Dear Socialists of America: Let’s Chat About Venezuela

Commentary by Mary Ramirez on The Blaze.com (Jan. 4):

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s signature “You Might Be a Redneck” routine was running through my head these last few days as I thought about Venezuela and socialism.

No really, I promise there’s a connection.

…………….

Let’s borrow Foxworthy’s line of logic here for a minute and apply it to the socialist-laced collapse of a country that should otherwise be one of the richest nations in the world:

……………

If an order of McDonald’s fries costs you the USD equivalent of $126 (oh and by the way, that’s 9 percent of your monthly wages), youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your local state-run grocery store shelves are stocked with the same couple of items (when they’re stocked at all), youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your president ordered a 30 percent minimum wage increase (the 33rd hike in 17 years) and yet “minimum wage is now only about 20 percent of the cost of feeding a family of five,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If what it once cost you to buy breakfast, lunch and dinner now barely gets you breakfast, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If you wait in line for hours for “a couple of little bags of flour or some butter,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.  [read more]

Yea, Cuba and N. Korea could fit these descriptions too. And America if it’s not careful.

The Left thinks socialism is cool but the Commoners who live under it know otherwise. The Ruling class don’t mind it all. They aren’t the ones who are suffering.

Seven Things the Government Requires IDs For

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 26):

As federal courts wrestle with voter ID laws in several states just months before a national election, there is considerably less attention being brought to other constitutional rights that require ID.

Proponents of voter ID have argued that retailers require ID to buy liquor, M-rated video games, prescriptions, or even nail polish.

But these arguments aren’t really applicable to voter ID, said J. Christian Adams, general counsel for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and a former Justice Department attorney, who supports voter ID and other election integrity laws.

“Tell me where in the Constitution does it talk about the right to buy liquor or rent a car?” Adams told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “The Constitution does guarantee the right to use firearms, and ID is always required to purchase a firearm. If you talk about buying liquor, the left will shred that argument. If you talk about ID when buying a gun, it boxes them in.”

Here are seven common situations that require an ID.

1. Welfare Benefits.
2. Registration for Buying Guns.
3. Petition Your Government.
4. Right of Assembly. Further, many municipalities require permits to hold protests or rallies in a public space under certain circumstances. This process varies based on the city, but requires some paperwork by the organizers.
5. Right to Marry.
6. Freedom of Movement. While the right to board an airplane isn’t spelled out in the Constitution, von Spakovsky said the right to travel could be broadly considered a basic public accommodation and a freedom of movement issue, even though the Transportation Security Administration requires photo ID for everyone boarding a plane.
7. Public Accommodations. Many local governments require hotels and motels to collect information from the ID of lodgers and maintain it to be available for police review.

[read more]

So, you shouldn’t have to show your id to vote but when you petition your government, or to board an airplane, or even when you buy a gun when both are rights under the Constitution you have to show some kind of id? Interesting. Then again the Left don’t care about those other rights.

The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1

The development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred to as the "Watch," or private-for-profit policing, which is called "The Big Stick” (Spitzer, 1979).

The watch system was composed of community volunteers whose primary duty was to warn of impending danger. Boston created a night watch in 1636, New York in 1658 and Philadelphia in 1700. The night watch was not a particularly effective crime control device. Watchmen often slept or drank on duty. While the watch was theoretically voluntary, many "volunteers" were simply attempting to evade military service, were conscript forced into service by their town, or were performing watch duties as a form of punishment. Philadelphia created the first day watch in 1833 and New York instituted a day watch in 1844 as a supplement to its new municipal police force (Gaines, Kappeler, and Vaughn 1999).

Augmenting the watch system was a system of constables, official law enforcement officers, usually paid by the fee system for warrants they served. Constables had a variety of non-law enforcement functions to perform as well, including serving as land surveyors and verifying the accuracy of weights and measures. In many cities constables were given the responsibility of supervising the activities of the night watch.

These informal modalities of policing continued well after the American Revolution. It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place.

These "modern police" organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980). [read more]

Source: “The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1.” by Dr. Gary Potter.

Interesting and informative article.  There are five other parts to the piece.

Other Progressive Donors: Labor Unions

Unions top the list of organizations donating to political causes — and large corporations are behind them. Fourteen of the top 25 political donors are unions, and virtually all donate exclusively to Democratic candidates.

Democrats also have the largest single donor source of any kind over the past 25 years: a PAC called ActBlue. Launched in 2004, ActBlue has amassed an incredible fortune of $1.1 billion, with only $100 million spent thus far.

Massive labor unions like SEIU wield enormous power and spend vast amounts electing candidates that further their agenda. And if going through legals channels doesn’t suit their purposes, they’re more than willing to use other means. Former SEIU president Andy Stern has said, “We’ve been trying to use the power of persuasion, and if that doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power, because there are governments and there are opportunities to change laws…”

Stern and SEIU have unabashedly put up tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars, for government healthcare and amnesty. Stern, the president of an international union, was the top visitor at the White House during Obama’s first year in office, with a record 22 visits. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka visited the White House two to three times weekly and talked daily to someone in the White House. No one else has had that kind of to President Obama, including most members of Obama’s cabinet, some of whom have had zero contact with him.

SEIU tops the list of labor union donors at $232 million, with 99 percent going to Democrats. The National Education Association is second, followed by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Then the Farr Group, an executive search consulting firm. The Carpenters Union and the American Federation of Teachers round out the top six groups for political contributors, all of which gave nearly every dime to Democrats. In fact, eight of the top ten, and 18 out of the top 25 are Democratic donors.

Believe it or not, the NRA has also donated to Democrats. Of the $22 million donated since 2002, 17 precent has gone to Democrats.

Source: Evil Progressive Donors Part IV: Labor Unions.

The Left says Big Business donates the most money so Big Labor has to keep up with the evil Big Business in donations. Well, corruption affects all social systems including labor unions. And where the Big Labor donates to might not be where the individual members want it to go—then again the Elites know better.

As part of this serial there is also “Evil Progressive Donors Part III: Hollywood.”

Other Progressive Donors: The Steyer Brothers

It’s likely you’ve never heard of the Steyer brothers. However, Jim Steyer and his billionaire brother Tom have donated millions — if not hundreds of millions of dollars — to their favorite Democratic causes.

Tom Steyer, formerly an “evil” hedge fund manager and “villainous” executive at Goldman Sachs, donated $5 million in 2014 to the Senate majority super PAC run by Harry Reid’s former aides — a drop in the bucket to his pledge of $100 million to influence elections and kill the Keystone pipeline. He wound up donating about $75 million and was, by far, the largest single individual spender in the midterm elections. Liberal Michael Bloomberg was a distant second at $40 million.

…………………..

Tom Steyer’s biggest crusade has been climate change, despite the fact his vast fortune was made primarily from huge investments in oil and coal. One major investment was a pipeline rivaling the Keystone pipeline. When his heavy investments in oil, coal and competing pipelines came to the attention of the media, he instructed brokers to divest from all fossil fuels. Doubt still remains as to whether the divestment ever took place.

It has been estimated that Steyer funded over the years CO₂ production equivalent to about 28% of the total amount of CO₂ produced in the United States by coal burned for electricity generation. Additionally, his personal “footprint” matches the size of his bank account.

Steyer’s primary home overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco — on each of its three stories. With an estimated value of $11.7 million, the home sits on a cliff with beautiful vistas, wrecking the area for all wildlife. He also has a second home in San Francisco for a total combined 11,000 square feet in the city. Add to that his humble, $8.5 million beach home in Marin County, his $2.6 million Sugar Bowl ski resort home in California and two homes at a Lake Tahoe ski resort, respectively valued at $15 million and a more modest $1.1 million. And last, but not least, Steyer owns a 2,000-acre California ranch — worth an estimated $23 to $50 million — where his wife keeps her show horses.

No honest capitalist would begrudge a billionaire of his luxuries. But when said billionaire makes a massive carbon footprint while preaching about catastrophic climate change and spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to influence elections and climate legislation, that sounds more like a man living in a glass house, casting around some mighty big stones. [read more]

This donor feels since he is special, an “elite” if you will, then he can increase his carbon footprint—but non-elites shouldn’t.

He also supports Hillary Clinton for president. Duh.

George Soros 101

Perhaps the most disturbing of all radical Democratic billionaire donors is the Fabian socialist, George Soros, who openly seeks a new world order and financial world order. Soros is openly anti-American, anti-Constitution and actively seeks to correct the “flaw” that “only Americans have a vote in Congress.”

In his book, The Age of Infallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror, Soros wrote, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” Soros believes capitalism is the enemy of the open society he envisions, and his solution is to turn to regulated markets not governed by capitalism. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soros said, “The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communists, but the capitalist threat.”

………………….

Soros made his first billion dollars in 1992 by shorting the British pound and bankrupting the Bank of England. He accomplished this by leveraging billions in financial bets on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and life savings cut drastically almost overnight. He also nearly collapsed the economies of Russia and Myanmar and Malaysia. He helped break down Czechoslovakia, brought on regime change in Croatia, Yugoslavia and Slovakia, and financed the orange revolution in Ukraine.

Soros admittedly enjoys collapsing the governments and economies of sovereign nations and, in fact, finds it “fun.” While he strongly condemned the United States for intervening in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has no qualms about inserting himself into the internal affairs of other nations. In his 1987 book, The Alchemy of Finance, Soros explained his omnipotent behavior stating, “I admit that I’ve always harbored an exaggerated view of my self-importance, to put it bluntly. I fancied myself as some kind of god.”

In December, George Soros donated $6 million to the leading super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The massive check marks the return of the billionaire finance year as among the biggest givers in all of American politics.  [read more]

The above information is from Glenn Beck’s serial “Evil Progressive Donors Part I: George Soros.” To this day, if George Soros appears in Great Britain he will be arrested.

From the Washington Times.com (Jan. 14, 2015):

Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times.

In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society Foundations. [read more]

From Zero Hedge.com (July 9):

Apart from the $5 billion Soros’s foundation has donated to groups like those cited above [Tides Foundation, Center for American Progress, and the Democracy Alliance], he has also made huge contributions to the Democratic Party and its most prominent members, like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and of course Bill and Hillary Clinton.

……………………

Soros began supporting Hillary Clinton’s current presidential run in 2013, taking a senior role in the “Ready for Hillary” group. Since then, Soros has donated over $15 million to pro-Clinton groups and Super PACs.

More recently, Soros has given more than $33 million to the Black Lives Matter group, which has been involved in outbreaks of social unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, in 2015. Both of these incidents contributed to a worsening of race relations across America.

…………………………….

Soros has not only backed groups that advocate the resettlement of third-world migrants into Europe, he in fact is the architect of the “Merkel Plan.”

The Merkel Plan was created by the European Stability Initiative whose chairman Gerald Knaus is a senior fellow at none other than the Open Society Foundations.

The plan proposes that Germany should grant asylum to 500,000 Syrian refugees. It also states that Germany, along with other European nations, should agree to help Turkey, a country that’s 98% Muslim, gain visa-free travel within the EU starting in 2016.   [read more]

Saul Alinsky 101

Saul David Alinsky — revered by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other progressive radicals — was a man who would grow up fantasizing about organizing hell itself. Born during a cold Chicago winter in 1909, Alinsky’s parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who were strict Orthodox Jews. They divorced when he was 13, and Alinsky moved with his father to Los Angeles, returning later to attend college at the University of Chicago.

By the time Alinsky came back to Chicago, he was no longer practicing Judaism. Instead, he was agnostic, even though he continued to identify with his Jewish heritage throughout his life. He had also changed emotionally and politically. Alinsky had become radicalized and discontented with the United States of America. And he wanted to change the nation he believed was unfair by doing what he enjoyed best: community organizing to overthrow the system.

After spending time with members of the Communist Party in the 1930s, Saul Alinsky developed a strange new way for radicals to fundamentally transform the United States. For a fee, he would infiltrate certain communities to stir up and agitate the poor and minorities. Yet, arguably, the only one he lifted out of poverty using these methods was himself. Community organizing gained Alinsky the financial security to live in a beautiful home in affluent Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, far from the ghettos and slums where he caused so much strife and commotion.

Alinsky’s tactics and results caught the attention of generations of radicals. His last book, Rules for Radicals, became the bible for those in America seeking radical transformation. And his strange, creepy acknowledgment to Lucifer at the beginning of the book provided insight into his goals and desires. 

Saul Alinsky started his journey in activism with communists, learning some of their best techniques to organize and agitate. He then expanded and spread that knowledge to a new generation of American radicals with his book Rules for Radicals, which would influence people with great power in the United States.

Alinsky’s most famous and successful rule was to pick a target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it, creating a public enemy with a face and name. Alinsky was unapologetic about his controversial tactics, believing the ends justified the means.

Similar to Alinsky, today’s radicals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are unapologetic about their polarizing and violent tactics. Instead, they accuse those on the right of being dangerous and potentially violent.  [read more]

This information is from Glenn Beck’s “Saul Alinsky: The Four-Part Series.” Yea, this guy is a mentor to both Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hillary did her thesis on this radical.

This is what she said in her thesis:

"His are the words used in our schools and churches, by our parents and their friends, by our peers. The difference is that Alinsky really believes in them...Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared - just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths - democracy."

The Link between Extreme Environmentalism and Hard-Core Racism

Commentary from Jeffrey Tucker on FEE.org:

In my reading and writing on the history of eugenics (here, here, and here), I’ve begun to discern a common trait between the people called environmentalists and racists from a century ago.

They share a common outlook that is illiberal to its core. They imagine that a wise and powerful state can better plan a future for both nature and man. Both groups were panicked about unplanned progress, assuming it could only resort in degeneration, mongrelization, and destruction. They dreamed of a future in which they and not the unwashed masses would be in charge of how resources are used and how the human race propagates itself.

Madison Grant Saves the Trees and the White Race

Thanks to Mother Jones, my suspicions have been confirmed. An essay that pleads with the progressive movement to deal forthrightly with its own grim history of racism discusses the life and work of Madison Grant (1865-1937). This bushy-lipped aristocrat was the hero of the environmentalists in the Progressive Era. He saved the redwoods of California from logging. He was the guru behind the creation of national parks. He undertook the most aggressive efforts ever to preserve species from extinction. He was handsome, urbane, ridiculously well educated and well connected, and “the greatest conservationist who ever lived.” 

Also, Grant wrote the book that Adolf Hitler described as “my Bible.” The book is the 1916 The Passing of the Great Race. A bestseller for many years, on the coffee tables in all the fashionable houses, it is quite possibly the crudest, crankiest, and most bloodthirsty racialist tract ever written; and there’s a lot of competition for that title. He championed segregation, exclusion, sterilization, immigration restrictions, a welfare state (to keep women from working), a high bar for professional employment (minimum wages), and aggressive central planning.

Racism Is an Ideology

Once you read this literature – it was almost impossible to avoid in the period between 1880 and 1935 or so – you begin to get the hang of it. The word racism – thrown around far too recklessly – exists as an accurate description of a special version of anti-liberal ideology. This isn’t about off-color jokes, prejudice, or even a preference for one’s own people. It’s a settled worldview that postulates race, far above any other concern, as the driving-force of history. It has a nightmare scenario of random race-mixing as a consequence of free-wheeling sexual association. And it has a utopia in mind: a great nation inhabited only by the purest stock. It is anti-capitalist, anti-individualist, and anti-liberal to the core, and it views government as savior.

……………………….

Grant’s theory of government sums it all up:

Mankind emerged from savagery and barbarism under the leadership of selected individuals whose personal prowess, capacity, or wisdom gave them the right to lead and the power to compel obedience. Such leaders have always been a minute fraction of the whole, but as long as the tradition of their predominance persisted they were able to use the brute strength of the unthinking herd as part of their own force, and were able to direct at all the blind dynamic impulse of the slaves, peasants, or lower classes. Such a despot had an enormous power at his disposal which, if he were benevolent or even intelligent, could be used, and most frequently was used, for the general uplift of the race. Even those rulers who most abused this power put down with merciless rigor the antisocial elements, such as pirates, brigands, or anarchists, which impair the progress of a community, as disease or wounds cripple an individual.

This is a restatement of the views of Thomas Carlyle, the founding father of fascism, united with pseudoscience of racial uplift, resulting in a worldview that serves as a perfect foil to the liberal tradition of Thomas Jefferson through F.A. Hayek. Is the fabric of history woven by brilliant planners with power, or by the cooperative and decentralized choices of millions of individual actors? There’s no question where people like Carlyle, Grant, and the fascist tradition stand on this question. To their minds, a unplanned social order is chaos and decline in the making, and is saved only by strong men. [read more]

When the author speaks of “liberalism” he is speaking about classic liberalism also known as libertarianism not progressivism or what I call the Left.

The Left has always been arrogant. They think they know better than anyone what’s best for society. They also like to stereotype people and that can lead to racism, sexism and any other “ism” you can think of. But the Left thinks they are exempt from such isms.

The Attack on Internships Is Wrongheaded

From FEE.org:

Google “unfair internships” and you get a blizzard of complaint. Interns are underpaid. Internships favor the rich. They are exploitative. They are a strategic way of getting around federal labor law. Some want mandates on pay. Others want them forbidden.

Here we have a narrow means of escape for young workers, a slight glimmer of hope in a job market that is growing increasingly dark for them. Following college, they can work for free or at a very low rate, for a time, and then perhaps have a greater chance of building a career, or at least avoiding the label “loser.”

And then what happens? The opinion elite conspire to wreck that opportunity too. Our laws and institutions set them up to fail, and then smother one of the few chances they have discovered to avoid that fate.

Why Internships?

Kids spend as much as 16 years sitting in desks, listening to experts, and taking tests to demonstrate that they can recite information. Then after undergoing all this, and paying ghastly amounts for the privilege, they are stunned to discover that they lack skills for the workplace.

Why is the marketplace not dumping barrels of cash on their heads as a reward for their good behavior? As it turns out, that’s not what a job is about. A job is a contract that pays money in return for the value that the employee creates. If you can’t create value in excess of your financial aspirations, there is a problem. You won’t get hired at a desirable wage or you won’t get hired at all.

More importantly, young people lack a network to even get in the door. At every stage of life, they march through school with their peers, step by step, and the adults around them celebrate each hoop they jump. Then the real world hits hard, and no one much cares about the only thing they have been told to do their entire lives.

Bombarding institutions with education-laden resumes is not doing the trick.

Reviving the Apprenticeship

The apprenticeship has been part of entryway training in most countries since the Middle Ages. You study under a master. You gain skills. You work without wages, possibly in exchange for food and housing. This goes on for a number of years until you can start to earn real money. Apprenticeships were a mainstream part of work life for hundreds of years.

But starting in the Progressive Era (with the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917), internships came to be regulated by governments at all levels. This is inevitable in a planning state that aspires to regulate work hours, wages, and terms of contract. In those days, school became compulsory, and it came to be considered a legal privilege to be employed at all. It was part of the effort by governments to sort people into categories based on eugenic notions of fit and unfit. To gain an apprenticeship at all required government approval.

Deregulate the Interns

People today complain that interns are paid too little and don’t experience a direct benefit in the form of employment after the internship ends.

But guess what? This isn’t the fault of the business. This is the fault of government. Incredibly, federal law stipulates conditions that are designed to devalue the internship in general; these are the six main ones:

1. It must be more like school than work. Ridiculous and counterproductive.
2. The intern, not the employer, should benefit. Why not both?
3. The intern cannot displace a regular employee. This is a mandate for uselessness.
4. The employer cannot benefit from the activities of the intern, which, again, is a devaluing mandate.
5. The intern is not working toward a job with the company, and this is well understood.
6. Both the employer and the intern know that no wages are paid to the intern.

If you look at those conditions, you can see that the practices that so deeply irk the critics of internships are specifically mandated by federal labor law.  [read more]

The Left don’t like internships because they think businesses (especially corporations) are the oppressor and employees are the oppressee. That’s basically from Karl Marx. And if someone wants to work for no or little pay just to gain experience then the business is exploiting him/her even though that’s the intern’s choice. If Congress can have interns then why can’t businesses?

Tax Avoidance Is Both Smart and Honorable

From FEE.org:

Since the first Presidential Debate, there has been a lot of hue and cry because Donald Trump had the temerity to declare that he paid no income taxes. More specifically Hillary Clinton said, about his refusal to make his income tax statements public:

"There is something he is hiding. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax."

Trump retorted, "That makes me smart," more or less declaring he didn't pay any income taxes and he's proud of it.

And so he should be.

To be sure, he is vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy, not paying tax, on one hand, and advocating what could turn out to be the largest infrastructure project in American history on the other, in addition to kvetching about crumbling infrastructure and declining military spending.

Yet, on the matter of taxes alone, he is right.

Judge Learned Hand stated that "anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands." (Gregory v. Helvering 69 F.2d 809 - 1935)

Everyone Should Do It

This is not just a privilege of the rich, though they might have more options available and the means to hire skilled tax lawyers. Every citizen has options available so as to limit or lower her taxes. These include such things as the various Individual Retirement Plans (IRAs) which confer certain tax advantages. Additionally, interest paid on a loan for business purposes is tax deductible. Many people run small businesses from their homes in order to deduct some of their living expenses. [read more]

Just like the article says because taxes are so complicated and confusing businesses hire tax attorneys to advice them of the best options. Not only do tax attorneys benefit from the complicated tax system but tax accountants and tax software companys benefit too. If the Left wants people to pay their “fair share” then the powers-that-be need to streamline the tax code like Trumps want to do. But too many in Congress use it reward and punish the taxpayer so there’s no incentive to change it.

Judge Learned Hand says its not patriotic to pay more. Well, the Left thinks it is your patriotic duty to pay more taxes because they see it as cost to the gov’t. It’s not your money but the government’s money. The Left will never tell you that though. All they say is it is your patriotic duty to pay taxes.

Christianity and Capitalism as Allies Rather than Enemies

Commentary by James D. Gwartney from FEE.org:

Many Christian leaders—evangelical, mainline Protestant, and Roman Catholic—appear to have a feeling that capitalism is unfair and needs more government intervention to keep it humane. While many of us who are both Christians and economists consider this view misguided, we sometimes lack arguments to help change this view.

I’d like to offer a few.

What I am defending when I speak of capitalism is a social order that provides for the protection of one’s possessions as long as they are acquired without the use of violence, theft, or fraud; and that relies primarily on free-market prices to allocate goods and services—the fundamental social system of the United States.

Here are some reasons why Christians might think more charitably about it:

Capitalism rewards and reinforces service to others. Under capitalism, a person’s income is directly related to his or her ability to provide goods and services that enhance the welfare of others.

……………………

Capitalism provides for the masses, not just the elite. To succeed in a big way under capitalism, you have to produce something that appeals to many people.

………………..

Capitalism provides opportunity for achievers of all socioeconomic backgrounds to move up the economic ladder.

……………………….

Capitalism provides for minority views. When decisions are made politically, minority views are often suppressed.

……………………….

Of course, capitalism does not impose the moral demands that Christianity does. But economic systems seeking to perfect human nature have more often led to tyranny than to bettering the human race. Christians would do well to settle for an economic system that reinforces Christian virtues, improves living standards, and provides for minority views. Capitalism is such a system. [read more]

So, true. An interesting article.

War on Poverty Part II: The Great Depression

The United States of America changed the world. The American experiment, launched by its Founders, revolutionized how the world viewed personal freedom, government, business, culture, commerce — everything. It set an example for liberty that captured the world’s envy and imagination. In short, the American experiment worked.

It worked so well that the poverty rate went from 90 percent in colonial America to 14.3 percent today. Some would argue the War On Poverty lowered that rate and not American exceptionalism. They would be wrong. The poverty rate before Lyndon Johnson and the Welfare Act was actually lower than today — 14 percent.

………………………

During the crash of 1920, the hands-off policies of President Harding’s administration allowed the free market to correct itself and send America into the Roaring Twenties. In 1929, there was a completely different approach.

Government intrusion and welfare programs increased exponentially after Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932. Rather than help end the depression, his actions actually deepened it. Americans who had seen tough times before had never seen anything like this.

……………………….

In March of that same year, FDR signed the Emergency Banking Act into law and the FDIC was born. He also ordered the nation off the gold standard. Then came the Civilian Conservation Corp, the Federal Emergency Relief Action, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the National Labor Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Soil Erosion Service, the Civil Works Administration, Works Progress Administration, the Wagner National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act — all by 1935.

……………………..

By 1937, five years after FDR took office, the percentage of Americans living in poverty had hit 45 percent. That same year, frustrated and beaten down workers at Republic Steel’s south Chicago plant and their families tried to combine a picnic with a rally and demonstration. Chicago Police moved in and opened fire on the crowd. Ten people were killed and a dozen more wounded in what is now called the Memorial Day Massacre. [read more]

Yea, instead of making poverty less the Left make it more. But then again they have good intentions.

There are two other parts to this series:

• War on Poverty Part III: The Great Society
• War on Poverty Part IV: Abusing the System

Donald Trump Missed His Chance In The First Debate

From Dick Morris.com (Sept. 28):

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump showed what an amateur he is in his first presidential debate performance Monday night. He stupidly thought a debate was about answering all the questions, rather than using them as excuses to get out his pre-planned sound bites. He lost the debate, but not by so much that he can’t come back in the second contest that will take place on Oct. 9th.

Apart from the outcome, the real story of the debate is the shots Trump left on the cutting-room floor. How can you go through a 98-minute debate with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and not mention the following words: “Clinton Library,” “Benghazi,” “FBI,” “pay for play,” “IRS scandal” or “speaking fees”?

…………………….

When the subject turned to cyber-security, why on earth did Trump not talk about Clinton’s private email server and how it compromised America’s national security by putting the country’s innermost secrets on an insecure server in her basement? Instead, he let her ramble on about the danger of cyber-attacks. Claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee server, she warned the Russian leader against any more hacking before the election.

And when the host, Jim Holt of NBC News, asked Trump directly what could be done to ward off things like the terrorist bombings in New York, he didn’t even mention his proposal to ban immigrants from countries deemed to be state sponsors of terrorism. (The bomber was an immigrant from Afghanistan, one of the countries from which Trump would have barred immigration.)

……………………………………..

Trump also was unable to fend off attacks on his failure to release his income tax returns. Instead, he tried to sell the transparent falsehood that he didn’t dare release them while he was under an audit from the Internal Revenue Service — a position Clinton rightly debunked. And he had no answer to charges that he laid off workers, stiffed them of their pay and went into bankruptcy to avoid paying his debts. Trump should have turned to Clinton and said that he was a private businessman, and that sometimes he succeeded and sometimes he failed, while she has lived off the taxpayers for 40 years, never taking chances and never taking risks.

Trump’s biggest omission was his failure to challenge his opponent on her health. Apart from questioning her stamina (which Clinton rebutted well), he should have demanded that she take a full MRI exam and release the results to the public. We can handle a disabled president. We had one for 12 years (FDR) and did just fine. But we cannot have a demented one. And, after cranial blood clots and four fainting episodes in the past six years (that we know about), we are entitled to question her health and demand answers. But Trump let that pass him by, too.  [read more]

Yea, Trump should have definitely brought up her mental health. That’s actually more important than IRS records. If a president can’t think clearly under pressure then that could bring disastrous results to the country.

I agree with Dick Morris. Trump should have counter-punched or zinged Hillary more than he did. Trump should have used the word “deplorable” every once in a while. He could have asked the audience how many of them are deplorable. Or saying that Hillary lying to the mothers of the four Americans who died in Benghazi is what is really depolorable.

Hopefully, Trump will do better in the next debate. He needs to prepare more. If he is counting on the moderators to bring up Benghazi, Clinton’s mental state, the emails, etc. he shouldn’t hold his breath especially they are in the camp for Clinton. He has to do it.