(I am changing some of my “Pages” to “Posts,” so some of this info is older to my site)
The above video is a good one-two-three punch explanation that is concise and short!
These people must be crazy! When there is near [damn] consensus on a topic… people should know about it, especially when the raising the minimum wage hurts the black community. But the left thinks and rants that not raising minimum wage is hurting the poor and minorities… when it is the exact opposite. What a crock!
Hurting the Poor
Thomas Sowell (left) and Walter Williams (right) explain the negative effects of the minimum wage.
(Minimum wage laws make discrimination on ethnicity and gender easy, via Milton Friedman) Here is Walter Williams referencing some statistics to make his point (including Neumark), followed by the excellent lead-up to the debate between [included as well] between L.A. Times columnist, Michael Hiltzik, and professor of economics at UC Irvine, David Neumark:
….University of California, Irvine economist David Neumark has examined more than 100 major academic studies on the minimum wage. He states that the White House claim “grossly misstates the weight of the evidence.” About 85 percent of the studies “find a negative employment effect on low-skilled workers.” A 1976 American Economic Association survey found that 90 percent of its members agreed that increasing the minimum wage raises unemployment among young and unskilled workers. A 1990 survey found that 80 percent of economists agreed with the statement that increases in the minimum wage cause unemployment among the youth and low-skilled. If you’re looking for a consensus in most fields of study, examine the introductory and intermediate college textbooks in the field. Economics textbooks that mention the minimum wage say that it increases unemployment for the least skilled worker.
As detailed in my recent book “Race and Economics” (2012), during times of gross racial discrimination, black unemployment was lower than white unemployment and blacks were more active in the labor market. For example, in 1948, black teen unemployment was less than white teen unemployment, and black teens were more active in the labor market. Today black teen unemployment is about 40 percent; for whites, it is about 20 percent. The minimum wage law weighs heavily in this devastating picture. Supporters of higher minimum wages want to index it to inflation so as to avoid its periodic examination….
Larry Elder has on an L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik on to defend his statements made in the column*, as well as professor David Neumark to debate some of the finer points. I do include the build up to the interview/debate, which includes and evisceration of anything deemed moderate at the L.A. Times — pointing out the bias lays firmly on the political-left.
More by Walter Williams:
How will the forced raising of the minimum wage hurt the poor?
As the #FightFor15 movement get fast food workers to strike in order to get a $15, and they watch businesses in Seattle closing because of the forced raise in wages. Automated cashier options are now an option to be weighed. Of course a business wants a human face to represent it. But the business wants to stay in business, so many are being forced to choose a cheaper, more sustainable option for its budget.
Would you like some microchips with that burger? McDonald’s Europe strikes another blow against human interaction by installing 7,000 touch-screen computers to take your order and money.
[….]
McDonalds recently went on a hiring binge in the U.S., adding 62,000 employees to its roster. The hiring picture doesn’t look quite so rosy for Europe, where the fast food chain is drafting 7,000 touch-screen kiosks to handle cashiering duties.
The BELOW is and update to the above story about MceeDee’s in Seattle:
While it seems liberals may think that raising the minimum wage will raise living standards for poor Americans, they should have seen this coming.
With Los Angeles joining Seattle in setting a $15 minimum wage (Los Angeles by 2020, and Seattle by 2021), it stands to reason that McDonald’s would find a way around simply paying workers more, as Vox pointed out the obvious fact that “the reality is that McDonald’s just wants to make money.”
In a very real-world example of big business’ response to liberal policies, a conservative Twitter user sent Labor Day wishes from McDonald’s workers whose minimum wage never goes up.
And this real world affect of what politicians can merely raise taxes to meet budgets with (or, on the Federal level just print more money [a dumb move BTW]) is that small business go out of business, thus affecting the poor who want jobs.
But now the option through technology is to replace workers for businesses altogether:
(Washington Policy Center) Everyone is predicting what the real world impact of Seattle’s newly passed $15 minimum wage will be. The truth is there will not be a mass exodus of businesses from the city, nor will the economy crash.
But many businesses will simply figure out how to employ fewer low-wage workers. They will do that by substituting machines and technology for people.
Service industry CEOs have cautioned a higher minimum wage is “encouraging automation,” which can improve efficiency. Even Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warns that a higher minimum wage would “encourage labor substitution” and incentivize employers to “buy machines and automate things” and ultimately “cause job destruction.”
He’s right. When government increases the cost of labor, employers find other ways to save money.
Just look at how McDonald’s has responded to France’s $12 an hour minimum wage. In 2011, McDonald’s invested in 7,000 touch screen computers in France to reduce the number of workers needed. Restaurants around the country are already exploring automation as a means to cut costs; Applebee’s is installing 100,000 tabletop tablets for ordering and payments.
Many food businesses are considering a machine that can freshly grind, shape and custom grill 360 gourmet burgers per hour, no human labor needed. Alpha, the burger-making robot, can even slice and dice the pickles and tomatoes, put them on the burger, add condiments and wrap it up. The manufacturer makes the point that cashiers or servers aren’t even needed: “Customers could just punch in their order, pay, and wait at a dispensing window.” The maker says Alpha will pay for itself in a year.
“I’m hearing from a lot of customers, ‘I voted for that, and I didn’t realize it would affect you.’” (IJ-Review)
Powerline has a great short article about minimum-wage laws pushed by Democrats bumping into the steel reinforced wall of reality:
Via InstaPundit, a lesson in economics for liberals. This time, it’s the minimum wage:
San Francisco’s Proposition J, which 77 percent of voters approved in November, will raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 by 2018. As of today, May 1, [Brian] Hibbs is required by law to pay his employees at Comix Experience, and its sister store, Comix Experience Outpost on Ocean Avenue, $12.25 per hour. That’s just the first of four incremental raises that threaten to put hundreds of such shops out of business. …
Hibbs says that the $15-an-hour minimum wage will require a staggering $80,000 in extra revenue annually. “I was appalled!” he says. “My jaw dropped. Eighty-thousand a year! I didn’t know that. I thought we were talking a small amount of money, something I could absorb.” He runs a tight operation already, he says. Comix Experience is open ten hours a day, seven days a week, with usually just one employee at each store at a time. It’s not viable to cut hours, he says, because his slowest hours are in the middle of the day. And he can’t raise prices, because comic books and graphic novels have their retail prices printed on the cover.
If he can’t stay in business, all of his employees will lose their jobs.
[….]
“Why,” he asks, “can’t two consenting people make arrangements for less than x dollars per hour?”
Exactly. Conservatives should oppose minimum wage laws on fairness grounds. If a person is willing to work for, say, $8 an hour, how dare liberals tell him he must remain unemployed instead? There are many, many people whose best offer of employment will be for less than the $15 an hour that San Francisco will soon mandate. Liberals are, in effect, making it illegal for these people to work, even though they are ready, willing and able to do so.
Minimum wage jobs are overwhelmingly entry level employment. They provide valuable training, experience and opportunity for advancement. Making it illegal for young people, especially, to seek employment at the wage they can command isn’t just economically stupid, it is deeply unfair.
“Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: ‘The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment’.” (Larry Elder)
Economists aren’t certain about many things, but on the minimum wage, nearly all of them (90 percent, according to one survey) believe that the case is open and shut. All else being equal, if you raise the price of something (for instance, labor), then the demand for it (for instance, by employers) will decline. That’s not just a theory; it’s a law.
A majority of professional economists surveyed in Britain, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and the United States agreed that minimum wage laws increase unemployment among low-skilled workers. Economists in France and Austria did not. However, the majority among Canadian economists was 85 percent and among American economists was 90 percent. Dozens of studies of the effects of minimum wages in the United States and dozens more studies of the effects of minimum wages in various countries in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Indonesia, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were reviewed in 2006 by two economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research. They concluded that, despite the various approaches and methods used in these studies, this literature as a whole was one “largely solidifying the conventional view that minimum wages reduce employment among low-skilled workers.”
A few more thoughts on the view from 1957. Relative to the size of the U.S. economy (which is to say, as a share of GDP) we have cut military spending to barely a third of what it was in 1957, from 9.8 percent of GDP then to 3.3 percent of GDP now. Even though we were spending three times as much on national defense in 1957—and even though we had lower taxes (17.2 percent of GDP then vs. 17.7 percent of GDP today) we ran a budget surplus. It’s usually described as a “modest” surplus, but at 3.4 percent of GDP, the budget surplus of 1957 was proportionally larger than military spending is in 2015.
The broadest budget categories are national defense, human resources, physical resources, net interest, other functions, and undistributed offsetting receipts. National defense, net interest, other functions, and undistributed receipts are pretty self-explanatory; human resources includes welfare and health-care programs, entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security, and education spending. Physical resources means things like energy development, transportation, natural resources maintenance, environmental conservation, and community- and regional-development programs, the “infrastructure” we’re always going on about.
[….]
Recap: In GDP terms, we spend about a third on the military today compared to what we spent in the late 1950s. We spend almost exactly the same on interest on the debt. We spend 20 percent less on energy, transportation, the environment, and natural resources. And we spend almost four times as much on welfare. Again, that is in GDP terms, and our economy is a heck of a lot bigger than it was in 1957. As a share of all federal spending, welfare has gone from 23 percent of spending to 73 percent of federal spending. In constant-dollar terms, we spend 17.5 times as much. In nominal-dollar terms, we spend 150 times as much.
Michael Medved dismantles a callers charge that we (as a country) spend more on the military than education and other social programs (2009).
One General says that 4% on military (GDP) if the floor… very bottom… we should not go below this percentage: Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called four percent an “absolute floor” (New York Times). Here Forbes explains a bit:
….But as an empirical matter, the share of GDP absorbed by federal taxes has been astonishingly stable since 1946—averaging less than 18 percent and exceeding 20 percent in only one year (2000).[3] The president’s own budget shows federal receipts going no higher than 19.2 percent of GDP by 2017. But he has put us on a path that his own Department of Treasury has declared is “unsustainable.” Why? Because health entitlements under Obamacare will grow so rapidly that federal spending as a share of GDP will grow by more than 40 percent by the year 2085. Rising health entitlements will account for every penny of that increase!
With projected federal spending topping 34 percent of GDP and the known politically acceptable levels of federal tax revenues falling below 20 percent of GDP, we are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Being able to afford even 4 percent of GDP for national defense—we’ve averaged 6.4 percent since 1946—will grow increasingly problematic. This is not just some future hypothetical: as it is, we currently are spending $50 billion less on defense in FY2013 than outgoing Secretary of Defense said just two years ago would be needed this year. And remember that Obamacare spending kicks in with a vengeance in 2014. Thus, the choice between bullets and butter will be harder to make each year we keep kicking the can down the road instead of addressing health entitlements….
While the following video is about Bernie Sanders… the portion starting at about the 4:54 mark:
In another excellent “myth busting” article at The Heritage Foundation, we read some examples of the importance in the GDP metric for healthy ~MILITARY~ spending:
Additional defense spending is unnecessary as the United States already spends more on defense than half the world combined.
Fact
No other country in the world has the enduring vital national interests of the United States, and therefore the U.S. military has global reach and responsibilities. Comparing the unique needs of U.S. security and the resources required against those of other countries is misleading. Further, it is not surprising that the richest nation on earth and history’s “sole superpower” should have a first-rate military; the overall dollar cost is mostly a measure of the size of our economy. What is surprising is that we get so much from such a small proportion of our wealth. As Mackenzie Eaglen of the Heritage Foundation writes,
Defense spending is near historic lows… Between 2010 and 2015, total defense spending is set to fall from 4.9 percent to 3.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), even though the nation has assigned more missions to the military over the past two decades.[1]
A narrow focus on strictly dollar figures is also misleading. Consider China’s military budget, which Beijing claims is $78 billion for this year. The Pentagon estimates that the relative “purchasing power” of the Chinese military is actually closer to $150 billion, in good part because China does not have to pay their soldiers, sailors, and airmen anything comparable to what the United States pays its servicemen and women.[2] By this yardstick, China moves from fifth place in overall military spending among the nations of the world to second.[3] And more to the point, China’s defense expenditures are focused primarily on gaining military leverage in a distinct region of the world—Asia—while the U.S. military has responsibilities everywhere. The resources the U.S. military can actually deploy “in theater” are not vastly superior to those of the Chinese. Simple comparisons of defense expenditures are deceptive measures of the unique needs of America’s armed forces.
Myth
Pentagon budgets were a “gusher” of new money in the Bush Administration.
Fact
In his recent drive to cut overhead, Defense Secretary Robert Gates indeed described the emergency supplemental appropriations for the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan as a “gusher.”[4] But as AEI’s Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly have written,
The budget increases that have occurred…are largely tied to fighting the wars. When Bill Clinton left the White House and Dick Cheney told the military that “help [was] on the way,” the defense burden stood at 3 percent of GDP—a post-World War II low. When George W. Bush headed out the door, the figure for the core defense budget was about 3.5 percent. This is an increase, to be sure, but not one to make the military flush after a decade of declining budgets and deferred procurement.[5]
One of the consistent and correct purposes of the wartime supplementals was to “reset” the force—to return the military to at least pre-war readiness levels. This goal is still a long way off. The backlogs at service repair depots will take years to work through.
More profoundly, very little wartime funding went to increase the number of U.S. ground forces. The strains on soldiers and Marines—reflected in rising suicide rates, for example—have yet to be fully calculated. And despite the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq and President Obama’s deadline for drawdown in Afghanistan, the Army and Marine Corps will continue to deploy overseas for years, an effort that can only be sustained by a reduced pace of operations, sharing the constant burden across a larger force.
There is a moral obligation not only to bind the wounds and tend to the families of those who have fought so well and so long, but also to give them what they need to continue to answer the call to service. Further, the government’s Constitutional obligation is to “provide for the common defense,” and to “secure the blessings of liberty” now and for future generations. This is the government’s fundamental obligation to its citizens and its cardinal contribution to our liberties.
[….]
Myth
Current levels of defense spending are unaffordable.
Fact
The defense budget is a relatively small slice of the $14-plus-trillion American pie. And it’s a shrinking slice: as a percentage of our economy and as a percentage of the federal budget, the burden of defense is declining. President Obama’s long-term budget projections also reduce Pentagon spending in real dollars.
Moreover, the idea that defense cuts will restore fiscal health simply does not add up: suppose Pentagon spending for 2011—$720 billion—were eliminated entirely.[7] This would only halve this year’s federal deficit of $1.5 trillion. And defense spending is a drop in the ocean of today’s $13.3 trillion of government debt. From the Korean War to the collapse of the Soviet Union, total U.S. defense spending was about $4.7 trillion.[8] So had there been no military spending at all during the Cold War, the savings would not equal even half our current national debt.
Talking about defense spending in isolation while discussing the overall federal budget is also misleading. Defense is not the source of the federal government’s fiscal woes. As Mackenzie Eaglen notes,
The substantial decline in the defense share of the budget largely reflects the dramatic growth of entitlement spending. Entitlements now account for around 65 percent of all federal spending and a record 18 percent of GDP. The three largest entitlements— Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—eclipsed defense spending in 1976 and have been growing ever since. If future taxes are held at the historical average, these three entitlements will consume all tax revenues by 2052, leaving no money for the government’s primary constitutional obligation: providing for the common defense.[9]
Over the past decade, necessary defense spending increases are responsible for less than 20 percent of all new spending from 2001 to 2009. This does not even include 2009 stimulus spending totaling $787 billion, with almost no money for defense.
Myth
The United States should not be “the world’s policeman.”
Fact
At a cost of less than one nickel of the American taxpayers’ dollar—and only 4.9 percent of U.S. GDP—the United States has fought two wars and provided the essential backbone for a system of global security; by any measurement, it’s an amazing bargain.[10]
The investments made during the Cold War—including the Reagan build-up— continue to pay global dividends. Europe, for the first time in centuries, enjoys a durable peace. East Asia, for millennia a theater of violent competition, is emerging as an economic dynamo, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Yet this peace and the prosperity it helps to create are not self-generating or selfsustaining. No other nation, or group of nations, is ready, willing or able to take on America’s role. As the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel observed, the future is
…likely to place an increased demand on American “hard power” to preserve regional balances. While diplomacy and development have important roles to play, the world’s first-order problems will continue to be our security concerns….As the last 20 years have shown, America does not have the option of abandoning a leadership role in support of its national interests….Failure to anticipate and manage the conflicts that threaten those interests…will not make those conflicts go away….It will simply lead to an increasingly unstable and unfriendly global climate and, eventually, to conflicts America cannot ignore.[11]
In short, the cost of preserving America’s role in the world is far less than would be the cost of having to fight to recover it or, still greater, the cost of losing it altogether. While many Americans would prefer to see our allies and partners play a larger part in securing the blessings of our common liberty, no president of either political party has backed away from America’s global leadership role —a bipartisan consensus that remains strong evidence that American leadership is still necessary to protect the nation’s vital interests.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) makes the continuing point of just-how-much burden is put on the U.S. military around the world (Defense Spending 101 PDF):
We are spending more on our military than half of the rest of the world combined is spending on defense. Do we really need to spend that much?
Questions about what America spends on defense versus what other nations spend on defense should be understood in the context of what we ask our military to do, what our role in the world is, and who our enemies and adversaries are and are likely to be.
From the Cold War to the post-9/11 world, US spending on national defense has given our country a military preeminence that, in turn, has yielded enormous strategic returns by:
Protecting the security and prosperity of the United States and its allies;
Amplifying America’s diplomatic and economic leadership throughout the globe;
Preventing the outbreak of great-power wars that marked previous centuries;
Preserving the international order in the face of aggressive, illiberal threats.
As the congressionally mandated, bipartisan Independent Review Panel of the Quadrennial Defense Review spelled out, this has required a military that has four “enduring” tasks:
Defense of the homeland
Assuring access to the sea, air, space and, now, cyberspace
Preserving a favorable balance of power across Eurasia that prevents authoritarian domination of that region
Providing for the global common good through such actions as humanitarian aid, development assistance, and disaster relief
These are obviously large tasks, requiring significant military resources. They are also complicated, as the panel also notes, by five global trends:
Radical Islamist extremism and the threat of terrorism
The rise of new global great powers in Asia
Continued struggle for power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East
An accelerating global competition for resources
Persistent problems from failed and failing states
The strength of this global international order provides America and its allies with real security at a low price while imposing tremendous costs on would-be adversaries. Consider the case of China’s rise. Over the past generation, China’s meteoric economic development has also allowed for a steady, now two-decades-long program of military modernization. Estimates are that Beijing now spends about $170 billion per year on its formal defense program, but that figure would be considerably higher if the Chinese military had to pay its soldiers, airmen, and sailors’ salaries comparable to what their counterparts in the US military earn.
Moreover, China’s expenditures are focused primarily on gaining military leverage in a distinct region of the world—Asia—while, as noted above, the US military has global responsibilities. The tasks in this equation are disproportionate: America seeks to keep the peace in East Asia because it is a vital element in the international system and important to America’s interests. while East Asia seeks to disrupt the regional balance and have no comparable stakes elsewhere.
The fact that we can afford to maintain a military capable of keeping the great powers of the world at peace is a bargain at four cents on the dollar. And the fact that our allies. including former adversaries, have renounced the use of force except in support of American-led coalitions should be thought of as a triumph. The further fact that a potential challenger like China has such a steep hill to climb is an advantage to maintain: it would be preferable to deter China than to fight her.
Politicians and leaders from both sides of the aisle make mention of this myth that we funded/created Al Qaeda via weapons, training, and money to the likes of Osama Bin Laden. The Daily Caller in 2013 notes some of the positions:
…in just a one-month span, Sen. Paul has — not once, but twice — advanced a conspiracy theory that says that during the Reagan era, the U.S. funded Osama bin Laden.
During John Kerry’s secretary of state confirmation hearing, Paul said ”We funded bin Laden” — a statement that prompted Foreign Policy magazine’s managing editor, Blake Hounshell, to fire off a tweet saying: “Rand Paul tells a complete falsehood: ‘We funded Bin Laden.’ This man is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
But that didn’t discourage Paul. During a much anticipated foreign policy speech at the Heritage Foundation today, Paul doubled down, saying: “In the 1980’s the war caucus in Congress armed bin Laden and the mujaheddin in their fight with the Soviet Union.”
The only problem is that this is, at best, highly speculative — and, at worst, the perpetuation of an outright myth.
This also puts Paul in the same camp as Michael Moore, who said: ““WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden! Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!”….
And, this is the crux of the matter: truthers took Michael Moore’s non-evidential presentations and statements and ran with them.
Another example that shows this myth isn’t necessarily one owned by strictly by politicians, as, this conversation on a friends FaceBook shows:
Antony: failed foreign policy means today’s buddies are tomorrows boogiemen.
Hunlsy: I just love the fact they’re fighting us with the weapons and training that we gave them.
Antony: Oh where oh where did Iran get those P3s and F-14 Tomcats?
Antony: it was the US – we used to be buddies with Iranians too. We played both sides of the Iran/Iraq war, which predicated Gulf I.
Hunsly: Likely from the Russians. Regardless, we’re fighting a group, not a country. This group makes all of its IEDs & buys all of their weapons with the money that we gave them.
Here is my short intercept of the above conversation. More info will follow it:
Weapons This is somewhat of a myth — that we sold the majority of weapons to the Taliban, to Iraq, and the like. For instance, in the following graph you can see that (in the instance of Iraq, which I was told over-and-over-again was weaponized by the U.S.) you have to combine the U.K. and the U.S. to equal 1%.
Moral Position Much like us supporting Stalin in defeating Hitler, we were aligned with people whom we didn’t see eye-to-eye with in order to beat the USSR during the Cold War (WWIII)… a war that was fought from 1947–1991.
History And thirdly, the Taliban didn’t exist when Reagan said this:
Reagan didn’t say that about the Taliban because the Taliban didn’t exist yet. He said that of the Mujahedin, the same men who would later go on to fight the Taliban under the name “Northern Alliance”
The Afghan Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (Persian: جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barā-yi Nijāt-i Afghānistān), was a military front that came to formation in late 1996 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, particularly president in exile Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000, leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Qadir, Sayed Hussein Anwari and others.
The Northern Alliance fought a defensive war against the Taliban government. They received support from Iran, Russia, India, Tajikistan and others, while the Taliban were backed by al-Qaeda. The Northern Alliance was mostly made up of ethnic Tajiks, but later included Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Pashtuns. The Taliban government was dominated by Pashtuns with other groups being the minority. After the US-led invasion and establishment of the Karzai administration in late 2001, the Northern Alliance broke apart and different political parties were formed.
The mujaheddin fighters who had previously defeated the communist government and formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA) came under attack and in 1996 lost the capital to the Taliban. At this juncture the Mujahedin resorted to the creation of UIF because Rashid Dostum and other warlords who belonged to various tribes but to no specific political party did not want to recognize the ISA as a legal entity, so the defeated government devised a military strategy to utilize these forces while not offending their political sensibilities.
In October 1996 in Khinjan, Ahmed Shah Massoud and Dostum came to an agreement to form the anti-Taliban coalition that outside Afghanistan became known as the Northern Alliance.
CNN was doing a special on Afghanistan and Peter Bergen asked for questions from viewers that he would answer. One of the questions is as follows:
“If it’s true that bin Laden once worked for the CIA, what makes you so sure that he isn’t still?” ~ Anne Busigin, Toronto, Canada
Peter Bergen responds:
This is one of those things where you cannot put it out of its misery.
The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.
The real story here is the CIA didn’t really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.
One person in a forum that was similarly challenged pointed out that this surely wasn’t the Taliban because they hated women in any position of authority — look at the pic at the top again.
As you read on, keep in mind Mr. Bergen was not a fan of conservatives, or Republicans. With that in mind, enjoy the rest, it is posted here so it will never disappear on me:
U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) or Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached or indoctrinated them. Scholars and reporters have called the idea of CIA-backed Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) “nonsense”,[6] “sheer fantasy”, and “simply a folk myth.”
They argue that:
with a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land
with several hundred million dollars a year in funding from non-American, Muslim sources, Arab Afghans themselves would have no need for American funds
Americans could not train mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of U.S. agents to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan;
the Afghan Arabs were militant Islamists, reflexively hostile to Westerners, and prone to threaten or attack Westerners even though they knew the Westerners were helping the mujahideen.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner.
Bin Laden himself once said “the collapse of the Soviet Union … goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan … the US had no mentionable role,” but “collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant.”
According to CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997,
The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There’s no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn’t have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn’t have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.
Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:
It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers’ money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy. It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan’s policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.
Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987–1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan’s Mujahideen, argues that no American money went to the foreign volunteers.
Sageman also says:
Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs]. Many were not serious about the war. … Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.
No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers. They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens. They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders.”[14]
Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration’s Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it,
The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala.” So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, … the skittish CIA, Cannistraro estimates, had less than ten operatives acting as America’s eyes and ears in the region. Milton Bearden, the Agency’s chief field operative in the war effort, has insisted that “[T]he CIA had nothing to do with” bin Laden. Cannistraro says that when he coordinated Afghan policy from Washington, he never once heard bin Laden’s name.
Fox News reporter Richard Miniter wrote that in interviews with the two men who “oversaw the disbursement for all American funds to the anti-Soviet resistance, Bill Peikney – CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1984 to 1986 – and Milt Bearden – CIA station chief from 1986 to 1989 – he found,
Both flatly denied that any CIA funds ever went to bin Laden. They felt so strongly about this point that they agreed to go on the record, an unusual move by normally reticent intelligence officers. Mr. Peikney added in an e-mail to me: “I don’t even recall UBL [bin Laden] coming across my screen when I was there.
Other reasons advanced for a lack of a CIA-Afghan Arab connection of “pivotal importance,” (or even any connection at all), was that the Afghan Arabs themselves were not important in the war but were a “curious sideshow to the real fighting.”
One estimate of the number of combatants in the war is that 250,000 Afghans fought 125,000 Soviet troops, but only 2000 Arab Afghans fought “at any one time”.
According to Milton Bearden the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. The Arab Afghans were not only superfluous but “disruptive,” angering local Afghans with their more-Muslim-than-thou attitude, according to Peter Jouvenal. Veteran Afghan cameraman Peter Jouvenal quotes an Afghan mujahideen as saying “whenever we had a problem with one of them [foreign mujahideen], we just shot them. They thought they were kings.”
Many who traveled in Afghanistan, including Olivier Roy[20] and Peter Jouvenal, reported of the Arab Afghans’ visceral hostility to Westerners in Afghanistan to aid Afghans or report on their plight. BBC reporter John Simpson tells the story of running into Osama bin Laden in 1989, and with neither knowing who the other was, bin Laden attempting to bribe Simpson’s Afghan driver $500 — a large sum in a poor country — to kill the infidel Simpson. When the driver declined, Bin Laden retired to his “camp bed” and wept “in frustration.”
According to Steve Coll, author of “Ghost Wars”, the primary contact for the CIA and ISI in Afghanistan was Ahmed Shah Massoud a poppy farmer and militia leader known as the “Lion of the Panjeer”. During the Afghan Civil War which erupted once the Soviets had left, Massoud’s army was routed by the Taliban (who were being helped by Pakistan’s ISI) and restricted to the northern region of the country. A loose entente was formed with several other native tribal militias which became known as the Northern Alliance who operated in opposition to the Taliban. On September 10, 2001 a camera crew was granted access to Massoud under the premise they were interviewing him for a documentary about the Mujahadeen. The crew members were actually Al Qaeda operatives who detonated a bomb killing themselves and Massoud. The purpose of the assassination was to eliminate a key ally for the US in anticipation of an invasion in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks which were to take place the following day.
And here is another great post responding to the non-evidential/conspiratorial [leftists] on the subject:
“Osama bin Laden was trained and funded by the CIA” – you’ll read the claim everywhere, and it’s rarely opposed: everyone just seems to accept that it’s true. But why? How much evidence have you ever seen presented to support this?
The reality is that there are many people who say this is simply a myth. And we’re not just talking about neo-con friendly journalists, either.
Take Jason Burke, for instance, a major contributor to the BBC documentary “The Power of Nightmares”. In his book “Al Qaeda”, he wrote the following:
It is often said that bin Ladin was funded by the CIA. This is not true, and indeed it would have been impossible given the structure of funding that General Zia ul-Haq, who had taken power in Pakistan in 1977, had set up. A condition of Zia’s cooperation with the American plan to turn Afghanistan into the Soviet’s ‘Vietnam’ was that all American funding to the Afghan resistance had to be channeled through the Pakistani government, which effectively meant the Afghan bureau of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the military spy agency. The American funding, which went exclusively to the Afghan mujahideen groups, not the Arab volunteers [bin Ladin’s groups], was supplemented by Saudi government money and huge funds raised from mosques, non-governmental charitable institutions and private donors throughout the Islamic world. Most of the major Gulf-based charities operating today were founded at this time to raise money or channel government funds to the Afghans, civilians and fighters. In fact, as little as 25 per cent of the monet for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states.
Steve Coll, former Managing Editor of the Washington Post, also suggests bin Ladin passed largely unnoticed by the CIA, in his book “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”:
…According to [Ahemd] Badeeb, on bin Ladin’s first trip to Pakistan he brought donations to the Lahore offices of Jamaat-e-Islami, Zia’s political shock force. Jamaat was the Pakistani offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood; its students had sacked the US embassy in Islamabad in 1979. bin Ladin did not trust the official Pakistan intelligence service, Badeeb recalled, and preferred to fund his initial charity through private religious and political networks.From the beginning of the Afghan jihad, Saudi intelligence used religious charities to support its own unilateral operations. This mainly involved funneling money and equipment to favoured Afghan commanders outisde ISI or CIA control… “The humanitarian aid-that was completely separate from the Americans”, Badeeb recalled. “And we insist[ed] that the Americans will not get to that, get involved–especially in the beginning,” in part because some of the Islamist mujahedin objected to direct contact with Western infidels…
In spy lexicon, each of the major intelligence agencies began working the Afghan jihad–GID [General Intelligence Department, Saudi Arabia], ISI and the CIA– began to “compartment” their work, even as all three collaborated with one another through formal liasons…
bin Ladin moved within Saudi intelligence’s compartmented operations, outside of CIA eyesight…
In a Q&A session following the release of his book, Coll said:
Wheaton, Md.: There have been accusations from the left that have directly accused the CIA of funding and training bin Laden. Is there any truth to this ? Steve Coll: I did not discover any evidence of direct contact between CIA officers and bin Laden during the 1980s, when they were working more or less in common cause against the Soviets. CIA officials, including Tenet, have denied under oath that such contact took place. The CIA was certainly aware of bin Laden’s activities, beginning in the mid- to late-1980s, and they generally looked favorably on what he was doing at that time. But bin Laden’s direct contacts were with Saudi intelligence and to some extent Pakistani intelligence, not with the Americans.
Peter Bergen expanded on the supposed CIA/ bin Ladin links in his book, Holy War Inc:
But were the CIA and the Afghan Arabs in cahoots, as recent studies have suggested? One author charges: “The CIA had funded and trained the Afghan Arabs during the war”. Another refers to “the central role of the CIA’s Muslim mercenaries, including upwards of 2,000 mercenaries in the Afghanistan war”. Both authors present these claims as axioms, but provide no real corroboration.Other commentators have reported that bin Ladin himself was aided by the CIA. A report in the respected British newspaper The Guardian states: “In 1986 the CIA even helped him [bin Ladin] build an underground camp at Khost [Afghanistan] where he was to train recruits from across the Islamic world in the revolutionary art of jihad”…Bin Ladin, meanwhile, had expoused anti-American positions since 1982, and thanks to the fortune derived from his family’s giant construction business had little need of CIA money. In fact, the underground camp at Khost was built in 1982 by an Afghan commander, with Arab funding.
A source familiar with bin Ladin’s organisation explains that bin Ladin “never had any relations with America or American officials… He was saying very early in the 1980’s that the next battle is going to be with America… No aid or training or other support have ever been given to bin Ladin from Americans.” A senior offical unequivocally says that “bin Ladin never met with the CIA.”
While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don’t make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of grey. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to fund the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.
Former CIA officer Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency’s Afghan operation in the late 1980’s, says: “The CIA did not recruit Arabs,” as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight…
Moreover, the Afghan Arabs demonstrated a pathological dislike of Westerners. Jouvenal says: “I always kept away from Arabs [in Afghanistan]. They were very hostile. They would ask, ‘What are you doing in an Islamic country?” The BBC reporter John Simpson had a close call with bin Ladin himself outside Jalalabad in 1989. Travelling with a group of Arab mujahideen, Simpson and his television crew bumped into an Arab man beautifully dressed in spotless white robes; the man began shouting at Simpson’s escorts to kill the infidels, then offered a truck driver the not unreasonable sum of five hundred dollars to do the job. Simpson’s Afghan escort turned down the request, and bin Ladin was to be found later on a camp bed, weeping in frustration. Only when bin Ladin became a public figure, almost a decade later, did Simpson realise who the mysterious Arab was who had wanted him dead.
This level of hostility to Westerners doesn’t suggest a warm working relationship with the US, and there’s some confirmation in a story retold by Richard Miniter:
…the handful of Americans who had heard of bin Ladin in the 1980’s knew him mainly for his violently anti-American views. Dana Rohrabacher, now a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, told me about a trip he took with the mujihideen in 1987. At the time, Rohrabacher was a Reagan aide who delighted in taking long overland trips inside Afghanistan with anti-Communist forces. On one such trek, his guide told him not to speak English for the next few hours because they were passing by bin Ladin’s encampment. Rohrabacher was told, “If he hears an American, he will kill you.”
Bin Ladin was himself asked about US funding by Robert Fisk:
Fisk: …what of the Arab mujahedin he took to Afghanistan – members of a guerilla army who were also encouraged and armed by the United States – and who were forgotten when that war was over? bin Ladin: “Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help…
And Ayman al-Zawahiri, second-in-command of al Qaeda, explains more in his text “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner”. Here he claims the “Afghan Arabs” had plenty of funding from various Arab sources, and points to other indications that they never supported the US:
“While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujahidin factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujahidin’s relationship with the United States was totally different.”Indeed the presence of those young Arab Afghans in Afghanistan and their increasing numbers represented a failure of US policy and new proof of the famous US political stupidity. The financing of the activities of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular organizations. It was substantial aid. “The Arab mujahidin did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujahidin themselves. Usama Bin Ladin has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujahidin that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 years.
Imagine how much aid was sent by popular Arab organizations in the non-military fields such as medicine and health, education and vocational training, food, and social assistance (including sponsorship of orphans, widows, and the war handicapped. Add to all this the donations that were sent on special occasions such as Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha feasts and during the month of Ramadan.”
“Through this unofficial popular support, the Arab mujahidin established training centers and centers for the call to the faith. They formed fronts that trained and equipped thousands of Arab mujahidin and provided them with living expenses, housing, travel, and organization.”
Changing Bin Ladin’s Guard
About the Afghan Arabs’ relationship with the United States, Al-Zawahiri says in his book: “If the Arab mujahidin are mercenaries of the United States who rebelled against it as it alleges, why is it unable to buy them back now? Are they not counted now-with Usama Bin Ladin at their head-as the primary threat to US interests? Is not buying them more economical and less costly that the astronomical budgets that the United States is allotting for security and defense?”
“The Americans, in their usual custom of exaggeration and superficiality, are trying to sell off illusions to the people and are ignoring the most basic facts. Is it possible that Usama Bin Ladin who, in his lectures in the year 1987, called for boycotting US goods as a form of support for the intifadah in Palestine, a US agent in Afghanistan?….
“Furthermore, is it possible that the martyr-as we regard him-Abdallah Azzam was a US collaborator when in fact he never stopped inciting young men against the United States and used to back HAMAS with all the resources at his disposal?
“Is it possible that the jihadist movement in Egypt can be a collaborator movement for the United States when Khalid al-Islambuli and his comrades killed Anwar al-Sadat, even before the phenomenon of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan emerged?”
“Is it possible that the jihadist movement in Egypt can be a US collaborator movement when in fact it brought up its children, ever since the movement started, to reject Israel and all the agreements of capitulation to it and to consider making peace with Israel as a contravention of Islamic Shari’ah?”
Richard Miniter has a little more on this in “Dispelling the CIA-Bin Ladin Myth“, and while you may not exactly trust the source, there were further comments worth at least a look on the US State Departments “Identifying Misinformation” site.
BTW, that first Tweet (above) of his is easily disproved, here are a few places to go:
No Evidence Sarah Palin’S Pac Incited Shooting Of Rep. Gabby Giffords (POLITIFACT)
According to news reports, Loughner became fixated on Giffords several years before his Jan. 8, 2011, shooting rampage that killed six and injured 14, including the Arizona congresswoman…. According to the Washington Post, there is no evidence Loughner was aware of Palin’s maps. And according to an interview with one of Loughner’s high school friends, the gunman did not watch the news. His rampage was akin to “shooting at the world,” said Loughner’s friend Zach Osler.
Despite the facts which have come out showing that Jared Loughner was not a political person and was motivated by his own delusions rather than politics…. Remember, there is not a shred of evidence that Jared Loughner ever saw the map. As discussed here numerous times, the connection of the map to the shooting was a complete fiction concocted moments after the shooting by certain left-wing bloggers who spread the connection into the mainstream media.
The New York Times Runs The Worst Editorial In Human History, Blames SARAH PALIN For Giffords Shooting AGAIN (DAILY WIRE)
Jared Lee Loughner wasn’t a conservative. He wasn’t a Republican. He wasn’t sane. There is no evidence whatsoever that he ever saw the infamous Palin targeted district map. None. The rumor was discredited within hours of the shooting. But six years later, The Times is still repeating the lie as true — and not just as true, but as the ultimate example of political rhetoric prompting violence.
(Via BREITBART) A New Jersey Democratic strategist is capitalizing on the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) by launching the hashtags #HuntRepublicans and #HuntRepublicanCongressmen, and he is showing no signs of backing down, claiming “the chickens are coming home to roost.”
James Devine, a longtime political strategist in the Garden State, tweeted in the wake of the shooting at a Republican baseball practice in Alexandria on Wednesday that “we are in a war with selfish, foolish & narcissistic rich people”…
[….]
He also accused Republicans of starting a “class war.”
“If you want to invite a class war,” he said, “then you have to expect people to fight back at some point.”
On his website, Devine claims to have served in multiple roles in the state, including as the Democratic State Committee political director between 1992-3, where he “authored the coordinated campaign plan that helped Bill Clinton become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win New Jersey since 1964.”
James J. Devine is a masterful Democratic Party campaign strategist, a crusading journalist and an accomplished leader with extensive experience managing large organizations.
Over the past 35 years, Devine accumulated experience in every facet of politics (running campaigns for local school board, city council and mayor to state legislature, governor, congress and the presidency) and government (as a top level legislative staff member and manager of a federal agency with 1,150 employees under his command).
I will first post a serious challenge/worry that the MSM (mainstream media) will be using as “special cases.” BUT FIRST, why is this not a good way to write law? That is, write law using special cases. Being that I am “conservative” and lean towards this bias, I will use some examples from these similar thinking people. The first zeroes in on a separate issue, but in regards to writing laws, it is the same:
…Proponents of gay marriage fail utterly to comprehend the idea that laws are made with society, not the individual, in mind. That is why they also fail to grasp the idea that law is predicated upon averages, not outliers. Interestingly, both libertarians and progressives suffer from this lack of understanding…
…But more often they try to undermine the link between marriage and childrearing by pointing to outliers—marriages in which couples choose not to have children or cannot have them because at least one partner happens to be infertile. But this argument only reveals the weakness of the progressive understanding of the law. Put simply, rules that are justified by the average case cannot be undermined by the exceptional case, otherwise known as the outlier. Thus the old maxim, “Hard cases make bad law.”…
Mike S. Adams, Letters To A Young Progressive (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 81, 82.
The following two media files are the same analogy of car insurance explained by Dennis Prager, but two different times:
PREEXISTING CONDITIONS
With the above in mind, here is my first response via Facebook to a thoughtful post:
This is a thoughtful and understandable challenge by a single mother who is on a fixed income… she asks a question about her child with a malady and what the change in “pre-existing” is according to the current bill (remember, it will go through the senate, then most probably “conference,” reconciliation [by this time the CBO will have gone through the bill then — which will be tweaked from the one we are speaking to currently], and then be re-voted on)…
…here is her concern:
✦ My child’s digestive and respiratory issues caused by her being born prematurely and her grief depression caused by her farther dying when she was 5 are all considered pre-existing. As a single mother on a fixed income, her health care is an issue I do get very excited about!
With the AHCA, and the future fixes, premiums will fall dramatically. If you are caught without insurance for 63-days, you will pay about 30% more, but again, the overall payment will be much lower. Due to Obama-Care imploding (the latest example out of the many is Iowa having zero insurance coverage options, in other words, if you are a single mother on a fixed income in many states, you have zero options.
This was and is untenable. One of the GOP’s goals is to allow cross state competition for insurance groups that will increase pool sizes and lower costs dramatically. This has been illegal. Also, tort reform would be the single most beneficial thing that could be done… This is hard because injury lawyers are the first or second largest donors to the Democrat Party, so until we get enough conservative and other Republican’s to take this part of the issue seriously, the Democrats will continue to stand in the way of effective ways to lower your cost and increase your coverage options.
ADDENDUM 1 Just to add to make what I said clear (wanting clarity to reign). If you have not had insurance for 63-days — and AFTER this point you get an illness, this is when “pre-existing” kicks in. You see, I run a warehouse, and while the owner (a close friend) could afford the rise in his premiums, and I had insurance through my wife, the responsible young man who made $12 bucks an hour had insurance through Blue Cross on his own, lost his insurance because of Obama-Care. When he could find a policy again, it was more expensive. Two years after this it was more than twice as expensive as he was paying before O-Care. And he made the least in the warehouse. Why was it so expensive? His plane included pregnancy tests, Pap smear, mammogram, etc.
This way, through this legislation, the premiums should drop (esp. through more free market options in the future), but the cost won’t be a burden to poorer responsible people who have health insurance.
I just wanted clarify the above, as, I feel for you. Your concern is real! The call at the end of this interview is similar to your case (via my YouTube upload):
ADDENDUM 2 Sorry, one last thing, and this is to help you get through the weeds of Main Stream Media and all the other sources you will come across — yes, even me. The best non-partisan summary is this:
➤ States may opt-out of requiring premiums to be the same for all people of the same age, so while individuals with pre-existing conditions must be offered health insurance there is no limit on the cost of that insurance. A new $8 billion fund would help lower premiums for these individuals.
So even with the “ding” against “pre-existing” cases, there is money set aside for people just like you… if your state chooses to participate. BTW, this is called Federalism light… it is more Constitutional than the previous plan. Something we should all be moving towards.
The above Kellyanne Conway Tweeting of a WASHINGTON POST OP-ED by Cathy McMorris Rodgers:
Hearing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional monologue this week about his son’s condition and his family’s experience in the moments after his birth, I had a flashback to the day my son was born and we learned he had Down syndrome.
My husband and I had a lot of questions about Cole’s future. Whether he’d have health care shouldn’t have had to be one of them. When you’re facing years of doctor’s appointments, you want to know that having a preexisting condition, such as an extra 21st chromosome or a heart defect, won’t prevent you or your loved ones from accessing the care you need.
Protections for children such as Cole Rodgers and Billy Kimmel have long existed, as they should. And despite what people are saying, House Republicans aren’t seeking to strip these protections — or anyone’s protections — away.
[….]
To me, protecting people with preexisting conditions isn’t just good policy — it’s a personal mission.
All across the country, families like mine have real concerns about the future of health care, and they are why we’re focusing on results and working on these reforms. Obamacare is wrong for America. It has failed, and it’s only getting worse — making health care more expensive and less accessible. To stand by and do nothing would be irresponsible. The AHCA is a monumental step forward that trusts the American people — not the federal government — to make the best decisions for themselves and their families….
She does state elsewhere that for two years premiums will still rise, but that this is a “PART 1” of a three-part “fix,” and from all I have read, they will not rise nearly as fast as under O-Care.
OTHER NATIONS OFFER HEALTH-CARE…
…EXCEPT THE FASCIST GOP…
Here is another challenge, albeit not so thoughtful:
The United States Government is stupid… every civilized nation on the globe offers citizens health care…this country can’t and won’t because of greed and big business! Fuck Trump and the fascist GOP!
Just a quick note… Hitler’s Germany offered single-payer health care… speaking of “fascists.” Here is my FB response, I will add something a bit later:
Canada, the UK, Norway, etc., Are all moving toward free-market health-care as their single payer systems fail… I have read quite a few books on this over the years (a classic I recommend is “Code Blue: Reviving Canada’s Health Care System”) dealing with the issue, it is a bit more complicated than your “erudite” synopsis. For instance, to exemplify my point a bit, here is some commentary by the guy who is the founder of the Canadian model of health care, which the UK also used for their model:
“Back in the 1960s, (Claude) Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.
The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.”
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”
“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”
But that is why most insurance companies backed O-Care to begin with, as a way to weed out competition. Private practices could not compete, other option (that allowed for groups of private citizens to form their own catastrophic care groups became illegal), etc… So greed plays a part, but not the way you think. Here are a couple of short examples of Econ 101 to make my point on my site: BAM! WHAT IS CRONY CAPITALISM
Here Is My Addition Here On My Site
SCANDINAVIAN SOCIALISM
One can read and listen/watch all the media on my main post about “
Economics 101
In an excellent Bloomberg article entitled, “Booming Sweden’s Free-Market Solution,” the myth is dismantled in toto by Anders Aslund. Here is a snippet:
…From 1970 until 1989, taxes rose exorbitantly, killing private initiative, while entitlements became excessive. Laws were often altered and became unpredictable. As a consequence, Sweden endured two decades of low growth. In 1991-93, the country suffered a severe crash in real estate and banking that reduced GDP by 6 percent. Public spending had surged to 71.7 percent of GDP in 1993, and the budget deficit reached 11 percent of GDP.
TURNING POINT The combination of the crisis and the non-socialist government under Carl Bildt from 1991 to 1994 broke the trend and turned the country around. In 1994, the Social Democrats returned to power and stayed until 2006. Instead of revoking the changes, they completed the fiscal tightening. In 2006, a non-socialist government returned, and Finance Minister Anders Borg, with his trademark ponytail and earring, has led further reforms. Sweden successfully weathered the global financial crisis that started in 2008, and the Financial Times named Borg Europe’s best finance minister last year.
Before 2009, Sweden had a budget surplus, and it has one again. For the past two years, economic growth has been 4 percent on average, and the current-account surplus was 6.7 percent in 2011. The only concerns are the depressed demand for exports caused by the current euro crisis and an unemployment rate that is about 7.5 percent.
Sweden’s traditional scourge is taxes, which used to be the highest in the world. The current government has cut them every year and abolished wealth taxes. Inheritance and gift taxes are also gone. Until 1990, the maximum marginal income tax rate was 90 percent. Today, it is 56.5 percent. That is still one of the world’s highest, after Belgium’s 59.4 and there is strong public support for a cut to 50 percent.
The 26 percent tax on corporate profits may seem reasonable from an American perspective, but Swedish business leaders want to reduce it to 20 percent. Tax competition is fierce in some parts of Europe. Most East European countries, for example, have slashed corporate taxes to 15-19 percent….
Finland is joining military exercises with other Scandinavian countries, as well as several members of NATO, in late May, Finnish media report. The maneuvers called Arctic Challenge will span 12 days, starting May 25, and include nine countries and close to 100 planes. The drills, over Sweden and northern Norway, come amid increased tensions between Russia and its Baltic and Nordic neighbors.
Sweden and Switzerland, which like Finland are not members of NATO, are expected to join the exercise, along with NATO members Norway, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany and the United States. Finland plans to send 16 F-18 Hornet fighter jets, while the other countries will supply Gripen “multirole” fighters, F-16s, Eurofighters and Jet Falcons, as well as transports and tankers, Russian news agency Sputnik reported. The Norwegian armed forces said the purpose of the Arctic Challenge exercise is to “learn to coordinate efforts in complicated flight operations conducted in cooperation with NATO.”
Russia has ramped up military activity along its borders with northern Europe, causing consternation in several Baltic and Nordic countries and pre-emptive actions to head off — or prepare for — a possible military crisis. Latvia, which reported a Russian submarine near its coast in mid-March, is beefing up security on its eastern border, while Finland recently began a letter campaign notifying some 900,000 reservists of their duties in a potential crisis. Sweden also intercepted four Russian planes flying over the Baltic Sea in March with their radios off. Russian jets have been intercepted in other instances while flying in European international airspace….
I also pointed out that this promise went back to the Cold War, and was not known about till a Swedish defense think-tank/security firm uncovered the agreements in 1994. The original story’s link has been lost, but it is here on FOI’s site. FOI’s “about us” page has this:
FOI is one of Europe’s leading research institutes in the areas of defence and security. We have 1,000 highly skilled employees with various backgrounds. At FOI, you will find everything from physicists, chemists, engineers, social scientists, mathematicians and philosophers to lawyers, economists and IT technicians…. The Armed Forces and the Swedish Defence Material Administration are our main customers. However, we also accept assignments from civil authorities and industry. Our clients from the defence sector place very high demands on advanced research, which also benefits other customers.
Initially after the end of World War II, Sweden quietly pursued an aggressive independent nuclear weapons program involving plutonium production and nuclear secrets acquisition from all nuclear powers, until the 1960s, when it was abandoned as cost-prohibitive. During the Cold War Sweden appeared to maintain a dual approach to thermonuclear weapons. Publicly, the strict neutrality policy was forcefully maintained, but unofficially strong ties were purportedly kept with the U.S. It was hoped that the U.S. would use conventional and nuclear weapons to strike at Soviet staging areas in the occupied Baltic states in case of a Soviet attack on Sweden. Over time and due to the official neutrality policy, fewer and fewer Swedish military officials were aware of the military cooperation with the west, making such cooperation in the event of war increasingly difficult. At the same time Swedish defensive planning was completely based on help from abroad in the event of war. Later research has shown that every publicly available war-game training, included the scenario that Sweden was under attack from the Soviets, and would rely on NATO forces for defence. The fact that it was not permissible to mention this aloud eventually led to the Swedish armed forces becoming highly misbalanced. For example, a strong ability to defend against an amphibious invasion was maintained, while an ability to strike at inland staging areas was almost completely absent.
In the early 1960s U.S. nuclear submarines armed with mid-range nuclear missiles of type Polaris A-1 were deployed outside the Swedish west coast. Range and safety considerations made this a good area from which to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on Moscow. The submarines had to be very close to the Swedish coast to hit their intended targets though. As a consequence of this, in 1960, the same year that the submarines were first deployed, the U.S. provided Sweden with a military security guarantee. The U.S. promised to provide military force in aid of Sweden in case of Soviet aggression. This guarantee was kept from the Swedish public until 1994, when a Swedish research commission found evidence for it. As part of the military cooperation the U.S. provided much help in the development of the Saab 37 Viggen, as a strong Swedish air force was seen as necessary to keep Soviet anti-submarine aircraft from operating in the missile launch area. In return Swedish scientists at the Royal Institute of Technology made considerable contributions to enhancing the targeting performance of the Polaris missiles.
After a friend posted something asbout the house passing the American Health Care Act (AHCA), his own flesh and blood… his mother… wrote:
American Health Care Act (AHCA),
If their legislation is so great why did they vote themselves exempt from it? Good enough for us – not ok for them…?
I respond,
Yes, this is a great example of misinformation via the MSM [the Left]. But the reason that separated the two is explained well in this article…. BUT BEFORE THAT EXCERPT, which is more in-depth, let’s go barney style first:
NYT CORRESPONDENT FALSELY REPORTS HOUSE MEMBERS VOTED TO EXEMPT THEMSELVES FROM GOP HEALTH CARE BILL
A New York Times correspondent falsely reported Thursday on Twitter that members of the House of Representatives unanimously voted to exempt themselves from the Republican health care bill.
A day earlier, reporters noticed that a provision in the American Health Care Act would exempt lawmakers and their staff from losing some of the repealed Obamacare provisions. In response to the criticism, House leadership announced they would vote separately on the issue.
The House voted 429-0 to pass a bill rectifying the mistake, preventing lawmakers from being exempted. But the New York Times‘ chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, apparently misunderstood the vote…..
HERE’S WHY CONGRESS EXEMPTED ITSELF FROM THE NEW HEALTHCARE BILL
Last week, Vox dug into the Republican healthcare bill and found a provision that would exempt Congress and its staff from many of the bill’s effects.
This provision was bad “optics,” as they say in Washington.
But instead of taking it out — like you would usually do with a provision you aren’t wedded to and can’t defend politically — the House passed the American Health Care Act with the exemption intact after first passing a separate bill that would repeal the exemption that would be created by the AHCA if both bills became law.
There’s a reason for this mess, and it’s not about Republicans in Congress not wanting to be subject to their law.
It’s about Senate procedure.
Republicans are attempting to pass the AHCA through a process called reconciliation. This process, created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, allows the Senate to pass certain bills relating to the federal budget with just a simple majority. There is no need to get 60 votes — and, in this case, some Democratic support — as there is for other legislation.
A variety of complex rules govern what matters may and may not be considered through reconciliation.
One of those is that reconciliation must be conducted pursuant to reconciliation instructions passed by both chambers of Congress. That happened earlier this year — Congress sent reconciliation instructions to two Senate committees (finance; and health, education, labor, and pensions) that were designed to allow those committees to write bills making changes to healthcare policy.
The problem, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explains, is that Congress’ healthcare is governed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and that committee was not sent any reconciliation instructions.
Therefore, if a reconciliation bill makes changes to the way Congress gets its healthcare, it might become subject to a 60-vote threshold because it addresses a matter that is supposed to be the purview of a committee that doesn’t get to participate in reconciliation this year.
Here I add some information I came across a day later:
ADDENDUM 1 And also from FACTCHECK.ORG, there was this updated insight that confirms the above:
….Indeed, Republican Rep. Martha McSally of Arizona proposed a stand-alone bill to strike the exemption of Congress from state waiver provisions should the AHCA be enacted into law. From the House floor, McSally said that “due to very arcane Senate procedural rules within the budget reconciliation process,” the MacArthur amendment “does not and cannot apply to members of Congress.”
“I believe that any law we pass [that] applies to our constituents must also apply equally to members of Congress,” McSally said. “Individuals who are stewards of public trust must abide by the rules that they make.”
McSally’s bill passed on May 4 by a 429-0 vote. Unlike a reconciliation bill, the McSally bill would require 60 votes in the Senate to pass.
So there are now two bills that the House sent to the Senate. The AHCA — for esoteric procedural reasons — would exempt members of Congress and their staffs from state waiver provisions. But then there’s a bill that would strike that exemption if the AHCA becomes law. Clearly, based on the unanimous vote for the McSally bill, there is bipartisan agreement that a health care law Congress passes should apply in the same way to members of Congress.
NOW, to the last, and the worst of them all… and I will link to the many articles refuting it with a couple commentaries from a few.
RAPE AS A PREEXISTING CONDITION
It is the — yes crazy — understanding that RAPE is a pre-existing condition. Dumb! [<<< my commentary]. Here is the first “non-partisan” [left-leaning] POLITIFACT notes this claim is… WAIT FOR IT…
~ MOSTLY FALSE! ~
And the WASHINGTON POST gives it their MAXIMUM debunking rating of FOUR PINOCCHIOS
I know… crazy huh? Someone told my wife — roughly this:
“I hope you never get raped… because that is a pre-existing condition.”
I sent her this post from the not Trump friendly REASON.ORG website… to which yesterday the last article makes clear their bottom line:
If Democrats and progressives would just stick to actual details of the AHCA, they would still have plenty of material to make Republicans look bad (and the same goes for traffic-thirsty bloggers). But once again, that’s not enough for them. In their zeal to portray Donald Trump and the current GOP as worse than Nazis, the actual details of the bill don’t matter—and if that terrifies a ton of sexual-assault survivors and terrorizes American women in the process, so be it.
Since yesterday the article has been updated substantially, which I will post a portion of:
Update | May 6, 11:30 a.m.: Since I posted this, several other media outlets have investigated the rape-as-preexisting-condition claims and come to similar conclusions as mine. Politifact declared the claim “mostly false,” and The Washington Post—which yesterday morning published an op-ed yesterday perpetuating the rape claim—ran a Fact Checker column today giving it Four Pinnochios. “The notion that AHCA classifies rape or sexual assault as a preexisting condition, or that survivors would be denied coverage, is false,” wrote the Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee. In addition, “almost all states (at least 45 to 48) have their own laws protecting survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse.”
“It takes several leaps of imagination to assume that survivors of rape and sexual assault will face higher premiums as a result of conditions relating to their abuse,” Lee continues.
A person would need to be in the individual or small-group market (most Americans under 65 are on employer-provided plans), in a state that sought waivers, and in one of two to five states that did not prohibit insurance-company discrimination against survivors of sexual abuse.
In other words, this claim relies on so many factors — including unknown decisions by a handful of states and insurance companies — that this talking point becomes almost meaningless.
We always say at The Fact Checker that the more complicated the topic, the more susceptible it is to spin. Both media coverage and hyperbole among advocates are at fault for creating a misleading representation of the House GOP health bill. We wavered between Three and Four Pinocchios, but the out-of-control rhetoric and the numerous assumptions pushed us to Four Pinocchios.
What is also sad is that people do not read the bill outside it being put into political talking points outside the media or their organizations. I have already noted the following above:
➤ States may opt-out of requiring premiums to be the same for all people of the same age, so while individuals with pre-existing conditions must be offered health insurance there is no limit on the cost of that insurance. A new $8 billion fund would help lower premiums for these individuals.
But here is more of a response to the broader challenge at hand:
Myth #2: People with pre-existing conditions will lose their coverage or pay more.
In fact, people who have health insurance and want to make changes to their coverage during open enrollment or after a qualifying life event (birth of a child, job loss, marriage, death, divorce, move, etc.) cannot be charged more for health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.
That said, if someone went uninsured and waited until they got sick to enroll in a health insurance plan, the MacArthur amendment to the AHCAgives states the authority to try to prevent that from happening.
One of the things a state could do, under this amendment, would be to allow insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions more money for their health insurance, if they’ve been uninsured for an extended period of time.
One of the authors of the AHCA has a congenetital heart issue, he says this in an op-ed:
The American Health Care Act (AHCA) that I voted for and passed in the House does just that:
It establishes a healthcare system built upon free-market and consumer-driven principles that will revive competition, increasing quality, drive down costs, and expand coverage.
Congressional members and staff are not exempt from the AHCA. The McSally Amendment made sure this legislation applies equally to everyone.
THOSE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS CANNOT BE DENIED COVERAGE. I HAVE A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION WITH MY CONGENITAL HEART DEFECT, AND I UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO MAINTAIN COVERAGE FOR OTHERS.
Low-income Americans are not losing coverage and will still receive coverage under Medicaid.
And finally, here are a repition of what is above, but for good measure:
1. The Upton Amendment: The Upton Amendment, named after Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mi.), adds another $8 billion on top of the aforementioned $100 billion to cover high-risk patients with chronic and/or pre-existing conditions. This amendment was put in place to help satisfy more moderate-leaning Republicans who felt the AHCA took too much away from their constituents.
Here is the final explanation to be clear:
….As the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts it, without community rating, “Insurers could increase premiums by unlimited amounts for people with a history of cancer, hypertension, asthma, depression, or other conditions.”
Likewise, lifting the essential health benefits requirement would allow insurers to offer plans that don’t cover chemotherapy, maternity care, prescription drugs, or other expensive treatments.
In other words, insurers could effectively turn away the sick by refusing to sell policies that cover the services they need at any price, much less an affordable one.
These concerns are wildly overstated.
First, the only people supposedly at risk of being denied affordable coverage by these waivers are the 7 percent of Americans who buy coverage in the individual insurance market.
Insurers have long been banned from discriminating against the sick in the employer-sponsored market, where a little less than 160 million Americans get their coverage. Those with pre-existing conditions who get their coverage from Medicare, Medicaid, or another government program have nothing to worry about, either.
Second, the House-passed American Health Care Act would only allow insurers to base premiums on the health status of an applicant if that person went without coverage for 63 days or more the previous year. Those in waiver states who maintain continuous coverage could not be medically underwritten — and so would be protected from egregious premium hikes.
Further, pre-existing conditions are far less common than Rep. Pallone and his fellow travelers claim. A 2010 congressional investigation found that, pre-Obamacare, insurers denied just one in seven applicants in the individual market because of a pre-existing condition.
That means that about 1 percent of the total non-elderly population has a health problem serious enough to even need those pre-existing condition protections.
Even if we add the entire uninsured population to the individual market and assume the same denial rate, the share of non-elderly people declined coverage because of pre-existing conditions would be less than 3 percent. That estimate is almost certainly high, as a number of the uninsured are probably eligible for coverage elsewhere, whether through work or a government program.
For this small share of the population that could potentially be priced out of the individual market because of pre-existing conditions, the AHCA includes several additional layers of protection. The House bill seeds a Patient and State Stability Fund with $130 billion over ten years to reduce premiums and out-of-pocket costs for these folks.
A last-minute amendment to the AHCA provides an additional $8 billion over five years specifically earmarked to help those with pre-existing conditions in waiver states who let their insurance coverage lapse for more 63 days or more pay their premiums. Insurers can consider these folks’ health status when determining premiums — but only for one year. After that, they’d pay the standard rate for their age.
Many waiver states will choose to direct at least part of that $138 billion toward high-risk pools — programs that offer subsidized coverage to those rendered uninsurable because of a serious medical condition.
By removing these most costly patients from standard risk pools, high-risk pools would help keep premiums down throughout the insurance market — and ensure that younger, healthier patients have affordable coverage options.
The AHCA has plenty of flaws. But it’s dishonest to argue that it abandons individuals with pre-existing conditions.
Liberal Media Claims Trumpcare Makes Rape A Pre-Existing Condition, It Doesn’t (Young Conservatives);
FAKE NEWS: No, The Republican Health Care Bill Didn’t Just Make Rape A Pre-Existing Condition (DAILY WIRE);
No. Rape Is Not A ‘Pre-Existing Condition’ Under The Republican Health Care Bill (CHICKS ON THE RIGHT);
No, Rape is Not a Pre-Existing Condition Under GOP Health Bill: Hysterical allegation vastly misstates impact of partial Obamacare repeal passed by House (POLIZETTE);
When the GOP Isn’t Murdering People, It’s Exploiting Rape Victims (NATIONAL REVIEW);
Just Stop: No, the AHCA Does Not Make Rape a Pre-Existing Condition (VICTORY GIRLS);
NY Mag Falsely Claims Rape Is a Pre-Existing Condition In AHCA (NEWSBUSTERS).
I had a person say “yes, I agree with that” to my following analogy:
It is the common belief via university that someone cannot be a racist who does not have power. So – the story goes – blacks cannot be racist because they are a minority. I have a name memorized that I use in an analogy (I remember it because I associate it with General Mills — the cereal maker). I say, “So, you’re telling me that if the co-founder of the white supremacist prison gang, the Aryan Nation, Barry Mills, boards a plane in America and flies to The Federal Republic of Nigeria, the moment he touched his foot on the tarmac he is no longer a racist?” I will then sometimes have some fun and mention Barry might have ceased being a racist in midair through time zones, and then magically become one again when reaching another.
But this short video explains the ludicrous nature of this thinking, well:
…The reader will be amused at my ignorance, when I tell the notions I had of the state of northern wealth, enterprise, and civilization. Of wealth and refinement, I supposed the north had none. My Columbian Orator, which was almost my only book, had not done much to enlighten me concerning northern society. The impressions I had received were all wide of the truth. New Bedford, especially, took me by surprise, in the solid wealth and grandeur there exhibited. I had formed my notions respecting the social condition of the free states, by what I had seen and known of free, white, non-slaveholding people in the slave states. Regarding slavery as the basis of wealth, I fancied that no people could become very wealthy without slavery. A free white man, holding no slaves, in the country, I had known to be the most ignorant and poverty-stricken of men, and the laughing stock even of slaves themselves—called generally by them, in derision, “poor white trash.” Like the non-slaveholders at the south, in holding no slaves, I suppose the northern people like them, also, in poverty and degradation. Judge, then, of my amazement and joy, when I found—as I did find—the very laboring population of New Bedford living in better houses, more elegantly furnished—surrounded by more comfort and refinement—than a majority of the slaveholders on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. There was my friend, Mr. Johnson, himself a colored man (who at the south would have been regarded as a proper marketable commodity), who lived in a better house—dined at a richer board—was the owner of more books—the reader of more newspapers—was more conversant with the political and social condition of this nation and the world—than nine-tenths of all the slaveholders of Talbot county, Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man, and his hands were hardened by honest toil. Here, then, was something for observation and study. Whence the difference? The explanation was soon furnished, in the superiority of mind over simple brute force. Many pages might be given to the contrast, and in explanation of its causes. But an incident or two will suffice to show the reader as to how the mystery gradually vanished before me.
My first afternoon, on reaching New Bedford, was spent in visiting the wharves and viewing the shipping. The sight of the broad brim and the plain, Quaker dress, which met me at every turn, greatly increased my sense of freedom and security. “I am among the Quakers,” thought I, “and am safe.” Lying at the wharves and riding in the stream, were full-rigged ships of finest model, ready to start on whaling voyages. Upon the right and the left, I was walled in by large granite-fronted warehouses, crowded with the good things of this world. On the wharves, I saw industry without bustle, labor without noise, and heavy toil without the whip. There was no loud singing, as in southern ports, where ships are loading or unloading—no loud cursing or swearing—but everything went on as smoothly as the works of a well adjusted machine. How different was all this from the nosily fierce and clumsily absurd manner of labor-life in Baltimore and St. Michael’s! One of the first incidents which illustrated the superior mental character of northern labor over that of the south, was the manner of unloading a ship’s cargo of oil. In a southern port, twenty or thirty hands would have been employed to do what five or six did here, with the aid of a single ox attached to the end of a fall. Main strength, unassisted by skill, is slavery’s method of labor. An old ox, worth eighty dollars, was doing, in New Bedford, what would have required fifteen thousand dollars worth of human bones and muscles to have performed in a southern port. I found that everything was done here with a scrupulous regard to economy, both in regard to men and things, time and strength. The maid servant, instead of spending at least a tenth part of her time in bringing and carrying water, as in Baltimore, had the pump at her elbow. The wood was dry, and snugly piled away for winter. Woodhouses, in-door pumps, sinks, drains, self-shutting gates, washing machines, pounding barrels, were all new things, and told me that I was among a thoughtful and sensible people. To the ship-repairing dock I went, and saw the same wise prudence. The carpenters struck where they aimed, and the calkers wasted no blows in idle flourishes of the mallet. I learned that men went from New Bedford to Baltimore, and bought old ships, and brought them here to repair, and made them better and more valuable than they ever were before. Men talked here of going whaling on a four years’ voyage with more coolness than sailors where I came from talked of going a four months’ voyage…
Mr. Elder talked about his book, “The Ten Things You Can’t Say In America,” discussing the political correctness, racial issues, and racism within the U.S. government. He also responded to telephone calls, faxes, and electronic mail.
A series of 5-myths via Daniel Flynn’s excellent book — Machiavelli said, “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”
Daniel J. Flynn, Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2002), 138-143.
MYTH #5: THE RICH GET RICHER, THE POOR GET POORER
WRITER JAMES L0EWEN laments the fact that publishers refrain from printing “a textbook that would enable readers to understand why children of working-class families do not become president or vice-president, the mythical Abraham Lincoln to the contrary.” Without a hint of irony, the author penned these words when the occupant of the Oval Office was a man abandoned by his father and raised in poverty by his struggling mother in Hope, Arkansas. The writer’s ideological myopia regarding class and success in America is a central tenet of leftist philosophy. The Left’s propaganda campaign has been so effective that a majority of Americans now believe that the American system benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. A December 2001 Harris poll, for instance, revealed just how the belief in class rigidity remains entrenched in the collective consciousness. Sixty-nine percent of Americans agreed with the assertion that, in their country, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” The facts do not support this popular belief. Nor do they buttress the idea that the system is set up to benefit the rich.
The burden of taxation overwhelmingly falls on the rich. The federal government relieves the poor of paying even a nominal amount of income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service reports that in 1999, the richest 1% paid more than a third of all income taxes it received. The richest 5% paid well over half of all federal income taxes. Only $1 out of every $25 collected by the IRS came from taxpayers on the bottom half of the economic ladder. To state that such a system unfairly benefits the rich, as many politicians perennially do, requires an abandonment of the facts as well as common sense.
The poor’s share of the economic pie has undeniably shrunk, however slightly, in recent decades. But the size of the entire pie has grown larger. Every economic class now receives a larger piece because they feast on a larger pie. From 1967 through 2000, the household income of the poorest tenth of the population increased by more than 33% in inflation-adjusted dollars. Surely it is better to have a smaller piece of a massive pie than it is to have a larger piece of a small pie. Countries exist, of course, where income equality is more pronounced among the masses. Economic equality for the populace (but not the leadership) is far more evident in China, Cuba, and Libya than it is in the United States. But what good is equality if it results in making everyone equally poor? Only one consumed by envy prefers equality of condition to increased prosperity for all.
A $9 trillion economy hardly leaves much room for what the rest of humanity considers true poverty. In more than 100 countries, America’s poor would be considered the moneyed elite. To its critics, the obscenity of our free-enterprise system is that some still go poor in a nation that houses Bill Gates and Leona Helmsley. Strangely, the system where everyone shares financial degradation equally earns higher marks from such critics. Such utopians fail to realize that only the system that keeps in place the natural rewards for hard work and ingenuity realizes the desired widespread prosperity. Government schemes that remove incentives seal the degraded fate of their own citizenry.
The United States is a free country. Any country that values liberty necessarily shuns the socialist’s conception of equality. The two ideals are incongruous. Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek astutely observed in The Constitution of Liberty,
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time.
A variety of income levels usually reflects the health of freedom in a nation. What truly would frighten would be no differences in income.
Ignoring the absolute gains of the lowest economic class while stressing their relative losses serves as one example of the mathematical legerdemain the Left plays in the service of class warfare. A second trick involves the portrayal of “the poor” as a static group of individuals rather than as an economic class whose membership constantly rotates. The people we refer to as “the poor” today are not at all likely to be the people we refer to as “the poor” a few years from now. This reality alone rebuts the notion that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Today’s rich are often yesterday’s poor.
Hard statistics demonstrate that economic mobility is widespread. A Treasury Department study tracking class movement from 1979 to 1988 discovered that 86% of 1979’s poor no longer remained in the lowest income quintile in 1988. More of 1979’s poorest quintile actually found themselves in the richest 20% of Americans in 1988 than were still mired in the poorest 20%. Considering that the bulk of the survey focused on the Reagan years, the very time the Left describes as an era of unprecedented misery for the poor, the numbers are quite devastating to any claim of a static class structure.
An Urban Institute study at around the same time yielded similar results. The group found that the greatest proportional income gainers from 1977 to 1986 were 1977’s poorest quintile. This bottom fifth of the economic ladder saw their incomes climb 77% during the time period. By way of comparison, the average income gain during the 10-year period was 18%. Conspicuously, 1977’s richest quintile experienced an anemic 5% increase in their earnings. In many ways, the Urban Institute’s findings merely confirm common sense. Poor people, having nowhere to go but up, experience more rapid proportional gains in income than the rich. To advance an ideology that ignores this reality flies in the face of common sense.
Over the past two decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has tracked individual income fluctuation from one year to the next on seven occasions. Even over a period as short as two years, the studies reveal a startling fluidity in the economy. In each of the Census Bureau’s seven two-year studies, at least three-fourths of all individual incomes fluctuated up or down by 5% or more. The studies affirm that the average American sees his earnings change significantly from year to year. A similar Census Bureau study of poor people in the mid-1990s found that nearly one-quarter of impoverished citizens in the first year of the study escaped poverty by the end of the next. Again, the poor are not a fixed group of people. Poverty is a condition that different people find themselves in at different times. Students, the young, and newly arrived immigrants may constitute “the poor” during one still frame but live quite comfortably once we fast-forward their lives.
Just as the extremely poor are not typically chronically impoverished, the extremely rich usually were not born into affluence. Historians generally regard John Jacob Astor as the first man to be worth $10 million, Cornelius Vanderbilt, $100 million, and John D. Rockefeller, $1 billion. Significantly, each of these men earned his own wealth and rose from a fairly modest background. When we look at the rich today, the tradition of self-made wealth still holds true.
The self-made rich constitute the majority of wealthy people. Someone born into wealth stands a far greater chance of dying wealthy, of course, than someone born into poverty. But this hardly supports the claim that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Nor does it indict the American system. The advantages of inherited wealth occur not just in the United States but everywhere else in the world as well. In viewing the Forbes 400, the annual ranking of America’s superrich, one finds quite a few spots on the list that, like the publisher’s chair of the magazine compiling the report, are occupied by the inheritors of great wealth. Sam Walton’s wife and children constitute half of the Forbes top 10. A brood of Rockefellers populate the list. Five generations after the launch of Johnson & Johnson, numerous members of Forbes’s exclusive club bear the genes of the company’s founders. Old money has its advantages.
Yet these people are the exception. A perusal of the most recent list of the 400 richest Americans yields a count of 252 men and women, 63% of the total, described by Forbes as “self-made.”74 Their stories are truly amazing.
Texan Red McCombs (ranked at 158), the son of an auto mechanic, made billions selling the cars his dad was paid a few dollars to fix. Equaling McCombs in wealth is Kenny Troutt (158), a man who grew up in a housing project, only to establish one of the most successful communications companies in the United States. Andrew McKelvey (172), founder of Monster .com, got his start selling eggs. He later graduated to peddling ad space in the Yellow Pages, which undoubtedly planted the seeds in his mind for his successful Internet classified-ad company. Both Marcus Bernard (60) and Arthur Blank (136) grew up in dilapidated tenement housing in and around New York City. After Bernard and Blank were fired by the Handy Dan home improvement store, they decided to launch their own venture. Handy Dan is out of business. Home Depot is one of the most successful stores in history. West Coast financier Leslie Gonda (136) escaped the Holocaust. The odds do not get much worse than that. Yet he made it. The lives of Mississippi sharecropper’s daughter Oprah Winfrey (280), college dropout Steve Jobs (158), and paperboy, horse breaker, and greeting card salesman H. Ross Perot (47) all serve as testimony to the reality of the American Dream.
These aren’t Horatio Alger stories. The rags-to-riches tales found in the Forbes 400 really happened. If the American Dream can become real for a Jew fleeing from under the jackboot of Nazism, whom can’t it become real for?
Is there a gender wage gap? Are women paid less than men to do the same work? Christina Hoff Sommers, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains the data.
If you’re like me, every time some screechy feminist starts whining about the “wage gap,” your eyes glass over (or they roll right out of your head). I honestly don’t know how many times we have to explain basic math, economics, and sociology to these harpies before they understand that this wage gap nonsense is precisely that.
Since this is a large post, I would suggest picking a topic or section and going through it… and then coming back to cover another section. We are often busy and so must manage time wisely. The reason for this post was a short paragraph written by an awesome gal who quickly explained her positions of why she (and other women) marched in the Women’s March that recently took place the day after the election. I took her small paragraph and bullet pointed a few issues I wish to address, and these can be seen in numbers one through four – below right. They are easily jumped to by clicking on the number. I will respond with media, quotes, and commentary in a way that steps beyond the mantras of the professional Left.
I would suggest combining this post with an earlier post of mine to understand just how much culture and the media can misrepresent things during an election season.
Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” statement was loudly rejected. However, if such importance is placed on false facts… then this should help the student of truth to wade through the “alternative facts” apparently infuriating women of the Left.
EQUALITY
The mottos of our country are: E Pluribus Unum, In God We Trust, and Liberty. The motto of our Revolution was basically: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” While the Constitution requires those who stand before the law to be treated equally (equal under the law)… “equality” is not part of liberty. You can have either liberty or either equality – but not both. You will see this fleshed out in number three, bellow., but a good example of this in history is the French Revolution. It had a motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” This was an experiment done around the same time as the American Revolution and it collapsed on itself. Here is a good recap of these foundation philosophies:
French Revolution
Let’s take the idea of equality. For the Americans, it was largely a matter of equality before the law. When Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he meant that human beings were equal in their possession of legal rights. He did not mean that all people were equal in talent, merit, wealth, or social status. Rather, they were equal, as human beings, in their right to pursue their interests and their dreams without interference by the government or other people.
Writing in the Federalist Papers No. 10, James Madison made it clear that he had no use for the French idea of absolute equality. He wrote, “Theoretic politicians have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.” For Madison, there was no single or general will in mankind. Rather, there was only a society of individuals with diverse interests and opinions whose natural freedoms needed to be preserved by government.
The French idea of equality, or égalité, is one of the three national mottos of the French Republic, but it is derived from a certain view of freedom. Since freedom is collective—an expression of the general will—and it is not individually determined, then naturally its truest expression is equality of the masses. You can be truly free only if you are in sync with the general will.
But that implies that everyone’s will must be equal; otherwise, what’s the use of it being general? If everyone was allowed to have different interests, statuses, opinions, they would not be united in a single will, would they? As Saint-Just put it during the height of the Reign of Terror, “Private happiness and interest are a violence against the social order. You must forget yourselves…. [T]he only salvation is through the public good.”
The “public good” is just another word for collective freedom, which leads us to the third motto of the Revolution, fraternité, or the appeal to national unity. The first celebration of the storming of the Bastille, called the Féte de la Fédération and held on the Champ-de-Mars in 1790, was not a Victor Hugo–like celebration of Les Misérables, but a mass rally celebrating the fraternité of the Revolution and the unity of the French nation. It was the French ideas of liberty and equality all wrapped up in one. Free citizens would come together as equal partners in the unified French nation.
But there was, in the French Revolution, a paradox in this passion for unity. All nations celebrate national unity, even our own, but it can be taken to extremes. The fraternal desire for consensus and accord ended up in violence and discord.
Hearing the guilty verdict at his trial during the Terror, a member of the Girondin party joked that the only way for him and his compatriots to save their skins was to proclaim “the unity of their lives and the indivisibility of their heads.” Exactly! Pushing for agreement to the extreme of violence is the most divisive—and exclusionary—thing you can possibly do.
In the history of ideas and political movements, the legacy of fraternité is twofold: One, it gave birth to the populist nationalisms that would roil Europe and the world for the next two centuries, and two, taken to extremes, it led to the rise of totalitarian democracy in the 20th century.
All these differences in interpreting freedom, equality, and unity led the Americans and the French to very different notions of government.
The modern Left and the French of centuries past have a similar view of equality. It is an illiberal view of nature. To create equality IN THIS SENSE (guaranteed equal outcomes) is an impossible task. I will give you a couple examples of what I mean. The first deals with “special rights” in the attempt to create the [illusion] of choice. In an oft used example of mine I note that by defining when life begins at a later stage of a humans life-span, we see gender abortions (typically a girl is aborted due to cultural preferences for males), but here is a hypothetical of a newly forming protected class:
“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it. Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”
Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (Lafayette, LA: Vital Issues Press, 1994), 172.
Mmmm, do you see an issue here? Under the “health of the mother” as the courts interpret Doe v. Bolton, ensuring a gender outcome or wanting a straight child would be allowed since “stress” or maladies like the baby having a cleft palate, or the mother is struggling financially, or one wished to pursue a career — are grounds for aborting children. Legally. Heck, if financial worries is reason enough… what’s left? Another example of the impossibility of reaching the equality spoken of here is those who felt marginalized BECAUSE of the march. Here are a couple examples:
… In fact, though conventional wisdom would suggest that progressives everywhere were pleased with the demonstration, it turns out some transgender people thought the prevalence of “pussy hats,” vagina costumes and paintings of female genitalia were “oppressive” toward their community.
“[P]ussy hats set the tone for a march that would focus acutely on genitalia at the expense of the transgender community,” Mic . com staff writer Marie Solis reported. “Signs like ‘Pussy power,’ ‘Viva la Vulva’ and ‘Pussy grabs back’ all sent a clear and oppressive message to trans women, especially: having a vagina is essential to womanhood.”…
Transgender activists are upset that the women‘s march over the weekend was not inclusive to biological men who identify as women, as the protest presented an oppressive message that having a vagina is essential to womanhood.
Saturday’s event to oppose the inauguration of Donald Trump was largely a “white cis women march,“ with too many pictures of female reproductive organs and pink hats, according to trans women and nonbinary individuals
The women‘s march had an over-reliance on slogans and posters depicting gender norms, like using pink to represent women and girls, said some transgender activists who boycotted the march.
Sorry, trannies, but until you can have abortions, the feminist movement isn’t that interested in you.
So just by having an inclusive march many were excluded. This is the trouble with the Left’s egalitarianism. It cannot work and merely creates more division and eventual cannibalism, as Christian Hoff Sommers notes:
FIRST and FOREMOST… when categories are compared properly, we see women tend to make more than men…
Among college-educated, never-married individuals with no children who worked fill-time and were from 40 to 64 years old— that is, beyond the child-bearing years— men averaged $40,000 a year in income, while women averaged $47,000.30 But, despite the fact that women in this category earned more than men in the same category, gross income differences in favor of men continue to reflect differences in work patterns between the sexes, so that women and men are not in the same categories to the same extent.
Even women who have graduated from top-level universities like Harvard and Yale have not worked full-time, or worked at all, to the same extent that male graduates of these same institutions have. Among Yale alumni in their forties, “only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men,” according to the New York Times. It was much the same story at Harvard:
A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31 percent of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the Yale students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home or work part time in their 30’s and 40’s.
Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008), 70.
What typically happen with women around age thirty? The word rhymes with manly.
…The Department of Labor’s Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.
Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.
Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.
Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women’s earnings are going up compared to men’s….
Another reason there is a broad variance in pay are for a few reasons. Women tend to choose different career paths than men (choice), and also take time out to care for children (nature).
…various countries’ economies, there are still particular industries today where considerable physical strength remains a requirement. Women are obviously not as likely to work in such fields as men are— and some of these are fields with jobs that pay more than the national average. While women have been 74 percent of what the U.S. Census Bureau classifies as “clerical and kindred workers,” they have been less than 5 percent of “transport equipment operatives.” In other words, women are far more likely to be sitting behind a desk than to be sitting behind the steering wheel of an eighteen-wheel truck. Women are also less than 4 percent of the workers in “construction, extraction, and maintenance.” They are less than 3 percent of construction workers or loggers, less than 2 percent of roofers or masons and less than one percent of the mechanics and technicians who service heavy vehicles arid mobile equipment.
Such occupational distributions have obvious economic implications, since miners earn nearly double the income of office clerks when both work full-time and year-round 20 There is still a premium paid for workers doing heavy physical work, as well as for hazardous work, which often overlaps work requiring physical strength. While men are 54 percent of the labor force, they are 92 percent of the job-related deaths.
Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008), 64-65.
The first thing to say is the Higher Court settled this — I says settled with “air quotes.” However, many fine gay men and women I know would reject this decision either because they think marriage between heterosexuals has benefits for society same-sex marriages cannot offer. And/or they support the idea in the Constitution that what isn’t clearly enumerated in the Constitution for the Federal Government to concern itself with, then these decisions should be left to the states.
In our sometimes misguided efforts to expand our freedom, selfish adults have systematically dismantled that which is most precious to children as they grow and develop. That’s why I am now speaking out against same-sex marriage.
By the way, I am gay.
A few days ago I testified against pending same-sex marriage legislation in Minnesota’s Senate Judiciary and House Civil Law Committees.
The atmosphere at these events (I’ve also testified elsewhere) seems tinged with unreality—almost a carnival-like surrealism. Natural law, tradition, religion, intellectual curiosity, and free inquiry no longer play a role in deliberations. Same-sex marriage legislation is defended solely on grounds of moral relativism and emotions.
Pure sophistry is pitted against reason. Reason is losing.
[….]
Same-sex marriage will do the same, depriving children of their right to either a mom or a dad. This is not a small deal. Children are being reduced to chattel-like sources of fulfillment. On one side, their family tree consists not of ancestors, but of a small army of anonymous surrogates, donors, and attorneys who pinch-hit for the absent gender in genderless marriages. Gays and lesbians demand that they have a “right” to have children to complete their sense of personal fulfillment, and in so doing, are trumping the right that children have to both a mother and a father—a right that same-sex marriage tramples over.
Same-sex marriage will undefine marriage and unravel it, and in so doing, it will undefine children. It will ultimately lead to undefining humanity. This is neither “progressive” nor “conservative” legislation. It is “regressive” legislation.
Another examples comes from respected Canadian sociologist/scholar/homosexual, Paul Nathanson, writes that there are at least five functions that marriage serves–things that every culture must do in order to survive and thrive. They are:
Foster the bonding between men and women
Foster the birth and rearing of children
Foster the bonding between men and children
Foster some form of healthy masculine identity
Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults
Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues “Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival,… every human societ[y] has had to promote it actively…. Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.” Going further he stated that “same sex marriage is a bad idea”… [he] only opposed “gay marriage, not gay relationships.”
…moving on…
Not Immutable
Some persons think being gay is immutable, and so apply the 14th Amendment to the issue. However, this is not the case. Homosexuality is often times due to trauma early in the person’s life. Or sexual activity at a young age:
So, for instance, my mom knew quite a few lesbians throughout her life as a hippie/druggy, who now loves Jesus. In her mobile-home park living experience she has become friends, acquaintances with and met quite a few lesbians over the years. She told me that most had been abused by some older man (often a family member) when they were young. Also, the men I have known well-enough to intimate to me their early lives also have corroborated such encounters (one was a family member, the other not). Which brings me to a quote by a lesbian author I love:
“Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is,* instead of the ‘coming-of-age’ experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS”
Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishers, 2003), 99.
*By the age of 18 or 19 years, three quarters of American youth, regardless of their sexual orientation, have had sexual relations with another person. Gay males are more likely than heterosexual males to become sexually active at a younger age (12.7 vs. 15.7 years) and to have had multiple sexual partners. The ages at the time of the first sexual experience with another person are closer for lesbians and heterosexual females (15.4 vs. 16.2 years).
You see, much like Walt Heyer, a man who had a sex operation, lived as a woman for 8-years, and then one day started to confront the “demons” from his childhood. He started to deal with these earlier issues in his life after taking some courses to get a degree in counseling at U.C. Irvine — he realized his gender dysphoria was because of trauma at a young age (HERE). To put a stamp of approval via society on a “choice” that is caused by anothers “choice” in making these relationships equal, is doing more harm to the individual than good (as Walt Heyer also points out in his book, mentioned in the link). Many have changed their sexual orientation from gay to hetero… but if this is the case, then one’s fluid sexuality is very UNLIKE ethnic origins (an ex-gay tells his story; a man raised by lesbians and who’s own early sexuality was in flux tells his story).
Here we find the indomitable Camille Paglia, a lesbian scholar, noting some of the above:
More than twenty years ago, the influential lesbian author Camille Paglia had this to say about the “born gay” myth: “Homosexuality is not normal. On the contrary it is a challenge to the norm…. Nature exists whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single relentless rule. That is the norm…. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction…. No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous… homosexuality is an adaptation, not an inborn trait.”
But she was just getting started as she asked:
“Is the gay identity so fragile that it cannot bear the thought that some people may not wish to be gay? Sexuality is highly fluid, and reversals are theoretically possible. However, habit is refractory, once sensory pathways have been blazed and deepened by repetition—a phenomenon obvious with obesity, smoking, alcoholism or drug addiction—helping gays to learn how to function heterosexually, if they wish is a perfectly worthy aim. We should be honest enough to consider whether or not homosexuality may not indeed, be a pausing at the prepubescent stage where children band together by gender…. Current gay cant insists that homosexuality is not a choice; that no one would choose to be gay in a homophobic society. But there is an element of choice in all behavior, sexual or otherwise. It takes an effort to deal with the opposite sex; it is safer with your own kind. The issue is one of challenge versus comfort.”
Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 162.
IN CASE you are not tracking… one cannot change his or her ethnicity/color.
Equality – LGBT [Must] Be Accepted By Everyone
Here is the actual quote from the paragraph mentioned at the top of the post:
“LGBT WOULD have just the same rights to be married, get a job, be accepted by EVERYONE”
In order to impose some essence of equality, the government has to homogenize ALL interactions. In doing so, and getting to the “accepted by everyone” level, you would have to have something more that what Orwell wrote of in 1984. This is in actuality impossible, and is a sign of the Utopian goals of the Left.
For thousands of years human beings have dreamt of perfect worlds, worlds free of conflict, hunger and unhappiness. But can these worlds ever exist in reality? In 1516 Sir Thomas More wrote the first ‘Utopia’. He coined the word ‘utopia’ from the Greek ou-topos meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’. But this was a pun – the almost identical Greek word eu-topos means a good place. So at the very heart of the word is a vital question: can a perfect world ever be realised?
All societies and movements that have attempted this have failed, miserably. This is no different. It curbs the freedom of contract between two individuals for a product or a service. Same-sex marriage as pushed by liberals is in direct conflict to enumerated protections in the Constitution. In Massachusetts, and now it is happening in Illinois. The oldest (in the nation), most successful foster and adoption care organization has closed its doors because they would be forced to adopt to same-sex couples. Lets peer into who this would affect:
“Everyone’s still reeling from the decision,” Marylou Sudders, executive director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), said yesterday. “Ultimately, the only losers are the kids,” said Maureen Flatley, a Boston adoption consultant and lobbyist. (more on RPT & WT)
And business are bankrupted by government to impose these unreachable norms.
Again, this is not a straight versus gay category. This is a Left/Right issue in our body politic. For example, here is a Christian, conservative, apologist — Frank Turek — making a point:
“….Imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should that homosexual videographer be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?….”
Now, here is a “conservatarian” blogger, Gay Patriot’s, input:
“…it’s a bad law, a law that violates natural human rights to freedom of association and to freely-chosen work. It is not good for gays; picture a gay photographer being required by law to serve the wedding of some social conservative whom he or she despises.”
AGAIN, there are many gay men and women that GET IT:
GAY PATRIOT shot me over to The Blaze’s article on this… good stuff, and I LOVE these two ladies.
[Kathy Trautvetter and Diane DiGeloromo, a lesbian couple who own and operate BMP T-shirts, a New Jersey-based printing company, sat down with Glenn Beck Thursday night to explain why they are standing up for an embattled Christian printer who refused to make shirts for a gay pride festival.]
[….]
The lesbian couple are standing up for Christian t-shirt maker Blaine Adamson, who refused to print shirts for a gay pride festival because it compromised his values. Adamson has come under attack for his stance, but this couple supports him. The story is a microcosm for what should be happening in America as we navigate the way the world is changing.
“As a business owner, it struck a chord with me when I read the story, because I know how hard it is to build a business. You put your blood and your sweat and your tears into every bit of it. When I put myself in his place, I immediately felt like if that were to happen to us, I couldn’t create or print anti-gay T-shirts, you know, for a group. I couldn’t do it,” Kathy explained.
Diane added, “We feel this really isn’t a gay or straight issue. This is a human issue. No one really should be forced to do something against what they believe in. It’s as simple as that, and we feel likewise. If we were approached by an organization such as the Westboro Baptist Church, I highly doubt we would be doing business with them.”“Everybody votes with their dollars, you know?” Kathy said. “And why you would want to go with somebody who doesn’t agree with you, [when] there’s others who do agree with you, that’s who I want to do business with.”
Nice. If only all gay people were so tolerant and open-minded.
Love is Love
A story via GAY PATRIOT and his very humorous way to bring to light the deeper issue at hand, we find another example of the deteriorating acidic colloquialisms of the Left falling apart at the expense of civil society:
A mother and son whose forbidden love affair could land them each a lengthy jail sentence have declared they are ‘madly in love’ and nothing will tear them apart.
Monica Mares, 36, and her son Caleb Peterson, 19, face up to 18 months in prison if found guilty of incest at a trial later this year in New Mexico.
But the mother and son couple have vowed to fight for their right to have a sexual relationship and are appealing to the public to donate to their legal fund.
Can you believe that The Patriarchy actually wants to put them in jail for being in love? Probably because of Thoecracy and stuff. “Government everywhere but in our bedrooms, yo!”
However, here is GAY PATRIOT noting what is really going on:
“Don’t be ridiculous,” they said. “No way does same sex marriage lead to legalized polygamy. The slippery slope argument is a complete fallacy, because enactment of one liberal social policy has never, ever led to the subsequent enactment of the logical extension of that liberal social policy. Ever!”
Well, they may have been wrong about the coefficient of friction on that particular incline. Commenter Richard Bell notes the following: Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional.
[….]
Since marriage is no longer about creating a stable environment for children, and has become (and this mainly the fault of heterosexual liberals) about personal fulfillment, validation, and access to social benefits, there literally is no constraint on how much more broadly it can be redefined.
Goals
There have been quite a few admissions like this, but here is one example by a wel known LGBT activist cataloged by THE BLAZE:
A 2012 speech by Masha Gessen, an author and outspoken activist for the LGBT community, is just now going viral and it includes a theory that many supporters of traditional marriage have speculated about for years: The push for gay marriage has less to do with the right to marry – it is about diminishing and eventually destroying the institution of marriage and redefining the “traditional family.”
The subject of gay marriage stirs powerful reactions on both sides of the argument. There are those who argue that legalizing it would diminish traditional marriage. And those advocating for gay marriage have long stated that the issue will not harm traditional marriage. Ms. Gessen’s comments on the subject seem to contradict the pro-gay-marriage party lines.
Gessen shared her views on the subject and very specifically stated;
“Gay marriage is a lie.”
“Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there.”
“It’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.” (This statement is met with very loud applause.)
As mentioned above, Gessen also talked about redefining the traditional family. This may have something to do with the fact that she has “three children with five parents”:
“I don’t see why they (her children) shouldn’t have five parents legally. I don’t see why we should choose two of those parents and make them a sanctioned couple.”…
Here again we run into the issue of EQUALITY as the Left views it. Not an equality in the sight of the law but an equality in outcomes. This is actually REALLY easy to show as wrong. But the 100% thingy made me chuckle. It reminded me of this call into the Larry Elder show:
Too Funny! But this is the thinking of these egalitarian tyrants. Take note that I will deal with the SHOOTING OF BLACK MEN first, then deal with Traffic stops. Remember, studies show police officers are MORE likely to shoot a white criminal than a black (cue shocked faces): Shootings
A study by a Harvard professor released this month found no evidence of racial bias in police shootings even though officers were more likely to interact physically with non-whites than whites.
The paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which examined thousands of incidents at 10 large police departments in California, Florida and Texas, concluded that police were no more likely to shoot non-whites than whites after factoring in extenuating circumstances.
“On the most extreme use of force — officer-involved shootings — we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account,” said Harvard economics professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. in the abstract of the July 2016 paper.
Mr. Fryer, who is black, told The New York Times that the finding of no racial discrimination in police shootings was “the most surprising result of my career.”
At the same time, the study found blacks and Hispanics were more than 50 percent more likely to experience physical interactions with police, including touching, pushing, handcuffing, drawing a weapon, and using a baton or pepper spray.
The 63-page study, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” appears to support research conducted at Washington State University showing that officers in simulation tests were actually less likely to shoot at blacks than whites.
The paper also challenges the contention by the new wave of civil-rights groups such as Black Lives Matter that racist police are singling out blacks for shootings….
Listen, these next two media pieces are a bit long, but you get to hear real-world statistics. The first pice of media is from Larry Elder via my YouTube channel. The video following Elder is a Bill Whittle production… good stuff for the serious student of truth:
Where to start with actor Jesse Williams’ widely praised rant on police brutality and white racism delivered at this year’s Black Entertainment Television awards show?
To his enthusiastic audience, Williams reeled off lie after lie, all in the name of black “resistance” over the “oppressor” – meaning anyone he believes benefits from “this invention called whiteness.” Time magazine called his discourse “powerful.”
Where are fact-checkers when the fact-devoid desperately need fact-checking? After all, Williams practically begged to be fact-checked when he said, “What we’ve been doing is looking at the data, and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day.”
The “police … manage to … not kill white people every day”?
Let’s start with 2014, the last year for which there are official records. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the police killed 261 whites and 131 blacks. The CDC also found that from 1999 to 2013, the police killed almost twice the number of whites compared to blacks, 3,160 and 1,724, respectively.
Activists promptly note that whites account for nearly 65 percent of the population and that, therefore, one would expect whites to comprise most of those killed by cops. And we are told that blacks, while 13 percent of the population, represent a much greater percentage of those killed by cops. Institutional, systemic, structural racism!
Here’s what those promoting the “police disproportionately kill black people” narrative consistently omit. Whites, despite being almost 65 percent of the population, disproportionately commit less of the nation’s violent crime – 10 percent. Blacks, at 13 percent of the population, disproportionately commit more violent crime. As to murders, black commit nearly half. Yet whites are 50 percent of cop killings.
Criminology professor Peter Moskos looked at the numbers of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 and found that 49 percent were white, while 30 percent were black. “Adjusted for the homicide rate,” says Moskos, “whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.” So if anything, whites have more to complain about than Mr. Williams….
Just a very quick explanation of the above. Using newer stats, if you had 100 black men lined up on a street on one side, and on the other side you had one-hundred white men lined up on the street, and a white man walked down the middle of the street… he would be 27-times more likely to be assaulted and then killed by the black men. Again, keep in mind that blacks make up almost 12.6% of the population and whites make up 77.35% of the population.
Traffic Stops
Here Larry Elder (a statistician in his own right) notes reports from the DOJ and other sources to bring the reader into alignment with something beyond a false narrative they heard from a friend:
…The National Institute of Justice is the research and evaluation agency of the DOJ. In 2013, the NIJ published its study called “Race, Trust and Police Legitimacy.” Unlike when responding to dispatch calls, police officers exercise more discretion when it comes to traffic stops. Thus, the supposedly “racial profiling” cops can have a field day when it comes to traffic stops, right?
But according to the NIJ, 3 out of 4 black drivers admit being stopped by police for a “legitimate reason.” Blacks, compared to whites, were on average more likely to commit speeding or other traffic offenses. “Seatbelt usage,” said the NIJ, “is chronically lower among black drivers. If a law enforcement agency aggressively enforces seatbelt violations, police will stop more black drivers.” The NIJ conclusion? Numerical disparities result from “differences in offending” in addition to “differences in exposure to the police” and “differences in driving patterns.”
President Obama, backed by research from the left and from the right, said, “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
Richmond, Virginia, is a city of 214,000, with a black population of 50 percent. Eighty-six percent of black Richmond families are headed by a single parent. Of Ferguson’s 67 percent black population, how many kids grew up in fatherless homes?
Whatever the answer, isn’t this a far more relevant statistic?
Okay, we are a few days AFTER this contentious election for ALL involved… both sides went with horrible choices for their nominee and caused not only contentious attitudes with the opposing nominee but an internal struggle as well. That is, the Democrat base did not like Hillary Clinton, and the Republican base did not like Donald Trump. In fact, in the hopes this will give me some credibility for at least what is to follow, I even started a website to defeat Trump and his rise to be the GOP nominee. Trump is not a conservative? He is a Blue-Dog Democrat.
In conversation with a person I respect highly, he said [partially in jest], that, “You can still love Trump. It’s okay with me….” Not realizing that I do not love Trump and started a site to defeat him. I even made it clear out of the 16-other candidates, Trump was my 18th choice. (Get it?)
…Continuing
So, we are a few days after the election and I read posts like:
I’m in mourning, again. I’m sad and disgusted that sexism and racism are still alive and kicking in this country. Color, not qualifications were voted into the White House last night.
I could sit here and sob about how devastating and pathetic this is. I’m just too pissed. Disappointed. Shocked. Fucking livid. Years of progress diminished in one night. This is not the country I thought I lived in.
Everyone better order their tamales now. There won’t be any by Christmas.
…another person asked this person: Are you making them?
…here is the response: Nope. I’m afraid if I do I will be deported.
… the humorous comeback was: Nobody is getting deported till January 20 2017, Christmas tamales are safe.
Another person I know posted the graphic to the right:
These are just a few of examples of raw emotion that should be sympathized with. But like in many-a-Facebook post this idea that if people do not agree with my position, they are one of the SIXHIRBs: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted.
One of the best turnarounds I saw from a family member is this:
So in class today I finally cried. This presidential unveiling has caused such a stir of emotions for the past 48 hours and it has all been bottled up until this point. We keep playing the blame game and it’s time to stop. Right now I blame myself because I was ignorant to the rest of the country. I didn’t think that everyone didn’t think like me. I lived in a bubble and now I feel like the different one. Because of this huge division right now the last thing we need to do divide it even further….
Wow! What a mature statement. THAT made my heart glad. She even went on to state she wished she had expressed this as clearly in an earlier class as she did on her FB. I agreed, hindsight is 20/20 and we all have said stuff that upon further reflection we could have said better.
All of us. (Especially Bush, and now Trump… NIGHTMARE!)
So, how do I explain some positions my friends and family probably think about a man they seem to fear, and I heard one psychotherapist yesterday say that the reaction of many millennials is like that of a loved one dying. In other words, this is deeply emotional to some. And while I love posting videos of people sobbing like the next dude, this gets us nowhere. So I decided to discuss three main points about Trump and this election to get people to think about what they say. Because it can be misunderstood as calling a friend or family one of those SIXHIRB labels, wounding both our Republic (because who would want to learn or discuss political matters with a racist?), as well as causing misunderstandings between friends.
It makes our political life too easy. A healthy Republic should be tough. Those labels are a cop-out for doing heavy liftin’. One very progressive leaning professor makes the same point about how this thinking harms his students:
Here, for example, is my sister noting her election day experience… and take note, she will never make her vote public:
In my 32 years as a registered voter, I have never left the polls feeling so disgusted and embarrassed by my choice. Not that my other option would have made me feel ANY different. I need a shower!
The point here is that people are more complicated than these few labels society has chosen to use. Another example (a few years back) of a dear friends mom smearing people like me is in a post discussing Judge Judy. I know, it’s a pop-culture Baby Boomer thing. Here is what she said with my response:
(She said) “Black people and white people weren’t allowed get married years ago either… if small minded, bigoted people had their way it would still be that way. Gay marriage Is NO different…. religious folks who believe and support same sex marriage ?? They must not be real religious people.”
(I Responded) In other words, a discussion to you is calling me and other readers here “bigots,” and impugning the character of religious gays by creating straw-man arguments of what I (we) say/mean? And when I politely point this out by not pointing out how you name call and use “cards” (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted ~ S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)….
People need to understand what they are saying. I make mistakes all the time. It’s in our nature. You apologize, grow, learn, and move on trying to keep friendships and family close to you. The friend’s mom unfriended me. So in response to my family member I noted something we all do, and it is this:
This election has brought to mind the now famous quote by elite Manhattanite and New Yorker columnist Pauline Kael after Richard Nixon’s sweeping presidential victory in 1972:
“I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”
There is a tendency to build sound rooms around one’s belief and where they choose to get their information from. WE ARE ALL susceptible to this.
So, part of our journey is allowing in other sources of information…
The conservative has no choice but to encounter leftist ideals. For instance, out of the top twenty most influential sources of news in our country, only two lean right (Fox News and the Washington Times). All the others lean left in their journalism and view of the world. In fact, Rachel Maddow noted her politics are to the left of Mao Zedong. She is more of a commentator though, and the study I am referring to only included straight news sources.
…Continuing.
So if a person is surprised at the outcome, maybe they should engage friends or family and ask questions. The key to doing this is the following, if it is not face-to-face,.and this is something I will at times start out a conversation with:
“By-the-by, for those reading this I will explain what is missing in this type of discussion due to the media used. Genuflecting, care, concern, one being upset (does not entail being “mad”), etc… are all not viewable because we are missing each other’s tone, facial expressions, and the like. I afford the other person I am dialoguing with the best of intentions and read his/her comments as if we were out having a talk over a beer at a bar or meeting a friend at Starbucks. (I say this because there seems to be a phenomenon of etiquette thrown out when talking through email or Face Book, lots more public cussing and gratuitous responses.) You will see that often times I USE CAPS — which in www lingo for YELLING. I am not using it this way, I use it to merely emphasize and often times say as much: *not said in yelling tone, but merely to emphasize*. So in all my discussions I afford the best of thought to the other person as I expect he or she would to me… even if dealing with tough subjects as the above. I have had more practice at this than most, and with half-hour pizza, one hour photo and email vs. ‘snail mail,’ know that important discussions take time to meditate on, inculcate, and to process. So be prepared for a good thought provoking discussion if you so choose one with me.”
Again, we all put into other people’s typed words our own emotional state at that time. The trick is to step away from this tendency… and this can be hard.
I shared what others wrote on election day, can I share mine? I went and cast my ballot for Trump and wrote this afterwords:
I voted. It was really hard to overcome my original emotions of dislike for Trump with reason (mind). But this IS the essence of being human… To think and reason beyond our emotive states…
Again, people are complicated and to label them as sexist or racist without really knowing is a travesty to our Republic.
OKAY… I will now post three responses to items of discussion that my guess is those who are very distraught over Trump’s win and view either him or a large segment of the population who voted for him as racist or bigoted, or mean to disabled persons, is more complicated than these labels. First up is this:
Is Mexico Sending Rapists?
When I ask people to offer me an example of Trump’s “racism,” I get a reference to this example most often:
“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems…. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you…. They’re sending people that have lots of problems…. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” ~ Donald J. Trump
Before I add information that I doubt a millennial has heard because either they or their friends are quick to label Trump as being bigoted or racist for saying this, and moving on without further reflection, I want to note that all Republican politicians said to round up illegals in America would be an impossible task. Trump has evolved on his statement that many understood as rounding up 11-million (actually, there are 30-million). ALSO, every Republican politician noted that the Constitution would not allow for the banning of all Muslims coming to our country. Again, our Constitution forbids this. It allows for banning all persons from a country, but not a religious or sectarian belief. He [Trump] has backed away from this as well, as all of us knew he would. In fact, this was removed from his site. Trump is not a politician, but his team is counseling him well.
…Continuing.
Okay. What of Trump’s statement? It surely sounds bigoted at best.
I will shock the reader.
I think that is the most pro-woman statement in a long time by a politician regarding real — violent — crime against women.
As the number of Central American women and girls crossing into the U.S. continues to spike, so is the staggering amount of sexual violence waged against these migrants who are in search of a better life.
According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report…
[….]
Through May, the number of unaccompanied girls younger than 18 caught at the US-Mexico border increased by 77 percent.
But while many of these girls are fleeing their homes because of fears of being sexually assaulted, according to the UNHCR, they are still meeting that same fate on their journey to freedom…
For clarity in the sources for the HUFFPO article, for those that are of the impatient and research non-oriented generation:
✦ 60% Amnesty International Report (PDF) ✦ 80% Is rape the price to pay for migrant women chasing the American Dream? (FUSION)
(UPDATED EDITORIAL BY RPT) To be clear, these rapes are happening by residents who live in towns and districts these migrants are passing through. Other rapes are happening by Coyotajes, as well as many by the men making the trip as well. We know that many Honduren gang-members make the trek, and so, a high percentage of these men (criminals) do in fact cross our border into our nation. Where American women of all ethnic background are subjected to assault. Since we know illegals commit crimes at double the rate of native-born… rape is also part of these increased stats.
…“According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report,” the well-known news outlet continued….
So, many of the men they travel with are rapping them. Many of the Coyotajes as well take advantage of them. There are what are now being called “rape trees,” which you can learn more about on a previous post of mine, here. Here is how a conversation using this understanding went in the real world:
The above exchange was discussed a bit wrong, like Trump, the main idea is lost in the presentation. Gavin McInness made it sound as if the rapes were happening at the border when in actuality they are happening during the entire trip. And the girl thought he meant Coyotes, the real animal. Not Coyotajes. (That was very funny BTW, and why I ended the video like I did.)
What would be the most compassionate step to take? I would say, to control our border. That would help the migrant woman AS WELL AS our own mothers, daughters, and wives. Many from these countries that are experiencing these horrible circumstances are experiencing it because of their government models they have chosen. But this is neither here-nor-there.
The bottom line is that Trump, while not explaining this well at all, was actually making a statement about policy that in the end will protect women. There is this as well dealing with drugs and violence aspect of the comment:
A fresh wave of crime from the infamously violent MS-13 gang in the District of Columbia is being driven by the heavy recruitment of young illegal immigrants.
A surge of minors crossing the U.S. southern border is helping the notorious gang boost their ranks and instigate a new string of violent attacks in the city, reported The Washington Times. Over the past few years a wave of illegal migrant children crossed the U.S. border, and MS-13 appears to be targeting them for recruitment.
“They are certainly susceptible,” Ed Ryan, gang prevention coordinator in Fairfax County, Virginia, told The Washington Times. “They are new, they have very little family, they don’t know the language very well. They are looking for someone who looks like them, talks like them.”
Experts say violence from MS-13, which originally started in California, historically occurs in waves. Currently MS-13, on orders from El Salvador, is ramping up efforts in cities across the U.S. to reestablish their dominance on the streets, reports The Washington Times….
This is just a very short clip of a longer audio (here: ) of John and Ken discussing Mollie Tibbetts and her murderer, Christian Bahena-Rivera. According to the DAILY CALLER, he was employed by a Republican small business owner…
“He worked on Yarrabee Farms, which is owned by the family of GOP official Craig Lang, who was a former 2018 Republican candidate for state secretary of agriculture, according to reports by the Des Moines Register.”
…who may have illegally had him in their employ? However, he was an example of the DACA young… so did he have his temporary papers? I have no idea. Nor would I know if he immigrated legally if he would have passed all the checks/balances.
As an side…
Is this man a racist or bigot? He was the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, and spoke out against the racist organization, La Raza, as well as calling workers who crossed the border “illegal immigrants” and “wetbacks.”
“In the mid 1970s, he conducted the ‘Illegals Campaign’ to identify and report illegal workers, ‘an effort he deemed second in importance only to the boycott’ (of produce from non-unionized farms), according to Pawel. She quotes a memo from Chavez that said, “If we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight.”
…“Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration,” Levin said during a Wednesday appearance on Fox News’ Hannity.
After saying that the premise that “compassion is an open border” is a “new idea” that has been pushed in recent times, Levin said that “a nation has a right to secure its border” and its citizens have a right to know who is coming into their country.
Chavez, who was also against ethnic organizations like La Raza, would tell illegal immigrants to get out of the country, especially because they lowered the wages of American workers. And he was often far from compassionate in handling illegal immigrants….
This one I believed for a long time. Here is a common way this is added into a litany of grievances:
If I owned a business and someone applied for the job that had a history of denigrating women, mocking a reporter with a disability, targeting people of a certain ethnic or religious affiliation, I would not hire that person. I am surprised to see that some would. Perhaps we have different values.
Firstly, it is not my job to correct EVERY detail a person brings up. Even I have a life. Barely, but it’s there… somewhere. So the denigrating women thing makes no real difference to the Democrat, because assaults, murder, and rape are all too common on the left. JFK raped a 16-year old girl in the White House and brought prostitutes into the same House. Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate,” a hero to the Left assaulted women even killing one in a drunken night out. Bill Clinton either raped or assaulted over 15-women and had sex with prostitutes, and his wife got a man she knew was guilty of rapping so violently a 12-year old girl that she could never have kids her entire life. She laughed about getting this rapist off. She [Hillary], also covered up her husbands attacks. She got so much flack for this that she removed from he campaign website a section detailing her hard work to protect women.
Thank you Bernie fans for being tough on her for this!
My answer to this requires watching a video/audio I worked on and uploaded to my YouTube… but if you want a condensed version that I responded to a person elsewhere on the WWW:
So, what have we learned so far by exchanging ideas in an open forum. Trump was right about the rapists comment, and the best thing to protect women is to control our border (both for the immigrant women and our mothers and daughters).
And the other things we learned is that Trump mocks everyone with the same motions. Childish? Yes. Not ideal for a President. Sure. He wasn’t my 18th choice out of seventeen. But what is said of him is not [often true].
Here is a time-line of each video of Trump mocking various persons (including himself) with the same mannerisms as the media says he expressly used to mock a man’s disability:
✦ May 2005 – Trump imitates a flustered Trump (decade prior to the “event” in question); ✦ October 2015 – Trump imitates flustered bank president (25-days prior to the “event” in question); ✦ November 25, 2015 – Trump imitates flustered reporter and flustered general (during the same speech given as the “event” in question); ✦ February 2016 – Trump imitates flustered Ted Cruz; ✦ October 2016 — Trump imitates a flustered Donna Brazile.
I include this call because it is more concise than my other uploads:
Again, he did this of himself, Ted Cruz, a general, and more. It is his “quirk.” One I hate, but not aimed at anyone in particular to represent a physical condition. (See a much longer report on all this here.)
Here is my “finisher” to a recent discussion via FB on this topic:
No, he was not mocking his disability. He was mocking his reporting. Like he was mocking the general later in that same speech. Unless, wait… Bonnie… you may have something… when Donald J. Trump mocked himself in May 2005, a bank president in October 2015, that general in November 25, 2015, Ted Cruz in February 2016, and Donna Brazile in October 2016…
…h-e was r-e-a-l-l-y mocking that reporter that doesn’t have a disability that causes him to make those motions.
In the opening of John Stossle’s video he deals with this:
Racists Support Trump
First, in the broad sense this has to be true… that is… somewhere in this nation I am sure a racist supports Donald J. Trump. Even if we assume the Klan all voted in unison, he would have gotten 8,000 votes at most! Nationwide.
HOWEVER, as you will see, even the above hypothetical is more complicated than most assume it to be. Let’s just clear the air first on this past charge of Trump not disavowing David Duke (a “famous” racist and past KKK leader) during the run-up-to the nomination: Trump clearly disavowed David Duke’s endorsement. As we will see, the truth about David Duke is more complicated than we often hear. Okay, moving on.
After Trump won the election the media and Hollywood types as well as comedians and Democrat Senators and Representatives all started saying there was a backlash of old-racist-white-men that came out in force and voted for Trump. This just isn’t the case. You can see from just a few of the bullet points from my “Blacks, Hispanics and Gays are Sexist, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Racist” post that this attack on American voters is just a maligning of each and everyone of those peoples character:
…Thirteen percent of Muslims voted for Trump, triple the amount that voted Romney, are they are Islamophobic, bigoted, xenophobic, and racist?
Eight percent of blacks voted for Trump, seven percent more than Romney — not to mention the black men and women who didn’t vote for the president at all in a higher percentage. These same men and women previously voted twice for Obama. These persons of color… if I understand my detractors correctly, are racist bigots?
A higher percentage (almost 30%) of Hispanics voted for Trump, more in fact than voted for Romney. These Hispanic and Latino men and women, like the others, are xenophobic, bigoted, and racist?
One hundred-and-ninety-four counties that voted for Obama once switched to GOP in the 2016 election. And, two-hundred-and-nine counties that voted for Obama twice switched to GOP. Many of these people are union members as well as life-long Democrats. Am I now being told that these Democrats who voted for Obama are: racist. sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted?
So you can see from the above and the graphic below that the people who really pushed Trump into the “win” section of the electoral count were minorities and voters who previously voted for Obama either once or both times prior to voting for Trump.
Two of the above four racist cults are both telling their followers to vote for Trump… the KKK and the Nation of Islam. Christian Identity as a cohesive movement is all but dead… and the 5% when they do vote always vote Democrat. IN FACT they all primarily vote Democrat.
A quick history point that is important for the next paragraph:
After the triumph of the civil rights movement and the introduction of a series of civil rights laws, the Klan broke up into various subgroups. Previously these KKK members were Democrats and they continued being so after.
“…virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” — Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ix;
“…not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” — Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 19.
People do not realize why these groups, especially the KKK, vote Democrat. For instance, out of the four leaders in the “white-power” movement (the KKK subculture) with the most followers, three told their peeps to vote Democrat (Actually, then it was them telling their followers to vote for Obama in 2008).
Here you see some higher ups in this white racist movement telling their people (3-of-the-4) to vote Democrat for the election in 2008:
➤ Tom Metzger: Director, White Aryan Resistance; Career Highlights: Was Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Klan in the 70s; won the Democratic primary during his bid for Congress in 1980… ➤ Ron Edwards: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America; Career Highlights: Sued in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center for inciting the brutal beating of a Latino teenager; building the IKA into one of the nation’s largest Klan groups by allowing non-Christians to join. ➤ Erich Gliebe: Chairman, National Alliance; Career Highlights: Turning white-power record label, Resistance Records, into a million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut; an 8-0 record as a professional boxer under the nickname, “The Aryan Barbarian.” ➤ Rocky Suhayda: Chairman, American Nazi Party; Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: “If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.”
Yes, most racist groups — INCLUDING THE KKK — voted for a black nominee.
The next question should be, Why?
Reason One
One reason is that these racist white groups are typically socialists. And socialism is a political system that wants the government to run health-care, business, increase central power, etc. Here is a most basic graph of this concept (see to the right – click the graph to go to my combined post on the matter).
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” — Hitler
John Toland, Adolph Hitler: The Definitive Biography (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1976), 223-225.
Reason Two
Another reason a lot of racist whites vote Democrat is they are very poor and use heavily the social services they support ideologically. This was even evident when less than the typical 80% that vote straight Democrat still voted straight Democrat in their respective states but did not vote for Obama.
The other Black Nationalist cults vote heavier [percentage wise] Democratic.
This year is different. You have both Louis Farrakhan telling his followers to vote for Trump, and you have more people in the disjointed KKK telling their people to vote for him. Why this change? I think it is because he has many similar views on issues with Bernie Sanders, as an example,
Forty-four percent of Sanders supporters surveyed said they would rather back the presumptive GOP nominee in November, with only 23 percent saying they’d support Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. And 31 percent said would support neither candidate in the likely general election match-up. (THE HILL)
Keep in mind those are voters in the state that put Sander’s into the Senate!
Here is the kicker though regarding the Nation of Islam (NOI). This cult, unlike the KKK, is VERY structured under a single leader. So what Farrakhan says is followed “religiously” by his adherents. Whereas, in the KKK, these leaders are not looked to in the same way Farrakhan is, as some sort of “messianic” figure. So you might have slightly more vote for Trump in the Klan on the recommendation of their leaders. This is different in the structure of the Nation of Islam, the percentages would be almost unanimous in their “lock-step.”
Many will continue to vote straight Democrat the rest of the ticket, in all groups mentioned.
“Racists Vote Republican,” or, “Republican’s Are Old Racist White Men” may be a convenient (actually evil) political narrative to scare a few voters away from the GOP, surely. But the maligning of every Republican nominee since Nixon just is not factually true.
DON’T accept the comparison. Take their arguments and return them packaged in a nice little bow.
Editor’s Aside:
Democrats want to fundamentally change America. I don’t love my wife if I want to fundamentally change her. Black Life Matters protesters teach their children to burn American flags or march down the street CHANTING “What do we want?!” “Dead Cops!” “When do we want them?!” “NOW!” They argue America was founded on nothing but slavery and greed. Hillary Clinton backed this group even going as far as far as saying (at the NAACP) that “systemic racism” needs to be eliminated. Months later calling Americans all racists: “I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think unfortunately too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other and therefore I think we need all of us to be asked the hard questions ‘why am I feeling this way?’”
Democrats think I am an imperialist white supremacist Christian cisgender capitalist heteropatriarchal male. Apparently however, these many demographic changes across the board [noted above] seem to agree that Trump’s slogan was acceptable, “Make America Great Again.”
One reason many of these hate groups (black and white) are voting for Trump is for border control. A) There is an animosity towards illegal aliens for racist reasons, and B) reasons related to economics as well. A great example would be this video “CHICAGO’S INNER-CITY POOR BLACK COMMUNITY ABANDONING OBAMA’S LIBERAL AGENDA“
To continue this point, one woman said this:
A resident of the Austin community, Jean Ray, says after 40 years of Democratic party control over the black community, the policies “are hurting,” and if there were Republicans willing to do the right job in her community, she would vote for them. (More at BREITBART)
So a good reason that black racist groups would have voted Trump includes practical economic concerns, i.e., jobs. Which is why we saw a 7% jump in blacks voting for the Republican candidate… but most likely even they voted Democrat the rest of the ticket.
Reason Three They HATE (H-A-T-E) Israel, and this is a reason they tend to support Democrats. For instance, on his YouTube, David Duke endorsed Charles Barron for Congress (video on the left). Another endorsement for Hillary was from a KKK leader here in California (right video).
So attributing racism to the GOP is silly, because as a whole, the almost 8,000 KKK members nation wide vote Democrat. AS DO ALL THE OTHER RACIST CULTS IN AMERICA (*booming megaphone affect in a cave*). NOT TO MENTION where all the hub-bub is when all these hate groups vote for Democrats in years past?
In other words, WHY is it only “newsworthy” when they vote for Republicans and not for Democrats?
I smell something fishy here.
I can continue, but this post is already long enough. On the racial issues, I suggest my page entitled: U.S. RACIAL HISTORY. This page deals with the supposed party switch by racist Democrats to Republicans, slavery, American Indian narratives, some VERY PROUD BLACK HISTORY in our country… and the like.
Recap Again, let’s recap for clarity some of my reasons white racist/nationalists cults vote Democrat:
They are typically socialist in their political views, and thus support the welfare state for personal financial reasons (poor) and ideological reasoning (socialist); or for the reason that it is a way of controlling minorities (racist reasoning). A modern plantation so-to-speak; There is a shared hatred for Israel and supporting of groups wanting to exterminate the Jews (Palestinians for instance).
This is why a majority STILL supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. She is a socialist at heart, wants a big welfare state, and does not like Israel as much as Trump, who has kids practicing the Jewish religion. Thee ONLY issue a racist could want to vote for Trump on is his immigration policies… hardly a racist position. It has only now become an issue of bigotry and racism because the Left has moved the goal post in the use of language. Racists no longer means “genetically superior,” rather, it mean you disagree with a Democrat and/or hurt their feelings. Otherwise, these people would be RACISTS!
Afterword
What are some of my suggestions to stop or prepare people for future events like this? Talk to friends or family why they are in a particular political party. I have read and studied the “Left” A LOT! But balance in peoples lives are good. I always make this point to express my thinking on this, and it was mainly based on when my boys were going through high school and their friends would pick my brain. It deals with balance:
I often bump into people that have watched some or most of the following “documentaries” I likewise own and have watched all on the following list (one should take note that some of these are shown in public school classrooms):
• Bowling for Columbine • Roger and Me • Fahrenheit 9/11 • Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price • Sicko • An Inconvenient Truth • Loose Change • Zeitgeist • Religulouse • The God Who Wasn’t There • Super-Size Me
But rarely do I meet someone of the opposite persuasion from me that have watched any of the following (I own and have watched):
• Celsius41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain Dies • FahrenHYPE 9/11 • Michael & Me • Michael Moore Hates America • Bullshit! Fifth Season… Read More (where they tear apart the Wal-Mart documentary) • Indoctrinate U • Mine Your Own Business • Screw Loose Change • 3-part response to Zeitgeist • Fat-Head • Privileged Planet • Unlocking the Mystery of Life
I am not saying one should go out and watch all these opposing points of views. I am saying that probably the person reading this has seen one or two of the above, was convinced about it, and now proclaim it as “true” without testing their position with balance. Someone who has changed my views in many areas is Thomas Sowell. I can recommend that if a person is really interested in knowing what much of the base of the opposing Party believes… in this case Republicans, to read only one of Dr. Sowells books, “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.”
Allow dissent in conversation. Our Republic is suppose to be tough. Enjoy this designed aspect of a healthy country.
Start by listening to the entire chapter entitled “The Real History of Slavery,” by Thomas Sowell (full audio here). Think racist Democrats became Republicans? Read and watch the videos in my post here.
Do not surround yourselves with Mini-Me’s. Bouncing ideas off of a sound board in a studio of all like-minded individuals does not create growth, understanding, and the like. It creates ideological group-think. DO NOT think I am saying this just to my audience. I have to tell myself this all the time. And I often fail. That is what friends and family are for. Grace and love through the hardest of times.
It really does make the person who is a staunch Democrat look silly, hypocritical, and VERY careless when bringing up the topic. In other words, to ignore Obama’s family’s close affiliation (past AND PRESENT) with self stated hard-core racists takes away any respect from me for Democrats speaking ill of some okie Ozark livin’ poor white person who is ignorant who may vote Republican once-in-a-while when for decades the Democrats have highlighted and supported the worse of these police killing cults.
The only death threats I get are from black racist nationalists via a video I did about the cult Jay-Z and Beyonce promote.
So don’t talk to me about “racism” and the KKK voting for Donald Trump… I have a list of black nationalist or black nationalists supporting POLITICIANS that recently or are currently in Congress AND in the highest office of the land. The Oval Office. Not to mention the sorted history of the Klan with a particular political Party.
If you are unwilling to learn history, and the religiously racist cultic backgrounds of what is promoted on the left as mainstream, then you are stuck where you are. Making blanket statements that cause others to wag-their-heads.
See also: Businesses Forced To Hurt The Poor ~ Thanks Dems
