Plastic Bag Bans Won’t Help the Environment, But They’ll Cause More Foodborne Illnesses

/in , , , , , , /by

Plastic bags are less than one percent of all litter.

New York lawmakers have followed California’s lead and decided to ban grocery stores from giving customers plastic bags. They hope shoppers will use their own cloth bags instead. This ban on plastic bags will harm shoppers in multiple ways.

As Daniel Frank sarcastically notes, “Reusable tote bags” can “cause food poisoning but at least they’re worse for the environment than plastic bags.” He cites Jon Passantino of BuzzFeed News, who observes, “Those cotton tote bags that are so trendy right now have to be used *131 times* before it has a smaller climate impact than a plastic bag used only once.” Yet, there are progressives who want to ban plastic grocery bags in favor of reusable cloth bags.

Plastic bags are less than one percent of all litter. Moreover, alternatives like cloth and paper bags are in many cases worse for the environment than plastic bags, and far worse for public health. That was illustrated by a 2011 legal settlement between plastic bag makers and an importer of reusable bags, ChicoBag. The plastic bag makers sued ChicoBag for its use of false claims about the recycling rate and environmental impacts of plastic grocery bags in its promotional materials. (Those false claims are also the basis for municipal bans and taxes on plastic bags.)

Under that settlement, ChicoBag was required to discontinue its use of its counterfeit EPA website and make corrections to its deceptive marketing claims, which had included sharing falsified government documents with schoolchildren. It was also required to disclose to consumers on its website that reusable bags, in fact, need to be washed.

Reusable bags “are a breeding ground for bacteria and pose public health risks — food poisoning, skin infections such as bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections,” noted a 2009 report.  Harmful bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and fecal coliform thrive in reusable bags unless they are washed after each use, according to an August 2011 peer-reviewed study, “Assessment of the Potential for Cross-contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags.”

Among the inaccurate claims that ChicoBag could no longer make after the settlement is one that contrasted the environmental impact of plastic versus reusable bags. Contrary to ChicoBag’s previous claims, a study done for the U.K. Environmental Agency showed it would take 7.5 years of using the same cloth bag (393 uses, assuming one grocery trip per week) to make it a better option than a plastic bag reused three times. See “Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags,” Executive Summary, 2nd page.

As an earlier report on the subject noted (see p. 60):

[A]ny decision to ban traditional polyethylene plastic grocery bags in favor of bags made from alternative materials (compostable plastic or recycled paper) will be counterproductive and result in a significant increase in environmental impacts across a number of categories from global warming effects to the use of precious potable water resources. … [T]he standard polyethylene grocery bag has significantly lower environmental impacts than a 30% recycled content paper bag and a compostable plastic bag.

cotton bag has a greater [harmful environmental] impact than the conventional [plastic] bag in seven of the nine impact categories even when used 173 times. … The impact was considerably larger in categories such as acidification and aquatic & terrestrial ecotoxicity due to the energy used to produce cotton yarn and the fertilisers used during the growth of the cotton (see p. 60).

Similarly,

Starch-polyester blend bags have a higher global warming potential and abiotic depletion than conventional polymer bags, due both to the increased weight of material in a bag and higher material production impacts (see Executive Summary).

As Environmental Protection noted in 2010:

Reusable grocery bags can serve as a breeding ground for dangerous food-borne bacteria and pose a serious risk to public health, according to a joint food safety research report issued by researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University. The study — which randomly tested reusable grocery bags carried by shoppers in the Los Angeles area, San Francisco, and Tucson, Ariz. — also found consumers were almost completely unaware of the need to regularly wash their bags.

“Our findings suggest a serious threat to public health, especially from coliform bacteria including E. coli, which were detected in half the bags sampled,” said Charles Gerba, Ph.D., a University of Arizona environmental microbiology professor and co-author of the study. “Furthermore, consumers are alarmingly unaware of these risks and the critical need to sanitize their bags after every use.” The bacteria levels found in reusable bags were significant enough to cause a wide range of serious health problems and even lead to death — a particular danger for young children, who are especially vulnerable to food-borne illnesses, he said.

The study also found that awareness of potential risks was very low. A full 97 percent of those interviewed have never washed or bleached their reusable bags, said Gerba, who added that thorough washing kills nearly all bacteria that accumulate in reusable bags.

Plastic bags are “less than 0.5% of the litter stream,” according to the head of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. That low percentage is confirmed by EPA data. (See, e.g., EPA, Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2009 Facts and Figures, p. 53, showing that the entire category of plastic sacks, wraps, and bags—including trash bags as well as grocery bags—together account for only a little over one percent of all municipal solid waste, and only a small fraction of overall plastics.)

This article is republished with permission from Liberty Unyielding. 

COLUMN BY

Hans Bader

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission.

Who Is Your Doctor?

/in , , , , , , , /by

In Arizona, law enforcement officers in tactical gear broke down the door to a home where children were sleeping, entered with guns drawn, and took three little children away from their parents. The stated reason: the mother had decided not to follow a doctor’s advice to take her two-year-old to the emergency room for a fever, because the fever broke and the child got much better soon after leaving the office.

People used to know who their doctor was. His name and phone number were on the wall or the refrigerator next to the telephone. He was there for you and could manage most of your problems.

When I was about 13, my mom took me to our pediatrician for belly pain. He was on his way out the door, but he stopped to take care of me. He diagnosed appendicitis based on history and physical examination. He called his favorite surgeon (“Billy,” a Tucson legend), who came from the golf course to meet me in the emergency room. Within hours, my red-hot appendix was in a jar. My parents paid the hospital bill ($150—10 days’ pay for a construction laborer) as I was discharged a few days later.

Today, the patient with abdominal pain could wait for hours to see the ER provider—possibly a nurse practitioner or physician assistant who had never seen a case of acute appendicitis. She’ll probably get a CT scan, after another wait. Eventually, Dr. On-call may take her to the operating room, hopefully before the appendix ruptures. And the bill will be beyond the means of ordinary people.

I used to be able to direct-admit patients from my office and send them with a set of orders to the hospital admitting office. For years, this has been impossible. The hospital is decidedly unfriendly to independent doctors. There’s now a gatekeeper in the emergency room, and most patients are under the control of a hospitalist.

This hospital, still Catholic at least in name, is now owned by a huge national conglomerate. Recently, it thwarted all efforts to keep it from dehydrating a patient to death despite lack of an advance directive or permission from next of kin. The patient’s mother disputed the diagnosis of brain death. The gastroenterologist of her choice was willing and able to place a feeding tube, needed in order to transfer the patient to a skilled nursing facility, but the hospital would not permit it. An outside physician whom the mother had called on was removed from the patient’s room by security, when she was merely praying with the mother. The mother could not get a phone call returned from an attending physician. Who was the doctor? Apparently, the hospital system.

Recently, a physician called me about her mother, who was seemingly a captive in a world-renowned hospital. She was concerned about her mother’s nutritional status and falling oxygen level. She could not speak to the attending physician. “They play musical doctors.”

Largely driven by government policy, the System is increasingly in control. A new level of intrusion is being proposed in California in a bill (SB 276) that would outlaw all medical exemptions for vaccines, unless a public health officer approves each one, based on the very narrow list of contraindications accepted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Doctors traditionally swore an oath not to harm patients, and are liable if they do. But government officials are immune from liability, even if they overrule a physician’s judgment that a particular patient faces an unacceptable risk of harm from a vaccine.

If you disagree with your private doctor, you can fire him or simply decline to follow his advice. But what if the government is your doctor?

In Arizona, law enforcement officers in tactical gear broke down the door to a home where children were sleeping, entered with guns drawn, and took three little children away from their parents. The stated reason: the mother had decided not to follow a doctor’s advice to take her two-year-old to the emergency room for a fever, because the fever broke and the child got much better soon after leaving the office. The main concern seemed to be that the child was not vaccinated.

Americans need to defend their right to have an independent physician, to choose their physician and type of care, and to give or withhold informed consent to medical treatments. Otherwise, their “doctor” will be a protocol in a system staffed by interchangeable automatons. Treatments will be inaccessible or required, tailored to meet the needs and beliefs of the system.

If the government is the ultimate authority on your “health care,” remember that its tools for checking whether a child has a life-threatening disease such as meningitis include battering rams and assault rifles.

The Racist Roots Behind the Minimum Wage

/in , , , , /by

Economist Walter Williams has called the minimum wage “one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of racists everywhere in the world.”

Yet today’s “Fight for $15” has placed a federal minimum wage increase at center stage.

“The federal minimum wage of $7.25 is a starvation wage,” Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted. “If you work 40 hours a week, you should not live in poverty.”

Legislation to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour also gained the support of 2020 Democratic Presidential nominees including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.

Today’s progressives deny that minimum wage hikes cause unemployment, specifically for low-skill and minority workers. But in the Progressive Era that initiated the first minimum wage laws, they considered such unemployment to be a feature and not a bug.

The Minimum Wage’s Beginnings

As documented in this Cato Institute research paper, the first minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, had racist origins. According to researcher David E. Bernstein, the story begins in 1927 when a contractor from Alabama “won a bid to build a Veteran’s Bureau hospital in Long Island, New York. He brought a crew of black construction workers from Alabama to work on the project. Appalled that blacks from the South were working on a federal project in his district, Representative Robert Bacon of Long Island submitted H.R. 17069.”

This bill was the precursor to the legislation known as the Davis-Bacon Act that was eventually passed into law. The act mandated a minimum wage to any workers on construction projects part of a contract with the U.S. or District of Columbia governments that exceeded $2,000.

As Walter Williams has further noted about the Act, “Among the widespread racist sentiment was that of American Federation of Labor President William Green, who complained, ‘Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates.’”

In practice, the mandated minimum wage in Davis-Bacon “was almost universally determined to be the same as the union wage,” wrote then-Harvard law student John Frantz in this 1994 article for the Foundation of Economic Education.

“Most major union construction unions excluded blacks. This was an effective tool to fight against what some legislators openly complained about, cheap black laborers from the south,” Frantz continued.

Representative John Cochran from Missouri laid bare the motivation behind the act when he stated, “I have received numerous complaints in recent months about southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South.”

The minimum wage being used as a means to discriminate against minorities was not exclusive to the U.S., however.

Economist Thomas Sowell points out how the minimum wage has been used to keep minorities and immigrants from accessing jobs in several nations across the world for generations.

In 1925, a minimum wage law was passed in the Canadian province of British Columbia, with the intent and effect of pricing Japanese immigrants out of jobs in the lumbering industry, Sowell wrote.

In 1912, Sowell notes, Harvard professor Arthur Holcome referred approvingly to Australia’s minimum wage law as a means to “protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese” who were willing to work for less.

Minimum Wage as a Means of Social Control

These days, you can count on media talking heads and countless politicians to proclaim how wonderful the minimum wage is for the poor. Wage floors will improve the standard of living, they say.

But back during the Progressive Era, they knew better. They understood that minimum wages exclude workers — and they favored them precisely because such wage floors drive people out of the job market. People without jobs cannot prosper and are thereby discouraged from reproducing. Minimum wages were designed specifically to lock “racial inferiors” out of the workforce and keep wages for white natives high enough to prevent immigrants and minorities from out-breeding the native population.

Princeton University’s Thomas C. Leonard wrote about this extensively, including in a 2003 issue of the History of Political Economy academic journal. Leonard’s research led him to conclude “Progressive economists, like their marginalist interlocutors, believed that binding minimum wages would result in job losses.” Those progressive economists, however, viewed these job losses as a benefit.

Leonard further noted that progressives in the early 20th century didn’t reject the prevailing notions that “blacks, Asians, Southern and Eastern Europeans, and mental and physical ‘defectives’ should be seen as innately different and inferior.” Indeed, progressives at the time embraced the notion and sought measures of social control to weed them out of the labor force, and ultimately society.

Moreover, progressives were concerned that immigrants and other “inferior stock” like blacks could outcompete natives and whites for work because they were willing to accept lower wages.

“Low-wage ‘races’ are depicted as innately disposed to endure a low standard of living,” Leonard wrote. “Racial theories were flexible enough to found a willingness to accept low wages on racial causes that ran from laziness to greed.”

The willingness of these “low-wage races” to accept low wages would drive down the wages of native whites, progressive economists feared at the time. Because of these lower wages, the native whites would be less able to afford larger families, and the blacks and immigrants would reproduce in greater number. Over time, the “inferior stock” of races would overwhelm the native white population and create a new ethnic majority in the country, according to progressives. This process of “race suicide” became a genuine concern.

One way to combat this process, the progressive economists theorized, was to create minimum wage laws to prevent a fall in wages and to effectively block low-skilled immigrants and minorities from the labor force.

For instance, progressive Princeton economist Royal Meeker favored the minimum wage for its effective means of culling out the least productive workers, Leonard wrote. Once separated, the ‘unemployables’ become easy to identify and in turn to be managed by the state.

Conclusion

There is little debate that the Fight for $15 is a fight to increase unemployment among low-skilled workers. Particularly hardest hit would be minorities and immigrants.

Today’s minimum wage advocates, however, naively deny any such negative economic consequences. Perhaps this denial is a manifestation of a guilty conscience created by the racist motivations of progressives a hundred years ago who disturbingly viewed such unemployment as a social benefit.

Either way, we should all agree that there is no place for the criminalization of voluntary labor agreements in a free society. The minimum wage’s racist roots serve to underscore its destructive nature.

Ten Policies That Prove The Democratic Party Is The Party of Cultural Marxism

/in , , , , , /by

The Democratic Party has become the party of “cultural Marxism.” Urban Dictionary defines cultural Marxism as:

A social and political movement that promotes unreason and irrationality through the guise of various ’causes’, often promoted by so-called ‘social justice warriors’. These causes and their proponents are often contradictory and are almost never rooted in fact. Indeed, true argument or discussion with proponents of these causes is almost impossible, as most attempts at discourse descend quickly into shouting, name-calling and chanting of slogans.

In 2013 I wrote a column titled “How did we become addicted to big government?” In this article I traced the beginnings of socialism in the United States to a meeting of intellectuals in New York City 114 years ago writing:

We the people began to embrace big government 104 [today 114] years ago with the founding of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) in New York City on September 12, 1905 in Peck’s Restaurant. An organizational meeting was held and Jack London was elected President with Upton Sinclair as First Vice President. The ISS was established to, “throw light [in America] on the world-wide movement of industrial democracy known as socialism.” Their motto was “production for use, not for profit.”

Cultural Marxism’s goal is “production for use, not for profit.” The Democratic Party’s goal is “production for use, not for profit.”

Below is a list of ten policies promoted by the Democratic Party that prove they are the party of cultural Marxism. The cultural Marxists in the Democratic Party support:

  1. Green New Deal – read about the Green New Deal
  2. Global Warming/Climate Change – read about the environmentalist movement.
  3. Censorship – read about censorship.
  4. Voter Fraud – read about voter fraud here.
  5. Illegal Aliens – read about illegal aliens.
  6. Sodomy – read about LGBT issues.
  7. The Followers of Mohammed – read about Islamic supremacy.
  8. Infanticide – read about abortion.
  9. Taxing the Rich – read about taxation.
  10. Government Free Stuff – read about government largess.

So how did Cultural Marxists begin selling big government and its redistribution of wealth ideology?

First they had to gain unfettered control of production. On February 3, 1913 Congress passed and the states ratified the Sixteenth Amendment to our Constitution. Congress grabbed control of production via the federal income tax. America taxed its productivity by tapping every American’s wages. With the millions, then billions, and now trillions of dollars that Congress collected, they could entice or even force the strongest American to take the big government drug.

Then on April 8, 1913 Congress passed and the states ratified the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution which transferred U.S. Senator Selection from each state’s legislature to popular election by the people of each state. These two events made it much easier to collect and distribute big government as now Senators were no longer loyal to their state legislatures or primarily concerned with state sovereignty. Now U.S. Senators, along with U.S. Representatives, saw the value of spreading  the big government drug amongst the people in return for votes.

During the Great Depression Congress created the first “opiate for the masses” and named it Social Security. It was to be a social insurance program run by government, in other words guaranteed government largess for life. The Social Security Act was signed into law in 1935 by President Franklin Roosevelt. He and Congress said this new drug would keep those unemployed, retirees and the poor financially secure. He called it the New Deal. All we needed to do was just pay in and all would be well.

In 1937 the United States Supreme Court in U.S. vs. Butler validated the Social Security Act and stated that, “Congress could, in its future discretion, spend that money [collected from the income tax] for whatever Congress then judged to be the general welfare of the country. The Court held that Congress has no constitutional power to earmark or segregate certain kinds of tax proceeds for certain purposes, whether the purposes be farm-price supports, foreign aid or social security payments.” All taxes went into the general fund.

Testifying before the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives in 1952, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration said—“The present trust fund is not quite large enough to pay off the benefits of existing beneficiaries”—those already on the receiving end, in other words. In 1955 chief actuary believed that it would take $35 billion just to pay the people “now receiving benefits”.

In 1935 under the Social Security program the Congress included the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Act (AFDC). During the late 1950s many states realized that this act, while created to help widows with children, was being used to subsidize women having children with men they were not married to. Louisiana alone took 23,000 women off the AFDC act rolls based upon their immoral behavior.

In effect big federal government became the pimp, the homes of single mothers became the brothels and the fathers became the Johns. The children begotten by these women became the next generation of big government addicts. Just as a baby born to a mother doing crack is addicted to cocaine, so too are these children born with a lifetime addiction to the onerous and destructive drug – big government.In 1960 Arthur S. Flemming, then head of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Dwight David Eisenhower and a key architect of Social Security, issued an administrative ruling that states could not deny eligibility for income assistance through the AFDC act on the grounds that a home was “unsuitable” because the woman’s children were illegitimate. In 1968, the United States Supreme Court’s “Man-in-the-House” rule struck down the practice of states declaring a home unsuitable (i.e., an immoral environment) if there was a man in the house not married to the mother. Thus, out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation were legitimized. In very short order, the number of women on welfare tripled and child poverty climbed dramatically. The assault on the family was on and Congress and the Supreme Court were co-pushers of this new government largess drug called AFDC.

Then Congress added a new ingredient to the powerful Social Security drug called Medicare on July 30, 1965.

Congress created Medicare as a single-payer health care system. Medicare was for those over 65 years old and was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson called it part of his Great Society program. Congress immediately got more addicts to begin taking this drug. At the same time Congress added a second even more powerful ingredient to this drug called Medicaid. This new ingredient brought into being an entirely new distribution system – all of the states of the union. Even though this new program violates state sovereignty it was passed anyway, in no small part because Senators were no longer accountable to the State Legislatures but rather committed to pushing government largess.

And so Cultural Marxists march on today.

In an article titled “Antonio Gramsci: the Godfather of Cultural Marxism” Bradley Thomas wrote:

There’s little debate that modern-day American universities, public education, mainstream media, Hollywood, and political advocacy groups are dominated by leftists. This is no accident, but part of a deliberate strategy to pave the way for communist revolution developed more than eight decades ago by an Italian political theorist named Antonio Gramsci.

Described as one of the world’s most important and influential Marxist theorists since Marx himself, if you are not familiar with Gramsci, you should be.

The Italian communist (1891 – 1937) is credited with the blueprint that has served as the foundation for the Cultural Marxist movement in modern America.

Thomas notes, “Gramsci spoke of organizations including churches, charities, the media, schools, universities and ‘economic corporate’ power as organizations that needed to be invaded by socialist thinkers.” And so they have been invaded, if not conquered, in America. From Silicon Valley to Yale, from New York to LA, the cultural Marxists won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election. What saved America was the Electoral College.

The Democrats want to buy votes by promising things that they know will, and are, bankrupting America. By bankrupting America the cultural Marxist can then, in the name of saving America, enslave Americans.

Who stands in the way of cultural Marxists? One man, President Donald J. Trump.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Democrat Party Is Dead

Democrat Congresswoman Tired of Republicans Trying to Stop Infanticide: “Oh My God, They Just Will Not Quit”

4 Reasons Why Africa’s Experiments in Socialism Failed

How Medicare for All Would Insert Government in Doctor-Patient Relationship

RELATED VIDEO: Jamie Glazov Confronts The Cultural Marxists.

Antonio Gramsci: the Godfather of Cultural Marxism

/in , , , , , /by

There’s little debate that modern-day American universities, public education, mainstream media, Hollywood, and political advocacy groups are dominated by leftists. This is no accident, but part of a deliberate strategy to pave the way for communist revolution developed more than eight decades ago by an Italian political theorist named Antonio Gramsci.

Described as one of the world’s most important and influential Marxist theorists since Marx himself, if you are not familiar with Gramsci, you should be.

The Italian communist (1891 – 1937) is credited with the blueprint that has served as the foundation for the Cultural Marxist movement in modern America.

Later dubbed by 1960s German student activist Rudi Dutschke as “the long march through the institutions,” Gramsci wrote in the 1930s of a “war of position” for socialists and communists to subvert Western culture from the inside in an attempt to compel it to redefine itself.

Gramsci used war metaphors to distinguish between a political “war of position”—which he compared to trench warfare—and the “war of movement (or maneuver),” which would be a sudden full-frontal assault resulting in complete social upheaval.

In the 1998 book The Antonio Gramsci Reader, edited by David Forgacs, Gramsci’s development of a new form of strategy for ushering in the socialist revolution is made clear.

Gramsci argued that the Bolshevik Russian revolution of 1917 worked because the conditions were ripe for such a sudden upheaval. He described the Russian revolution as an example of a “war of movement” due to its sudden and complete overthrow of the existing governing structure of society. Gramsci reasoned that in Russia in 1917, “the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous.”

As such, a direct attack on the current rulers could be effective because there existed no other significant structure or institutions of political influence that needed to be overcome.

In Western societies, by contrast, Gramsci observed that the state is “only an outer ditch” behind which lies a robust and sturdy civil society.

Gramsci believed that the conditions in Russia in 1917 that made revolution possible would not materialize in more advanced capitalist countries in the West. The strategy must be different and must include a mass democratic movement, an ideological struggle.

His advocacy of a war of position instead of a war of movement was not a rebuke of revolution itself, just a differing tactic—a tactic that required the infiltration of influential organizations that make up civil society. Gramsci likened these organizations to the “trenches” in which the war of position would need to be fought.

The massive structures of the modern democracies, both as state organizations, and as complexes of associations in civil society, constitute for the art of politics as it were the “trenches” and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position: they render merely “partial” the element of maneuver which before used the “the whole” of war, etc.

Gramsci argued that a “frontal attack” on established institutions like governments in Western societies may face significant resistance and thus need greater preparation—with the main groundwork being the development of a collective will among the people and a takeover of leadership among civil society and key political positions.

It is important to bear in mind that Gramsci’s ultimate goal is still socialism and overthrow of the capitalist order. His contribution was to outline a different strategy for this to occur.

As described by Forgacs, “War of movement is a frontal assault on the state whereas war of position is conducted mainly on the terrain of civil society.”

Gramsci likened political “warfare” to military warfare, with his war of movement akin to the frontal assault of a rapid military attack upon the opening of a breach in the enemy’s defenses to attain a rapid and definitive victory.

In contrast, Gramsci likened war of position to trench warfare, settling in for a long-term struggle with strategic smaller victories to gain more territory bit by bit. The war of position is also characterized by an abundance of supplies to replenish the troops and “a great mass of men under arms.”

Gramsci argued that a war of position is necessary for advanced capitalist societies where civil society has become a “very complex structure” that is resistant to “incursions,” such as economic depressions, that would otherwise weaken the current power structure in terms of ideological support. In other words, civil society provided a support system for the current political structure and those in power who could help it withstand otherwise negative shocks like economic recessions.

Gramsci believed that in advanced capitalistic Western societies, the prevailing ideological support system for a capitalistic economic structure and bourgeois values would shield the current ruling class from any organized opposition.

As a result, he believed it essential to study in depth “which elements of civil society correspond to the defensive systems in a war of position.”

Gramsci defined civil society as the “ensemble of organisms commonly called ‘private.’”

More directly, he described civil society as that sphere of social activities and institutions not directly part of the government. Primary examples included political parties, trade unions, church organizations, and other popular voluntary associations.

Gramsci noted that dominant social groups in civil society organized consent and hegemony—they assumed a leadership position by the consent of members. Their leadership role includes fostering an ideological consensus among their members. Gramsci envisioned that these groups would organize their opposition to the existing social order.

Gramsci, however, viewed civil society in Western societies to be a strong defensive system for the current State, which in turn existed to protect the interest of the capitalist class.

“In the West, there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The state was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks,” he wrote. In short, in times when the state itself may have shown weakness to overthrow from opposing ideological forces, the institutions of civil society provided political reinforcement for the existing order.

In his view, a new collective will is required to advance this war of position for the revolution. To him, it is vital to evaluate what can stand in the way of this will, i.e. certain influential social groups with the prevailing capitalist ideologies that could impede this progress.

Gramsci spoke of organizations including churches, charities, the media, schools, universities and “economic corporate” power as organizations that needed to be invaded by socialist thinkers.

The new dictatorship of the proletariat in the West, according to Gramsci, could only arise out of an active consensus of the working masses—led by those critical civil society organizations generating an ideological hegemony.

As Gramsci described it, hegemony means “cultural, moral and ideological” leadership over allied and subordinate groups. The intellectuals, once ensconced, should attain leadership roles over these groups’ members by consent. They would achieve direction over the movement by persuasion rather than domination or coercion.

The goal of the war of position is to shape a new collective will of the masses in order to weaken the defenses that civil society provides to the current capitalist state.

Gramsci further emphasized the role of a political party to assume leadership and philosophical direction of all these civil society alliances. Additionally, and critically, one of the main goals of the party would be to place foot soldiers in the revolutionary war of position in actual state institutions, as well, such as legal institutions, police, councils, and influential bureaucracies. There needs to be established a foundation of socialists upon which to run the apparatus of the state once its overthrow was complete, Gramsci argued.

As Gramsci described it, a war of position involves a “passive revolution” of sorts; transitioning from the dominant bourgeois order to one of socialism without any violent social upheaval.

For social transition to occur, the “necessary conditions” in society must have “already been incubated,” according to Gramsci. Here he is referring to a new collective will among the masses that coincides with having the right people in strategic positions among civil society and state bureaucracies.

Gramsci pointed to the example of the Italian fascism of his time as an example of passive revolution. As he noted, economic fascism “consists in the fact that the economic structure is transformed in a ‘reformist’ way from an individualistic to a planned economy (command economy).” This “intermediate economy” could serve as the starting point for the next transition to total state control of the means of production, a transition that could occur “without radical and destructive cataclysms of an exterminating kind.”

Economic fascism takes a step toward collectivization of the means of production without seizing them from the capitalists, Gramsci argued. Fascism serves to “accentuate the ‘plan of production’ element” of the economic structure, making it easier to transition to complete collectivization. This shift helped to facilitate widespread acceptance of the notion of greater centralized control over production without actually wresting control over the means of production from the capitalists or eliminating profit. Yet.

Once all these conditions are in place—i.e. a new collective will, ideological control over institutions of civil society, revolutionaries in strategic positions in the state—the time would be right for the final and conclusive “war of movement.”

This full-frontal war of movement to overthrow the existing state and social order will be assured to not only be successful but also permanent. For according to Gramsci, “in politics, the ‘war of position’, once won, is decisive definitively.”

The Left’s “long march through the institutions” is a deliberate attempt to create conditions right for the final overthrow of our private property society. Their success would spell disaster.

COLUMN BY

Bradley Thomas

Bradley Thomas is creator of the website Erasethestate.com and is a libertarian activist and writer with nearly 15 years experience researching and writing on political philosophy and economics. Follow him on Twitter: ErasetheState @erasestate.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission.

The Unplanned Censorship of the Abby Johnson Story

/in , , , , , , , /by

It had to stare down a media blackout, an R-rating, even a suspended Twitter account, but the pro-life movie Unplanned still defied all the odds. On opening weekend, the true story about former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson stunned Hollywood by climbing to number five on the box office charts and doubling projections with $6 million dollars in ticket sales.

“We are thrilled, gratified, and humbled,” co-directors Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman said Sunday. “We are so pleased that the American people have responded with such an enormous outpouring of support at the box office… [W]e look forward to seeing what happens in the weeks ahead.” Like Gosnell, the movie had a tough time getting visibility in the mainstream press. Several TV networks refused to sell advertising time to the project, while the Motion Picture Association of America tried to dissuade audiences with a Restricted rating.

But never underestimate pro-lifers. An outpouring of support helped Unplanned break through all of the obstacles, even earning a rare A+ from CinemaScore in the process. For the film’s distributor, Pure Flix, it was the second-best start ever — coming in just slightly behind God’s Not Dead 2. For lead actress Ashley Bratcher, whose own story took a surprising twist when she got the job, the response is overwhelming. “I am blown away by the public response to Unplanned, as well as the box office numbers,” she said. “Not only is it beyond my wildest dreams, but it has surpassed the expectations of critics across the country. Despite biased critic reviews written more like op-eds, the audience has spoken.” Still, she pointed out, “the most rewarding thing about this weekend’s opening is the flood of messages I’ve received from people experiencing healing and a change of heart.”

That’s exactly what social media giants like Twitter must be afraid of. After a blockbuster weekend for the film’s social media page, the Unplanned account was mysteriously suspended — just as followers jumped to 100,000. Coincidence? Investor Mike Lindell doesn’t think so. “They don’t want you to see this movie!” the My Pillow founder tweeted. “Make your voices heard and tell your friends to go see the movie this weekend!”

Frustrated, co-director Konzelman spoke out. “It’s a sad state of affairs when the right to free speech gets shut down with the flick of a switch… Whether this was an executive decision by Twitter, or a reaction by Twitter to complaints from those opposed to the pro-life viewpoint, either reason is unacceptable.” Actress Bratcher piled on. “If Twitter is committed to helping increase the ‘openness and civility of public conversation’ and to hold themselves ‘accountable towards progress,’ then what’s with the censorship of a differentiating opinion?”

Fortunately, after a groundswell of protest started hitting Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account, the page was suddenly live again. The social media giant insisted the suspension was an accident. Even so, the Unplanned account seems to be locked in a see-saw battle for followers, since tens of thousands seem to keep vanishing. PJ Media’s Tyler O’Neil was one of the many people who tried — unsuccessfully — to follow the film’s page and got an error message instead.

Of course, it’s no mystery why social media would want to keep the movie quiet. Like most of the liberal platforms in America, they know how powerful the truth about abortion can be. That’s why they’ve spent years hiding the violent reality of what happens behind Planned Parenthood’s closed doors.

But this is one of those rare moments in time — like Gosnell, like New York’s abortion law — when the pro-life movement has the opportunity to break through to the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. So what can you do? Go see the movie! Take your church group, your family, or your Bible study. If your local theater isn’t playing the movie, call them up and demand it. Then have your friends do the same. Can a handful of movie tickets change the debate? Buy some and let’s find out!

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

President Trump Issues New Pro-Life Rules Protecting Doctors and Nurses From Having to Do Abortions

Man Who Portrays Abortion Doctor in ‘Unplanned’ Former Abortionist

This Is Outrageous’: Conservatives And Journalists React After Twitter Appears To Block Pro-Life Film

Dems’ POW Flags Still AWOL

Love and Hate in Verona

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with video is republished with permission.

VIDEO: DYSTOPIAN California — Window to America’s FUTURE

/in , , , , /by

dys·to·pi·an

relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.

Whatfinger.net published the below video by @navyhato:

Smollett and the Deep State: We Deserve Justice

/in , , , , , /by

Outrageously, Chicago State’s Attorney Kim Foxx dropped all charges against Jussie Smollett. Smollett is the black actor who staged a fake hate crime, claiming he was brutally assaulted by Trump supporters wearing MAGA caps.

Smollett paid the two guys he hired to stage his bogus attack with a $3000 check. Closed circuit TV caught Smollett’s hired attackers buying the MAGA caps and other materials needed to stage the fake hate crime. Smollett intended for his fake attack to be videoed on cc TV. Thank God the camera in the area Smollett selected malfunctioned. Had Smollett been successful, fake news media would have gleefully aired the video 24/7, probably igniting massive race riots and violence on Trump supporters.

After Kim Foxx dropped all charges, Smollett addressed the media, outrageously lying and presenting himself as a victim of police corruption. Smollett said,

“I have been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one. I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I’ve been accused of.” 

Does this guy think we are idiots? Dude, you lied about being attacked. Idiotically, you paid your fake attackers with a check. There is video of them buying the props. And yet, Smollett has the audacity to sell the lie that he is yet another innocent black man abused by racist police. Sadly, I suspect most of fake news media will help to sell Smollett’s lie which sets up our brave men and women in blue for more assassinations by Black Lives Matter disciples.

Many have forgotten the ambush of uniformed Texas Deputy Darren Goforth who was shot multiple times in the back while pumping gas. Deputy Goforth’s black assassin was inspired by Black Lives Matter. Forty-seven year old Deputy Goforth left behind his wife Kathleen, his 12 year old daughter Ava and his 5 year old son Ryan.

Do you remember NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu who were ambushed and killed while eating lunch in their police car? The enraged black shooter said his motivation was revenge for cops supposedly murdering blacks. 

Officer Ramos’ 13 year old son Jaden posted the following on Facebook.

“Today I had to say bye to my father. He was their for me everyday of my life, he was the best father I could ask for. It’s horrible that someone gets shot dead just for being a police officer. Everyone says they hate cops but they are the people that they call for help. I will always love you and I will never forget you. RIP Dad.” 

I could go on and on with examples of police ambushed and assassinated because of the evil politically motivated lie that cops routinely abuse and murder blacks. Democrats nurture this heinous lie because it keeps blacks voting for Democrats to protect them from nonexistent massive police and white American racism.

So here is race-baiter Jussie Smollett all over national media, disgustingly claiming he is a hero for civil rights. Please excuse me while I barf. This evil man sought to generate more hate and violence on Trump voters who courageously wear MAGA caps.

While in Walmart, I saw a wheelchair-bound elderly white gentleman wearing a white MAGA cap with gold stars on it. I said, “I like that hat.” With a grin, he stuck-out his hand and said, “You’re alright partner!” We enthusiastically shook hands. His wife pushing his wheelchair smiled.

All charges were dropped against Smollett because his insidious hoax furthers leftists’ mission to demonize police, Trump and Trump voters. From Hillary Clinton’s serial lawbreaking to Obama, the FBI, the DOJ and others silent coup against an elected president, the deep state feels free to break laws to remove Trump from office. 

Allowing deep state operatives to feel emboldened to freely break laws to get rid of Trump is extremely dangerous as we move toward the 2020 presidential election. We must not allow deep state operatives to be above the law.

I pray that Sen Lindsey Graham will follow through with his promise to investigate all the arrogant corrupt players in the deep state’s 679 days bogus Trump-colluded-with-Russia investigation.

My fellow Americans it is time that we stop allowing anti-American enemies-within to get away with criminal and treasonous behavior. Jussie Smollett’s feet should be held to the fire. We the People deserve justice.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Hate Crimes of Jussie Smollett

RELATED VIDEO: Chris Rock: Jussie Smollett, You Don’t Get No Respect From Me | Image Awards – TV One.

The Cultural Failure Of Free College

/in , , , , , /by

Economist Ludwig von Mises observed the reality that virtually every government action creates unintended consequences that cause problems greater than the ones that were meant to be solved.

But the Democratic Party that is now apparently fully on board with free college for everyone is clearly unaware of this truism. That’s not too surprising as it has to do with economics, history and rational thought — all areas largely abandoned by the modern Democratic Party.

So here are the almost assured consequences that will stem from such a policy (beyond the $7 trillion price tag) and each ends up conflicting directly with the goals of free college for everyone.

  • Most people will not graduate. Right now, according the National Digest of Education Statistics, fewer than one in three enrollees in four-year institutions of higher learning with open enrollment policies graduate — even after six years. So even if it is free, statistically it is reasonable to predict that two-thirds of those who enter will not come out with a degree. That means it becomes both an enormous misallocation of resources and it squanders years in pursuit of a fruitless endeavor for most. Further, for all these young people, there will be no increase in salary because there is no college degree — only lost time and likely some college-related expenses.
  • It will create skyrocketing costs. Is everyone accepted who wants to go? If it is guaranteed tuition payment to universities without academic requirements — which has been the Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric — it will mean that these institutions will have even less incentive to control costs. Right now, only health care costs have soared as fast as college costs over the past 30 years. Not coincidentally, both markets are deeply impacted by government. In the case of colleges, it is easily obtainable student loans backed by the federal government, along with Pell grants and other fundings. This guaranteed flow of federal money and the ongoing cultural push for kids to go to college regardless of the need for them to, has driven up college costs and created the debt issue. Making it ”free” would make it much more expensive for taxpayers.
  • Government will further screw up the college market. The obvious hike in costs would force the political reality of having to control costs by limiting or even lowering tuition. (This is all very akin to the dynamics in the health care debate, except the option of rationing is the opposite of what free tuition is for, so that likely would not be an alternative.) How would universities hire more professors, instructors and add classroom buildings and dorms along with administrators if the government is capping or cutting tuition? Obviously the quality and value of a college degree would plummet.
  • It wouldn’t accomplish the goal of everyone making more money. Assuming, however, that it does increase the number of college graduates, what does that accomplish? In the big picture, it would mean that a Bachelor’s Degree becomes the equivalent of a high school degree within about a half of a generation, except that the B.A. comes with a lot of debt while a high school degree does not. So the result is that the American people generationally are saddled with trillions more in debt without a discernible increase in the actual value of what the new wave of college graduates have.

And finally, this is becoming even more of a big deal for Democrats at the very time that the labor market is historically tight. Right now, the unemployment rate is about 3.8 percent — below what economists consider full employment.

Further, there are about six million unemployed Americans, while there are seven million job openings — the majority of which do not require a college degree. In truth, the nation and the economy actually do not need more college graduates, particularly in all the wrong fields, i.e. the soft sciences, the arts, literature, ethnic and cultural studies, communications and media.

Evidence? There are 13 million Americans with at least a four-year college degree working in jobs that do not require any college degree.

The push for free college for everyone is much worse than just being a $7 trillion budget buster. It also destroys the value of a college degree, high school degree and years in a young person’s life, all while not accomplishing its primary goals.

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission.

55 Years of Carte Blanche Lies by the Main Stream Media

/in , , , , /by

Governments are composed of human beings, and all of the frailties that humans possess are absorbed into these governments and become active within these governments. Hatred, anger, jealousy, fear, greed, distrust and the whole host of afflictions that humans must bear, lurk just beneath the surface of civility displayed by government. – John McAfee

For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow, and groans on seeing another’s happiness. – Aeschylus

As soon as the 2016 election results came in, many on the left exploded in anger, smashing windows, setting fires, calling for Trump to be assassinated, and labeling his supporters bigots and sexists who should be murdered. Protesters burned Trump in effigy, and passed around a stuffed figure of Trump in a noose.

And then came the Russia Collusion Investigation, thanks to Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Robert Mueller whose thirty-year modus operandi has destroyed countless lives. Link

Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, the nation’s former so-called spy master, James Clapper, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “If it weren’t for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place.”

There you have it, and despite the Russia collusion investigation being over, targeting President Trump for elimination will never be over.  We know all the players and we want them prosecuted for their corruption, but it’s highly unlikely they will ever be held accountable.

A stench has been emanating from the J. Edgar Hoover Building (FBI headquarters) for decades, but in the last 10 years the decay has become evident.  The brazen plot against President Trump by the Obama-era FBI and DOJ was enabled by a complicit media.

Defamation Law

The odor of corruption has long been noxious and truth is not forthcoming from media.  Why?  Because the 1964 Supreme Court decision in NYTs v. Sullivan gave media a “first amendment” right to lie with impunity about any public figure they wished to destroy or promote thus protecting them from most libel suits.

A public official could recover in a libel action only if and when a court found that the libelous statement about the official was made with “actual malice”—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.  As long as the press has an “absence of malice,” public officials are barred from recovering damages for the publication of false statements about them.

Defamation law, the ability to sue someone for false attacks on your reputation, was governed by state law until 1964.  The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S. Ct. 710, 11 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1964), extended the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech to libel cases brought by public officials. The Supreme Court sought to encourage “public debate” by changing the rules involving libel that had previously been the province of state law and state courts.

In the case of police Commissioner Sullivan, the State of Alabama found for him against NYTs libel and awarded him $500k which was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court in 1962.  However, the very liberal Warren Court took up the case filed by the NYTs against Sullivan.

The unanimous Warren Supreme Court decision in New York Times Company v. Sullivan was argued on January 6-7, 1964 and decided on March 9, 1964.  It has proven to be one of the very worst decisions ever made by the supreme court.

Calls to Overturn NYTs v. Sullivan

Justice Clarence Thomas recently called for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling. Thomas wrote that the New York Times ruling and follow-up cases “were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”

President Donald Trump has called for overhauling the country’s libel laws to make it easier to sue.  He first mentioned the NYTs v. Sullivan case in 2016 when he campaigned in Alabama where the case originated.  He had previously asked why the media was allowed to lie and that is when I wrote my original article on this horrendous ruling.

Now L. Lin Wood, attorney for Covington High School student, Nicholas Sandmann has expounded on this horrible decision and how the ruling enables media to ruin reputations. Nick became the latest focus of false and defamatory accusations published and broadcast across the nation and the world.

Attorney Wood made it very clear on a recent Mark Levin program when he stated he was a believer in the first amendment but that it has no strings and no real value when there is no accountability for wrongdoing.  He explained that with the Nicholas Sandmann case, it was false speech by both social and main stream media (MSM) that threatened, attacked and vilified a minor child.

Watch the twelve-minute Mark Levin interview of Lin Wood’s discussion regarding the NYTs v. Sullivan decision and how it has affected all of society negatively.

VIDEO HERE:

55 Years of Media Deterioration

Attorney Wood was right when he mentioned the deterioration in the media, and over 55 years it has grown exponentially worse.  Mr. Wood said he has watched the media since the  Richard Jewell case, and it is horribly unhealthy.  He said, “There’s nothing valuable to our public discourse for people to simply go out and tell rumors, lies, make accusations with no sources and to be able to use the media and the First Amendment to, in effect, advance his or her or some corporation’s own agendas. That’s what happened to Nicholas. There’s a lot of agendas at work.”

Attorney Wood explained that the large corporations who own the media outlets have no objectivity and no fairness to them and are extensions of political parties who wish to influence the public instead of informing the public.  It used to be for media, “Get it first, but get it right.”  They’ve thrown out get it right and even get it first.  He says that if we don’t get accountability, the deterioration will continue.

The Russia Collusion Narrative

Efforts by high-ranking officials in the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and State Department to portray President Donald Trump as having colluded with Russia were the culmination of years of bias and politicization under the Obama administration. The weaponization of the intelligence community and other government agencies created an environment that allowed for obstruction in the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the relentless pursuit of a manufactured collusion narrative against Trump.  Link

A willing and complicit media spread unsubstantiated leaks as facts in an effort to promote the Russia-collusion narrative. Worse yet was the “epic disconnect between the Robert Mueller described by the MSM and Officialdom as a model of public propriety and the Robert Mueller documented by independent researchers.  Rep. Louie Gohmert wrote a 15,500-word monograph exposing Mueller, and Louisiana State Senator John Milkovich wrote an entire book on Mueller.

The Spygate scandal also raises a bigger question: Was the 2016 election a one-time aberration, or was it symptomatic of decades of institutional political and media corruption?

Conclusion

Special Counsel Robert Mueller was given no restrictions regarding the collusion investigation from his appointee, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.  In fact, Rosenstein testified that he told Mueller he could investigate any crimes he uncovered in the Russia collusion investigation.

“Rod is a survivor,” dirty cop James Comey once said privately of Rosenstein, not meaning it as a compliment. Rosenstein’s survival helped Special Counsel Robert Mueller do his job absent interference. Every day Rosenstein didn’t resign bought the special counsel more time for character assassination against the President and his supporters. He needs to be fired for a host of reasons

.

The day Rosenstein is actually forced out will be a very good day.  Unfortunately, it won’t be soon enough. Attorney General William Barr has asked Rosenstein to remain despite the fact that as Deputy AG he allowed Mueller to carry out his modus operandi of intimidation and destruction without any oversight.

The group at the FBI that doggedly pursued the false collusion story is the same group that let Hillary Clinton slide on deleting official emails, creating an illegal computer server and destroying evidence of her wrongdoing with cover ups by the complicit democratic controlled media.  It’s also the same group who in 2009 allowed her to sell 20 percent of our uranium to Russia with the help of FBI Director Mueller, while the Clinton Foundation raked in $145 million via Rosatom.

The clear double standard of the liberal media and their role as propagandists is in full view.  This is why the 1964 Warren Court NYTs decision must be overturned.

In the next article, we’ll discuss those who were targeted by Mueller, the Democrat Party and the media and have paid extremely high prices for supporting an outsider for President.

How Border Security Failures Make US Sick: The Hypocrisy in our Immigration Debate.

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Several weeks ago I wrote about how Open Borders Are Dangerous To Our (Public) Health and noted that Ellis Island was a quarantine station.

In the weeks that followed, attention has greatly increased over the growing measles epidemic that is infecting increasing numbers of children particularly in New York State.

On March 26, 2019 the headline of a Newsday report blared: “State of emergency declared in Rockland County because of measles outbreak”.  The subtitle of that article stated, “At least 153 people, mostly children, have been affected in the county. And nearly 200 cases have been counted in recent months in Brooklyn and Queens.”

News coverage of the worrying outbreak have focused on the orthodox Jewish community blaming their supposed religious beliefs and practices for not permitting their children to be vaccinated.

This raises the disquieting question if health concerns are being used as a way of demonizing members of the religious Jewish community by blaming them for the measles outbreak.

However the Newsday report provided this important quote:

“I am an Orthodox rabbi, and there is absolutely no religious authority that forbids one from getting vaccinated,” said Dr. Aaron Glatt, chairman of medicine at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, and a specialist in infectious diseases.

“Unfortunately, there is a segment of the population that has fallen under the influence of the anti-vaxxers,” Glatt said of people who espouse anti-vaccine beliefs. “You see this among Jewish and non-Jewish parents. There is a strong contingent of anti-vaxxers who have ulterior motives, but most are decent parents who are just misinformed.”

The Newsday article went on to report:

Earlier this month a federal judge barred 50 students from attending a Rockland school because they were unvaccinated. Health officials believe the outbreak was ignited in September by an international traveler who arrived in the area with measles. The situation worsened when six additional international travelers with measles arrived in Rockland, further spreading measles to vulnerable children.

The issue has a clear nexus to international travel yet most news outlets refuse to focus on this significant aspect of the health crisis.

Having used the term crisis we cannot ignore the headline of a March 26, 2019 report published by WAMC Northeastern Public Radio, Rockland County Exec Declares State Of Emergency For Measles Outbreak.

Under the terms of the declaration of the State of Emergency children under the age of 18 years of age who have not been vaccinated against measles must not enter any public place until April 27 or until they are vaccinated to protect against measles, mumps and rubella.  The penalty for violation of this order is a maximum fine of $500 dollars and/or six months in prison for committing a Class “B” Misdemeanor.

Before we go any further, we must consider what this really means.

Out of a concern for the health of the general population of the residents of Rockland County, a country that lies north of New York City, the fact that several hundred children have contracted the measles prompted swift and decisive action to safeguard the lives of children and others who might be vulnerable to a dangerous disease.

However, under the premise of “Sanctuary Policies” illegal aliens who enter the United States without inspection are shielded from detection by Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaving them free to wander about those communities with impunity.

Aliens who enter the United States are illegally present and, as I have noted in ever so many of my articles and Congressional testimony, pose a threat to public safety and national security.  They also may well pose a threat to public health.  Under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S. Code § 1182 (Inadmissible Aliens), aliens may not be granted visas or admitted into the United States if they have a communicable disease or cannot provide proof that they have been vaccinated against at least the following: mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria toxoids, pertussis, influenza type B and hepatitis B, and any other vaccinations against vaccine-preventable diseases recommended by the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices.

Aliens without inspection are not vetted and their very presence in the United States is not known by our government.

Now let’s consider how frequently advocates for sanctuary policies justify their outrageous policies by claiming that many businesses depend on what they refer to as “undocumented immigrants” (Orwellian Newspeak for aliens who are illegally present in the United States and may have entered the United States illegally and without inspection).

Among the businesses that eagerly hire these aliens who evaded the vetting process at ports of entry are restaurants and food processing plants.

So, while unvaccinated children are to be kept away from public events under the threat of having their parents or legal guardians arrested and imprisoned for up to six months, potentially separating the American parents from their American children, illegal aliens whose medical backgrounds are unknown along with the potential public health risks that they pose are free to go where they wish in those “Sanctuary” jurisdictions and may even help to prepare your next meal.

Bon appetite!

To further support my concerns about health issues that relate to aliens who seek entry into the United States consider on January 15, 2019 Newsweek published a report, “Anti-Vax Movement Listed By World Health Organization As One Of The Top 10 Health Threats For 2019.”

Here a few excerpts from the Newsweek report to help keep you awake at night:

Fragile and vulnerable settings

Crises—such as drought, famine, conflict and population displacement—and poor health services have left more than 1.6 billion people around the world, or 22 percent of the planet’s population, without access to basic care.

Ebola and other high-threat pathogens

Two outbreaks of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo occurred last year, causing the deaths of nearly 400 people. This highlights the danger of known high-threat pathogens with the potential to cause epidemics—like Ebola, Zika, Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—as well as those that have yet to be discovered.

Weak primary health care

People in many countries around the world lack access to adequate primary health care services. This is a significant problem because they are the first point of contact that an individual has with a health care system. Often, service is of poor quality or is simply unaffordable

Dengue

Every year, about 390 million people around the world are infected with dengue fever and about 40 percent of the global population lives in regions where it risks contracting the disease. Transmitted by mosquitoes, the flu-like fever has a mortality rate of below 1 percent when it is detected early and the patient receives medical care. However, this figure can rise significantly if the disease is left untreated.

Finally, on March 11, 2019 CNN reported, More than 2,000 people in ICE custody quarantined for contagious diseases.

It is more than a bit ironic and hypocritical that while Congress collectively voted against President Trump’s declaration of an emergency at our porous and dangerous southern border that the local government of Rockland County in New York State have declared a “State of Emergency” over health concerns that may well have a nexus to border security, or lack thereof.

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission.

Wetwork: A Review of “Unplanned”

/in , , , , , , /by

Brad Miner on a remarkable, if uneven, pro-life movie that makes clear why abortion is “wetwork,” a loan word from the Russian mokroye delo: meaning murder.

My anti-abortion views solidified in 1976 when I bought a copy of Esquire magazine. There was something in it by or about George Plimpton that I wanted to read, but thumbing through the pages I came to an article titled “What I Saw at the Abortion” by Richard Selzer, M.D.

I’d been a Catholic for about three years and knew what I was supposed to believe about abortion. I’d recently read Humane vitae for the first time and been deeply impressed by its clarity: “all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, [is] to be absolutely excluded.” But it was when I read Dr. Selzer’s article that my view was forever set.

What knocked me for a loop was Selzer’s reference to a “flick,” a resistance, the fetus defending itself against its murder. Read it for yourself (The Human Life Review has reprinted it here), but here’s the good doctor’s conclusion:

I am not trying to argue. I am only saying I’ve seen. The flick. Whatever else may be said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense will not vanish from my eyes. What I saw I saw as that: a defense, a motion from, an effort away. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?

So, it seemed to me before I watched the new movie, Unplanned, that the defining scene would have to be just such a moment, one in which Abby Johnson (played by Ashley Bratcher) witnessed the abortion that changed her life. (The film is based on her book of the same title.)

That moment is set up nicely in an earlier scene in which Abby, the youngest clinic director at Planned Parenthood, banally counsels a young woman not to worry: “The one thing that all experts agree on is that, at this stage, the fetus can’t feel anything.”

But then she witnesses a “procedure” during which she sees (via ultrasound) the child “twisting and fighting for its life” against the abortionist’s cannula, which causes her to look anew at her participation in the 22,000 abortions that happened during her tenure. This begs the question of how one could ever not have known what the hell was going on, but that’s life, I guess. We must suppress what we believe we must not accept.

As the Psalmist says (34: 14-15), “Keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” And that’s what Abby Johnson did, a change of heart and mind, however, made more difficult for her because she’d had two abortions herself.

The scenes in which Ashley Bratcher acts through Abby Johnson’s descent into abject misery and ascent into pro-life glory are very fine indeed.

Yet Unplanned is sometimes sluggish, partly because of flashbacks and narration, and occasionally it’s preachy. It also goes further than it probably should have in showing, specifically, a bloody abortion gone wrong, and, generally, the blood associated with a Planned Parenthood clinic.

It’s shocking to watch, and that’s clearly what directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon intended these scenes to be. But it’s also why their film received an MPAA rating of R and not PG-13. The implications of this at the box office could be grave, although I hope not. And some churches may decide not to screen it, especially to teenagers, and that would be a shame, especially since a drop of blood can be effective. And anyway the point is the potential crises in abortion: perforated uterus, falling blood pressure, and the pallor that comes from blood loss. You don’t have to dwell on the effusion of blood and fetal tissue.

It reminded me of Signal 30, the driver’s ed video we were shown in high school that depicted, in gruesome detail, the consequences of recklessness behind the wheel. It was repulsive without, I’m afraid, actually being an effective deterrent.

I’m sorry to dwell on this, but the ultrasound image in Unplanned of the vacuum aspiration of a fetus – graphic but not bloody – was sufficient; its impact far greater than the billows of crimson.

Still, abortion is what, in intelligence-military jargon, is called “wetwork,” a loan word from the Russian mokroye delo, meaning murder or assassination.

But I must say that Unplanned makes its arguments cogently. And arguments are still necessary, since the idea that the “products of conception” are not a human being still clearly rules in Federal law and dominates thinking and policy in one of America’s political parties, the party of Herod.

And this is another reason why the gore in Unplanned is unnecessary. Many medical procedures spill blood and some go sideways. Audiences are used to that, and I suppose if a pro-abortion advocate saw this movie, she might say, “The fact that sometimes things get messy isn’t an argument for restricting a woman’s reproductive rights. It’s her body!”

In the end, Unplanned, though far from a failure, is shallow. The motif in the film is the fence around the Texas Planned Parenthood facility where most of the action takes place. On one side are the abortionists, who are portrayed either complacent or evil; on the other side are the pro-life demonstrators from 40 Days for Life, are of whom all virtuous.

It’s not a propaganda film, although a final scene, in which the My Pillow founder, Mike Lindell, operates a bulldozer to knock down the Planned Parenthood sign at Abby’s former clinic, threatens to make what went before seem like an infomercial. I’m sure the producers were grateful for the million dollars Mr. Lindell put into the film. “I don’t get into things for the money,” Lindell told the Hollywood Reporter, “I get into them if the message is right.” Okay, Mike, but do you have to actually get into the movie itself?

Meanwhile, Ms. Bratcher gave a remarkable interview on the Fox News Channel that you’ll want to watch before you see Unplanned. And, please, see it.

COLUMN BY

Brad Miner

Brad Miner is senior editor of The Catholic Thing, senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute, and Board Secretary of Aid to the Church In Need USA. He is a former Literary Editor of National Review. His new book, Sons of St. Patrick, written with George J. Marlin, is now on sale. The Compleat Gentleman, is available on audio.

RELATED ARTICLES:

President Trump Issues New Pro-Life Rules Protecting Doctors and Nurses From Having to Do Abortions

Yes, Babies Are a Better Solution to Climate Change Than the Green New Deal

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. Video by Fox News Channel Fox & Friends. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Treasonous Illegal Take Down and the Failed Coup d’ etat

/in , , , , , /by

The biggest political scandal in US history has been exposed. The treasonous illegal take down (insurance policy – which has lapsed), and the failed coup d’ etat is exposed for the world to see. We are now living in a post Mueller Investigation. It’s a brand new day! The disruptive cloud of the collusion hoax has been lifted. President Trump is unchained. Watch Trump at this recent rally in Michigan as he unleashes on the fake news, democrats and the deep state. Furthermore, we will begin to see even greater success with international leaders and negotiations with such countries as China and North Korea etc. Any delays or uncertainties that the witch hunt created will no longer be an obstacle to forging ahead with our allies and trading partners as Trump dismantles globalism and the new world order.

Trump Unchained

With this hoax, for all intents and purposes behind us, President Trump has now openly gone on the offense. The enemy has been and continues to be doing an excellent job at destroying themselves. The president has expressed his views on the dedicated one hour show with Sean Hannity (a must watch), as well as to the international media and from his busy Twitter account. The president acknowledged that this was not only a complete fabricated hoax, but in fact a treasonous illegal take down and failed coup d’ etat against a duly elected president. Trump vows to expose this so that justice will be served. The president stated this must never happen again to any president.

When asked by Hannity about declassifying FISA and other intel records and releasing this to the public, the President concurred that this will now take place. Trump indicated to Sean Hannity that he will now look into Hillary Clinton which I have a well documented track record stating this day would come. President Trump has used words such as evil individuals. Sick people doing really bad things. With regards to the media in a tweet, the president said “The Fake News Media is going Crazy! They are suffering a major “breakdown,” have ZERO credibility or respect, & must be thinking about going legit. I have learned to live with Fake News, which has never been more corrupt than it is right now. Someday, I will tell you the secret! Looking forward to the secret revealed Mr. President.

The president talked with Sean about Obama and his responsibility in all this since it was under BHO’s watch and BHO’s DOJ, FBI, CIA where and when all this originated. We’ve known all along about the Bushes, Clinton’s and Obama’s. The Bush’s are now under Trump’s control. Beginning perhaps from the bottom up, we will see Clinton and Obama in due time, facing justice. What did the founding fathers say is the punishment for elected officials guilty of high crimes, sedition and treason? Oh yeah, execution.

Keep in mind that Google hearings are on going. Facebook is under federal investigation and frantically data dumping as an attempt to hide their crimes.  FB, Twitter, Google, Microsoft YouTube etc. will be challenged further. Are they news sites? Are they breaking any laws with regards to censorship? Shadow banning? Data mining? Algorithms designed to silence the opposition? Leave this up to intel and the lawyers but I am sure we will be hearing about monopolies and anti trust laws along the way.

Q has told us there are over 82,000 sealed indictments. We are witnessing sedition and treason. We are witnessing felonies, high crimes and misdemeanors. These acts will now see the light of day and the facts will be known as the day of reckoning is upon is. Comey, Shiff, Schummer, Pelosi, Feinstein, Ryan, Burr along with McCabe, Clapper, Brennan and so many others.

Watch Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul. The probes, hearings, investigations, grand juries, subpoenas, indictments as well as military tribunals, will now commence and quicker than we may think. This will, however go on for several years. But it’s a new day dawning. In fact, President Trump stated on that Hannity interview I mentioned, that we are in a very dark, dark period but we are now shedding light and coming into the truth and into the light. Yes, from dark to light.

Closing Remarks

President Trump mentioned in the Hannity interview that he is working on restoring election integrity of which I have written extensively about in my book “Trump and the Resurrection of America“. Trump talked about the importance of a paper ballot back up to computers which we now all know are rigged. The chapter in my book titled “Free and Fair  Elections” is perhaps among the first to reveal what really went on rigging the polls, election theft and voter fraud.  We have now officially entered steps six, seven and eight on the scale of discovery and action which will prove to be the longest and most dangerous phase as we are well engaged in America’s second revolution. The democrats, fake news and the deep state will fight back with a vengeance. Expect further false narratives and legal attacks and attempts against the president. False flags will continue and perhaps escalate in terms of damage. Be prepared spiritually, personally and economically.

The hoax has ended. Take a win. Calm down and enjoy the ride. And so the Nuremberg style trials that I wrote about back in August of 2017 are now at our doorstep. In fact with the tribunals of both John McCain and George Herbert Walker Bush already behind us, I stand corrected as this has already begun. Get the popcorn and enjoy the show.

Informed – Connected – Grounded

Read through my books and nearly 400 articles here on this website. Sign up for the JMC Report. I have a pretty good track record for over two decades. It’s either us or them. Mark my words. They are all going down. The global financial reset and the rule of law reset are the underlying policies of which our brilliant and brave President is operating. President Trump is restoring power to the people and re-directing the course for humanity. We are on God’s side. May the force remain with us.

RELATED ARTICLE: Clapper: Obama Ordered The Intelligence Assessment That Resulted In Mueller Investigation

VIDEO: Another day in Trump’s America

/in , , , , /by

CNN would show only the first half of this video, but it’s worth watching to the end – unless you’re a proud low-information voter.

All credit goes to Paul Martinez.

EDITORS NOTE: This video posted by Red Square appeared on The Peoples Cube.

VIDEO: Film “Unplanned” Is All About the Big Lie[s]

/in , , , , , /by

I had the opportunity in 2018 to actually meet Abby Johnson, who wrote the book Unplanned. I went to see the film “Unplanned” based upon her book on it’s opening day, March 29, 2019.  The key lesson that audiences should take away from this compelling movie is that it all about a big lie. A big lie that Abby (played by Ashley Bratcher) and tens of millions of women fall far. Watch the trailer:

This is a film that exposes the big lies preached over and over again by Planned Parenthood.

An important scene that exposes the big lie is when Abby, the newly promoted Director of a Planned Parenthood in Houston, TX, meets with a protester named Shawn (played by Jared Lotz) filming outside of the clinic. Abby wants Shawn to stop filming. When Shawn refused Abby says that Planned Parenthood’s work is akin to ending slavery, stopping the Holocaust and the women’s rights movement. Shawn points out that in reality everything Abby said is the opposite of the truth. He points out that slavery took away the rights of blacks like abortion takes away the rights of the unborn, killing the unborn is the new Holocaust and once inside the PP clinic a woman is convinced to give up the right of her baby to live. Powerful indeed.

Here is a fact check video done by Live Action titled “Planned Parenthood: Lies, no matter what”:

Many of these same lies, told from 2001 to 2009 by Abby Johnson, are exposed in Unplanned. It is clear from the film that Planned Parenthood exists primarily from the money made by performing abortions, not from providing healthcare services to mothers and their unborn child. Unplanned also mentions big downers to Planned Parenthood Bill Gates and George Soros.

As the Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany Joseph Goebbels wrote,

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

It is estimated that there have been over 60 million abortions in America since Roe v. Wade. This is 60 million people who would today be taxpaying, working Americans adding to our economy. This doesn’t include the adult children of those who were aborted.

The big lie is now out in full view. This is a must watch film. Take your children and grandchildren. They must see this film. Don’t worry about the R-rating.

RELATED ARTICLES:

President Trump Issues New Pro-Life Rules Protecting Doctors and Nurses From Having to Do Abortions

Wetwork: A Review of Unplanned

EXCLUSIVE: HHS Makes $5.1 Million Grant to Pro-Life Community Clinics

The Numbers That Show Planned Parenthood About Abortion Not Women’s Health

Disentangling the Data on Planned Parenthood Affiliates’ Abortion Services and Receipt of Taxpayer Funding

‘Unplanned’ Actress Fires Back At Alyssa Milano’s Attack On Georgia’s Pro-Life Bill

Twitter Suspends, Then Quickly Unsuspends Account of Pro-Life Movie ‘Unplanned’ During Release Week