Your Son is Not as Safe as You Think at College by Pernas Juntos

Fall’s arrival brings students — America’s future — streaming into the hallowed halls of higher education.

For those of you directly engaged in funding one of these institutions, much of your thought is focused on classes, dorms, books, computers, software and trying to remove that stunned look from your face brought about by today’s tuition and dorm price tags. But there is undoubtedly some fear for the safety of your daughters, who will be exposed to binge parties, sexual peer pressure and some wild fraternities.

You should expand that to your sons as well.

Sexual assault on our campuses have greatly increased. Even the elite liberal-leaning Chronicle of Higher Education states, “The number of reported forcible sex crimes on campus increased from 2,200 in 2001 to 5,000 in 2013 (a 126 percent increase).”

I have worked with administration in higher education for more than 27 years. Campus sexual assaults have long been a fixture in campus life. Universities are never thrilled to talk about it, for good reason. They compete viciously for your son or daughter’s enrollment. Colleges and universities do their level best to lower the numbers of sexual assaults on their campuses. Both by encouraging reporting…and by hiding it.

College administrators play with the numbers

For example, many will consider any attack that takes place outside their strict ‘campus’ perimeters as not a campus assault. Even if it is one of their students walking back from classes to their dorm. Some fraternities and sororities are also placed off campus to lower on-campus sexual assault numbers. A perpetrator committing a crime on campus may even be passively allowed to walk off campus to make the arrest off campus.

And as we have seen with some of the more publicized sports figure arrests, institutions have many standards and protocols for different students accused of crimes — despite supposed ‘zero tolerance’ policies on sexual assault. They all do it to some degree. The argument is, if they didn’t, their campus would seem less safe than those who report student sexual assaults in a more selective way. All of this is hardly new, and we could make a great case that sexual assault awareness and reporting on campus is higher than it ever has been.

However, some groups — men, including gay men — seem to be discouraged from reporting.

Liberal/progressive ideology has taken over most administrations of higher education. Contrary to what many people believe, the real ideological power broker isn’t that gray-haired, pony-tailed, sandal-wearing professor. It’s an administration that holds the purse-strings and sets curriculum. With that ideology has come many changes in sexual behavior and identification on campus.

LGBT centers have sprung up on nearly every campus, bathrooms are sometimes open to both biological genders to cater to transgender persons, and students are openly encouraged to question their sexual identification. Women’s Gender Studies classes do a fantastic job of vilifying men, and in many cases encouraging alternative sexual identification and experimentation. Fresh off their successes activating students around gay marriage, sex on campus in all its different forms can seem not an issue, but rather the issue.

Young people have never been as sexualized as they are today on campuses. That brings issues of its own.

Tilting justice against white men

Liberalism/progressivism thrive on the collectivist notion of an oppressor and an oppressed. That view seems to be binary and set in stone, the oppressed can never be the oppressor and vice versa.

Your male son, especially your white male son, is viewed as the oppressor in every circumstance when the issue is against an ‘oppressed female’. His word simply does not carry the equal weight of his female counterparts. Any accusation against him by a female will almost certainly be treated as the truth.

That accusation can be a real problem for your son’s future. A quick look through Michigan State University’s Sexual Assault Program, for one example, shows not a single male staff member. However, this is the norm on sites I checked and not unique to MSU. A search of your Alma Mater will most likely show the same thing.

Imagine a large city police force that only has male sexual assault on-site councilors. Probably wouldn’t go over well. While campuses would argue that women are assaulted far more than men, that shouldn’t deny men from getting the help they need and deserve. That help should include the right to counsel with someone of your own gender. Yet many campuses view that as a non-issue.

We are a nation that should provide equal justice to any sexual assault victim. Especially on campus. But we don’t.

This issue has also manifests itself in a way that may not immediately jump to mind: the LGBT community itself.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 46.4% lesbians, 74.9% bisexual women and 43.3% heterosexual women reported sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes. On the flip side, 40.2% gay men, 47.4% bisexual men and 20.8% heterosexual men reported sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes. That means that if your gay son, who has a more than 4 in 10 chances of being sexually assaulted in his life needs help, he must confide in a woman….or not report. Many do not.

On top of that, because he is a man in a center staffed by women advocates, he will most likely be viewed as the perpetrator in his time of trauma, at least until he establishes his case. He’s assumed guilty — as the victim. Even the liberal Huffington Post has posted opinion columns by gay advocates demanding more men, particularly gay men, to be on the staff of the sexual assault crisis centers.

Yet for now, that seems to fall on deaf ears. Students will continue to be oversexualized to promote agendas. Men, especially white men, will continue to be viewed as the default perpetrator on liberal campuses — which is most campuses. Gay people reporting sexual assaults doesn’t fit the agenda and reporting is not as encouraged as it should be.

Interracial couple assaults are also something that they do not want ‘over reported’. Those groups are to be portrayed in their group identity as better than the normal population and not as suffering the plagues of the rest of us. Statistics be damned. Sexual crisis centers are viewed by the administration, as being for women. Almost exclusively. Sadly, that leaves many victims in the cold.

Many of your sons are one accusation away from having their lives ruined. Many gay men will not receive the justice and counseling they deserve. Your son, gay or straight, is not as safe as you may think in a liberal institution. Something to think about when a university is courting your child.

Pernas Juntos, a pseudonym meaning “think together” in Spanish, has spent nearly three decades working in the administration of a major American university.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. The featured image is a Stock Photo: Dreamstime.

When I was young there were only 2 classes of people — the working class and those wanting to join the working class

“I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

When I was growing up there were only two classes of people, those who were working and those who aspired to work. The type of work did not matter so long as it was honest work.

Many Americans remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I have a dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. I however, believe that his greatest speech was his “Street Sweeper” speech given at the New Covenant Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois, on 9 April 1967.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’

No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

The King Center expands on Dr. King’s words noting:

We need to constantly reflect on the privilege of being blessed to live in a country where we are free to labor in whatever work we choose, and are divinely called into, let us remember that no labor is in vain, nor is it worthless, but brings lasting value to those that we serve – let us serve with honor and excellence!

It seems that this quotation’s from Dr. MLK Jr. alludes to two things:

  1. That all work or actions have an impact in the world — there is nothing humanity does that is insignificant.
  2. That when such work is focused on uplifting and freeing human kind, it must be practices with awareness to doing it precisely and carefully…or in his words “with painstaking excellence”.

All our tasks are so intertwined no matter where we are in the society, in our churches, in our factories.  If one of us does not do our task well it brings down the entire group. [Emphasis added]

Read more.

The first black president did not heed the words of Dr. King, Jr. with a focus on “the privilege of being blessed to live in a country where we are free to labor in whatever work we choose.” Rather President Obama during his administration has:

  1. Created a black white racial divide.
  2. Created an economic divide, which created social stratification (i.e. more haves and abandoned the have-nots).
  3. Used government regulations and departments to attack opponents.
  4. Introduced Common Core into public schools nation wide to indoctrinate not educate.
  5. Created a divide between Christians and anti-Christians (e.g. Muslims, homosexuals, satanists, collectivists).
  6. Created a social divide between naturalized citizens and illegal aliens.
  7. Created class warfare (i.e. the 99% versus the 1%).
  8. Created a war on fossil fuels, especially coal, using Environmental Protection Agency rules.
  9. Created a barrier between law enforcement and citizens (e.g. in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, Detroit)
  10. Created a war against lawful gun owners rather than addressing criminals like Vester Lee Flanagan.
  11. The war against unborn children – over 55 million causalities and counting.
  12. The Planned Parenthood Industrial Complex – selling dead, mostly black, babies for profit.
  13. Created a opaque government rather than his promised transparent government.
  14. Created a political divide between Democrats and all others opposed to his policies, including some Democrats.
  15. Created a divide between America and Israel.
  16. Created a foreign policy divide between America and global freedom loving movements.
  17. And on, and on, and on…

Before President Obama Americans did not see issues like being black, being a member of a particular economic class, being Hispanic, homosexual or bulling as important. Rather Americans were focused on working, providing for their families and being good members of their community.

President Trump understood that Americans simply wanted to get back to work, hence his slogan Make America Great Again. This slogan resonated with the working class and those who aspired to become part of the working class in America.

Americans understand that “If one of us does not do our task well it brings down the entire group.”

Time for Americans to get to work. Work is a blessing.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of President Trump and Vice President Pence meet with workers at the Carrier factory in Indiana.

Iran is following the North Korea play-book

It is no secret that North Korea and Iran are joined at the hip. Iran’s advances on the way to developing nuclear weapons and long range missiles (in violation of UN provisions) are largely attributed to the relationship of these two evil empires. In addition Iran’s new found wealth as a result of Obama’s nuclear deal has allowed it to advance its nuclear program and state of the art missile defense systems purchased from Russia.

Obama’s colossal nuclear deal miscalculation has allowed Iran to expand its aggression and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s budget by 40%. Iran seeks to encircle and destroy Israel  which Israel will not permit. Thus the nuclear deal which empowered Iran’s increased aggression will eventually lead to war which may include Iran, Israel, Russia and the U.S. among others.

Nominee for the post of defense minister for new cabinet of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Gen. Amir Hatami arrives at the podium to defend himself in a session of parliament in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

AFP/Tehran in a column titled “Iran’s new defense minister says priority is to boost missile program” reports:

Iran’s new defense minister said Saturday the priority was to boost the country’s missile program and export weapons to shore up neighboring allies.

“In combat fields, especially in missiles, we have a specific plan to boost Iran’s missile power,” said General Amir Hatami, who was appointed defense minister earlier this month, in a speech carried by the ISNA news agency.

“God willing, the combat capabilities of Iran’s ballistic and cruise missiles will increase in this term,” he added. Hatami also said Iran would look to export weapons “to prevent war and conflict”. [Emphasis added]

Read more.

Please read the article below by Melanie Phillips. While North Korea has garnered our attention Iran is far more dangerous. It is Iran who has killed many Americans and whose proxies have killed thousands and made millions homeless.

The Iranian Symptom of the West’s Auto-Immune Disease

By Melanie Phillips

People are understandably preoccupied with the threat from North Korea and what to do about it. But with the polyvalent perversity that characterises our modern age – afflicted as it is by the political equivalent of auto-immune disease in which it seeks to destroy its allies while embracing its mortal enemies – many in the west continue to downplay or ignore the far greater threat to the world from North Korea’s partner in crime, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It’s not just that, as with North Korea today so with Iran tomorrow; just as “negotiation” [under President Bill Clinton] was supposed to persuade Pyongyang to park its nuclear weapons programme only for us to find to our apparent surprise that it has now tested yet another nuclear device, so the “negotiated” [under President Barack Obama] Iran deal will result before long in our finding to our apparent surprise that it has moved from being the world’s number one terrorist threat to being the world’s number one nuclear terrorist threat.

It’s also not just that Iran and North Korea are working hand in glove in their infernal joint enterprise (although with very different philosophies) to develop the nuclear weapons by which they can either blackmail, attack or destroy the west or commit a further genocide against the Jews; that Iranian scientists and military brass have been reliably tracked to North Korea inspecting or witnessing its nuclear weapons programme development; and that almost certainly Tehran has outsourced some if not much of that programme to Pyongyang.

[ … ]

The Spectator has run a piece by John R Bradley arguing that Iran is the west’s “natural ally” and that the gravest threat to western security and values comes from Saudi Arabia. But this is an example of the “zero sum game” fallacy. Yes, Saudi Arabia is indeed the epicentre of the Sunni Wahhabi ideology which has fuelled the Islamist extremism that now poses such a threat to the west. But it absolutely does not follow that Saudi Arabia’s mortal foe, Shi’ite Iran, is therefore the west’s friend, let alone its greatest ally.

It’s not either/or. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran pose a threat to the west. My enemy, in the case of Saudi Arabia, is currently my tactical friend as well as my enemy; and that’s because my enemy’s enemy, Iran, is my own far more dangerous enemy. [Emphasis added]

Read more.

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Down With The Rainbow

Students are finally rebelling against the oppressive rainbow flag and I cheer them on!

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Southern Poverty Law Center refuses to classify Antifa as a ‘hate group’

Of course. The SPLC and Antifa have the same overall goal: to destroy the freedom of speech and allow only Leftists access to the public square. The SPLC demonizes and tries to destroy dissenters (including foes of jihad terror) by lumping them in with the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. Antifa, a genuinely violent and hateful group, doesn’t make the list because it doesn’t dissent from the Leftist agenda, it works to advance it.

Richard Cohen

“Southern Poverty Law Center condemns antifa, but won’t call hate group,” by Steven Nelson, Washington Examiner, September 3, 2017:

The leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center said the organization condemns the antifa movement but won’t brand it with the center’s often-cited “hate group” designation.

Richard Cohen, the president of the SPLC, told the Washington Examiner the loosely organized antifa movement, short for anti-fascism, is “wrongheaded” in opposing free speech and using violence.

“We oppose these groups and what they’re trying to do. We just don’t think anyone should be able to censor someone else’s speech,” Cohen said, echoing and endorsing recent statements from progressive scholar Noam Chomsky.

“We think they are contributing to the problem we are seeing,” Cohen said. “We think it’s likely to lead to other forms of retaliation. In Berkeley, antifa showed up and shut down speeches. The next time the white supremacists brought the Oath Keepers with them, they brought their own army.”

He said, however, the SPLC won’t label antifa a “hate group” because adherents do not discriminate against people on the basis of race, sexual orientation or other classes protected by antidiscrimination laws, such as religion.

“There might be forms of hate out there that you may consider hateful, but it’s not the type of hate we follow,” Cohen said.

Antifa activism generally but not always features black-clad activists confronting adversaries they deem fascist, such as neo-Nazis or white supremacists. The movement is decentralized, and Cohen notes in many cases it lacks discernible organization, though he said that’s not the reason against a hate-group designation.

Cohen said the SPLC does work to inform local police about the intentions of antifa activists and intends to speak out against the movement, adding “we follow them, but we don’t track them in the same way.”

The SPLC is controversial among some conservatives for its influential hate-group designations, which some on the list call unfair. The socially conservative Family Research Council was attacked in 2012 by a gunman who told investigators he saw the group listed on the center’s website….

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‘Liberal Socialism’ is Another False Utopia by Richard M. Ebeling

Very often bad and failed ideas do not die, they simply reappear during periods of supposed social and political crisis in slightly different intellectual garb, and offer “solutions” that would merely help to bring about some of the very types of crises for which they once again claim to have the answers. Socialism in its various “progressive” mutations represents one of the leading so-called solutions of our time.

The Marxian-style socialism of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries is now long passé.

The latest manifestation of this appeared on August 24, 2017 in the New Republic in an online article by John B. Judis on, “The Socialism America Needs Now.” He is heartened by the wide appeal, especially among younger voters, that Bernie Sanders received during the 2016 presidential contest. He thinks that this may herald a rebirth and a renewed possibility for a socialist alternative to the current American political and economic system.Having traveled over the decades from the 1970s to the present from a radical, revolutionary socialist to a more “moderate” one today, Mr. Judis admits that the Marxian-style socialism of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries is now long passé. The embarrassing experience of “socialism-in-practice” in the form Lenin and Stalin created in the Soviet Union or by Chairman Mao in China will not fly anymore.

From Soviet Central Planning to “Liberal Socialism”

Central planning seemed not to work too well, and the “communist” variation on the socialist theme also had a tendency to be authoritarian with some drawbacks for human life and liberty. (He tactfully avoids mentioning that Marxist-inspired regimes in the twentieth century murdered well over a 100 million people – with some estimates suggesting the number might have been closer to 150 million or more in the name of building the “bright, beautiful socialist future.” (See my article, “The Human Cost of Socialism in Power”.)

He turns his mind and ideal to the “democratic socialist” parties and regimes in Western Europe in the post-World War II era, or as Mr. Judis prefers to call it – following John Maynard Keynes -“liberal socialism.” What makes this form of socialism “liberal”? It is the belief that there can be “socialism with a human face.” In other words, a form of “economic” socialism that leaves in place democratic politics with a respect for a broad range of personal and civil liberties.Virtually all socialists condemned and called for the abolition of private ownership of means of production.

We have heard this all so many times before. While Mr. Judis wishes to suggest that there is no real or definitive definition of “socialism” (any more than there are of “liberalism” or “democracy”), the fact is that throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, virtually all socialists condemned and called for the abolition of private ownership of means of production, and imagined in its place some form of socialist central planning directed by government in the name of “the people.”

Mr. Judis actually more or less admits this, and that the only great debate among socialists and communists in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was over how the socialist utopia would be brought about, whether through violent revolution or through the democratic ballot box. The Russian Marxists led by Vladimir Lenin insisted that only revolution and a “dictatorship of the proletariat” could bring “the workers” to power and assure their permanent triumph over the exploitive capitalist class. The German democratic socialists opted for democratic means to power and rejected the dictatorship of Lenin and later Stalin.

But it is nonetheless the case that well into the post-World War II period this was a dispute over political means and not ideological ends, which remained for both branches of the socialist movement the abolition of capitalism and the imposition of socialist central planning. Communists wanted to bring about this transformation of society in one fell swoop through violent means and imposed dictatorship.  The German Social Democrats and the “Fabian” socialists in Great Britain proposed democratic means, with socialism coming more gradually and through incremental extensions of government control and planning over more and more parts of society. But for both, the end result would be the same: centralized government direction of economic affairs and social change.

As the 1950s turned into the 1960s and 1970s, more and more “democratic” socialists in Western Europe grudgingly accepted the fact that comprehensive socialist central planning was a failure as practiced in the Moscow-dominated Soviet bloc countries; and it brought little of the prosperity that government planning promised to provide as an escape from poverty in the “third world” countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The collectivist dream and delusion springs eternal.

Plus, the tyranny and brutality of Soviet-style socialism made it ethically difficult to defend. So the democratic socialists turned to the interventionist-welfare state to achieve their “social justice” ends without nationalizing all the means of production or centrally planning all economic activity in society. (See my article, “Barack Obama and the Meaning of Socialism”.)

Social Justice Tourism

But those communist regimes were not so repulsive that democratic socialists in the West would not continue to give moral indulgence and wishful hopes that somehow Marxian socialism would finally work and fulfill its promise in, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba, or Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam, or in the Sandinista’s Nicaragua, or any other failed utopia we can find in recent history. The collectivist dream and delusion springs eternal. After all, even a rude, crude, and rough Marxist regime isn’t the United States – please, almost anything other than capitalist America!

Even today, the enlightened “progressive” can take a tour of Castro’s Cuba with the leftist magazine, The Nation. Don’t miss out! This November 2017 you can go with The Nation and, their advertisement promises, “learn about the Cuban Revolution from experts at some of its most pivotal locations, including the Moncada Barracks, the site of the first armed assault by Fidel Castro and his band of rebels on July 26, 1953.”

The progressive political pilgrim to the collectivist promised land will be spending his or her “days meeting with prominent Cuban professors, government officials,” including “urban planners” and “health care workers.” Don’t miss out on your chance to visit one of the remaining socialist “utopias” before global capitalism succeeds in taking it away.Che arbitrarily sent hundreds to their deaths, sometimes literally by his own hand.

No doubt, these “social justice” tourists will not be taken to La Cabana prison, where Che Guevara was assigned by Castro the role of state prosecutor against “enemies of the people,” following Fidel’s triumphant entrance into Havana and seizure of power in January 1959. In the role as unrestrained judge and jury, Che arbitrarily sent hundreds to their deaths, sometimes literally by his own hand.

Nor are they likely to have quoted to them Che’s words that, “My ideological training means that I am one of those people who believe that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.” And that “I can’t be the friend of anyone who doesn’t share my ideas.” Or that Che was the one who in 1960 instituted communist Cuba’s system of forced labor camps. This would not fit in with the heroic face of Che on the t-shirts that, no doubt, some of these “progressive” travelers to utopia would be wearing. After all, Fidel and Che did it all for “the people,” and, well, they did have “good intentions.”

Of course, while such political pilgrims are pleased to visit these places and bask in the moral satisfaction that the few remaining communist regimes in the world are still trying to make that “better world,” even if with the heavy hand of dictatorship, censorship of art, music and political views, the imprisonment of political opponents, and torture and execution of “enemies of the people” (all of which they still mostly turn a blind eye to), they prefer to live in their own Western countries and dream the “liberal socialist” dream, as clearly Mr. Judis is doing.

Liberal Socialism as the Regulatory and Redistributive State

What, precisely, is this democratic or “liberal” socialism to which Mr. Judis hopes a younger generation of Americans will turn in the years ahead? It turns out to be the same “utopia” of the interventionist-welfare state that Western countries have been following since the end of the Second World War, though, admittedly, to different degrees in different places around the world.

Mr. Judis wants the government to intensively and pervasively regulate, command, restrict and direct various aspects of the private enterprises in society, while ensuring that American society can still take advantage of the self-interested incentives and innovations that can improve the material conditions of life. But the direction, form, and extent to which private enterprisers shall be allowed to do those productive and innovative things with their businesses will be confined to and constrained within those avenues that serve the “higher” and “non-market” values and purposes of “society.”

Matching the regulatory and interventionist state must be the redistributive welfare state.

Matching the regulatory and interventionist state must be the redistributive welfare state. The excessive and unnecessary income and wealth of the businessmen and private sector investors of America must be taxed – heavily – to assure greater material egalitarianism, and to fund all the social services and government-provided safety nets, which “would bring immeasurable benefit to ordinary Americans. A good watchword is economic security – something that is very lacking to all except the wealthiest Americans.”

At this point, it might be wondered what, then, marks off Mr. Judis’ “liberal socialism” from the already existing modern American “liberal” interventionist-welfare state? It turns out that it is all a matter of intentions and the intended recipients. In Mr. Judis’ view, mainstream modern American liberals have lost their way; they too frequently sleep with the enemy (think Bill and Hillary Clinton) in the form of excessively collaborating with businessmen and bankers to the latter’s benefit; American liberals and progressives have stopped sufficiently emphasizing “economic justice” for middle America with their increasingly primary focus on “identity politics.”

Liberal Socialism and Democratic Politics Without Romance

Also, unlike the communists and many radical socialists and some progressives, Mr. Judis calls for moving towards his notion of a better socialist future through a more active participation in the Democratic Party. The task is to nudge and shove mainstream modern American liberals in the Democratic Party further to the socialist left, which in many of their hearts these people already know is right. And to use the Democratic Party as the vehicle to propagandize and persuade more in society that socialism is good and just and the best for them.

In other words, Mr. Judis calls for using the methods of the earlier German Democratic Socialists and the British Fabians, only do so in a way that does not seem to be as threatening or undermining of all the institutions of existing society as those earlier groups often did with their call for the total abolition of capitalism.

What is sometimes called “crony capitalism” is just Pareto’s “bourgeois socialism.”

Mr. Judis’ “liberal socialism” is really just the existing interventionist-welfare state placed – “democratically” – in the “right” elected hands, so those manning and managing the machinery of government will do what he wants political authority to do, rather than what it is currently being done by Republicans and the current Democratic Party establishments.

A way for Mr. Judis to more easily defend his desire and ideal is to suggest that the existing political-economic system in America today is a free market, “neo-liberal” capitalism, rather than what the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) once more accurately labeled it: “bourgeois socialism.” That is, a system of government regulation, redistribution, favors and privileges that benefits many in the private enterprise sectors of society rather than a more “proletarian socialism” that simply would take from “the rich” to give to “the workers” and “the poor.”

What is sometimes called “crony capitalism” is just Pareto’s “bourgeois socialism.” Pareto also understood with amazing clarity in the 1890s one of the insights of modern Public Choice theory, that “participatory democracy” of the community as a whole is a theoretical and practical illusion in a complex society. Politics in an unrestrained democracy always becomes a contest among special interest groups capable of gaining concentrated benefits from State intervention and redistribution at the diffused expense of the rest of the society.

In democratic societies it takes the form of coalitions of special interest groups who succeed in offering campaign contributions and votes to politicians desiring elected political office, who then fulfill their campaign promises to those groups once in the actual halls of political power.

The communist “classless society” had one of the most intricate social webs of favoritism and plunder ever.

In totalitarian societies, such as in the former Soviet Union, it took the form of hierarchical positions within the Communist Party and within the central planning bureaucracy, including the state enterprise managers, who had the decision-making power over access to and use of the socialized means of production. Thus, the communist “classless society” had one of the most intricate social webs of power, privilege, favoritism and plunder ever seen in human society.

This “politics without romance,” to use Nobel Laureate, James M. Buchanan’s (1919-2013) phrase, shows why the notion of “the people” owning, controlling, regulating and overseeing the collective direction of an economy is pure illusion and deception concerning the reality of how and why political power works the way it does.

What Mr. Judis and far too many who share his views about capitalism and some form of socialism – “liberal” or otherwise – fail to understand is that any and all forms of planning, regulation, and political redistribution in fact takes power and decision-making out of the hands of the people about whom they express their concerns.

Real Participatory Liberation under Free Market Liberalism

It is the open, competitive market economy that, precisely, gives each and every individual wide latitude and liberty over his own personal affairs. It is the market that enables each of us to make his own choices concerning the profession, occupation, or productive calling to pursue. It is the market that enables each and everyone of us to have the freedom to make our own choices to earn an income and spend that income as we consider best in terms of the values, beliefs, purposes and desires that we think may bring meaning and happiness to our individual lives.

It is the free society that provides truly participatory opportunities to form groupings of almost any type.

It is the free society of individual liberty and voluntary association that provides truly participatory opportunities to form groupings of almost any type to further the ends outside of the narrower arena of market transactions to better our lives materially, socially, culturally and spiritually. See my article, “Individual Liberty and Civil Society” for more about this.

At this point no doubt, Mr. Judis would reasonably ask, but what about those who are unable to provide for themselves, due to personal tragedy, unfortunate circumstances, or simply bad luck? Is this not the reason why enlightened and decent societies had to move “leftward” to establish and financially provide for those unable to personally meet the essentials of everyday life and to have opportunities to fulfill their potentials as a human being? Is not the welfare state of “liberal socialism” the inescapable necessity of having a humane society?

The classical liberal responds that these very concerns can be far better and more successfully solved and served through the voluntary institutions and associations of civil society than to turn such tasks over to the government. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before the modern welfare state, all such “social problems” were handled with wide and positive effects by charities, philanthropies and for-profit organizations in places such as Great Britain and the United States. That their workings and successes are virtually unknown to most people in modern society shows the extent to which their history and social nobility has gone down a memory hole of collectivist misinterpretation and misunderstanding of what a society of liberty did and could provide (for more about this, see my article, “A World Without the Welfare State”).

Furthermore, the transfer of such welfare responsibility to the government reduces each and every recipient to a ward of the State. It is politicians and bureaucrats who decide the education your children will receive in government schools; they are the ones who determine the retirement possibilities you will have, the healthcare to which you will have access and its type, the wages and work conditions under which you may be allowed to be employed or unemployed, and the forms and types of associations you may enter into as well as the activities and membership you are permitted.

“Liberal socialism” is not the path to liberation, but of continuing servitude to the those with political power.

The “liberal socialism” about which Mr. Judis dreams is not the path to liberation, but of continuing servitude to those with political power and who have the presumption to imagine that they know better how people are to care for their own lives than those individuals (See my article, “Democratic Socialism Means Loss of Liberty”).

One would have thought that after more than seven decades of the interventionist-welfare state as the political left’s “liberal socialist” alternative to Marxian socialist central planning, it would be realized that it is just another constraining and corrupt manifestation of the unworkability of any collectivist system of control and command.

Mr. Judis’ program for a socialist America also shows the intellectual bankruptcy of those on “the left.” The revolutionary transformation of society, for which they yearn, ends up being nothing more than the existing interventionist-welfare state, except with the desire that people who agree with Mr. Judis should be at the helm of political power rather than those with whom he disagrees.

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008.

Media Whores

All apologies to the hard-working street-walkers and penthouse prostitutes who, unlike the modern-media harlots and rent-boys, have no illusions and offer no excuses about what they do and why.

For well over 75 years, Americans have naively trusted that the people who bring them the news every night––and today, 24/7––are highly informed, deeply sincere, remarkably unbiased public servants.

After all, why would anyone go into a notoriously low-paying profession if he or she was not at heart an idealist?

Motives, of course, vary. Some are attracted to the “profession” because they are news junkies and want to be where the political action is. Others seek the limelight because the narcissist in them likes to be on camera. Then there are those who genuinely believe that their exposés and hard-hitting reporting can make a helpful difference in people’s lives. Finally we have aspirants with money signs in their eyes, hoping that they will be among the few who actually rake in the big bucks.

But for a public who still believe the “news” they read and hear and watch is even remotely related to “the truth,” allow me to burst that bubble.

As ace journalist Ashley Lutz scrupulously documented in a Business Insider report last year, in 1983 there were 50 media companies, but today only six organizations are now responsible for 90 percent of all the “news” we read, watch and listen to! They include:

  • GE (Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, et al).
  • NewsCorp (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al).
  • Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Miramax, Marvel Studios, et al)
  • Viacom (MTV, Nick Jr., BET, CMT, Paramount Pictures, et al)
  • Time Warner (CNN, HBO, TIME, Warner Bros., et al)
  • CBS (Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, NFL.com, Jeopardy, 60 Minutes, et al)

Make no mistake, the CEOs of these multibillion-dollar businesses are all leftist globalists––not a conservative among them––except perhaps for Rupert Murdoch (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al) who recently gave control of his empire to his leftist sons Lachlan and James, hence the distinctly leftward tilt of Fox and the WSJ.

Over the years, these globalist business titans have all made massive investments in the global economy, thanks largely to the leftist con men and women––the Clintons and Obamas; the communists, tin-pot dictators and America-haters of the United Nations; the leftist billionaires who thrive on and denounce capitalism at the same time––who wined and dined and charmed them into believing that America was on the decline and that the open-borders, one-world-government crowd was in imminent ascendance.

But big ideas, like the notion of a diminishing America, are never successful without the full-time help of a media that is run by––ta da––the globalists themselves!

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS

Ms. Wide-Eyed idealist and Mr. Upwardly-Mobile go-getter apply for jobs at their local or national radio or TV stations or newspapers. Or they “know someone” who facilitates an interview that leads to being hired. A good example of the latter is the nice-enough but remarkably untalented Chelsea Clinton, who landed an astronomically high-paying job with NBC that, mercifully for viewers, lasted about a minute.

Once hired, these wannabe journalists are thrilled to be on their way, until it dawns on them that their bosses don’t give a damn about anything they think or believe or want to convey to a hungry public. For most media employees, it soon becomes clear that they are expected––indeed, mandated––to reflect and convey the belief systems of their employers. And unless they do that, they are completely DISPENSABLE!

My favorite example is Alysin Camerota of CNN. When she was at Fox, she was Ms. Reliable Conservative, or at least fair and balanced. But the very millisecond she moved to CNN, she became as rabidly partisan as any leftwing fanatic has ever been.

Why? Because Ms. Alysin knew immediately that she was dispensable. That’s how big business works. Toe the line or you’re out! The same can be said of all of the self-important newscasters who are literally given their marching orders––or more accurately, their talking orders––by their media bosses.

Not just talking orders, but word-for-word memes, which is why no matter which lefty network or cable show you turn to, they’re all using the same vocabulary, expressions, key words. I first noticed this when Dick Cheney was chosen as a VP candidate by George W. Bush. All of a sudden, the media talking heads discovered the word “gravitas”!

Today, vis-à-vis Hurricane Harvey, the buzz word is the “empathy” that President Trump supposedly lacks––this in spite of an entire nation watching the people of Houston embrace and thank him. But objectivity has never been part of the media whores’ repertoire, only slavish obeisance to their bosses.

Watch for yourself… in fact, take notes. There is a remarkable absence of originality in today’s political reportage; it’s all an echo chamber of talking points and leftist propaganda that the anchors and reporters have received beforehand and literally been commanded to utilize at risk of their job.

And watch these [dispensable] media whores try to impress their bosses by competing in the categories of “best gotcha question,” “most [feigned] outrage,” most blank-faced faux objectivity,” “most vilification toward President Trump,” who these disrespectful [dispensable] employees insist on calling “Trump.” Again, watch for yourself.

But the question still remains: Why the ferocity against President Trump? Why the fanatical mission to depose him from office, to bring him down? The answer is quite simple: in every single case of what used to pass for politics as usual––he has single-handedly destroyed and brought down the prevailing powers-that-be: the Democrat Party, the Republican Party, the globalist agenda, treaties that were bad for America, the open-borders fetish, and the monolith known as the American media.

How? By giving voice to what the American people have known and been angry about for decades, i.e., that they are all corrupt, permeated with bribes and payoffs, self-serving, and in too many cases anti-American, anti the U.S. Constitution, and anti the Judeo-Christian ethics upon which our exceptional nation was founded.

PAYING THE WHORES

What we’ve been witnessing since June of 2015, when billionaire real-estate mogul and TV celebrity Donald Trump announced for the presidency is a three-part phenomenon.

The first gear was based on the arrogance of the establishment media poohbahs––the globalists––who spent over a year believing that the directives they gave to their [dispensable] media whores to deride, insult, sneer at, defame, vilify and laugh at candidate Trump would destroy him.

But they failed! And as candidate Trump succeeded in vanquishing not five or 10 or 14 but 17 formidable opponents and gaining the nomination, the globalists shifted into second gear.

Second gear involved the vast expenditures the globalists were willing to make to stop Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in its tracks, the kind of money––including, I suspect, huge payoffs––to polling firms to literally lie about the numbers.

Every poll showed the worst candidate in American history, Hillary Clinton, ahead of the charismatic Mr. Trump. And every poll in every state that historically has been a reliable slam-dunk for Democrats––Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, etc.––showed Ms. Hillary far ahead. And let’s not forget that every lying poll was reported earnestly as the gospel truth by the globalists’ reliable but [dispensable] media whores.

I don’t have to guess about the, ahem, contributions made to the poseurs who call themselves Republicans but who we now know are really in the thrall of anyone who puts money into their bottomless pockets. Those windfalls include––according to opensecrets.org and Matthew Boyle of Breitbart.com––the hefty largess from hedge-fund billionaire and mega-funder of all things leftist, George Soros, whose name is attached to no fewer than 206 left-wing U.S. organizations, according to Dr. Eowyn. Here is the short list of sell-out Republicans who accepted Mr. Soros’s, um, influential money: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, presidential candidates former governor Jeb Bush and current governor John Kasich; senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Ron Johnson, Chuck Grassley, and senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, the list goes on.

It is noteworthy that, as reported by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, Mr. Soros has also funded every major protest since the November 2016 election, including the Women’s March on Washington (see my article, “The March to Nowhere”), the protests in front of Trump Tower in NY City, the thug-fests at Berkeley College and elsewhere, and of course the fascists-on-display demonstrations of the anti-American, anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter and Antifa, where bought-and-paid for miscreants––dressed up like and imitating ISIS terrorists and Hitler’s Brown Shirts––proceeded to smash windows, light cars on fire, and brutally attack supporters of President Trump.

All the while, the media honchos have kept up the negative drumbeat to defeat the president––to find something criminal to pin on him, to impeach him––even exhorting their [dispensable] media whores to ramp up the attacks.

In fact, a Harvard study released in May by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy revealed that in the president’s first 100 days in office, 10 major TV and print outlets reported negatively 98 percent of the time!

Third gear is what we’ve been witnessing since the election on November 8, 2016, when the globalists and moneybags who control both the media and the politicians realized that all of their efforts to stop the Trump Triumph had failed miserably. Every last dollar down the drain. Every “news” report for naught. Every article worthy only of lining a thousand birdcages.

DESPERATE MEASURES

What to do? First the media whores created the colossal fiction that the Trump camp had colluded with Russia to rig the election. For days and weeks and months on end, these [dispensable] prostitutes studiously eschewed actual news, instead robotically intoning their anesthetizing talking points: Russia-Trump, Trump-Russia, Russia-Trump, Trump-Russia. That was it. No evidence, no first-person testimony, just the feeble attempts by their supposedly intelligent bosses to accomplish what they had failed at in the first place––getting rid of Donald Trump.

After that huge fizzle, the now-desperate get-Trump cabal trotted out the über-corrupt head of the FBI, James Comey, who astonishingly admitted that he used a Columbia professor to plant an article in The New York Times so that President Trump would be forced to appoint a Special Counsel. Sure enough, it was Comey’s close pal, former FBI director Robert Mueller, who got the job and has now appointed 17 attorneys, seven of them contributors to Ms. Hillary’s Presidential campaign and/or the Clinton foundation.  

But again, this witch hunt went nowhere, and so the [dispensable] media whores launched into their next mantra. While both domestic and international news demanded coverage, the American media’s globalist bosses ordered their lackeys to keep up their anti-Trump mantras in the preposterous form of Breaking News: “obstruction of justice,” Jared Kushner’s ‘illegal’ business dealings with Russian companies,” the supposedly nefarious goings-on of POTUS advisors Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, Charlottesville and their bogus claims of “racism, racism, racism,” and now Melania’s stilettos!

THE NET RESULT

Adding it all up, we have a president who is zooming along at warp speed, amassing unprecedented accomplishments for the American people (See my articles, “The Juggernaut & the Jerks” and “The Unstoppable Trump Train”).

The [dispensable] media whores have had zero effect on President Trump’s performance or his continuing popularity with the American public, as attested to by the huge and enthusiastic audiences he attracts wherever he goes. Or, for that matter, his mood, which is clearly and consistently ebullient, upbeat, enthusiastic, and optimistic about America’s future.

In addition, the mass gatherings of thugs, malcontents, anarchists, and basement dwellers have had zero effect on convincing our citizens that the left’s fairy-tale vision of America––a free lunch (and breakfast, dinner, education, housing, cell phones, etc.), socialized medicine, open borders, sanctuary cities, high taxes, a nanny government, et al.––is even palatable, much less preferable.

Still, President Trump––an upright citizen his entire life, an incredibly successful businessman, the bestselling author of over a dozen books, a philanthropist, the father of five respectful and loving children the eldest of whom are also impressively contributory members of society, the representative and now enactor of every value Republicans and conservatives traditionally stand for (low taxes, fewer regulations, secure borders, a strong military, strict conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, et al)––continues to be the target of a “system” that clearly prefers their longtime habit of cozy corruption.

The fact that he CANNOT. BE. BOUGHT. drives them crazy. And the fact that the entire media establishment, for all their blitz-like attacks, has not dented his energy, resolve, or the respect of our nation’s citizens, is clearly too much for them to take…hence the continued onslaught of lies, defamation, and attack.

This, of course, is where the media whores differ from the more respectable prostitutes in our culture, who simply do their job, collect their fees, and express their personal opinions and biases to their friends, colleagues and families.

The media whores could learn a lot from them.

EDITORS NOTE: The author may be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com or via her website is www.joanswirsky.com.

The Recent Popes on Work and Workers

Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Francis on work and working men and women. Work is fundamental. 

The Church is convinced that work is a fundamental dimension of man’s existence on earth. She is confirmed in this conviction by considering the whole heritage of the many sciences devoted to man: anthropology, palaeontology, history, sociology, psychology and so on; they all seem to bear witness to this reality in an irrefutable way. But the source of the Church’s conviction is above all the revealed word of God, and therefore what is aconviction of the intellect is also a conviction of faith. The reason is that the Church-and it is worthwhile stating it at this point-believes in man: she thinks of man and addresses herself to him not only in the light of historical experience, not only with the aid of the many methods of scientific knowledge, but in the first place in the light of the revealed word of the living God. Relating herself to man, she seeks to express the eternal designs and transcendent destiny which the living God, the Creator and Redeemer, has linked with him.

The Church finds in the very first pages of the Book of Genesis the source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human existence on earth. An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they express-sometimes in an archaic way of manifesting thought-the fundamental truths about man, in the context of the mystery of creation itself. These truths are decisive for man from the very beginning, and at the same time they trace out the main lines of his earthly existence, both in the state of original justice and also after the breaking, caused by sin, of the Creator’s original covenant with creation in man. When man, who had been created “in the image of God. . . .male and female,” hears the words: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it,” even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world. Indeed, they show its very deepest essence. Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.

Work understood as a “transitive” activity, that is to say an activity beginning in the human subject and directed towards an external object, presupposes a specific dominion by man over “the earth,” and in its turn it confirms and develops this dominion. It is clear that the term “the earth” of which the biblical text speaks is to be understood in the first place as that fragment of the visible universe that man inhabits. By extension, however, it can be understood as the whole of the visible world insofar as it comes within the range of man’s influence and of his striving to satisfy his needs. The expression “subdue the earth” has an immense range. It means all the resources that the earth (and indirectly the visible world) contains and which, through the conscious activity of man, can be discovered and used for his ends. And so these words, placed at the beginning of the Bible, never cease to be relevant. They embrace equally the past ages of civilization and economy, as also the whole of modern reality and future phases of development, which are perhaps already to some extent beginning to take shape, though for the most part they are still almost unknown to man and hidden from him. – from John Paul II’s Laborem Exercens (1981)

Click here to read the rest of the popes’ words . . .  

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is a painting titled Men of the Docks by George Bellows, 1912 located in the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Trump supporters are intelligent and energetic people of integrity

A doctor recently said to me that it’s hard to find individuals with intelligence, energy and integrity. My answer to him was that there are. The over 63 million who voted to make Donald J. Trump the President of the United States.

There are those who characterize Trump supporters as racist, hateful, bigoted. That’s not the truth.

Let’s look at why Trump supporters are intelligent and energetic people of integrity.

Perhaps the best example is the response to Hurricane Harvey. Texas is a state in which Donald Trump won 36 out of the 38 electors. Trump won the state by over 8 percent. Texas is Trump country. Texas is part of fly over America.

What exactly is fly over America?

Fly over America is that part of America between the big metropolitan areas of New York City and Los Angeles, California. It is where working class Americans live, work and play. It was the part of America that Hillary Clinton ignored. It was the part of America that Donald Trump embraced and the part that embraced Donald Trump. It is that part of America that wanted to restore respect for the country in a positive and loving way.

Intelligence versus Education

Intelligence is defined as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” Education is “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.”

In July 2014 The Street listed the 10 “smartest” and 10 “dumbest” states in the country based on the percentage of the population with at least a bachelor’s degree or higher. The assumption is that having a bachelor’s degree or higher makes one “smart.” Those states without a high percentage of people with a bachelor’s degree, or higher, are classified as “dumb.”

When you look at The Street list and the 2016 Presidential election results, Hillary Clinton won all ten of the “smart” states – Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado and Massachusetts. Mrs. Clinton won one of the top ten dumbest states – Nevada.

Looking at the 2016 Presidential election results Donald J. Trump won nine of the top ten “dumb” states  – Tennessee, Oklahoma, Indiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Donald Trump won the election. Of the remaining 30 states Donald Trump won 21 of the states that were classified by The Street as neither smart or dumb.

Smart is defined as having an bachelor’s degree or higher but that doesn’t make a person intelligent, e.g. a person having the ability to apply knowledge and skills. Intelligence is also defined as “the collection of information of political value.”

It is fly over Americans who are educating themselves and creating congregations, communities, organizations and a movement which elected Donald J. Trump president. An election that went against those who are deemed smart. The smart states lost. The intelligent people won.

Human Energy is what Makes America Great

Energy is defined as “the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity.”

Human capabilities are boundless and the best of America comes out when the people are tested. The recent devastation in Texas is an example of the the boundless energy of the American people. The American people always respond to love, charity and helping those in need. This video tells the story better than any words we can write.

Physical strength and mental toughness were shown in Houston. Rolling up ones sleeves and rebuilding that which God’s nature has, by its power, taken away. This example of many coming together as one nation under God is what makes America great, a shining city on a hill. It was truly inspiring.

Integrity is key to a fulfilled life

Integrity is defined as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.”

Rod Dreher in his book The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation wrote:

The church, then, is both Ark and Wellspring – and Christians must live in both realities. God gave us the Ark of the church to keep us from drowning in the raging flood. But He also gave us the church as a place to drown our old selves symbolically in the water of baptism, and to grow in new life, nourished by the never-ending torrent of His grace. You cannot live the Benedict Option without seeing both visions simultaneously.

Those who see both visions will be people of integrity. It’s not about us, its about Him. Living as a Christian in a post-Christian nation requires integrity and much much more. America witnessed hundreds if not thousands of arks, the Texas Navy, being pulled on trailers headed toward Houston. Each of those arks was to keep the people of Texas from drowning in the raging flood both physically and spiritually.

Dreher in his book bears his soul and his concerns for the future of his family, community and the nation. Dreher writes in the preface to his book:

In my 2006 book Crunchy Cons, which explored a countercultural, traditionalist conservative sensibility, I brought up the work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who declared that Western civilization has lost its moorings. The time was coming, said MacIntyre, when men and women of virtue would understand that continued full participation in mainstream society was not possible for those who wanted to live a life of traditional virtue. These people would find new ways to live in community, he said, just as Saint Benedict, the sixth-century father of Western monasticism, responded to the collapse of Roman civilization by founding a monastic order.

Life requires a religious orthodoxy that sustains one through the tough times, like Houston, Texas. Houston gives us hope that God is alive and well and He is working in mysterious ways.

RELATED ARTICLE: Texas Samaritans Are Evidence that Good People Still Exist

Gore’s new health warning: ‘Every organ system can be affected by climate change’

In Al Gore’s new book, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”, the former Vice President features a professor of pediatrics warning that global warming is impacting our health.

“Every organ system can be affected by climate change. When I say that, I get goosebumps,” says Pediatrician Susan Pacheco, a professor of pediatrics at University of Texas McGovern Medical School, in Gore’s new book. Gore’s book features Pacheco and her climate change health warnings and touts the fact that the professor was inspired to get involved in climate activist after seeing his original film. The book is a companion to Gore’s new film being released this month, a sequel to his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.”  The book is being billed as “Your action handbook to learn the science, find your voice, and help solve the climate crisis.” Gore’s new book excerpts available here. Excerpts of Gore reading the book available here.

Image result for inconvenient sequel book

Gore wrote, “The obvious and overwhelming evidence of the damage we are causing is now increasingly impossible for reasonable people to ignore. It is widely know by now that there is a nearly unanimous view among all scientists authoring peer-reviewed articles related to the climate crisis that it threatens our future, that human activists are largely if not entirely responsible, and that action is needed to urgently prevent catastrophic harm it is already starting to bring.” (Climate Depot Note: Blaming extreme weather on “climate change” is not supported by evidence. & Climate Depot has repeatedly debunked Gore’s climate claimsGore admits Paris pact symbolic – Makes incorrect claims about Greenland, sea levels & extreme weather And here: Climate Depot’s New ‘Talking Points’ Report – A-Z Debunking of Climate Claims And Here  Skeptics Deliver Consensus Busting ‘State of the Climate Report’ to UN Summit)

Pacheco warns in Gore’s new book that climate change is already making us sick. “There’s heart disease, there’s lung disease, there’s kidney disease,” she says in Gore’s book. Gore writes that Pacheco “didn’t become concerned with climate science until 2006. Her eldest son was learning about climate change in school,, so she took the family to see An Inconvenient Truth.”

Gore wrote that “this trip to the theater proved to be a wake-up call. She had never paid much attention to climate science, but after seeing the move she found herself preoccupied by it. As time passed, she decided she needed to talk action, and applied to take part in the second-ever Climate Reality Leadership Corps, a training program I led in Nashville in 2006.”

“Pacheco became convinced she could see the effects in her own clinic’s waiting room, in the Texas children she saw suffering from asthma, heat sensitivity, and allergies. Children and the elderly, she discovered, tend to be the most vulnerable. And while many adults have lived for years in an environment less affected by climate change, today’s youth will grow up with an entire lifetime of exposure. The potential for damage and illness, she suspects, is much higher,” Gore wrote.

“Pacheco also founded the Texas Coalition for Climate Change Awareness. In 2013, the White House bestowed Pacheco with the illustrious “Champions of Change” award in recognition of her efforts,” Gore wrote.

Other activists have warned of similar climate impacts. UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Michael Oppenheimer warned in 2014: “In fact, anybody who eats is under threat from climate change.” (Also see: Scientist to the Hollywood Stars: UN IPCC’s Michael Oppenheimer ‘was the holder of the ‘Barbra Streisand Chair of Environmental Studies’ at Environmental Defense Fund’)

Related Links: 

Watch: Skeptic Morano confronts Gore with ‘Climate Hustle’ DVD in Australia! Gore refuses to accept, departs in SUV

Watch: Morano in Australia on Sky News TV Rips Gore’s Claims

Note: Al Gore accused of using ‘weather-porn to fuel superstitious belief’ in Aussie speech)

UK Daily Mail cites Depot: Al Gore compares climate battle to great moral causes

Australian Herald Sun

Listen: Gore & UN tout ‘modern witchcraft’ – Morano on Aussie’s Alan Jones radio promotes Climate Hustle & Rips Gore

WND: AL GORE: GLOBAL WARMING FIGHT LIKE SLAVERY, CIVIL RIGHTS

Fox News features Climate Depot on Gore speech in Australia

Sky News: Watch: Morano in Australia on Sky News TV Rips Gore’s Claims: ‘As CO2 has risen, extreme weather has actually declined’

Canada Free Press

Drudge Report: www.DrudgeReport.com

Independent Journal Review  – Al  Gore Just Compared Climate Change Activism to the Fight Against Slavery

The Blaze: Al Gore just compared climate change to this ‘great moral cause’

The Daily Caller – Al Gore Likened The Climate Change Movement To Campaign Ending Slavery

Watch: Morano on TV in Australia on meeting Al Gore: Gore attempts to ‘intimidate, silence & ignore’ – Liz Wheeler’s ‘Tipping Point’ show – One America News Network – Monday July 17, 2017

Paris climate deal exit by Trump reversible, French president believes – Morano responds

Rush Limbaugh: ‘Algore’s Back — And More Insane Than Ever’ – Links To Climate Depot Report

Gore ‘insanity and hypocrisy down under’ – Al Gore is jetting around the land Down Under, promoting his new climate chaos film and claiming manmade pollution is equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs going off daily! Australian heat waves are now five times more likely because of manmade global warming! Teachers and journalists get free passes to Gore’s events, to get their propaganda talking points, but no one is allowed to record any part of his talks. When Climate Depot’s Marc Morano offered him a free DVD of the Climate Hustle documentary film, a scowling Al Gore turned and headed to his SUV and private jet.

Al Gore accused of using ‘weather-porn to fuel superstitious belief’ in Aussie speech

A tweet that says it all!

Invasion of Europe news…..

It is so mind boggling to realize that supposedly smart people in Europe (Merkel, Macron, etc) cannot see what has happened to them.

Screenshot (789)

More babies please!

(And, come on, you can afford it! To save big don’t send them to an expensive college to be brainwashed!)

See my complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive here.

RELATED ARTICLE: South Carolina governor wants no refugees from six countries named in Trump travel ‘ban’

VIDEO: 400 Links Google Doesn’t Want You To Visit

Thomas Dishaw reports:

The war on truth has reached a fever pitch as Google has made it their mission to annihilate the independent media. The ‘New Media’ lead by the likes of Infowars, Breitbart, Natural News and many other great independent sites will have an uphill battle when it comes to getting their content in front of readers. Google has announced they will be doubling down on their ‘Orwellian’ practice of making stories disappear from their monopolistic search engine.

Outlined in their Gestapo like 160-page handbook, Google describes exactly how they plan to suppress any information they deem unfit for readers.

[ … ]

This information from Google’s handbook was first uncovered by Melissa Dykes at Truth Stream Media who made a great video that eloquently breaks down the importance of this complex issue.  I highly recommend everyone watch it and more importantly support their work.

ABOUT THOMAS DISHAW

Thomas Dishaw is the editor and creator of Govtslaves.com. You can follow Gov’t Slaves on TwitterFacebook and GAB or contact us by email at govtslaves@protonmail.com.

SITES GOOGLE HAS BLACKLISTED

NEWS & POLITICS

Drudgereport.com

Breitbart.com

Infowars.com

SteveQuayle.com

Whatreallyhappened.com

Rense.com

Blacklistednews.com

Thefreethoughtsproject.com

Thedailysheeple.com

Public Intelligence Blog

Robert David Steele

Judicialwatch.org

Projectveritas.com

Henrymakow.com

Sott.net

Caravantomidnight.com

Joemiller.us

Newsbusters.org

Democracynow.org

Globalresearch.ca

Antiwar.com

Reason.com

Prisonplanet.com

Copblock.org

Opposingviews.com

Topsecretwriters.com

Allgov.com

The Freedom Articles

Veteranstoday.com

Whowhatwhy.org

Truthstreammedia.com

Thenewamerican.com

Freedomproject.com

Corbettereport.com

Sgtreport.com

Newsbud.com

Dailycaller.com

Mintpressnews.com

Informationliberation.com

Truthstreammedia.com

Fromthetrenchesworldreport.com

Trueactivist.com

Shtfplan.com

Collective-evolution.com

Counterpunch.org

Truth-out.org

Hangthebankers.com

Govtslaves.info

Theantimedia.com

Theintercept.com

Activistpost.com

Intellihub.com

Theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Coasttocoastam.com

Cnsnews.com

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EDITORS NOTE: This article is Creative Commons and can be republished in full with attribution.

Unions Are the Worst Labor Day Deal by Gary M. Galles

Every Labor Day, unions repeat assertions of advancing the interests of all workers. But those claims are false. Unions harm most American workers.

Project Labor Agreements

Unions use government-delegated powers to restrict competition from other workers, extracting higher wages for their members. But higher wages mean fewer job openings because each worker is more expensive to the employer. That forces workers to move to other jobs, increasing the supply of labor services in non-union employment and reducing wages for all workers in those jobs. With far less than 10 percent of private sector workers in unions, more than 90 percent of them are injured by that exercise of union power.

Other union-backed initiatives also show how unions feather their own nests at the expense of other workers. Among the best examples are Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), such as the one recently adopted in Santa Ana (despite a staff report that estimates that it would increase construction costs by 10-20 percent).

PLAs are agreements negotiated between government bodies and unions (but excluding non-union workers and contractors), establishing in advance the terms and conditions that will be imposed on all workers for designated projects.

PLAs are rationalized as buying labor peace, “leveling the playing field” for competitors, guaranteeing projects are completed on time, holding down costs, increasing quality, and safety, etc. But they advance none of these goals. They restrict competition, raise costs, and pick taxpayers’ (i.e., other workers’) pockets. As Wharton Professor Herbert Northrup wrote in the Journal of Labor Research, PLAs “have little or no economic rationale, nor can they be defended on the grounds of labor peace, enhanced safety, or other reasonable criteria.”

Non-union workers must also contribute to union health and pension funds with nothing in return.

PLAs supposedly buy labor peace because unions promise not to engage in disruptive activities. Of course, strikes still hit the San Francisco International Airport expansion project, the largest PLA at the time. Such PLAs punish nonunion workers and contractors, who do not threaten strikes, to buy labor peace from unions who threaten strikes–penalizing the innocent (including taxpayers) to reward the guilty. As the New York Supreme Court described it in the Albany Specialties case, it reflects “capitulation to extortion” by unions.

PLA backers assert they just impose equal labor terms on all project bidders, allowing equal competition. But those “equal” terms are anything but even-handed. As in San Francisco and Santa Ana, all workers on the concerned projects, including non-members, must pay union dues and fees, for which they will receive no benefits. Non-union workers must also contribute to union health and pension funds with nothing in return.

Restricting Competition

Virtually all new workers are forced through union hiring halls and even apprentices are union-controlled. Union wages, work rules, job classifications, and hiring and grievance procedures are mandated, raising costs, particularly for non-union bidders. In 2009, John McGowan estimated that PLAs faced employees of non-union contractors with 20 percent cuts in their take-home pay, while increasing non-union employers’ costs by about 25 percent.

PLA terms are so onerous to non-union contractors and workers that most will not even bid on PLA projects (86 percent, in a 1997 survey of non-union contractors in Washington). Bids rise as restrictions eliminate bidders (particularly lower-cost non-union contractors), raising costs for taxpayers. For instance, a 1995 study of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York found that the winning bid without a PLA was 26 percent lower than the one with a PLA.

PLAs harm other workers both directly and as taxpayers financing public projects.  

Such results reinforce the repeated failure of PLAs to demonstrate an increase in either quality or safety, and a 1998 GAO investigation that could document no cost efficiencies from PLAs.

Just as with their other exercises of their unique, government-granted power to restrict competition, PLAs harm other workers both directly and as taxpayers financing public projects.

Rather than living up to union claims, Diana Furchtgott-Roth concluded that a PLA “drives out small businesses from competing for these projects; raises their cost to the taxpayers; and funnels a larger stream of union dues from taxpayers’ pockets to union treasuries.”

So, if we want to make the workers whose contributions we claim to celebrate on Labor Day better off, we should give them more freedom, rather than subjecting them to so many harmful union impositions.

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. His recent books include Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014) and Apostle of Peace (2013). He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

RELATED ARTICLE: On This Labor Day Please Remember the 94 Million Killed by Communist Workers Party in the 20th Century

Failed FBI Motto: Fidelity Bravery Integrity

In a staggering admission of ongoing partisan protectionism the FBI just announced there was not enough “public interest” to release the information requested to further investigate Hillary’s unsecured basement email server.

The FBI has denied NY attorney Ty Clevenger his FOIA request for Hillary Clinton’s documents due to “lack of public interest.” Now that is a new one!

Mr. Clevenger recently received an asinine explanation from FBI records management section chief David Hardy saying, “You have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject.” The stunning arrogance of this FBI response is rivaled only by former FBI director Comey’s recommendation against prosecuting Hillary after publicly articulating the powerful case for proceeding with prosecution.

The corrupt politicized FBI is still protecting Hillary. Now that is an old one!

FBI: Fidelity to the Constitution of the United States. Bravery to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats. Integrity to combat public corruption at all levels. The entire FBI motto continues to be tested in the ongoing Hillary Clinton email affair and all three elements fail.

The FBI, Treasury, State Department, and Justice Department were all seriously politicized during the Obama administration. The departments operated more like protection rackets than proper non-partisan government agencies. They became political enforcers for Obama’s Washington Mafia including the Clinton Crime Family. Refused FOIA requests, stonewalling FOIA requests, conducting incompetent investigations that the Three Stooges would laugh at were all part of the scheme.

Whistleblowers didn’t last long in the Sicilian Mafia and they don’t last long in Washington either.

America elected a new President who has been isolated by government agencies still staffed by the Obama Washington Mafia leftovers determined to protect their crime boss. Obama’s “resistance” movement is nothing more than a criminal syndicate determined to destabilize and overthrow the government of President Donald Trump. After all, anarchy is still a crime in America. The Capos in congress sit on both sides of the aisle and work in collusion with the mainstream media whose bosses have a shared agenda to bring down President Trump.

The fake news, deliberate distortions, stonewalling of FOIA requests, malfeasance and ongoing lack of cooperation from the FBI, State Department, and West Wing democrats active in the White House are all part of the broader plan to protect Hillary which protects Obama which protect their globalist elite puppet masters.

The globalist elite groomed swamp master master Barack Hussein Obama to become president and bring the seismic change the globalist elite need. The legacy of swamp-master Barack Obama will be that he activated the Leftist/Islamist axis to destroy America from within. The hope and change that Obama brought to America was designed to create the social chaos necessary for the globalist elite to impose their own dystopian one-world government.

Barack Obama is a pro-Muslim narcissistic useful idiot. Hillary Clinton is a greedy Leftist useful idiot. Their sycophants are the lemmings that help bring anarchy through the Leftist/Islamist axis. What these arrogant fools do not understand is that there is no place for them in the one-world government envisioned by the elite globalists.

The existential enemy of the Leftist/Islamist axis is President Donald Trump. His Americanism and America-first policies are diametrically opposed to the globalism envisioned by his enemies. If President Trump does not immediately take back the White House he will be neutralized and relegated to the dust heap of ineffective Presidents.

We need to restore our government agencies to America-first. We need to restore the FBI motto to Fidelity Bravery and Integrity. We need President Trump to stand up in the White House and declare himself PRESIDENT not in a political rally in front of his base.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Goudsmit Pundicity.

Sign the petition to declare anti-American billionaire George Soros a terrorist

Last fall, Donald Trump condemned “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”

He said, “The only force strong enough to save our country is US.”

President Trump was taking direct aim at political entities that do not have our best interests at heart, many of them founded and/or supported by anti-American billionaire George Soros. 2ndVote’s research has found Soros, through his Open Society Foundations, provides funding for organizations supporting abortion, same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, extreme environmentalism, opposition to school choice, and attacks on religious liberty, the freedom of speech, and 2nd Amendment rights.

The world over, Soros has waged ideological battles by funding left-wing activists, anarchists, and radical movements that have allowed him to financially gain from the turmoil.

A current petition at whitehouse.gov asks the Trump administration to “Declare George Soros a terrorist and seize all of his related organizations’ assets under RICO and NDAA law.” The petition is only a few thousand signatures short from the 100,000 needed by September 19, 2017 to elicit a response the White House.

Click here to read, sign, and share the petition.

Thank you for lending your voice and for your support!