Month: March 2019

Want a gander at some one-sided reporting?

Take a look at what the normally centrist Roll Call has cranked out, openly advocating for congressional positions for DACA kids, who along with other foreign nationals, are prohibited by law from assuming positions of governance in the federal government. Legal foreigners in Congress are required by law to be taking steps, at least, toward U.S. citizenship. DACA kids, who are here illegally, but have the special privileges of DACA other illegal immigrants don’t have, are not.

“I would call that a WTF moment,” he said. “It’s mean-spirited. DACA recipients have overcome challenges. They have grit and tenacity and the skill sets needed to work on Capitol Hill. It’s not only a detriment to these folks who have public service careers closed off to them, it’s a detriment to the country.”

Ah, service! We should be slavering for their ‘public service’ or else. Roll Call pours on the glurge, effectively telling us that we all owe it to DACA recipients to allow them to work in Congress, changing the ‘mean-spirited’ law, and all based on their campaign work to elect Democrats. Here’s the actual rationale given by Roll Call for changing the law to allow DACA kids to lord it over us — or as the writer puts it, ’serve’ — in Congress:

Perez had spent months knocking on doors and speaking to voters across south Phoenix and Mesa. She had deep roots in the 9th District, where she’d lived since she was 4 years old.

She was knowledgeable about policy and had a track record of success working behind the scenes for the Phoenix City Council — from the installation of a new dog park to an ordinance requiring equal pay for women in the city.

No word on whether she’s trying to become a citizen legally, the way legal immigrants do, applying for a green card from her home country. Roll Call, of course, didn’t ask. 

It just reported that because she campaigned to elect a Democrat, a U.S. law should now be changed to allow her to be the arms and legs of the congressional office, accomodating her every wish as her political spoil. Wow.

Not one word about why the law might be a good idea from the other side. Reporting is supposed to be about giving two sides, maybe even a nod to two sides. No effort at all was exerted to find out anything about why that “mean-spirited” law might have been put in place to keep foreigners out of the reach of U.S. sovereign power.

Career congressional staff are invisible, yet very powerful, people, often more powerful than the congresspeople they purport to represent. They often have their own interests and agendas. And, as Roll Call explained in its syrupy lobbying piece to give this DACA kid political power over us, the DACA recipient had lots of experience in governing U.S. citizens with that dog park and equal pay for women in the city of Phoenix. Every political decision involves choosing one set of interests over another. For a foreigner to be doing it in the supposedly free United States, ruling against some U.S. citizen in whatever her decisions were, is rather intolerable. 

What’s more, that foreign citizenship ought to exclude every foreigner from security clearances and secret briefings, given the pressure such foreign nationals could be under from their countries of citizenship. Consider also that many DACA kids are unassimilated immigrants who haven’t even learned English. English, as it turns out, is not even a requirement for DACA qualification. Should those people, hired by some congressional Democrat, be making decisions for us? The DACA cutoff age is 16, so plenty of such recipients not only haven’t bothered to master English (you can tell this by the foreign language press releases from DACA kids giving testimony by activist groups), they are also very much loyal to their home countries and view a U.S. residency as a pass for bennies, or in some cases, political power. Many openly wave the Mexican flag in their calls for amnesty. More important, foreign nationals of some countries are uniquely susceptible to pressure from their countries of citizenship to advance that foreign country’s interests. You can bet that a Chinese national under protection from the DACA program would be hearing from the Chinese government about duties to the motherland – and maybe a few threats about what would happen to his relatives if he didn’t play ball. I’ve seen the Mexican goverment apply pressure to its nationals, too, in Los Angeles.

 That reality is no match for the gimme-gimme-gimme attitude of some politically active DACA recipients, who shouldn’t even be allowed to campaign here as non-citizens. (It’s a jailtime offense in Mexico for a foreign national to be campaigning in their elections over there.) But don’t count on the press to report it. I suspect Roll Call is just the tip of the iceberg on this one-sided reporting and already the New York Times is making calls to try to outdo Roll Call with the sob stories in coming days.

Image credit: Michael L. Dorn, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

 

 

Want a gander at some one-sided reporting?

Take a look at what the normally centrist Roll Call has cranked out, openly advocating for congressional positions for DACA kids, who along with other foreign nationals, are prohibited by law from assuming positions of governance in the federal government. Legal foreigners in Congress are required by law to be taking steps, at least, toward U.S. citizenship. DACA kids, who are here illegally, but have the special privileges of DACA other illegal immigrants don’t have, are not.

“I would call that a WTF moment,” he said. “It’s mean-spirited. DACA recipients have overcome challenges. They have grit and tenacity and the skill sets needed to work on Capitol Hill. It’s not only a detriment to these folks who have public service careers closed off to them, it’s a detriment to the country.”

Ah, service! We should be slavering for their ‘public service’ or else. Roll Call pours on the glurge, effectively telling us that we all owe it to DACA recipients to allow them to work in Congress, changing the ‘mean-spirited’ law, and all based on their campaign work to elect Democrats. Here’s the actual rationale given by Roll Call for changing the law to allow DACA kids to lord it over us — or as the writer puts it, ’serve’ — in Congress:

Perez had spent months knocking on doors and speaking to voters across south Phoenix and Mesa. She had deep roots in the 9th District, where she’d lived since she was 4 years old.

She was knowledgeable about policy and had a track record of success working behind the scenes for the Phoenix City Council — from the installation of a new dog park to an ordinance requiring equal pay for women in the city.

No word on whether she’s trying to become a citizen legally, the way legal immigrants do, applying for a green card from her home country. Roll Call, of course, didn’t ask. 

It just reported that because she campaigned to elect a Democrat, a U.S. law should now be changed to allow her to be the arms and legs of the congressional office, accomodating her every wish as her political spoil. Wow.

Not one word about why the law might be a good idea from the other side. Reporting is supposed to be about giving two sides, maybe even a nod to two sides. No effort at all was exerted to find out anything about why that “mean-spirited” law might have been put in place to keep foreigners out of the reach of U.S. sovereign power.

Career congressional staff are invisible, yet very powerful, people, often more powerful than the congresspeople they purport to represent. They often have their own interests and agendas. And, as Roll Call explained in its syrupy lobbying piece to give this DACA kid political power over us, the DACA recipient had lots of experience in governing U.S. citizens with that dog park and equal pay for women in the city of Phoenix. Every political decision involves choosing one set of interests over another. For a foreigner to be doing it in the supposedly free United States, ruling against some U.S. citizen in whatever her decisions were, is rather intolerable. 

What’s more, that foreign citizenship ought to exclude every foreigner from security clearances and secret briefings, given the pressure such foreign nationals could be under from their countries of citizenship. Consider also that many DACA kids are unassimilated immigrants who haven’t even learned English. English, as it turns out, is not even a requirement for DACA qualification. Should those people, hired by some congressional Democrat, be making decisions for us? The DACA cutoff age is 16, so plenty of such recipients not only haven’t bothered to master English (you can tell this by the foreign language press releases from DACA kids giving testimony by activist groups), they are also very much loyal to their home countries and view a U.S. residency as a pass for bennies, or in some cases, political power. Many openly wave the Mexican flag in their calls for amnesty. More important, foreign nationals of some countries are uniquely susceptible to pressure from their countries of citizenship to advance that foreign country’s interests. You can bet that a Chinese national under protection from the DACA program would be hearing from the Chinese government about duties to the motherland – and maybe a few threats about what would happen to his relatives if he didn’t play ball. I’ve seen the Mexican goverment apply pressure to its nationals, too, in Los Angeles.

 That reality is no match for the gimme-gimme-gimme attitude of some politically active DACA recipients, who shouldn’t even be allowed to campaign here as non-citizens. (It’s a jailtime offense in Mexico for a foreign national to be campaigning in their elections over there.) But don’t count on the press to report it. I suspect Roll Call is just the tip of the iceberg on this one-sided reporting and already the New York Times is making calls to try to outdo Roll Call with the sob stories in coming days.

Image credit: Michael L. Dorn, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

 

 

A new paper released Monday says that property crime rates would increase significantly among 16-to-24-year-olds if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour, leading to $2.4 billion damage, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

This information contradicts findings by Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2016, which stated that raising the minimum wage would reduce crime rates.

“Instead, we find that raising the minimum wage increases property crime arrests among those ages 16-to-24,” the authors of the study wrote.

“Myriad factors determine whether or not people choose to commit crimes, including economic ones. Access to jobs, steady income, and education, can all influence whether or not a person begins a career as a criminal,” Charles Fain Lehman wrote for The Washington Free Beacon.

“This has a practical implication for policymakers looking to reduce crime: In addition to expensive interventions like increasing incarceration or the number of cops, enhancing labor market access and outcomes might be an effective approach.”

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But, according to the study, the minimum wage hikes don’t end up enhancing labor market access.

While the Council of Economic Advisers found in 2016 that increasing the minimum wage to $12 would create enough wealth at lower economic strata to eliminate 250,000 to 510,000 crimes, the authors of the new study — Zachary S. Fone, Joseph J. Sabia, Resul Cesur of the National Bureau of Economic Research — say that there’s a flaw in that the Council of Economic Advisers’ approach.

“Although the minimum wage increases take-home wages for some workers, it also leads to reduced hours and job loss among workers,” Lehman reported.

“This is especially true for those whose skill level who puts the market value of their labor below the floor imposed by the minimum wage — a situation which increasingly encourages the replacement of people with robots.”

“We find little evidence that minimum wage increases affect violent or drug crimes, or net crime among older individuals, but do increase delinquency-related crimes related to teenage idleness,” the study read.

“Moreover, in contrast to (an earlier study), we find no evidence that minimum wage increases reduced net crime among working-age individuals, suggesting that different margins of criminal behavior may be affected by minimum wages.”

“Our estimates suggest that this minimum wage hike would generate over 410,000 additional property crimes and $2.4 billion per year in additional crime costs,” the study read.

“We conclude that increasing the minimum wage will at best be ineffective at deterring crime and at worst will have unintended consequences that increase property crime among young adults.”

This is hardly surprising. If you want to look at this in the micro sense as opposed to the macro, consider what happened at Whole Foods.

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The Amazon subsidiary introduced a $15 minimum wage for all employees this year, along with raises for those making above the minimum wage. Almost immediately, hours began dropping for employees.

The U.K. Guardian reported that “part-time employee hours at their store were cut from an average of 30 to 21 hours a week, and full-time employees saw average hours reduced from 37.5 hours to 34.5 hours.”

“My hours went from 30 to 20 a week,” an employee who provided the Guardian with schedules said.

“We just have to work faster to meet the same goals in less time.”

Fewer hours means more time on one’s hands. And, at least according to this study, that could mean a dramatic increase in property crime. Meanwhile, a sound economy and a glut of entry level positions — what conservatives are fighting for — would likely have a meliorative effect. Once again, conservatives win this round.

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Yesterday’s detention of Roberto Marrero, Venezuelan President Juan Guaido’s chief of staff, by the Nicolas Maduro dictatorship, drew bipartisan condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats.

Here’s Nancy Pelosi on Twitter:

 

We condemn the Maduro regime’s middle of the night raid and kidnapping of Roberto Marrero, the Chief of Staff to Venezuela’s interim President Juan Guaidó. We call on Maduro to release Marrero immediately and allow him safe return to his family. https://t.co/HCxJghDMBM

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) March 21, 2019

 

Here’s Secretary of State Mike Pomeo.

 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Twitter post: “We will hold accountable those involved.” https://t.co/ObNwRJ7T93 via @WSJ

— Juan Forero (@WSJForero) March 21, 2019

 

And we all know what President Trump thinks of the thuggery. Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Donna Shalala, and New Jersey’s Sen. Bob Menendez all tweeted similar. We all agree that Maduro is despicable.

USA Today called the entire stunt a ‘kidnap.’ Even the press is onboard.

Then there are the outliers… the socialists who are so out of it they’re seeing pushback from the leftist press on something that’s going to be painful for them when they hear about it.

The Sorosy Project-Syndicate site has a doozy of an essay decrying these avowed socialists, these hipsterly socialist “it girls” and objects of youthquake voting atttraction – as out-of-date.

Unfashionable. Mr. Magoo-ey. Outre. Passe. Didn’t get the memo. Embarassing hayseeds…

Get a load of this brilliant piece by Schlomo Ben-Ami, who is a lefty himself, who reads these three like a bad lottery ticket and warns them that their parroty, off-the-shelf, generic, America-hating “narrative” on Venezuela is as stale as last week’s milk left out to stink. It’s embarrassing to the other lefties. This piece is deadly for their image of being fashionable and out there as the cutting-edge progressives:

Here’s his tease:

Much of the left in Europe and the US continues to subscribe to a Cold War worldview, in which virtually any domestic revolution stands in direct opposition to the ultimate enemy: Western imperialism. When it comes to Venezuela, that stance effectively advances the interests of multiple dictatorships.

Here’s his outline of the problem:

It is because of this failure that, until fairly recently, the most heinous – and long-lasting – insurgency in Latin America’s history, waged by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), had advocates in the European parliament. Now, the story is repeating itself, with many Western leftists rejecting any international effort to push back against President Nicolás Maduro’s disastrous leadership.

The scale of the disaster should not be underestimated. Severe food and medication shortages are the new normal. The International Monetary Fund estimates that inflation will reach ten million percent this year. The result is a desperate people, 10% of whom have already fled the country. Among those who remain, 90% live below the poverty line.

A revolutionary delusion has collapsed, leaving behind only the tyrannical rule of a class of corrupt tycoons – effectively a mafia – that has purchased the military’s loyalty with massive cash bonuses and lucrative oil-smuggling and drug-trafficking deals. The mafia’s opponents are repressed, often brutally. In terms of the number of political prisoners, Maduro’s Venezuela has joined the ranks of China, Cuba, and Turkey.

And then he takes square aim at Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose heads are filled with lefty university mush and true ignorance of anything else, as well as the biggest old dinosaur himself, socialist honeymooner Bernie Sanders.

Representative Ilhan Omar has warned of a “US-backed coup” aimed at picking a leader “on behalf of multinational corporate interests,” and ignorantly defined the opposition as “far right.” (Guaidó is a member of a social-democratic party.) Likewise, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agreed that the large-scale, human rights-violating crisis is an “internal polarized conflict,” and argued that the United States should not recognize Guaidó as head of state.

Senator Bernie Sanders, for his part, invokes America’s dark history of interventions in Latin America when discussing Venezuela. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who memorialized Maduro’s mentor Hugo Chávez in 2013 for his “massive contributions to Venezuela and a very wide world,” also opposes “outside interference in Venezuela.”

These leaders subscribe to a Cold War worldview, in which virtually any domestic revolution stands in direct opposition to the ultimate enemy: Western imperialism. By not recognizing the nuances of the current crisis, they end up effectively advancing the interests of multiple dictatorships, including those in Iran, Nicaragua, Syria, and Turkey, as well as the real colonial powers in Venezuela right now: China, Cuba, and Russia.

This is a major smackdown from the leftside, and so well written it’s spread far and wide, featured in a coveted slot on RealClearPolitics Thursday. People are reading it. Its title? Maduro’s Useful Idiots. Read the whole thing.

 

Image credit: Lorie Shaull, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

Yesterday’s detention of Roberto Marrero, Venezuelan President Juan Guaido’s chief of staff, by the Nicolas Maduro dictatorship, drew bipartisan condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats.

Here’s Nancy Pelosi on Twitter:

 

We condemn the Maduro regime’s middle of the night raid and kidnapping of Roberto Marrero, the Chief of Staff to Venezuela’s interim President Juan Guaidó. We call on Maduro to release Marrero immediately and allow him safe return to his family. https://t.co/HCxJghDMBM

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) March 21, 2019

 

Here’s Secretary of State Mike Pomeo.

 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Twitter post: “We will hold accountable those involved.” https://t.co/ObNwRJ7T93 via @WSJ

— Juan Forero (@WSJForero) March 21, 2019

 

And we all know what President Trump thinks of the thuggery. Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Donna Shalala, and New Jersey’s Sen. Bob Menendez all tweeted similar. We all agree that Maduro is despicable.

USA Today called the entire stunt a ‘kidnap.’ Even the press is onboard.

Then there are the outliers… the socialists who are so out of it they’re seeing pushback from the leftist press on something that’s going to be painful for them when they hear about it.

The Sorosy Project-Syndicate site has a doozy of an essay decrying these avowed socialists, these hipsterly socialist “it girls” and objects of youthquake voting atttraction – as out-of-date.

Unfashionable. Mr. Magoo-ey. Outre. Passe. Didn’t get the memo. Embarassing hayseeds…

Get a load of this brilliant piece by Schlomo Ben-Ami, who is a lefty himself, who reads these three like a bad lottery ticket and warns them that their parroty, off-the-shelf, generic, America-hating “narrative” on Venezuela is as stale as last week’s milk left out to stink. It’s embarrassing to the other lefties. This piece is deadly for their image of being fashionable and out there as the cutting-edge progressives:

Here’s his tease:

Much of the left in Europe and the US continues to subscribe to a Cold War worldview, in which virtually any domestic revolution stands in direct opposition to the ultimate enemy: Western imperialism. When it comes to Venezuela, that stance effectively advances the interests of multiple dictatorships.

Here’s his outline of the problem:

It is because of this failure that, until fairly recently, the most heinous – and long-lasting – insurgency in Latin America’s history, waged by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), had advocates in the European parliament. Now, the story is repeating itself, with many Western leftists rejecting any international effort to push back against President Nicolás Maduro’s disastrous leadership.

The scale of the disaster should not be underestimated. Severe food and medication shortages are the new normal. The International Monetary Fund estimates that inflation will reach ten million percent this year. The result is a desperate people, 10% of whom have already fled the country. Among those who remain, 90% live below the poverty line.

A revolutionary delusion has collapsed, leaving behind only the tyrannical rule of a class of corrupt tycoons – effectively a mafia – that has purchased the military’s loyalty with massive cash bonuses and lucrative oil-smuggling and drug-trafficking deals. The mafia’s opponents are repressed, often brutally. In terms of the number of political prisoners, Maduro’s Venezuela has joined the ranks of China, Cuba, and Turkey.

And then he takes square aim at Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose heads are filled with lefty university mush and true ignorance of anything else, as well as the biggest old dinosaur himself, socialist honeymooner Bernie Sanders.

Representative Ilhan Omar has warned of a “US-backed coup” aimed at picking a leader “on behalf of multinational corporate interests,” and ignorantly defined the opposition as “far right.” (Guaidó is a member of a social-democratic party.) Likewise, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agreed that the large-scale, human rights-violating crisis is an “internal polarized conflict,” and argued that the United States should not recognize Guaidó as head of state.

Senator Bernie Sanders, for his part, invokes America’s dark history of interventions in Latin America when discussing Venezuela. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who memorialized Maduro’s mentor Hugo Chávez in 2013 for his “massive contributions to Venezuela and a very wide world,” also opposes “outside interference in Venezuela.”

These leaders subscribe to a Cold War worldview, in which virtually any domestic revolution stands in direct opposition to the ultimate enemy: Western imperialism. By not recognizing the nuances of the current crisis, they end up effectively advancing the interests of multiple dictatorships, including those in Iran, Nicaragua, Syria, and Turkey, as well as the real colonial powers in Venezuela right now: China, Cuba, and Russia.

This is a major smackdown from the leftside, and so well written it’s spread far and wide, featured in a coveted slot on RealClearPolitics Thursday. People are reading it. Its title? Maduro’s Useful Idiots. Read the whole thing.

 

Image credit: Lorie Shaull, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0