Why Is the Nanny State so Popular?

From FEE.org (Aug. 8):

Bans on plastic straws, soda taxes, bans on diesel cars, the crackdown on smoking, restrictions on alcohol consumption: the list of restrictions on people's personal freedoms is steadily increasing. But why is the Nanny State so popular?

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The theory of the brainwashed consumer

The idea that the consumer needs a centralized authority telling him or her how to behave, derives from the fundamental idea that he or she is inept at making rational decisions. It is interesting to see how the topic is addressed, in the example of restrictions on marketing for products: parents are seen as influenced by their own children, who themselves have been brainwashed by companies. As marketing becomes synonymous with manipulation, manipulated consumers need someone to protect them.

The basic flaw is a misunderstanding between "manipulation" and "marketing", two words which are not pointing to the same type of strategy. Governments seem to believe that all types of advertising mislead consumers about the product, when this is actually a more exceptional case. When Volkswagen manipulated their vehicles in order to show a lower emissions output, they were giving consumers false information about their product.

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But the idea of consumer protection remains important for governments because consumers have been taught to perceive themselves as victims. For this purpose, multiple European countries already have ministries for consumer protection. Much like the Ministry of Truth, it's a question of who gets to decide how the consumer is really protected, instead of letting that decision up to the individual.

The Nanny State is popular because people have lost trust in their own abilities to make their own decisions for themselves, not because they have actually lost them. Governments feed on the idea of the irresponsible individual, because confident consumers won't accept the mere existence of paternalism. If we want to defeat the Nanny State, we need not only oppose the individual policies that governments introduce, we also need to empower individuals to believe in their ability to act as responsible individuals. [read more]

It’s true that consumers don’t act responsibility sometimes. But consumers don’t need over-regulation because the powers-that-be don’t act responsible either and make stupid laws. Which is worse? An individual consumer making a bad decision or a gov’t leader(s) with power making a bad law (Obamacare for instance) that could potentially effect every citizen?

What’s not stated in the article is that the elitist Left believe they don’t make mistakes—that they are perfect. Therefore they make laws they deem are “good” for everyone else except themselves. They aren’t the brainwashed after all. They’re the brainwasher. (Just joking! I think…)

New Voter Fraud Cases Show Need to Secure Our Elections

From The Daily Signal.com (Oct. 31):

If Americans cannot say with certainty that their votes will be counted, that the process is free of fraud, and the outcome is valid, what incentive do they have to turn out in the first place?

Unfortunately, the latest news on the election integrity front is less than inspiring.

In August, the Justice Department announced it was prosecuting 19 foreign nationals for illegally voting in North Carolina—some of them in multiple elections. Those prosecutions are ongoing.

A month later, Californians learned—just weeks before a tremendously consequential election—that a “processing error” had led to 1,500 people being improperly registered to vote in their state, including at least one noncitizen.

Unbelievably, this is only the latest in a series of snafus that have plagued the state’s new “motor voter” law. Earlier this year, the state Department of Motor Vehicles botched 23,000 registrations and double-registered potentially tens of thousands more.

Just this week, The Heritage Foundation has added 20 new cases to its online election-fraud database, which now documents 1,165 proven cases of election fraud spanning 47 states. And 1,011 of these cases resulted in criminal convictions.

The new entries run the election fraud gamut, but voters heading to the polls may find one from Philadelphia particularly disturbing.

The members of the election board responsible for administering polling station 43-7 during a March 2017 special election abused their authority to deny voters an opportunity to freely cast their ballots.

According to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Calvin Mattox, Wallace Hill, Thurman George, and Dolores Shaw employed “harassment and intimidation against voters who wanted to vote for candidates of their choice—but not the candidate being pushed by the city’s Democratic Party machine.” [read more]

The cases above are far more damaging to the election process than any foreign country’s meddling. Although, that is bad too.

When To Trust A Story That Uses Unnamed Sources

Commentary from Perry Bacon Jr. on Five Thirty Eight.com (July 18, 2017):

The various investigations into the Trump administration and its alleged ties to Russia are hard to follow. The allegations are sometimes muddled, the probes are still ongoing, and all sides in the dispute are leaking information that favors their points of view. These stories are also hard to follow because few officials are willing to put their names behind their claims and comments, leading to a stream of stories rife with unnamed sources. What’s a reader to do?

………………….

1. Multiple sources add up. When an outlet says “six White House officials” or “seven Department of Justice officials,” it’s providing a level of precision that makes me more likely to trust the story. This does not necessarily mean that the story is correct. But it does suggest it was thoroughly reported. A recent New York Times story, for example, described something top White House adviser Jared Kushner was saying in private meetings, according to “six West Wing aides.” Six people are less likely to be wrong than one — and this also indicates that the reporter was cautious and diligent enough to seek confirmation with more than one person.

2. Unverifiable predictions are suspicious. Trust a source who says something happened; distrust a source who says something might happen.

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I’m more dubious of stories that claim insider knowledge about future events, for three reasons. First, they are almost impossible to disprove in any way.  …..A second concern, related to the first, is that the nebulous nature of these speculative stories creates an incentive for reporters to write them. …..Thirdly, sources have an incentive to encourage these kinds of speculative stories. If you are someone in the White House who does not like Priebus or you want to take his job, anonymously leaking that Trump is considering replacing Priebus is a great tactic.

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3. Specifics matter. What information does the story give you about its sources? The more, the better.

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4. Consider the outlet and the reporters. If, say, Nate Silver, Harry Enten and I co-write a story with unnamed sources about Hillary Clinton’s campaign decisions in 2016, there are reasons for readers to trust that story. All three of us have long records covering electoral politics. If the three of us wrote an article claiming that Kushner had a secret meeting with a Russian oligarch, full of unnamed sources, you should be more skeptical, since we are not regularly breaking news about Kushner’s activities.

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5. Watch for vague or imprecise “denials” of these kinds of stories. That often means they are accurate. Another thing to make you trust a story: When an official spokesperson offers a “denial” that really isn’t a denial. [read more]

Interesting, good advice.

The Good Intentions Fallacy Is Driving Support for Democratic Socialism

From FEE.org:

When doctors of the ailing George Washington bled him, they were motivated by good intentions; and their unscientific medical practice arguably hastened Washington’s death.

Politicians who trust their seat-of-the-pants good intentions inevitably become authoritarians. They are relying on the limits of their error-prone minds and not on proven principles that promote human flourishing.

Those who rely on their good intentions to guide their actions are arrogant rather than humble. They have little respect or understanding for, as Hayek put it in his essay “Individualism: True or False,” the “spontaneous collaboration of free men [that] often creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend.”

When Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuela’s nightmare, passed in 2013, President Carter praised Chavez’s bold leadership saying, "We came to know a man who expressed a vision to bring profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized.”

Professor Owen Williamson of the University of Texas at El Paso might say President Carter had fallen victim to the logical fallacy, The Argument from Motives: “Falsely justifying or excusing evil or vicious actions because of the perpetrator's apparent purity of motives or lack of malice.”

In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman argued that there were two threats to freedom, external and internal. In 1962, Friedman pointed to the Soviet Union as an external threat. Seeing an internal danger, Friedman argued, is more difficult because it is “far more subtle”:

It is the internal threat coming from men of good intentions and good will who wish to reform us. Impatient with the slowness of persuasion and example to achieve the great social changes they envision, they are anxious to use the power of the state to achieve their ends and confident of their own ability to do so. Yet if they gained the power, they would fail to achieve their immediate aims and, in addition, would produce a collective state from which they would recoil in horror and of which they would be among the first victims.

That "concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it” has become among Friedman’s most famous ideas. His warning is ignored today by those believing the “good intentions” of politicians, such as Bernie Sanders or congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will render their destructive policies harmless.  [read more]

Dick Morris: Clinton’s Ties to the Uranium Scandal Continue To Grow

From Western Journal.com (Sept. 1):

Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager John Podesta (and his former partner in their lobbying business), was paid $180,000 by the Russian-owned company Uranium One to push for Clinton’s approval of its acquisition of 20 percent of the U.S. uranium mines, a project near and dear to Vladimir Putin’s heart.

So let’s detail Moscow’s efforts to get the Clintons to approve the uranium acquisition:

1. The Russians paid Bill Clinton $500,000 to give a speech in Russia a few weeks before Hillary Clinton had to vote on the acquisition.

2. Moscow directed ten spies in America to infiltrate Clinton’s political apparatus to push her to back the uranium deal. The operations of these spies, disguised as Americans, are the theme of the TV drama The Americans.

3. Tony Podesta was paid $180,000 by Uranium One to push for the deal.

4. The New York Times reported that “in total, $145 million went to the Clinton Foundation from interests linked to Uranium One, which was acquired by the Russian government nuclear agency Rosatom.”

Yet, with all of these connections between Uranium One and the Clintons and all the payments that might have, in fact, been bribes, the Department of Justice’s investigator probing the Clintons, John Huber, has yet even to interview Doug Campbell, the FBI undercover informant who had infiltrated Uranium One, according to Campbell’s attorney Victoria Toensing. [read more]

Yea, this scandal should be investigated by the Justice Dept. And it is completely ignored by the fake news community.

Scientists create a clock so accurate it won't lose time for 40 million years

From CNET.com (Sept. 3):

The Cryogenic Sapphire Oscillator is one of the most precise clocks ever invented -- and it's not just keeping time, it's keeping Australia safe.

Researchers at the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) in Adelaide, Australia in conjunction with Cryoclock, have, for the past 20 years been working on developing the Oscillator which they have dubbed the "Sapphire Clock."

It is 1,000 times more precise than any other commercial system currently available and ticks 10 billion times per second. The  "cryogenic" in the device's real name comes from the 1,200-carat sapphire crystal that needs to be cooled to minus 267 degrees Celsius (around 449 degrees Fahrenheit) -- only a few degrees above absolute zero.

The idea to harness the amazing properties of sapphire came from Andre Luiten, director of IPAS, during his PhD project before moving to Adelaide in 2013.  [read more]

Wow, that’s one accurate clock. Then again who will be around to check the accuracy.

Understand How Insurance Works Before Debating Health Care Policy

Commentary from Gary M. Galles on FEE.org (Aug. 7):

Unfortunately, if accurately applying principles of insurance is the standard, both single-payer and Obamacare fans compare poorly to pots calling kettles black. Their preferred policies sharply conflict with insurance principles on multiple fronts.

Insurance Is All About Risk and the Unknown

Insurance is about reducing risk from uncertain events. It makes outcomes for a group with similar risks more predictable. But that must be weighed against the additional administrative and other costs of insurance. That would mean that people would not insure against what would happen for certain nor where there is only a small amount of risk reduction provided if they were spending their own money.

Insuring things which would occur with certainty, say certain inoculations and annual checkups, offers no risk reduction.

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Insurance Is Not About Price Controls or Mandated Coverage

The price controls government health care proposals incorporate also violate insurance principles. For instance, my age makes my actuarial risk roughly six times that of my students. Pooling risks among those similarly situated with me can benefit us; pooling risks among those similarly situated with my students can benefit them. Insurance is based on pooling risks among people whose risks are comparable. But incorporating more people with risk differentials (say, 6 to 1) that are different from their premium differentials (say, 3 to 1) forces the overpriced people to subsidize the underpriced people. That is not motivated by insurance principles. It is wealth redistribution.

It is redistribution, not insurance, which motivates that, and explains why Obamacare imposed penalties to force the losers to accept a bad deal. [read more]

Open Borders Bring a Higher Risk of Disease

From The Daily Signal.com:

The Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that all immigrants and refugees undergo a medical screening examination to determine whether they have an inadmissible health condition.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has technical instructions for medical examination of prospective immigrants in their home countries before they are permitted to enter the U.S. They are screened for communicable and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, polio, measles, mumps, and HIV. They are also tested for syphilis, gonorrhea, and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The CDC also has medical screening guidelines for refugees. These screenings are usually performed 30 to 90 days after refugees arrive in the United States.

But what about people who enter our country illegally? The CDC specifically cites the possibility of the cross-border movement of HIV, measles, pertussis, rubella, rabies, hepatitis A, influenza, tuberculosis, shigellosis, and syphilis.

Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent in South Texas, warned: “What’s coming over into the U.S. could harm everyone. We are starting to see scabies, chickenpox, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections, and different viruses.”

Some of the youngsters illegally entering our country are known to be carrying lice and suffering from various illnesses. Because there have been no medical examinations of undocumented immigrants, we have no idea how many are carrying infectious diseases that might endanger American children when these immigrants enter schools across our nation. [read more]

This is just plain sense but nobody wants to talk about especially the Left. If someone brings this issue up the Left calls them a racist or an anti-immigrant. This could be why diseases that were once thought long dead are coming back. Poor countries are breeding ground to poor sanitation which spreads diseases.

AI could make MRI scans as much as 10 times faster

From Popsci.com (Aug. 21):

Getting an MRI means being in a noisy, claustrophobia-inducing tube. For many, that's no fun. For others—like children or the very unwell—it’s worse. So to make these diagnostic tools run even faster, researchers are exploring incorporating a new tactic: using artificial intelligence to take the raw data generated by the MRI machine and create readable images.

The reason MRI scans are slow, explains Daniel Sodickson, a professor in the department of radiology at NYU School of Medicine, is that they need to capture all the data necessary to generate a nice image for a radiologist to interpret. A knee scan can take around 15 to 20 minutes; a brain, 30 minutes; imaging a heart can last an hour. But what if you could run that machine faster and still get a usable image?

Using AI, “it may be possible to capture less data, and therefore image faster, while still preserving—or even enhancing—all the rich information content of the magnetic resonance images,” Sodickson says.

Here’s how they’d do it: They’d run the MRI scan faster, gathering less raw data in the process. But instead of interpreting that raw data the traditional way—which involves a tried-and-true non-AI mathematical process—they train artificial intelligence to do the data-to-image conversion. If researchers try to interpret the fast-MRI data the traditional way, the results are bad, because there’s not enough data in the first place. With AI, they are better. [read more]

Better than Self-Esteem Is Reality-Esteem

From FEE.org:

Since 1966, the American Freshman Survey has tracked the attitudes of first-year college students. Over time, there has been a dramatic increase in the percentage of freshman seeing themselves as above average or even gifted, even as measured abilities have gone down. Students’ self-reported “drive to succeed” has gone up, as the time students spend studying has gone down.

Among students, narcissism has increased while performance has declined.

Researchers, led by famed psychologist Roy Baumeister, conducted an extensive review of scholarly literature to examine links between self-esteem and academic and job performance. Little evidence was found to support the idea that increasing self-esteem is the pathway to success.

Are interpersonal relationships strengthened by higher levels of self-esteem? Again researchers say no:

People with high self-esteem claim to be more popular and socially skilled than others, but objective measures generally fail to confirm this and in some cases point in the opposite direction… People who have elevated or inflated views of themselves tend to alienate others.

Have we put the cart before the horse? To accomplish almost all worthwhile goals, we need more than our “boldest self.” We need the cooperation of others. Without a vibrant society, we can achieve little on our own. What we seem to lack these days is not self-esteem but esteem for liberty that promotes human cooperation.

A focus on self-esteem does not lead to healthy individualism. In his essay“Individualism: True and False,” F.A. Hayek warned against “rationalistic pseudo-individualism” which holds that everything can be controlled by a perfectible human mind. True individualism, on the other hand, Hayek writes, “is a product of an acute consciousness of the limitations of the individual mind which induces an attitude of humility toward the impersonal and anonymous social processes by which individuals help to create things greater than they know.”  [read more]

The author says we should seek self-respect rather than self-esteem. Good advice. A lot of dictators have great self-esteem. But how many of those respected? Probably not very many.

How to Make a Robot Use Theory of Mind

From Scientific American.com (Aug. 17):

Imagine standing in an elevator as the doors begin to close and suddenly seeing a couple at the end of the corridor running toward you. Even before they call out, you know from their pace and body language they are rushing to get the same elevator. Being a charitable person, you put your hand out to hold the doors. In that split second you interpreted other people’s intent and took action to assist; these are instinctive behaviors that designers of artificially intelligent machines can only envy. But that could eventually change as researchers experiment with ways to create artificial intelligence (AI) with predictive social skills that will help it better interact with people.

A bellhop robot of the future, for example, would ideally be able to anticipate hotel guests’ needs and intentions based on subtle or even unintentional cues, not just respond to a stock list of verbal commands. In effect it would “understand”—to the extent that an unconscious machine can—what is going on around it, says Alan Winfield, professor of robot ethics at the University of West England in Bristol .

Winfield wants to develop that understanding through “simulation theory of mind,” an approach to AI that lets robots internally simulate the anticipated needs and actions of people, things and other robots—and use the results (in conjunction with pre programmed instructions) to determine an appropriate response. In other words, such robots would run an on-board program that models their own behavior in combination with that of other objects and people.

“I build robots that have simulations of themselves and other robots inside themselves,” Winfield says. “The idea of putting a simulation inside a robot… is a really neat way of allowing it to actually predict the future.”

“Theory of mind” is the term philosophers and psychologists use for the ability to predict the actions of self and others by imagining ourselves in the position of something or someone else. Winfield thinks enabling robots to do this will help them infer the goals and desires of agents around them—like realizing that the running couple really wanted to get that elevator.

This differentiates Winfield’s approach from machine learning, in which an AI system may use, for example, an artificial neural network that can train itself to carry out desired actions in a manner that satisfies the expectations of its users. An increasingly common form of this is deep learning, which involves building a large neural network that can, to some degree, automatically learn how to interpret information and choose appropriate responses.  [read more]

6 Times Foreign Powers Meddled in Our Elections

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 17):

A foreign government sought to influence the U.S. presidential race to benefit a favored candidate by pushing stories into the American media, working through an ambassador, and instigating what could be called collusion with the candidate.

This was 1796 and the culprit was France. Fast forward 200 years, and China tried to influence a presidential election. Two decades after that, it’s Russian meddling.

Top Trump administration officials announced earlier this month that Russian operatives are trying to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections, as they did with the 2016 presidential election. The U.S. government, they said, is taking actions across agencies to prevent it from happening again.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted more than two dozen Russian individuals and entities for cybercrimes, including pushing misinformation to undermine the 2016 election.

Then, as now, there was no evidence votes were changed. Instead, foreigners spread money or propaganda for the purpose of influencing the election.

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The Soviet Union meddled in U.S. elections at least as far back as 1948, said Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College.

“Liberals never gave a damn about Russian meddling in American elections until 2016,” Kengor told The Daily Signal. “They care now because Hillary Clinton lost.”

Here are six key examples of foreign influence in U.S. elections.

1. France and the 1796 Election

The outgoing administration of President George Washington wanted American neutrality in the war between Britain and France. However, the leader of the Democratic-Republican party, Thomas Jefferson, was avidly pro-French and believed the United States owed a debt to the country that helped it gain independence from the British.

Chief Justice John Jay went to Britain to hammer out an agreement, the Jay Treaty ratified in 1795, pledging U.S. neutrality in the conflict and establishing peace—at least for a time—between the U.S. and Britain.

Washington didn’t seek a third term, but his vice president, Federalist John Adams, was running to succeed him and was pro-British.

France’s ambassador to the United States, Pierre Auguste Adet, was among French officials and diplomats who openly expressed support for Jefferson and attacked Adams and the Federalists. So it wasn’t a covert operation.

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2. World War II and the 1940 Election

Some recently reported Russian methods are surprisingly similar to how an ally interfered with the 1940 presidential election, planting fake news stories in newspapers and making public what were believed to be private communications.

President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to intervene in World War II, but the American public and Congress—remembering World War I—had little appetite for what seemed like another European gambit.

Britain, besieged by Nazi Germany, thought one way to get American help was to reshape American public opinion.

“This was literally a matter of changing the establishment’s view of U.S. support for the war,” said Morris, who writes about British espionage in the 1940 election in his book “Rogue Spooks.”

The British Security Coordination, a front corporation for British intelligence in the United States, had offices inside the U.S. that conducted espionage and planted fake news stories in American media to tilt public opinion, according to information declassified in 1999. [read more]

The other four foreign powers were: Soviet Union in 1948, 1960, & 1980; and China in 1996.

The Wisdom of Eric Hoffer, Part II

From FEE.org:

He [Eric Hoffer] caught the attention of the powerful and the influential. President Eisenhower distributed copies of The True Believer to friends. Indeed, Hoffer was known as “Ike’s Favorite Author.” Eric Sevareid of NBC News brought Hoffer into the homes of millions of Americans with a 1967 television interview. President Reagan bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him shortly before the longshoreman philosopher’s death in 1983.

Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are “vowed” to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor. The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor.

The intellectual craves a social order in which uncommon people perform uncommon tasks every day. He wants a society throbbing with dedication, reverence, and worship. He sees it as scandalous that the discoveries of science and the feats of heroes should have as their denouement the comfort and affluence of common folk.

The corruption inherent in absolute power derives from the fact that such power is never free from the tendency to turn man into a thing, and press him back into the matrix of nature from which he has risen. For the impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

The significant point is that people unfit for freedom—who cannot do much with it—are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a “have-not” type of self. If Hitler had had the talents and the temperament of a genuine artist, if Stalin had had the capacity to become a first-rate theoretician, if Napoleon had had the makings of a great poet or philosopher they would hardly have developed the all-consuming lust for absolute power.

The best education will not immunize a person against corruption by power. The best education does not automatically make people compassionate. We know this more clearly than any preceding generation. Our time has seen the best-educated society, situated in the heart of the most civilized part of the world, give birth to the most murderously vengeful government in history. Forty years ago the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thought it self-evident that you would get a good government if you took power out of the hands of the acquisitive and gave it to the learned and the cultivated. At present, a child in kindergarten knows better than that.

No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion—it is an evil government.

[read more]

Eric Hoffer has described the Left perfectly.

Scientists have developed a 'GPS' system that can track inside the human body

From Cnet.com (Aug. 20):

Using the Global Positioning System satellites in orbit around the Earth, Google can pinpoint the restaurant's location, tell you how far away from the restaurant you are and how long it will take you to get there.

Now apply that philosophy to the human body. In diseases such as cancer, you might want to find a tumor -- but you can't use a GPS to do that.

Until now.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, led by Professor Dina Katabi, have developed ReMix, an "in-body GPS system" that utilizes wireless technology to locate ingestible implants inside the human body.

Current methods of looking inside the human body can be highly invasive, forcing physicians to send cameras snaking down throats or through incisions. With ReMix, you could theoretically ingest an implant that can be tracked externally. If that implant honed in on tumors it would provide doctors a way to improve targeted therapy options.

It doesn't use the satellites orbiting the Earth, however.

Testing ReMix involved attaching a "small marker" to a fake tumor inside a transparent container full of animal tissues. The marker itself only acts as a reflector, bouncing the wireless radio signal back out, and thus does not require a power source. [read more]

4 Key Facts About ICE, and What Could Happen If It’s Abolished

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 18):

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Aug. 14 arrested and deported an illegal immigrant who is wanted in El Salvador on murder charges.

Brian Alejandro Martinez reportedly had been arrested and freed several times in New Jersey and New York. ICE officials criticized authorities in Middlesex County, New Jersey, for releasing Martinez without notifying the federal agency.

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent years has had to contend with “sanctuary” policies by cities and counties that protect illegal immigrants, the agency now faces a push by some in Congress to abolish it.

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The House adopted a resolution last month supporting ICE agents, but 167 Democrats refused to vote for it.

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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio are among Democrats who have said they support getting rid of ICE.

Just 25 percent of voters say they are for abolishing the agency, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released last month.

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Primarily an immigration enforcement agency that doesn’t operate on the border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement still performs other functions. Here are four major facts about ICE, and what could happen if it ceases to exist.

1. Protecting Minority Communities

If ICE were abolished, minority communities would be disproportionately harmed, said Matthew T. Albence, the agency’s executive associate director for enforcement and removal.

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2. Enforcing Immigration Law

When Congress created the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, it established ICE as the enforcement arm while U.S. Customs and Immigration Services would be in charge of naturalizing legal immigrants.

The 9/11 Commission noted that terrorists involved in the 2001 attacks exploited U.S. immigration rules and some of the hijackers violated the terms of their visas.

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3. Targeting Smugglers of People, Drugs, Guns

Immigration and Customs Enforcement also combats the smuggling of people, drugs, money, counterfeit merchandise, and weapons into the United States. This includes confronting sexual trafficking, and in some cases, fighting child pornography.

ICE made more than 11,000 arrests related to weapon offenses in fiscal year 2017, according to the White House.

The agency is also responsible for “repatriation of cultural treasures,” or returning expensive items stolen from another country.

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4. Preventing Terrorism

ICE also specializes in identifying dangerous individuals before they enter the United States, or finding them after they illegally enter.

The agency’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit is comprised of two divisions: the Terrorist Tracking and Pursuit Group and the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System Exploitation Section.

The terrorist tracking group coordinates with other Homeland Security agencies to identify those who overstayed or otherwise violated their visas.

The student and visitor section investigates foreign nationals here for educational purposes who could be involved in criminal or terrorist activity or in intelligence gathering for a foreign power. [read more]

If enough anti-ICE politicians (mainly Dems) get into power ICE might just disappear. Keep in mind this is about keeping themselves in power and not protecting the people. Something to think about.

How Democracies Turn Tyrannical

From FEE.org:

The Tyrannies of Minorities and Majorities

In his famous essay “On Liberty” (1859), the British social philosopher John Stuart Mill warned that tyranny could take three forms: the tyranny of the minority, the tyranny of the majority, and the tyranny of custom and tradition. The tyranny of the minority was represented by absolute monarchy (a tyranny of the one) or an oligarchy (a tyranny of the few). The tyranny of custom and tradition could take the form of social and psychological pressures on individuals or small groups of individuals to conform to the prejudices and narrow-mindedness of wider communities who intimidate and stifle individual thought, creativity, or (peaceful) behavioral eccentricity.

Mill also was insistent that while democracy historically was part of the great movement for human liberty, majorities potentially could be as dictatorial and dangerous as the most ruthless and oppressive kings and princes of the past. At moments of great collective passions and prejudices, individual freedoms of speech, the press, religion, of association, and of private property could be voted away, reducing the isolated person to the coerced pawn and prisoner of the political system due to sheer numbers in an electoral process. (See my articles, “John Stuart Mill and the Three Dangers to Liberty” and “John Stuart Mill and the Dangers of Unrestrained Government”.)

For this reason, many of the great social philosophers and reformers of the 1700s and 1800s were often strongly insistent that because of democracy’s double-edged sword of liberty or tyranny, it was necessary to restrain the powers and reach of governments through written and unwritten constitutions that limited what majorities could do through their elected representatives. Hence, the role and importance, in the American case, of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

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“Negative” Freedom = Liberty, “Positive” Freedom = Coercion

One of the great linguistic tricks of the communists and many of the socialists of the twentieth century was to try to distinguish between false, or “bourgeois” freedoms in contrast to real, or “social,” freedoms. The former were those individual freedoms expressed in the Bill of Rights, which were labeled “negative” freedoms in that they “merely” protected a person against the aggression and coercion of others. “Positive,” or “social” freedoms required government planning, regulation, and redistributive control to assure that “need” rather than “profit” guided production and that the shares of income and wealth among the members of society were more equalized according to a prior notion of “distributive justice.”

Individual freedom only requires that each person respect the life, liberty and honestly acquired property of others and that he follows the rule of peaceful and voluntary association in all human interactions. Beyond this “negative” restraint on each of us, we are all at liberty to live our individual lives as we choose, guided by our own personal conceptions of value, meaning, and purpose in ordering and following our private affairs and dealings with others. [read more]

Why Democratic Socialists Can’t Legitimately Claim Sweden, Denmark as Success Stories

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 10):

Sen. Bernie Sanders and congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are popularizing the philosophy of democratic socialism, especially among younger age groups.

Meanwhile, the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) are gaining influence on college and high school campuses, claiming to have organizing activities planned at more than 250 campuses across the nation.

The YDSA website describes the group’s vision as “a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.”

Many on the right question this vision, pointing to countries such as Venezuela and Cuba as examples of socialist disasters. Democratic socialists claim those countries implemented socialism “incorrectly” or that other factors are to blame.

They prefer to cite Norway, Sweden, and Denmark as examples of socialist success. There are, however, several key problems with that.

First, these countries are not technically socialist. By the YDSA’s definition, socialism entails a centrally planned economy with nationalized means of production. Although these countries have high income taxes and provide generous social programs, they remain prosperous because of their free-market economies.

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Second, the success of these countries is clearly based on a capitalist foundation, and it predates the expansion of social programs. Sweden, for example, became a wealthy country in the mid-20th century under a capitalist system with low tax rates.

Social programs and high tax rates were not implemented until the 1970s, which caused the economy to significantly underperform and unemployment to rise.

Finally, these countries are largely homogeneous and have a culture that is conducive to a large welfare state. Scandinavians are described as hardworking citizens with extremely high levels of social trust and cohesion.

By contrast, America is a much larger country with lower levels of social trust, and therefore, a comparison is difficult to assess. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden are not democratic socialist countries that the U.S. can be accurately compared with, and could be better described as “compassionate capitalists.”

As such, the “democratic socialists”—as they define socialism—are left with no successful examples of their vision, only disastrous ones. [read more]

More articles about democratic socialism:

• Dear Democratic Socialists: Entitlements Are Not Rights
• Democratic Socialism Doesn't Exist: Like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, Democratic Socialism Exists Only in Myth
• Venezuela's Nightmare Is a Tragedy, But Not a Surprise

A new computer program generates eerily realistic fake videos

From Science News.com (Sept. 15):

“The camera never lies” is a thing of the past.

A new computer program can manipulate a video such that the person on-screen mirrors the movements and expressions of someone in a different video. Unlike other film-fudging software, this program can tamper with far more than facial expressions. The algorithm, to be presented August 16 at the 2018 SIGGRAPH meeting in Vancouver, also tweaks head and torso poses, eye movements and background details to create more lifelike fakes.

These video forgeries are “astonishingly realistic,” says Adam Finkelstein, a computer scientist at Princeton University not involved in the work. This system could help produce dubbed films where the actors’ lip movements match the voiceover, or even movies that star dead actors reanimated through old footage, he says. But giving internet users the power to create ultrarealistic phony videos of public figures could also take fake news to the next level (SN: 8/4/18, p. 22).

The algorithm starts by scanning two videos frame by frame, tracking 66 facial “landmarks” — like points along the eyes, nose and mouth — to map a person’s features, expression, head tilt and line of sight. For example, those videos might show former President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then, to make Putin mimic Obama’s behavior, the program distorts Putin’s image to adopt Obama’s head pose, facial expression and eye line in each frame. The program can also tweak shadows, change Putin’s hair or adjust the height of his shoulders to match his new head pose. The result is a video of Putin doing an eerily on-point imitation of Obama’s exact motions and expressions. [read more]

Disturbing. A good way to frame someone.

Aristotle’s Defense of Private Property: 4 Reasons Communal Property Is Inferior

From FEE.org:

In "The Communist Manifesto," Karl Marx aptly summarized the implications of a communist society, stating that “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” As an institution, private property has been a crucial factor in the flourishing of Western society and its political thought. However, its defense rarely extends beyond a calculation of its economic benefits. Many defenders of private property simply state that there is no viable alternative system and that private property is simply the best option of a bad bunch. This argument, with its pessimistic tone, hardly inspires much love for the concept of private ownership.

Thankfully, there have been numerous thinkers throughout history who have robustly defended and justified the institution of private property. Such figures are Cicero of Ancient Rome, Thomas Aquinas of medieval Europe, and John Locke of the early modern period.

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On the subject of private ownership, Aristotle believed that external goods such as property and wealth could help people live a virtuous life. Unlike the more austere Plato, who recommended strict limits on wealth, Aristotle argued that “happiness also requires external goods in addition, as we said; for it is impossible, or at least not easy, to play a noble part unless furnished with the necessary equipment.” With this view in mind, Aristotle adopted a positive stance toward private ownership.

Aristotle’s arguments on the justification of private property are necessary to examine, as they have shaped the debate on property throughout history. In his seminal work Politics, Aristotle argued against communal ownership of property by demonstrating the superiority of private property in four core areas: efficiency, unity, justice, and virtue.

Efficiency

First, Aristotle argued that private ownership is simply more efficient than communal ownership. The latter increases the likelihood of neglect; since people are sharing something, everyone is more likely to assume that someone else is taking care of the situation, instead of taking responsibility themselves.

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Unity

Critics of private property tend to demean property as atomistic, claiming that its adoption creates a society of “rugged individualists” who refuse to cooperate with one another. Aristotle sharply disagreed with this view, arguing instead that private property in fact fostered unity, while communally owned property bred constant strife and discord. On the subject of communal ownership, he writes that “in general, living together and sharing in common in all human matters is difficult, and most of all these sorts of things.”

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Justice

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserts that justice is defined by equals getting equal rewards and unequals getting unequal rewards. When this view is applied to the notion of communally owned property, an issue arises. “For if people are not equal, they will not possess equal things, but from this comes fights and accusations… For everyone agrees that the just in distributions must be according to some worth; the worth however, everyone does not call the same thing.”

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Virtue

Aristotle believed that using one’s property to aid friends was a great practice; “doing favors and helping friends, guests or mates is most pleasant, and this only happens when property is private.” In his opinion, generosity and charity can only exist in a society which upholds private property. If everyone communally owns everything then no one can aid one another. Aristotle writes of “generosity concerning possessions, for no one will be known to be generous or do generous actions, since the work of generosity is in the use of one’s possessions.” [read more]

Aristotle was Ayn Rand’s favorite philosopher. I now understand why. Ayn Rand believed in private property and so did Aristotle. So, it makes sense why she considered him a favorite of hers.

Here’s an article on private property:

Which Countries Have the Best Record in Protecting Property Rights?

Former Obama Supporter Explains Why She Chose to #WalkAway

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 13):

A former Obama supporter says she joined the “#WalkAway Campaign,” a movement that highlights stories of why people walk away from leftist ideology, because she could no longer subscribe to what the Democrat Party aligned itself to.

“I did vote for our current president and I will vote for him again in 2020, and just seeing how the left has become or is extremely dehumanizing. They are not into logic; it is all about your emotions, it is all about, ‘I feel like this, so therefore, it is fact,’” a YouTube user whose handle is Tumi Yukii said in a video posted July 10 to the video-based site.

Yukii said she grew up in a left-leaning household, attended the first presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, and was in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his second inauguration.

She said her political convictions began changing when she saw the party’s inconsistencies.

“I was raised a Democrat, I was raised to believe that, you know, Republicans, conservatives, who are old school, right-wing, racist[s] who wanted to keep America like the 1940s or the slavery times,” Yukii said. “You know, I was brought to different political events as a kid, all that kinda stuff.”

“I got off the Democrat plantation,” Yukii said. “And I noticed that there is a quote that says if you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results, that’s insanity, so voting for these Democrats over and over and over and over and [then] they’re doing nothing for inner cities, they’re doing nothing for black people.” [read more]

Good for her! But the Left would call her a traitor (an uppity black as Judge Clarence Thomas would say)  to her party and her race (maybe her gender too. Who knows.)