Ted Cruz is Awesome! XII

What no one seems to know about Ted Cruz's time at the FTC:         (From: PJ Media)  

At the FTC, Cruz’s agenda could have been written by Milton Friedman. 

Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers. Based on his early support of disruptive online companies, Cruz has some grounds to call himself the “Uber of American politics.” 

Moreover, and perhaps surprising to some, Cruz sought and secured a broad, bipartisan consensus for his agenda. Almost all of Cruz’s initiatives received unanimous support among both Republicans and Democrats. 

Ted Cruz a consensus-builder? He was, at the FTC.

RIP Antonin Scalia, and the U.S. Constitution

RIP Antonin Scalia, who died today.  So did the U.S. Constitution.  The Constitution, however, has been sick for many years.  Here's what I wrote back in 2010:      

In 2008, the Supreme Court barely upheld the second amendment by a narrow 5-4 decision in DC v. Heller. The second amendment is all of ONE SENTENCE LONG and we’ve been debating its meaning for 220 years. It couldn’t be simpler. Yet it barely squeaked by with nary a vote to spare. A similar case, McDonald v. Chicago, is in the court right now and as usual, all bets are off despite that one, single, simple, clear, sentence. 

Now we have a new “right to healthcare”.  This week the president rewired 17% of the US economy with the stroke of a pen and a new 3000 page law.  Remember, the second amendment is one sentence long! How are we going to interpret our new 3000 page right to healthcare? Of course, unlike the right to bear arms, which hangs from a thread, the right to healthcare is not in the constitution. 

Nor is the “right” to Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare, but the court has never done anything about them either. These programs are like “deem and pass” amendments, unofficial changes to the constitution that we have selfishly agreed to allow because, hey, we like free stuff. All the while, we shamelessly stick our kids and grandkids with the bill, but we’re worth it, right? 

Roe v. Wade is based on another non-existent right, the so-called “right to privacy”. This right was based on a “penumbra” or weak shadow, cast by the bill of rights. Seriously, that’s how they justified it. The imaginary right to privacy was conjured-up by lawyers looking to find exactly what they needed in the constitution.  It is made-up. Yet that hasn’t stopped this law from surviving for some 26 years. 

We just watched the spectacle of the President berating the Supreme Court in his State of the Union Speech because they had the temerity to uphold the first amendment in Citizens United v. FEC.  Again, that was a narrow 5-4 decision on the really complicated first amendment, which is another behemoth at one sentence long! 

In short, rights that really are there, in clear language, must fight to within an inch of their lives, while imaginary rights, like the latest one, are cheered through with parades and marching bands. 

So I ask: If the constitution can mean anything, is it not really meaningless? Picture an orchestra warming up. There is no rhythm, no melody, no key, no limits, and no beauty. Just avant-garde progressive noise. That is the music of our modern US constitution.

Trump does Caddyshack!

Ready for Hillary!

There is zero chance Barack Obama will allow his DOJ to indict Hillary Clinton.  No, punishments for jeopardizing national security are for opponents only.  The rule of law under Barack Obama is that there is no rule or law that applies to his political allies.  But we can pretend... 

Ted Cruz is Awesome! XI

saw this tonight and had to repost:

  

DON SURBER: Thank You, Ted Cruz, For Helping Flint Out. How many bottles of water did Bernie Sanders send?
Well, none, but he has a new ad with Simon and Garfunkel music.
Posted at 11:22 pm by Glenn Reynolds   (from Glenn Reynolds www.instapundit.com)
Here's the Don Surber piece below:  
Thank you, Cruz, for helping out Flint

Having spent much time in January 2014 trying to score bottled water when the local water system went down, my heart is with those in Flint, Michigan, who are without safe water. Ours was from an industrial alcohol that smelled like licorice and within weeks it disappeared. They have lead in theirs, so the problem is a real nightmare.

Ted Cruz came to the rescue with 600 gallons of water. That does not sound like much, until you consider that is 600 people who got a gallon of water when their water was out.

From WJRT:

Senator Ted Cruz's Michigan office spent the day handing out gallons of water to the Flint community.

We caught up with them as they dropped off gallons of water at Carriage Town Ministries.

They dropped off around 600 gallons and cases of water throughout the area, delivering to expectant mothers at crisis centers.

Volunteers say it's the least they can do to help out residents in need of clean water.

"Senator Cruz has already made a very strong statement on this issue in support of the people of Flint, in acknowledging what's happened with the government failure on basically every level. And we believe it's our civic duty to reach out. We have to be willing to step up. And here we are putting our money and time where our mouth is," said Wendy Day, state director for the Ted Cruz campaign.

Cruz talked about Flint's water emergency on the campaign trail. While in New Hampshire, he said, "What has happened in Flint, Michigan is an absolute travesty. The men and women have been betrayed. Every one of us is entitled to have clean water. And to all the children who have been poisoned...by government officials, by their negligence, their ineptitude, there needs to be accountability as to why dirty water, poisoned water was given to a community that did not deserve this. Need to ensure there is accountability, clean water and clean air. Prayers for people of Flint, Michigan that health affects aren't as long-lasting as many think they will be. Needs to be accountability from the city government all the way up."

The EPA knew about this problem and did nothing.

And Washington pundits wonder why the people are against everything Washington stands for?

By the way, where was Bernie? Hillary? O'Malley? Any of the staffs of the other Republicans?

Hell, where was Barack Obama?

Socialists, Progressives, Communists, and Democrats; What are the differences?

Bernie Sanders is a socialist.  Hillary swears she's no socialist, she's a progressive democrat. Barack Obama swears he's no socialist either.  No one openly admits to being a communist.  What are the differences between these philosophies?

I maintain the above question is the wrong question.  The correct question is, "what unites these philosophies?"  The differences all relate to tactics and emphasis, not philosophy.  The underlying philosophy is the same in all cases.

Socialists, progressives, communists, and modern democrats in the U.S. are all Marxists.  They all believe as their foundational tenet in government coerced egalitarianism (equality of stuff).  The Marxist slogan, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.", applies in all cases.  This is not organic egalitarianism.  It is imposed by the government through force.

Democrats and progressives want to impose this Marxist utopia gradually and nominally through the political process, but they cannot reveal their intentions.  Socialists want exactly the same thing, only they are willing to reveal their intentions.  Communists are different only in that not only are they willing to reveal their intentions, they hope to achieve their utopia through revolution.

But in all cases utopia is the goal and it is the same vision despite some differences in detail.  Never is there a limiting principle.  In other words, how would a progressive know when the work is done? How would they know when the utopian dream has been achieved?  They cannot tell us.  

Progressivism and progressive democrats in the U.S. are unique.  That's because those terms relate specifically to our constitution.  The constitution is a formidable roadblock to Marxism.  Therefore, it must be relegated to the dustbin of history.  Progressivism means progressively dismantling the constitution.  Where will this progress end? Only when the constitution is completely dead.  It must be destroyed because it alone stands in the way of the Marxist utopia.

What makes America exceptional are the ideas on which it was founded.   Primary among them are the ideas that we are all equal in our rights, our relationship to the law, and the governments job is to protect the rights of the individual.  Marxism turns those ideas upside-down and puts the government over the individual in order to impose equality of outcomes.

So this is what it means when you hear a politician claim, "I'm no socialist/communist/Marxist, etc. I'm a progressive democrat!"  There is no difference.    

      

Ted Cruz is Awesome! X

Donald Trump won hands-down over Ted Cruz on the "New York Values" exchange during Thursday's debate when he invoked 9/11.  It was evidence of Trump's evolving genius as a politician. Yet, I'm a constitutionalist, and therefore a natural supporter of the less skilled Cruz.  Hence, this post is not about Trump's victory, but Cruz's adept "apology" to the people of NY after the debate.  He did an awesome job of turning lemons into lemonade.

Barack Obama - A Legacy of Deception and Destruction

I wish I could spend the aftermath of Barack Obama's final State Of The Union Address praising him for his public service.  Even I, a Classical Liberal, had high hopes for our first black president.  But I had studied him before he took his oath.  I knew his tactics would be Alinsky, his economics Demand Side, his government totalitarian, and his national security policy appeasement.  I have not been surprised these last seven years by Barack Obama.  What has surprised me is the degree to which the country has turned a blind eye and ignored Obama's deceptions and destruction.

If you've ever tried to build something, you'd know that it is much harder to build than to destroy. Demolition is the quickest part of any project.  Construction and rebuilding are slow and arduous. Ever wonder how Obama can squeeze in hundreds of rounds of golf, nonstop fundraisers, constant non-working vacations, endless campaigning, globetrotting, partying with Hollywood celebrities, and appearances on lightweight entertainment shows?  It's easy.  His project is not about building.  It's about tearing things down.  Demolition is easy.  You can do it in your spare time.  And if you deceive enough people, they won't even know what you are up to.

Here are the four main areas of Obama's deceptions and destruction as highlighted by his SOTU speech yesterday:

The Economy - The central deception of Obama's economic crowing is that he inherited a mess from George W Bush, he fixed it, and now we are on a path towards building a stronger economy.   Deceptions all.  He and the Democrats created the mess by advocating Demand Side socialist housing policies in the 1990s.  Democrats under Bill Clinton with an assist from Community Organizers like Barack Obama instituted those policies which redistributed risk from home buyers to the federal government and created a massive housing bubble that Ben Bernanke violently burst in 2006 under the hapless George W Bush. In the wake of the deceptions about this, Obama was swept into office only to double down on the destruction of any semblance of a free market housing policy.  Dodd Frank put the government firmly in control of all credit allocation, and today Fannie and Freddie own a larger percent of mortgages than they did in 2008.  National debt has doubled, workforce participation is at an all time low, growth is anemic, business creation is at a standstill, wages are stagnant, the poor are poorer, the rich are richer, The Fed and central banks call all the shots in the global economy, commodities are collapsing, and the world is reeling.

Whats more, new socialist bubbles have been inflated.  Twelve and a half trillion dollars have been borrowed from our children,  all student loans have been socialized, new socialist housing policies are being instituted daily, and even car loans are subprimed and bubbled thanks in part to the same kind of government pressure that led to the subprime mortgage disaster.  In short, the destruction of our once free market system is well underway.

National Security - President Peace Prize likes to crow that he's ended wars, got bin Laden, made friends with old enemies, and brought about an era of peace around the globe.  Every one a massive deception.  Wars have not ended, but expanded.  Our involvement has been reduced, but at what cost? The Taliban controls more of Afghanistan than at any time since 9/11.  ISIS has an actual Caliphate in Iraq and Syria complete with revenue, an army, and advanced weapons.  Death and destruction from ISIS are everywhere, including in the U.S. on an almost weekly basis.  Refugees have overtaken Europe and are flooding here as well.  Putin is on the march.  Iran is flexing it's newfound hegemony thanks to Obama's tragic trade deal sold as a nuclear deal.  The only democracy in the mid-east, Israel, is now effectively an enemy.   Every semblance of stability in the world has been destroyed by Obama's policies.

And Obama didn't get bin Laden.  Every one of the policies and actions that led to getting bin Laden were put in place by George W Bush and opposed - OPPOSED -  by Barack Obama.  His only contribution was to be warming the seat in the oval office when it all went down.

Political Tone - Obama sold himself as a messianic figure sent here to unite us.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  The Alinsky tactics are "Divide and Conquer - 101".  This has always been Obama's playbook.  He taught Alinsky in college.  He was an Alinsky Community Organizer. He has never strayed from Alinsky, not for one minute.  As a result we got Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, Black Lives Matter, open season on Cops, a weaponized IRS, demagoguery about Fox News, Tea Baggers, the GOP, bitter clingers, the NRA, religious people, the rich, the successful, non-union companies, etc.  The country has not been this divided perhaps since 1865.

Obamacare, which restructured almost twenty percent of our economy, was shoved down the throats of the country over the unanimous objections of Republicans and a majority of all Americans. Major transformative legislation had never been imposed in such a way without bi-partisan support. Ever.  In the country's history.  But Obamacare was just the beginning.  When Obama cannot sell a policy to the American people, or to their elected representatives, he simply executes an executive order as he's done on immigration, Obamacare modifications, guns, unions, etc. Any other president would have been stopped or impeached long ago.  But Obama is our first black president and he leverages it. He doesn't just play the race card, he lives in a house of race cards, and knows that no one will ever dare approach.

Which brings me to the final deception and destruction of Obama's reign - The Constitution.  Obama and his supporters were quick to tell skeptics that he was a big fan of The Constitution.  He'd studied it and taught it.  Why he was practically a founding father!  Yes, Barack Obama was an expert in The Constitution, but only in the same way that a bank robber is an expert in bank security.  He was casing the joint!  He had studied it's weaknesses, knew it's vulnerabilities, and knew how to destroy it.  Obama knew that The Constitution was a limit on what government could do, but he also learned that it was not self-defending.  The Constitution is not like the Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones movie - it cannot smite those who seek to destroy it.  It is essentially a voluntary pact between the people and the government. Any determined totalitarian can easily run roughshod over it's weak defenses.  And Obama is nothing if not determined.

A great clause by clause analysis of Obama's willful destruction of The U.S. Constitution is contained in Senator Mike Lee's book,  "Our Lost Constitution - The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document".   There's too much for me to attempt a summary.    

The success of Obama and liberalism to deceive and destroy is due to a cocktail of history and culture that will be a subject for historians and political scientists for generations.  But regardless of how we got here, the reality is liberalism, Socialism, anti-constitutionalism, appeasement, totalitarianism, and Alinsky tactics are the dominant political movements in America today.   The media, Hollywood, academia, TV, and pop music are all-in reflecting and amplifying this agenda.

Anyone, like yours truly, who opposes this zeitgeist is fighting a limited rear-guard action which is likely doomed to failure.  Unless, that is, we have a purely national security election or two, and I don't wish that on anyone because that would mean we are under imminent threat.  Is it any wonder then that a guy like Donald Trump is leading a primary race and that his strongest support is from disaffected registered Democrats? 

      

        

Diet Facism

As everyone knows, the constitution mandates that every five years our government tells us what to eat.  So it is that we have a new directive from the Obama administration - the people who have done such an amazing job of making our entire federal government as efficient, trustworthy, and customer oriented as... The IRS.

Here is an executive summary of the 2015 dietary guidelines: link

Some of the key brilliance found within:

• Saturated fats (natural) and trans fats (manmade) are treated as equally bad.  This defies logic and has been debunked thoroughly.
• Unsaturated vegetable fats (many of which are highly processed) are the recommended fats. This also defies logic.    
• Grains, half of which should be "whole grains", yet all of which are highly processed in the modern world, are still being encouraged as a staple.  This would be great advice in the old days when a farmer grew wheat and then had it ground locally and made into food soon thereafter. But in todays world of modern grain processing this makes no sense.   Grains labelled "whole grains" today are usually refined flours to which they have added back the germ and the bran in proportions unrelated to actual complete grains.  Consumers will be hard pressed to know whether they are buying complete grains or reconstituted "whole grains". 

• According to the bureaucrats - who would never take the advice of sugar lobbyists - a healthy diet can include up to 10% of total calories as added sugars.  That's added sugar, not total! Total carbohydrates would be much higher given the recommendation to drink skim milk, eat lots of fruity things, and load up on pasta and bread.   

And we wonder why we have an ongoing obesity epidemic!

The fact is, governments don't do science.  Individuals do science.  Governments do consensus. Consensus is not science.  No one said this better than the late author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, etc.):

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Crichton was not referring to diet science here but it applies.  Governments are always telling us, "the science is settled".  They've been saying that about diet since 1977.  And yet, obesity rates in the U.S. have skyrocketed since then.   The original "Food Pyramid" that helped put the obesity epidemic on steroids in the 1990s is at the top of this page.

What are the odds these same consensus followers are right about any scientific matter?

If only our government would get back to the business of constitutionally limited government and leave the science to the few gifted scientists who can actually prove their theories.  We'd all be better off and much healthier.      

*If the subject of diet and science interests you, please check out my review of the diet documentary "Fed Up".  Link

What do you call a President who makes Laws without Congress?

Occupy Oregon

The hypocrisy of the Left is truly breathtaking sometimes.  Not that they have a monopoly on it, but they sure seem to have a Google-sized market share.  Take the current stand-off in Oregon where some rabble rousers led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy are trespassing and occupying an Oregon wildlife refuge in protest of federal land holdings, ranchers rights, or some such thing.  Lefties are all over the media (social and otherwise) mocking this petulant and pointless usurpation of public property.  Yup, those would be the same folks who were camped-out across America in public parks mirroring the Occupy Wall Street movement, which employed the exact same tactic to similarly useless ends.

Hopefully, unlike Occupy Wall Street, which resulted in lost lives, rapes, millions in destroyed property, and inconvenience for countless law abiding citizens, this Oregon tantrum will end with a whimper.    

Ted Cruz is Awesome! IX

Look Up, America

Think the above meme is over-the-top?  Think again.

Remember the IRS scandal?  The one where the Obama IRS was (and still is) targeting conservative groups and persecuting them with exemption delays, audits, and ridiculous document requests?  Well, one of the things they required of a particular Christian group was that they reveal the content of their prayers.
  
Meanwhile, just this week in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack we learned that Tashfeen Malik, the terrorist immigrant wife, had been posting jihadist material on social media but DHS had a policy that protected her privacy.  She was not an American.  She wanted to kill Americans.  Yet according to the Obama-ocracy, her imaginary right to privacy trumped the right of American citizens to continue living.

The average American knows nothing of this but can easily name every single member of the Kardashian family, and thinks it would be really neat to have a female president replace the first black president.

Maybe this is why the level of divisiveness and passion is so high for this election cycle.  Some see the headlights of a train coming, while others are mesmerized by the light gleaming off the shiny tracks.  

The Fed Finally Moves

Now that Janet Yellen and the Fed have finally gotten off the floor, it's time to review a brief history of Fed tinkering and its consequences.

Below is the Fed Funds Target Rates for the last 15 years.  (2010 -2015 = 0.0%)

During the period 2001 - 2004 the Fed lowered rates eventually down to 1% to boost a sagging economy and in response to 9/11.  This had an important side effect.  The already emerging housing bubble got a massive new injection of easy money.  The housing bubble was originated by alternative government mortgage policies dating back to the 1990s which upended thousands of years of sound lending practices.  This included mandates for Fannie and Freddie to buy the bulk of the new alternative mortgages.  Then came the Fed.  By lowering rates to historically low levels, the housing bubble was put on steroids.  Along with all the new easy Fed money came the mortgage derivative monster that Hollywood loves to focus on.  This was how the bubble got so big and so dangerous. Fed tinkering, no matter how well-meaning, played a big role.  But the real damage came when the Fed violently burst the bubble it helped create.        

Ben Bernanke became Fed Chairman February 1, 2006 when the Fed Target rate had already been raised by Alan Greenspan to 4.25% from 1%. The day Bernanke became Chairman, he raised the Target Rate to 4.5%, but he didn’t stop there. He kept raising until July 1, 2006 when the Fed Funds Target hit 5.25%. So from July 1, 2004 to July 1, 2006 the Fed raised it’s Target Rate from 1.00% to 5.25%, an increase of 425% in 24 months.

Imagine if food or gasoline went up by 425.00%! Can you picture the carnage?

What effect did all those rate increases have on the yield curve and why would that matter? Well, as most economists will tell you, nothing screams recession quite like an inverted yield curve (when long term rates are lower than short term rates).  Forcing a negative yield curve is economic poison.

In January, just before Bernanke became Chairman, the yield curve was essentially flat with a slightly positive bias, but that quickly changed. Bernanke’s first raise to 4.5%, resulted in a slightly negative yield curve and again, he kept raising the Fed Target all the way to 5.25% by July 1, 2006. By November 2006, there was a clear downward trend in yields. (see chart below).

Why did Bernanke's Fed keep raising interest rates in the midst of a housing bubble with a midterm election coming up in November 2006 and a yield curve already threatening negative by late 2005? Why did they persist and force the yield curve decidedly negative by mid 2006 thus throwing us into recession and crashing the housing market?  Only they know, but their tinkering turned a bubble into a financial crisis.  

The collapse of the housing market quickly inspired the Fed to lower once again - all the way down to zero this time.  That's where it's been for about seven years.  No President in Fed history has enjoyed an economy for his entire term boosted by 0.0% Fed funds rates as has Barack Obama.  So what side effects are we experiencing this time?

That's the funny thing about interest rates; the side effects of Fed tinkering only reveal themselves over time.  Consider this:  During the Obama presidency we have been able to borrow and print over $12 trillion including QEI, II, and III - more than every other U.S. president - combined!  We have financed that spending spree with cheap money that will not last.  When rates normalize, it will consume the federal budget in a way we have never seen before.  This government borrowing bubble will make the housing bubble seem like small potatoes in comparison.

Janet Yellen and Barack Obama hope they will be long gone when that happens.    

    

 


 

Is Islam just a Religion?

I do not take Donald Trump seriously, and have not since he entered the race.  Despite his consistent lead in the polls, I stand by what I wrote months ago :

Donald Trump is the Howard Stern of politics.  He’s a shock jock in a field of politicians who sound like boring newsreaders in comparison.  He opens his mouth and out comes ego, shameless self-promotion, outrageousness, braggadocio, and downright meanness towards his detractors.  But there are other things too which endear him to his audience.   He’s fearless, confident, unapologetic, and says things no one else has the cojones to say.   And he's entertaining.  In other words, he’s exactly like Howard Stern.  His fans are the same too.  Listen to them talk and you'll find yourself expecting them to blurt out “Baba Booey!” any second.  

Donald Trump is a serious candidate for President the same way Howard Stern was a serious candidate when he ran for Governor of New York in 1994.  Stern didn’t win.  Neither will Trump. 

      

That said, Trump does create opportunities for serious discussion as he has most recently with his seemingly extreme position on a pause in Muslims being allowed into the country.  The reason this is so controversial is that we have two definitions for Islam in the West.

If you deplore Trump's proposal, chances are you think of Islam as just another religion.  Every other religion in the world has its fanatics and orthodox observants.  Islam is no different.  Singling out a religion on any level seemingly violates the principles on which we were founded.

However, if you believe Trump's proposal deserves a fair hearing, chances are you think of Islam, particularly the Salafist variety, as a treasonous and murderous political movement inseparable from a religion.   Our constitution specifically defines treason as a crime and grants the legislature the power to deal with it accordingly.

In other words, everything hinges on one's knowledge of Islam and whether it is seen as just a religion, or as a treasonous political movement.  Neither side is crazy.  Neither side is being un-American. Neither side is morally inferior.  It is a disconnect based on different understandings of Islam.  A majority, including many Republicans from Dick Cheney to Paul Ryan, apparently define Islam as just a religion.  A minority believe that's naive.

I wonder how those whacky nut-jobs Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would see it given the recent power of Islam to project its power within our borders?

(Hat tip to The Wall Street Journal for today's "Notable & Quotable" column which featured the above Adams and Jefferson quote.)



   

Obama, Guns, Islam, and San Bernardino

In a case of galloping irony, I picked-up my newspaper today and saw two stories on page one :  The massacre by Muslims in San Bernardino, CA, and the U.S. is set to lift sanctions on Iran.

Meanwhile, Obama's message after the massacre in CA was, of course, about...gun control.

So, over a hundred billion dollars goes to the people who desire nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and chant "Death to America", and law abiding Americans have their constitutional right to self defense taken from them.

Is it any wonder some people think Donald Trump would be an improvement?  I believe my labradoodle would be an improvement!

ICYMI, this one says it all:

    

The Syrian Refugee Problem - Part 2

In Part 1, I posed the following questions regarding the problem of Syrian Refugees:

• Are the refugees fleeing a war?
• Are they coming here for a better life?
• Do we owe them a better life? 
• Are they coming here to conquer us?  
• Is coming here the best way for them to have a better life?
• Can we know they are not terrorists?
• Can we discriminate against refugees based on religion?
• Does the West have an obligation to absorb every civil war torn population?

These Muslim refugees are not innocent victims fleeing a war.  There is no war in Kosovo, and the majority were Kosovars in early 2015.  Even now, the majority of Muslim refugees are from countries other than Syria and without wars.    

Of the minority fleeing Syria lately, the majority of them, 72%, are fighting age men.  And they are Sunnis, not the more endangered Christians and Infidels.  These men are the rebels who tried to overthrow Assad and failed.  If they stay, they will likely be imprisoned or worse by Assad.   Assad's ally, Russia, is now actively involved in the fighting and that is a game changer.  As Russia swooped in, the Sunni rebels swooped out.  It's that simple.  The Syrians who are seeking refugee status are fleeing a war they started and now have lost.    

  

And yes, most refugees are seeking a better economic life than the one they currently have.  They are aggressively seeking out countries that have the best welfare programs and job opportunities, which is why they insist on getting to Germany and the US for example.  

But, do we owe them a better life?  We have historically been very welcoming to immigrants in the U.S.  Much of this occurred before we became a welfare state.  Now that we are a welfare state though, it is increasingly expensive and politically divisive to welcome unlimited numbers of needy immigrants.

But these immigrants present a new question:  Are they coming to conquer us?  Islam has a word, hijrah (hejira, or hijra, etc.), which means emigration jihad.  In other words a holy war conducted through demographic overthrow.  The idea is to infiltrate the West and conquer it from within.  The history of Islam is replete with such conquests, many of them successful.   So yes, they seek to conquer the West.

If a better life is all they seek, is emigrating to the West the best way to achieve that?  A better way is to create a better life for them in their homelands.  It is actually cheaper too.  This seems obvious, but there is no will to pursue this in the West, or from those engaged in hijrah.

Can we know they are not terrorists?  Of course there is no way to screen terrorists, or potential terrorists from this wave of hijrah.  

Which brings us to the real question:  Can we discriminate against refugees based on religion?  This is really an interesting question when it comes to Islam because Islam is not just a religion - Islam is also a violent political system.  These two aspects of Islam are, in current practice, inseparable.

Of course in the U.S., we don't care which God you pray to or what holidays you observe.  But if your religion is hell-bent on denying others their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we ought to discriminate against you.  If your faith imposes it's ideology on others against their will, we ought to discriminate against you.  But the duality of Islam is a paradigm we cannot wrap our minds around in the West.  We are incapable of understanding the difference between a mere religion, and a religious political movement which incites violence.

The grey area in the U.S. is what constitutes "inciting violence".  Courts have given wide latitude for hate speech in the U.S. and even allowed some speech which clearly incites violence.  In other words, an Imam at a Mosque in the U.S. can basically implore his congregants to blow things up and kill thousands in the name of Islam, but as long as he chooses his words carefully, we cannot legally stop him.

Finally, does the West have an obligation to absorb every civil war-torn population?  When the option of engaging enemies abroad is taken off the table, and when we are unwilling to identify the enemy amongst us, we have painted ourselves into a dangerous corner.

This is how democracies commit suicide.                    

     

The Syrian Refugee Problem - Part 1

Battle lines have been drawn on the issue of Syrian refugees.  (Whether or not the refugees are actually from Syria is beside the point.)  The questions everyone is struggling with are these:

• Are the refugees fleeing a war?
• Are they coming here for a better life?
• Do we owe them a better life? 
• Are they coming here to conquer us?  
• Is coming here the best way for them to have a better life?
• Can we know they are not terrorists?
• Can we discriminate against refugees based on religion?
• Does the West have an obligation to absorb every civil war torn population?

All good questions.  Before I answer them, please watch some Syrians sing about one of their favorite events:  

(YouTube has deleted this content, and as we now know this censorship is often done at the direction of the U.S. government in direct violation of the First Amendment to The Constitution of The United States.)



I'll answer the questions in my next post - Part 2.

The Syrian Refugee Problem - Part-2

Déjà vu à Paris

I wrote the following in March of this year:

Kinetic Islam Déjà vu 

In March of 2001 Mullah Omar and the Taliban destroyed two 1700 year-old stone Buddahs in Afghanistan.  One of them stood 165 feet tall.  At the time few westerners understood that act.  Six months later when the twin towers of The World Trade Center were destroyed we all got an education in how kinetic Islam feels about infidel idols and symbols.  

Fast forward to today and the exact same thing is happening in Iraq.  Islamic State, or ISIS, or ISIL, is summarily destroying ancient churches, statues, artwork, and symbols of the infidels.  This time we have some perspective on why this behavior is occurring – Islam, or at least a fundamental interpretation of Islam, leads its followers to destroy these symbols.  It turns out the Quran, like the Old and New Testaments, contains a fair amount of idol destruction.  The difference is Christians and Jews do not go about re-enacting these verses from the early days of monotheism.  Muslims do, particularly the kinetic radical fundamental type. 

What scares me is the timing of all this.  Six months after the Buddahs came down we got 9/11.  I hope kinetic Islam has a different schedule this time.

Anatomy of a Myth - Democrats are Better for the Economy!

The Wall Street Journal published a letter Nov, 3rd from two Princeton Professors, Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, defending Hillary Clinton for saying, "The economy does better when you have a Democrat in the White House!"  They have written a well publicized research paper proving her assertion.  Alan Blinder is a Clinton advisor.

Robert Reich, (no relation), is another one who has written extensively about the miraculous economies of Democrats, particularly in the years after WWII.   Robert Reich served in the Bill Clinton administration.

The New York Times ran a related piece in 2008,  right before the election,  about how the stock market does much better under Democrats than under Republicans.  The New York Times is a long time supporter of both Clintons. (I refuted the NYT piece thoroughly at the time here.  I highly recommend reading it.)

We can expect much more of this as the 2016 election approaches.  Having studied these claims for years, I find this is all carefully calculated political sophistry, but very weak economics, and void of logic.      

The GDP assertions are of two types:

• Democrat presidents have a better record of growing GDP since 1947.
• During some of our best GDP growth periods we had much higher tax rates and a highly unionized workforce.  

Both assertions are factually correct - and meaningless at the same time.

It is true that Democrat presidents have a better record of growing GDP.  After all, Democrats are the party of growing government, and GDP includes government spending.  Ergo, when government grows, GDP grows.  Barack Obama borrowed and printed fourteen trillion dollars, all of which added to GDP, but must be paid back at some future time.   GDP doesn't account for that. It is a one sided account entry.  If you take away the fourteen trillion in debt and QE under Obama, growth is about ten trillion...negative, since he took office.  But that's not how GDP growth is reported. It should be if we want the whole story.   

Another factor is that Republican presidents have had two hands tied behind their backs when it comes to economic policy: power and interest rates.  No Republican president since 1947 has ever had full robust control of both houses of the legislature.  Democrats, on the other hand, had either filibuster power (40 votes) or complete control (60 votes) of the Senate every second since 1947. Democrats had complete control of the executive and legislative branches for 20 years since 1947. Republicans had all of 4 years.  Moreover, Republican presidents have had an interest rate headwind averaging about 38% higher rates since the Fed began setting rates.  Albeit, most of that discrepancy comes from the historically low rates from the Obama years. 

Additionally, presidential party affiliation has almost no correlation with economic policies over time.  JFK, a Democrat, was a tax cutting supply-sider like Reagan, and nothing like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.  Richard Nixon, a Republican, instituted wage and price controls, something Ronald Reagan would never have done.  Bill Clinton ended up as a free trader and a capital gains tax cutter.  The list goes on.

Finally, economic policies do not reveal themselves instantly.  Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security were passed by Democrats long ago, but only now threaten to explode in our faces.  George W. Bush was saddled with the 2008 sub-prime disaster, yet Bill Clinton and the Democrats set that disaster in motion in the 1990’s when they thought it was a good idea to offer mortgages to unqualified people.  Sub-prime boosted the economy smartly until it blew-up over a decade later. Barack Obama likes to claim victimhood for inheriting the sub-prime mess, yet he was a key supporter all the way back to his community organizer days.  He continued that support while in the Illinois state senate,  into the U.S. Senate in 2008, and continuing even to this very day as president.   

Alan Blinder asserted in his letter that the economy is healthier today than it was in 2009.  I calculated that if we had just given every family in the US the money added to the debt since 2009, plus the Fed’s Quantitative Easing under Obama, each household could have been gifted $120,000.  My Labradoodle could have improved the economy if you gave him $14 trillion to re-distribute!

Robert Reich waxes nostalgic for the halcyon days after WWII when tax rates and unionization were high and the economy grew like topsy.  He is making a classic "post hoc" fallacy mistake.  ("post hoc, ergo propter hoc" is latin for the logical fallacy, "after this, therefore because if this.") Correlation is not causation.  Yes, the post war economy was very strong for decades, but that strength had nothing to do with high taxes and unionization.   In fact it was in spite of that.  WWII left us the only intact industrialized country in the world.  Japan, Europe, and the USSR were smoldering ruins.  China was still in loincloths.  South Korea was on the verge of its own war.   Of course we grew!  We could do no wrong with that tailwind.

Despite being convinced that Democrats are not superior stewards of the economy, I cannot make the claim that Republicans are.  There's just too much noise in an economy.  Too many moving parts. And party affiliation is too weak an indicator of historical economic philosophy.  

It all comes down to where the parties are at a given point in time.  Today's Democrat party is a Demand Side Economics party, and there's one thing I know in this life; nothing good ever comes from a Demand Side Economy.  

(For my definition of Demand Side Economics see this.  And this.)    

Ted Cruz is Awesome! VIII

Watch for as long as you like, but the whole thing is worth seeing.
At least to this classical liberal observer, this may be the best political speech I've ever seen.

Here's the link in case the embed doesn't work properly. Remember, this is C-SPAN, a government operation.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?328980-12/senator-ted-cruz-budget-deal

Ted Cruz is Awesome! VII

I heard Ben Carson refer to this as a "Cruz Missile".  I like that.

Search for Ted Cruz in the upper left search box for the other six "Ted Cruz is Awesome!" posts.

UPDATE: I tried to upload my own version of this exchange from CNBC but was blocked by NBC for copyright infringement.  I intend to file a claim based on this being a public matter that is now in the public domain.  If they continue to fight, I will research whether they are as strict with Democrat content, because if not, that constitutes an in-kind unreported campaign contribution to the Democrat party.  As Saul Alinsky said, "Make them live up to their own book of rules."  This will be interesting...

UPDATE2: They capitulated, and the above clip is now my version.  

Happy Birthday, Hillary!

On the occasion of Hillary Clinton's 68th trip around the sun, I offer two videos I made just for her, because everyone knows store bought gifts are never as cool as hand crafted ones.  Please enjoy and share!

Dude, Benghazi Still Matters!

(Originally posted May 7, 2014)

According to the “Obama-Is-Awesome” crowd, Benghazi doesn’t matter.  It’s old news, the election’s over, Fox is the only network that cares, nothing can bring back those who died, it’s all about politics, what difference does it make, move on dot org, let’s focus on jobs, look, the Koch brothers, and go Hillary 2016! 

Dude, Benghazi still matters.  Some are calling the Ben Rhodes email a smoking gun.  Yes it is, but not just for what it says.  The Ben Rhodes email proves illegal activity on the part of the Obama Administration.  Remember, this email was part of a previous subpoena but was withheld by the administration.  A judge forced its release as part of another subpoena from a private lawsuit.  At this rate there could be hundreds of such documents. This renders all previous hearings and investigations null and void.  It is abundantly clear that there has been a twenty-month campaign by the Obama administration to stonewall and cover-up the truth.  Innocent parties don’t behave this way.  And it is illegal to ignore a subpoena.

The content of the withheld email along with recent testimony contradicts everything the administration has been telling us.  They were involved in pushing the YouTube video story.  They did edit the talking points.  They did know an al Qaeda affiliate called Ansar al-Sharia was responsible.  They knew there was no demonstration about a video in Benghazi.

Moreover, they have never revealed why requested security was denied and who was responsible.  They have never told us why Chris Stevens and the CIA were in Benghazi.  They have never explained Barack Obama’s whereabouts during the attack and involvement in the decision not to attempt a rescue.  They still have not brought justice to the murderers - no one has been captured or punished - despite several journalists being able to locate and interview the perpetrators.  A filmmaker was jailed for a full year as a result of this alleged deception.  $70,000 in taxpayer funds was spent on ads in Muslim countries to apologize for a YouTube video. 

The Presidential oath of office begins with the line “I do solemnly swear to faithfully execute the Office of The President…”  The definition of faithfully is “in a manner that is true to the facts…”  Just in recent history Richard Nixon lost his job because he did not act in a manner true to the facts.  Bill Clinton was impeached for the same offense.  No one died in either case.  Did Barack Obama know the truth about Benghazi and then lie to the American people to cover-up his incompetence in the face of a re-election campaign?  This matters, and Presidents have lost their jobs over it. 

The second line of the Presidential oath regards the obligation to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution…”  If the YouTube video was a deception to cover-up incompetence, then jailing a filmmaker to support the deception clearly violates the Constitution.  If the video was a deception, then the $70,000 spent on running ads in Muslim countries was a theft of taxpayer funds for purposes of winning an election. 

Hillary Clinton aspires to swearing the same oath as Barack Obama.  She swore a similar oath as Secretary of State. 

Dude, Benghazi still matters, and learning the truth is the right thing to do.

(UPDATE:  Since 5/7/14 thousands of illegally hidden emails have been discovered pertaining to this matter.  There are still thousands more illegally withheld as part of the stonewall put up by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  What they are hiding is the subject of these hearings, and it should be.)    

Why Socialism is Chic, and Capitalism is Not (ICYMI)

Socialism is chic in 2015.   But, just a few short years ago Obama voters would mock and charge racism when anyone likened his ideology to socialism.  Now Bernie Sanders, an openly socialist candidate, is leading in some key polls of those very same voters!

Why is this happening in a country which enjoys the highest standard of living of any large diverse country, and one which uniquely earned it's place due to its historic reliance on free markets and constitutionally limited government?  Part of this is a triumph of deliberate indoctrination which has been going on for at least half a century.  Another part, and the most recent part, is a deliberate deception regarding the financial crisis of 2008.

Pop quiz:   

1. Who is the father of modern socialism/communism?  
2. Who is the father of modern capitalism? 

Odds are you will be able to answer the first question correctly, and can name Karl Marx as the father of modern socialism/communism.  You probably can do a decent job of explaining Marxism without even looking it up on Wikipedia.  You may even be familiar with the Marxist slogan, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

Conversely, if you are asked who the father of modern capitalism is, odds are you'd either draw a blank or be mostly wrong.

You may not realize it, but socialists have been influencing you your whole life. Prior to the 1960's there were prohibitions on government workers joining organized labor.  That's because there was an obvious conflict of interest; organized labor and socialism have been synonymous throughout their shared history in the U.S.. But that changed in the 1960's under Democrat John F. Kennedy, and since then, government workers including school teachers have flooded into organized labor.   Most likely every teacher who taught you in a U.S. public school was a member of organized labor.  Of course, not all teachers, nor members of organized labor, are socialists, but the politics of organized labor in the U.S. leans undeniably in that direction.  

"Hold on!", you say, "Just because public schools are unionized and organized labor leans socialist doesn't mean it has had any real impact on our country!"  Actually it has.  After half a century of this, Karl Marx is the most assigned economist at U.S. colleges today.  By far.   

So how did you answer the second question?  In one sense the answer to that one is again... Karl Marx.  Yes, Karl Marx is both the father of modern socialism AND the father of modern capitalism. Karl Marx was the person who defined capitalism for the masses in his scathing critique of 1860s capitalism called "Das Kapital".  He constructed a convenient dichotomy between socialism and capitalism based on his own definitions to support his theories .  Of course Marx's preferred ideology, socialism, was defined in the most glowing light, while his version of capitalism was defined in the most sinister.

Many scholars credit a Scotsman named Adam Smith as the person whose ideas most influenced our economic system.  Adam Smith’s book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, was actually published in 1776.  (That date rings a bell, no?)  But the word capitalism didn't exist in Adam Smith’s day.  He never used it.  We mistakenly call our economic system capitalism because that's what Marx and the critics called it.  The name unfortunately stuck. 

If everyone knows what Marxism is, why doesn't everyone know what Smithism is?  Because it’s not taught.   Except to select economics majors.  "Smithism" never became a word.  Marxism is taught everywhere all the time, and not just to economics majors.  If you want to learn about Adam Smith, you most likely have to do it on your own.  You can go through K-12 and well beyond in schools in the U.S., and never hear the name Adam Smith, never learn about his ideas, and never understand the influence those ideas had on the founding of our country.  If you go to Wikipedia and look up Marxism, you’ll find plenty.  If you go to Wikipedia and look up Smithism, you’ll get crickets. 

How about a more modern term, like Supply Side Economics?  You are probably familiar with that term, but can you accurately define it?  Can you define its opposite, Demand Side Economics?

·         Supply side economics is the theory that people will SUPPLY (create) more value if they are allowed to function in a free market.
   

·         Demand side economics is the theory that people will DEMAND (consume) more value if wealth is redistributed to them.    

These are opposite approaches for achieving different economic goals.  Supply Side seeks to optimize overall economic vitality (Smithism).  Demand Side at times seeks to stimulate consumption (Keynesianism), or at times to achieve egalitarianism (Marxism).

If you look up supply side economics on Wikipedia, you’ll find a thorough entry along with plenty of criticisms.  If you look up demand side economics, you’ll get zip.  The language in this case does not favor the socialist demand side ideology.   Hence, it is not even defined.

No event has had a more profound impact on this country's recent tilt towards socialism than the financial crisis of 2008.  It is said that history is written by the victors.  That has never been more true than in the wake of the financial crisis.  Democrats controlled the government commission that wrote the post-mortem.  Barack Obama won the presidency.  Democrats had both houses of congress.  And liberals made the movies and wrote the books explaining the crisis to the masses. Unfortunately, everything they told you was a deliberate deception designed to exonerate socialism, and scapegoat capitalism.   

The fact is the financial crisis of 2008 was a perfect demonstration of the failures of socialism. Redistribution of wealth, in this case redistribution of mortgage credit, was at the heart of the financial crisis.  At times, the support for this redistribution was bi-partisan, but the ideology behind it was socialist regardless of who was advocating.

It all began with the affordable housing goals promoted by Democrats in the early 1990s, which lowered mortgage requirements.  It accelerated in the mid 1990s under Democrat Bill Clinton with further loosening of mortgage standards, pressure on banks to write loose loans, and mandates for government backed companies FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FHLMC (Freddie Mac) to buy all the new mortgages.  It finally reached it’s apex in 2007 under Republican George W. Bush, while Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, ran both houses of congress.

All the risk from this socialist redistribution was supposed to be assumed by the federal government in the form of the afore mentioned government backed companies.  Fannie and Freddie were ground zero for the financial crisis.  No government official took more money from these two companies, and at a faster rate, than the junior Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.  His closest competitors in that money grab included Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Hillary Clinton.  If this is news to you,  it's because they wrote the history.

What they told you was that it was a perfect storm involving greedy bankers, deregulation, and the natural flaws of capitalism.  It was a plausible argument designed to deceive.  Bankers today are no greedier than their banking forebears.  So why did they suddenly engage in subprime lending for the first time in history in such large numbers? Because they were coerced to do so by their government.

Deregulation also had nothing to do with it.  Canadian banks are lightly regulated compared to their U.S. counterparts, and none of them failed.  Are U.S. bankers so much greedier than their Canadian counterparts that they drove their banks into insolvency while their less regulated neighbors to the north did not?  No, it was U.S. government regulation in the form of a socialist housing policy that caused the financial crisis.  Unfortunately, when the scheme went bad the damage spread to the private banking and investment sector bringing the entire global financial system to its knees.

The deceptions about this animated the Occupy Wall Street movement, got Barack Obama elected twice, and are responsible for the acceptance of openly socialist candidate Bernie Sanders today.   They are also part of the continuing campaign that has mischaracterized the mortgage market as an example of failed capitalism.

The frightening thing about this is, if history is written by the victors and they engage in deception, aren't we doomed to repeat it?  We are.  Fannie and Freddie own just about every new mortgage written since 2008, and the socialist policies promoting home ownership and borrowing have accelerated under Barack Obama.  We are in the process of building a second real estate bubble. Adding to that scenario is a socialist national debt bubble, student loan bubble, auto loan bubble, and equity bubble.

You might be saying, "OK, big deal, I'm a socialist.  Lots of countries are socialist, and some of them seem to be doing just fine.  What about the Scandinavian countries?  Why can't we have what they have?  Free healthcare, free college, and lots of benefits sounds pretty good to me!".  Scandinavian success came before their experiment with socialism.  They were happy, healthy, productive, and prosperous prior to the 1960s when they made the turn.  Fifty years of high taxes has slowed their growth and momentum and now they are "feeling the Bern".  Sweden and Denmark currently spend more than 100% of their private sector income on government services.  This is obviously unsustainable.  Socialist Europe is failing and is increasingly freeing their economies in response.

Here's the thing:  National socialism has never produced anything long term other than misery, starvation, poverty, and authoritarianism.  That's at the national level.  And long term.  At the local level, socialism can survive a bit longer.  Local socialism does not eliminate the incentive killing aspects of socialism, but it does delay the inevitable monetary collapse.  That's because local governments cannot create money. State and local governments must be more disciplined or risk imminent collapse.  Therefore, they tend to be more fiscally responsible.  National governments can hide their insolvency much longer, plunder future generations, devalue currencies, manipulate interest rates, and cause much bigger problems down the road.

This is an important point that deserves repeating;  socialism cannot work long term at the national level.  The national level is where money is usually created and controlled.  The Euro countries are a recent exception now that money is no longer controlled by the individual countries.  The Euro is controlled by the European Central Bank, which is a consortium of 19 Eurozone countries .  It's almost like they recognized the fatal flaw and are trying to work around it.

But in the U.S. we have no such arrangement.  We borrow and print money at the federal level. Our system was never designed to be a socialist system.  The constitution implied that the states were the proper place for redistributive experimentation.  At the national level, the conflict of interest is just too great for elected officials.  National politicians will eventually destroy the currency, borrow too heavily, undermine the work ethic, and undermine national defense in an attempt to gain and maintain power today.  The founders knew that.  It's happening today. We have doubled our national debt in just the last seven years.  Interest rates have been artificially held near zero for that entire time.  If and when rates normalize to historical levels, the debt service alone will cause the kind of pain socialist nations have felt throughout history. We are not immune.
  

In summary: You were indoctrinated to be a socialist. You were indoctrinated to call our system capitalism.  You've been deceived about the benefits of socialism.  You've been deceived about the evils of free markets.  And you've been deceived about the perils of national socialism.  If you still think socialism is chic after all that, that is your right.  Just keep it local, and maybe - just maybe, it won't collapse until after your kids inherit the mess.