Let's bring this week to a close. Along that line, I offer you this week's musical finale.
I was watching the movie Final Destination recently, which used John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" as a surprisingly creepy background song. In spite of that, the song has stood the test of time well:
While Denver performed the definitive version, I would also recommend Chris Nole's piano version, which shows the true beauty inherent in the tune:
That is all for me. Enjoy your weekend folks, and go Falcons!
Friday, February 3, 2017
The new welfare state
Are we beginning to see a new kind of welfare state evolving? Consider this news article, from AFP:
One income for all: far-fetched, or future fact?While I question how much support this idea has from the "libertarian right", I cannot say I am completely opposed either.
It is a utopian idea, literally, but is enjoying a renaissance as politicians and policy wonks grapple with technology-driven changes that could redefine our very understanding of work.
If robots and machine intelligence threaten to render many white-collar jobs obsolete, then what will people do for money?
Enter the concept of a "universal basic income", a flat sum paid to all regardless of your existing wealth or ability to work. It is one of the rare ideas that has support from both the libertarian right -- which favours tearing up the welfare state -- and the left wing.
In France, Benoit Hamon has emerged as the surprise Socialist candidate for April's presidential election first round, on a radical programme that includes such an income -- to be funded in part by a new tax on industrial robots.
National or local governments in other countries such as Finland, the Netherlands, Canada, Scotland and Brazil are already evaluating how such a revenue might work in practice.
Finland is furthest down the road. On January 1 it started a two-year trial to give 2,000 unemployed Finns a monthly unconditional payment of 560 euros ($590).
At the least, advocates argue, a basic income could replace the thicket of unemployment benefits currently on offer in many advanced economies. Those can, perversely, discourage people from retraining in new fields or taking on lower paid work that society needs, such as care for the elderly.
Consider how much the U.S. government overspends each year. Most of that money goes to welfare programs, such as Social Security and Medicare. However, giving everyone a base income would run the U.S. over $3 trillion a year (based on my own back-of-the-napkin estimate), and that is a very conservative estimate.
Even if you end all the special interest payouts, and cut military spending, you might be able to get to $3 trillion a year. The current budget is at $3.9 trillion, with about $597 billion of that going to the military. Not much wiggle room there.
However, with the current regime of money-printing, wherein we print far more than we need in order to pay the banks to sit on money, wouldn't it make more sense to just hand that money to the people instead? If you want to stimulate the economy, give it to the people, not the banks.
If we combine what the federal government and the Federal Reserve are doing, eliminate our current welfare programs, and toss out unnecessary government spending, we could easily come up with $3 trillion, and maybe even more.
It could even be politically palatable, even though it will run counter to many of the special interests currently supporting our political class. You give everyone money, you get more actual votes than if you just give it to somebody for a campaign donation.
Now for the downside: Inflation. With created money going directly from the government to the economy (why save money if you will just get more from the government?), we will quickly get Zimbabwe-style inflation.
On the other hand, if you have a self-producing economy, whereby most or all things needed are produced without human involvement (for example, by robots and/or artificial intelligence), then it MIGHT be possible to create a system where humans are primarily a consumer class funded by the government. In other words, with supply and demand still properly balanced, we might be able to sustain such a system.
At this point, this is all just theoretical, but it could become necessary in the near future. We may need some seriously outside-the-box thinking before this century is over.
Busy day for Congress: Today's news for February 3rd
CNN:
The Republican-led House voted Thursday to repeal an Obama-era regulation that required the Social Security Administration to disclose to the national gun background check system information about people with mental illness.
The regulation instituted in the final days of the Obama administration required the SSA to share information about those who are considered incapable of managing their own disability benefits due mental illness.
The rule sought to limit the ability of those with mental illness to purchase guns but drew criticism for casting too wide a net and not providing the opportunity for due process. Opponents of the rule, including the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, also said the broad range of reasons that could be used to designate someone for the SSA database include conditions that should not stop a gun purchase.
...The Senate is expected to pass the National Rifle Association-backed measure soon and President Donald Trump is expected to sign it.While nobody wants insane people walking around with guns, who determines insanity? How is it determined? And what happens if a person is cured of their insanity? How do they get off this government list?
The potential for abuse with such a law is enormous. It doesn't take much imagination to picture Democrats defining all Republicans as insane. Democrats already act that way.
But the Congress didn't stop there...
CNN:
The Senate voted Thursday to roll back the Stream Protection Rule, an Obama administration regulation aimed at curbing waste from coal mines from entering waterways but that Republicans complained was an onerous job killer in coal country.Before the Lefties start screaming about polluted water, ask yourself: Is the waste from coal mines removed during the processing of water to clean it? If it is, then what is the problem?
The 54-to-45 vote was largely along party lines though four red state Democrats supported it and one moderate Republican voted against it.
The vote came out one day after the measure passed the House 228-194, sending the bill to President Donald Trump's desk.
This is the first of what is expected to be dozens of environmental, financial disclosure and energy rules put in place by Obama in the last weeks of his tenure that the GOP leaders on the Hill plan to undue using a special legislative tool known as the Congressional Review Act. Trump is expected to sign each of the measures.
By the way, if a coal mine did pollute a waterway and hurt people, how long before the very expensive class action lawsuit started? This isn't the Flint water crisis, which was caused by politicians, who are above being sued for their incompetence.
One other thing: If a coal mine were to flaunt the regulation and still pollute a waterway, what good is this regulation? You would still be in the same situation you would have been in without the regulation. Preventive regulation doesn't work with criminals.
In other political news...
The Daily Beast:
During an appearance on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” on Thursday night, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and now an adviser in his administration, appeared to make up a fictional “massacre” when justifying the President’s ban on refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.In other words, Conway gave Obama far more credit for his actions than he deserves. She really needs to stop lying for Obama.
“I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre,” Conway said during an exchange on the program. “Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”
The media didn’t cover the Bowling Green Massacre because no such event ever happened.
What Conway was likely referring to was an incident in 2011 in which two Iraqi nationals were indicted for allegedly having ties to IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq.
According to a 2013 release from the Department of Justice pertaining to their sentencing for terrorist activities, “Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, a former resident of Iraq, was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31, a former resident of Iraq, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.” The two men lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky and according to the release “admitted using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and who attempted to send weapons and money to Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) for the purpose of killing U.S. soldiers.”
There is no information about the men having committed violent offenses in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Conway’s reference to a “ban” from Obama likely alludes to a review of vetting procedures for individuals coming from Iraq which did occur in 2011 as a result of the Bowling Green arrests. It was not a ban though.
Finally...
Study Finds:
As social media sites like Facebook and Snapchat move to eliminate “fake news” reports from their sites, researchers from Stanford and New York Universities say Americans can be sure of one thing: the phenomenon did not affect the results of the presidential election.The results?
The new study released last month investigated the influence that fake news may have had on President Trump’s victory.
NYU economics professor Hunt Allcott and Stanford economics professor Matthew Gentzkow led the research. The pair ran a series of tests to determine which fake news articles were circulated, how much of it was circulated, and the amount of voters that believed the stories to be true.
Although fake news stories in Trump’s favor were shared more times (30 million compared to 8 million for Hillary Clinton), the authors of the report had determined that these stories still did not reach enough voters nationwide to change the election results.The problem with so-called "fake news" is confirmation bias. It tends to confirm what people already believe, rather than influence them to change their beliefs.
“The average American saw and remembered 0.92 pro-Trump fake news stories and 0.23 pro-Clinton fake news stories, with just over half of those who recalled seeing fake news stories believing them,” the authors wrote. But, “for fake news to have changed the outcome of the election, a single fake article would need to have had the same persuasive effect as 36 television campaign ads.”
The observers’ work also revealed that a majority of voters were capable of accurately deciding whether or not a news story was true. They concluded that an insignificant number of American voters casted their final decision based on false information.
“In summary, our data suggest that social media were not the most important source of election news, and even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans,” the study concludes.
But it was a nice political talking point while it lasted.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
The Democrats fortify against Gorsuch
There was a disturbing New York Times editorial by David Leonhardt titled, "Why Democrats Should Oppose Neil Gorsuch". One would hope such an editorial would be about problems with President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. One would be wrong:
It’s important to remember just how radical — and, yes, unprecedented — the Senate’s approach to the previous Supreme Court nominee was.Arguments of right or wrong, good or bad, have all left the building. This is all about political strategy now. Here is Leonhardt's moral justification for this:
Republican leaders announced last March that they would not consider any nominee. They did so even though Barack Obama still had 10 months left in his term and even though other justices (including Anthony Kennedy) had been confirmed in a president’s final year.
The refusal was a raw power grab. Coupled with Republican hints that no Hillary Clinton nominee would be confirmed either, it was a fundamental changing of the rules: Only a party that controlled both the White House and the Senate would now be able to assume it could fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
...So what can Democrats do?
First, they need to make sure that the stolen Supreme Court seat remains at the top of the public’s consciousness. When people hear the name “Neil Gorsuch,” as qualified as he may be, they should associate him with a constitutionally damaging power grab.
Second, Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate.
But Democrats simply cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one. The only thing worse than the system that the Republicans have created is a system in which one political party volunteers to be bullied.All of this completely ignores the fact that Obama's SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland, could have tilted the Supreme Court in favor of the progressive socialists. The GOP didn't get control of the Congress by agreeing to be accommodating to President Obama. They were elected to be obstructionist, and that is what they did.
This also ignores the fact that Trump had nothing to do with Republican obstructionism. Even if he supported it, it wasn't him. Blaming Trump is like blaming Andrew Johnson for Lincoln's assassination: Johnson wasn't even in the room at the time, just as Trump wasn't in power at the time.
Now the Democrats, ignoring the American people's general dislike of Obama (he only got elected twice because the GOP ran even worse candidates), see themselves as justified in throwing a temper tantrum, using the childish lament, "But they started it!"
Meanwhile, Trump keeps picking up in the polls, as Democrats make him look sympathetic.
Go ahead Democrats, and look like the spoiled brats you are. Dig in tight, hold your collective breaths, and force the Republicans to remove your filibuster (you can thank Harry Reid for giving them the means to do so), thereby making the Republicans look like the adults in the room, regardless of whether they deserve to look that mature.
The anti-Islamic agenda: Today's news for February 2nd
Washington Post:
It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.Trump gets the bear for this:
Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.
At one point Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that “This was the worst call by far.”
...“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center. Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admissions of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”
But when you look closer about Trump's refugee complaint, combined with his executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, another picture starts to emerge from the fog.
And then it becomes this:
Reuters:
The Trump administration wants to revamp and rename a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focuses solely on Islamist extremism, five people briefed on the matter told Reuters.Even with as much leeway as Trump gives Islam as a whole, it is becoming obvious that his administration is more dedicated to the war on Islam than the last two administrations. Trump can protest that he has nothing against Islam as much as he wants, but he comes off sounding like FDR saying he has nothing against Germans or Japanese.
The program, "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE, would be changed to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.
Such a change would reflect Trump's election campaign rhetoric and criticism of former President Barack Obama for being weak in the fight against Islamic State and for refusing to use the phrase "radical Islam" in describing it. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on civilians in several countries.
However, having said that:
Fox News:
The advocacy group Open Doors USA recently released the latest edition of its annual World Watch List, which ranks countries based on the treatment of their Christian populations. The group said the increase in incidents considered persecution was alarming and only getting worse.
"It is appalling that Open Doors has to report that persecution has increased again in 2016 and we are still at the worst levels of persecution in modern times," David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, said to Fox News. "The spread of persecution has gotten worse, now hitting nearly every continent in the world. There were 23 Christians killed in Mexico specifically because of their faith.”
The report comes on the heels of another study by the Center for Studies on New Religions that showed nearly 90,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2016 and that as many as 600 million were prevented from practicing their faith through intimidation, forced conversions, bodily harm or even death.So why would Christian persecution be on the rise? How about hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims?
Don't get me wrong: Islam isn't kind to anyone who doesn't follow their faith, especially in countries that adhere to Sharia Law. The great irony here is how Leftists defend Islam with a broad brush, ignoring all the sexism, homophobic beliefs, and general denial of human rights such as freedom of speech and religion. Islam is as much a political philosophy as it is a religious one.
Should we be at war with Islam? The answer to that question is the answer to whether Trump is doing the right thing or not.
In other news...
Shareblue:
A line sneakily inserted into the new House rules package exempts the Congressional Budget Office from doing a standard 10-year cost analysis on a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, thus seeking to conceal the cost to taxpayers of taking away their health insurance.
As House Republicans voted on the new congressional rules package for the 115th Congress, many passages drew controversy, including a provision to unconstitutionally fine legislators for taking video footage on the House floor, and an attempt to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics.
But one passage made it through without attention from the corporate media: A provision that distorts the analysis of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for political gain.The Republicans should be screaming this to the rooftops: "This is how much the Democratic takeover of the healthcare industry cost you to fix!" Instead, they act like the weasels they are.
...the new Republican rules package specifically instructs the CBO not to say how much it would cost to repeal Obamacare.
It is worth pointing out that the last time the CBO did a cost analysis of repealing Obamacare, in 2015, they found that it would increase the deficit by $353 billion. That is important, because Republicans are hoping to repeal much of Obamacare using budget reconciliation, which requires any legislation that increases the deficit to expire after 10 years.
(hat tip to Giphy for the GIF)
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Wednesday wisdom: Langston Hughes
Final Curve by Langston Hughes
When you turn the cornerThis poem is a clever way of saying, if you travel far enough, you will eventually run into yourself.
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left
Gorsuch for SCOTUS: Today's news for February 1st
Associated Press:
President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, a fast-rising conservative judge with a writer's flair, to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, setting up a fierce fight with Democrats over a jurist who could shape America's legal landscape for decades to come.
At 49, Gorsuch is the youngest Supreme Court nominee in a quarter-century. He's known on the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals for clear, colloquial writing, advocacy for court review of government regulations, defense of religious freedom and skepticism toward law enforcement.
...Gorsuch's nomination was cheered by conservatives wary of Trump's own fluid ideology. If confirmed by the Senate, he will fill the seat left vacant by the death last year of Antonin Scalia, long the right's most powerful voice on the high court.What can we expect from Gorsuch?
CNN:
The article linked above shows a judge who very much defers to original interpretations of the Constitution in his rulings. His most famous ruling was in Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius:
One of the most striking and potentially controversial features of Gorsuch's jurisprudence is his overarching commitment to religious freedom as both a constitutional and statutory right -- even in contexts in which the Supreme Court had previously been less sympathetic to such claims.From a libertarian perspective, his dissent in United States v. Carlos is most reassuring:
In 2013, he joined in an opinion by the full Court of Appeals holding that federal law prohibited the Department of Health and Human Services from requiring closely-held, for-profit secular corporations to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their employer-sponsored health insurance plans.
And although a narrowly divided 5-4 Supreme Court would endorse that view (and affirm the 10th Circuit) the following year, Gorsuch wrote that he would have gone even further, and allowed not just the corporations, but the individual owners, to challenge the mandate.
As he opened his concurrence, "All of us face the problem of complicity. All of us must answer for ourselves whether and to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others. For some, religion provides an essential source of guidance both about what constitutes wrongful conduct and the degree to which those who assist others in committing wrongful conduct themselves bear moral culpability."
Those religious beliefs, he concluded, justified allowing the individuals, and not just the corporations, to challenge the government's rules for employer-sponsored health insurance plans.
One of the areas in which Justice Scalia's jurisprudence was, or at least appeared to be, the least partisan was with regard to the Fourth Amendment -- a context in which Scalia would often provide the more progressive justices with a fifth vote to invalidate a search or seizure that he deemed unconstitutional.Overall, Gorsuch looks like an excellent choice at first glance. It should be interesting to see how he gets Borked. Rest assured, he will be.
As a result, the Fourth Amendment is likely to be one of the contexts in which Gorsuch may well be the swing vote between two four-justice blocks. And if his dissenting opinion in this case is any guide, he may well continue Scalia's more libertarian tradition on searches and seizures. At issue was whether police officers were allowed to enter the area around the defendant's home (the "curtilage") before knocking on his door (usually, the answer is yes) if, as in that case, the defendant had prominently posted no-trespassing signs all over his property.
Although the majority held that the answer was yes, Gorsuch dissented. According to him, a property owner had the right to revoke the "implied license" of allowing potential visitors at least up to his front door, there was no precedent justifying the government's effort to "upend the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment or centuries of common law recognizing that homeowners may revoke by word or deed the licenses they themselves extend."
In that regard, he expanded upon the Supreme Court's own guidance in a 2013 opinion written for a 5-4 Court by... you guessed it... Antonin Scalia.
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