmental pressure to accomplish the same ends.
Who’s Actually Doing the Canceling?
On the right, the perpetrators of cancel culture are the rich and powerful: governors and legislators, cheered on by well-known pundits like Ben Shapiro. This is a case of those in power working to use their power to punish corporations who don’t toe the appropriate line.
But on the left, it’s often also the rich and powerful who are working to punish wrongthink.
This might come as a surprise to defenders of cancel culture, who tend to praise it as a power rebalance and a way for marginalized voices to be heard. Procon.org, a prestigious site known for making the best arguments for and against debatable positions, published three ‘Pros’ and 3 ‘Cons’ of cancel culture. One of their ‘Pros’ was “Callout culture [in this case, a synonym for cancel culture] gives a voice to disenfranchised or less powerful people.” Or recall Hudley’s claim about cancel culture: “for black culture and cultures of people who are lower income and disenfranchised, this is the first time you do have a voice in those types of conversations.”
This is a lofty idea…but the data tell a different story.
Almost all of the cancellations from the left come from the far left, not the middle. Moderate liberals don’t consider supporting JK Rowling to be a fireable offense. Middle-of-the-line Democrats don’t tend to want business executives fired for believing that men might want to be engineers more often than women do.
This isn’t just anecdotal. Scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon polled 8,000 respondents for a study called, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape.” Based on the poll responses, 30 one-hour interviews, and six focus groups, they divided Americans into seven political tribes ranging from far-left (“Progressive Activists”) to far-right (“Devoted Conservatives”). Among other things, they asked members of each tribe for their views on political correctness.
Eighty percent of Americans across the board said that, “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Left-leaning respondents tended to say that political correctness was less of a problem than right-leaning respondents did, but even among the second-most-liberal group of Americans (“Traditional Liberals”), 61 percent agreed with the statement that political correctness was a problem.
Only Progressive Activists truly support political correctness: a mere 30 percent of them said that political correctness was a problem.
If you think political correctness is a problem, you’re unlikely to try to get someone fired for non-politically-correct statements like, “#IStandWithJKRowling.” To put it another way: data on their views about what kind of speech should and should not be permissible strongly suggest that Progressive Activists are the ones driving cancel culture on the left.
So who are Progressive Activists? Are they the, “lower income and disenfranchised” people whom Hudley imagines?
Not exactly.
The Hidden Tribes report offers in-depth data about each political tribe, in terms of beliefs and also in terms of demographics. They find that Progressive Activists are:
More likely to be white than the average American (80% of Progressive Activists, vs 69% of Americans) (only Devoted Conservatives are more likely to be white than are Progressive Activists)
Twice as likely to have completed college as the average American (59% vs 29%)
Almost twice as likely to make $100,000 per year or more as the average American (25% vs 13%) (Progressive Activists are more likely to be in this top income group than are members of any other political tribe)
Less than half as likely to make under $20,000 per year as the average American (7% vs 17%) (only Devoted Conservatives are less likely to be poor than are Progressive Activists)
And even though African Americans represent 12 percent of the US population, just 3 percent of Progressive Activists are black.
Essentially: the group most in favor of cancel culture on the left is also one of the richest, most privileged, highly educated, whitest groups in the country. In their power and privilege, they mirror the group of elected officials and pundits who have endorsed cancel culture on the right.
Maybe these aren’t the two groups that should be in charge of telling the rest of Americans what we are and aren’t allowed to say.
Julian is a former political op-ed writer and current nonprofit marketer. His work has been featured in FEE, National Review, Playboy, and Lawrence Reed’s economics anthology Excuse Me, Professor.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-26 13:49:482022-08-26 13:53:04What Is Cancel Culture? Getting Beyond The Partisan Talking Points
There’s an apocryphal quote often misattributed to Ben Franklin that goes something like this: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” While we’re not quite nearing the collapse of our republic, we are actively witnessing the corrosive effect it has when the political power of redistributionism is abused.
President Biden is “canceling” (transferring) student debt for millions of Americans and forcing the rest of us to pay for it. His plan “cancels” $10,000 for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 individually or $250,000 for their household. It also includes two other forgiveness plans that bring the total cost to taxpayers up to $500 billion, a whopping $3,500 per federal taxpayer.
Simply put, we’re all going to have to pay more in taxes so that a relatively affluent slice of society doesn’t have to repay their investment on college degrees that will, on average, earn them $1 million more over a lifetime.
People are pissed off. And for good reason, as the manifest unfairness of punishing those who scrimped and saved to bail out those who didn’t is obvious and maddening. But there’s an even deeper injustice to this: President Biden is trying to, legally, buy votes and reward his party’s voter base.
Think about the simple facts.
Student debt “cancellation,” by definition, only financially rewards those who attended college. College graduates are a voting block that voted for President Biden overwhelmingly. So, too, this bailout disproportionately aids those living in major cities and those living in the Midwest and Northeast, where student debt is geographically concentrated. These just so happen to be places that voted for Biden as well.
President Biden’s student loan bailout is perfectly calibrated to benefit a slice of society that voted for him, and, more importantly, a voting block that is key to the Democratic Party’s success this November. Through it, he is attempting to use public policy to reward his voters at the public’s expense.
This is precisely what French economist Frédéric Bastiat once dubbed “legal plunder.” He famously noted that, “Government is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
To this end, Bastiat explained, “Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
To be clear, something being “legal” plunder doesn’t always mean it is actually legal. In this case, Biden’s attempt to unilaterally cancel student debt is highly suspect both constitutionally and legally. It’s legal plunder nonetheless, however, because it attempts to pervert the law and use it for naked clientelism.
That might win the president some votes. But it’s exactly the kind of partisan plunder that corrodes a republic.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-26 13:26:582022-08-28 10:32:58Biden’s Student Loan Bailout Is a Textbook Example of ‘Legal Plunder’
It isn’t enough that Joe Biden left behind $7 billion (at least) worth of sophisticated military equipment that the Taliban quickly seized. It wasn’t enough, either, that he left Americans to die violent deaths in Afghanistan. Now the Biden administration is discussing giving the Taliban $7 billion more. Biden claims that any money donated to Afghanistan for relief will be kept out of the Taliban’s hands or used by the Taliban in a humanitarian fashion.
At it celebrates its windfall, the Taliban mocks America. Last year, Taliban members dressed up as US troops, as the NY Post reported:
After a humiliating swift takeover of Afghanistan amid President Biden’s botched troop withdrawal, Taliban leaders and fighters are now rubbing it in America’s face — showing off their new uniforms and gear taken from US special forces stockpiles provided to the Afghan army.
The Taliban are becoming wealthier and more powerful thanks to their chief benefactor, Joe Biden.
The Biden administration is proceeding with talks to unfreeze the $7 billion in Afghanistan’s assets held by the U.S. Federal Reserve, Reuters reported on Monday, despite the Taliban failing to meet human rights commitments and harboring al-Qaeda mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul.
Reuters on Monday quoted “three sources with knowledge of the situation” who said the administration is prepared to overlook a great deal of misbehavior by the Taliban because of Afghanistan’s growing humanitarian crisis.
The United Nations and U.S. Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) both warned this month that nearly half of the Afghan population will experience “extreme levels of hunger” in the coming winter, with millions facing “near-famine conditions.”
SIGAR also warned about the Taliban’s growing “repression of women and girls,” a clear violation of promises the Islamist regime made to the United Nations after President Joe Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal one year ago brought the Taliban back to power.
The contrast between SIGAR’s warnings captures the dilemma facing the civilized world, as the Taliban refuses to hear Western demands or implement needed reforms until America unfreezes the funds it holds, while humanitarian groups warn they cannot deliver aid to sick and starving Afghans while the national economy lies in ruins.
On the other hand, unfreezing Afghanistan’s assets would put billions of dollars at the disposal of a violent extremist regime that was just caught giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda leadership and would effectively reward the Taliban for taking the people of Afghanistan hostage.
The American people will not look kindly on handing $7 billion over to the Taliban after a failed 20-year, $5 trillion effort to turn Afghanistan into a democracy, especially since much of the Taliban leadership is currently under U.S. sanctions or wanted by the FBI on terrorism charges….
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-08-26 06:51:572022-08-26 06:54:02U.S. Commits $7,000,000,000 More to the Taliban Despite Severe Human Rights Abuses
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten defended a contract between Minneapolis Public Schools and the union which will fire white teachers over minority teachers.
The March contract between Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) includes a deal that fires teachers who are not a part of underrepresented populations first, instead of basing termination on seniority. Weingartentweeted an article by the Associated Press with a quote from Greta Callahan, the president of the teachers chapter of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.
“This,” Weingarten tweeted, followed by a quote from Callahan.
“The same people who want to take down teachers unions and blame seniority are now defending it for white people. This is all made up by the right wing now,” Callahan said.
This. “The same people who want to take down teachers unions and blame seniority are now defending it for white people. This is all made up by the right wing now." – @greta_callahan@MFT59https://t.co/y11edqHh71
Callahan said that the new contract does not threaten any job because there are vacancies in the school district, according to the AP. She also added that the contract will help account for the minority teachers who have quit in the past few years.
The contract that ended a 14-day union strike keeps minority teachers “exempted from district-wide layoff[s] outside seniority order.” The new policy is intended to reverse “past discrimination” due to “disproportionate hiring.”
Weingarten, AFT, MFT and Minneapolis Public Schools did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-08-26 06:27:302022-08-26 06:42:07Teachers Union President Defends School District That Will Lay Off White Teachers First
Well, well, well. Since the 2022 primary elections are over we the people of Florida know who’s the Democrat nominee to run against Top-Gov Ron DeSantis for governor of the sunshine state.
My, my, my! It’s our former governor, you know that former republican, then independent and now Democrat, who’s representing Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. and his policies in D.C. and in the sunshine state — Charles Joseph Crist, Jr.
You know that lawyer who now works for both Obama and Biden supporter John Morgan from the Morgan & Morgan law firm in Tampa.
Right after winning the nomination Charlie proudly declared he thinks Joe Biden is doing a “remarkable” and “phenomenal” job as president.
It seems as though Charlie doesn’t want your vote because his statement sends a clear message to the majority of Florida voters that he doesn’t care about you, your family, your children and your economic state of wellness, given that Joe and Charlie, by design, have now put America and Florida into an economic recession.
According to Charlie, anyone who supports our current Governor Ron DeSantis’ freedom-first, anti-woke, pro-parental rights, pro-business, pro-law enforcement, pro-law and order and pro-life/pro-family agendas has “hate in their heart.”
Crist stated, “Those who support DeSantis should stay with him and vote for him and I don’t want your vote. If you have that hate in your heart, keep it there.”
Watch:
Crist: "Those who support DeSantis should stay with him and vote for him and I don't want your vote. If you have that hate in your heart, keep it there." pic.twitter.com/S0B93bw52i
It appears that Charlie, like Joe, passionately hates Ron DeSantis. Add to this list California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsome who also hates Top-Gov Ron DeSantis.
Gavin Newsom’s obsession with Florida and Governor DeSantis continues to grow as he pledges $100,000 to Charlie Crist —the man who has already declared he doesn’t want your vote.
Republicans filed a complaint against Team Crist for “repeated” finance violations. After the complaint was filed, Crist & Co. refunded thousands of dollars to donors who exceeded the legal limit of $3,000.
Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist made his name in the Republican Party, but his new employer — a personal injury law firm [Morgan & Morgan] — leans the other way, as evidenced by a $50,000 donation it made to the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action.
Orlando, Fla.-based law firm Morgan & Morgan, known for its slogan “representing the people, not the powerful” and its ubiquitous advertising, made the donation March 31. The gift was disclosed in documents filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
It is one of only a handful of companies to donate to the super PAC, which is allowed to accept unlimited amounts of money from individuals, unions and corporations thanks to legal changes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and a federal court ruling called SpeechNow.org.
Crist, a Republican who served as the Sunshine State’s moderate governor until January 2011, joined Morgan & Morgan after placing second in Florida’s 2010 U.S. Senate race. He works in the firm’s Tampa office handling class action lawsuits.
It seems that while Charlie’s been in D.C. he has diligently been working with and for Joe Biden, while, on the other hand, Governor Ron’s been in Tallahassee working for everyday Floridians.
Last but not least, while in Florida Charlie is working diligently with his boss John Morgan to make recreational marijuana legal by putting an amendment on the ballot in 2024 to amend the Florida Constitution. We know this will lead, as it has in all states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use, to more addiction in young children, more addicts and more crime and abuse of other illegal drugs including fentanyl, cocaine, heroine and ecstasy. While in Congress Charles Joseph Crist, Jr. voted for the: Medical Marijuana Research Act and Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act.
Wow! Does this get any worse?
Get it? Got it? Good!
If you wish to challenge this please feel free to leave a comment below.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-08-25 13:23:372022-08-28 04:54:28Read Why Charlie Crist is Joe Biden’s ‘Lap Dog’
Just as school bells across the country begin ringing for another semester of class time again, Florida conservatives are running another victory lap around the school yard.
Tuesday night’s Florida primaries handed victories to 25 of the 30 school board candidates backed by the state’s Governor Ron DeSantis (R), and 35 of 49 candidates endorsed by school board-challenging 1776 Project PAC, flipping several school boards to have conservative majorities.
“It’s the culmination of a lot of hard work,” Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, told The Washington Stand. “It’s a reflection of Florida citizens’ anger at the school boards in red counties and a red state acting like they live in blue counties and blue states. A lot of these places very publicly and strongly pushed back on implementing the governor’s recommendations on masking for students and following the federal guidelines. This is a big part of why you’re seeing this big turnout right now.”
Florida Research Council Action’s Matt Carpenter stated,
“The most important government is the government closest to home, so when parents stream to the polls to toss recalcitrant ideologues off their local school board they are sending a clear message: teach our children to read and write, not gender ideology or dividing them by race.”
According to an October 21st article in the Tampa Bay Times reporter Jeffrey S. Solochek wrote,
In October 2021 the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Biden raising concerns about “domestic terrorism” targeting boards. Although the association did not mention parents, and the Justice Department did not call for investigations, DeSantis and others have framed the issue as a federal attempt to curtail parental rights.
[ … ]
DeSantis said Wednesday that federal officials were trying to intimidate parents from speaking their minds on controversial issues at board meetings.
“As we continue to see the use of fear and intimidation to suppress opposition to the regime, we’re going to find new ways to be able to empower parents’ rights to decide what is best for their children,” DeSantis said. “Parents across the state should know that their freedoms are going to be protected here, and that the state of Florida has your back.”
Governor DeSantis kept his word and helped elect candidates to school boards in Florida that are dedicated to empowering parents’ rights to decide what is best for their children.
For example in Sarasota County DeSantis endorsed three pro-parental right to choose candidates for the school board and all three won, giving parents a voice on matters concerning how and what their children are being taught.
Public schools statewide are under the microscope in Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis is leading the charge to make sure the the voices of parents are heard, loud and clearly, by each and every school board.
Parental rights is now the key issue in Florida with Democrats saying parents have no rights and Governor DeSantis clearly supporting the rights of parents in their child’s education. This issue was a factor in the primaries and will be again in the midterm election for Governor of Florida.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser thinks the illegal aliens bused to the nation’s capital from Texas and Arizona are in her city temporarily. Boy, is she in for a rude awakening. The aliens have nowhere else to go and say they want to stay.
The aliens are placed in hotels instead of the city’s homeless shelter system. All they get is a hotel room – which they and their children can’t leave – and three meals a day. No city services of the kind typically offered to the homeless in D.C. The new arrivals are not allowed visitors or even to go to each other’s rooms, which is a problem for large families spread across multiple rooms. They’re not given keys, but have to ask to be let in. There are no translators and the security guards, who don’t speak Spanish, are aggressive in enforcing the rules, leading to fights. Welcome to Muriel Bowser’s America. I can’t wait for the first class-action lawsuit naming her as a defendant.
“The city promotes the narrative that they’re only here temporarily,” a volunteer said. “However, the families are staying…. They have no contacts in the United States and they have nowhere else to go.” We can blame the Biden administration for letting them into the country in the first place and the Bowser administration for trying to handle the situation on the cheap. Her solution? Keep asking the National Guard to take care of the problem, even though they keep telling her ‘no’. Oh, pobrecito! After years of promoting D.C. as a sanctuary city, she just can’t believe Biden’s border problem has landed in her lap and blown up in her face. Careful what you wish for.
But if she’s looking for sympathy, she won’t find any among mayors of towns along the border. “If we can do that, they can too,” one mayor, who has had deal with as many as a thousand new arrivals a day, said. “Their numbers [of illegal immigrants] are pretty low. I know they can do it.” A spokesman for Arizona said the state’s “hospitals, community organizations, [and] nongovernmental organizations are being strained tremendously. So, the goal here is to alleviate the burden for Arizonans.” Seven more Texas counties just declared an invasion at the southern border, bringing the total to 17.
Bowser shouldn’t look for sympathy in the Biden administration, either. The administration is still bending over backwards to pack the country with as many illegal aliens as it can. The latest policy changes opening the border and welcoming illegal aliens include final rules preserving the unconstitutional DACA program. Why do I say unconstitutional? Because Barack Obama said many times he didn’t have the authority to create the DACA program, but he did it anyway. DACA is part of a web of Biden rules intended to cut the number of deportations of illegal aliens as much as possible.
Biden’s relaxed border rules for children have led to a number of older illegal aliens posing as children to avoid expulsion. Border agents just caught ten in El Paso. More than 650 have been caught in the El Paso sector in just the last fiscal year, alone. Agents warn many more pretenders get through because the government does a bad job of screening them at the border.
In previous commentaries, I’ve documented numerous other policy changes the Biden administration has made to open the border. I love immigration, but I’m not for shredding the Rule of Law in the process. I’m also on record calling for the impeachment of Joe Biden and his partner in crime DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for refusing to faithfully execute the nation’s immigration laws – laws passed by your duly elected representatives in Congress and signed by former presidents.
So you can criticize me all you want, but let’s see what tune you sing after Texas or the feds send hordes of illegal aliens on buses or midnight flights to your town.
The Department Of Commerce revised the estimate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Thursday morning, finding similarly to July’s estimate that real GDP contracted in the second quarter of 2022.
The revised estimate for the second quarter finds that real GDP decreased annually at a rate of 0.6%, slightly less than the July 28 estimate of a 0.9% decrease, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
This matches the expectations of economist E.J. Antoni, who told the Daily Caller News Foundation in advance of the results that it was unlikely that the revised estimate would significantly change from the July estimate.
One well-known rule of thumb for defining a recession is two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction, a measure that the Biden administration has repeatedlyattempted to argue is not necessarily accurate. The White House has typically deferred to the National Bureau of Economic Research to officially declare a recession, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stressing the health of the labor market ahead of the July GDP estimates as an example of why the U.S. is not in a recession.
“We are already in a corporate earnings recession,” Antoni told the DCNF. “Many corporations have only met or beat earnings estimates last quarter because those estimates were revised down from previous quarters.”
Every time monthly supply of new houses has exceeded 9 months a recession has ensued. Currently at 10.8 months. pic.twitter.com/aUfctnDGgE
Since the last GDP estimate, a series of high-profile retail companies, including Target, Best Buy and Walmart, have been forced to cut earnings estimates, joined Tuesday by Macy’s and Nordstrom. As companies struggle with inventory overflow, some have even turned to storing inventory in truck trailers or parking lots as temporary storage facilities in lieu of potentially expensive investments in more traditional warehouse facilities, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Shipping industry insiders believe that this practice is adding to existing strain on the shipping industry, taking up shipping containers that could otherwise be used to transport goods, according to the WSJ.
“When a trailer is being used for storage, it can’t be used for transporting other goods,” said Miami University professor of supply chain management Lisa Ellram, to the WSJ.
Since the last GDP estimate, the July Consumer Price Index indicated inflation seen by consumers was 8.5% year-on-year in July, remaining historically high despite being below the June peak of 9.1%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The July Producer Price Index was similar, estimating inflation seen by producers was 9.8% year-on-year, down from a peak of 10.3% in June, according to data from the BLS.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-08-25 11:17:022022-08-25 11:19:23It’s Official: Revised GDP Numbers Show The Economy Is Definitely Shrinking
Greta Thunberg first came into the public light in 2018 when she started a school strike on climate in front of the Swedish parliament.
March 15th saw enthusiastic worldwide school student protests inspired by passionate appeals from 16-year-old Swedish school girl-turned-global-leader Greta Thunberg. Thunberg first came into the public light last year when she started a school strike on climate in front of the Swedish parliament. She rose to worldwide fame in January when she addressed the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Predictably, a lot of the reactions from those who are skeptical of climate change alarmism seem to focus on Thunberg’s age. Even Bjorn Lomborg seems to have alluded to her in his remark about how the predominant narrative about climate change makes children scared.
I disagree with this perspective. I believe that 16-year-olds have as much intellectual capacity as legal adults to understand the issues related to climate change and the potential measures that could be taken to mitigate it. However, if 16-year-olds desire to seriously contribute to important political debates, they should, like anyone else, do it without engaging in demagoguery and scaremongering.
It is here that Greta Thunberg—in spite of all her genuine sincerity and passion—has failed spectacularly and made the legions of her fans, as well as people who may face the consequences of the panicky measures she advocates, a great disservice.
False Sense of Urgency
To get a taste of the content of Thunberg’s preachings, let us consider her recent remarks to European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker:
We have to focus every inch of our being on climate change. Because if we fail to do so then all our achievements and progress have been for nothing. […] According to the IPCC report, we are about 11 years away from being in the position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control. To avoid that, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place within this coming decade.
There is no place for nuance here, no trace of uncertainty, no appeal to actual facts or pragmatics of politics—only the demand for total commitment and sacrifice because the absolute urgency of our predicament is supposed to be self-evident since none other than IPCC purportedly said so.
I would wager that it would be pointless to ask Thunberg any serious questions about the actual science underlying the climate change issue—to ask her how much the Earth has warmed so far since 1979 compared to computer model predictions; that the bulk of the recent warming occurred during the El Niño stages of the ENSO climate oscillation; or whether she is aware that the doubling of CO2 can only in itself cause only about 1°C of warming and that to postulate alarmist scenarios one needs to postulate uncertain positive feedbacks, whereas, in reality, the net feedback may be zero or negative; that a lot more people die from cold temperatures than from hot ones and that it is not extreme cold temperatures that are the most deadly; that increased CO2 concentrations are good for plant life, and so on.
Let us focus on an easier issue and ask whether the latest IPCC report even in the (as usual) distorted summary for policymakers says anything remotely similar to Thunberg’s 11-years-left-till-Apocalypse-unless-we-act claim. Unsurprisingly, the summary—biased as it is in favor of alarm—says no such thing. Thunberg seems to be wildly misinterpreting the statement on page 6 of the summary that “global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 (till which date 11 years remain) and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” There is no implication in the summary that this extent of warming may cause catastrophic planetary consequences.
Even if we take what Thunberg claims about the inevitable impacts of an unaddressed climate change at face value, she does not appear to be cognizant that the only viable way of reducing CO2 emissions is switching to nuclear power. Writing for that famous den of climate change deniers, MIT Technology Review, last July, James Temple cited an estimate that if even California, with its abundant sunshine, were to switch to 100 percent renewables, that would make the price per megawatt-hour skyrocket to $1612.
Instead, we hear from her the usual platitudes that massive emissions reductions should be made immediately using renewable energy sources. Added to this are calls to abandon the focus on competition and focus on equity as if that clearly had anything to do with climate change or handling it.
Fanaticism Is Not Heroism
We must also reflect on the fact that Thunberg is considered by many people to be a global hero. She has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But is it really brave or enlightened to advocate a cause that has long enjoyed the status of conventional wisdom? To which one can only sadly hear widely disseminated public objections from the likes of President Trump, who is admittedly as clueless on the issue as the most religious alarmists are and who does not care about the outrage his remarks can cause?
It is sad if this is what is taken for Nobel-worthy heroism these days. Countless Venezuelans, for instance, risk their freedom, health, and lives every day, protesting against the Maduro regime that has lost any semblance of connection to reality and plunged the formerly richest country in Latin America into the literal darkness of the pre-industrial age. It is people like them who should be invited to global fora to tell their tale. Them, not a girl from one of the richest and most comfortable countries on Earth who is in too much of a panic because she cannot make herself actually read up on the actual science about climate change and the real state of the potential solutions.
The real problem with the climate change activist sensation Greta Thunberg is not that she is 16 years old. Rather, it is that she is a clueless fanatic who is considered brave and enlightened for promoting a cause that almost everyone agrees with without any study or reflection. And it is the duty of anyone who does not want clueless fanaticism to determine policies affecting billions to call it out as such.
Daniil Gorbatenko is a free-market economist living in Aix-en-Provence, France. He obtained his PhD in economics from Aix-Marseille University in 2018.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-25 08:56:062022-08-25 09:03:00The Real Problem with Greta Thunberg Is Not Her Age
The case of gun control advocates for the U.S. to move to the Australia model for gun ownership is faulty at best.
In the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, which left dozens dead and hundreds wounded, a great number of people have laid the blame on America’s relatively lax gun laws and alleged unwillingness to adopt “common sense” gun control.
In particular, gun control advocates tell us America could eliminate mass shootings if only we followed Australia’s lead.
The Australia Model
In Australia, after a horrific mass shooting in 1996, the national government introduced a mandatory buyback program which forced gun owners to sell certain firearms (mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump action shotguns) to the state, who promptly destroyed them.
This program, which resulted in the stock of civilian firearms in the country being reduced by approximately twenty percent, was effectively large-scale gun confiscation, as gun owners would have become criminals were they to withhold their firearms from the state.
Since the introduction of these measures, Australia’s firearm homicide rates have fallen and it has yet to witness a mass shooting. Because of these “results,” Australia has been constantly cited as a successful example of gun control in action.
But the reality is much less simplistic than the narrative being promoted by gun control advocates.
Sure, there have been no mass shootings in Australia since it enacted gun control, but that hardly proves anything by itself. A 2011 study published in Justice Policy Journal compared the trends in mass shootings before and after 1996, when gun control was enacted, in Australia and New Zealand.
New Zealand is Australia’s neighbor and is very similar to it socioeconomically, but unlike Australia, it retained the legal availability of guns that were banned and confiscated in Australia in 1996. It thus served as a useful control group to observe whatever effects gun control had on mass shootings.
The authors of the study found that, after taking into account difference in population size, Australia and New Zealand did not have statistically different trends in mass shootings before or after 1996. Indeed, New Zealand has not had a mass shooting since 1997, “despite the availability in that country of firearms banned in Australia.”
Well, what about firearm homicides in general? Or firearm suicides?
These questions were answered by a 2016 American Medical Association (AMA) study, which examined trends in firearm homicides and suicides before and after the adoption of gun control in Australia in 1996. The authors found no evidence of a statistically significant effect of gun control on the pre-existing downward trend of the firearm homicide rate.
This is in accordance with past research. For example, the authors of a paper published in the International Journal of Criminal Justice report that, “Although the total number of published peer-reviewed studies based on time series data remains relatively small (fewer than 15 studies, at the time of writing), none of these studies has found a significant impact of the Australian legislative changes on the pre-existing downward trend in firearm homicide.”
The authors of the AMA study did find that the decline in firearm suicide rates accelerated in the wake of gun control, but concluded that “it is not possible to determine whether the change in firearm deaths can be attributed to the gun law reforms” because the “decline in total non-firearm suicide and homicide deaths were of greater magnitude.”
In other words, since non-firearm suicide rates were reduced to an even greater extent than firearm suicide rates in the wake of gun control, one cannot firmly conclude that gun control is the reason firearm suicide rates fell.
Basically, gun control advocates have built their entire case about Australian gun control on lazy data analysis, or perhaps no data analysis at all. If anything, Australia proves the complete opposite of what advocates of gun control want.
A national gun confiscation scheme which reduced the civilian firearm stock by an astounding twenty percent and nobody can seem to find any clear evidence it caused a meaningful effect on the firearm murder rate? That’s not only embarrassing, it goes against everything they believe about the nature of the relationship between guns and murder rates.
Corey Iacono is a Master of Business graduate student at the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Science and a minor in Economics.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-25 08:43:102022-08-25 08:43:10The Australia Model for Gun Control Is Useless
Political incentives shape policy decisions, which is why the freeze on student loan payments is unlikely to be rescinded without some forgiveness this close to midterms.
The White House recently announced that President Biden’s decision on whether to continue the freeze on student loan payments would come sometime in the next week.
“We’ve been talking daily about this and I can tell you that the American people will hear within the next week or so,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
The payment freeze is set to expire at the end of the month, which means payments will resume in September if no new action is taken.
The freeze on payments was initially put in place by President Trump during the Covid-19 lockdowns. However, the freeze has been extended for the last two years. This is perplexing given that the lockdowns, which were used as justification for the policy, are no longer in place.
What’s more, each month payments and interest are frozen, the government gives up revenue which could be used to pay for spending. Without this revenue, the government must take on more debt, which will ultimately be paid for by taxpayers in the future.
Summers, along with 59 percent of Americans, are worried that a move to forgive these paused loans will lead to more inflation. While most people recognize that indefinitely suspending payments makes for an unsuccessful loan program, ending the freeze on payments will be difficult for Biden.
Those with the largest student loans are saving the most in payments and frozen interest each month. For these borrowers, the benefit of keeping their money each month is what they lose if the freeze is allowed to expire. When this happens many of these borrowers will resume paying thousands of dollars a year.
This is a problem, because the benefits to all taxpayers present and future are much harder to see. It will be clear to borrowers when their payments resume. It won’t be as clear to taxpayers when their taxes don’t increase as much 10, 20, or 30 years in the future because the payments were allowed to continue.
This is a textbook example of what economists would call a situation of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs.
Because the benefits of the student loan freeze are clear and concentrated, there is a comparatively large incentive to defend them. The incentive by the taxpayers who foot the bill is weaker because the costs they experience are vague and far from immediate.
Political Markets Have Consequences
The logic of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs creates an incentive for politicians. As elections (such as the upcoming midterm elections in November) approach, politicians who want to get re-elected must convince voters and donors that voting and donating are in their best interests.
So politicians promise groups of voters and special interest groups taxpayer dollars or special privileges, which is what prompted twentieth century journalist H.L. Mencken to quip that “[e]very election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”
So long as the benefits promised to these groups are clear and present, and the costs to others are vague and far-off, the politician can improve electoral outcomes by promoting these kinds of policies.
In fact, these institutional incentives are so systemic that some theorize that the economy will appear to boom near elections. As politicians work to provide benefits and kick the costs down the road into the future, the present economy may improve at the expense of the future.
This isn’t real economic improvement, of course, as the seeming growth comes at the cost of lower future growth. But, nonetheless, it may appear like the economy booms before elections for this reason.
The name of this theory is the political business cycle theory. And although it by no means explains every economic boom and bust, it certainly appears to be true in some fundamental sense—and it creates difficult decisions for politicians.
Biden’s decision with student loans is a case in point. If the president allows the student loan freeze to expire, it’s possible he’ll alienate progressive voters prior to the midterms. This would spell doom for Biden’s ability to get things done in the last two years of his term.
As a result, I’d be surprised if Biden allowed the freeze to expire at this point without some sort of bribe to borrowers. In this case, the bribe would likely take the form of some amount of student loan forgiveness.
By delaying payments or forgiving some amount of student loans, Biden may be able to improve the economic fortunes of some, leading to a small “boom.” But like any manufactured boom, the day of reckoning will eventually come.
If Biden takes this road, the political business cycle is alive and well.
So, while many recognize the payment freeze has overstayed its welcome (not that it was welcome in the first place), I think it’s unlikely Biden will rescind it without some forgiveness option this close to midterms.
Politicians have incentives to bribe voters and interest groups insofar as it helps their chances at elections, and Biden is no different. But, I’d be happy to be wrong here.
Peter Jacobsen teaches economics and holds the position of Gwartney Professor of Economics. He received his graduate education George Mason University. His research interest is at the intersection of political economy, development economics, and population economics.
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Is God making a comeback in some of the public schools of Texas? A news item last week gives a glimmer of hope that it may be so.
60 years ago this summer, the Supreme Court effectively banished God from the public schools. They did this in the first anti-school prayer case.
On June 17, 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled this harmless prayer as supposedly being unconstitutional: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”
At that time, only one Supreme Court Justice, Potter Steward, dissented. He said: “I think this decision is wrong….[I don’t see how] an official religion is established by letting those who want to say a prayer to say it.”
Stewart pointed out that even the Supreme Court opens with a type of invocation: “God save the United States and this honorable Court.” He also quoted a decision from the 1950s, Zorach v. Clauson, in which the Supreme Court declared, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”
As the executive director of Providence Forum, I have been working on a series of films called the Foundation of American Liberty, which is our nation’s Judeo-Christian roots. I was privileged to interview Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU, for these documentaries.
Prager told our viewers, “The Supreme Court changed America… with the 1962 decision that prayer in school was unconstitutional. That was the decision that began the end of America as we knew it….And as I often point out, within one generation, kids went from blessing their teachers to cursing their teachers.”
And then came school shootings. Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver observes, “We should not be surprised when we see violence and suicides in public schools.…because once we have removed transcendent moral principles… then we see the destructive behavior that we, unfortunately, experience today.”
But perhaps God is making a comeback, even in some public schools in Texas. There is a new “In God We Trust” law.
The Texas Tribune notes (8/18/22): “The ‘In God We Trust’ law was authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes….Texas public schools or colleges must display the national motto in a ‘conspicuous place’ but only if the poster is ‘donated’ or ‘purchased by private donations.’”
Hughes spoke to the Northwest Austin Republican Women’s Club last week and tweeted, “The national motto, In God We Trust, asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God…I’m encouraged to see groups like the Northwest [Austin] Republican Women and many individuals coming forward to donate these framed prints to remind future generations of the national motto.”
The motto is derived from the last stanza of Francis Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner (our national anthem), written in 1814 when the British unsuccessfully tried to invade Baltimore. It says: “Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation! / Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, / And this be our motto – “In God is our trust.”
During the Civil War, the Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase directed his department that: “No nation can be strong except in the strength of God or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.”
On March 3, 1865, the U. S. Congress agreed with Secretary Chase’s suggestion to have our coins inscribed with the motto, “In God We Trust.”
In fact, the last official act that President Lincoln signed into law before he was killed was this one—that our coins would say “In God We Trust.”
It would not be until the 1950s that these words would then grace our paper money.
And in 1956, during the height of the Communist threat, which was atheistic to the core, our national government adopted “In God We Trust” as our national motto. It still is to this day.
But why does this matter? God is not a magic panacea. But people live differently when they recognize that the Almighty will hold us all accountable.
I read recently about a robber who held up the great preacher John Wesley 200 years ago. Wesley gave him his money, paltry as it was, but he also sowed seeds in the man’s heart to turn his life over to Christ. Eventually, the thief did and, by God’s grace, made something of his life.
We took God out of our schools and reaped chaos, but perhaps now we can restore Him to His rightful place and bring peace. This Texas law seems to be a step in their right direction.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Newcombe, D. Min.2022-08-25 07:17:352022-08-30 06:19:20The Comeback of God in Some Texas Schools?
