U.S. Senate Democrats kill the Syrian Refugee SAFE Act — use Trump as excuse

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Senate Democrats showed their abject fear of Donald Trump by bringing him into the debate as they did.

As we told you a couple of days ago, the federal refugee resettlement contractors were whipping their forces to tell their Senators to oppose a bill that had passed the House in November with broad bipartisan support.  The contractors were so afraid of losing their Muslim ‘clients’ (a large portion of those for which they are paid by the head to bring to your towns).

 

Yesterday, the Senate failed to get cloture and move the bill with enough votes to assure Obama would not veto it.  From insiders we learned that the bill, if it ever passed and was signed by Obama, would have been a fig leaf and not done much to keep us safe from terrorists getting into your neighborhoods from places like Syria and Iraq.

The vote, however, was informative.  All Democrats except Bernie Sanders who missed the vote, and two brave souls, voted to kill the bill. Republicans including the three US Senators running for President voted to move the bill.

The two Dems who bucked the party (and the grassroots working for contractors) were West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp.

Here is the roll call vote.

This is what Reuters says about the vote:

U.S. Senate Democrats on Wednesday narrowly blocked legislation that would slow the entry of refugees from Syria and Iraq to the United States in a contentious vote cloaked in presidential election-year politics.

Manchin and Heitkamp

Democratic Senators Manchin and Heitkamp.

The vote was 55-43, with “yes” votes falling short of the 60 needed to advance the Republican-backed measure in the 100-member Senate. No Republicans voted against the bill, and only two Democrats backed it.

Among other things, the bill would halt the admission of refugees and require high-level U.S. officials to verify that each refugee from Iraq and Syria posed no security risk before being allowed into the United States.  [This is the part of the bill that was so weak because the Obama Administration (and a Hillary one too) would simply verify that screening was adequate.—ed]

Republicans said the tighter screening was essential to ensure the safety of Americans and prevent attacks within the country by Islamic State and other militant groups.

“This bipartisan bill would allow Washington to step back, take a breath and ensure it has the correct policies and security screenings in place,” Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in the Senate before the vote.

[….]

All three Senate Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, backed the bill. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders missed the vote.

Dems tried and failed to bring Donald Trump into the debate.  Who in their right mind would have gone along with this trick!

Democrats also sought to play politics. They tried and failed to reach a deal with Republicans to set up a vote on an amendment establishing a religious test for would-be immigrants.

That vote was planned to see if Republicans would side against presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has advocated barring Muslims from entering the United States.

The Syria refugee bill passed the House by a large margin days after the Nov. 13 Islamic State attacks in Paris. The bill was supported by dozens of Democrats who defied Democratic President Barack Obama’s veto threat.

There is mention in the story that refugees are screened for 18-24 months which is a joke.  They are briefly screened, then they wait for their plane tickets and their assignments to your towns!

Conclusion!  Democrats, except those in West Virginia and North Dakota, are on the side of flooding America with refugees from terror-producing countries.  That is pretty clear.

And, it is also pretty clear that there is much work ahead (Congress is not going to save us!) during Election 2016 to educate the public through whatever means possible about the Refugee Admissions Program which is being effectively directed by the United Nations choosing America’s refugees.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Nearly 500,000 Visa Overstays Will Impact the Immigration Debate

Trump, Cruz and New York Values

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New York City values are going through the roof. And it’s not just real estate. A prime story the last many days has been the GOP debate dust-up between Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz. After the senator impugned “New York values” in an effort to call into question the businessman’s conservative bona fides, Trump responded with an impassioned defense of New Yorkers’ character. Trump won the exchange on style with rhetorical effectiveness, but, frankly, Cruz was right on substance.

This is not a commentary on whether Trump exemplifies NY values. In fact, I love most of what The Donald is saying; furthermore, while I have great respect for Cruz, the fact that no other candidate Thursday night could join Trump in supporting a halt to Muslim immigration — a common-sense measure — calls their qualifications for the presidency into question. But this isn’t a commentary on that, either, or on NY values, although I will touch on them. This article is about something far deeper.

All of us generalize. And most of us bristle at generalizations we don’t’ like — whether true or not. It’s then that we, waxing emotional, may complain about the “folly of generalization.”

Now, it may come as a shock to the critics of mine who suppose I live in West Virginia and eat chicken-fried steak, but I was born in NY and grew up in NYC — the Bronx, to be precise. And believe me, there are NY values (along with an ever decreasing number of NY virtues). Moreover, as Cruz said, most people know what they are. Trump certainly does; after all, he referenced his NY values in a 1999 interview. And while radio host and Trump supporter Michael Savage, another man I greatly respect, took exception to Cruz’ remarks, I remember when he complained on air that Vermont was ruined and became Sandersized when too many New Yorkers moved there.

What are NY values? Well, state residents elected a governor who said in 2014 that pro-life, pro-Second Amendment conservatives “have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are’”; and the Big Apple elevated to mayor Bolshevik Bill, a Marxist who honeymooned in Cuba and once raised money for the Sandinistas. You figure it out.

My real concern here, however, is not how people value New Yorkers or Cruz or Trump, but how they value generalization itself. For our refusal to properly generalize is one of the characteristic faults of our time — and a dangerous one at that.

Here’s a good example: if it’s wrong to generalize about New Yorkers because, in principle, it’s wrong to generalize, how can we then generalize about terrorists or Muslims? Doesn’t it make it harder to justify a halt to Muslim immigration if generalization is taken off the table? So some may get offended and say “Not all New Yorkers are liberals,” but this is reminiscent of liberals opposing common-sense profiling and saying “Not all Muslims are terrorists” (or “Not all terrorists are Muslim”). In point of fact, the percentage of Muslims who are terrorists is lower than the percentage of New Yorkers who are liberal, but this is irrelevant. The fact that virtually all the terrorists bedeviling us are Muslim is significant and indicates the importance of honest examination of Islamic values — which, like NY values, certainly exist.

The reality is that “not all _____ are _____” is not a valid argument against generalization, only reflective of a misunderstanding of it. If I say “Men are taller than women,” it’s silly to respond “But not all men are taller than all women!” After all, I didn’t say “all” and wasn’t implying the absence of individual variation; rather, I was referring to men and women as groups. And just as we must judge every individual as an individual and not paint everyone with the same brush, we must judge an individual group as an individual group and not paint every one with the same brush.

In fact, the only reason we can even identify groups as “groups” is that there are differences among them. And barring the rare cases in which groups are differentiated solely by location (as when dividing a class of boys into two groups placed at different tables), those differences are often neither arbitrary nor insignificant. Is location the only thing differentiating Afghans from Americans? Is location the only thing differentiating New Yorkers from Alabamans? Just as there’ll be very different government if you replace the 320 million Americans in the US with 320 million Muslims, there’ll be very different state government if you replace the 4.8 million Alabamans in Alabama with average New Yorkers.

In fairness, most NY counties without big population centers are red. “Aha,” you say, “what about those rural values in the Empire State?!” Yes, there can be sub-groups within groups, and there is a general ideological divide between the woods and the hoods. But the point is that speaking of “rural values” is a generalization, too — and a correct one.

Why does this matter? Question: who’s in closer touch with reality, someone who only understands individual variation or someone who also understands group variation? In fact, the latter is necessary for survival. Just as being able to judge individual character (as when choosing a babysitter) is important, so is being able to judge group character (related to this is being able to properly judge what faults are found mostly in a given group, even if they’re exhibited by only a minority in the group). This is especially true given that understanding group character aids in assessing individual character.

This is not synonymous with prejudice. It rather is part of profiling, which, to paraphrase Dr. Walter Williams, is a method by which we can make determinations based on scant information when the cost of obtaining more information is too high. For example, since an Israeli airport-security agent can’t spend a month living with and becoming acquainted with every traveler, he must make judgments based on group associations; thus, knowing not all Muslims are terrorists but virtually all Mideast terrorists are Muslim, he’ll scrutinize a Muslim flier more closely.

We all make such generalization/profiling-based judgments. A stranded woman motorist may refuse to roll down her window and accept aid from a young man with greasy hair who’s peppered with tattoos and body-piercings; of course, he could conceivably be well-meaning, but this is a situation where she really does have to judge the book by its cover. Likewise, she may refuse to lower her window for any man, knowing that while most men aren’t rapists, most all rapists are men. I’m not hiring a member of the Communist Party USA as a babysitter no matter how pleasant the person appears. And not all dogs bite, but it’s still a good policy to not pet strange dogs.

Doctors also must consider group characteristics, to do their patients justice. For example, understanding that Pima Indians have the world’s highest diabetes rate and that black men’s prostate-cancer rate is twice white men’s can serve as indicators for screening. And only women are routinely examined for breast cancer even though men occasionally develop the disease.

Of course, no good person wants generalization to descend into prejudice, a fault man so often exhibits. But to consequently dismiss generalization, and thus throw out of the baby with the bathwater, is much like dispensing with medical diagnostics merely because witch doctors have existed. Moreover, note that since “prejudice” is defined as “an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason,” such an uninformed, unfavorable opinion of generalization is a prejudice itself. And it’s a prejudice that can get you killed.

You’re 62 times more likely to be killed by an Islamic jihadist than by a ‘right-wing extremist’

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Contrary to media myth, you’re actually 62 times more likely to be killed by an Islamic jihadist than by a “right-wing extremist.” Professor Andrew Holt shows that not only did the New America Foundation wildly exaggerate the threat of “right-wing extremists,” and fudge the data to do so, it also ignored several murderous Islamic jihad attacks. The New America Foundation study was written up in the New York Times and elsewhere — the mainstream media loved it and continues to cite it to this day. This debunking will not get that kind of attention.

Andrew-Holt

Professor Andrew Holt, Florida State College at Jacksonville, FL

“Prof DEBUNKS study claiming right-wing extremists in U.S. more deadly than Islamic terrorists,” by Michael McGrady, The College Fix, January 18, 2016:

A widely touted study claiming right-wing extremism is more deadly than Islamic terrorism in the United States has been debunked by a history professor who shows that, in actuality, there have been 62 Americans killed by Islamic terrorists in the U.S. for every one American killed by right-wing extremists. Professor Andrew Holt of Florida State College at Jacksonville recently published his analysis that discredits the widespread sentiment that right-wing attackers are the deadliest domestic terrorists in the U.S.

“If you include the death totals from 9/11 in such a calculation, then there have been around 62 people killed in the United States by Islamic extremists for every one American killed by a right wing terrorist,” Holt stated in his analysis.

Holt’s analysis points out numerous flaws in the highly cited study released in 2015 by New America Foundation, which claimed 48 deaths in the U.S. were due to “far right wing attacks” while only counting 45 deaths due to “violent jihadist attacks.”

The study’s findings were not only touted by many major news outlets across the nation as proof that fears over radical Islamic terror in the U.S. are overblown, but the findings are also used today in some college classrooms as an example of Islamophobia.

But, Holt points out the foundation’s findings are based on flawed data sets.

For one, the foundation did not count the deaths on Sept. 11. Secondly, it did not factor in extraordinary security measures, such as the Patriot Act and the creation of Homeland Security, put in place after 9/11 that prevented a large number of attempted attacks by Islamic terrorists on American soil.

Moreover, the foundation’s count does not recognize “the disproportionately high number of attacks by Islamic extremists in the United States, who, even after excluding the victims of 9/11, are still responsible for around 50 percent of the total number of deaths due to extremism, even though Muslims only account for around 1 percent of the total U.S. population,” Holt states.

Underscoring all that, Holt said the foundation’s count ignored more than a half-dozen examples of radical Islamic terrorism deaths in the U.S.

One of the most glaring omissions, he noted, is the 2002 D.C. Beltway snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who admitted to authorities that they were inspired by Osama bin Laden and sought to set up a terrorist training camp.

“Indeed, on April 22, 2005, the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed [the] death penalty on the basis that Muhammad had committed an act of terrorism,” Holt stated. “Together, Muhammad and Malvo killed at least ten people. Yet [the foundation] does not list their victims among those under the category of ‘violent jihadist attacks.’”

“If we add Muhammad and Malvo’s victims to the total number of Americans killed by Islamic extremists since 9/11, then the number killed rises to 55, a total higher than the 48 deaths they attribute to right wing extremism.”

Holt added additional deaths due to Islamic terror in the U.S. are not counted by the foundation, including:

In June of 2006 in Denver, a man shot four of his co-workers and a swat team member, killing one. He later claimed he did it because it was “Allah’s choice.” In December of 2009 in Binghamton, a Saudi Arabian graduate student named Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani killed Richard T. Antoun, a non-Muslim Islamic studies professor who served on al-Zahrani’s dissertation committee, in revenge for “persecuted” Muslims. Prior to the killing one of al-Zahrani’s roommates tried to warn the university administration that he had been acting “like a terrorist.” In 2012 in Houston, in two separate incidents in January and in November, two people were shot to death by a Muslim extremist for their roles in his daughter’s conversion to Christianity. In March of 2013 in Ashtabula (Ohio), a Muslim convert walked into a Christian Church during an Easter service and killed his father, claiming it was “the will of Allah.” In August of 2014 in Richmond (California) killed an Ace Hardware employee by stabbing him seventeen times, claiming he was on a “mission from Allah.”

In an email interview with The College Fix, Holt emphasized that any extremist attack is disturbing and must be condemned, adding “my comments are not intended to discount the very real suffering of victims of right wing terror.”

Nevertheless, Americans have been misled by the foundation’s study and deserve an accurate picture, Holt said.

“The study has been widely reported in the mainstream press, and those reports have been widely shared on social media, often cited as evidence for the surprising claim above,” Holt told The College Fix. “… But the reality is that if you include the deaths from 9/11, then the raw and ugly numbers show that over the last 15 years more Americans have died as a result of Islamic extremism than right wing extremism by an extraordinarily lopsided ratio of more than 62 to 1.”

“Moreover, even if you exclude the deaths of 9/11 for some reason, but do not apply the very limiting parameters used in the New American study, then you still get a higher number of total U.S. deaths from Islamic extremism than from right wing extremism.”…

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Geert Wilders: ‘Welcome, Donald Trump’ to the land of thoughtcrimes

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Britain: the cradle of freedom, now the land of thoughtcrime.

“Exclusive–Geert Wilders: Delusional Britain Would Rather Ban Donald Trump Than Confront Unpleasant Facts,” by Geert Wilders, Breitbart, January 19, 2016:

Deja-vu. It is not an English word, but French. However, the word immediately springs to mind when hearing about yet another Western politician or Islam critic, whom some British politicians want to ban from entering their country. Welcome, Donald Trump, in the company of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and myself.

Both Pamela, Robert and myself have been banned from entering the United Kingdom. In my case, it happened on February 12, 2009. Two highly respected members of the British House of Lords, Lady Caroline Cox and Lord Malcolm Pearson, had invited me to show my 2008 documentary Fitna to members of the House in a conference room of the parliament building in Westminster. Fitna is a movie, juxtaposing Koranic versed calling for violence with footage of terrorist attacks and other violent deeds these verses inspired.

Fitna, as well as my view that Islam, rather than a religion, is primarily a totalitarian political ideology aiming for world domination, has resulted in several death threats against my person. I am on the death list of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Pakistani Taliban. Since 2004, I have been living under round-the-clock police protection, but I have a mission: Speak the truth about Islam.

However, a Pakistani-born Islamic member of the House of Lords, one Nazir Ahmed, demanded that the then British Labour government ban me from entering the UK. He threatened that he would personally mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent me from entering the Upper House. The government complied and had me banned. Though a member of the Dutch parliament, invited by British colleagues, I was locked up in a detention room upon arrival at Heathrow Airport. Three hours later, I was put on the next flight to Amsterdam.

The British authorities said that my “presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society.” My statements as expressed in Fitna and elsewhere were said to “threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK.” Lord Ahmed boasted of his victory in the Pakistani media. He termed the decision “a victory for the Muslim community.”

However, I challenged the ban before the British Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. On October 12, 2009, this tribunal overturned the ban. In March 2010, I returned to London and showed my movie to my colleagues in Westminster. There were no incidents and no disturbances of Britain’s “fundamental interests,” “community harmony,” or “public security.” The bans served but one goal: It was an attempt to shut me up for speaking the truth about Islam.

Yesterday, Pamela Geller wrote on this website that in June 2013, she and Robert Spencer, too, were banned from the UK because their presence was “not conductive to the public good” and a “threat to security of our society.” It sounded eerily familiar, as did the arguments of those who want Donald Trump to be banned from Britain for advocating a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration into the US. Fortunately, they did not succeed.

When the great Ronald Reagan visited the British Parliament in 1982, he told the British parliamentarians that “if history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.” This is an advice that politicians everywhere should take at heart.

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January 20, 2009: A day that lives in ‘irony’

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January 20, 2009, seven years ago today, is a day that lives in “irony.”  It was 6:00 p.m. in “den Haag” (the Hague) Netherlands and I just finished an amazing interview with Member of Parliament Geert Wilders regarding a variety of issues related to Islamic jihad and the cultural attack of Islam against the Judeo-Christian West.

As my team and I walked into the Plaza on the Hague grounds, I heard loud chanting and screaming like you would hear at a Super bowl football game. I looked inside the very upscale cafe’s and bars and saw crowds of young Europeans jumping around in ecstatic fits crying, laughing and cheering. I was extremely curious as to what was going on in these 15 different public places. I walked into the doorway of one and saw that all the Euro’s were watching the television. As I focused on the TV set I was doubly-shocked, as I deeply experienced a frightening moment of post-modern intellectual chaos.

On the TV screen, at noon, Eastern time, was President Barak Obama was being inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. Not 20 minutes earlier, as it relates to global security, I was with Geert Wilders one of the most clear-thinking political leaders in the world and now, those for who he serves, were bowing at the foot of a man that I knew would create world chaos with his flawed and failed views of foreign policy and national security.

It struck me, “are these Euro’s blind or stupid or ignorant or all of the above?” Well, it’s seven years removed from that day and the facts of history confirm exactly what many of us knew on January 20, 2009 and know even better today, January 20, 2016.  Geert Wilders is right and President Obama is wrong. Enjoy this walk down Memory Lane!

Teens Who Use Marijuana at Risk of Schizophrenia

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In a pre-clinical study, researchers from Western University in Ontario, Canada, studied the effects of long-term exposure to THC in both adolescent and adult rats.

They found changes in behavior as well as in brain cells in the adolescent rats that were identical to those found in schizophrenia. These changes lasted into early adulthood long after the initial THC exposure.

The young rats were “socially withdrawn and demonstrated increased anxiety, cognitive disorganization, and abnormal levels of dopamine, all of which are features of schizophrenia,” according to the article. The same effects were not seen in the adult rats.

“With the current rise in cannabis use and the increase in THC content, it is critically important to highlight the risk factors associated with exposure to marijuana, particularly during adolescence,” the researchers warn.

Read Medical News Today story here. Read study abstract in the journal Cerebral Cortex here.

Syrian civil war negotiations get off to rocky start

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Dr. Riad Hijab, Syria's former Prime Ministe

Dr. Riad Hijab, Syria’s former Prime Minister : Syria’s Supreme Commission for Negotiations Convenes (PRNewsFoto/Office of Dr Riad Hijab)

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia /PRNewswire/ — The Supreme Commission for Negotiations held its third meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday January 19-20, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Commission Coordinator Dr. Riad Hijab presided over a wide agenda with several deliberation sessions and reviews, in addition to consultations over outcomes from visits to various Arab and Western capitals.

Following a thorough review of the Commission’s proposed agenda to UN Special Envoy, Staffan de Mistura; the Commission agreed to the appointment of Mr. As’ad Al-Zo’ubi as head of the negotiating team, Mr. George Sabra as deputy and Mr. Mohamad Alloush as chief negotiator. Appointment of the delegation was based on a rigorous selection criteria taking into account qualifications, expertise and ability to implement any future agreements on the ground.

Dr. Hijab confirmed that the Commission will request from the UN envoy to formally and directly issue invitations to the Commission to attend the negotiations.  Regarding the idea of a third delegation from outside the charter of the Commission, Dr. Hijab commented:

“The Riyadh Conference incorporated a diverse spectrum of Syrian opposition, including the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, the National Coordination Committee, moderate factions, political groups and independent figures who participated in the Cairo and Moscow conferences, as well as broad ethnic and religious representation and a significant number of independents.

We will not accept attempts by foreign parties to support a particular group at the expense of another, make proposals intended to challenge the credibility and mandate of the Supreme Commission for Negotiations, or to inject individuals in the form of a so-called third delegation, justifying their presence under unfounded pretexts merely to disrupt the political process and prolong the fighting in the name of combating terrorism.”

During the meeting several opposition groups proposed to suspend negotiations and consider the timing in the absence of full adherence by signatory states to UNSCR 2254, particularly:  lifting the siege to enable humanitarian agencies to deliver aid, releasing detainees, ceasing aerial shelling and artillery attacks against civilians.

In response to these valid reservations Dr. Hijab pointed out that, “Dates are not sacred, we will not go to any negotiations while our people suffer from shelling, starvation and siege… debased political bartering at the expense of the Syrian people is tantamount to callous extortion which we will not accept under any circumstance.”

Trump Surges to 48 Percent in Florida

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fau poll logoBOCA RATON, Florida /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Donald Trump has surged nearly 12 points in the last two months and is closing on half of the GOP vote in Florida, where Hillary Clinton has improved in all head-to-head match-ups against GOP front runners, according to a new poll by the Florida Atlantic UniversityBusiness and Economics Polling Initiative (FAU BEPI).

The survey began Jan. 15, the day after the latest GOP debate, and concluded Jan. 18, the day following the most recent Democratic debate.

Trump leads the GOP field in Florida with 47.6 percent; followed by Ted Cruz at 16.3 percent; Marco Rubio at 11.1 percent; and Jeb Bush at 9.5 percent. Ben Carson fell from third to fifth as his support dropped from 14.5 percent in November 2015 to just 3.3 percent in this latest poll. Cruz gained more than six points from the November 2015 poll, while Rubio lost more than seven points, and Bush gained six-tenths of a point.

With his support growing in each of the polls BEPI has conducted since September 2015, Trump has clearly seized momentum in Florida, where he enjoys a 70 percent favorability rating among GOP voters.

“At this point, Donald Trump is simply crushing the opposition in the Florida Republican primary,” said Kevin Wagner, Ph.D., associate professor of political science at FAU and a research fellow of the Initiative.

On the Democratic side, Clinton has strengthened her position in head-to-head match-ups with the GOP front runners. Clinton has turned a three-point deficit against Cruz in November into a five-point lead, while pulling even with Rubio after trailing him by seven points two months earlier. Clinton also closed the gap on Trump by six points and now trails the GOP frontrunner 47 to 44.3 percent. However, Bush leads Clinton in Florida 45 to 41.5 percent.

Clinton also maintains a 36-point lead over Bernie Sanders (62.2 to 25.9 percent), despite losing seven points from her 43-point margin in November.

“Clinton continues to hold a solid lead on the Democratic side in Florida,” said Monica Escaleras, Ph.D., director of the BEPI. “She’s also performing much better against all the GOP front runners, including Trump.”

VIDEO: Tactics for Counter Jihad

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Many people are afraid of speaking out about Political Islam. But, once you understand the nature of our enemies, you need not be afraid. Actually, we have two enemies: the far enemy (Islam) and the near enemy (the apologists). You only need to deal with the apologists, such as ministers, media editors, school board members and opinion makers. The only damage you will have to contend with is being called names, such as bigot, hater and racist.

We must educate the apologists by understanding their principles and showing them how Political Islam violates their own beliefs. Once they can see this, they can become an ally.

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Bernie’s Bolsheviks vs. Donald’s Trumpites

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Bolshevik: Russian for “One of the Majority.” There appear to be two movements in the 2016 presidential primary race. One is led by Bernie Sanders and his Bolsheviks. The other is lead by Donald Trump and those who “Want to Make America Great, Again”, known at Trumpites. One movement promotes collectivism, the other individualism. Ayn Rand defines the principles underlying these movements as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group (i.e. One of the Majority).

Question: Which movement will win on November 8th, 2016?

Chris Stirewalt from Fox News reports:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign network is riot with talk about socialism, seeping in under the door or perhaps in the fluoridated water. You never know where the “conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids” will turn up.

Among those warning of socialist creep is prominent Clinton booster, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who got double coupons for warning of a threat to the very heartland of the nation. “Here in the heartland, we like our politicians in the mainstream, and he is not — he’s a socialist,” Nixon told the NYT.

The sinister socialist to whom Nixon is referring is 74-year-old Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been in Congress since 1991 and for all of his adamancy about being an independent and a, yes, socialist has almost always been a perfectly pliant supporter of the Democratic party. Read more.

Megan Kelly Tweeted: A stunning new poll out of  with the below graphic:

poll out of New Hampshire

I recently wrote a column titled “The Trump Insurgency.” In that column I noted:

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

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

The choice for America is between a collectivist form of government or one that returns power to the people.

In a column titled “Government Caused the ‘Great Stagnation‘” Peter J. Boettke, Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University, discusses how government has outgrown America’s ability to pay for it. Boettke writes, “Government is too big, too bloated. Washington faces a spending problem, not a revenue problem. But too many within the economy depend on the government transfers to live and to work. Yet the economy is not growing at a rate that can afford the illusion. Where are we to go from here?”

Boettke labels totalitarian government as “Stupidity.” Boettke notes that, “[W]e fought off (in the West, at least) totalitarian government (Stupidity).”

However, that has changed. Today stupidity reigns supreme with more and more citizens receiving government subsidies and largess.

If either Hillary or Sanders wins the Democratic Party nomination for president, we could see the party at the last minute recruit Uncle Joe Biden to run.

This would be a last ditch effort to end the stupidity, or maybe not?

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Senator Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump is courtesy of AP/Jacquelyn Martin/Seth Wenig/Photo montage by Salon.

Bernie Sanders Is Wrong on College and Jail by Kevin Currie-Knight

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In a December 15 tweet, Senator Bernie Sanders intimated that graduating from college decreases the likelihood that you will go to jail:

Sanders has long supported dubious measures for making college more affordable and hence accessible to all, and this may be why: he believes that “no college” is a path to jail.

Mike Rowe, the former TV host of the Discovery Channel series Dirty Jobs and a longtime opponent of the “college for all” message, responded to Sanders with outrage. Rowe challenged Sanders’s idea that the most viable option without a college degree is jail. He also brought home a favorite point of his, to throw into question whether a cost-benefit analysis of college really shows that college is the best path to a successful career.

I’ve written before against the “academic training for all” mentality that Sanders and so many others seems set in, but Rowe, unfortunately, also gets a few things wrong.

Upcredentialing and Downvaluing

While Sanders is right that college degrees significantly increase one’s job prospects, he’s wrong to think that “college for all” will increase job prospects for everyone. Rowe is right to note that there are viable career options that don’t require college degrees, but he overlooks that they are vanishing by the year.

We all strive to “outcredential” each other, and in short order, the college degree is the new high school diploma. 

As a recent study documents, more employers are demanding a college degree as a qualification for careers that never used to require one — from positions at an IT help desk to positions as a receptionist, office manager, or file clerk. What is behind this “upcredentialing” phenomenon?

College degrees and other certificates of learning are what economists call positional goods: their value partly hinges on how they stack up relative to what others have. If I live in an area where few have finished college, my degree will be of great value and probably open many doors. But if I live where college degrees are commonplace, mine will do little more than put me on an even footing with my equally credentialed peers. In that case, distinguishing myself from others may require me to get still more education than my peers.

The Education Arms Race

We can think of higher education as a game of chicken, where each person’s strategy is to outdo others without completely breaking their bank. Since I want to compete in the job market, and I have reason to think that many other people are getting college degrees, my strategy should be to get one, too, and perhaps one more impressive than theirs. But my competitors are probably thinking the same thing, and each of us knows what the other is thinking. We all strive to “outcredential” each other, and in short order, the college degree is the new high school diploma.

This is basically what Americans have done for the last several decades, at least since the GI Bill expanded college accessibility.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, college enrollment in 1983 was 10.6 million, and, after a small dip between 1984 and 1985, it has steadily increased each year. In 2012, the number stood at 17.7 million. Data also show that more Americans than ever have college degrees, though the percentage of people with college degrees (20 percent to 40 percent) varies by state.

Upcredentialing occurs because it can. Employers want ways to differentiate candidates. When college degrees were scarce, the candidate with the college degree distinguished himself from everyone else right off the bat. But when more and more people have a college degree, employers can afford to make having one a requirement.

If this process looks circular, that’s because it is. Bachelor’s degrees are a pathway to many more career options because many careers now require bachelor’s degrees. But the reason many careers now require bachelor’s degrees is because people en masse get bachelor’s degrees because they are a path to a better future.

Trapped in a Vicious Circle

While I generally support Rowe’s “college isn’t the only way” message, I am more pessimistic than he is because I don’t see the circle breaking easily.

If the best way to have the best career prospects is to outdo my competition, how likely is it that I will decide not to go to college if I suspect that others are better satisfying employers’ expectations by going? I could take a chance, but it’d be a big chance; if I’m right, I save a lot of tuition money, still get a decent job, and accumulate four extra years of earnings and experience, but if I’m wrong, my career prospects are slim. Rowe might point out that many careers don’t require a college degree, but I’d remind him that the pool of such jobs is shrinking. Fifteen years ago, those jobs included file clerks and construction supervisors, both of which now require degrees.

If this process looks circular, that’s because it is.

Some companies are bucking the upcredentialing trend and recognizing that there is little reason for them to require college degrees for certain positions. I hope that as those companies find success with that model, others will follow suit and we will reach a tipping point. Rowe probably shares that hope.

None of this lets Sanders off the hook. Not only is his tweet horribly oversimplified (and to be fair, one can’t be terribly nuanced in a tweet). But “college for all” ceases to look so good when you understand that education is a positional good. Increasing college access to all will do little more than deflate the value of a college degree for everyone by fueling the very upcredentialing that is already making the degree ever less meaningful.

“At the end of the day,” some future tweet may opine, “a second PhD is a helluva lot cheaper than prison.”

Kevin Currie-KnightKevin Currie-Knight

Kevin Currie-Knight teaches in East Carolina University’s Department of Special Education, Foundations, and Research. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

The Islamic State vs. the Laffer Curve by Daniel J. Mitchell

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Based on my writings, some people may think I’m 100 percent against higher taxes.

But that’s not exactly true. In some cases, I like punitive taxation. Or, to be more precise, I sometimes take pleasure when punitive tax policy backfires on bad people.

Here’s an example. An interesting article in Slate, authored by Adam Chodorow of Arizona State University Law School, looks at how a terrorist group’s attempt to form a government is being stymied by an inability to collect taxes.

Revolution is easy. Governing is hard. And there are few things more difficult than taxes. Operating a country requires money, and that typically requires taxes. … 

The population in this area is estimated to be between 7 million and 8 million, about the same as the population of Washington state. While ISIS currently collects about $1 billion annually, countries of similar size collect about $16 billion, suggesting that ISIS has a long way to go if it wants to operate like a real state.

But the comparatively low levels of tax revenue are not because of a Hong Kong-type commitment to limited government.

Instead, the terror group is discovering that people don’t like giving their money to politicians and bureaucrats, even ones motivated by Islamic fundamentalism.

Taxes aren’t a great way to ingratiate oneself with the governed. … More than one government has fallen because of its tax policy. ISIS must face these challenges just as any emerging polity does… ISIS may have displayed prowess on the battlefield, but it has revealed that it is as stymied and constrained by the complexities of taxation as the rest of us. …

ISIS’s taxes appear to be … no more popular in the territory it controls than they would be here in the U.S. As the Times reported, ISIS’s taxes are now so onerous that large numbers of people, who were apparently willing to tolerate ISIS’s religious authoritarianism, are fleeing Syria and Iraq to escape them. At some point people will either rise up or leave, threatening ISIS’s internal revenue source.

So taxes are becoming so onerous that taxpayers (and taxable income) are escaping.

Hmm… excessive taxation leading to less taxable economic activity. That seems like a familiar concept — something I’ve written about one or two times. Or maybe 50 or 100 times.

Ah, yes, our old friend, the Laffer Curve!

ISIS is … constrained by a lack of administrative resources and the simple reality once sketched on the back of a cocktail napkin by the economist Arthur Laffer: that tax rates can only get so high before they actually drive down government revenues.

Given current conditions, ISIS may be near or at the limits of its ability to tax, even if it can recruit jihadi tax accountants to its cause. Thus … it’s not clear how much room the group has to grow internal revenues. More important, its efforts to do so may do more to damage its prospects than outside forces can accomplish.

This sounds like the tax equivalent of War of the Worlds, the H.G. Wells’ classic in which alien invaders wreak havoc on earth until they are felled by bacteria.

Tom Cruise was the star of a 2005 movie adaptation of this story, but I’m thinking I could rekindle my acting career and star in a movie of how the Laffer Curve thwarts ISIS!

But to have a happy ending, ISIS has to be defeated. And Professor Chodorow closes his article with a very helpful suggestion.

Rather than send in ground troops … view our tax code as a weapon of mass destruction. … We could make full use of it in the war on ISIS, perhaps by translating it into Arabic in the hopes that the group adopts it.

Sounds like the advice I once gave about threatening Assad with Obamacare.

A version of this post first appeared at Dan Mitchell’s blog International Liberty.

Daniel J. MitchellDaniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.

Government Caused the ‘Great Stagnation’ by Peter J. Boettke

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Tyler Cowen caused quite a stir with his e-book, The Great Stagnation. In properly assessing his work it is important to state explicitly what his argument actually is. Median real income has stagnated since 1980, and the reason is that the rate of technological advance has slowed. Moreover, the technological advances that have taken place with such rapidity in recent history have improved well-being, but not in ways that are easily measured in real income statistics.

Critics of Cowen more often than not miss the mark when they focus on the wild improvements in our real income due to quality improvements (e.g., cars that routinely go over 100,000 miles) and lower real prices (e.g., the amount of time required to acquire the inferior version of yesterday’s similar commodities).

Cowen does not deny this. Nor does Cowen deny that millions of people were made better off with the collapse of communism, the relative freeing of the economies in China and India, and the integration into the global economy of the peoples of Africa and Latin America. Readers of The Great Stagnation should be continually reminded that they are reading the author of In Praise of Commercial Culture and Creative Destruction. Cowen is a cultural optimist, a champion of the free trade in ideas, goods, services and all artifacts of mankind. But he is also an economic realist in the age of economic illusion.

What do I mean by the economics of illusion? Government policies since WWII have created an illusion that irresponsible fiscal policy, the manipulation of money and credit, and expansion of the regulation of the economy is consistent with rising standards of living. This was made possible because of the “low hanging” technological fruit that Cowen identifies as being plucked in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the US, and in spite of the policies government pursued.

An accumulated economic surplus was created by the age of innovation, which the age of economic illusion spent down. We are now coming to the end of that accumulated surplus and thus the full weight of government inefficiencies are starting to be felt throughout the economy. Our politicians promised too much, our government spends too much, in an apparent chase after the promises made, and our population has become too accustomed to both government guarantees and government largess.

Adam Smith long ago argued that the power of self-interest expressed in the market was so strong that it could overcome hundreds of impertinent restrictions that government puts in the way. But there is some tipping point at which that ability to overcome will be thwarted, and the power of the market will be overcome by the tyranny of politics. Milton Friedman used that language to talk about the 1970s; we would do well to resurrect that language to talk about today.

Cowen’s work is a subversive track in radical libertarianism because he identifies that government growth (both measured in terms of scale and scope) was possible only because of the rate of technological improvements made in the late 19th and early 20th century.

We realized the gains from trade (Smithian growth), we realized the gains from innovation (Schumpeterian growth), and we fought off (in the West, at least) totalitarian government (Stupidity). As long as Smithian growth and Schumpeterian growth outpace Stupidity, tomorrow’s trough will still be higher than today’s peak. It will appear that we can afford more Stupidity than we can actually can because the power of self-interest expressed through the market offsets its negative consequences.

But if and when Stupidity is allowed to outpace the Smithian gains from trade and the Schumpeterian gains from innovation, then we will first stagnate and then enter a period of economic backwardness — unless we curtail Stupidity, explore new trading opportunities, or discover new and better technologies.

In Cowen’s narrative, the rate of discovery had slowed, all the new trading opportunities had been exploited, and yet government continued to grow both in terms of scale and scope. And when he examines the 3 sectors in the US economy — government services, education, and health care — he finds little improvement since 1980 in the production and distribution of the services. In fact, there is evidence that performance has gotten worse over time, especially as government’s role in health care and education has expanded.

The Great Stagnation is a condemnation of government growth over the 20th century. It was made possible only by the amazing technological progress of the late 19th and early 20th century. But as the rate of technological innovation slowed, the costs of government growth became more evident. The problem, however, is that so many have gotten used to the economics of illusion that they cannot stand the reality staring them in the face.

This is where we stand in our current debt ceiling debate. Government is too big, too bloated. Washington faces a spending problem, not a revenue problem. But too many within the economy depend on the government transfers to live and to work. Yet the economy is not growing at a rate that can afford the illusion. Where are we to go from here?

Cowen’s work makes us think seriously about that question. How can the economic realist confront the economics of illusion? And Cowen has presented the basic dilemma in a way that the central message of economic realism is not only available for libertarians to see (if they would just look, or listen carefully to his podcast at EconTalk), but for anyone who is willing to read and think critically about our current political and economic situation.

The Great Stagnation signals the end of the economics of illusion and — let’s hope — paves the way for a new age of economic realism.

This post first appeared at Coordination Problem.

Peter J. BoettkePeter J. Boettke

Peter Boettke is a Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University and director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

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Political Correctness and Barack Obama

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President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on January 12, 2016 was criticized by many. For us, the people of the former Socialist countries, it had been a very familiar political theater. The carefully choreographed speech was brought from the stratosphere of illusion and a calligraphy of misleading, which had nothing to do with the reality on the planet Earth. We were not surprised—we are used to the political theater of Stalinist’s ideology, the only achievement of Soviet Socialism. President Obama’s speech represented a quintessential form of the Stalin’s Political Correctness, which has been nourished by the liberals in America for the last several decades.

You won’t find a person in America’s social media who doesn’t use the term Political Correctness every day and many times a day. In his interview with Fox, the former FBI deputy director Kostrome said to Judge Jeanine: “Political correctness is killing us.” He is right, PC was designed to harm and destroy Western civilization. Yet, I am not sure that all the people using the term are familiar with its agenda, etymology, and creator. The author and architect of the term is Joseph Stalin and knowing this fact will help many to grasp the world politics of the 21st century.

Barack Obama forces me to return again to this subject. When I read that 76 per cent of the American people loath Political Correctness (PC), my love for those people tripled. They did not know that PC was a Stalinist ideological invasion into their culture, they just felt it intuitively. I also knew that they are the fairest people in the world and their dislike for PC shows them to be very sensitive to the adversarial and harmful actions against American interests.

Political Correctness is the Ideological Tool of Soviet Socialism.

Political Correctness is the major method in fighting the war against Western civilization and implementing the ideology of Soviet Socialism, the topic I have been writing about for the last twenty years. I called this war WWIII. There are four main components in my definition of an asymmetrical WWIII. They are the following: Recruitment, Infiltration, Drugs, and Assassinations. Recruitment and Infiltration are inextricably connected. Neither could have been achieved without Political Correctness, which is falsely projects tolerance.

A famous Russian dissident Vladimir Bukowski once said: “when a Socialist comes to power, you can expect concentration camps.”  He was right—violence is the main feature of Socialism. The perspective for the future Socialist world was expressed by Karl Marx in his slogan Proletarian of the world unite, which meant a violent world war. One hundred years later Joseph Stalin developed the Socialist intent in a more politically pronounced manner by camouflaging violence: One world Government under the Kremlin auspices. He used Political Correctness.

We, the former citizens of the Socialist countries went through that development, called Soviet Socialism. It was a war by the government against its own citizens–a multi-faceted war with different fronts, methods, shapes, and forms. Speaking different languages and living in different countries, we all came to America from a collective microcosm of Political Correctness—a false narrative to alter the nature of the Truth. There is no surprise that the American people are angered and frustrated—this is a response to Obama’s war against the population. He is following the same way Stalin did to build his Soviet Socialism, which had never worked.

Yet, many Americans are still infected by the virus of Stalin’s Socialism. The question is – how it was possible that a fraud, as I identified Stalin’s ideology of Socialism, survive for almost a century and still seduce a lot of people in the world today? The question I have been researching and investigating for many years discussing multi-faceted methods of the Stalin’s social model—one of them is Political Correctness.

Does anybody in America or the world know the architect of PC, its concept or the fundamental agenda behind it? Does anybody know the nature and crucial role those two words played in their lives for decades? The answer to the question will unite us: the former citizens of the Socialist countries and all of the people in the 21st century, as we all together in different times have been manipulated and brainwashed by these two words—Political Correctness.

It seems that the nature of those two words, is very neutral indeed. In fact, those words are not peaceful, on the contrary they represent the psychological tools or methods which are used to transform a political system by fraud, while simultaneously fighting its ideological opponents. To my knowledge Stalin was the author of those two words that were published for the first time in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia (News) in 1933, the time when major transformation was going on within the Soviet Union. Stalin called “Politically Incorrect” the leaders of the opposition. The American educator Herbert Kohl confirms my opinion:

“In the early-to-mid 20th century, contemporary uses of the phrase “Politically Correct” were associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist doctrine, debated between formal Communists (members of the Communist Party) and Socialists. The phrase was a colloquialism referring to the Communist party line, which provided for “correct” positions on many matters of politics. According to American educator Herbert Kohl writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s. “

Writing about Stalinism and watching its ubiquitous application in the 21st century, I have offered my version of the matter several times before:

“… Political Correctness is a Stalinist policy, driven by the political agenda, a skillfully crafted design of quintessential system of lies, the long-term strategy of war against Western civilization and creation of One World Government.”

And again I’d like to remind you about Stalin’s incredible ability to mislead, lie, and defraud. Stalin was so skillful at political intrigue that vast majority of people in the Soviet Union not only believed him, but adored him as a Messiah. Nobody could compete with him in the art of intrigue. Political Correctness had no opponents and reigned in the country—we lived inside a gigantic network of falsehood… And so lives America in the 21st century.

Look at America today. Due to the constant efforts of the Obama administration America is drastically transformed, like us, living in the Soviet Union, America lives today inside a gigantic network of falsehood created by Political Correctness. And this is not the end of the resemblances: our economy is going down the tube, the harm Obama has done to economy counts in billions, our morals are at their lowest level ever. All of this has a logical result—Socialism has never worked anywhere, it ended by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The history of the 20 century repeats itself in the 21st when manipulation and brainwashing of human minds goes undetected in America. We can’t continue down the path of “Democratic Socialism”: it is an oxymoron–Democratic can’t be Socialist and Socialism can’t be democratic. We must return to the values of our Founding Fathers. Now is the time to see clearly where we are going under the leadership of the party, called Democratic: Even the name is a false one. I am not sure that Trump, like the vast majority of Americans knows about source of PC, yet, with his magnetic and unique personality, he symbolizes them all. We are witnessing an uprising against the bureaucracy of the Washington political class.

“I voted against that incompetent, lying, flip-flopping, insincere, double-talking, radical socialist, terrorist excusing, bleeding heart, narcissistic, scientific and economic moron currently in the White House!” – Clint Eastwood

VIDEO: Iranian-Backed Harakat al-Sabireen Terror Group in West Bank and Gaza

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 reports:

A new Iranian-backed terror group is making inroads in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, where it operates underground with the potential capacity to deliver devastating attacks to Israel, according to regional experts who have been investigating the organization’s rise.

The group, which goes by the name Harakat al-Sabireen, was established around May 2014 but has begun in recent months to boost its public profile on social media and brag about its plots to wage jihad against Israel, according to information gathered by regional analysts and provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

Al-Sabireen is believed to receive $10 million a year from Iran via funds that are smuggled through a large network of tunnels built by terrorists to facilitate illicit travel beneath the Gaza Strip, according to estimates disseminated in the Arab language press.

Read more.

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