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MMT: The Latest Liberal Economic Fantasy

A good definition of a liberal might be someone who tries to ignore the actual nature of reality. Thus, many politically correct formulations distort reality even to the point of denying the differences between the sexes.

Ignoring the nature of reality can get particularly dangerous when applied to economics. The nature of money calls for having sufficient control over the money supply to prevent the breakdown of the system. It calls for keeping debt levels low.  Some liberals are now trying to turn conventional economy policy upside down by changing all the rules.

The new economics is called Modern Monetary Theory or MMT for short. MMT is gaining traction among high-profile Democrats and other liberals that are looking for ways to finance social and ecological programs that they hope to implement in the future. The present monetary system with its $22 trillion-and-growing debt is too rigid and constraining. Something new is needed to provide more flexible and expandable financing. The answer is MMT.

The Basic Tenets of MMT

Critics say that MMT is neither monetary nor a theory. It more closely resembles a political opportunity, since it puts everything in the hands of enlightened politicians. Its promoters keep the theory sufficiently vague to avoid close scrutiny. They tend to stay outside of the mainstream economic journals and inside social media.

Nevertheless, liberal economist Heather Boushey claims that the theory has moved to center stage in the political debate. It is the catchphrase of economists, pundits, and politicians who “hold it up as the answer to our economic problems.”   Prof. Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook University (with two co-authors) summarize the theory’s magic formula as “Anything that is technically feasible is financially affordable.”

The two basic tenets of MMT are dear to liberal hearts. First, governments can spend much more than they tax. Secondly, promoters claim that governments should uses taxes, not as a generator of revenue, but as an instrument of inflation control and achieving equality.

MMT advocates say that deficit spending does not matter for countries like the United States that borrow in their own currency. Governments can issue money using mechanisms like the Federal Reserve to self-finance their budgets.   

The MMTers claim that the present monetary policies of setting interest rates and controlling the money supply by the Fed are no longer needed as tools for balancing an economy.

The new tools for job creation and economic growth should be increased federal spending and taxation. When things get rough, the government can spend its way to full employment by printing up money. When the economy booms and inflation threatens, the government can contract the money supply by taxing it down to acceptable levels.

Creating a Climate of Instability and Distrust

MMT takes the control of policy out of the hands of economists and puts it into those of politicians. It replaces long-term planning with short-term spending. Such policies will have more immediate effects since increased spending impacts the economy directly. MMTers claims politicians will not abuse their newly acquired powers since they can be voted out if they err in judgment. More likely than not, politicians will probably be rewarded by the amount of MMT-funded pork that they can bring back to their districts.

Most conventional economists observe that failure to think in the long term creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust that destabilizes markets. Moreover, the far-out ideas of MMT have never been tested, but, like deficits and taxes, that does not seem to matter. No one really cares that not even liberal economists like Paul Krugman give it much credence. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers, for example, called it “voodoo economics.”

It is a sad reflection of these Twitter times in which nothing has consequences, and everything runs on impressions and emotions. In the age of fake news, fake money makes sense. It is enough to “feel” and “believe” that it will work and finance the Green New Deal for it to gain acceptance.   

Meanwhile, no one answers the real question of who is going to pay down the federal debt.  

A good definition of a liberal might be someone who tries to ignore the actual nature of reality. Thus, many politically correct formulations distort reality even to the point of denying the differences between the sexes.

Ignoring the nature of reality can get particularly dangerous when applied to economics. The nature of money calls for having sufficient control over the money supply to prevent the breakdown of the system. It calls for keeping debt levels low.  Some liberals are now trying to turn conventional economy policy upside down by changing all the rules.

The new economics is called Modern Monetary Theory or MMT for short. MMT is gaining traction among high-profile Democrats and other liberals that are looking for ways to finance social and ecological programs that they hope to implement in the future. The present monetary system with its $22 trillion-and-growing debt is too rigid and constraining. Something new is needed to provide more flexible and expandable financing. The answer is MMT.

The Basic Tenets of MMT

Critics say that MMT is neither monetary nor a theory. It more closely resembles a political opportunity, since it puts everything in the hands of enlightened politicians. Its promoters keep the theory sufficiently vague to avoid close scrutiny. They tend to stay outside of the mainstream economic journals and inside social media.

Nevertheless, liberal economist Heather Boushey claims that the theory has moved to center stage in the political debate. It is the catchphrase of economists, pundits, and politicians who “hold it up as the answer to our economic problems.”   Prof. Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook University (with two co-authors) summarize the theory’s magic formula as “Anything that is technically feasible is financially affordable.”

The two basic tenets of MMT are dear to liberal hearts. First, governments can spend much more than they tax. Secondly, promoters claim that governments should uses taxes, not as a generator of revenue, but as an instrument of inflation control and achieving equality.

MMT advocates say that deficit spending does not matter for countries like the United States that borrow in their own currency. Governments can issue money using mechanisms like the Federal Reserve to self-finance their budgets.   

The MMTers claim that the present monetary policies of setting interest rates and controlling the money supply by the Fed are no longer needed as tools for balancing an economy.

The new tools for job creation and economic growth should be increased federal spending and taxation. When things get rough, the government can spend its way to full employment by printing up money. When the economy booms and inflation threatens, the government can contract the money supply by taxing it down to acceptable levels.

Creating a Climate of Instability and Distrust

MMT takes the control of policy out of the hands of economists and puts it into those of politicians. It replaces long-term planning with short-term spending. Such policies will have more immediate effects since increased spending impacts the economy directly. MMTers claims politicians will not abuse their newly acquired powers since they can be voted out if they err in judgment. More likely than not, politicians will probably be rewarded by the amount of MMT-funded pork that they can bring back to their districts.

Most conventional economists observe that failure to think in the long term creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust that destabilizes markets. Moreover, the far-out ideas of MMT have never been tested, but, like deficits and taxes, that does not seem to matter. No one really cares that not even liberal economists like Paul Krugman give it much credence. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers, for example, called it “voodoo economics.”

It is a sad reflection of these Twitter times in which nothing has consequences, and everything runs on impressions and emotions. In the age of fake news, fake money makes sense. It is enough to “feel” and “believe” that it will work and finance the Green New Deal for it to gain acceptance.   

Meanwhile, no one answers the real question of who is going to pay down the federal debt.  

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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Senator Wyden’s Very Bad Idea for More Taxes

Oregon’s liberal Democratic senator Ron Wyden most likely knew from the get-go that his idea for new taxes on assets and investments wouldn’t get a lot of traction — so much so that a news release, tweet, or bulletin taking credit for his own proposal can’t be found on the senator’s official website.

Yet Senator Wyden, who is the ranking member of the Senate’s Finance Committee, in early April told the financial press he is developing a “mark-to-market” approach to tax unrealized capital gains.  In simple terms, he proposes a levy — a tax — on investments (like real estate or stocks) based on valuations of their holdings each year, with all annual gains treated like income — even gains that have not been realized.  This “mark-to-market” accounting practice of updating the value of an asset would tax all capital gains like income at a maximum rate of 37 percent.

The present capital gains tax functions this way: when capital assets like stocks or real estate are bought, the purchase price becomes the “cost basis,” and when they are sold, the difference between the cost basis and the sale price becomes a “capital gain.”  With a couple stipulations involving the length of time an asset is held (i.e., long- or short-term) and breakpoints based on a taxpayer’s overall income, the current capital gains tax in the U.S. ranges between 15 percent and 23.8 percent.  When an asset is sold for a profit after a year or more, it is taxed at long term rates, while rates if assets are sold after less than a year — i.e., short term — generally equate to ordinary income tax rates.

So what could possibly go wrong with systematic annual taxation that would be extraordinarily difficult and complex to implement, while loaded with potential to disrupt and devastate the nation’s financial markets?

First and foremost: compliance and its associated costs.  Would it even be humanly possible to annually value the wide array of capital assets that constitute our nation’s economy?  How do you go about fairly valuing — without transactions to price them — everything from venture capital to private debt to stock options to cyclical businesses to illiquid real estate and beyond?

Then, what kind of drain on the U.S. economy would such annual fiscal gymnastics impose, as everyone’s asset and money managers maneuver to value assets, particularly illiquid ones, with the objective of tax efficiency?  (Of course, Senator Wyden promises, but has not yet provided, a detailed explanation of exactly how all this will work.)  Some, if not many, investors would just not bother and take their capital elsewhere.

Another problem: How would smaller investors — even otherwise moderately wealthy investors — pay taxes on investments that have not yet returned cash to them?  Senator Wyden must know that Americans saving and investing for the future do not possess surpluses of cash in addition to those assets to pay additional taxes.  The obvious is that only when a stock, real estate, or another asset is sold does an investor obtain the cash to monetize the gains of his investment.  There is good reason why we presently tax only realized gains in America — and not notional ones — because one is a tangible gain, while the other is only an abstract number on paper until it is sold.

Senator Wyden, with a worldview common among liberal Democrats, further sees the issue in terms of binary economic and class distinctions.  In announcing his proposal, he asserted:

There are two tax codes in America.  The first is for nurses, police officers, and factory workers — those who earn wages and pay taxes with every paycheck.  The second is for millionaires and billionaires — those who use their wealth to build more wealth, paying what they want, when they want … Everyone needs to pay their fair share.

That statement by itself ignores the facts that the top one percent already pay a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent), or that more Americans than ever own stocks and almost two thirds of Americans own their homes.

Additionally, many Americans are not rich and wealthy like Wyden’s pejorative “millionaires and billionaires” and do not fit neatly into either group.  They are America’s so-called “middle class.”  Yes, they earn wages and pay taxes with every paycheck, but over time, they are fortunate enough to save some of the money the government has allowed them to keep.  They go on to invest their dollars, sometimes well and other times not so well.  Over the years, the growth and appreciation of those assets enable them to raise families, pay their bills, even enjoy life and increase their likelihood of making it through retirement without running out of money.  Just where would an always benevolent federal government draw the line on who and what is taxed — and for how much?

Critics mostly agree that Wyden’s proposal has little chance of passing any time soon, but it is a siren call to those lured by its potential to raise vast sums to feed the seemingly insatiable demands of government spending — funds that could otherwise remain available to taxpayers to circulate in the economy as they see fit.

Is it too much to expect the senior Democrat on the Senate’s Finance Committee to understand that such a tax proposal disregards the lifeblood of our economy: investment?  Senator Wyden’s proposal, if implemented, would discourage capital formation, increased productivity, investment risk-taking, and wealth creation.  Such an idea embodies an entire party’s diametrically different political philosophy of wealth as a divisive political wedge and “millionaires and billionaires” as a populist foil instead of concentrating on growing the economy and creating jobs for the benefit of all Americans.

Maybe Vice President Mike Pence said it best with his remarks at CPAC, the annual conservative convention, in March: “The truth is, we [conservatives] want to make poor people richer; they [the Democrats] want to make rich people poorer.”  Senator Wyden’s proposal is just a very bad idea that all Americans — regardless of their politics — could agree should never see the light of day.

Chris J. Krisinger (colonel, USAF ret.) served in policy advisory positions in both the Pentagon and the State Department.  He was a National Defense Fellow at Harvard University.

Oregon’s liberal Democratic senator Ron Wyden most likely knew from the get-go that his idea for new taxes on assets and investments wouldn’t get a lot of traction — so much so that a news release, tweet, or bulletin taking credit for his own proposal can’t be found on the senator’s official website.

Yet Senator Wyden, who is the ranking member of the Senate’s Finance Committee, in early April told the financial press he is developing a “mark-to-market” approach to tax unrealized capital gains.  In simple terms, he proposes a levy — a tax — on investments (like real estate or stocks) based on valuations of their holdings each year, with all annual gains treated like income — even gains that have not been realized.  This “mark-to-market” accounting practice of updating the value of an asset would tax all capital gains like income at a maximum rate of 37 percent.

The present capital gains tax functions this way: when capital assets like stocks or real estate are bought, the purchase price becomes the “cost basis,” and when they are sold, the difference between the cost basis and the sale price becomes a “capital gain.”  With a couple stipulations involving the length of time an asset is held (i.e., long- or short-term) and breakpoints based on a taxpayer’s overall income, the current capital gains tax in the U.S. ranges between 15 percent and 23.8 percent.  When an asset is sold for a profit after a year or more, it is taxed at long term rates, while rates if assets are sold after less than a year — i.e., short term — generally equate to ordinary income tax rates.

So what could possibly go wrong with systematic annual taxation that would be extraordinarily difficult and complex to implement, while loaded with potential to disrupt and devastate the nation’s financial markets?

First and foremost: compliance and its associated costs.  Would it even be humanly possible to annually value the wide array of capital assets that constitute our nation’s economy?  How do you go about fairly valuing — without transactions to price them — everything from venture capital to private debt to stock options to cyclical businesses to illiquid real estate and beyond?

Then, what kind of drain on the U.S. economy would such annual fiscal gymnastics impose, as everyone’s asset and money managers maneuver to value assets, particularly illiquid ones, with the objective of tax efficiency?  (Of course, Senator Wyden promises, but has not yet provided, a detailed explanation of exactly how all this will work.)  Some, if not many, investors would just not bother and take their capital elsewhere.

Another problem: How would smaller investors — even otherwise moderately wealthy investors — pay taxes on investments that have not yet returned cash to them?  Senator Wyden must know that Americans saving and investing for the future do not possess surpluses of cash in addition to those assets to pay additional taxes.  The obvious is that only when a stock, real estate, or another asset is sold does an investor obtain the cash to monetize the gains of his investment.  There is good reason why we presently tax only realized gains in America — and not notional ones — because one is a tangible gain, while the other is only an abstract number on paper until it is sold.

Senator Wyden, with a worldview common among liberal Democrats, further sees the issue in terms of binary economic and class distinctions.  In announcing his proposal, he asserted:

There are two tax codes in America.  The first is for nurses, police officers, and factory workers — those who earn wages and pay taxes with every paycheck.  The second is for millionaires and billionaires — those who use their wealth to build more wealth, paying what they want, when they want … Everyone needs to pay their fair share.

That statement by itself ignores the facts that the top one percent already pay a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent), or that more Americans than ever own stocks and almost two thirds of Americans own their homes.

Additionally, many Americans are not rich and wealthy like Wyden’s pejorative “millionaires and billionaires” and do not fit neatly into either group.  They are America’s so-called “middle class.”  Yes, they earn wages and pay taxes with every paycheck, but over time, they are fortunate enough to save some of the money the government has allowed them to keep.  They go on to invest their dollars, sometimes well and other times not so well.  Over the years, the growth and appreciation of those assets enable them to raise families, pay their bills, even enjoy life and increase their likelihood of making it through retirement without running out of money.  Just where would an always benevolent federal government draw the line on who and what is taxed — and for how much?

Critics mostly agree that Wyden’s proposal has little chance of passing any time soon, but it is a siren call to those lured by its potential to raise vast sums to feed the seemingly insatiable demands of government spending — funds that could otherwise remain available to taxpayers to circulate in the economy as they see fit.

Is it too much to expect the senior Democrat on the Senate’s Finance Committee to understand that such a tax proposal disregards the lifeblood of our economy: investment?  Senator Wyden’s proposal, if implemented, would discourage capital formation, increased productivity, investment risk-taking, and wealth creation.  Such an idea embodies an entire party’s diametrically different political philosophy of wealth as a divisive political wedge and “millionaires and billionaires” as a populist foil instead of concentrating on growing the economy and creating jobs for the benefit of all Americans.

Maybe Vice President Mike Pence said it best with his remarks at CPAC, the annual conservative convention, in March: “The truth is, we [conservatives] want to make poor people richer; they [the Democrats] want to make rich people poorer.”  Senator Wyden’s proposal is just a very bad idea that all Americans — regardless of their politics — could agree should never see the light of day.

Chris J. Krisinger (colonel, USAF ret.) served in policy advisory positions in both the Pentagon and the State Department.  He was a National Defense Fellow at Harvard University.

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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Black principal of Houston inner-city school lays down the dress code…on parents

A principal at a Houston high school has issued a memo that bans parents from entering her school who are not appropriately dressed.

Items banned from the building include shower caps, hair rollers, bonnets, satin caps … house shoes, undershirts (for men), and pajamas, or anything that could be construed as such, a topic on which the directive casts a wide net: ‘[A]ttire that could possibly be pajamas, underwear, or home setting wear, such as flannel pajamas,” it reads.

Items banned from the entire campus include hot pants and Daisy Dukes, cleavage-revealing dresses, saggy pants or ripped-up, overly revealing jeans, and leggings, another topic on which the order goes to some length to explain.  To warrant a ban, they must be “showing your bottom and where your body is not covered from the front or the back (rear).

Critics are calling this “a form of  ”respectability politics,” defined as “the way minority groups police their behavior to fit white standards of decorum and behavior.”  ”Coined by author Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, this tendency among African Americans has roots in the works of WEB DuBois and Booker T. Washington; curmudgeonly NBA commentator Charles Barkley, comedian Chris Rock, and even Barack Obama have been accused of practicing respectability politics.”

This may be the long awaited rebound of the decent against the indecent.  Principal Carlotta Outley Brown is black, and Madison High School is in the inner city.  She appears to be instituting a regime that prepares students for life after high school.  ”Respectability politics” seems to argue that anybody should be able to wear anything in any way he pleases.  This is a variation of sixties hippies, who dressed like bums to disrespect the system generally.

That disrespect is intended in the current context becomes clear when defiant attitudes accompany inappropriate dress.  Kids model their parents and imbibe the defiance along with the rest.  This approach to the world outside home is a recipe not for success, but rather for lifelong conflict.

One can’t escape the suspicion that such people really aren’t much concerned with their progeny’s success.  It’s one thing to “be your own man” and to dress to showcase your individuality, but this can be done without vulgarity and disrespect.  The opinions of others do matter.  Over time, the general opinion establishes rules of propriety.

The underlying principle is respect for legitimate authority, without which society (and high schools) breaks down.  That authority can be abused isn’t the issue here; the more basic need for rules, and for authority to establish those rules and exact compliance with them, is.

This gutsy principal has taken the bull by the horns.  We can be sure there will be a backlash during which she will be accused of racism, Uncle Tomism, etc.  In similar situations in universities, we’re accustomed to seeing the administration backing down, apologizing, and undercutting such brave souls, perhaps even firing them.

We can hope her district has the fortitude and clear-eyed vision that animate Mrs. Brown, to stand behind and fortify her decision.  Of her kind America needs more, not fewer.

A principal at a Houston high school has issued a memo that bans parents from entering her school who are not appropriately dressed.

Items banned from the building include shower caps, hair rollers, bonnets, satin caps … house shoes, undershirts (for men), and pajamas, or anything that could be construed as such, a topic on which the directive casts a wide net: ‘[A]ttire that could possibly be pajamas, underwear, or home setting wear, such as flannel pajamas,” it reads.

Items banned from the entire campus include hot pants and Daisy Dukes, cleavage-revealing dresses, saggy pants or ripped-up, overly revealing jeans, and leggings, another topic on which the order goes to some length to explain.  To warrant a ban, they must be “showing your bottom and where your body is not covered from the front or the back (rear).

Critics are calling this “a form of  ”respectability politics,” defined as “the way minority groups police their behavior to fit white standards of decorum and behavior.”  ”Coined by author Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, this tendency among African Americans has roots in the works of WEB DuBois and Booker T. Washington; curmudgeonly NBA commentator Charles Barkley, comedian Chris Rock, and even Barack Obama have been accused of practicing respectability politics.”

This may be the long awaited rebound of the decent against the indecent.  Principal Carlotta Outley Brown is black, and Madison High School is in the inner city.  She appears to be instituting a regime that prepares students for life after high school.  ”Respectability politics” seems to argue that anybody should be able to wear anything in any way he pleases.  This is a variation of sixties hippies, who dressed like bums to disrespect the system generally.

That disrespect is intended in the current context becomes clear when defiant attitudes accompany inappropriate dress.  Kids model their parents and imbibe the defiance along with the rest.  This approach to the world outside home is a recipe not for success, but rather for lifelong conflict.

One can’t escape the suspicion that such people really aren’t much concerned with their progeny’s success.  It’s one thing to “be your own man” and to dress to showcase your individuality, but this can be done without vulgarity and disrespect.  The opinions of others do matter.  Over time, the general opinion establishes rules of propriety.

The underlying principle is respect for legitimate authority, without which society (and high schools) breaks down.  That authority can be abused isn’t the issue here; the more basic need for rules, and for authority to establish those rules and exact compliance with them, is.

This gutsy principal has taken the bull by the horns.  We can be sure there will be a backlash during which she will be accused of racism, Uncle Tomism, etc.  In similar situations in universities, we’re accustomed to seeing the administration backing down, apologizing, and undercutting such brave souls, perhaps even firing them.

We can hope her district has the fortitude and clear-eyed vision that animate Mrs. Brown, to stand behind and fortify her decision.  Of her kind America needs more, not fewer.

via American Thinker Blog

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

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Leftist judges cry about gerrymandering in Michigan because it doesn’t benefit Democrats

A panel of federal judges on Thursday ruled that 34 of the 162 congressional and state legislative districts drawn by the Michigan State Legislature, controlled by Republicans, violated the constitutional rights of Democrat voters in Michigan by putting as many Democrats as possible into as few as possible “safe” Democrat congressional and state legislative districts and then creating as many as possible Republican-leaning in the remaining districts.

That is precisely what the Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature did, just as it is precisely what the Democrat-controlled Michigan Legislature had done for decade after decade before Republicans gained parity in state legislative strength after the 1994 Republican midterm landslide.

In fact, what Republicans in the Michigan Legislature did was just what Democrats had done in every single state in which they controlled state government for the last century.  Consider this chart from the National Conference of State Legislatures of state legislative control by state from 1978 to 1988 and the period from 1990 to 2000. 

These charts show that during a period in which Republicans were winning presidential elections, often easily, Republicans were almost extinct at the state legislative level.  In 1990, Republicans controlled the legislatures of only six of the fifty states.  In January of 1986, after Reagan won the greatest presidential landslides in modern political history, carrying 49 and almost 50 states, Republicans controlled only nine state legislatures. 

Why did Republicans do so pathetically in state legislative elections?  Why, in 1980, the year of the first Reagan landslide, did House Republican candidates in California, who won more of the popular vote that Democrat candidates in the same races in California, win a paltry number of congressional races in California, a state in which Reagan had been a popular two-term governor?

Democrat gerrymandering in state legislative and congressional races was the reason why Democrats were able to win a majority of these races with, often, a minority of the total vote.  Republicans on numerous occasions throughout the 20th century sought to have federal courts strike down these Democrat-drawn districts as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Democrats in defending this litigation did not even pretend that they were not engaged in blatant partisan gerrymandering.  They argued, instead, and federal judges agreed with them that partisan gerrymandering was perfectly constitutional.  The Democrat congressman who drafted the grotesque congressional map of California even bragged about how many seats Republicans would lose with the new districts (and he was right).

So is the problem today, as federal judges and Democrats complain, that Republican gerrymandering has gotten much worse than Democrat gerrymandering was in the past?  Recall that after Reagan’s 1984 landslide, Republicans controlled only nine state legislatures, and then consider that after the 2018 midterms, Democrats controlled 18 state legislatures, with one state legislature divided. 

Republican gerrymandering at its worst was not remotely as anti-democratic as Democrat gerrymandering has been at its best.  Even a cursory review of the partisan composition of state legislatures since 1994, when Republicans finally broke through a century of iron control of state legislatures, shows that both parties have a much better chance of competing for control of almost any state legislature than in the past decades of Democrat gerrymandering.

The Michigan State Legislature, that Republican legislature whose redistricting over the last couple of cycles so troubles the panel of federal judges seeing the imagined menace of Republican gerrymandering, has the two houses of the legislature with the following breakdown:  Michigan Senate: 22 Republicans and 16 Democrats; Michigan House: 58 Republicans and 52 Democrats. 

This is more than enough to allow Democrats in a good year to capture the Michigan Legislature.  Indeed, after the 2000 Census, Republicans controlled the Michigan Legislature, but in spite of drawing Michigan’s state legislative districts, by 2009, control of the Michigan Legislature was divided between the two parties.  That ought to be the goal of truly fair state legislative redistricting: control of one or both houses of the state legislature could be won by either political party in the next election cycle.

Leftists, however, who infest not just Washington and the national media, but also the federal bench and legal profession, do not care one whit about fairness or honesty or meaningful elections.  They care only about power.

A panel of federal judges on Thursday ruled that 34 of the 162 congressional and state legislative districts drawn by the Michigan State Legislature, controlled by Republicans, violated the constitutional rights of Democrat voters in Michigan by putting as many Democrats as possible into as few as possible “safe” Democrat congressional and state legislative districts and then creating as many as possible Republican-leaning in the remaining districts.

That is precisely what the Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature did, just as it is precisely what the Democrat-controlled Michigan Legislature had done for decade after decade before Republicans gained parity in state legislative strength after the 1994 Republican midterm landslide.

In fact, what Republicans in the Michigan Legislature did was just what Democrats had done in every single state in which they controlled state government for the last century.  Consider this chart from the National Conference of State Legislatures of state legislative control by state from 1978 to 1988 and the period from 1990 to 2000. 

These charts show that during a period in which Republicans were winning presidential elections, often easily, Republicans were almost extinct at the state legislative level.  In 1990, Republicans controlled the legislatures of only six of the fifty states.  In January of 1986, after Reagan won the greatest presidential landslides in modern political history, carrying 49 and almost 50 states, Republicans controlled only nine state legislatures. 

Why did Republicans do so pathetically in state legislative elections?  Why, in 1980, the year of the first Reagan landslide, did House Republican candidates in California, who won more of the popular vote that Democrat candidates in the same races in California, win a paltry number of congressional races in California, a state in which Reagan had been a popular two-term governor?

Democrat gerrymandering in state legislative and congressional races was the reason why Democrats were able to win a majority of these races with, often, a minority of the total vote.  Republicans on numerous occasions throughout the 20th century sought to have federal courts strike down these Democrat-drawn districts as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Democrats in defending this litigation did not even pretend that they were not engaged in blatant partisan gerrymandering.  They argued, instead, and federal judges agreed with them that partisan gerrymandering was perfectly constitutional.  The Democrat congressman who drafted the grotesque congressional map of California even bragged about how many seats Republicans would lose with the new districts (and he was right).

So is the problem today, as federal judges and Democrats complain, that Republican gerrymandering has gotten much worse than Democrat gerrymandering was in the past?  Recall that after Reagan’s 1984 landslide, Republicans controlled only nine state legislatures, and then consider that after the 2018 midterms, Democrats controlled 18 state legislatures, with one state legislature divided. 

Republican gerrymandering at its worst was not remotely as anti-democratic as Democrat gerrymandering has been at its best.  Even a cursory review of the partisan composition of state legislatures since 1994, when Republicans finally broke through a century of iron control of state legislatures, shows that both parties have a much better chance of competing for control of almost any state legislature than in the past decades of Democrat gerrymandering.

The Michigan State Legislature, that Republican legislature whose redistricting over the last couple of cycles so troubles the panel of federal judges seeing the imagined menace of Republican gerrymandering, has the two houses of the legislature with the following breakdown:  Michigan Senate: 22 Republicans and 16 Democrats; Michigan House: 58 Republicans and 52 Democrats. 

This is more than enough to allow Democrats in a good year to capture the Michigan Legislature.  Indeed, after the 2000 Census, Republicans controlled the Michigan Legislature, but in spite of drawing Michigan’s state legislative districts, by 2009, control of the Michigan Legislature was divided between the two parties.  That ought to be the goal of truly fair state legislative redistricting: control of one or both houses of the state legislature could be won by either political party in the next election cycle.

Leftists, however, who infest not just Washington and the national media, but also the federal bench and legal profession, do not care one whit about fairness or honesty or meaningful elections.  They care only about power.

via American Thinker Blog

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

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Dark Money Leftist Group Runs Facebook Ads Targeting Kavanaugh

A dark money progressive organization hoping for a leftward turn on the courts is targeting Justice Brett Kavanaugh with advertisements, suggesting the Court is illegitimate following his elevation last October.

"Brett Kavanaugh’s performance during his testimony in front of the Senate was a disgrace. His blatant partisan attacks and hostile behavior towards senators calls into question his ability to serve as a fair and impartial judge. His conduct undermines the legitimacy of his decisions and the entire Supreme Court," the ad reads.

"We’re calling on Congress to open an investigation into Kavanaugh right now."

Other ads by the group Demand Justice alleged there was "overwhelming evidence that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury during his confirmation hearings before the Senate" and also urged George Mason University to "fire" Kavanaugh from teaching a summer course at the Virginia school.

Unlike most other political players in this arena, Demand Justice is neither a political action committee nor a nonprofit.

"Instead, Demand Justice operates as an unincorporated entity organized by a tax-exempt fiscal sponsor," said a recent report from the Center for Responsive Politics.

"That sponsor is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit named Sixteen Thirty Fund, which provides a legal home and steers money from secret donors to more than 40 different unincorporated entities that are consequently not required to file separate tax returns or other incorporation documents."

Another recent report, this one by the Capital Resource Center, estimated that the Sixteen Thirty Fund had shepherded about $1.6 billion from donors to the various organizations under its umbrella.

Many of the ads have been targeted in states with early caucus or primary votes in the 2020 presidential race.

For example, one ad from Demand Justice that dredged up the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh during his contentious senate confirmation was targeted to run exclusively in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, all of which are early on the 2020 presidential voting calendar.

Carrie Severino is chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, which, according to its website, advocates for the rule of law consistent with the "Constitution and the Founders’ vision of a nation of limited government."

She says Democrats and others on the left failed at phase one and two of their campaign, to delay and then defeat Kavanaugh’s nomination, and have moved on to phase three: discredit.

"Knowing that they failed even with historic levels of dirty politics, smear campaigns to get him off the court, they’re hoping they can discredit him at every future decision that he makes," Severino told the Washington Free Beacon.

"It’s the last refuge of scoundrels," she added later. "If you can’t actually win on the merits of your arguments, you can’t say ‘well, he’s wrong on the law,’ and then explain your constitutional or legal reasoning, then you just go for ad hominem attacks. This is a variation of that theme."

Requests for comment to Demand Justice were not returned.

The post Dark Money Leftist Group Runs Facebook Ads Targeting Kavanaugh appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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Fighting back against the indoctrination that has replaced education

The indoctrination of young Americans is the goal of those who control curriculum in public schools and colleges. Faculty, administrators, and textbook writers all do their part to create a narrative of an America that should be ashamed of its racist  exploitative past, and ready to overhaul a capitalist system that benefits the few and cheats the many by robbing them of their fair share.

The new Advanced Placement history textbook is a case in point. Paul Mirengoff writes at Powerline:

…beginning in 2020, many Advanced Placement students will be using an American History textbook that suggests President Trump is mentally ill and that depicts him and many of his supporters as racists. The book asserts that “[Trump’s] not very-hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters.” (snip)

The textbook goes further. It says that Hillary Clinton supporters “worried about the mental stability of the president-elect.” (snip)

The textbook clearly is using “Clinton supporters” as a device to plant the idea that President Trump is mentally unstable, a proposition for which there is no basis other than raw hatred of the man.

The book’s publisher defends its handiwork, saying that it underwent “rigorous peer review to ensure academic integrity.” No doubt.

Here is an alternative from Steven Hayward of Powerline:

Next month our friends at Encounter Books will publish Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Wilfred M. McClay, who is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the Director of the Center for the History of Liberty. (snip)

Suggestion: urge your high school history teachers and your school district to adopt this book, and if you have a child in history—and especially AP history—get a copy of this book and have your kid read this alongside whatever leftist slop is being thrown at them by their public school.  And everyone else should support this enterprise by buying a copy.

Rich schools, like Yale, always have more money to throw at diversity, equity and inclusion, which is why they are so easy to shake down. Heather Mac Donald writes at the Wall Street Journal:

Yale President Peter Salovey announced a major expansion of the school’s diversity bureaucracy this month, providing a case study in how not to lead a respected institution of higher education.

The pretext for this latest accretion of bureaucratic bloat was a May 2018 incident in a graduate student dorm. Sarah Braasch, a 43-year-old doctoral candidate in philosophy, called campus police at 1:40 a.m. to report someone sleeping in a common room, which she believed was against dorm rules. Yale administrators knew Ms. Braasch had psychological problems and that she had a history of bad blood with the sleeping student, Lolade Siyonbola, a 35-year-old doctoral candidate in African studies. But because Ms. Braasch is white and Ms. Siyonbola is black, the administration chose to turn the incident into a symbol of what Mr. Salovey called the university’s “discrimination and racism.”

Yale leaders immediately announced a slew of new initiatives: “implicit bias” training for graduate students, grad-school staff and campus police; instruction in how to run “inclusive classrooms”; “community building” sessions; a student retreat to develop the next phase of equity and inclusion programming. Despite this flurry of corrective measures, Kimberly M. Goff-Crews, Yale’s secretary and vice president for student life, ominously declared there was still “much more to do.”

That “more” was soon in coming. Yale commissioned an outside diversity bureaucrat—Benjamin Reese, vice president of institutional equity at Duke—to evaluate its diversity infrastructure, which, predictably, he found sorely lacking.

A small retreat by Amherst College’s PC Police: Richard Bernstein writes at Real Clear Investigations:

Sometimes in the culture wars, the identity-politics camp leans so far to a politically correct extreme that liberals and conservatives alike reject it. Or so it would seem. A recent episode at Amherst College is worth examining less as a defeat for political correctness than a tactical retreat illustrating that the cult of identity politics on campus shows little sign of weakening.

Withdrawn from circulation, but why?

What happened is this: Last month Amherst’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion sent all 1,850 or so students at the elite western Massachusetts school an attractively produced 36-page brochure called the Amherst Common Language Guide, with definitions of “key diversity and inclusion terms.” Its clear emphasis: “Marginalized groups” were being oppressed by what the document called the “cisheteropatriarchy” — a system of domination by straight white men – through racism, sexism, oppression, hegemony, and exploitation.

Within hours of the guide’s release, a member of the Amherst College Republicans leaked the brochure to the conservative Daily Wire website, which pronounced it “something out of ‘1984.’ ” A crescendo of ridicule from conservative websites and blogs followed.

But it wasn’t just the right piling on. Members of the predominantly liberal Amherst faculty, who were not consulted about the guide as it was being drafted, criticized it too.

At a post-release meeting of some 70 faculty members, “the people who departed most strenuously from the guide were on the left, including transgender faculty members,” said one of those present, Francis G. Couvares, the chairman of the Amherst History Department, speaking by phone.

Soon after, the language guide was withdrawn from circulation, erased from the college website, with college President Carolyn Martin proclaiming it “counter to the core academic values of freedom of thought and expression.”

Heather Macdonald, writing in City Journal, on a couple of campuses where Administrators appear to have the semblance of a spine:

On April 9, at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Professor Camille Paglia, famed nemesis of victimology feminists everywhere, gave a university-wide lecture entitled “Sexual Duality and Sexual Multiplicity in Western Art.” A self-described “non-binary” student, Joseph McAndrew, had organized a protest against the speech after failing to get it moved off campus. McAndrew was upset by recent interviews Paglia had given. (snip)

McAndrew masterfully blended victimology and the consumerist model of education in his complaint against Paglia. “We’re giving a space for her following to come, into our safe space that we pay to be in,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. A photo of the protest shows a group of well-fed, healthy, eminently protected, privileged teenagers sitting in a lobby under a large banner reading “Camille Paglia, Stop Victim Blaming.” They hold signs such as “Sexual Assault Is NEVER the victims [sic] fault.” A male lays his head on the shoulder of a female, who gives him a supportive hug; presumably both procured affirmative consent for this Platonic embrace.

About 30 minutes into Paglia’s lecture, someone pulled a fire alarm, following the Middlebury precedent. All 17 floors of the building where Paglia was speaking had to be evacuated (snip)

On many other campuses, such tactics would have been greeted by either dead air from the administration or an expression of concern for the University of the Arts’ wounded “survivors.” President David Yager, however, denounced the repressive mindset spreading from American campuses to the culture at large. The suppression of speech “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” he wrote in a campus-wide email the day after the shutdown. “I firmly believe that limiting the range of voices in society erodes our democracy. Universities, moreover, are at the heart of the revolutionary notion of free expression: promoting the free exchange of ideas is part of the core reason for their existence. . . . Artists over the centuries have suffered censorship, and even persecution, for the expression of their beliefs through their work. My answer is simple: Not now, not at UArts.” While his email did not mention the protest or the fire alarm activation, which would have been ideal, the protesters understood that Yager was referring to them. (snip)

The University of Arizona has gone one better than Yager. On March 19, two agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol were giving a presentation at a job-recruiting fair, having been invited by the undergraduate Criminal Justice Association. Protesters invaded the room and continuously screamed “murder patrol” and “murderers,” preventing students from listening. “We won’t stop until you get off our campus,” the protesters shouted, as they hounded the agents into their cars. In a sharp departure from the norm, the campus police have filed criminal-misdemeanor charges against the disruptors, for “threats and intimidation” and “interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution.” And the university president, Robert Robbins, after issuing a bland statement about “ensuring safety” for students and respecting others’ right to speech, followed up with a far more explicit denunciation. The “incident with the Border Patrol officers” was a “dramatic departure from our expectations of respectful behavior and support for free speech on this campus,” Robbins wrote. “Student protest is protected by our support for free speech, but disruption is not.” 

Another horror story at Sarah Lawrence- none dare accuse administrators of bias. David French writes at National Review Online: 

Last October, Sarah Lawrence College professor Samuel Abrams wrote an important and insightful essay in the New York Times. While critics of higher education have often focused on faculty bias — in part because a small subset of professors is prone to say ridiculous things — a larger problem has gone mostly unnoticed. Abrams’s research revealed that college administrators are more uniformly progressive even than college faculties. “Liberal staff members,” he wrote, “outnumber their conservative counterparts by the astonishing ratio of 12-to-one,” making them the “most left-leaning group on campus.” (snip)

Abrams told an important truth. And he’s been punished for it. As our Madeleine Kearns reported last November, his office door was vandalized, students called for him to be punished, anonymous individuals falsely accused him of sexual misconduct, and when Abrams urged the college president, Cristle Judd, to take a strong stand in favor of academic freedom, he said that she “asked whether he thought it was appropriate to write op-eds without her permission and further suggested that his article had been hostile toward his colleagues.”

It turns out that Abrams’s ordeal isn’t over. Yesterday, a group of students calling themselves the “Diaspora Coalition” began a sit-in and issued an extraordinary set of demands, including demands aimed directly at Abrams.

The indoctrination of young Americans is the goal of those who control curriculum in public schools and colleges. Faculty, administrators, and textbook writers all do their part to create a narrative of an America that should be ashamed of its racist  exploitative past, and ready to overhaul a capitalist system that benefits the few and cheats the many by robbing them of their fair share.

The new Advanced Placement history textbook is a case in point. Paul Mirengoff writes at Powerline:

…beginning in 2020, many Advanced Placement students will be using an American History textbook that suggests President Trump is mentally ill and that depicts him and many of his supporters as racists. The book asserts that “[Trump’s] not very-hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters.” (snip)

The textbook goes further. It says that Hillary Clinton supporters “worried about the mental stability of the president-elect.” (snip)

The textbook clearly is using “Clinton supporters” as a device to plant the idea that President Trump is mentally unstable, a proposition for which there is no basis other than raw hatred of the man.

The book’s publisher defends its handiwork, saying that it underwent “rigorous peer review to ensure academic integrity.” No doubt.

Here is an alternative from Steven Hayward of Powerline:

Next month our friends at Encounter Books will publish Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Wilfred M. McClay, who is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the Director of the Center for the History of Liberty. (snip)

Suggestion: urge your high school history teachers and your school district to adopt this book, and if you have a child in history—and especially AP history—get a copy of this book and have your kid read this alongside whatever leftist slop is being thrown at them by their public school.  And everyone else should support this enterprise by buying a copy.

Rich schools, like Yale, always have more money to throw at diversity, equity and inclusion, which is why they are so easy to shake down. Heather Mac Donald writes at the Wall Street Journal:

Yale President Peter Salovey announced a major expansion of the school’s diversity bureaucracy this month, providing a case study in how not to lead a respected institution of higher education.

The pretext for this latest accretion of bureaucratic bloat was a May 2018 incident in a graduate student dorm. Sarah Braasch, a 43-year-old doctoral candidate in philosophy, called campus police at 1:40 a.m. to report someone sleeping in a common room, which she believed was against dorm rules. Yale administrators knew Ms. Braasch had psychological problems and that she had a history of bad blood with the sleeping student, Lolade Siyonbola, a 35-year-old doctoral candidate in African studies. But because Ms. Braasch is white and Ms. Siyonbola is black, the administration chose to turn the incident into a symbol of what Mr. Salovey called the university’s “discrimination and racism.”

Yale leaders immediately announced a slew of new initiatives: “implicit bias” training for graduate students, grad-school staff and campus police; instruction in how to run “inclusive classrooms”; “community building” sessions; a student retreat to develop the next phase of equity and inclusion programming. Despite this flurry of corrective measures, Kimberly M. Goff-Crews, Yale’s secretary and vice president for student life, ominously declared there was still “much more to do.”

That “more” was soon in coming. Yale commissioned an outside diversity bureaucrat—Benjamin Reese, vice president of institutional equity at Duke—to evaluate its diversity infrastructure, which, predictably, he found sorely lacking.

A small retreat by Amherst College’s PC Police: Richard Bernstein writes at Real Clear Investigations:

Sometimes in the culture wars, the identity-politics camp leans so far to a politically correct extreme that liberals and conservatives alike reject it. Or so it would seem. A recent episode at Amherst College is worth examining less as a defeat for political correctness than a tactical retreat illustrating that the cult of identity politics on campus shows little sign of weakening.

Withdrawn from circulation, but why?

What happened is this: Last month Amherst’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion sent all 1,850 or so students at the elite western Massachusetts school an attractively produced 36-page brochure called the Amherst Common Language Guide, with definitions of “key diversity and inclusion terms.” Its clear emphasis: “Marginalized groups” were being oppressed by what the document called the “cisheteropatriarchy” — a system of domination by straight white men – through racism, sexism, oppression, hegemony, and exploitation.

Within hours of the guide’s release, a member of the Amherst College Republicans leaked the brochure to the conservative Daily Wire website, which pronounced it “something out of ‘1984.’ ” A crescendo of ridicule from conservative websites and blogs followed.

But it wasn’t just the right piling on. Members of the predominantly liberal Amherst faculty, who were not consulted about the guide as it was being drafted, criticized it too.

At a post-release meeting of some 70 faculty members, “the people who departed most strenuously from the guide were on the left, including transgender faculty members,” said one of those present, Francis G. Couvares, the chairman of the Amherst History Department, speaking by phone.

Soon after, the language guide was withdrawn from circulation, erased from the college website, with college President Carolyn Martin proclaiming it “counter to the core academic values of freedom of thought and expression.”

Heather Macdonald, writing in City Journal, on a couple of campuses where Administrators appear to have the semblance of a spine:

On April 9, at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Professor Camille Paglia, famed nemesis of victimology feminists everywhere, gave a university-wide lecture entitled “Sexual Duality and Sexual Multiplicity in Western Art.” A self-described “non-binary” student, Joseph McAndrew, had organized a protest against the speech after failing to get it moved off campus. McAndrew was upset by recent interviews Paglia had given. (snip)

McAndrew masterfully blended victimology and the consumerist model of education in his complaint against Paglia. “We’re giving a space for her following to come, into our safe space that we pay to be in,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. A photo of the protest shows a group of well-fed, healthy, eminently protected, privileged teenagers sitting in a lobby under a large banner reading “Camille Paglia, Stop Victim Blaming.” They hold signs such as “Sexual Assault Is NEVER the victims [sic] fault.” A male lays his head on the shoulder of a female, who gives him a supportive hug; presumably both procured affirmative consent for this Platonic embrace.

About 30 minutes into Paglia’s lecture, someone pulled a fire alarm, following the Middlebury precedent. All 17 floors of the building where Paglia was speaking had to be evacuated (snip)

On many other campuses, such tactics would have been greeted by either dead air from the administration or an expression of concern for the University of the Arts’ wounded “survivors.” President David Yager, however, denounced the repressive mindset spreading from American campuses to the culture at large. The suppression of speech “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” he wrote in a campus-wide email the day after the shutdown. “I firmly believe that limiting the range of voices in society erodes our democracy. Universities, moreover, are at the heart of the revolutionary notion of free expression: promoting the free exchange of ideas is part of the core reason for their existence. . . . Artists over the centuries have suffered censorship, and even persecution, for the expression of their beliefs through their work. My answer is simple: Not now, not at UArts.” While his email did not mention the protest or the fire alarm activation, which would have been ideal, the protesters understood that Yager was referring to them. (snip)

The University of Arizona has gone one better than Yager. On March 19, two agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol were giving a presentation at a job-recruiting fair, having been invited by the undergraduate Criminal Justice Association. Protesters invaded the room and continuously screamed “murder patrol” and “murderers,” preventing students from listening. “We won’t stop until you get off our campus,” the protesters shouted, as they hounded the agents into their cars. In a sharp departure from the norm, the campus police have filed criminal-misdemeanor charges against the disruptors, for “threats and intimidation” and “interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution.” And the university president, Robert Robbins, after issuing a bland statement about “ensuring safety” for students and respecting others’ right to speech, followed up with a far more explicit denunciation. The “incident with the Border Patrol officers” was a “dramatic departure from our expectations of respectful behavior and support for free speech on this campus,” Robbins wrote. “Student protest is protected by our support for free speech, but disruption is not.” 

Another horror story at Sarah Lawrence- none dare accuse administrators of bias. David French writes at National Review Online: 

Last October, Sarah Lawrence College professor Samuel Abrams wrote an important and insightful essay in the New York Times. While critics of higher education have often focused on faculty bias — in part because a small subset of professors is prone to say ridiculous things — a larger problem has gone mostly unnoticed. Abrams’s research revealed that college administrators are more uniformly progressive even than college faculties. “Liberal staff members,” he wrote, “outnumber their conservative counterparts by the astonishing ratio of 12-to-one,” making them the “most left-leaning group on campus.” (snip)

Abrams told an important truth. And he’s been punished for it. As our Madeleine Kearns reported last November, his office door was vandalized, students called for him to be punished, anonymous individuals falsely accused him of sexual misconduct, and when Abrams urged the college president, Cristle Judd, to take a strong stand in favor of academic freedom, he said that she “asked whether he thought it was appropriate to write op-eds without her permission and further suggested that his article had been hostile toward his colleagues.”

It turns out that Abrams’s ordeal isn’t over. Yesterday, a group of students calling themselves the “Diaspora Coalition” began a sit-in and issued an extraordinary set of demands, including demands aimed directly at Abrams.

via American Thinker Blog

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Trump Guilty of Obstructing a Coup d’état

Trump Guilty of Obstructing a Coup d'étatHeed the call of the Woke Caucus and let them bring their articles of impeachment to the floor of the House. Political super-geniuses like Green New Deal Girl and the one who might have married her brother are totally in touch with the groundswell of popular support for impeachment—their constituents in New York and Mogadishu West are 100% behind it! —Kurt Schlichter “Come On Democrats, Impeach Trump!”

Well, okay, technically President Trump is not guilty of obstructing the Deep State’s attempt to frame him with bogus evidence…an attempt which, as I understand things, amounts to, at the least, Seditious Conspiracy by certain Deep State heavy hitters.

via CanadaFreePress.Com

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Code Pink upset no one wants to join its pro-Maduro Venezuela sit-in

It’s not easy being a crazy leftist these days.

Word has gotten out about the mass starvation, crushing repression, and refugee crisis brought on by Venezuela’s brutal socialist dictatorship, and now no one wants to jump in to support Code Pink’s sit-in to defend the regime at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.

Get a load:

 

 

The photo shows a whopping six Code Pinksters involved in this obnoxious little stunt, with only one of them, founder Medea Benjamin, in pink, something that raises questions about the commitment of the protestors. This group has so little public support it can’t even get its own people to put on the Pepto-Bismol pink. It suggests that even the Code Pinksters themselves (so very abundant in congressional yell-ins) are staying away from this particular protest like a bad smell.

They should. Starvation pictures now coming from Venezuela are horrifying. The latest news from the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, Carlos Trujillo, is that half the population of Venezuela – about 15 million people - are expected to flee the hellhole if Maduro retains power, meaning a hell of a refugee mass-migration crisis on the horizon.

And it doesn’t help Code Pink’s cause at all that people on the center-left, such as the writers for the Caracas Chronicle, who use all the language of the ‘woke’ such as ‘peace privilege,’ to denounce groups such as Code Pink. Here’s what one contributor on that high-traffic blog writes:

In these [social media] exchanges, “deniers” of the Venezuelan crisis (most of them tweeting from their peaceful lives in the U.S. or Europe, with no real clue about what it means to survive in present-day Venezuela) attack and provoke Venezuelan social media users. They, in turn, go to painstaking lengths to prove that what these “Starbucks communists” claim and what it takes to actually survive in Venezuela are not correlated.

With an essay like that, denouncing the crazies on the left, center-leftists have made opposition to the Chavista socialist hellhole regime a respectable position even among most leftists. Democrats running for president, seeking the Florida vote, know that Florida’s voters won’t look at a candidate who supports the Code Pink position. Even socialist Bernie Sanders, seems to be trying to distance himself from Venezuela’s failure, though he didn’t earlier when other people’s money was still around. No support from those quarters, either.

Life’s tough when you support odious pariahs. Code Pink didn’t get the memo. Now pariahs are about all they have left.  

It’s not easy being a crazy leftist these days.

Word has gotten out about the mass starvation, crushing repression, and refugee crisis brought on by Venezuela’s brutal socialist dictatorship, and now no one wants to jump in to support Code Pink’s sit-in to defend the regime at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.

Get a load:

 

 

The photo shows a whopping six Code Pinksters involved in this obnoxious little stunt, with only one of them, founder Medea Benjamin, in pink, something that raises questions about the commitment of the protestors. This group has so little public support it can’t even get its own people to put on the Pepto-Bismol pink. It suggests that even the Code Pinksters themselves (so very abundant in congressional yell-ins) are staying away from this particular protest like a bad smell.

They should. Starvation pictures now coming from Venezuela are horrifying. The latest news from the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, Carlos Trujillo, is that half the population of Venezuela – about 15 million people - are expected to flee the hellhole if Maduro retains power, meaning a hell of a refugee mass-migration crisis on the horizon.

And it doesn’t help Code Pink’s cause at all that people on the center-left, such as the writers for the Caracas Chronicle, who use all the language of the ‘woke’ such as ‘peace privilege,’ to denounce groups such as Code Pink. Here’s what one contributor on that high-traffic blog writes:

In these [social media] exchanges, “deniers” of the Venezuelan crisis (most of them tweeting from their peaceful lives in the U.S. or Europe, with no real clue about what it means to survive in present-day Venezuela) attack and provoke Venezuelan social media users. They, in turn, go to painstaking lengths to prove that what these “Starbucks communists” claim and what it takes to actually survive in Venezuela are not correlated.

With an essay like that, denouncing the crazies on the left, center-leftists have made opposition to the Chavista socialist hellhole regime a respectable position even among most leftists. Democrats running for president, seeking the Florida vote, know that Florida’s voters won’t look at a candidate who supports the Code Pink position. Even socialist Bernie Sanders, seems to be trying to distance himself from Venezuela’s failure, though he didn’t earlier when other people’s money was still around. No support from those quarters, either.

Life’s tough when you support odious pariahs. Code Pink didn’t get the memo. Now pariahs are about all they have left.  

via American Thinker Blog

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Governor asks Trump to “intervene” against deep state

Somebody is having trouble with the deep state, and this time it’s not President Trump. Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) is asking the president for help tackling what he views as entrenched workers in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (yes… I’m serious) who have been working to thwart oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Bet you didn’t see that one coming. (Government Executive)

A governor is asking the president to intervene with career federal employees, accusing them of “undermining” the sale of lands that would benefit his state.

In a letter to President Trump dated March 1, first made public by the Anchorage Daily News, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, R-Alaska, requesting relief from an array of activities various federal agencies are engaged in through his state. The appeals included many standard state-level concerns, such as more Medicaid funding and exemptions from forestry rules. In one case, however, Dunleavy castigated “career federal employees” he said were intentionally sabotaging efforts to sell off parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling.

“U.S. Fish and Wildlife career employees undermined seismic work this winter, so the sale will occur without valuable data, likely lowering the bids,” Dunleavy wrote. “These same U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees are working to undermine the lease sale.”

The bottom line here is that the ANWR leasing arrangement was part of the 2017 tax bill that President Trump signed. But you don’t just kick off a process like that overnight. In order for the states or the federal government to get top dollar for such leases, a number of studies have to be performed. Core samples are extracted and analyzed, and as with this case, seismic information is gathered. All of this allows energy companies to better understand the makeup of the terrain and predict how much oil and gas might be found there. The more solid (and positive) the data, the more they will be likely to bid for the lease.

In Alaska, some of those tasks fall to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But nearly two years after the measure was approved, the studies have still not been completed and signed off on. That means that some of the leases either won’t happen or will bring in less money than they should. So is this the deep state in action?

You can shout about paranoia all you like, but Dunleavy (and Trump) have some valid concerns in this regard. Back in 2017, Politico’s Michael Crowley was already talking about the reality of the deep state, though he obviously saw it as more of a conservative, military industrial complex issue. He wrote, “There really is a kind of cabal that operates independently of elected officials in Washington—even if it’s not quite what Trump or his conservative allies think it is.”

There’s no reason that the Fish and Wildlife Service should be immune to this phenomenon. Any large government organization is composed of an army of people who largely stay in that department for much of their careers and they don’t get replaced every time a new administration comes into power. How the organization evolves in its earliest days will largely determine what its deep state attributes look like. Those who rise to middle and senior management positions will no doubt lean toward hiring and promoting new talent with a similar world view. And those new arrivals will, in turn, do the same thing when they advance. Over a sufficient period of years, you find yourself with an entrenched culture that is very resistant to change.

If the agency has a liberal tilt when a new conservative director is appointed by the next president, they can either lie low or perhaps even take quiet actions to thwart (or at least slow down) new policies of the incoming leadership. And if they wait long enough, another president from the other party will be elected sooner or later and they can return to business as usual. When you consider these patterns in hiring and retention and the sort of people who would likely be attracted to the Fish and Wildlife Service (environmentalists), are Governor Dunleavy’s accusations really all that shocking?

The post Governor asks Trump to “intervene” against deep state appeared first on Hot Air.

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Those filthy Teslas

A Tesla Model 3 emits more carbon dioxide emissions than a Mercedes C220d diesel sedan, according to a new study by German think tank IFO. That’s right, the supposedly ‘green’ electric car of the future so touted by the wealthy virtue-signalers, is actually filthier than your garden variety diesel-powered sedan.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial about it, and the Daily Caller has some additional context. DC’s Michael Bastasch lays it out with:

When the CO2 emissions from battery production is included, electric cars, like Teslas, are “in the best case, slightly higher than those of a diesel engine, and are otherwise much higher,” reads a release from the German think tank IFO.

Here are a pair of tweets:

 

 

 

 

So it turns out the $35,000-at-the-low-end cars for rich people, rolling down places like Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills to virtue-signal all that greenness, courtesy of taxpayer subsidies and a $7,000 tax credit, are really rolling filth machines, dirtying up the air much worse than the average Joe buying his pudknocker Mercedes. IFO found that when you calculate the pollution cost of just manufacturing the electrical green car’s giant battery, the scale tips toward dirtier-than-thou, not a cleaner-than-thou, car. 

And the Journal notes that these cars, in Germany, which is failing to meet its virtue-signalling Paris climate targets up the wazoo, (unlike the U.S.), are heavily subsidized as well.

Berlin for years has offered thousands of euros in subsidies to electric-car buyers to get a million of them on the road. The European Union lets manufacturers claim an implausible zero emissions for electric cars under its strict emissions limits. They may have this exactly backward in some European countries.

These subsidies and exemptions inevitably divert consumer euros and corporate investment toward electric vehicles no matter their true environmental impact.

 No kidding.

What a fraud this whole rich man’s plaything is. And somehow, we don’t hear cries of ‘tax the rich!’ from leftist politicians over this pollution imposition on us. Rich leftists are dirtying our air so they can virtue-signal to us — and they’re making us pay for it, too. 

Bastasch notes that Congress is actually considering extending the electrical car tax breaks, so the virtue-signallers can keep their status symbols. Get ready for more pollution, then. Such a fraud.

A Tesla Model 3 emits more carbon dioxide emissions than a Mercedes C220d diesel sedan, according to a new study by German think tank IFO. That’s right, the supposedly ‘green’ electric car of the future so touted by the wealthy virtue-signalers, is actually filthier than your garden variety diesel-powered sedan.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial about it, and the Daily Caller has some additional context. DC’s Michael Bastasch lays it out with:

When the CO2 emissions from battery production is included, electric cars, like Teslas, are “in the best case, slightly higher than those of a diesel engine, and are otherwise much higher,” reads a release from the German think tank IFO.

Here are a pair of tweets:

 

 

 

 

So it turns out the $35,000-at-the-low-end cars for rich people, rolling down places like Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills to virtue-signal all that greenness, courtesy of taxpayer subsidies and a $7,000 tax credit, are really rolling filth machines, dirtying up the air much worse than the average Joe buying his pudknocker Mercedes. IFO found that when you calculate the pollution cost of just manufacturing the electrical green car’s giant battery, the scale tips toward dirtier-than-thou, not a cleaner-than-thou, car. 

And the Journal notes that these cars, in Germany, which is failing to meet its virtue-signalling Paris climate targets up the wazoo, (unlike the U.S.), are heavily subsidized as well.

Berlin for years has offered thousands of euros in subsidies to electric-car buyers to get a million of them on the road. The European Union lets manufacturers claim an implausible zero emissions for electric cars under its strict emissions limits. They may have this exactly backward in some European countries.

These subsidies and exemptions inevitably divert consumer euros and corporate investment toward electric vehicles no matter their true environmental impact.

 No kidding.

What a fraud this whole rich man’s plaything is. And somehow, we don’t hear cries of ‘tax the rich!’ from leftist politicians over this pollution imposition on us. Rich leftists are dirtying our air so they can virtue-signal to us — and they’re making us pay for it, too. 

Bastasch notes that Congress is actually considering extending the electrical car tax breaks, so the virtue-signallers can keep their status symbols. Get ready for more pollution, then. Such a fraud.

via American Thinker Blog

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