Tag Archive for: Bernie Sanders

What Marx Got Right about Redistribution – That John Stuart Mill Got Wrong by Alan Reynolds

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The idea that government could redistribute income willy-nilly with impunity did not originate with Senator Bernie Sanders. On the contrary, it may have begun with two of the most famous 19th century economists, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Karl Marx, on the other side, found the idea preposterous, calling it “vulgar socialism.”

Mill wrote,

The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary about them. … It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution only. The things once there, mankind, individually, can do with them as they like.

Mill’s distinction between production and distribution appears to encourage the view that any sort of government intervention in distribution is utterly harmless — a free lunch. But redistribution aims to take money from people who earned it and give it to those who did not. And that, of course, has adverse effects on the incentives of those who receive the government’s benefits and on taxpayers who finance those benefits.

David Ricardo had earlier made the identical mistake. In his 1936 book The Good Society (p. 196), Walter Lippmann criticized Ricardo as being “not concerned with the increase of wealth, for wealth was increasing and the economists did not need to worry about that.”

But Ricardo saw income distribution as an interesting issue of political economy and “set out to ascertain ‘the laws which determine the division of the produce of industry among the classes who concur in its formation.’

Lippmann wisely argued that, “separating the production of wealth from the distribution of wealth” was “almost certainly an error. For the amount of wealth which is available for distribution cannot in fact be separated from the proportions in which it is distributed. … Moreover, the proportion in which wealth is distributed must have an effect on the amount produced.”

The third classical economist to address this issue was Karl Marx. There were many fatal flaws in Marxism, including the whole notion that a society is divided into two armies — workers and capitalists. Late in his career, however, Marx wrote a fascinating 1875 letter to his allies in the German Social Democratic movement criticizing a redistributionist scheme he found unworkable.

In this famous “Critique of the Gotha Program,” Marx was highly critical of “vulgar socialism” and considered the whole notion of “fair distribution” to be “obsolete verbal rubbish.” In response to the Gotha’s program claim that society’s production should be equally distributed to all, Marx asked,

To those who do not work as well? … But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time. … This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor… It is, therefore, a right to inequality.

Yet Marx offered a glimmer of utopian hope about the future in which things would become so abundant that distribution would no longer be a matter of concern:

In a higher phase of communist society … after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banner: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

That was not a prescription but a warning: For the foreseeable future Marx knew nothing would work without work incentives. If income were equally distributed to “those who do not work,” why would anyone work?

Contemporary public economics — “optimal tax theory” and the newest of the “new welfare economics” — also teaches that to tax a man “according to his abilities” would give able men a very strong incentive to use their skills to hide their earnings (and therefore their abilities) from tax collectors. This predictable response to tax penalties on high earnings is confirmed by economic research on the elasticity of taxable income.

Distributing government spending “to each according to his needs” must likewise give potential recipients a strong incentive to exaggerate their needs. People who got caught doing that used to be called “welfare cheats” and considerable cheating still goes on in food stamps, Medicaid, etc. The Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, gives low-income working people an extra incentive to not report cash income from tips, casual labor or illicit activities.

In The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford rightly notes that “when economists say the economy is inefficient, they mean there’s a way to make somebody better off without harming anybody else” (called “Pareto optimality”). But argues that Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow figured out a way to efficiently redistribute income with “appropriate lump-sum taxes and subsidies that puts everyone on equal footing.” As Harford says, “a lump-sum tax doesn’t affect anybody’s behavior because there’s nothing you can do to avoid it.”

Unfortunately, Harford says “an example of a lump-sum redistribution would be to give eight hundred dollars to everybody whose name starts with H.” That simply shows that if the subsidies were not ridiculously random then the subsidies will affect behavior and will not be lump-sum. The government could collect a lump-sum tax of $800 from every adult and then send a lump-sum subsidy of $800 to every adult with no net effect, for example, but why do that? If the government tried to tax people on the basis of abilities or to subsidize on the basis of needs, even Marx knew that would have a terrible effect on incentives.

The whole idea was curtly dismissed by another Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, in his 1994 book Whither Socialism? (p. 46): “The ‘old new welfare economics’ assumed that lump-sum redistributions were possible,” wrote Stiglitz; “The ‘new new welfare economics’ recognizes the limitations on the government’s information.”

The reason governments cannot simply take money from some people according to how able they are, and give it to others according to how needy they are, is because people who were aware of that plan would not be foolish enough to accurately reveal their abilities and needs.

Actual taxes and transfer payment distort behavior in ways that undermine economic progress and commonly produce results (such as trapping people in poverty) that are the opposite of their stated intent.

This post first appeared at Cato.org.

Alan ReynoldsAlan Reynolds

Alan Reynolds is one of the original supply-side economists. He is Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and was formerly Director of Economic Research at the Hudson Institute.

Bernie trounced Hillary in NH Primary despite his Israel Hating Advisers

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Bernie Sanders may have trounced Hillary Clinton in yesterday’s New Hampshire primary by a significant double digit margin with his Wall Street bashing and Swedish-style entitlement giveaways trolling for millennials and the economically disaffected.  However little known are his foreign policy advisers who are notoriously anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. Among them are Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute, former Defense official Larry Korb and, of course, the Soros-funded operatives of J Street.

Adam Credo’s article in yesterday’s Washington Free Beacon article noted the views of these ‘foreign policy’ advisers, “Meet Bernie Sanders’ Israel Hating Advisers.”   You thought his stint in a left Socialist Hashomer Hatzair Israeli kibbutz in his 20’s would make him a lifelong Zionist defender of the Jewish State. As my mythic cousin Vinny from Brooklyn would say, FERGEDABOTIT. Just look at his brother who lives in the UK, a supporter of the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian Labor Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.  Bernie congratulations Corbyn on his victory winning the Labor Party leadership. The UK Daily Mail article  noted his email to Corbyn saying:

The Democrat presidential hopeful said he is ‘delighted’ to support a leader who ‘tells the billionaire class that they cannot have it all’.

‘At a time of mass income and wealth inequality throughout the world, I am delighted to see that the British Labor Party has elected Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader,’ he said in an email to Daily Mail Online.

‘We need economies that work for working families, not just the people on top.’

His words come after then Argentina’s President  Cristina Kirchner, since ousted by conservative successor Mauricio Macri, gushed that ‘hope has triumphed’ and that Corbyn ‘stands with Argentina’ in their anti-American stance.

Bernie also has a close friendship with notorious left wing anti-Israel advocate Noam Chomsky who endorsed him for President. They both share an Israeli kibbutz experience that in Chomsky’s case bolstered his Israel hating obsessions.

Watch this You Tube video of Chomsky’s endorsement of Bernie for President:

Note these comments from Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Yehudit Barsky, fellow at Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy in Kredo’s Washington Free Beacon article:

Sanders, who is Jewish and had family members slaughtered during the Holocaust, recently disclosed that his top foreign policy advisers include J Street, a dovish Middle East advocacy group that backs some of Congress’ most vocal critics of Israel, former assistant Secretary of Defense Larry Korb, and James Zogby, an Israel detractor who heads the Arab American Institute.

The inclusion of these advisers in the Sanders’ campaign, which has already come under fire for ignoring prominent Jewish-American political organizations, has prompted speculation from some that the presidential hopeful will pursue anti-Israel foreign policy priorities.

“Bernie seems to care very little about foreign policy, and so his views are shaped inordinately by advisers,” said Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, an advocacy organization. “And now we know who those advisers are. Two of them—Zogby and J Street—are leading anti-Israel apologists for terrorism. By his association with these extremist groups, Bernie fails the commander-in-chief test.”

“If advisers are a crystal ball to the future of foreign policy, then Sanders seeks a policy which doubles down on many of the failed assumptions that have undercut Obama’s policies,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and terrorism analyst. “America’s adversaries are real and are motivated by ideology rather than grievance. To rest American national security on the good will of anti-American despots and Islamists is never a good gamble.”

Zogby has accused the Jewish state of committing a “Holocaust” against the Palestinians and has referred to Israelis as “Nazis.” He has also described sitting members of Congress as “Israel firsters,” an anti-Semitic trope that implies dual loyalty to the Jewish state.
Zogby also has come under fire for exploiting the memory of the Holocaust for political purposes.

Zogby claimed in a 2010 blog post for the Huffington Post that “the plight of Palestinians is to the Arabs, what the Holocaust is to Jews world-wide.”
His comparison immediately drew outrage, with researchers from the UK Media Watch organization describing it as “grievously insulting.”
“Nothing that I could say to highlight his words would make them any more insulting or horrid than they are on their own,” a representative of that group wrote at the time.

“Zogby has two goals: to make Arab Americans more powerful than Jewish Americans and to be their preeminent leader,” Yehudit Barsky, a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy, wrote in a profile about Zogby’s anti-Israel attitudes.

J Street has faced similar criticism for its efforts to pressure Israel into making security concessions to the Palestinians that could endanger its survival.

J Street accused the Jewish state of “fanning growing flames of anti-Semitism” due to its efforts to stop daily attacks on civilians during Israel’s 2014 battle against Hamas terrorists.

The group’s leaders also have accused leading Israeli politicians of being racists.

We’ll see how Bernie Sanders fares in the upcoming Democratic primaries.  Given his radical background there was a reason why the media took to calling the city he was elected to serve the People’s Republic of Burlington.  With the FBI released a letter yesterday that Hillary is under investigation because of alleged confidential intelligence abuses using her private email server, you never know what can happen next in the 2016 Democrat Presidential nomination race.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Bernie Sanders suspends campaign, endorses Clinton

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Durham, NH – Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders abruptly suspended his campaign following tonight’s debate, and Hillary Clinton has graciously accepted his endorsement. As is often the case when a candidate withdraws from a race, the announcement came directly from his opponent during a post-debate interview with moderator Rachel Maddow. Clinton appeared distracted by her phone as Maddow questioned her on points made by Sanders regarding income inequality, but as Maddow concluded, Clinton exclaimed, “my opponent made valid arguments that I think merit serious consideration, but I am pleased to announce that he has dropped out of the race and given me his endorsement. I urge the supporters of Senator Sanders to honor his wishes and direct their enthusiasm to make a Hillary Clinton presidency a reality.”

The move is not totally unexpected, as Sanders had limited finances and little chance of carrying any state beyond New Hampshire. He has reportedly decided to take a much needed vacation after months of running a passionate, if largely fruitless, campaign.

Some commentators, particularly those on the Republican side, questioned the circumstances surrounding the announcement. Minutes after the debate, Clinton posted, “why hasn’t Sanders been fed into the hay baler yet?” on Huma Abedin’s Facebook wall, and Abedin responded, “five minutes. There was traffic.”

Stories of similar evidence of Clinton’s purported wrongdoing have never gained traction in the past, and the announcement clears the way for her to direct attention and resources towards the eventual GOP nominee.

“Bernie Sanders ran an honorable race and contributed valuable insights into the direction that we need to go, but his concession makes the party stronger,” tweeted Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, adding the hashtag #BernHillaryBern.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire column originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

Why Bernie Sanders Has to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class by Daniel Bier

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Willie Sutton was one of the most infamous bank robbers in American history. Over three decades, the dashing criminal robbed a hundred banks, escaped three prisons, and made off with millions. Today, he is best known for Sutton’s Law: Asked by a reporter why he robbed banks, Sutton allegedly quipped, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Sutton’s Law explains something unusual about Bernie Sander’s tax plan: it calls for massive tax hikes across the board. Why raise taxes on the middle class? Because that’s where the money is.

The problem all politicians face is that voters love to get stuff, but they hate to pay for it. The traditional solution that center-left politicians pitch is the idea that the poor and middle class will get the benefits, and the rich will pay for it.

This is approximately how things work in the United States. The top 1 percent of taxpayers earn 19 percent of total income and pay 38 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earn 12 percent and pay 3 percent. This chart from the Heritage Foundation shows net taxes paid and benefits received, per person, by household income group:

But Sanders’ proposals (free college, free health care, jobs programs, more Social Security, etc.) are way too heavy for the rich alone to carry, and he knows it. To his credit, his campaign has released a plan to pay for each of these myriad handouts. Vox’s Dylan Matthews has totaled up all the tax increases Sanders has proposed so far, and the picture is simply staggering.

Every household earning below $250,000 will face a tax hike of nearly 9 percent. Past that, rates explode, up to a top rate of 77 percent on incomes over $10 million.

Paying for Free

Sanders argues that most people’s average income tax rate won’t change, but this is only true if you exclude the two major taxes meant to pay for his health care program: a 2.2 percent “premium” tax and 6.2 percent payroll tax, imposed on incomes across the board. These taxes account for majority of the new revenue Sanders is counting on.

But it gets worse: his single-payer health care plan will cost 80 percent more than he claims. Analysis by the left-leaning scholar Kenneth Thorpe (who supports single payer) concludes that Sanders’ proposal will cost $1.1 trillion more each year than he claims. The trillion dollar discrepancy results from some questionable assumptions in Sanders’ numbers. For instance:

Sanders assumes $324 billion more per year in prescription drug savings than Thorpe does. Thorpe argues that this is wildly implausible.

“In 2014 private health plans paid a TOTAL of $132 billion on prescription drugs and nationally we spent $305 billion,” he writes in an email. “With their savings drug spending nationally would be negative.”

So unless pharmaceutical companies start paying you to take their drugs, the Sanders administration will need to increase taxes even more.

Analysis by the Tax Foundation finds that his proposed tax hikes already total $13.6 trillion over the next ten years. However, “the plan would [only] end up collecting $9.8 trillion over the next decade when accounting for decreased economic output.”

And the consequences will be truly devastating. Because of the taxes on labor and capital, GDP will be reduced 9.5 percent. Six million jobs will be lost. On average, after-tax incomes will be reduced by more than 18 percent.

Incomes for the bottom 50 percent will be reduced by more than 14 percent, and incomes for the top 1 percent will be reduced nearly 25 percent. Inequality warriors might cheer, but if you want to actually raise revenue, crushing the incomes of the people who pay almost 40 percent of all taxes isn’t the way to go.

These are just the effects of the $1 trillion tax hike he has planned — and he probably needs to double that to pay for single payer. Where will he find it? He’ll go where European welfare states go.

Being Like Scandinavia

Sanders is a great admirer of Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and many of his proposals are modeled on their systems. But to pay for their generous welfare benefits, they tax, and tax, and tax.

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all capture between 20-26 percent of GDP from income and payroll taxes. By contrast, the United States collects only 15 percent.

Scandinavia’s tax rates themselves are not that much higher than the United States’. Denmark’s top rate is 30 percent higher, Sweden’s is 18 percent higher, and Norway’s is actually 16 percent lower — and yet Norway’s income tax raises 30 percent more revenue than the United States.

The answer lies in how progressive the US tax system is, in the thresholds at which people are hit by the top tax rates. The Tax Foundation explains,

Scandinavian income taxes raise a lot of revenue because they are actually rather flat. In other words, they tax most people at these high rates, not just high-income taxpayers.

The top marginal tax rate of 60 percent in Denmark applies to all income over 1.2 times the average income in Denmark. From the American perspective, this means that all income over $60,000 (1.2 times the average income of about $50,000 in the United States) would be taxed at 60 percent. …

Compare this to the United States. The top marginal tax rate of 46.8 percent (state average and federal combined rates) kicks in at 8.5 times the average U.S. income (around $400,000). Comparatively, few taxpayers in the United States face the top marginal rate.

The reason European states can pay for giant welfare programs is not because they just tax the rich more — it’s because they also scoop up a ton of middle class income. The reason why the United States can’t right now is its long-standing political arrangement to keep taxes high on the rich so they can be low on the poor and middle.

Where the Money Is – And Isn’t

As shown by the Laffer Curve, there is a point at which increasing tax rates actually reduces tax revenue, by discouraging work, hurting the economy, and encouraging tax avoidance.

Bernie’s plan already hammers the rich: households earning over $250,000 (the top 3 percent) would face marginal rates of 62-77 percent — meaning the IRS would take two-thirds to three-quarters of each additional dollar earned. His proposed capital gains taxes are so high that they are likely well past the point of positive returns. The US corporate tax rate of 40 percent is already the highest in the world, and even Sanders hasn’t proposed increasing it.

The only way to solve his revenue problem is to raise rates on the middle and upper-middle classes, or flatten the structure to make the top rates start kicking in much lower. You can see why a “progressive” isn’t keen on making more regressive taxes part of his platform, but the money has to come from somewhere.

The bottom fifty percent don’t pay much income tax now (only $34 billion), but they also don’t earn enough to fill the gap. Making their taxes proportionate to income would only raise $107 billion, without even considering how the higher rates would reduce employment and income.

The top 5 percent are pretty well wrung dry by Sanders’ plan, and their incomes are going to be reduced by 20-25 percent anyway. It’s hard to imagine that there’s much more blood to be had from that stone.

But households between the 50th and the 95th percentile (incomes between $37,000 to $180,000 a year) earn about 54 percent of total income — a share would likely go up, given the larger income reductions expected for top earners. Currently, this group pays only 38 percent of total income taxes, and, despite the 9 percent tax hike, they’re comparatively spared by the original tax plan. Their incomes are now the lowest hanging fruit on the tax tree.

As they go to the polls this year, the middle class should remember Sutton’s Law.

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

Tech Sector Bears Brunt of Capital Taxes, Random Regulation by Dan Gelernter

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According to our president’s final State of the Union, we’ve recovered from the economic crisis and now enjoy the strongest, most durable economy in the world. Obama does acknowledge that startups and small businesses may need some help, so he wants to reignite our “sprit of innovation” — which he plans to do by putting Vice President Biden in charge of curing cancer.

But the problem facing startups is not a lack of innovation. We are being killed by the economy, which, for those of us who have to live in it, is not good at all. Young entrepreneurs may have spent last year working hard, innovating and building, only to find their companies are worth less now than when they started.

The market is adjusting downwards. Valuations are sinking. The investors I’ve spoken to feel the Fed’s free-money policy has created a dangerous over-valuation of companies and stocks and, now that the rates are coming back up, the air is being let out. 2015, they say, was a tough year because we knew this was coming. 2016 is going to be even tougher.

There is something else weighing on the minds of entrepreneurs and investors alike — regulatory uncertainty. No startup can deal with compliance by itself — not even software companies with no physical products to sell. Startups have to hire lawyers and compliance experts to help them, and this is money we’re not spending on product development or marketing or making our prices more competitive.

The way Obamacare is being implemented, for example, makes our hair white. The rules seem to change with bureaucratic whim; various parts of the law are suspended by executive order. How will we comply next year, and what will it cost? Nobody knows.

In the meantime, the Democratic candidates for President are proposing large hikes to the capital gains tax, which increases effective risk for investors and depresses valuations. Will these hikes ever take place? We don’t know, and that uncertainty carries an additional price.

We’re already seeing more investors decide to weather the storm on the sidelines, keeping an eye on their current affairs and declining to invest in companies they would have snapped up a year ago. A tech startup with a working product will find it harder to raise money today than it would have two years before with nothing but a concept. Not only are we faced with a weak market now, the trend is even more disturbing.

The problem is easier to diagnose than to repair. As an entrepreneur, I’d like to see less regulation and lower taxes. And not just lower taxes on the companies themselves, but on the people who can afford to invest in them. This may come as a surprise, but it’s the hated “one percent” that invests in startups and helps entrepreneurs’ dreams come true. When taxes cut deeper into the pockets of the wealthy, it most negatively affects us — the entrepreneurs and the people we would have hired — not the wealthy.

Regulation remains erratic, and the policies of the next administration cannot be foreseen. 2016 is going to be a hard year for the startup. Investments will continue to decline until investors see a stable market. And they’re not looking at one right now. Companies will die as a result, and not for lack of innovative ideas.

Dan Gelernter

Dan Gelernter is CEO of the technology startup Dittach.

Voter Survey: Muslims in U.S. Overwhelmingly support Democratic Party

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WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released the results of a six-state survey indicating that 73 percent of registered Muslim voters say they will go to the polls in upcoming primary elections and that 67 percent will vote for Democratic Party candidates.

According to an Investigative Project report, CAIR:

[P]urports to be a “leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding” and claims to speak for the majority of American Muslims. However, after a careful review of the history, activities, statements, and causes of and by CAIR, it seems that its primary goals are to silence and de-legitimize its critics and redefine what it means to be a moderate Muslim. And when it comes to U.S. efforts to crack down on terrorists and their financiers, CAIR takes an almost visceral stand in opposition. This has the effect of undermining the legitimate security-related concerns and campaigns of the United States and its allies. These conclusions and the summary immediately below are based upon the evidence and examples that follow in this report; beginning with CAIR’s very founding.

The full dossier “CAIR Exposed,” can be found here.

CAIR’s Muslim voter survey also indicated that more than half of respondents said they would support Hillary Clinton in the elections (51.62%), followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (22.03%) and Donald Trump (7.47%).

Growing Islamophobia in America was ranked as the most important issue for Muslim voters. Domestic issues like the economy and health care also topped the Muslim voters’ list of priority concerns in this election. (NOTE: Islamophobia was listed as the third-ranked issue in a similar 2014 CAIR survey.)

CAIR’s survey of almost 2000 registered Muslim voters in California, New York, Illinois, Florida, Texas, andVirginia – the states with the highest Muslim populations – was conducted January 26 using an independent automated call survey provider and asked four questions:

1. “Do you plan to vote in your upcoming state primary election?”
2. “Which political party do you plan to support in your upcoming state primary election?”
3. “Based on your party support which candidate do you plan to vote for in the upcoming state primary election?”
4. “What is the most important issue to you in the 2016 presidential election?”

Survey Results: (NOTE: Results indicate number of respondents and corresponding percentages.)

Question One: Do you plan to vote in your upcoming state primary election?

Yes                 

1417

73.80%

No                     

235

12.24%

Decline to Answer      

268

13.96%

Total Respondents    

1920

100.00%

Question Two: Which political party do you plan to support in your upcoming state primary election?

Democrat              

876

67.33%

Republican            

190

14.60%

Libertarian            

21

1.61%

Green                             

11

0.85%

Other                            

57

4.38%

Decline to Answer      

146

11.22%

Total Respondents    

1301

100.00%

Question Three: Based on your party support which candidate do you plan to vote for in the upcoming state primary election?  

Hillary Clinton     

525

51.62%

Bernie Sanders                   

224

22.03%

Donald Trump                  

76

7.47%

Sen. Ted Cruz               

21

2.06%

Jeb Bush                        

16

1.57%

Sen. Marco Rubio       

15

1.47%

Martin O’Malley          

10

0.98%

Sen. Rand Paul               

6

0.59%

Dr. Ben Carson                       

5

0.49%

Gov. Chris Christie      

4

0.39%

Carly Fiorina                

3

0.29%

Decline to Answer     

112

11.01%

Total Respondents     

1017

100.00%

Question Four: What is the most important issue to you in the 2016 presidential election?  

Islamophobia           

456

29.71%

Economy               

364

23.71%

Health Care            

221

14.40%

Civil Liberties             

103

6.71%

Foreign Affairs                    

95

6.19%

Education                       

86

5.60%

Other                        

78

5.08%

Decline to Answer     

132

8.60%

Total Respondents    

1535

100.00%

RELATED ARTICLES:

Is CAIR a Terror Group? – National Review Online

FBI Chart and Documents Portray CAIR as Hamas-Related

Council on American-Islamic Relations – Discover the Networks

Bolshevic Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton 42-4 among Texas Gamers

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SAN ANTONIO, Texas /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NAVGTR CORP. — Young voters turned out in droves to support Bernie Sanders in San Antonio.  A mock Iowa caucus was held at the Penny Arcade Expo South (PAXS), a gaming festival drawing tens of thousands.

The caucus event was titled, “Decision 2016: Vote on Game ‘War of Awards’ or Donald Trump,” organized by the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) for the Official PAXS panel schedule.

A 450-seat room was packed with 332 caucus-goers, clearly dominated by Democratic voters with only 24 self-declared Republican voters.  “All night there was a clear enthusiasm gap between those who were willing to climb over people in their rows of seats and those who chose to sit and watch impartially,” said academy president Thomas Allen.  “The plan was to clear half the room of chairs to have a large open space, but time was working against us.”

Among the caucus-goers, about 73 people voted publicly for the presidential candidates.  Forty-two Bernie Sanders supporters flooded the voting floor, while four and three people stood for Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley, respectively.

Among Republicans, Ted Cruz won with 8 votes.  Rand Paul was a close second with 7 votes.  Marco Rubio held in the top three with 5 votes.  Jeb Bush received two votes.  Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump received 1 vote each.

Game players also expressed who they thought should win the industry D.I.C.E. and Game Developers Choice Awards.  The crowd established fan-favorite front-runners such as “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” for Achievement in Character (DICE), “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” for Game Design (GDC), “Undertale” for Innovation (GDC), and “Ori and the Blind Forest” developer Moon Studios for Best Debut (GDC).

In the final vote, “Fallout 4” won Game of the Year with an estimated 32 votes.  Even among gamers, supporters were therefore more able to consolidate top-tier votes behind Bernie Sanders than any one video game:

Presenters included Larry Asberry Jr., Vanessa Fernandez, Colby Sites, Justen Andrews, Geoff Mendicino, and George Wood.

The National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers announces its own nominations February 9.  Entries have been extended to a February 1 deadline.  NAVGTR will caucus again at South by Southwest (SXSW) and the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Networking Event on March 15, 2016.  Subscribe at navgtr.org for updates.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Four Types of Socialists

Hillary and Bernie Must ‘Stop Spewing the Gender Pay Gap Myths’

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SAN DIEGO, California /PRNewswire/ — The National Coalition For Men (NCFM) calls on Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and all other candidates to be honest about the gender “pay gap.”  Claiming that women “earn less” without explaining why is misleading and dishonest.  The Department of Labor funded a study that showed the pay gap is mostly due to choices, not discrimination.

Before women get married and have kids, they earn the same as men, and are also beneficiaries of quality of life choices that favor health and longevity as reflected by statistics on industrial deaths.  After having kids, women make additional quality of life choices different from males, such as more flexible hours and less managerial positions. Women have more options than men when it comes to being primary parents.  In fact, over half of female graduates of Stanford and Harvard left the workforce within 15 years of entry into the workforce.  This is not an option for most men.

Men are either primary breadwinners or on the streets. Consequently, they make the vast majority of homeless adults, job-related deaths, suicides, and incarcerated persons.

Women who were never married and are childless earn more than their male counterparts.  And as corporate executives, women now earn more than men.

NCFM calls on the candidates of both parties to be honest and tell the whole truth about the gender pay gap as well as the many gender inequalities that men face in our society, not just in terms of homelessness, workplace deaths, and suicides but also systematic sex discrimination in child custody, criminal sentencing, public health policies, and more.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL COALITION FOR MEN

Operating since 1977, NCFM is the oldest men’s group committed to ending sex discrimination. Throughout our history we have advanced step by step, across three nations, toward our goal of resolving issues which are barriers to progress and freedom. You may quickly realize that you are not alone or that an uncomfortable feeling has been revealingly discussed here. Or you may realize that your insight or skill could dramatically improve our mutual progress. We are not finished. We are a work in progress toward substance, comradeship, and freedom. We are glad that you are here, whether you are seeking help or learning how you can work with us.

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Bloomberg for President?

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Amid reports that the FBI is close to recommending that the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecute Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified materials, and that FBI Director James Comey and other agency personnel investigating Clinton may resign if the DOJ refuses to do so, sources close to Michael Bloomberg say the billionaire former mayor of New York City may run for president if Clinton appears unable to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

CBS New York reports, “[t]hey say Bloomberg would strongly consider running if the general election looked like it would be a contest between Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.” Bloomberg, who has let on that he would be willing to spend 1 billion dollars on a campaign, is expected to make his decision by March. Four states are holding their presidential primaries and caucuses in February, and another 14 will do so on Super Tuesday, March 1st.

Appearing unfazed by her troubles, Clinton insists “nothing that I did was wrong” and said of the Bloomberg news, “the way I read what he said was if I didn’t get the nomination, he might consider it. Well, I’m going to relieve him of that and get the nomination, so he doesn’t have to.”

Unfortunately, from Clinton’s perspective, that may be a fairly big “if.” Polls show her being trounced by Sen. Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire and also losing Iowa, where the country’s first presidential primaries and caucuses will be held, and that her national figures are dropping. Other polls show that more Americans view her unfavorably than favorably.

Fox News reports, “[t]he FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible ‘intersection’ of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws.” Fox followed up on the story on Tuesday, saying, “The security investigation is now part and parcel with the criminal [public corruption] investigation.”

Bloomberg must theorize that he could appeal to voters on the basis of his success as a businessman and his time as the mayor of the nation’s most populous city. But he faces a difficult “if” of his own. Clinton been casting herself as the most anti-gun presidential candidate in American history, a distinction Bloomberg would certainly want to challenge if he threw his hat into the ring. Also, and perhaps for the same reason, a Morning Consult poll released this week found Bloomberg at 13% in a hypothetical three-way race against Donald Trump and Clinton, 11% when the Republican candidate is Sen. Ted Cruz, and down to 10% when the Republican is Sen. Marco Rubio.

Bloomberg might be able to bump those numbers up among Democrats a bit, if he promised to pardon Clinton on the first day of his presidency. That would not only endear him to Clinton’s most fanatical supporters, it would wipe the slate clean, at least legally-speaking, for someone who shares his deep antipathy for guns. With public opinion trending steadily against gun control, a President Bloomberg couldn’t afford to have one of his strongest anti-gun allies in court or in prison.

Give the Nazis What They Want: Call Them National Socialists by B.K. Marcus

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If you called Donald Trump a Nazi, he’d probably take offense, even though his nationalism is socialistic. If you called Bernie Sanders a Nazi, you’d be dismissed out of hand, though his socialism is avowedly nationalistic. But did you know that Adolf Hitler himself took offense when the word was applied to him and his political party?

“He would have considered himself a National Socialist,” writes word nerd Mark Forsyth in The Etymologicon.

Sure, but as Steve Horwitz reminds us in “Why the Candidates Keep Giving Us Reasons to Use the ‘F’ Word” (Freeman, winter 2015), “Nazi is short for National Socialist German Workers Party [Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei].” So why would even Hitler be offended by the epithet?

Because “Nazi is, and always has been, an insult,” according to Forsyth.

Hitler’s “opponents realised that you could shorten Nationalsozialistische toNazi. Why would they do this? Because Nazi was already an (utterly unrelated) term of abuse. It had been for years.”

The standard butt of German jokes at the beginning of the twentieth century were stupid Bavarian peasants. And just as Irish jokes always involve a man called Paddy, so Bavarian jokes always involved a peasant called Nazi. That’s because Nazi was a shortening of the very common Bavarian name Ignatius. This meant that Hitler’s opponents had an open goal. He had a party filled with Bavarian hicks and the name of that party could be shortened to the standard joke name for hicks.

Something similar has been happening in the Middle East, with opponents of the self-described Islamic State deciding that the group should be called instead Daesh.

Sarah Skwire explains:

ISIS does not want to be called Daesh. The group considers the acronym insulting and dismissive. An increasing number of its opponents do not want it to be called the “Islamic State.” They fear that this shorthand reifies the terrorist group’s claims to be a legitimate government. (“The Islamic State by Any Other Name,” December 8, 2015)

Totalitarians and terrorists shouldn’t get to bully us into using the terminology they prefer, especially when their preferred terms smuggle semantic baggage past our defenses, but neither should we reflexively refuse to apply accurately descriptive names just because it’s what the bad guys say they want.

Whether you consider “Islamic State” to be an appropriate moniker hinges on how you feel about both the nature of Islam and the nature of the state.

But how appropriate was Hitler’s preferred appellation? No one denies that nationalism was central to his ideology, but whether or not he deserved to call himself a socialist depends on how you feel about individual liberty, private property, central planning, and state ownership of industry. It also depends on how much you want the word socialism to carry a connotation of internationalism and social liberalism.

Horwitz writes, “The Nazis were undoubtedly socialist … as even a quick glance at their 1920 platform will tell you.” And those of us who associate private property with public welfare will tend to agree. But ours was not the dominant perspective in the countries that received National Socialism’s exiles.

As Forsyth tells it,

Refugees started turning up elsewhere complaining about the Nazis, and non-Germans of course assumed that this was the official name of the party.… To this day, most of us happily go about believing that the Nazis called themselves Nazis, when, in fact, they would probably have beaten you up for saying the word.

I suspect, however, that the confusion Forsyth describes was less innocent than his story implies. Those who fled east to get out of Germany would have found themselves under the authority of self-described socialists of the Soviet variety. Those who fled west landed among social democrats who, whether or not they were comfortable with the term “democratic socialism,” certainly didn’t want to give weight to the growing association between socialism and totalitarianism.

In the United States, the S-word was never as popular with the general public as it was in Europe, but many in the American intelligentsia did and still do seek to defang socialism in the popular imagination. The more we use the old Bavarian insult as if it were the National Socialists’ name for themselves, the more we cooperate with that agenda.

But you don’t have to oppose socialism to call the German fascists by their party’s proper name. You need only prefer historical accuracy and semantic precision to linguistic confusion — or politically motivated obfuscation.

B.K. MarcusB.K. Marcus

B.K. Marcus is editor of the Freeman.

Notorious Pro-Bernie Sanders PAC Strikes Back with Political Satire Comic Series

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bernie sanders comic book coverWASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire/ – Hands down Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders is leading in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, which may have Hillary Clinton’s team on the edge of their seat. Nonetheless, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) remains abundant with support from a political committee Americans Socially United that started this time a year ago before he announced his official candidacy for the presidential race.

Americans Socially United Director Cary Lee Peterson talks with PoliWatch about 2016 PAC activities leading to Primary Election.

The pro-Sanders PAC had scrutiny for its stance in September from a political journalist, which led to a convoluted state of opinion about the PAC and why it chose to support Bernie Sanders’ run for presidency. They’ve since restructured and are aiming back at the media with a political satire comic placed on a digital billboard in New York Times Square, a secondary jab since their first media billboard blitz in New York Times Square last April.

Americans Socially United chief director Cary Lee Peterson comments, “We were there this time a year ago. We’re still here now. You don’t like it, go start your own PAC or join a campaign committee of another candidate; we’re here and going nowhere.”

The billboard ad displays a character that portrays Bernie Sanders as a super hero flying into the scene amongst other 2016 presidential candidates with a caption that says ‘I see through you’. Ironically this billboard ad holds a handful of hidden messages that only the creators can describe.

PoliWatch spoke with pro-Bernie Sanders billboard comic artist Harrison Wood (41), currently a Las Vegas radio personality and freelancer of independent comic book series Thunder Frogs, who stated “I like what he [Bernie Sanders] stands for and I am happy to contribute to the 2016 presidential election campaigns. Every candidate out there deserves an opportunity to prove themselves and I’m glad I can use my talent to be involved in some way.”

ASU director Cary Peterson tells PoliWatch that the comic billboard ad is only the beginning of a series of political satire stokes at 2016 U.S. presidential candidates. At the end of the day the art of the pen is mightier than the sword.

3 Kinds of Economic Ignorance by Steven Horwitz

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Nothing gets me going more than overt economic ignorance.

I know I’m not alone. Consider the justified roasting that Bernie Sanders got on social media for wondering why student loans come with interest rates of 6 or 8 or 10 percent while a mortgage can be taken out for only 3 percent. (The answer, of course, is that a mortgage has collateral in the form of a house, so it is a lower-risk loan to the lender than a student loan, which has no collateral and therefore requires a higher interest rate to cover the higher risk.)

When it comes to economic ignorance, libertarians are quick to repeat Murray Rothbard’s famous observation on the subject:

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Economic ignorance comes in different forms, and some types of economic ignorance are less excusable than others. But the most important implication of Rothbard’s point is that the worst sort of economic ignorance is ignorance about your economic ignorance. There are varying degrees of blameworthiness for not knowing certain things about economics, but what is always unacceptable is not to recognize that you may not know enough to be speaking with authority, nor to understand the limits of economic knowledge.

Let’s explore three different types of economic ignorance before we return to the pervasive problem of not knowing what you don’t know.

1. What Isn’t Debated

Let’s start with the least excusable type of economic ignorance: not knowing agreed-upon theories or results in economics. There may not be a lot of these, but there are more than nonspecialists sometimes believe. Bernie Sanders’s inability to understand why uncollateralized loans have higher interest rates would fall into this category, as this is an agreed-upon claim in financial economics. Donald Trump’s bashing of free trade (and Sanders’s, too) would be another example, as the idea that free trade benefits the trading countries on the whole and over time is another strongly agreed-upon result in economics.

Trump and Sanders, and plenty of others, who make claims about economics, but who remain ignorant of basic teachings such as these, should be seen as highly blameworthy for that ignorance. But the deeper failing of many who make such errors is that they are ignorant of their ignorance. Often, they don’t even know that there are agreed-upon results in economics of which they are unaware.

2. Interpreting the Data

A second type of economic ignorance that is, in my view, less blameworthy is ignorance of economic data. As Rothbard observed, economics is a specialized discipline, and nonspecialists can’t be expected to know all the relevant theories and facts. There are a lot of economic data out there to be searched through, and often those data require careful statistical interpretation to be easily applied to questions of public policy. Economic data sources also requiretheoretical interpretation. Data do not speak for themselves — they must be integrated into a story of cause and effect through the framework of economic theory.

That said, in the world of the Internet, a lot of basic economic data are available and not that hard to find. The problem is that many people believe that certain empirical facts are true and don’t see the need to verify them by actually checking the data. For example, Bernie Sanders recently claimed that Americans are routinely working 50- and 60-hour workweeks. No doubt some Americans are, but the long-term direction of the average workweek is down, with the current average being about 34 hours per week. Longer lives and fewer working years between school and retirement have also meant a reduction in lifetime working hours and an increase in leisure time for the average American. These data are easily available at a variety of websites.

The problem of statistical interpretation can be seen with data on economic inequality, where people wrongly take static snapshots of the shares of national income held by the rich and poor to be evidence of the decline of the poor’s standard of living or their ability to move up and out of poverty.

People who wish to opine on such matters can, again, be forgiven for not knowing all the data in a specialized discipline, but if they choose to engage with the topic, they should be aware of their own limitations, including their ability to interpret the data they are discussing.

3. Different Schools of Thought

The third type of economic ignorance, and the least blameworthy, is ignorance of the multiple perspectives within the discipline of economics. There are multiple schools of thought in economics, and many empirical questions and historical facts have a variety of explanations. So a movie like The Big Short that clearly suggests that the financial crisis and Great Recession were caused by a lack of regulation might be persuasive to people who have never heard an alternative explanation that blames the combination of Federal Reserve policy and misguided government intervention in the housing market for the problems. One can make similar points about the Great Depression and the difference between Hayekian and Keynesian explanations of business cycles more generally.

These issues involving schools of thought are excellent examples of Rothbard’s point about the specialized nature of economics and what the nonspecialist can and cannot be expected to know. It is, in fact, unrealistic to expect nonexperts to know all of the arguments by the various schools of thought.

Combining Ignorance and Arrogance

What is missing from all of these types of economic ignorance — and what is often missing from knowledgeable economists themselves — is what we might call “epistemic humility,” or a willingness to admit how little we know. Noneconomists are often unable to recognize how little they know about economics, and economists are often unable to admit how little they know about the economy.

Real economic “expertise” is not just mastery of theories and facts. It is a deeper understanding of the variety of interpretations of those theories and facts and humility in the face of our limits in applying that knowledge in attempting to manage an economy. The smartest economists are the ones who know the limits of economic expertise.

Commentators with opinions on economic matters, whether presidential candidates or Facebook friends, could, at the very least, indicate that they may have biases or blind spots that lead to uses of data or interpretive frameworks with which experts might disagree.

The worst type of economic ignorance is the type of ignorance that is the worst in all fields: being ignorant of your own ignorance.

Steven HorwitzSteven Horwitz

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions.

He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

What Trump and Sanders Said about Oil Prices 4 Years Ago by Daniel Bier

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Remember when complaining about the price of gas was all the rage? The public discourse was awash in pseudo-psychology, hand-wringing about “peak oil,” and an array of conspiracy theories to explain why oil cost so much.

There was much ado about corporate “greed” (the cause of all life’s problems), hissing about “speculators,” nationalist chest-thumping about OPEC, self-proclaimed experts warning that Earth was out of oil, and many inarticulate suspicions about George Bush and Barack Obama.

Economists were pretty sure that the price of oil was related to supply and demand, but what did they know? One cantankerous socialist knew the truth:

Pump prices spiked 5% in the past month… Crude oil prices stood at $108 on Friday, up from only double digits at the beginning of the month. …

What’s the cause? Forget what you may have read about the laws of supply and demand. Oil and gas prices have almost nothing to do with economic fundamentals.

Fortunately, when he wrote that in 2012, Sen. Bernie Sanders was ahead of the game, having never read anything about supply and demand at all. Unencumbered by basic economics, he was able to see that Big Oil “gouging” and Wall Street “speculators” were to blame.

Remarkably, right around the time of the fracking revolution, the price of oil and gas started tumbling. I guess Wall Street’s heart grew three sizes that day.

But Sanders didn’t have the only theory. One super smart billionaire figured out that Saudi Arabia was the real problem:

Look at what’s going on with your gasoline prices. They’re going to go to $5, $6, $7 and we don’t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, “Fellas, it’s time. It’s over. You’re not going to do it anymore.”

When Donald Trump diagnosed this problem in 2011, his solution wasn’t just to “call Saudi Arabia” and tell them “you’re not going to raise that f***ing price!” No, he had a practical measure: seize Iraq’s oil fields. “To the victor belong the spoils. You go in. You win the war and you take it.”

It’s worth remembering this mass hysteria, although the situation today is somewhat different. The price of oil is below $30 a barrel. The International Energy Agency has warned that the world is now “drowning” in oil.

This week, the price for a particularly low-quality type of oil briefly dipped to negative fifty cents a barrel. That is, producers actually had to pay the refinery to take their oil. Has greed been abolished from the land? Maybe. But there’s also a sensible explanation: the high-sulfur oil is expensive to transport and refine, but the producers still had to get rid of it somehow.

But just a few years ago, it would have been almost unthinkable for refineries to actively discourage oil production. At $140 a barrel, almost any kind of oil is worth refining. And here’s the upshot: it was precisely those high prices that prompted the massive investment in production, exploration, and innovation that led to fracking, the shale revolution, and today’s tumbling prices. It was greedy, profit-seeking oil companies who drove the price of oil down over 80% from its peak in 2008.

It’s important to grasp these lessons now, because at some point, the price of oil — or some other commodity — will rise again, and we will be greeted by the same parade of doomsayers, conspiracy theorists, and would-be regulators that we endured for the last decade.

They’re not gone, they’re not even hiding — they’re leading the race for president.

Bonus economics of gas story: On Monday, local news in Michigan reported that a bidding war between a couple of gas stations briefly resulted in prices below 50 cents a gallon. To understand just how weird this is, the wholesale price of gasoline is about $1.

Is this another sign of irrational generosity sweeping the petroleum industry? No. Gasoline is retailed at razor thin margins; gas is typically about 70% of a station’s revenue, but only 30% of its profit. Gas stations actually make most of their money selling food, cigarettes, and bottled water inside.

Occasionally, gasoline is used as a loss leader: stations will sell gas for cheap (even at a loss) to bring people to the pump, where they can then make more money selling high-margin items like bottled drinks and tobacco.

Daniel BierDaniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

Don’t Believe The Bigots

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Despite the ongoing onslaught of lies the progressives promote against the truth concerning anything, including American history, the United States of America was founded upon Judeo/Christian Ethics.  In many circles, there was a heavy emphasis on the blessed leadership, protection, wisdom and mercy of God almighty, through his son Christ Jesus.  Great men of adventure, dating all the way back to Christopher Columbus dedicated land in this hemisphere to the God of Abraham, Isaic and Jacob.  As time progressed, there came to the fore a series of events that would build toward what would later become the United States of America.

Such a venture was an almost non-stop cascade of herculean actions which took an unlimited amount of faith, grit and intelligence to accomplish.  There were also the horrendously scorched summers that the Europeans were not accustomed to.  In addition, many of the first wave of early pilgrim settlers were wiped out through disease, starvation and bad decisions until wisdom finally prevailed and changed their fortunes and halted their demise.

Sometime later, 56 men gathered in Independence Hall in Philadelphia and said “no more” of the boot heel of tyranny under Britain’s King George and declared independence.  As a result, there was a collective wave of laughter throughout the British Empire.  After all, Great Britain was the world’s super power at the time.  So it was unfathomable to those in England that those colonial rabble rousers could present much of a challenge to the mighty Brits.

However there were four things the Founding Fathers of the United States possessed that the proud red coats did not seem to poses or exhibit.

  • Faith
  • Sense of purpose
  • Destiny
  • Mission of Liberty

For just as during the time of the prophet Nehemiah, there were those lousy skeptics and discouragers who sought to prevail against what some might describe as a rendezvous with destiny.  As the men focused more on the job at hand than the irritant discouragers, they prevailed, setting yet another example of not giving in to those who oppose what you are destined to achieve.  You can refer to Nehemiah 2: 17 to 20 in the Amplified or King James version.

Of course, Nehemiah and his friends rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem.  They clearly were victorious.  But eventually, the glory of their victory faded into a defeat for their nation.  Primarily, because the people turned away from God, who was their source of success.  In addition to that mistake, the parents and others including national leaders did not properly pass on the concept of victorious living to the succeeding generations.  Throughout the annals of history, mankind has either experienced or caused revival then fell away to defeat or decline, followed by revival again, then yet another tumbling away from the greatness of victorious living.  Yet we were meant to be continuously victorious in living all aspects of greatness, victory and positive achievement, not just a partial life of existence.

For example there is more to salvation than simply being saved from Satan’s vow of damnation with him.  Much like the founding fathers did, I believe God wants us to live complete lives of continuous advancement, vitality, victory and liberty, which they understood comes from our creator.  Our liberty and unalienable rights do not come from government or bastardized rights called civil rights either, no matter what certain people may say.

The United States was and is still meant to be the beacon of light to the world.  The light of true liberty should be so bright that rest of the world would desire to emulate the concept in their respective nations.  Through true liberty, America was once known as the envy of the world do to almost unlimited opportunities and even her cities were world renowned for their civility.  I believe America will experience a soon to come revival.  But before that can really occur there may be some sort of setback, possibly on the scale of the 9.11 attacks in 2001.  Why? Because many stupid and detrimental decisions (like the Iran deal and speeding up the growth of immorality) have been made by the current regime that has America vulnerable to possible enemy attacks or economic collapse.

Also, unfortunately our nation has become stuck in a quagmire of declining greatness because the good aspects of our past are purposely not taught to most students.  So as a result, the foundations of individual and societal greatness based upon God’s principles have not been built upon, and now our republic is in a heap of hurt.

But despite the mangled mess of today, I believe our republic will arise from her current moral, economic, political, educational and spiritual stupor.  Even though America is currently in a seemingly bottomless pit of decline, believe it or not there is much hope.  First of all, God wants us to do away with the curse of mediocrity that breeds stagnation for both individuals and the nation as a whole.

We don’t have to hold on to the brokenness that has led to the prevailing scourge of mediocrity that has led to stagnation, decline and pervasive misery.  Just as the Founding Fathers and the people of ancient Israel turned to God, especially after making wrong decisions and paying for them, let us humble ourselves and seek God’s forgiveness, wisdom, guidance and mercy.  He will then hear from heaven and forgive our national sin and heal our land.  It can’t hurt to give it a faith filled try. I believe our future generations and the republic itself is worth the effort.

God Bless You, God Bless America and May America Bless God.

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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.