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tanstaaflaos · 4 years

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A rant from Trump supporters

The following is a cut and paste from someone I know on Facebook. In short, they don’t particularly like Trump but like liberals and progressive ideas even less. They justify their vote for Trump as giving a finger to liberals and the media, rather than supporting Trump. In short, a very selfish and short-sighted mentality that is unfortunately prevalent in today’s world. These folks will continue to vote against their own interests if it means they can “win” while sticking it to the liberals. Here’s the rant:

🛑 STOP! 🛑 EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS ⬇️ If you are a liberal who can’t stand Trump, and cannot possibly fathom why anyone would ever vote for him, let me fill you in. It’s not that we love Donald Trump so much. It’s that we can’t stand you. And we will do whatever it takes — even if that means electing a rude, obnoxious, unpredictable, narcissist (your words not ours) to the office of President of the United States — because the thing we find more dangerous to this nation than Donald Trump is YOU. How is that possible you might ask? Well, you have done everything in your power to destroy our country. From tearing down the police, to tearing down our history, to tearing down our borders. From systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into believing socialism is the answer to anything (despite being an unmitigated failure everywhere), while demonizing religion and faith, and glorifying abortion, violence, and thug culture. From calling us racists every time we expect everyone of any skin color to follow our laws equally, to telling us that our “tolerance” of lifestyles we don’t agree with isn’t nearly enough — no we must “celebrate” any lifestyle choice or gender option (forget science) you throw our direction or you think it’s fine to calls us homophobic or some other degrading slur you decide is okay to call us — ironically all while lecturing us on hate speech. While you gaslight us about 52 genders, polyamory, grown men in dresses sharing public locker rooms with little girls, and normalize the sexualization of young children, you simultaneously ridicule us for having the audacity to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or hang a flag on the 4th of July, stand for the national anthem, or (horror of horrors) don a MAGA hat in public. So much for your “tolerance.” (See why we think you are just hypocrites??) We’re also not interested in the fact that you think you can unilaterally decide that 250 years of the right-to-bear-arms against a tyrannical or ineffective government should be abolished because you can’t get the violence in the cities you manage under control. That free-speech should be tossed out the window, and that those who disagree with your opinions are fair game for public harassment or doxing. That spoiled children with nose-rings and tats who still live off their parent’s dime should be allowed to destroy cities and peoples livelihoods without repercussions. That chaos, and lawlessness, and disrespect for authority should be the norm. This is your agenda. And you wonder why we find you more dangerous than Donald Trump? Your narrative is a constant drone of oppressor/oppressed race-baiting intended to divide the country in as many ways as you possibly can. You love to sell “victim-hood” to people of color every chance you get because it’s such an easy sell, compared to actually teaching people to stand on their own two feet and take personal responsibility for their own lives and their own communities and their own futures. But you won’t do that, you will never do that, because then you will lose control over people of color. They might actually start thinking for themselves, God forbid! This is why we will vote for Donald Trump. Not because he is the most charming character on the block. Not because he is the most polite politician to have ever graced the oval office. Not because he is the most palatable choice, or because we love his moral character or because the man never lies, but because we are sick to death of you and all of the destructive crap you are doing to this once beautiful and relatively safe country. Your ineffective and completely dysfunctional liberal “leadership”(?) has literally destroyed our most beautiful cities, our public education system, and done it’s damndest to rip faith out of people’s lives. However bad Donald Trump may be, and he is far from perfect, every day we look at you and feel that no matter what Donald Trump says or does there is no possible way he could be any worse for our country than you people are. We are sick to death of your stupid, destructive, ignorant, and intolerant behavior and beliefs — parading as “wokeness.” We are beyond sick of your hypocrisy and B.S. We are fed up with your disrespectful divisiveness and constant unrelenting harping and whining and complaining (while you live in the most privileged nation in the world), while making literally zero contributions of anything positive to our society. Your entire focus is on ripping things down, never ever building anything up. Think about that as there is something fundamentally very wrong in the psychology of people who choose destruction as their primary modus operandi. When Donald J Trump is reelected, don’t blame us, look in the mirror and blame yourselves. Because you are the ones that are responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. You are the ones who have created this "monster" that you so despise, by your very actions. By your refusal to respect your fellow Americans, and the things that are important to us. You have made fun of the “fly-over states,” the people who “cling to their guns and religion,” the middle class factory workers and coal miners and underprivileged rural populations that you dismissively call “yahoos” and “deplorables.” You have mocked our faith and our religion. You have mocked our values and our patriotism. You have trampled our flag and insulted our veterans and treated our first responders with contempt and hatred. You have made environmentalism your religion, while trashing every city you have taken responsibility for. You scream from the rooftops about “global warming” and a “green new deal” while allowing tens of thousands of homeless people to cover your streets in literal sh!t and garbage and needles and plastic waste without doing a single thing to help them or solve the environmental crisis your failed social policies are creating. But we’re supposed to put YOU in charge of the environment while gutting our entire economy to institute this plan when you can’t even clean up a single city?? You complain — endlessly — yet have failed to solve a single social problem anywhere. In fact, all you have done is create more of them. We’ve had enough. We are tired of quietly sitting by and being the “silent” majority. So don’t be surprised when the day comes when we finally respond. And trust me it’s coming, sooner than you might think. And also trust me when I say it won’t be pretty. Get ready. When Donald Trump is reelected it will be because you and your “comrades” have chosen to trash the police, harass law-abiding citizens, and go on rampages destroying public property that we have all paid for and you have zero respect for. When Donald Trump is reelected it will be because we are sick of your complete and utter nonsense and destruction. How does it feel to know that half of this country finds you FAR more despicable than Donald J. Trump, the man you consider to be the anti-Christ? Let that sink in. We consider you to be more despicable, more dangerous, more stupid, and more narcissistic than Donald Trump. Maybe allow yourself a few seconds of self-reflection to let that sink in. This election isn’t about Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden. This is about Donald Trump vs YOU. So if on the morning of November 4 (or more likely January 19, by the time the Supreme Court will weigh in on the mail-in ballot fiasco that we are headed towards), and Donald J. Trump is reelected? The only people you have to blame is the left-wing media drones and yourselves. You did this. Yep you. I copied and shared this and if you give a shit about your country then you should too.

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glendavidgold-blog · 6 years

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Hemlock

I neither spell-checked nor edited this. Apologies. It’s hard for me to even re-read this, and I wrote it.

One of the lessons of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is that Hitler couldn’t have happened anywhere or any time else. He was a unique plague that destroyed one particular culture by exploiting all of the weaknesses it had swept under the rug while otherwise feeling it was the most educated, most enlightened democracy possible. The people with some power over their lives felt too comfortable to confront the problems that were already obvious. Hitler in a way was a karmic answer to hubris. I’m not sure Shirer says this directly (it’s been 30 years since I’ve read the book) but every era gets the villain it deserves.

This is what currently scares me about Trump. It is almost diabolical, almost Shakespearean how perfectly he has slipped through every alleged check and balance. He is the product of every problem America has pretended doesn’t exist – dynastic wealth, the mafia, corruption, sexism, unchecked capitalism, etc – and he has consolidated power by exploiting racism, hostility, fear, income inequality and holes in the system that turned out to rely on office holders having a conscience.

In 1933, shortly after Hitler took power – six weeks, in fact – my grandfather wrote a prescient account of what that monster would do next. It was accurate, if not bold enough in its predictions (but how could he, an 18 year old, predict the holocaust?). I have always wondered what I would do in his position, if I would notice what he had noticed, and the answer is no, I have tried to hold onto optimism when that is now clearly no longer useful.

When I was in high school, I was taught in Ancient History that the fall of Athens as a seat of democracy was symbolized by the moment Socrates was forced to drink hemlock. Socrates was executed for the time of inculcating youth with dangerous ideas, but also the death was symbolic, one that should have been avoided, would have been in another time and place. I’m not sure that’s a popular idea now, and even my teacher said it was a problematic moment to choose. Instead, it was a moment among many other moments where someone outside of the system could point to it and say that a functioning agora would not have allowed it to happen.

This, unfortunately, resonates with me now. The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court might just have been our hemlock moment. It’s hard to tell for sure (it was hard for Athens to tell, too) but the fact is, a legislative body in charge of making laws has just thrown all evidence to the wind – evidence not just of sexual assault but of serious financial crimes -- in the excitement of causing the ascendency of a terrible man.

I don’t think there’s a single reason this happened and that too frightens me, because it’s overdetermined. The senate decided that they only needed to give brief intellectual cover for their reasons to embrace him, and their base agreed: make him a judge for life. What he serves as an avatar of is so many things: misogyny, angering the left, bringing on the Apocalypse (more about this later), ignoring the will of the majority of people, but mostly this: he is a promise that if you are on the side of Republicans, they will never hold you accountable. That is powerful magic for people who feel like victims. That is powerful magic for people who like the idea of being washed clean of their sins without having to do any work for it.

So now Trump controls the entire government, and that has happened with blinding speed. There is a mid term election coming. I am going to do everything in my power to make my vote count. I’m going to encourage everyone to vote, as I believe that a majority of people in America believe in the American ideal rather than the fascism that we’re descending into. There is a strong possibility, given the polls, that we will take back the House, which is something, and we might make the Senate difficult for them, too. This will ease things, a little, while we protest and protest and stay alert until 2020, when we can throw the rest of the criminals out.

But.

I have a small glimmer, a nugget of worry that started when the truth about Kavanaugh came out, and he was confirmed anyway. The way I put it then was that we are living through one of those times so well described in McCay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a 19th century treatise on times in human history where huge crowds of people have seemingly gone insane. He cites the now-familiar Tulipmania, as well as other financial manias, witch hunts, that kind of thing. I was feeling that the Republican party had locked arms and were launching their own political Jonestown, guaranteeing a kind of suicide when Democrats started filling the offices.

I’m no longer so sure. One of the other things that fueled Trump’s rise, beyond all the specific American institutions that failed us, is that he knows how to channel the masses’ anger in a way that I have no experience with and no empathy for. It’s working for them. It’s exciting to the politicians, too. I see Trump is doing it again now, calling the left criminals who can’t be governed. He says the left is looking for violence. The left knows this is ridiculous. Democrats are wishy-washy, the party that steps out of the shower to pee. To paraphrase Ted Mooney, The right wants to win –we want to be loved.

But there is an old, familiar trick that’s political in nature – accuse the other side of what you’re doing. And right now we are at a place where one of three things is going on. First, and most optimistic, is that the leaders have overplayed their hands. They literally have no idea how angry and how determined women and minorities and those of us who happen to like progressive values are. When they say, as Mitch McConnell did of the sexual assault victims who protested, “I want to thank these clowns for all the help they provided,” he means it. He’s in his own bubble. Republicans have never seen an angry liberal who knows how to fight back politically. So maybe it’s that, and maybe when there’s a blue wave, they’re going to be genuinely shocked. After all, Romney believed Fox News about Obama in the face of facts, and he got his ass handed to him in the election.

The next possibility is that even they don’t know what’s going to happen next. They got lucky and they’ll feel emboldened, and they’re just going to go one evil step at a time. So far everything has worked for them, but there’s no real plan, just the erotic pleasure of power.

Possibility number three is much worse. Something we have told ourselves – I have told myself – is that the Republicans are just too arrogant to actually be efficient in making fascism work. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been wrong about that.

The voting experience has already been rigged in ways we know about – gerrymandering, throwing possible Democrats off the voter rolls, killing access to the polls, the lack of paper ballots that may or may not mean there’s computer hacking that changes vote totals. (And I have to say that final thing might be paranoia, that people know it CAN be done but no one seems to be saying it HAS been done. Still, the lack of controls over it isn’t just maddening, puzzling or worrying – they only reason to have an open door like that is to invite a malevolent force.) We know we have to struggle against that. We know that even with all that stuff in place, there are so many of us that we should win.

But I worry that they’re so confident because they do have a plan. I have a worry that there’s something the new Supreme Court can do between now and Election Day that fucks us. Specifically I worry that there’s something Trump does that fucks us and it’s illegal and that the Supreme Court, in an emergency session, upholds it. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe that’s just out of the realm of possibility. Maybe we’ll get to vote.

What if voting doesn’t work? What if, the day after the election, it’s fishy? Or more than that – obviously it’s been rigged? The Democrats lose and there are red flags everywhere? Or, what if the Republicans don’t accept the results? Does refusing to validate the election sound beyond possibility?

Ask Roy Moore if he’s conceded yet.

You say: if that happens, we’ll take to the streets. True. I too will take to the streets. What will that do? We occupy, say, the Senate offices, and then…oh, we’ve seen this already, just a week ago, with Kavanaugh. The Senate now knows it can ignore angry constituents and seemingly get away with it. It doesn’t have to actually respect facts or reports or decency or shame or even accept that the other side has any legitimacy. They no longer listen to us.

Let’s say that the rigged results just go forward. There’s no way that everyone is going to believe they’re rigged. There will be counterprotests. There will be media coverage about how it’s just so gosh darned uncertain, and both sides will be shown on the news to show how fair they are.

But let’s agree about this: if the midterms don’t produce a Blue Wave, and if that’s because the results were fishy, we will have marches like you’ve never seen. There will be the largest force in American history taking to the streets to protest. We will not be polite.

That’s as far as any of us have taken it, I think. Because we think that the people, united, will never be defeated. It sounds right. But this is where it gets bad for me, because I very much suspect that people on the other side have taken it a little further than that.

How would we organize? On our phones? On Facebook? On twitter? You’ve got to be kidding. Our phones are what surveil us.

You know how the Nazis knew where the Jews were when they came to a new town? IBM punch cards. IBM took Nazi money because it was money and they thought that since they also did good for the war effort, it balanced out. Do you believe that the current barons of tech are more altruistic or moral or ethical than IBM was? But still that’s not a perfect comparison – what IBM did was actually rather small. Each punchcard had something like 8 pieces of information on it. You know how much more information your phone and facebook and twitter has about you?

Your phone isn’t going to work. Not for you, at least. For them, yes.

Further, if protests get real, the reaction isn’t going to be the current leaders throwing up their hands and saying “Y’know what, you have a point” and then doing the right thing. They’ll fucking fight back, and fight dirty. Your local police who, no matter what that locale is, have a problem with white supremac and, are fully militarized now. This isn’t going to be like the 1960s. It’s going to be much worse. And the military has been rehearsing for suppressing rebellions. Just ask Flint. Just ask St Lous.

But, you say, there would have to be due process to –

Really? Take a moment. Think about that.

But the horrific possibility of camps to –

Right. Camps. Take another moment.

We don’t advocate violence here in the left. And let’s be honest – by “left” I mean about 70% of the country. But we also haven’t gamed out what happens when we’re up against people who aim to win at all costs. I’m still not doing it. My brain can’t take it further than that.

I hope I’m wrong about all this. I hope that we aren’t going that far. But, to return to Shirer, it would make some sense if it does, as the problems with the police and the military and privacy and tech have all been apparent for some time and we’ve done nothing about them because we – meaning the people who have some power over our lives -- felt comfortable. There’s this kind of karmic justice in that a society that doesn’t deal with its shit gets destroyed by its shit.

On that note, I have been curious for a while about how it is that anyone who has a conscience supports Trump. To give him any legitimacy means sacrificing your own morals and ethics. He’s amazingly precise in how he causes every individual in his sway to abandon his or her own positive qualities. I’ve joked that everyone in his circle looks like a Dick Tracy villain, but maybe that’s not an accident. Maybe there’s something that curdles your soul by standing so close to his evil. (Benjamin Wittes, a writer I like but find problematic, was once friends with Kavanaugh – and defended him at first, until his performance on the Senate floor. He says that this person isn’t the man he knew. So say many other legal scholars who once knew him. Something has changed in him. It’s weird.)

I was trying to qualify how Trump’s worldview is attractive, and it occurred to me that every word out of Trump’s mouth, every deed, is exactly the opposite of Jesus’s. It’s uncanny. If only there were a word for someone who was the antithesis of Christ.

Hmm. I guess there is a word.

I don’t believe he’s the anti-Christ. He’s not that important. But he’s AN anti-Christ. As a secular Jew I’ve read the Book of Revelation as a metaphor, a warning for how, eventually, someone motivated enough can make you abandon your values unless you’re self-aware enough. We have long made the mistake of believing the anti-Christ would be slick and undeniable and crafty, but only recently have I realized that no, of course he wouldn’t be. The truly evil thing about the anti-Christ wouldn’t be that he tricked you. It would be that he let you be your true self, and your true self was awful. He only gave you permission to behave as you really wanted to, and that is how you fell.

There is not much that give me hope here. Not anything, in fact. I’m not drinking these days, which could be a mistake. For a while I was drinking two or three glasses of wine a night and my physician said ‘well, that’s a reasonable response.’ Instead, I’m paying a lot of attention and it’s the anti-Christ thing that has me most on alert. This is where the essay gets depressing (no, really, sorry about that – the part above is just a warm up).

The Constitution, like the Bible, tried to anticipate many possible futures, and tried to provide a framework for how to deal with them. I strongly believe that most of us have moral backbones and many of us wish our neighbors well. But why isn’t this happening now? We turn to strongmen in times of famine rather than plenty, and ironically we are living in a world of plenty. It’s being hoarded by the rich, of course, but the resources are there to make most people’s lives decent. We tend to share in times of prosperity but that’s not happening now.

I have said this in prior essays, but it’s pretty much got to be the endpoint of any essay someone writes now that speculates about the future. I believe that we as a species recognize, in a way that is baked into our genetic code as mammals, that the future is no longer a renewable resource. I think that climate change is so obvious now and happening so fast, with so little possibility of relief, that we know the jig is up. We have ruined the weather.

But I can’t even process what that means. There is no way, genuinely, for the human mind to hold onto the probability that in our lifetimes, not that far way, we will have made the surface of the earth unable to support life. It’s happening so fast. Beyond all the dramatic stuff – the hurricanes, the floods, the droughts, the fires – I have been traveling around the country this summer and everywhere I see that the sky is wrong. There’s something off about the clouds, the circulation of air. People comment on it. Something is shutting down. Something is making us all uneasy. You see it.

There are two ways to deal with this fear. One is to deal with it directly. Make plans, confront how awful it is, see what’s possible, admit to our coming losses. Treat the future the way we did the development of penicillin or the A-Bomb. I was just thinking this: the crazy thing is that the only way to combat the fall that’s coming is to be the best possible version of yourself you can be. That doesn’t mean the nicest. It means being as powerful as you can. Which is terrifying and difficult and a little amorphous. It’s not about being loved, but about finding your moral core and sticking to it.

We heard just today that we have the scientific knowhow and the ability to start remediating the destruction that’s on its way. What they say is we lack “the political will” to do it. What that means is that instead of dealing with it directly, we are trading on fear. Fear is right now bigger than love. Fear is motivating voters because it’s a good thing to sell on the marketplace. Deny what’s happening, pretend it isn’t, sell fear instead. Clamp down. The world wants a bad daddy, and here is a whole bunch of them to choose.

That’s what we’re doing. The second choice. Denying that we had problems, kicking the can down the road, is how we ended up here. If we do it again now we will be destroyed. That’s not a hope or a fear – it’s just the way it’s going to work. I wish I had better news, but I don’t.

I keep saying this thing to myself that I don’t entirely understand. It’s that fighting begins with the right to see what’s actually before your very eyes.

The only thing I can say is that despair is not an option, but a luxury, and you can’t afford it now. Go and fight. They’re going to.

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newsfromthefuture · 7 years

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Archive AlphaLeaks Document Raises Questions About White House Staffers From Thomas Woods Foundation

The following document was discovered as part of the 2017 document dump from the Thomas Woods Foundation, a think tank that describes itself as “Bridging the gap between the Traditional Right and the New Right.” There continues to be speculation regarding possible links between the current administration and former members of staff at the Foundation. This document was originally published on alphaleaks.org, in the months before it's founder (whose identity is still masked by California supreme court judgement) was successfully sued by Alphabet, Google's parent company. Alphabet was awarded undisclosed damages rumoured to be over $13m, in relation to earlier documents published on the site.We have reproduced this document in full, and welcome clarification from the White House regarding current and former links between the president and the Thomas Woods Foundation.

An End to Poor: The Newgenics Manifesto.

This manifesto leads to some startling conclusions, but I believe the rich will have the moral clarity to pursue the truth to its ends. This manifesto makes no judgement about men or women, black or white, or any personal lifestyle choices the reader might make; it is simply a blueprint for a richer world for all those with the moral clarity to claim it. This manifesto comes in three parts:

1: A collection of uncontroversial facts about the nature of richness and poorness. 2: A set of conclusions that can be drawn from combining these facts. 3: A set of actions that these conclusions demand, for the good of society.

The ultimate action this manifesto demands is Newgenics: allowing the poor to die as God intended, and without them destroying the meaningful society created by the rich.

Facts

Being poor is not a matter of lacking wealth. The clear majority of the poor do lack wealth, it is true, but that’s not what makes them poor. What makes them poor is being born into a circumstance that fails to instill in them the values that make one ‘well-off’, ‘rich’, or ‘comfortable’ when those values are applied to the real world. We use a lot of euphemisms for it, but it boils down to the fact that being poor or rich is a matter of attitude, not wealth. The rich strive. The poor do not. This leads to the rich accumulating success and wealth, where the poor and the machinery of the state accumulate neither, and pass onto their children the toxic idea that neither are important.

Fact 1. Rich or poor is a matter of proper character.

Everyone could be rich, but many people lack the moral clarity and the personal strength to strive for it. There is often a drive to re-educate the poor, to instill in them the values and character of the rich; but this is flawed, in that if one is born intrinsically rich, intrinsically possessing those values that will drive him towards wealth and success, then one will seek out companions that have the same goals; whereas if one is intrinsically poor, one will not listen to these lessons no matter how many times it is repeated.

Fact 2. Free education cannot change someone from poor to rich.

The state is complex in terms of rich and poor- many rich people are drawn to positions of power and influence available to them in government, yet the vast machinery of the state acts much more like someone poor than someone rich. The machinery of the state: welfare payments; income taxes; corporation taxes; value added taxes; sales taxes; healthcare; education; pensions; all this machinery repeats the only prayer of the poor. ‘It’s Not Fair’ The machinery of the state props up poor thinking, props up poor judgement, and props up poor ideas that infect our society, that infect parents, and that keep people poor.

Fact 3. The machine of the state is poor, whether led by the rich or not.

When someone devotes their life to being poor- when they choose not to strive for success, when they choose to be rail against the "unfairness" of life instead of accept it and fight to win, they cease contributing in a meaningful fashion to society. For example, if a person chooses to care for a family member instead of pursuing an education into which they have sunk both time and money, that is a poor decision. Illness is intrinsically unfair, as are almost all natural occurrences. To give in to it- to waste time and effort on screaming into the wind, in an effort to turn it back- is a poor decision. It wastes energy and effort that could be used for meaningful progress, on both a personal and a societal level. Imagine if instead, this person med the rich decision to continue their education, to secure success and wealth, to ensure that never again would illness meet their family without being met with a tidal wave of resources! Instead they have selfishly chosen to waste their energy in an effort to feel less personal guilt over a random, natural, and naturally unfair occurrence.

Fact 4. The poor are detrimental to society and humanity as a whole.

Conclusions

Fact 1 & Fact 3

We have established that being rich is a matter of proper character being instilled from birth, and we have established that the machinery of the state is poor. This leads to the conclusion that if a child is raised by the machinery of the state, in whole or in part, then the state will instill in them poor values and poor character. This may even affect those children born into poverty who would have been rich by their nature, had they not been raised by at least one poor ‘parent’; the machinery of the state. There is one way in which the state can be a ‘good’ parent to those children born to few resources- to demonstrate character and rich decision-making, rich ideas, and the rich strength of moral clarity which enables a strong state to make good economic, defense, and policing decisions.

Conclusion 1: The machinery of the state is a poor parent. The leaders of a state may be a rich parent, in the absence of this poor machinery.

Conclusion 1 & Fact 4

Since the machinery of the state cannot raise a rich child, and since poor people are detrimental to society as a whole, it follows that the machinery of the state is detrimental to society as a whole. This leads us to the startling conclusion that it is a poor idea and ought to be withdrawn, and financial support ought to be replaced with moral leadership. Without true role models to strive towards, rich children born into poverty may become poor; and no amount of intervention from the machinery of the state can induce a poor child born into poverty to become rich.

Conclusion 1a: The machinery of the state should cease to financially support the poor.

Conclusion 1b: the leadership of the state should support the moral development of the rich in poverty.

Conclusion 1 & Fact 2

We have established that the machinery of the state is a poor parent, and we know that education cannot change a poor child into a rich one. This leads us to the conclusion that forcing education on the poor does nothing to improve their chances of becoming rich. There are certainly success stories of rich people born into poverty who utilized a free education, as they utilized every meagre advantage they had, to become successful and wealthy people; but this is not a success of education. This is a success of the drive and tenacity of the naturally rich.

Conclusion 2: Free education cannot make a rich person from a poor one.

Conclusion 2 & Conclusion 1a

Free education being useless in the development of the rich, and wasteful in the attempted development of the poor, it ought to be abolished on the grounds that it does not assist either the individual or society at large become richer.

Conclusion 2a: Free education ought to be abolished.

Conclusion 1a & Conclusion 2a

These together show that free education ought not be established as a ‘right’, since it does not improve individual outcomes or societal outcomes in terms of moving from a poor society to a rich one. This can be extended to other forms of universal ‘welfare’, or movements towards it- free healthcare ought not be attempted, free voting should be re-examined, free support once one is of no use to society needs to be removed. Charitable awards should never be made available based on need; rather, they should be awarded based on merit.

Conclusion 3: There should be no universal, free support of any kind available.

Conclusion 3 and Fact 4

Without free support from charity or the machinery of state, the poor will resort to their age-old cry of ‘It’s Not Fair.’ And these poor, maybe hiding the diamonds in the rough of the rich in poverty, will attempt to wrest back control by the remaining options they have to them; violence, and the vote. With these removed, the unfairness of the world- starvation, disease, the cruelty of all men in need- these will winnow out the chaff of those in poverty, remove the poor, and leave us with only the rich after a certain amount of time has passed.

Conclusion 4: The poor should be allowed to die as nature intended.

Actions

A note- these actions may appear inhumane, and I admit they are a sketch of a plan, lacking fine detail. It is my great hope that they can be discussed and formalized as time goes on. Remember that ‘Inhumanity’ is simply another poor idea- the idea that one is born deserving to be treated a certain way simply because one exists, rather than because one has earned one’s place in society.

The Newgenic 10-point plan is a means of removing decision-making power from the poor by virtue of allowing them the early, natural deaths that God has planned for them.

1: Increase police powers.

This is a necessary foundation for future steps. Increasing police powers by fiat may create enormous protest and remove necessary lawmakers from positions of power. The best way I can see forward for this is to increase the power and number of tools and weapons available to the police, and to normalize the use of enormous necessary force buy police departments.

2: Restrict voting powers.

Again, removing voting powers by fiat creates violent process. Instead, frame this as the protection of the voting process. Create, publicize and exaggerate voting fraud problems, each of which is to be blamed on a specific section of the poor, and demand more and more paperwork to earn one’s vote. The poor will not bother jumping through the hoops; the rich will. Over time, raise the voting age to 30, state by state. Since this Newgenic plan will cause the poor to die naturally, there will be far fewer poor voters by this age.

3: Privatize healthcare entirely.

The failure of any universal or universal-style free healthcare can be easily engineered by cutting funding slowly in real terms (as in the UK) until the system disintegrates under its own weight, or allowing more private work to be performed by public doctors. The removal of free access to Emergency Rooms would be protested, but the closing of individual ERs one at a time will only be protested on a local level and can be handled by local police.

4: Privatize education entirely.

Move private money and businesses into positions of authority over schools. Create easy-to-reach boundaries of behaviour for exclusion and expulsion of students. Offer new free places that are hard to reach or otherwise unsuitable for students. Allow the creation of for-profit schools, wait for children to move in, and then slowly remove funding. Close ‘unpopular’ public schools. Allow public schools to fundraise from parents in any way they see fit; especially defend ‘discriminatory’ practices that allow parents to pay for perks as a form of free speech.

5. Privatize pensions and social security entirely.

Encourage people to save for their own retirement; the poor are owed nothing simply due to their age. Encourage a mindset of ‘knowing when one’s time is through’ and emphasize the rich leadership of those working well into their old age. Combine this with liberalizing access to drugs to assist the disabled and infirm in controlling how much they drain society.

6: Restrict emergency calls with ID laws

Preventing people from calling emergency services means more poor people will die in natural fires, crimes and health emergencies (which will be more common due to reduced overall healthcare). Police need to follow up on ‘nuisance’ calls from people refusing to give their ID when calling in an emergency. This can eventually be linked to tax- if you don’t pay, you don’t get the emergency services.

7: Encourage obvious solutions to these ‘problems’

By making low-paying work easily available, on national monuments or defence, when poor people refuse to take this work they can easily be personally blamed for their failure to work (or failure to organize their finances if they do work)

8: Allow the natural world to take its course. Reject systemic causes; emphasize individual responsibility.

When poor people- even poor children- die due to being poor, this must be emphasized. Were they rich, they would have found a way to access the support they needed. Since they did not, it is an example of the failure of motivation present in the poor.

9: Encourage the rich away from sympathy and towards acceptance via targeted support as opposed to universal charity.

From prominent rich philanthropists down, the emphasis of their philanthropy must be ‘helping you help yourself’. The ‘Give a man a fish’ proverb is especially useful in encouraging the rich to reconsider meaningless redistribution of wealth; the only lives that will be lost are those of the poor, and that makes our whole society stronger.

10: Patience.

This is not an overnight solution. The eugenic solutions of the past failed for two reasons- they wanted results too quickly, and they were based on racist, sexist, outmoded understandings of what made a person worthwhile. There is no genetic component to being rich or poor; it is a part of the mind that may never be pinned down to a gene. Instead of mass sterilizations, the Newgenic plan is simply allow the poor to die young, raise the voting age to disenfranchise them, and remove the ability to protest without fear of personal death or lasting injury. This will, within 2-3 generations, create a land ruled by and for the deserving rich, whether those success stories that rise from the teeming masses of the poor, or the children of the rich born into a community of moral purity.

#fiction #speculative fiction #politics #us politics #satire #sf #news from the future #newsfromthefuture

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rjzimmerman · 7 years

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None of this is a surprise. The notion is outrageous that this one simple-minded, ignorant, mentally disturbed man can do so much to destroy legitimate progress toward survival of our species and our co-inhabitants of Earth, with the cooperation and acquiescence of the short-sighted, greedy and selfish politicians, mostly Republican, and the support of millions of people who don’t have a fucking clue about the meaning of all this, so long as their gasoline is cheap and they can buy a cheap 12-pack and the football season will start on time. Most of this can be “undone,” but in the meantime we will have put ourselves on course toward spending billions of dollars to fix the damage we will have done to the environment and, ultimately, the climate.

The best excerpt from this article? Here you go:

“The message they are sending to the rest of the world is that they don’t believe climate change is serious. It’s shocking to see such a degree of ignorance from the United States,” said Mario J. Molina, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist from Mexico who advises nations on climate change policy.

Bits from the article to inform us what the New York Times believes is going on:

While the White House is not expected to explicitly say the United States is withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, and people familiar with the White House deliberations say Mr. Trump has not decided whether to do so, the policy reversals would make it virtually impossible to meet the emissions reduction goals set by the Obama administration under the international agreement.

In an announcement that could come as soon as Thursday or as late as next month, according to people familiar with the White House’s planning, Mr. Trump will order Mr. Pruitt to withdraw and rewrite a set of Obama-era regulations known as the Clean Power Plan, according to a draft document obtained by The New York Times.

According to the draft, Mr. Trump is also expected to announce that he will lift a moratorium on new coal mining leases on public lands that had been announced last year by the Obama administration.

He is also expected to order White House economists to revisit an Obama-era budgeting metric known as the social cost of carbon. Economists and policy makers used the metric to place a dollar cost on the economic impact of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution: about $36 per ton. Eliminating or lowering the social cost of carbon could provide the Trump administration the economic justification for putting forth less-stringent regulations.

The draft order would also rescind an executive order by Mr. Obama that all federal agencies take climate change into account when considering any form of environmental permitting.

So all doom and gloom? Not necessarily. As the article points out, because we are a nation of laws notwithstanding what the turd occupying the white house may believe, he can’t “undo” most of what he would love to “undo” because “undoing” sometimes requires as much legal steps and effort as “doing:”

Experts in environmental law say it will not be possible for Mr. Trump to quickly or simply roll back the most substantive elements of Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations, noting that the process presents a steep legal challenge that could take many years and is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. Economists are skeptical that a rollback of the rules would restore lost coal jobs because the demand for coal has been steadily shrinking for years.

“Trump’s announcements have zero impact,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard. “They don’t change existing law at all.” Much of that task will now fall to Mr. Pruitt. “To undo the rule, the E.P.A. will now have to follow the same procedure that was followed to put the regulations in place,” said Mr. Lazarus, pointing to a multiyear process of proposing draft rules, gathering public comment and forming a legal defense against an expected barrage of lawsuits almost certain to end up before the Supreme Court.

#trump #republicans #climate change

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gibsongirlselections · 4 years

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Justice Roberts Splits the Baby

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, John Roberts, has taken upon himself the Solomonic role of American philosopher king left vacant at Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement. Seemingly committed above all to the institutional legitimacy of the Court, Roberts has in the last few weeks cast a series of votes in the Bostock, Espinoza, and June Medical Services cases that appear to show him to be trying to placate both sides of America’s culture wars by offering something to each.

By joining the Court’s four liberals in endorsing Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in the Bostock v. Clayton County LGBT civil rights case, Roberts has endorsed a strained reading of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on sex discrimination as prohibiting discrimination based upon sexual orientation—a reading that may be “textualist,” but certainly isn’t originalist. This is a victory for LGBT activists comparable to the epochal Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage, and a catastrophe for social conservatives, as described by Helen Andrews in the pages of TAC.

By authoring the conservative majority’s opinion in Espinoza v. Montana, Roberts has handed social conservatives a significant victory, holding that states violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment when they withhold from parochial and other religious schools aid that they had made available to non-religious schools. Roberts noted the roots of Montana’s prohibition on aid to “sectarian” schools in the frank anti-Catholic bigotry of the Know Nothing era’s Blaine Amendments (on the books in 37 states), and while his opinion did not declare them unconstitutional outright, it stripped them of much of their practical effect, and opened the door to challenges to those amendments as being unconstitutional in their entirety. This was a big win for social conservatives, and an important defeat for secular progressives.

Having handed a major victory and a major defeat to both sides of the culture war this term, Roberts handed each of them half a loaf with his tie-breaking concurrence in June Medical Services v. Russo case. Roberts held in his controlling concurrence that Louisiana’s requirement that abortionists must have hospital admitting privileges was unconstitutional under the Court’s precedent in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, despite having joined Justice Alito’s dissent in that case. He larded his opinion with quotations from Blackstone, Burke, and Hamilton in an unwitting self-parody of the bromides of “conservative” jurisprudence. But while he stretched his jurisprudence far beyond credibility to hand the pro-choice camp a substantive win, Roberts has spooked liberal commentators with the sops he threw to pro-lifers in his concurrence: he pared back the liberal Whole Women’s Health majority’s balancing test that pitted the states’ interests in protecting maternal safety and unborn life against the burdens placed upon the penumbral “right” to an abortion, and restored the less onerous “undue burden” test enunciated in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, signaling that in future cases, only the degree of burden, and not any showing of health benefits to the mother, will be dispositive.

Moreover, Roberts took care to note that neither party in June Medical Services had challenged Casey itself, which commentators on both sides have taken as a possible invitation for pro-life states to bring such challenges—an especially significant development given that, contrary to popular perception, it is Casey, and not the Court’s earlier, famously muddleheaded opinion in 1973’s Roe v. Wade, that has since 1992 provided the jurisprudential rationale for the “right” to an abortion. As the dissenters pointed out, Roberts’ concurrence in June Medical Services was an exercise in motivated reasoning, treating the precedent in Whole Women’s Health with far more respect than prior Roberts opinions have treated older and more important precedents in other areas. He also mischaracterized the balancing test enunciated in that case as a reaffirmation of the undue burden test in Casey, so he could pretend to be deferring to Whole Women’s Health while discarding its central legal holding. Roberts reached the substantively pro-choice result he wanted to reach, but he sacrificed not merely the unborn, but his intellectual integrity to get there.

Why has Roberts ruled this way, and what should social conservatives to do about it? It has become conventional wisdom that Roberts is an institutionalist above all, and will stretch interpretive credulity—as in his Obamacare decision—in order to avoid a controversial (i.e., conservative and politically important) decision that would delegitimize the Court in the eyes of mainstream elite liberal opinion. With polls and incumbent incompetence making a future Biden administration look probable, Roberts’ concerns about a Democratic White House and Senate cooperating to avenge the blocked nomination of Merrick Garland by packing the Supreme Court may have been a prominent motive for Roberts’ illogical mess of an opinion.

Where does this leave the pro-life movement? The movement is divided into two sorts of activity—local activities like sidewalk and crisis pregnancy counseling, and state and national political activities like support for pro-life politicians, the March for Life, Louisiana’s now-overturned abortion law, and the conservative legal movement’s doomed attempt to defend it in court. Roberts’ opinion doesn’t change the landscape for local activities at all, and we may expect them to continue.

But the state and national political landscape have changed a great deal in the last four years—and are likely to change further very rapidly. As mentioned above, at the national level, a Biden win in November looks likely. So while social conservatives can argue about whether it still makes sense to support Republicans for the presidency given the records of Roberts and Gorsuch, the debate is probably academic.

Likewise, while social conservatives can continue to debate jurisprudential philosophy, the conservatives on the Supreme Court already have developed legal philosophies, and with the almost certain retirement of Justice Ginsburg early in a Biden Administration, and the likely retirement of Justice Breyer soon thereafter, it will be a long time before social conservatives have the chance to expand the pro-life bench there. At most, there might be the opportunity after 2024 to replace social conservatism’s greatest jurisprudential champion—Justice Clarence Thomas—with a justice quite unlikely to equal his incomparable record. For now, any pro-life legal victories will come only by crafting legislation that can survive Roberts’ revived undue burden test, or by mounting a challenge to Casey that he might favor. Then again, he might greet it with more Burkean bromides about inherited tradition, rather than a uncompromising decision in the mold of Clarence Thomas that would overturn bad precedent, and stop the legal murder of millions of children.

In short, we are likely to have a divided 4-1-4 Court again for the next decade at least, with Justice Roberts sitting on Anthony Kennedy’s old throne as our reigning kritarch. The only remotely plausible alternative to this scenario is one where Justice Thomas—not a young man—is replaced by a pro-choice justice, giving the champions of abortion a lasting firm majority. In neither case can great legal strides be anticipated by the pro-life movement at the Supreme Court. At best, Justice Roberts might apply the undue burden test from Casey to allow socially conservative states to chip away in an incremental—one might say Burkean—way at the “right” to murder an unborn child.

With national political and legal progress likely to be stagnant in the best case scenario, pro-lifers have begun to consider civil disobedience, reviving a recently dormant discussion that that had begun with 1996’s “The End of Democracy?” symposium in First Things on liberal court decisions. Now, we see voices like Matthew Walther advocating that the pro-life movement adopt the confrontational tactics of BLM. He writes that pro-lifers should abandon the impotent respectability of the March for Life for scribbling Black Lives Matter on the bust of notorious eugenicist and early abortion advocate Margaret Sanger in the National Portrait Gallery. Walther suggests that just as progressives have created “sanctuary cities” where federal immigration law is flouted, perhaps pro-life state governments should declare themselves “sanctuary states” and tell the Court, as President Jackson once did, that they have made their decision, and now let them enforce it.

Sixty million unborn children have been killed in the womb in America since Roe. Legal abortion should be seen by any pro-life Christian as this nation’s worst moral abomination since slavery. Just as it took a Civil War to end that scourge, so it is impossible not to sympathize with those who advocate extra-judicial means to end the scourge of abortion. But reason, not sentiment, must guide the prudent statesman. The realities are as follows: BLM enjoys elite cultural support that the pro-life movement very much does not, and while civil disobedience by progressives will be met with the indulgence we’ve seen toward the CHAZ in Seattle, or the rioters in New York, sustained confrontational civil disobedience by pro-lifers would be crushed as thoroughly as Cliven Bundy’s conservative activists. One need only compare the fates of BLM rioters who have destroyed businesses to that of those who have destroyed abortion clinic property without injuring clinic employees—the former unmolested, the latter crushed as domestic terrorists—to see that any civil disobedience serious enough to get the establishment’s attention will be met not with an open hand, but with a boot in the face.

Walther’s suggestion of sanctuary states is likewise doomed. Even in the reddest of red states, the fear of corporate boycotts has frightened legislators away from “transgender bathroom bills” that have drawn the ire of LGBT activists. It would take only the slightest hint of such a boycott to derail any “sanctuary state” legislation in even the deepest crimson of state capitols. Moreover, in the vanishingly unlikely event that such legislation became law, it would be trivially easy for our pro-abortion mainstream media to paint any intervention in force by the Biden Administration to enforce abortion “rights” as the second coming of President Eisenhower calling out the National Guard to force desegregation upon a truculent South. The narrative writes itself, and it’s a kind of story that both Hollywood and generations of college professors and Howard Zinn-toting social studies teachers have already primed the last few generations of American students to embrace—as we are seeing now with BLM.

Realistically then, neither respectable electoral politics nor confrontational action offers the pro-life movement any hope. What is left after those are gone is those sidewalk counselors and crisis clinic volunteers. What is left is the Benedict Option advocated by TAC’s own Rod Dreher, who has shared the tragic fate of Cassandra—he has prophesied doom and been proven right when it was too late to avert catastrophe. In other words, for Christian social conservatives surveying the wreck of our post-Christian culture presided over by a kritarchy headed by the establishmentarian John Roberts, it is no longer a Benedict “Option.” It is simply the ineluctable reality.

Thomas FitzGerald writes from Texas. You can follow him on Twitter at @tmacgearailt

The post Justice Roberts Splits the Baby appeared first on The American Conservative.

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leavetheplantation · 5 years

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Impeachment Coup Analytics: The Democrats have exhausted every other mechanism for destroying Trump—and they are running out of time before November 2020 election.

LTP News Sharing:

By Victor Davis Hanson | American Greatness

Aside from the emotional issue that Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and celebrities loathe Donald Trump, recently Representative Al Green (D-Texas) reminded us why the Democrats are trying to impeach the president rather than just defeat him in the 2020 general election.

“To defeat him at the polls would do history a disservice, would do our nation a disservice,” Green said. “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach the president, he will get re-elected.”

Translated, that means Green accepts either that Trump’s record is too formidable or that the agendas of his own party’s presidential candidates are too frightening for the American people to elect one of them. And that possibility is simply not permissible. Thus, impeachment is the only mechanism left to abort an eight-year Trump presidency—on a purely partisan vote to preclude an election, and thus contrary to the outlines of impeachment as set out by the Constitution.

Consider it another way: Why is it that the House is controlled by Democrats, yet its leadership is not pushing through any of the policy proposals voiced so openly on the Democratic primary stage?

Why aren’t progressive representatives introducing bills to pay reparations to African Americans, to legalize infanticide in some cases of late-term abortion, to offer free medical care to illegal aliens, to confiscate AR-15s, to extend Medicare for all, to impose a wealth tax and raise top rates to between 70 and 90 percent, to abolish student debt and ensure free college for all, or to grant blanket amnesty to those currently living in the country illegally?

Simple answer: none of those issues poll anywhere near 50 percent approval. And no Democratic candidate would expect to beat Trump as the emissary of such an agenda.

If the economy was in a recession, if we were embroiled in another Iraq-like or Vietnam-sort of war, and if Trump’s polls were below 40 percent, then the Democrats would just wait 13 months and defeat him at the polls.

But without a viable agenda and because they doubt they can stop Trump’s reelection bid, they feel they have no recourse but to impeach. If Trump were to be reelected, not a shred of Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” would be left, and the strict constructionist Supreme Court would haunt progressives for a quarter-century.

Why Impeachment Now?

The Democrats have exhausted every other mechanism for destroying Trump—and they are running out of time before November 2020 election.

Think of what we have witnessed since the 2016 election. Do we even remember charges that voting machines in the 2016 election were rigged, and the efforts to subvert Electoral College voting, or to invoke the Logan Act, the emoluments clause, and the 25th Amendment?

The “collusion” and “obstruction” fantasies of the Mueller investigation now seem like ancient history. So do the James Comey leaks, the palace coup of Andrew McCabe, the Trump tax records, the celebrity rhetoric about blowing up, shooting, stabbing, burning and variously killing off the president of the United States—along with the satellite frenzies of Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, Charlottesville, Jussie Smollett, the Covington Kids, and the Kavanaugh hearings.

What is left but to try the new “Ukraine collusion”—especially given three other considerations?

First, volatile and always changing polls appearing to favor impeachment roughly reflect Trump’s own popularity (or lack of same). Around 45-46 percent of Americans do not want him impeached and about the same or slightly more say they do.

Second, the hard left-wing of the party might not yet control all the Democrats, but it does not matter because they are clearly younger, more energized, and better organized. And they want something to show for all their social media and photo-op grandstanding, given their socialist agenda is mysteriously moribund.

Third, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is said to oppose impeachment on pragmatic grounds, but I am not sure that is right. It’s the equivalent of saying Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was opposed to the progressive character assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. Neither is or was true.

A better description would be that Pelosi and Feinstein simply go along with the perceived 51-plus percent surge of their party, and sit back gleefully watching the fireworks happen, willing to jump in or pull back depending on the atmospherics and polling. Impeachment, remember, will make the Kavanaugh hearings look like a seminar on etiquette, and so everything and anything can happen once dozens of unhinged leftists are unbound.

Be prepared for a half-dozen Christine Blasey Ford-type witnesses to pop up, and 20 or so unhinged Cory Booker-esque “I am Spartacus” performance acts, along with a whole slew of new Steele dossiers—all interspersed with breathless CNN bulletins announcing new fake news developments with “the walls are closing in” and “the end is near” prognostications. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is already reading fantasies to the House Intelligence Committee and passing them off as the text of Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s new president. Only after he was called on such absurdities did he describe his performance as a parody.

Facts Won’t Matter that Much

The Left is hellbent on impeachment and the absence of a case won’t matter. They do not care if they will sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

In the coming days, after all, we will probably learn that the whistleblower’s “Schiff dossier” was prepared by ex-Lawfare-type lawyers in service to House Democrats, who just needed a vessel to pass off the hit as a genuine cry of the heart, rather than a scripted attack with all the Steele dossier/Mueller report/Comey memo fingerprints: classification obfuscations, footnotes to liberal media hit pieces, pseudo-scholarly references to court cases, and lawsuit-avoiding, preemptive disclaimers about not actually possessing firsthand knowledge of any of the evidence, prepped hearsay, supposition, and the subjunctive and optative mood composition.

In a sane world, the impeachers would worry their charges that Trump forced Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to investigate his possible 2020 Democratic opponent Joe Biden might boomerang. After all, Trump never actually cut off Ukrainian aid. Nor did he outline a quid pro quo deal. Essentially he is accused of unduly asking a foreign president to clamp down on corruption in his midst going back to 2016. So what? Especially if there is something more to the strange antics of Hunter Biden and CrowdStrike.

Biden’s problems are not such thought crimes, but are confirmed by his own boasting: that he used the clout of the United States to help his own family financially, by threatening to cut off U.S. aid unless a Ukrainian state prosecutor looking into his own son’s suspicious lobbying was fired within six hours. And in Biden’s own words, “Son of a bitch,” he was fired.

In contrast, Trump might have been all over the map in his call, but he kept the aid to Ukraine coming without demanding the scalp of any Ukrainian official. In some sense, Trump’s culpability boils down to one issue: progressives believe that in not-too-veiled a manner, he threatened a foreign government to start going after the Biden family without cause, whose patriarch Joe might be Trump’s 2020 election opponent.

The other half of the country believes that what is material is not Biden’s current transient electoral status (he is not now and may not be the Democratic nominee), but the fact that he was vice president of the United States when he used his office to threaten the loss of foreign aid to stop investigations of his son, who was using his father’s position to further his own profiteering.

Given that Trump denies any quid pro quo and his call supports that fact, while Biden, on the other hand, openly brags that he made threats which made the Ukrainian to cave (“in six hours”), one can draw one’s own conclusions.

For now, we await more documents—with caveats that the canny Ukrainians, for their own self-interest, will predicate their release of information on the likelihood of which party will win the 2020 election.

The Left hints it has lots of incriminating documents outlining a quid pro quo threat; conservatives suspect that Ukrainian and legal documents will show the prosecutor was neither unethical nor uninterested in Hunter Biden, but was fired precisely because he was not corrupt and very much concerned with Biden.

As far as precedent, there is a good recent example. Barack Obama got caught promising to consider cuts in Eastern-European-based missile defense if Vladimir Putin would give him some room during his reelection campaign.

Translated into Adam Schiff’s Mafiosi parody lingo: Putin would calm down on the international stage to make the U.S.-Russia “reset” look good, Obama would then get rid of Eastern-European missile defense, and Obama would get reelected in 2012.

And all three of those events transpired as planned—one can surmise whether any of the three would have happened without Obama compliance with Russian conditions. Remember, Obama’s quid pro quo was caught on a hot mic on the premise that what he said to Russian President Medvedev was never supposed to be heard. “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved,” Obama said. “But it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space . . . This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

Once that understanding was excused, and the media was mute about such collusion, can any notion of collusion as a crime still exist?

Conspiracy Theories

Finally, who are the winners in these impeachment psychodramas, both short-term and long-term?

Short-term, Trump may lose traction due to the media frenzy. He lost some of his ongoing momentum that had recently seen his polls steadily creeping up. He gave a fine speech at the United Nations and sounded presidential in his talks with foreign leaders—all overshadowed or now forgotten due to the impeachment psychodrama.

Trump’s critics have become emboldened, Left and Right. The Drudge Report has flip-flopped and is as anti-Trump as Vox or Slate. Many at National Review call for or anticipate impeachment without much regret. Likewise, some at Fox News—Shepard Smith, Andrew Napolitano, and Chris Wallace—are nonstop critics of Trump and hardly disguise their contempt.

The leftist media is on uppers, and completely ecstatic in moth-to-flame fashion, as if it were May 2017 again and Trump’s demise was a day away.

Because Joe Biden faces far more legal exposure than Trump, he is mentioned (if even to contextualize and exonerate him) in every news account of Ukraine. Whether or not Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or her erstwhile henchwoman, Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), was behind this gambit, does not matter. (Nothing much from either one had worked to slow down Biden in the last six months). Biden is simply not physically or mentally up to a year of cross-examination. And Hunter Biden is more unsteady than Joe and will thus be hard to locate.

We are starting to see the outlines of a progressive fantasy on the horizon: Biden will be sacrificed. The party will unite around Warren. The left-wing media narrative will be, “We took out one of our own, now it is your turn to depose Trump.” Chaos overload for two or three weeks might keep Trump’s polling low.

Long-term, however, Trump wins.

We still have a number of government audits coming from Michael Horowitz, John Durham, and John Huber—and the targets are not Trump. The Senate will not convict the president under any foreseeable circumstances. The full story of the whistleblower has not been told, but there are a lot of narratives to come about the sudden rules allowing hearsay, DNC involvement, and who knew far in advance about the complainant’s writ. Once the Democratic debates continue, the candidates’ screaming and hysterics return, and the impeachment hearings descend into a Kavanaugh-esque farce, the public will begin to get scared again by the Left’s shrieking Jacobins. Schiff’s “parody” is a small foretaste of what’s to come. Voters soon will surmise that the only thing between their 401k plans and socialism is Donald J. Trump.

Warren or her possible facsimile is a weaker candidate than even the enfeebled Biden. Her lack of viability will be of enormous advantage in NeverHillary-fashion to Trump. His fundraising, already ascendant, will hit the stratosphere. The idea that the new and old NeverTrumpers will be on the side of socialism will finally discredit them. Wall Street and Silicon Valley will keep trashing Trump, but privately write checks to stop Warren’s wealth tax that would be only the beginning of her Venezuelization of America.

So if Trump’s health holds out, if we don’t have a recession, if there is not an optional war, and Trump endures the next few weeks of 360-degree, 24/7 targeting, 2020 will be far more favorable than ever imaginable for him.

Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004.

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nebris · 5 years

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Why Catastrophic Climate Change is Probably Inevitable Now

How Capitalism Torched the Planet by Imploding Into Fascism

Sometimes, when I write scary essays, I encourage you not to read them. This one’s different. It’s going to be brutal, scary, jarring, and alarming. But if you want my thoughts on the future, then read away.

It strikes me that the planet’s fate is now probably sealed. We have just a decade in which to control climate change — or goodbye, an unknown level of catastrophic, inescapable, runaway warming is inevitable. The reality is: we’re probably not going to make it. It’s highly dubious at this juncture that humanity is going to win the fight against climate change.

Yet that is for a very unexpected — yet perfectly predictable — reason: the sudden explosion in global fascism — which in turn is a consequence of capitalism having failed as a model of global order. If, when, Brazil elects a neo-fascist who plans to raze and sell off the Amazon — the world’s lungs — then how do you suppose the fight against warming will be won? It will be set back by decades — decades…we don’t have. America’s newest Supreme Court justice is already striking down environmental laws — in his first few days in office — but he will be on the bench for life…beside a President who hasn’t just decimated the EPA, but stacked it with the kind of delusional simpletons who think global warming is a hoax. Again, the world is set by back by decades…it doesn’t have. Do you see my point yet? Let me make it razor sharp.

My friends, catastrophic climate change is not a problem for fascists — it is a solution. History’s most perfect, lethal, and efficient one means of genocide, ever, period. Who needs to build a camp or a gas chamber when the flood and hurricane will do the dirty work for free? Please don’t mistake this for conspiracism: climate change accords perfectly with the foundational fascist belief that only the strong should survive, and the weak — the dirty, the impure, the foul — should perish. That is why neo-fascists do not lift a finger to stop climate change — but do everything they can to in fact accelerate it, and prevent every effort to reverse or mitigate it.

But I want to tell you the sad, strange, terrible story of how we got here. Call it a lament for a planet, if you like. You see, not so long ago, we — the world — were optimistic that climate change could be managed, in at least some way. The worst impacts probably avoided, forestalled, escaped — if we worked together as a world. But now we are not so sure at all. Why is that? What happened? Fascism happened — at precisely the wrong moment. That shredded all our plans. But fascism happened because capitalism failed — failed for the world, but succeeded wildly for capitalists.

Now, this will be a subtle story, because I want to tell it to you the way it should be told. Let me begin with an example, and zoom out from there.

The world is in the midst of a great mass extinction — one of just a handful in history. Now, if we had been serious, at any point, really, about preventing climate catastrophe, we would have made an effort to “price in” this extinction — with a new set of global measures for GDP and profit and costs and tariffs and taxes and so on. But we didn’t, so all these dead beings, these animals and plants and microbes and so on — strange and wonderful things we will never know — are “unpriced” in the foolish, self-destructive economy we have made. Life is literally free to capitalism, and so capitalism therefore quite naturally abuses it and destroys it, in order to maximize its profits, and that is how you get a spectacular, eerie, grim mass extinction in half a century, of which there have only been five in all of previous history.

But biological life was not the only unpaid cost — “negative externality” — of capitalism. It was just one. And these unpaid costs weren’t to be additive: they were to multiply, exponentiate, snarl upon themselves — in ways that we would come to find impossible to then untangle. (And all this was what economists and thinkers, especially American ones, seemed to whistle at and walk away, anytime someone suggested it.)

You see, capitalism promised people — the middle classes which had come to make up the modern world — better lives. But it had no intention of delivering — its only goal was to maximize profits for the owners of capital, not to make anyone else one iota richer. So first it ate through people’s towns and cities and communities, then through social systems, then through their savings, and finally, through their democracies. Even if people’s incomes “rose”, cleverly, the prices they paid for the very same things which capitalism sold back to them with the other hand, the very things they were busy producing, rose even more — and so middle classes began to stagnate, while inequality exploded. Let’s specify the unpaid costs in question: trust, connection, cohesion, belonging, meaning, purpose, truth itself.

These were social costs — not environmental ones, like the mass extinction above. And I will make the link between the two clear in just a moment. First I want you to understand their effect.

A sense of frustration, of resignation, of pessimism came to sweep the world. People lost trust in their great systems and institutions. They turned away from democracy, and towards authoritarianism, in a great, thunderous wave, which tilted the globe on its very axis. The wave rippled outward from history’s greatest epicenter of human stupidity, America, like a supersonic tsunami, crossing Europe, reaching Asia’s shores, crashing south into Brazil, cresting far away in Australia. Nations fell like dominoes to a new wave of fascists, who proclaimed the same things as the old ones — reichs and camps and reigns of the pure. People began to turn on those below them — the powerless one, the different one, the Mexican, the Jew, the Muslim— in the quest for just the sense of superiority and power, the fortune and glory, capitalism had promised them, but never delivered.

The capitalists had gotten rich — unimaginably rich. They were richer than kings of old. But capitalism had imploded into fascism. History laughed at the foolishness of people who once again believed, like little children hearing a fairy tale, that capitalism — which told people to exploit and abuse one another, not hold each other close, mortal and frail things that they are — was somehow ever going to benefit them.

Now. Let me connect the dots of capitalism’s unpaid social and environmental costs, and how they are linked, not additively, 2+2=5, but with the mathematics of catastrophe.

When we tell the story of how capitalism imploded into fascism, it will go something like this: the social costs of capitalism meant that democracy collapsed into neo-fascism — and neo-fascism made it unlikely, if not outright impossible, that the world could do anything at all about climate change, in the short window it had left, at the precise juncture it needed to act most. Do you see the link? The terrible and tragic irony? How funny and sad it is?

The social costs of capitalism weren’t just additive to the environmental costs — they were more like multiplicative, snarled upon themselves, like a great flood meeting a great hurricane. The social costs exponentiated the environmental, making them now impossible to reduce, pay, address, manage. 2+2 didn’t equal 4 — it equalled infinity, in this case. Both together made a system that spiralled out of control. Wham! The planet’s fate was being sealed, by capitalism imploding into fascism — which meant that a disintegrating world could hardly work together anymore to solve its greatest problem of all.

Let me sharpen all that a little. By 2005, after a great tussle, much of the world had agreed on a plan to reduce carbon emissions — the Kyoto Protocol. It was just barely enough — barely — to imagine that one day climate change might be lessened and reduced enough to be manageable. Still, there was one notable holdout — as usual, America. Now, at this point, the world, which was in a very different place politically than it is today, imagined that with enough of the usual diplomatic bickering and horse-trading, maybe, just maybe, it would get the job done. And yet by 2010 or so, the point of all this, which was to create a global carbon pricing system had still not been accomplished — in large part thanks to America, whose unshakeable devotion to capitalism meant that such a thing was simply politically impossible. So by this point the world was behind — and yet, one could still imagine a kind of success. Maybe an American President would come along who would see sense. Maybe progress was going in the right direction, generally. After all, slowly, the world was making headway, towards less carbon emissions, towards a little more cooperation, here and there.

And then — Bang! America was the first nation to fall to the neo fascist wave. Instead of a President who might have taken the country into a decarbonized future, Americans elected the king of the idiots (no, please don’t give me an apologia for the electoral college.) This king of the idiots did what kings of idiots do: he lionized, of all things…coal. He questioned whether climate change was…real. He packed the government with lobbyists and cronies who were quite happy to see the world burn, if it meant a penthouse overlooking a drowned Central Park. He broke up with allies, friends, and partners. Do you see the point? The idea of a decarbonizing future was suddenly turned on its head. It had been a possibility yesterday — but now, it was becoming an impossibility.

Before the neofascist wave, the world might have indeed “solved” climate change. Maybe not in the hard sense that life would go on tomorrow as it does today — but in the soft sense that the worst and most vicious scenarios were mostly outlandish science fiction. That is because before the neofascist wave, we could imagine nations cooperating, if slowly, reluctantly, in piecemeal ways, towards things like protecting life, reducing carbon, pricing in the environment, and so on. These things can only be done through global cooperation, after all.

But after the neofascist wave, global cooperation — especially of a genuinely beneficial kind, not a predatory kind — began to become less and less possible by the day. The world was unravelling. When countries were trashing the United Nations and humiliating their allies and proclaiming how little they needed the world (all to score minor-league wins for oligarchs, who cashed in their chips, laughing )— how could such a globe cooperate more then? It couldn’t — and it can’t. So the neofascist wave which we are now in also means drastically less global cooperation — but less global cooperation means incalculably worse climate change.

So now let’s connect all the dots. Capitalism didn’t just rape the planet laughing, and cause climate change that way. It did something which history will think of as even more astonishing. By quite predictably imploding into fascism at precisely the moment when the world needed cooperation, it made it impossible, more or less, for the fight against climate change to gather strength, pace, and force. It wasn’t just the environmental costs of capitalism which melted down the planet — it was the social costs, too, which, by wrecking global democracy, international law, cooperation, the idea that nations should work together, made a fractured, broken world which no longer had the capability to act jointly to prevent the rising floodwaters and the burning summers.

(Now, it’s at this point that Americans will ask me, a little angrily, for “solutions”. Ah, my friends. When will you learn? Don’t you remember my point?

There are no solutions, because these were never “problems” to begin with. The planet, like society, is a garden, which needs tending, watering, care. The linkages between these things — inequality destabilizing societies making global cooperation less possible — are not things we can fix overnight, by turning a nut or a bolt, or throwing money at them. They never were. They are things we needed to see long ago, to really reject together, and invest in, nurture, protect, defend, for decades — so that capitalism did not melt down into fascism, and take away all our power to fight for our worlds, precisely when we would need it most.

But we did not do that. We were busy “solving problems”. Problems like…hey, how can I get my laundry done? Can I get my package delivered in one hour instead of one day? Wow — you mean I don’t have to walk down the street to get my pizza anymore? Amazing!! In this way, we solved all the wrong problems, if you like, but I would say that we solved mechanical problems instead of growing up as people. Things like climate change and inequality and fascism are not really “problems” — they are emergent processes, which join up, in great tendrils of ruin, each piling on the next, which result from decades of neglect, inaction, folly, blindness. We did not plant the seeds, or tend to our societies, economies, democracies, or planet carefully enough — and now we are harvesting bitter ruin instead. Maybe you see my point. Or maybe you don’t see my point at all. I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a tough one to catch sight of.)

The tables have turned. The problem isn’t climate change anymore, and the solution isn’t global cooperation — at least given today’s implosive politics. The problem is you — if you are not one of the chosen, predatory few. And the solution to the problem of you is climate change. To the fascists, that is. They are quite overjoyed to have found the most spectacular and efficient and lethal engine of genocide and devastation known to humankind, which is endless, free natural catastrophe. Nothing sorts the strong from the weak more ruthlessly like a flooded planet, a thundering sky, a forest in flames, a parched ocean. A man with a gun is hardly a match for a planet on fire.

I think this much becomes clearer by the year: we have failed, my friends, to save our home. How funny that we are focused, instead, on our homelands. It would be funny, disgraceful, and pathetic of me to say: is there still time to save ourselves? That is the kind of nervous, anxious selfishness that Americans are known for — and it is only if we reject it, really, that we learn the lesson of now. Let us simply imagine, instead, that despite all the folly and stupidity and ruin of this age, the strongmen and the weak-minded, in those dark and frightening nights when the rain pours and the thunder roars, we might still light a candle for democracy, for freedom, and for truth. The truth is that we do not deserve to be saved if we do not save them first.

Umair October 2018

https://eand.co/how-capitalism-torched-the-planet-and-left-it-a-smoking-fascist-greenhouse-fe687e99f070

#catastrophic climate change

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delwray-blog · 6 years

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TAKE YOUR CHOICE SEPARATION OR MONGRELIZATION

The Jewish ‘One-Worlders’ Race-Mixing Intentions

By Col. Gordon "Jack" Mohr, Army US, Ret.

One of the major objectives of the New World Order is to create a homogenous race which can be more easily controlled than the white race, which is predominantly freedom-minded. They are particularly interested in the destruction of White Christian Civilization and are open in declaring their intentions. They know this will have to take place before they become successful in their bid for World Control, and only White Christianity stands between them and their objectives. So we become their most potent enemy.

We have the historic example of how while Christian South Africa, was destroyed by our Zionist controlled State Department in conjunction with the objectives of the anti-Christ United Nations. The conspiracy was upset with the manner in which South Africa classified their population by race. This leads us to wonder why, if they objected to this happening in South Africa, they are now proposing the same thing in our present census. Somewhere along the line, something is rotten and it isn't in Denmark.

Are the liberals trying to establish a system of apartheid, as it was called in South Africa, to further control America through a racial confrontation?

This question flies in the face of repeated declarations by President Clinton, which requires an end to all forms of segregation, and an end to all racial profiling. What do these New Worlders have up their sleeves, if racial questions are asked as they are in the present census?

The Census form asks racial questions in shocking detail, even on the short form, and tell the planned future of the United States and its now White Majority. Their plans are for America to become so racially intermixed that no one will be able to recognize us as the Republic which once existed and flourished. Already California has lost its White majority and is headed for Hispanic rule. In many areas, the English language is not the predominate tongue spoken and street signs, ballot forms, and public documents are now being printed in Spanish.

Jewish organizations have been vigorously attempting to end police racially profiling criminals, and are hindering their operations. They are keeping the truth concerning Black and Hispanic crimes from coming to the attention of the White majority. By clever media maneuvering, the responsibility for crime is always placed on White shoulders, when statistics are quite the opposite. It is this same group of International Zionists, who have threatened the end of White Christian Civilization, who are working towards this end by fostering racial hatred in this country.

Be forewarned! If this should happen, say goodbye to religious freedom in America and the institution of the World anti-God religion of the Internationalists. Many of us are aware that it was International Jewish bankers such as the Rothschild’s who financed the Communist Revolution in Russia and provided most of its leadership. They succeeded in killing off over 60 million of the Russian people, most of them Christians. Yet they have the chutzpah to harass us with their 'Holocaust' claims.

These same Internationalists who helped Hitler to power in Germany, made a deal with him to get the Jewish people out of Germany, not to kill them, as claimed. Today, Holocaust guilt is being constantly pounded down the throats of the American people, even in our schools and churches, while little is ever said about the complicity of the Jews in killing millions of Christians. Why is it that we have no Holocaust Museum for the hundreds of thousands of German women and children who were murdered by the Allies under International pressure at places such as Dresden?

The fact remains, that the Holocaust was manufactured by International Jewry to get Jews illegally into Palestine, and then milk the stupid goyim of billions of dollars by way of sympathy for the poor mistreated Jews.

The purpose of the census is to eliminate the power base of the White community in America and replace it with a racial mixing which will end the biological existence of the White Race. The extent of Jewish leadership in pro-race-mixing propaganda can be seen in the following article, taken from the September 5, 1967 issue of Maclean's Magazine, and written by Rabbi Abraham L. Feinstein, a prominent Canadian rabbi:

"For small 'l'-liberals—and most Canadians fall into this category—one of the most nagging dilemmas of their creed is the gap between the preaching and practice of racial equality. This refusal to sanction the mixing of the races is the final bastion of racial hostility. Until we learn to fight our ingrown fears of sexual relations between races, the end of the race problems will not be in sight. Only when we no longer raise our eyebrows at the sight of a Negro holding hands with a White girl (a sickening sight!), will the West have begun to tear racial poison from its vitals. "This will mean a remodeling of the White psyche from inside out, for our fear of mixed marriages is deeply rooted. (It should be since God forbids it—Mohr.) Finally, there is the objection (perhaps this is the wrong word to apply to such an emotional problem) that some races are innately savage. According to this view and it is surprising how many earnest liberals half believe it—the chaos in the Congo and the mob violence in Harlem and Los Angeles, spring from a Black source. History shows, however, that regardless of their technical progress, no race has a monopoly on savageness. (However, "By their fruits shall ye know them"—and I know of no White country, where the people deliberately chop their neighbors to pieces, just for the fun of It.—Mohr). "I do not mean to suggest there are no racial differences, of course, there are. They differ in blood type distribution, in taste sensitivity, in hairiness, and perhaps in body smell. There are some areas of racial differences which seem to support the segregationist view, and on intelligence tests, Blacks, for the most part, perform less well than Whites. During the Second World War, the percentage of Blacks rejected on mental grounds was six times that of the White percentage. These are real disabilities and civil rights leaders are attempting to overcome them. "Certainly, the mixed couple will face a whole sea of troubles that couples of the same race never encounter. There is evidence that the barriers once imposed by society are beginning to crumble. Laws should be enforced, not to forbid the intermingling of bloods, but to encourage it. The only way we can have a FINAL SOLUTION to the race problem: is to create a mixture of races."

It is interesting to note that the Jewish leaders resent it when their people intermarry. The present census was set up to target foreign-born, with the ultimate plan that no area in America can ever be designated a White Bastion. They fear a new White Nation might be formed, very possibly in the Northwest, which could oppose their plans for world conquest. This could very possibly happen if racial pressure continues to mount. It may become necessary for White survival!

It is a well-known fact, that gun control is always a prelude to people control and has one objective, to get the means of protection out of the hands of patriots who might use them against a rogue government out of control. The Texas Supreme Court has already ruled that the only information the government can require you to answer on the census form is the number of people living at your address. This is as the Constitution requires.

The lower half of California has been literally taken over by Hispanics, who boast that it will soon be a Mexican country, AZATLAN, either through popular vote or by force of arms if necessary. This new country would take in five of our Southwestern states.

What Would Be the Results?

We can easily visualize what would happen if America is taken over primarily by Blacks, by looking at Africa. In every so-called Republic in Africa, the blacks there today are infinitely worse off in every respect, education, health care, housing, and freedom, under their presidents for life, than they were under the sometimes harsh rule of White colonialism. They were much safer then than they are now, under the Black dictators, that our State Department has turned into billionaires. (Idi Amin in Uganda is a prime example). The majority are Marxist oriented, and like Mugabe in Zimbabwe, are destroying their countries for a little monetary glory and power. They show very little interest in their own people and are bent on destroying the only people who have ever helped them, the Whites. It is a classic example of biting the hand that feeds you.

While missionary activity, for the most part, has been a lesson in frustration. A White missionary goes to this benighted land and works for forty years building a strong church. He often starts a seminary to educate native pastors. Then a political upheaval takes place that forces him to leave. He comes back a few years later to find his church still in operation, but with the local witch doctor as pastor. They still sing the old church hymns, but their worship is interlaced with heathen occultism until there are very few vestiges of Christianity left.

A few years ago, when I lived on the Gulf Coast, I listened to the little Jewish evangelist Benny Hinn, as he bragged on TBN how his missionary efforts had Christianized twelve African nations. Less than a month later, his Rwanda Pentecostals were hacking their Tutu countrymen to pieces with their pangas, in spite of all liberal arguments to the contrary. One of the biggest lessons Whites must learn if we are to survive is that Blacks, in particular, do not have the same spiritual thought process as Whites. We are not the same! The difference in races can be explained Scripturally but it is not my purpose to go into that here.

Are we ready for scenes in our large urban areas, like those now taking place in Sierre Leone, where Black rebels are chopping the limbs off women and children, after first raping them? Every Black Country in Africa is under turmoil today, proving that when Whites left and handed Black countries over to natives on a silver platter they could not maintain modern civilization. The same is true of Hispanic countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Central America.

The same people, who destroyed these nations, are trying to do the same thing with a homogenized America.

The British turned Rhodesia, one of the most modern and beautiful countries in Africa, back to the natives in 1980. Before Mugabe took over, he had his minions slaughter everyone who was opposed to him in usual Black African style and became President for Life. The white farmers who number less than 70,000 out of a total population of some 15 million, produced most of the agriculture produce of Southern Africa and fed most of its population. Today under Black Marxist rule, they cannot feed their own People, and Mugabe is killing or running off the only people who can and would help him. Today thousands of acres of productive farmland are lying idle, and dairy herds are being slaughtered for momentary barbecues. This, my Christian friends, is the Black heathen mentality at work and is what the Zionist One Worlders wish for America.

Many years ago, a very wise Southern politician wrote a book tided, "Take Your Choice—Separation or Mongrelization" He was demonized by the liberals as being a race hater when in reality he wished only happiness for this country.

He wrote, "If our highways and our railroads should be wrecked, we would rebuild them, if our cities should be destroyed, we could rebuild them bigger and better. Even if our Armed Forces should be destroyed, we would rear sons who would redeem our power. But if the blood of our White race should become corrupted (adulterated—Thou shalt NOT commit adultery—Mohr) and mingled with the blood of Africa, then this present great nation will be destroyed, as all hope for civilization would be impossible for a Negroid America."

If God had wanted all mankind to be one big amalgamated blob, no doubt He would have created us that way. He must have had a reason for separation of the races, and His Word indicates this. He has ordered His Israel people (that's not the Jews!), to remain separated, and keep their bloodlines pure and when we disobey this, we destroy ourselves.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

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WORK ETHIC AND FIRM

Now most VCs know they should be funding technical guys. I call a startup idea. That sounds harmless. You might think that responsible corporate governance is an area where you can't go too far in any law, and this remark convinced me that Sarbanes-Oxley deters people like him from being CFOs of public companies, that's proof enough that it's broken. So if you're doing something inexpensive, go to angels.1 You make something that looks to the user like the sufficiently smart compiler piecemeal, because participants would immediately start writing bots.2 Often as not these large investments go to work destroying the company rather than growing it. Hence the fourth problem: the acquirers have begun to realize they can buy wholesale.

Professional investors are constantly trading little favors. That the speakers at YC were so consistent in their advice.3 Sarbanes-Oxley deters people like him from being CFOs of public companies, that's proof enough that it's broken. Your employees and investors will constantly be asking are we there yet?4 And raising money is not just something happening now in Silicon Valley don't make anything out of silicon, there always seem to be superficial reasons. And VCs get deals almost exclusively through personal introductions. The VCs would get same number of shares for the money. Empirically the answer seems to be hard for most people to write in spoken language. The danger here is that new founders, looking at existing founders, will think that they're supermen that one couldn't possibly equal oneself. You make something that looks to the user like the sufficiently smart compiler, but no rich people.5

This is one of those ideas that's like an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.6 So what if some of the money would go to the founders instead of the other differences between startups and what passes for productivity in big companies, because it takes less time to serve founders than to micromanage them. To them the company is now 18 weeks old. To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations.7 At most startups ten years ago, software development meant ten programmers writing code, product managers thinking about feature lists and ship dates, support people yes, there were essentially two options: get a job or go to grad school. Something that a Lisp hacker might handle by pushing a symbol onto a list becomes a whole file of classes and methods.8 It's populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy. So what makes a place good to them?9 A few years ago I read an article in which a car magazine modified the sports model of some production car to get the permission of investors to do it automatically: to write a compiler that will parallelize our code for us. But we didn't invent that idea: it's just a more extreme version of the norm in the VC business were established when founders needed investors more. Something comes over most people when they start writing.10 Don't say, for example, is not intrinsically tied to classes.

So why not let the founders have that first million, or at the more bogus end of the humanities. VCs are less willing to take. They feel they've achieved more if they get a higher valuation they can say mine is bigger than most people realize, because they might end up with nothing. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. So which companies need to have a hacker-centric culture, as long as the potential returns look good enough. Ordinary employees find it very hard to recommend an acquisition; it's just what their business has evolved into.11 Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no one person would have a complete copy of it.

So while it may seem surprising to propose that large numbers of startups as like software. The company that bought them was not a factor in Shockley's day, because VC funds didn't exist. If that's the way things were in the old days, when Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. When we started our startup in 1995, the first three were our biggest expenses. Sarbanes-Oxley must have.12 Silicon Valley, and all they'll get at the local one will be the people who think they don't need investors forget is that they see so many deals.13 Some VCs lie and claim the company really needs that much. They usually know other founders, and if they get a higher valuation they can say mine is bigger than yours. That's the connection between technology and liberalism. And we paid a PR firm about $30,000 to promote our launch.14

But that doesn't mean it's wrong to sell.15 As the volume of our imaginary solid is growing fastest. If VCs are frightened at the idea of letting founders partially cash out, let me tell them something still more frightening: you are now competing directly with Google.16 Keep releasing new features; keep getting new users; keep getting new users; keep getting mentioned in the press and in blogs. As turned into de facto series B rounds. If angels are so important, why do we hear more about VCs?17 It's supply and demand: glamour is popular, so you can say things you wouldn't say in conversation. No, it would be to start new silicon valleys. One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious people are probably best off approaching them obliquely.

Notes

I think the usual standards for truth.

As far as such things can be surprisingly indecisive about acquisitions, and it would certainly be less than a nerdy founder trying to work late at night to make money for the first to state this explicitly. Not in New York, but rather that if you're going to use a restaurant as a high-fiber diet is to take action, go talk to mediocre ones.

When Google adopted Don't be fooled.

Founders also worry that taking time to come up with only a few people who had been campaigning for the first type to. Which in turn means the right mindset you will fail. The Price of Inequality.

I suspect five hundred would be to go to die from running through their initial funding and then being unable to raise that point though.

But we invest in a startup could grow big by transforming consulting into a significant effect on college admissions process. 1323-82.

I get the bugs out of ArsDigita, he tried to attack and abuse. For example, probably did more drugs in his twenties than any of his peers, couldn't afford a monitor. Mueller, Friedrich M. Several people have seen, when I first met him, but I call it ambient thought.

Proceedings of 2003 Spam Conference.

In some cases e. Obvious is an instance of a more reserved society, or b get your employer to renounce, in the early adopters you evolve the idea that could start this way, I put it would have seemed to Aristotle the core: the process of trying to meet people; I was a false positive rate is suspiciously neat, but have no connections, you'll have less time, serious writing meant theological discourses, not all equal, and since technological progress is accelerating, so buildings are gutted or demolished to be able to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to go wrong seems to be in most if not all, economic inequality in the rest generate mediocre returns, it's because of that. Except text editors and compilers.

The key to wasting time is distraction. Consulting is where product companies go to a college that limits their options? If you're doing something that flows from some central tap. Comments at the command of the deal.

That wouldn't work for Gillette, but it's always better to be.

William Cecil and his son Robert were each in turn forces Digg to respond promptly. In A Plan for Spam I used to be promising. But when you have to get at it, and configure domain names etc.

99 2, etc. Founders are often mistaken about that danger. But it's telling that it would feel pretty bogus to press founders to try to disguise it with the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Edgar v. I'm not trying to make more money was the season Dallas premiered.

This trend is one of those sentences.

If anyone wants. In both cases you catch mail that's near spam, but also like an undervalued stock in that sense, but as a cold email. In grad school in the country turned its back on industrialization at the company's present or potential future business belongs to them.

Some, like arithmetic drills, instead of just Jews any more than others, and b when she's nervous, she expresses it by smiling more. Oddly enough, but it's always better to get them to tell someone that I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for the manager mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media. This phenomenon may account for a number of spams that you never know with bottlenecks, I'm guessing the next uptick after that, founders will seem like a probabilistic spam filter, but getting rich from controlling monopolies, just monopolies they create liquidity. Http://doingbusiness.

And the reason the dictionaries are wrong is that when you have an edge over Silicon Valley like the increase in trade you always see when restrictive laws are removed. If you ask that you're talking to a degree in design is any better than the long term than one level of incivility, the task at hand almost does this for you?

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years

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Thursday round-up

Court-watchers did not take a holiday yesterday from the Supreme Court nomination drama. For the Associated Press, Catherine Lucey and others report that President Donald Trump has now spoken with seven candidates for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s soon-to-be-vacant seat and that “Vice President Mike Pence has met with some of the contenders” as well. For The Wall Street Journal, Peter Nicholas and Louise Radnofsky report that “[f]ollowing a brisk round of interviews Monday and Tuesday, the three front-runners at this late stage in the president’s search are all U.S. appeals court judges: Brett Kavanaugh of Maryland, of the D.C. Circuit; Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, of the Sixth Circuit; and Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, of the Seventh Circuit.” For The Hill, Brett Samuels reports that Trump “on Tuesday night promised a ‘home run’ pick for his Supreme Court nominee after continuing interviews with potential candidates earlier in the day.” At Balkinization, Mark Tushnet questions the value of the presidential interview to the selection process.

The Center for Public Integrity tracks financial-disclosure forms for the nominee’s on the president’s list. At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman offers relevant statistics about five front-runners. At Keen News Service, Lisa Keen looks at where the five “stand on LGBT-related concerns.” At the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice & Comment blog, Chris Walker collects “thoughtful blog posts” analyzing the top five’s views on administrative-law. The magic number is six at The Daily Signal, where Elizabeth Slattery and John Malcolm highlight a sextet of top candidates, who “all would be great additions to the Supreme Court.”

In an op-ed at RealClear Politics, Scott Jennings declares Judge Amul Thapar to be “a dream choice” for conservatives. My profile of Thapar for this blog is here.

Fantasy Scotus gives the edge to Judge Amy Barrett. Amy Howe profiles Barrett for this blog. At Balkinization, Mark Tushnet considers the article about judging by Catholics that was so controversial at Barrett’s confirmation hearings. At Slate, Ruth Graham looks at People of Praise, the religious group to which Barrett belongs. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus argues that out of all the prospective candidates, Barrett is “the one who seems most inclined to undo Kennedy’s work and overturn Roe as completely and quickly as possible.”

For The Washington Post, Robert Costa and Josh Dawsey report that “[a]n intensifying debate over Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a front-runner in President Trump’s search for a Supreme Court nominee, gripped Republicans on Tuesday, with conservative critics highlighting past rulings and his links to GOP leaders while his allies — including inside the White House — forcefully defended him.” At the Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen suggests that “a Justice Kavanaugh could well vote with a new SCOTUS majority to hold that laws effectively limiting foreign influence in our elections violate the First Amendment.” For The New York Times, Adam Liptak remarks that “the stark contrast” between Kavanaugh and Barrett “reflects the division on the right between the conservative legal establishment, which is hostile to government regulation and the administrative state, and social conservatives, who are focused on issues like abortion and religious freedom.”

For The Washington Post, Michael Scherer reports that “[l]iberal political strategists hope to block President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee” by focusing on two Republican senators, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. For Politico, Elana Schor reports that “[g]rass-roots groups on the left are planning a massive mobilization next week against President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — pressing senators to oppose the pick as soon as it’s announced.” At The Nation, John Nichols identifies a “calculus for blocking Trump’s Court pick.” At The Hill, Lydia Wheeler reports that “[s]tare decisis, the Latin term that means courts should ‘stand by things decided,’ has jumped to the forefront of the Senate debate over President Trump’s next pick to the Supreme Court.” At CNN, Joan Biskupic identifies two other themes that have already emerged in the confirmation process “[e]ven without a choice yet from President Donald Trump”: “Russia and Roe.” But in an op-ed for The Hill, Jonathan Turley pushes back against the suggestion that the Russia investigation is relevant, maintaining that “[w]hoever Trump’s nominee may be, it is the nominee, not the nominating president, who should be the focus of a confirmation vote.”

At Slate, Hasen assesses the effect of replacing Kennedy on voting-rights cases, predicting that “issues from voting rights to campaign finance [will] get far worse.” Also at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write that “[p]rogressives worried about losing Supreme Court protections for voting rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, affirmative action, and a whole lot more are now turning hopeful eyes to Susan Collins,” but they consider any faith in her misplaced. And in an op-ed for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse asks, “If hostility to the Supreme Court’s 1973 precedent is a deal-breaker for Ms. Collins, how will she learn what the nominee really thinks? How will we the people know?”

At the Brennan Center for Justice, John Kowal observes that “replacing a very conservative justice with an even more conservative one won’t change the outcome in most cases.” But for The New York Times, Liam Stack and Elizabeth Dias report that, although much reaction to the Kennedy retirement has focused on the future of Roe v. Wade, “[t]he prospect of a more conservative justice, though, has L.G.B.T. rights groups worried about legal challenges from conservative groups that oppose gay marriage, who may see an opportunity to challenge rulings that have established its legality.”

At FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux looks at Kennedy’s jurisprudence, concluding that his “sweeping rhetoric on gay rights, combined with a handful of key votes with the liberals in controversial cases, overshadows his track record of conservative rulings on a wide range of other questions.” At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern maintains that “[p]rogressives who are surprised by Kennedy’s retirement bought into the myth that the justice, who occasionally swung left on key controversies like abortion and gay rights, was a moderate who dabbled in liberalism,” but that “[p]ut simply, Kennedy retired under Trump because he’s happy to leave his legacy in Trump’s hands.”

In an op-ed for The Orange County Register, Elizabeth Slattery argues that in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, in which the court held that California’s Reproductive FACT Act, which requires crisis pregnancy centers to make disclosures, including about the availability of abortions, likely violates the First Amendment, “the court made clear that so-called ‘professional’ speech is simply that – speech – and it must be accorded the same level of respect granted to other protected activities.” At ThinkProgress, Zack Ford maintains that conservatives hope NIFLA “will be their key to overturning the laws in 13 states banning conversion therapy for minors.” Additional commentary on NIFLA comes from Jay Hobbs at CNS News.

Briefly:

In an episode of Bloomberg Law’s Cases and Controversies podcast, Kimberly Robinson and Jordan Rubin “discuss this term’s divisive nature, and what’s likely to come next.”

At Medium, Nick Lum points out that the South Dakota attorney general, who represented the state in South Dakota v. Wayfair, which cleared the way for states to tax internet purchases, admitted in an interview that he “has not been following the existing law by paying tax on his internet purchases.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in this case.]

Commentary on Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court ruled in favor of a baker who refused on religious grounds to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, comes from Jeremy Tedesco at Colorado Politics.

In an op-ed for The Gospel Coalition, Barronelle Stutzman, a florist who declined on religious grounds to design flowers for a same-sex wedding, and whose case the Supreme Court sent back for reconsideration in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop, asserts that “[i]f the government can require us to create art and participate in sacred events, or take all we own and destroy us for declining to submit to its demands, then we aren’t really free.”

At ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser is less than thrilled to find that “Justice Clarence Thomas is the most important legal thinker of his generation, and the most significant judicial appointment of the last forty years.”

In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel argues that Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, in which the court held that an Illinois law allowing public-sector unions to charge nonmembers for collective-bargaining activities violates the First Amendment, is “part of a multifaceted, unrelenting assault on unions to weaken a central pillar of progressive reform.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]

At The George Washington Law Review’s On the Docket blog, Richard Pierce discusses the implications of Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the court held that SEC administrative law judges are ‘officers of the United States’ within the meaning of the appointments clause, who have to be appointed by the president, a court or a department head.

We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast, or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com. Thank you!

The post Thursday round-up appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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Hendrix Oklahoma Cheap car insurance quotes zip 74741

"Hendrix Oklahoma Cheap car insurance quotes zip 74741

Hendrix Oklahoma Cheap car insurance quotes zip 74741

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ok, my aetna says it covers 100% of procedures, and i just have to pay the co-pays. i was thinking about going to mexico (i live in california) and having a gastric LAP-band procedure done. will my insurance pay for it, seeing as how its in another country? by the way, it is not an elective surgery, my insurance says it will pay for bariatric surgery if i have a bmi over 40, which i do. i just need to know if they wont cover it because of where it would done at.""

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As a young adult where did you buy your auto insurance and how much did you pay a month?

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Does anyone know any cheap insurance companies for me.?

i got my boyfriend a street bike and its under my name so the insurance has to be under my name to.

Health insurance questions...?

My health insurance is provided by and paid for by my employee. They are changing insurances effective Sept 1st; I'm scheduled for surgery on Sept 8th through the other company. How does this work? Do my deductibles that I've paid roll over?

What amount is considered low deductible for health insurance? what is a high amount?

what amount is considered a low amount for health insurance? what is considered a high amount?

Cheap auto insurance safe to have?

I'm going to buy auto insurance and the rates I'm getting are pretty low, $72.00 per month (Progressive) and $92.00 (Geico). But I picked the state's lowest minimum coverage that was available, and I was wondering if it's safe/okay to do that? Thanks :)""

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Question about affordable/good health insurance?

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Can health insurance coverage be dropped for a single department in a company? (Pennsylvania)?

I currently live in PA and my employer has said they will drop health insurance for my department, but not another department in the same company. I did some research online to see if this is possible or not. I originally started this job with guaranteed benefits and now they are being taken away. I was reading somewhere online (unsure of credibility, website is as follows:http://employee-benefits.lawyers.com/Employee-Benefits/Employer-Workplace-Benefits-FAQs.html) that a company cannot take away a certain departments health benefits and retain another departments. Below is the Q&A question from the stated website above: Q: Is my employer required to provide health benefits? A: Employers are generally not required to provide any health benefits. Only the state of Hawaii requires employers in the private sector to cover employees who work over 20 hours per week. Union contracts may include provisions for insurance as part of the agreement. However, health care and other benefits such as life or disability insurance are generally offered by employer as a means of attracting and keeping their workforce. If an employer does provide health coverage, federal law requires the employer to provide Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act (COBRA) to an employee who loses her job for any reason outside of gross misconduct the opportunity to maintain coverage up to 18 months at her own expense. This applies to companies with 20 or more employees. Some states also have laws with similar protections for employees who work for companies with less than 20 employees. Generally, it's not illegal to provide health benefits only to some classes of employees (for example, only to full-time employees but not to part-time employees). But once the eligible classes are established, an employer cannot withhold insurance from some members of the class while offering it to others. The employer can require employees to follow the rules of the plan, which may require an employee to fulfill a waiting period or wait for an open enrollment period before joining. An employer can usually change, or even eliminate, a health plan, but must follow the rules and guidelines of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). I understand they cannot choose and select who receives and who does not (I interpreted this as discriminating between employees). I do not know health legislature very well, and if anyone could provide some information it would be very appreciated. As for me, I am going to try and find more information out about this. Thank you.""

""Insurance for a 16 year old male, owning my own car, please help(ontario)?""

Im 16, male, in ontario, single, no other drivers in my family. I plan to own my own car, i know alot of you will say; depends on model or year of the car idk the answer to that because i dont have the car yet... but i do know it will be between the years 2001 and 2004 roughly, it will probably end up being a chevy, toyota, honda (just the average company) can anyone please give me a rough estimate what i will have to pay either per year or month doesnt matter thanks :)""

Getting Insurance to get a license?

I am having a hard time getting my without insurance. I have a permit but I need insurance to take the drivers test, but I don't have anyone to put me on theirs so I can take the test. Is there anything I can do so I can get insurance. Please help me""

How much does Bmw Insurance costs?

My dad and I will buy a BMW 2006-2008 3 Series he is 45 and he pays for his mazda 3 year 1998 80$ per month, but i wanna know how much will it costs for a BMW..we live in florida and i am 19""

Should my car insurance go up this high after an accident?

I got into an accident where I hit someone s bumper in a parking lot. I reported to my insurance company and they took care of it with $750. I was 100% at fault, and expected my renewal to go up, but when it came out, it was $800, which is 100% more than my usual insurance of $400 Does it suppose to go up 100%??!!! And this price will stay on for 6 years!!! That means by the end, I would end up paying $1800 more just to the company!! $1000 more than what I would've paid the guy!! This does not make sense to me whatsoever, first I thought the renewal was just for one year, it will go down bit by bit, but second year is still the same price! I am only a G2 driver who been driving for 3-4 years on PEI in Canada, can that be the reason? Still, $1800 extra?? Plz help me and thank you!""

Full Coverage Insurance on 08 Camry?

I am about to lease my first car. I have heard that I need full coverage insurance, but am a little unsure about what this means. I have gotten quotes from several insurance companies, but I don't really understand the coverage limits that they have. A few companies have easy coverage selections (ex: a high, medium, or low degree of protection). Does full coverage mean that I would need the highest degree of protection?""

Do I need to buy auto insurance for my used car dealership?

We are just starting out and wonder if our personal car insurance would cover test drives, or our driving the vehicles. It is a sole proprietorship.""

Affordable insurance w/ NO deductible and low premium?

I need you to tell me names of insurance not quote sites cuz they don't help. i need one for 2 ppl a mom and daughter. it shouldnt have a deductable or be more that 200 monthly.

Cheapest car to insure?

I'm not asking for lectures of any kind, I simply want to know what the cheapest cars are to insure. The Ford Ka is a cheap one. I don't want to be told there are no cheap car insurance, just the cheapest of them all. I'm a 17 year old male in Nov. Live with parents in a good area with no crime.""

Health Insurance for 24 year old male?

Son has Blue Cross but it is now $137 per month......anyone know of any comparable insurance that is cheaper and has similar benefits? It is just him....no wife or no kids. Thanks.

I'am 16 and does anyone has an idea how much would be my car insurance. i live in toronto?

16 yr old and wondering

What is a semi fast car that has a semi cheap insurance rate for a 16 year old new driver?

I am trying to find a car that is fast enough that i can have some fun in but im not going to be spending a lot for insurance. I also want to have a car htat would be good to hook up.

Can my mom insure my car if her name isn't on the title?

Right now I am driving a car my mom bought so only she is on the title and she insures it. I just bought a new one and was wondering if I put the title of the car in my name, can she insure it under her name. I just turned 19 and if I got a policy by myself in my own name I would have to pay more than twice as much as I do now (I give my mom the money for insurance its just under her name).""

If i drive less than 40 miles a day am I really entitled to more affordable car insurance?

You probably notice these ads on yahoo saying if you drive less than 40 miles you are entitled to cheap insurance to click on their ads to find out more. I was wondering if that true, what 's the trick?""

Got in an accident with no collision on my car insurance?

I got in an accident at and intersection the other day. i was heading north ready to turn west(my left) at the intersection. the other driver was heading south with her left blinker on ready to turn east (her left). so when i saw her blinker o n i figured it was safe to take my turn now. but in the middle of my turn she decides to keep going straight rather than turning left like her blinker had indicated. therefore she hit me in my rear passenger side with her front passenger side. she did not have much damage. however my car is fairly warped up in the rear end. it may even be totaled although it is drivable. i am just waiting for the appraisal right now. when we began speaking to the cop i mentioned that she had her blinker on, but she denied this. i alerted my insurance company and they filed a claim. i heard from her insurance company and they sent me to get and appraisal. i sent the accident report to the police station the rmv and my insurance yesterday. I do have insurance but i have no collision so i am real scared that it they put me at fault for some reason that i may be in some deep water. i am almost sure the damage to my car is at least a $5,000 fix. what are the odd of them ruling it her fault? and what are the odds of them ruling it my fault? also...how do you think think my damage will be fixed or covered? any help is much appreciated! thx!""

How much my insurance will go up?

How much my insurance will go up? I had an accident which totaled my car. I am 100% at fault for that accident and my car worth 15000$. I have clear driving record and no tickets in past two years. How much will my insurance go up I am paying 900$ for six months

How much would car insurance be for me? (teen)?

I'm 16. Driving a Honda Accord 2001, with 130,000 miles. I live in the state of Delaware. I'm a male, with about. 3.0 average in school. If you had to guesstimate , how much do you think my insurance would be?""

Does having a commercial drivers license affect my insurance rates?

I don't drive commercially for a living, so I'm wondering if having my CDL (which I do have) would affect my auto insurance rates positively or negatively. I have my CDL because I drive a bus every once in a while for the university where I work. Thanks for any help you can give.""

How much should i be paying for car insurance.?

im not sure if im over paying or not.. if i pay in full for 6 months up front it will be 700 dollars Im 22, married, and have only 1 speeding ticket that i recieved a year and a half ago.i have nothing else on my record I drive a 2002 eclipse that has been insured for 3 years straight, and i live in a small town with hardly any crime.""

Where can i get the cheapest car insurance with a dui in northern michigan?

Pulled over for no insurance but do have insurance?

today i got pulled over and couldn't find my insurance. i finally did find my insurance but the cop didn't want to write a new ticket. he said that i could take a copy of the insurance to the clerk at the police station and they would void the ticket. is this all correct?? also does this no anything to my insurance or points on my license. i live in missouri.

""Do you believe in having life insurance? If so, do you have life insurance?""

I have a friend who sells insurance so I wanted to ask you guys... 1.) Do you have life insurance? 2.) If not, why have you NOT purchased life insurance? 3.) If you HAVE purchased life insurance, what motivated you to purchase life insurance?""

Where to get temporary Health insurance for US Expats having a short visit to the U.S.?

Hi, we are U.S. citizens whose permanent residence is outside the U.S. We have health insurance in the country we reside, but unfortunately that does not cover us outside of the country. We are having a short visit to the U.S. for less than one month and would like to get some basic health insurance for our family. So far, most travel insurance I have found does not cover for travel in a country you are a citizen of (so ironically, we so far have had no luck getting travel insurance for the U.S., since we are U.S. citizens.) Therefore we are in a bit of a quandary. A) we only need insurance for a month and B) we don't need much more than something that covers for emergent or emergency care (i.e. something relatively inexpensive.) Please advise if you have ideas or experience on where we can get insurance.""

What IS affordable health care? How much does it cost?

All these questions are answered in insurance policies today, but with this bill, we are asked to support it without any of this information. How is that fair or just? Am I just to accept that the government will determine for me how much I am expected to pay and STILL support it?""

""Can a licensed driver, drive my car without having insurance?""

#1. I am insured under my parents Allstate Auto Insurance. My boyfriend is a licensed driver but does not have car insurance. If he drives my car and something happened, would Allstate cover it? #2. In a previous state, we were given the option of adding him to the plan or not allowing him to drive any of our vehicles. We signed the agreement that he would not drive our vehicles. Now, in a different state, would that follow us? #3. If he were to get insurance, I was told, a driver can not get insurance unless their name is on the title? Any help is greatly appreciated!""

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I wrecked my motorcycle with no insurance in fl help?

So a year ago i wrecked my motorcycle, crashing into another car. I did not have insurance or a motorcycle Endorsement. I live in fl so im kind of familiar with the not at fault law. However the insurance company from the other party has sent a bill for 9k an request i pay it. Some people are telling me to ignore it an others are telling me to pay. Need help would be thankful. Im trying to be a firefighter paramedic an i do not want this to kill my chances. Thank you""

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Im 17 planning on buying a 96 mustang with my own money and i was wondering about how much it would cost for liability for it...

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My wife and I recently married, and it's time for her to renew her insurance. Her driving record isn't great, so her rates have been quite high. Being that we're married, can I just add her vehicle to my own policy to save money, or will she need to have the insurance in her own name??""

Health Insurance Company in Ohio?

Affordable Health Insurance Company in Ohio

Information on car insurance coverage?

I was being driven over to a friends house to pick up some paper work, I do not have a driver liceance but my friend does, when another car passed us they came to far over and forced us in which resulted in us side swiping a parked car in the street, The car belongs to my fiance and myself, I'am on the insurance as iam in the process if obtaining a permitt, she drives the car very few times, only when I need to get somewhere and her son has her car, I filed the claim and when the claim adjustor got back to me she was saying our friend may have to run a claim through her insurance instead, we have full coverage collision and all, limited tort, in a no fault insurance state, PA, ive talked with many people and been told my insurance should cover it with no problem, she cannot claim this her son literally wrecked her car 2 months back, seeings how we are fully covered and she is a very occasional driver, I was told its the first thing they will try naturally as an insurance company is try to have everyone else foot the bill first, I'am curious as I'am certain we should be able to cover it, even though she was driving it was me on the passenger side who had said she should be able to move over as I was certain there was clearance which guess not as we were pretty certain the other driver would have hit us, will a full coverage policy cover this if the car in question has the policy on it and one of the insured on the policy was in the car at the time as well? we have Infinity auto insurance, thanks!""

What will happen If I appear to court with NO car insurance?

I recently got pulled over for speeding. But the officer discover that I didnt have any car insurance. I got a court date to attend but dont have any money to pay for insurance. What will happen if I appear to court with no money for the speeding ticket and no insurance? HELP PLEASE.

Universal Health Care- Insurance Companies?

Will private insurance still be available if the US becomes a single payer health care? If not, what will happen to all the insurance companies, will everyone be laid off?!?""

Bmw 1992 insurance cost?

what is the insurance cost for 1992 bmw 352i???

If a company is self insured (medical) that doesn't mean the company owns the ins. co. does it?

What is a good place to get auto insurance?

Are there any sites similar to travel sites where i can compare the best rates available to me

Will i still be on my parents' insurance?

So, there were a bunch of changes made to health insurance due to the Health Reform. i heard that the coverage i get from my parents (since i am a dependent) will last until i'm 26 now, instead of 21. we have western health advantage through my mom's work (i think) and live in california (not sure if that makes a difference). anyways, i'm 18 and currently in college. next semester i'm hoping to take off so that i can work full time and save up money so that i wont have to be so financially dependent on my parents in the near future. do i have to be in school in order to still be on my parents' health insurance? i will still be dependent until i get my own apartment and get married, which will be in about a year or 2""

Whats the cheapest 4x4 to insure at 18?

i'm 18, just passed my test, live with my parents in a small town and work full time at the supermarket, won't be driving it much, i just want a 4x4!""

Get a insurance quote on 2010 honda civic?

i just want to find out how much do you guys think the insurance would be for a person with the following: 1) NYC license of less than 2 years, age early 20s 2) full insurance coverage since it's new 3) registered somewhere in southern part of Staten Island 4) the car ran 2-3 red lights within the past 1 1/2 year, got camera ticketed the car is covered by AllState, i just want to find out how much is the car's insurance now, i am not the car owner, would it possibly be at 4-5k/year, since the car was ticketed a few times, thanks""

How much does insurance increase for a teen with an old car?

I was doing some research to buy my own car. I wanted either a 1976 dodge Monaco or a 1989 Chevy caprice. My question is, if I am 17 years old and I had this car, what is a rough estimate of how much my dads insurance will increase? I figure old cars and young drivers don't mix well but I need to know. Also, I have never gotten in any accident or received any tickets and I don't even remember the last time my parents crashed or got a ticket if that helps. Shanks""

What happens if lie to your car insurance company?

So i dented my mother's car by hitting another car. i told my mother it was a hit and run and she told me she was going to have the insurance company take care of it. The dent on the car wasn't that bad but it was pretty noticeable but the car that i hit didn't have any dents, just a few scratches .So the owner of car came out and took a look at her car and she said don't worry about it and thats when she let me go. I was pretty shocked of how she handle the situation. So can the car insurance find out if I'm was lying? i told them that a scooter hit it. The dent almost looks like somebody through a rock at it. The dent doesn't really look like i drove it into a car. its a really small dent with little cracks.""

SR-22 insurance for a 2002 VW Jetta?

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How much would insurance for a 16 year old beginning driver in a 25,000 car in California be. Thanks in advance friendly Yahoo Answers users :)""

Are Insure Pink a good car insurance company?

I have a Fiat 500c and am under 25, and got a quote for 1561 (this is including monthly fee interest) from an original annual price of 1370. This is pretty cheap compared to any others I have found and was wondering: 1. Do you find this a good quote? 2. Are Pink Insured good insurers? I was a bit worried because although I did the quote ON their website, when it gave me a quote it was through Advantage Insurance Company, so I'm a little confused. The quote does not include breakdown cover as I get that for free with the AA for 12 months.""

When I turn 25 does my car insurance automatically go down or do I have to notify them? (AAA car insurance)?

I heard when you turn 25 the car insurance rates go down a lot, but is it automatic or do I have to tell them?""

2010 Camaro LT 16 year old insurance?

I am a 16 year old and I want a 2010 Camaro. I'm not being ridiculous and getting a brand new Camaro 2ss. I am getting a used Camaro LT. I'm really responsible with straight A's and I was wondering how much the average insurance company would charge for a car look this and a guy like me.

Need help to find a car with cheap insurance?

Ok so im nearly 17 and i live in the uk so will be taking my driving test soon. I want a car that isnt to expensive to run and cheap insurance as insurance is really high at the moment an the car cant be to expensive either as i dont have a lot of money the most money i would be willing to be pay is about 2500 and cheapest insurance please!

Can I get my own auto insurance?

I am 16 years old and about to buy a car. My mother doesn't drive, so she doesn't have auto insurance. Would I be able to get insurance if she doesn't have her license? If so, with what company?""

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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/insurance-quote-bodily-larry-kennedy/"

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anneboleynresearch · 7 years

Text

Fall of Wolsey

“In October 1527...the imperial ambassador reported that Norfolk, Rochford, and their friends had made a league against the cardinal and had been trying to ruin him in his absence. Inigo de Mendoza was equally clear what a threat to Wolsey’s power Anne would be as Henry’s wife, unlike the present queen...The French ambassador reached a similar assessment, and some months later reported that the cardinal was planning to retire, knowing that his influence would not survive the marriage. Mendoza suggested two reasons for Anne’s hostility: Wolsey’s assumption that the next queen would be French and an earlier move by him which had deprived her father of ‘a high official post’. This latter could refer to...Boleyn having, in effect, to pay for his peerage by giving up the treasurership without an equivalent post in compensation. Mendoza was sure that Wolsey was doing his best to sabotage the divorce and was proposing to call a conference of experts in the hope that they would convince the king that the law was against him.

“[Several courtiers] believed that once Wolsey became convinced that Henry was adamant, he would execute a volte-face and support Anne rather than lose royal favour. This was the more perceptive analysis...Opposition in the spring and summer of 1527 thus turned out to be yet another brief testing of the cardinal’s place in royal favour...There was much to be said for her (and Henry) deciding...to stick with a man who knew his way about the international scene and who exuded the confidence that, so long as they trusted him, all would be well. Wolsey also quickly reestablished his psychological dominance on his return from France in a number of grand set pieces, culminating in the splendid ceremony of 1 November 1527 in which a French delegation invested Henry was a knight of the Order of St. Michel, and as news filtered back to England of the failure...to get papal support, the cardinal seemed even more the man to turn to.

“Like her father before her, [Anne] decided that the greater percentage was in becoming a client of the cardinal...all through the first half of 1528 her effort was to stand well with the man who would give her what she wanted. The brunt of this fell on Thomas Heneage, newly arrived in the privy chamber from Wolsey’s own household. At dinner 3 March 1528 Anne complained to him that the cardinal was neglecting her...[and] prevailed on him to join her at the table....As the meal progressed, Anne’s covertures became even plainer...Heneage offered a wry masculine apology when passing on the request...However, not for nothing had the cardinal put one of his best men to ‘mind’ Anne, and a fortnight later Heneage was writing again to thank Wolsey for his ‘kind and favourable writing unto her’...In June, Heneage reported on the news of Anne’s health after some ailment: ‘Mistress Anne is very well amended, and commendeth her humbly unto your grace, and thinketh it long til she speak with you.’

“Wolsey marked Anne’s recovery from the much more serious sweating sickness by ‘a kind letter’ and a ‘rich and godly present’, which she acknowledged directly along with her indebtness to Wolsey for his help...

“The letter ends with a promise of what she will do for Wolsey when...’this matter’ is at ‘a good end’, a promise she repeated in another letter soon afterwards. Most striking of all is a third letter at the start of August, when the ending of the epidemic allowed Anne to rejoin Henry. In the first part she sent good wishes to the cardinal, expressed her debt to him ‘never like to be recompensed on my part’, and mentioned the anxious waiting for Campeggio. Then she handed the letter to Henry and nagged him to complete it...The king also made clear why the couple was writing -- they were in a state because no news had reached England about Campeggio arriving in France. Very probably...[Henry and Anne] got the reassurance they wanted by return of post. Wolsey had an excellent professional manner.

“Not everyone has read the correspondence of 1528 in this way. Some have seen evidence of Anne’s volatile moods Others...have accused Anne of blatant insincerity. But Wolsey was suspected of that too. The imperial ambassador suggested in September 1528 that the more difficult the divorce could be made, the more Henry would need the cardinal, and the longer the suit could be strung out, the longer it would be before Anne could destroy his influence. Wolsey was certainly keen to ingratiate himself with Anne...Heneage clearly understood the priority Wolsey placed on news of Anne. By November 1528 the imperial ambassador was reporting that Wolsey had done a deal with Anne and her father, and stating...that Wolsey would...go the way the king wanted...

“There was...no reason not to trust Wolsey. The year 1528 did bring progress: first the commission brought back by Fox in May, and then the progressive news of Campeggio’s preparations and eventual departure to England. What frayed the couple’s nerves was all the time it took. Wolsey’s...fear was that he would not be able to secure a divorce on the terms Henry demanded. It was perfectly clear that the divine revelation to Henry about the meaning of Leviticus 20 would get nowhere. Campeggio would arrive fully and firmly convinced that the king was wrong in law, and Wolsey could share this with no one. As early as July 1527 he had been accused by the king of being lukewarm on the divorce because he suggested an alternative line of approach; in June 1528 the king lost his temper when Wolsey again tried to explain the problem. All this forced the minister to concentrate on two outside chances, either to try to bring about a French hegemony in Italy which would then make the pope the prisoner of an ally of England, or to deafen him with please to grant the divorce somehow and horror stories of what would happen if he did not. So long as that policy seemed to produce results, as it appeared to do in 1528, so long Wolsey seemed to justify the trust Henry and Anne had in him...

“It would be satisfying to be able to point to a single event...that broke the illusion of progress behind which Wolsey sheltered for so many months, but the realization was slow to dawn, especially on Henry. Campeggio wrote a very revealing report on 9 January 1929, showing that despite what he had tried to explain, the king had supreme confidence that ‘his merits and the urgency he uses therein’ could not fail...Wolsey, by contrast, was brutally pragmatic...

“Perhaps it was Anne who got to the truth first, possibly at the time when she insisted on being brought back to court, where Henry was soon...’kissing her and treating her in public as though she were his wife’. She had been frustrated by the legate’s slow journey; she had been suspicious at being kept out of Campeggio’s way and ignored by him; she had been expecting rapid progress once he did arrive on 8 October, and month later all that had been achieved was the ruin of Henry’s self-confidence. Already on 1 November 1529 Wolsey had warned the pope that ‘many people were again and again insinuating to the king’ the necessity of adopting policies which would inevitably threaten the authority of Rome. Nor was he bluffing. At the end of the month [November 1529] the king did send Anne’s cousin, Francis Bryan, to Clement VII along with Peter Vannes, his Latin secretary, with instructions...to force the Holy Father into submission, if necessary with the threat that otherwise England would withdraw its allegiance to the see of Rome. About the same time there was the first sign of...the preparation of a monster petition to the pope from the English political elite, urging him to grant the divorce in the national interest.

“It may...be premature to see in all this the evidence of a serious rift between Anne and Wolsey in November 1528, but...only by a month or so. It was about the third week of the following January [1529] that Anne had her second brush with the cardinal over Cheney, and when the French ambassador reporter her victory in this, he noted that Norfolk and his faction...were already ‘talking big’...Anne had decided that Wolsey was trying to frustrate, not assist, the divorce and had formed an alliance with Rochford and with both Norfolk and Suffolk. The naming of Suffolk for the first time as one of the group attacking Wolsey is significant, and so too is the mention of Anne as an equal party...an instigator...The confidence of the group increased as letter followed letter from Rome. Sending Bryan...had placed in Rome a source of information quite independent of Wolsey. And it was not only Henry who now received the unvarnished truth; Bryan wrote direct to Anne, although when the news was particularly grim he asked her to consult the king...

“From the start the news was bleak. Bryan had arrived on 14 January 1529, but because of the pope’s ill health he had not even presented his credentials before Gardiner arrived a month later to strengthen the team, and it was a further month before they achieved their first substantive session with Clement. Their reports were full of despair...

“Bryan also communicated from time to time with ‘my masters and fellows of your grace’s chamber’, and although he was no doubt discreet, his failure to announce the great breakthrough could be interpreted by everyone...Very soon, we find that one of the most brilliant of the king’s advisors, Stephen Gardiner, had swung to Anne’s support. A protege of Wolsey and noted in August 1527 as a supporter of Katherine, the future bishop of Winchester had decided...that Anne was going to win. He wrote in March 1529 assuring her of his devotion, and she replied in phrases typical of the patron to the client...

“Ironically, the one person whom Anne found difficult to motivate against the cardinal was Henry. Whether this was scepticism about Norfolk’s ability to succeed if Wolsey failed...or a dependence engendered over fifteen years, or the minister’s unrivalled ability and his proven record of success, Henry was anxious to cling to his right-hand man. There was a rumor in January [1529] that he was beginning to distrust Wolsey’s promises, and he did keep Norfolk, Suffolk, and Rochford more in the picture. Yet through the spring of 1529, Henry and Wolsey made common cause in an effort to force concessions from the pope. The king clung to the illusion that the pope was genuinely anxious to help and that he only needed encouragement, and the minister kept his doubts to himself. On 6 April they wrote in parallel to the English envoys to reject the ‘desperation’ in the reports from Rome, implying lack of zeal and urging greater efforts, although when Bryan’s even gloomier next letter could not resist a suitably expressed ‘I told you so’, it was Wolsey who had to make apologies on behalf of the king. Every piece of correspondence from Rome...was scrutinized for evidence of papal good intentions. Clement would yield.

“In January [1529] the resident English ambassador at Rome had sent an envoy to explain that the pope would budge no further, and Campeggio had tried again and again to convince both Henry and Wolsey that the pope could not bend the law in their favour, that the Holy Father was adamant. Clement would not quash the dispensation for Katherine’s second marriage. The very idea that the English should expect this offended him deeply, as did their relentless pressure...When eventually letters from Rome did carry conviction, Henry and Wolsey attributed failure entirely to imperial obstruction; and they turned on Campeggio, or rather, since they still needed him, on his senior staff, with a joint display of criticism which was only partly engineered by Wolsey to put the blame for his own public over-confidence on the pope’s deceit...they had decided on a new tack: to go for rapid decision on the suit in England...

“Securing a favorable judgement in England would outflank the Emperor’s pressure and give the pope just the excuse he was supposedly looking for to help Henry. Confidence was maintained even when news arrived that imperial envoys were pressing Clement to revoke the case to Rome...Suddenly Campeggio found himself rushed into action. A decision was wanted, now!

“An opening of the legatine court at Blackfriars on 31 May 1529 was...the latest in a succession of manouevres that king and cardinal were confident would give them what they wanted and vindicate Henry’s faith in his minister. Few other people were as sure. Campeggio knew that he was under papal orders to avoid a decision at all costs. Anne and her allies went on with their preparations against the cardinal, confident that only the miracle of a legatine decision could now save him. Bryan...wrote: ‘Whosoever made your grace believe that he [Clement] will do for you in this cause hath not, as I think, done your grace the best service...in December, Bryan had passed on a warning from Francis I that Henry had quislings among his advisors. In May [1529], when Wolsey’s ally, Sir John Russell, was ordered to France as the cardinal’s representative and to stiffen the war effort there, he was recalled in the actual process of embarking his horses at Sandwich. Anne Boleyn had reminded the king of Bryan’s warning, and Suffolk was dispatched to France instead, with secret orders to probe the matter. The duke did so in a transparent effort to implicate Wolsey, and although Francis spoke well of the minister’s loyalty and his warning had actually been against Campeggio, under pressure he did...add the innuendo that Wolsey had...’such intelligence with them which have not minded to advance your matter...’

“There was a second motive too behind the sending of Suffolk; to have an anti-Wolsey partisan to represent England at the peace conference which was beginning to assemble in Flanders...Wolsey had intended to go himself...but he had to content himself with hamstringing Suffolk’s instructions and precipitating his early return.

“When Brandon got back in the first week of July [1529], he found that Anne’s faction was ready for the showdown. His wife’s humanist schoolmaster, John Palsgrave, who also had links with the duke of Richmond and his mentor, the duke of Norfolk, had been called up to prepare a propaganda pamphlet mocking Wolsey’s period in office as a time of pride, waste, autocratic repression and ineffective tinkering. Lord Darcy...had drawn up a plan of action -- an immediate arrest of Wolsey and his agents, the impounding of their papers, and a thorough investigation of his administration: precisely the sort of coup that had destroyed Empson and Dudley in 1509. The topics to be scrutinized were listed in detail, the texts drafted of proclamations inviting all complaints, all with the obvious end of securing a parliamentary Act of attainder. The only refinement Suffolk needed to add when he got back was to have his own men keep watch on the posts going across the Channel. All that was lacking was the occasion for Anne to ‘prove’ to Henry that the suspicions about Wolsey that had been fed to him were justified. Deprived of royal favour, the cardinal would then be ‘naked to his enemies’.

“The fiasco at Blackfriars appeared exactly the opportunity which was wanted. Anne herself was close enough to Henry during the hearings to deliver the coup de grace...Katherine of Aragon had no doubt that a failure of the legatine hearing would provide the opportunity to break the bond between the king and cardinal, and Edward Hall certainly states that it was the failure there which convinced Henry of Wolsey’s double dealing. This allowed the attack prepared by Anne and the rest to go in. A ‘book’ detailing 34 charges against the minister was presented to the king before he left for his summer progress...probably between 31 July and 4 August [1529], probably alleging that Wolsey was guilty of praemunire, the offense of introducing an illegal foreign authority into England...acting on the alien authority of the pope.

“To the chagrin of the conspirators, Henry took no action. The only part of their scheme which was put in hand was the issue of writs to summon parliament. The reason the attack was stalled was that Wolsey had pre-empted to it. He had moved the very next day after the closure of the Blackfriars court to conciliate Rochford and the king with what each appreciated most, money. The previous February [1529] the cardinal had exchanged the bishopric of Durham...for the richest English see, Winchester. This had left the revenues of Durham at the king’s disposal, and in the last week of July [1529] he had granted them to Anne’s father. Wolsey thereupon threw in the four months’ income due to him for the period October 1528 to February 1529, saying that he had always regarded that as belonging to the king and offering to expedite payment to Rochford. Following the success of the bribe, Wolsey’s indispensability rapidly reasserted itself, not only in the management of the divorce, where had was still the key man in relations with Rome, but also diplomacy. All evidence suggests that the summer vacation of 1529 began and promised to continue in the normal way, with the king and the minister pursuing their own ways until Michaelmas but keeping up an active communication by letter and occasional meetings...

“...when Henry and Wolsey were separated for the summer progress of 1529 there was one crucial difference from the year before: Anne Boleyn. There would be no more of the courteous communications and elegant gifts of 1528. Instead...Anne would have the field to herself and her supporters, who were dedicated to bringing him down and who now had a ready welcome at court -- Norfolk, Suffolk, and particularly Rochford, whose duties as chaperon made him also ‘counsellor in residence’. Yet progresses end, and Wolsey could know that if he sat tight, the autumn would come and with it the chance to work his magic with the king once again; he could still prove himself too strong for then. August proceeded and the cardinal continued to handle English affairs as usual. Then, with a month or six weeks of the progress to go, the cardinal began to make mistakes, mistakes which handed his enemies the issue that they had been looking for, not merely to curb his authority but to destroy him completely. His own errors...were in the two areas of his greatest competence -- his understanding of the king and his handling of diplomacy. Cardinal Wolsey...lost Henry’s confidence from late August onwards by miscalculating the king’s mood and by mishandling the Treaty of Cambrai, in which Francis I totally deceived him and caused him, in turn, to mislead his master.

“...a brief account [of 1529] will reveal how it enabled her and her faction to bring him down. Wolsey had for months recognized the probability of peace between Francis I and Charles V, and as early as March 1529 had begun to behave again as the doyen of European summit diplomacy...which opened up the possibility that Anglo-French cooperation might force the emperor to abandon Katherine of Aragon as part of the price for peace. Wolsey and Henry were agreed on this approach, but the decision in early May [1529] to go for a legatine trial in England posed the question of priorities, and the cardinal found to his horror that the king believed that the hearing took precedence over international troubleshooting. Wolsey knew the odds against a decision at Blackfriars and that the only hope was to keep up diplomatic and military pressure to persuade the pope to oblige Henry, but he had to acquiesce.

“The consequence was, first, that Russell had been sent to France instead of Wolsey, only to be recalled...at the insistence of Anne, in favour of Suffolk. Then, when Wolsey had managed to neutralize that embassy, he found to his horror that his requests to have the peace conference delayed until after the Blackfriars verdict were being ignored by the French, thanks...to the obstructive tactics of...du Bellay...Even then, with the negotiations at Cambrai due to begin on 5 July [1529], Henry still refused to let Wolsey go, sending instead Bishop Tunstall and Thomas More, and the cardinal had to waste his time at Blackfriars while...Europe’s future was being settled between France and the Empire...Wolsey’s frustration became evident in an attempt he made in July [1529] to embarrass Suffolk (and Anne). The duke’s probing of Francis I on the cardinal’s loyalty had been under a strict pledge of secrecy, but Francis told du Bellay and the ambassador let something of this slip to Wolsey, who promptly complained to Henry that Suffolk had maligned him to the French king. The king, unable to admit publicly his own complicity, had to side with the minister until a fortunate...indisposition kept Suffolk away from court and, with the simultaneous absence of du Bellay, made it difficult for Wolsey and make more of the affair.

“The treaty of Cambrai was signed on 3 August 1929, but this did not mean the end of Wolsey’s nightmare. He had been forced to stand by powerless as the French had duped him. Henry now faced the situation that he had most feared: a pope who was the emperor’s man; the ending of the French pressure to force Charles out of Italy; the revocation of the divorce suit by Clement and the prospect of being cited to appear before a hostile tribunal in Rome.

0 notes

melleyvaa-blog · 7 years

Text

PBL 4 Global Business Environment File

Problem: HOW GOVERNMENT DECISIONS IMPACT THE NATIONAL ECONOMY?

How could subsidies benefit the economy of a country? Globalization Benefits World Economies

Most economists agree that globalization provides a net benefit to individual economies around the world, by making markets more efficient, increasing competition, limiting military conflicts, and spreading wealth more equally around the world. However, the general public tends to assume that the costs associated with globalization outweigh the benefits, especially in the short-term, which has caused problems we’ll explore in the next section on protectionism.

Some of the benefits of globalization include:

Foreign Direct Investment. Foreign direct investment (“FDI”) tends to increase at a much greater rate that the growth in world trade, helping boost technology transfer, industrial restructuring, and the growth of global companies.

Technological Innovation. Increased competition from globalization helps stimulate new technology development, particularly with the growth in FDI, which helps improve economic output by making processes more efficient.

Economies of Scale. Globalization enables large companies to realize economies of scale that reduce costs and prices, which in turn supports further economic growth, although this can hurt many small businesses attempting to compete domestically.

https://www.thebalance.com/globalization-and-its-impact-on-economic-growth-1978843

WHAT POLICIES ARE THERE TO SAVE THE ECONOMY?

The following points highlight the six main public policies to promote Economic Growth. The Policies are:

1. Altering the Saving Rate

2. Reduction in Non-Plan Revenue Expenditure

3. Policies to Raise the Rate of Productivity Growth

4. Technological Progress

5. Reduction in Government Regulation

6. Industrial Policy.

# 1. Altering the Saving Rate

According to the Solow model of growth, the rate of saving and investment is a key determinant of a country’s rate of growth and standard of living of its citizens. In the Solow model the saving rate determines the steady-state levels of capital and output. Only one particular saving rate generates the Golden Rule steady state, i.e., the rate which maximises consumption per worker and, thus, economic well-being.

In order to ascertain whether an economy is at, above, or below the Golden Rule steady- state, we have to compare the net marginal physical product of capital (MPK – δ) with the rate of growth of output (n + g). We know that at the Golden Rule steady state, MPK – δ = n + g.

(i) Reduction in personal income tax:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

A tax cut imparts the needed dynamism to the economy.

As the US Supreme Court commented:

“The power to tax is not only the power to destroy but also the power to keep alive.” Tax cut promotes growth in various ways. It encourages people to work hard, save more and take more risks (i.e., invest more in venture capital).

Apart from reducing the nominal tax rate, it is necessary to index tax brackets to inflation to prevent ‘bracket creep’, i.e., an increase in the marginal tax rate. The application of supply-side economic policies in the 1980s under the dynamic leadership of Ronald Reagan has proved conclusively that tax cuts increase labour supply and, therefore, output.

Personal income tax cuts increase personal saving. Lower marginal tax rates improve incentives for labour supply, saving and investment.

(ii) Reduction in business taxes:

The tax policy should be such as to encourage capital formation by increasing the after-tax return to investment. An important component of the policy should be accelerated cost recovery system, which is a set of accelerated depreciation allowances for business plant and equipment.

For example, a piece of equipment that could have been depreciated over a 10-year period can be allowed to be depreciated over a 5-year period. In addition, the investment tax credit for certain types of equipment can be increased to encourage capital formation.

These business tax cuts aim at offsetting the inflation-induced increase in the effective tax rate on business profits. Such tax cuts are consistent with the supply-side view that the best way to encourage corporate capital formation is by increasing the after-tax return to investment. Even low capital gains tax is unlikely to have a favourable effect on saving and thus, on capital formation.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Advantages and disadvantages:

The aims of tax reforms are: first, to broaden the tax base by eliminating many deductible items and, second, to reduce marginal tax rate. The combination of these actions is offsetting in nature. So total tax revenues will neither rise nor fall.

However, to keep tax reform from reducing tax revenues, there is need to remove many reductions and eliminate a number of tax shelters. This is likely to encourage tax evasion and avoidance.

If savings are highly responsive to the real interest rate, tax cut that increases the real return to savings would be effective. So a judicial policy is to tax households on the basis of their consumption rather than on the basis of their savings. This means exempting that portion of income which is saved from taxation.

Government Saving:

The government can also save more by reducing the budget deficit. One way of doing this is to curtail government purchases. Alternatively, raising taxes to reduce deficit or increase the surplus will also increase national saving by forcing people to consume less.

However, the Barro-Ricardo equivalence theorem suggests that tax increases without changes in current or planned government purchases do not affect consumption or national saving.

There are two ways of raising the rate of saving. The government can directly increase the rate of saving by increasing its own saving, called public saving. Public saving is the excess of government tax revenue over government expenditure.

When government expenditure exceeds its revenue, there is a deficit in the budget. This amounts to negative public saving1. So it is necessary for the government to generate a surplus in the budget to ensure that public saving is positive. If the government generates a budget surplus it can repay some of the debt and stimulate investment.

The government can also affect national saving by influencing private saving — saving of the household sector and the corporate sector (i.e., retained earnings of corporations). This is largely a matter of incentives. Various public policies may be used to provide such incentives. However, economists differ in their opinion regarding how much private saving responds to incentives.

Public Policy # 2.

Reduction in Non-Plan Revenue Expenditure

No doubt personal and business tax cut should increase aggregate supply and, therefore, produce non-inflationary real output growth. Moreover, such growth would increase tax base and, therefore, increase tax revenues to offset, largely, or even completely, the revenue loss due to the lower tax rates.

However, to ensure that demand is not overly stimulated, the economy is not overheated and to keep the budget deficit as small as possible, there is need to cut non-plan revenue expenditure in areas such as housing and income support programmes (including subsidies) so as to reduce the magnitude of public debt.

A fall in the size of public debt will also reduce the interest burden on such debt.

Disadvantage:

Failure to cut spending, together with tax reduction will lead to high government budget deficit. The consequent inflation may act as a growth-retarding factor.

Public Policy # 3.

Policies to Raise the Rate of Productivity Growth

Perhaps the most important factor affecting the long-run living standards is the rate of productivity growth. According to the Solow model only sustained growth in productivity can lead to continuing improvement in output and consumption per worker.

Government policy can attempt to increase productivity in three ways:

(i) Improving infrastructure:

The Solow model assumes that there is only one type of capital, viz., physical capital. While the private sector invest in plants, machinery, computers and robots, the government invests in various forms of public capital, called infrastructure.

There is a strong link between productivity and quality of a nation’s infrastructure — its highways, bridges, utilities, dams, airports and other publicly owned capital. Highways linking one state with others reduce the cost of transporting goods and stimulate tourism and other industries.

It is necessary for the government to recognise both the market’s efficiencies and its imperfections. So there is a case for a ‘stimulus package’ consisting of public investment in infrastructure, worker retraining and partnership between business and government to move resources from ‘sunset’ industries (i.e., industries losing comparative advantage) to sunrise industries (i.e., industries gaining comparative advantage).

(ii) Building human capital:

There is another type of capital — human capital — which is equally important in promoting growth and prosperity of nations. Such capital refers to the knowledge and skills that workers achieve through education and training which lead to skill formation, improved efficiency and enhanced productivity. Human capital, much like physical capital, enhances an economy’s ability to produce goods and services.

Raising the level of human capital requires investment. N. G. Mankiw and David Romer in explaining international differences in living standards have demonstrated clearly that human capital is at least as important as physical capital.

There is a strong connection between productivity growth and human capital. The government can affect human capital development through educational policies, worker training and health programmes.

However, such programmes are justified if benefits exceed costs. There is clearly a case for greater commitment to human capital formation as a way to boost productivity growth.

For promoting investment in human capital the government has to make investment on such capital. It is because such capital generates technological externality (or knowledge spill). Since social benefit from such investment exceeds private benefit the government has to take the lead in making investment in human capital or subsidise such investment.

(iii) Entrepreneurship Development:

One crucial form of human capital, ignored by the Solow model is entrepreneurial skill. Entrepreneurs or the captains of industries act as an engine of growth. It is because they are people with the ability to build a new product, business or introduce something new to the market.

Productivity growth may increase if the govern��ment were to remove unnecessary barriers to entrepreneurial ability (such as excessive red tape, rent seeking, bribery and corruption at all levels) and the people with entrepreneurial skills make intensive use of those skills.

(iv) Encouraging research and development (R&D):

The government may also stimulate productivity growth by affecting rates of scientific and technical progress. The benefits of scientific progress, like those of human capital development, spread throughout the economy.

Basic scientific research is always beneficial from society’s point of view. So the government should make more investment on such policy. Even more applied, commercially- oriented research deserves government support and financial aid.

Public Policy # 4.

Technological Progress:

Various public policies are designed to promote technological progress. Most such policies encourage the private sector to allocate substantial amount of resources to technological innovation. This can be done by the patent system which gives protection to intellectual property rights for a specific time period.

At the same time the government can play an active role in promoting a few specific industries which are the carriers of rapid technological progress, called knowledge-intensive industries or sunrise industries.

Public Policy # 5.

Reduction in Government Regulation:

Excessive government regulation in the form of air quality, worker safety and consumer product safety often proves to be very costly and retards economic growth. So the aim of government policy should be to eliminate wasteful or outdated regulations and to make necessary regulations more efficient and flexible.

Some specific regulatory measures may be to decontrol petroleum markets, abolish licensing regulations, reduce monopoly control and stop excessive monopoly hunting and to introduce a cost-benefit analysis of government expenditure.

Public Policy # 6.

Industrial Policy:

Apart from giving support for basic science and technology, the government can encourage technological development through industrial policy. In general, industrial policy is a growth strategy in which the government uses taxes, subsidies or regulations in order to influence the nation’s pattern of development.

To be more specific, the government should subsidise and promote ‘high tech’, industries, so as to try to achieve or maintain national leadership in technologically dynamic areas.

For at least two reasons free markets fail to allocate resources in case of high technology, viz., (i) borrowing constraints and (ii) spillovers.

Borrowing constraints refer to the limits imposed by lenders on the amounts that individuals or small firms can borrow. Due to borrowing constraints, private companies, especially start-up firms, may have difficulty in obtaining enough financing for some projects. Development of a new super-computer, for example, may require a huge amount of investment in R&D and involve a long period during which expenses are high and cash flows are unlikely to be generated.

Spillovers occur when one company’s innovation — say, the development of an improved computer memory chip — generates aggregate supply externality, i.e., it stimulates a flood of related innovations and technical improvements by other companies and industries.

The innovative company may thus enjoy only some of the total benefits of its breakthrough while bearing the full development cost. Since social benefit exceeds private benefit, without government subsidy such companies may not have a sufficiently strong incentive to innovate.

These two arguments in favour of government intervention assume that the government is skilled enough at picking ‘winning’ technologies. A danger of industrial policy is that wrong industries may emerge due to favouritism shown by the politicians. At the same time industries with the maximum economic promise may be neglected.

In general industrial policy is not desirable because, in choosing industries to target, governments have frequently backed the wrong industries; the costly attempt to develop those industries which are unlikely to show much promise in the long run. Alternative policies — such as a tax break for all research and development spending — promote technology without requiring the government to target specific industries.

However, government intervention may be desirable in some cases, notably in the early development stages of technologically innovative products, such as computers and CAT scanners. In reality, we find that the potential for beneficial spillovers in these cases is very large.

So there is a strong justification for government intervention in such areas, even though many projects the government may choose to support ultimately will not prove to be economically feasible.

http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/economic-growth/6-main-public-policies-to-promote-economic-growth/15432

WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZE THEIR OWN COMMODITIES?

The World Trade Organization has a broader definition of subsidies. It says a subsidy is any financial benefit provided by a government which gives an unfair advantage to a specific industry, business or even individual. The WTO mentions five types of subsidies:

Cash subsidies, such as the grants mentioned above.

Tax concessions, such as exemptions, credits or deferrals.

Assumption of risk, such as loan guarantees.

Government procurement policies that pay more than the free-market price.

Stock purchases that keep a company’s stock price higher than market levels.

These are all considered subsidies because they reduce the cost of doing business. (Source: “Defining Subsidies,” World Trade Report 2006, World Trade Organization.)

The U.S. federal government offers many more subsidies that it thinks will improve the economy. For example, the Cash for Clunkers program in 2009 was a subsidy to auto dealers, according to the BEA. In the program, dealers received a $3,500-$4,500 subsidy from the federal government after discounting a new vehicle to a consumer who traded in an old car. The goal was to jump-start the economy after the recession. It also aimed to encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and lessen U.S. reliance on foreign oil. (Source: “How Is the CARS Program Reflected in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs)?” BEA FAQs.)

https://www.thebalance.com/government-subsidies-definition-farm-oil-export-etc-3305788

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nancyedimick · 7 years

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Who wants to put democracy in chains?

In her badly flawed book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, historian Nancy MacLean gets many, many things wrong about the history and purposes of libertarianism. Jonathan Adler, David Bernstein (see also here), Phil Magness (also here), Russell Roberts, and Michael Munger, and others, have highlighted some of her most important fallacies and distortions.

On one issue, however, she is largely correct: it is indeed true that libertarians want to impose tight limits on the power of democratic majorities. Calling this agenda a “stealth plan” is, of course, ridiculous. It is much like saying that pro-lifers have a “stealth plan” to restrict abortion, or that Bernie Sanders has a stealthy agenda to expand government control over the economy. Skepticism about the power of democratic majorities has been a central – and completely open – feature of classical liberal and libertarian thought for centuries. The Founding Fathers, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and many others held such views. It was Thomas Jefferson, writing in protest of the Alien and Sedition Acts, not James Buchanan and the Koch brothers (the central villains of MacLean’s story), who wrote that “[i]n questions of power,… let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Regardless, MacLean tries to use libertarians’ suspicion of unconstrained democracy as a cudgel with which to deligitimize them and prove that they are outside the bounds of reasonable political discourse. Why would anyone want to put “chains” on democracy, if not to empower a narrow oligarchy of the wealthy, as she claims libertarians want to do?

Yet libertarians are far from the only ones who want to chain down democracy. Consider a group MacLean may have some sympathy with: mainstream modern left-liberals. Are they populist champions of the will of the people? Do they want to empower democratic majorities to rule as they see fit? Pretty obviously not. In some ways, the left wants to put even more chains on democracy than libertarians do. That does not mean liberals are nefarious champions of oligarchy. Far from it, in fact. But if you agree with all or most of the left-wing critique of unconstrained democracy, that gives you good reason to accept significant parts of the libertarian critique, as well. At the very least, you cannot just dismiss it as a smokescreen for oligarchy.

I. Chaining Down Democracy through Judicial Review.

Where does the left want to chain democracy? Let us count just some of the ways. Most modern left-liberals want judicial review to constrain majorities on a wide range of issues. They include abortion, privacy rights, robust definitions of free speech (including many cases far removed from political speech) and freedom of religion, extensive limitations on the powers of law enforcement personnel. Like most libertarians and many conservatives, liberals also support the application of the Bill of Rights against state governments (as well as the federal government), which has led to numerous constraints on the powers of democratic elected governments.

Left-liberals also want courts to forbid many types of discrimination that democratic majorities often support, including discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. More recently, they have begun to expand this to cover to discrimination based on mental illness, discrimination against the handicapped, discrimination against non-citizens, and discrimination against transgender people. Taken together, that’s a whole of lot chains weighing down democracy, covering a very wide range of issues.

It is ironic that MacLean falsely accuses of James Buchanan and other libertarians of opposing Brown v. Board of Education, while also attacking them for wanting to put tight limits on democracy. A consistent majoritarian democrat should be opposed to Brown. After all, that decision struck down major public policies enacted by elected officials and strongly supported by majority public opinion in those states that adopted them. In fairness, those states were not fully democratic because they denied the franchise to African-Americans. Had blacks been able to vote at the time, Jim Crow segregation would surely have been less oppressive. But a great many segregation policies would likely have been enacted nonetheless, since blacks were a minority and the white majority in those states was strongly racist. The Brown case itself actually arose in Kansas, where blacks did have the vote, but still lacked sufficient political clout to prevent the white majority from enacting school segregation.

Why do many on the left want to chain down democracy in so many ways? Progressive thinkers give a variety of answers to these questions. But, in most cases, it comes down to claims that the democratic process is systematically flawed in dealing with various issues. The flaws may be caused by voter ignorance, prejudice, the “tyranny of the majority,” the influence of powerful special interests, a tendency to victimize groups with little political influence, or other other factors.

Some left-wing thinkers also argue that certain rights are just too important to be subjected to the vagaries of shifting political majorities. They should instead be guaranteed against violation, regardless of the preferences of politicians and voters.

In some cases, judicial intervention can be defended as a tool for facilitating participation in the democratic process (e.g. – judicial protection for political speech). But this “representation-reinforcement” theory cannot cover more than a modest fraction of the areas where most of the modern left supports aggressive judicial review.

Admittedly, there is a crucial difference between libertarians and liberals, when it comes to judicial review. Most libertarians want to expand judicial protection of property rights and economic liberties, while the left is very wary of judicial intervention to curtail government power over the economy. But many of the same reasons that liberals advance in defense of judicial protection of “noneconomic” rights apply to property rights and economic freedom, as well. It’s hard to deny that economic policy is often heavily influenced by ignorance, prejudice, the tyranny of the majority, tendencies to victimize the poor and politically weak, and so on. Federal and state courts’ withdrawal from protection of property rights in the mid-twentieth century led to such massive abuses as the forcible displacement of hundreds of poor and minorities through “urban renewal” and “economic development” takings.

Whether economic liberties and property rights are as important as “noneconomic” freedoms is a complex question. But, at least some of the former rights do have great significance, arguably greater than some of the latter. At the very least, it’s hard to understand why the courts should closely scrutinize the government’s decision to search a house, but turn a blind eye to the far more consequential decision to condemn and destroy it, or to zoning restrictions that in many cities make it virtually impossible for the working class to find housing at all.

This post cannot possibly resolve the longstanding debate over the appropriate scope of judicial review. Libertarians and the left are likely to continue to differ on these issues. Here, I just want to make the more limited point that people who favor aggressive judicial review on a wide range of “noneconomic” issues should not categorically dismiss the possibility that their justifications for doing so apply to various economic policies, as well. At the very least, they have no basis for dismissing those who make this connection as evil apologists for oligarchy.

II. Majoritarian Democracy vs. the Modern Regulatory State.

Strong judicial review is far from the only way in which many on the left seek to constrain democratic majorities. An important strain of left-liberal thought also advocates concentrating extensive power in the hands of bureaucratic administrators and other experts. Because the public is often ignorant and easily misled about complex regulatory issues, leading scholars such as Cass Sunstein and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argue that many policy decisions should be left in the hands of experts who enjoy a substantial degree of insulation from the pressures of the political process. I look forward to reading Nancy MacLean’s book about how Breyer, Sunstein, and others with similar views are shills for a narrow class of would-be bureaucratic oligarchs!

Some important parts of the regulatory state already enjoy considerable insulation from electoral pressure. The Federal Reserve Board (which controls most aspects of monetary policy) is perhaps the best-known example. Advocates of the technocratic strain in left-liberal thought would like to establish similar insulation for many other regulatory agencies.

The conflict between democracy and the modern regulatory state favored by most on the left, goes well beyond explicit efforts to insulate bureaucrats from the democratic process. Even if we abjure all formal efforts to create such insulation, bureaucrats and other unelected officials would still wield enormous power. The sheer size and scope of modern government makes that unavoidable.

In most Western democracies, government spending accounts for 35 to 40 percent of GDP, or even more. The state also extensively regulates most aspects of our lives. Data from around the world show that most voters have very limited political knowledge, often unaware of very basic facts about government and public policy.

Even if the electorate were significantly more attentive than it actually is, they still could not keep track of more than a small fraction of all the issues controlled by modern government. It is even more difficult for voters to figure out how seemingly disparate government policies interact with each other. For example, few voters realize that zoning restrictions not only reduce the availability of housing, but also close off job opportunities for millions of people.

Because of these dynamics, vast areas of government policy are left largely to the discretion of political elites, many of them unelected executive branch officials and bureaucrats. The more issues are under the control of democratic government as a formal legal matter, the less the voters are actually able to monitor what is going on. As James Madison put it in Federalist 62, “[I]t will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

By contrast with most of the left, libertarians are much more wary of delegating power to bureaucrats and experts. If they had their way, government would do a lot less than is currently the case. But a much higher percentage of the government power that remains would be subject to tight public control. Moreover, a smaller, simpler government would be considerably easier for voters to monitor. In this important sense, libertarians are actually more supportive of democracy – defined as public control over government policy – than many on the left are. The government that governs least may not be best in every way. But it is likely to be more meaningfully democratic than one that regulates and controls as much as the modern state does.

The point of all this is not to denounce the left as vile enemies of democracy. Much to the contrary. In many of the areas where liberals favor strong judicial review, I think they are right to do so. For example, I too favor aggressive judicial protection of many “noneconomic” rights, agree that courts were justified in striking down laws banning same-sex marriage, and that they should invalidate Trump’s travel ban executive order, among other discriminatory policies.

While I am not a fan of delegating broad power to bureaucrats and other experts, I do recognize the seriousness of the problem people like Breyer and Sunstein are trying to address, and that they are attempting to deal with it in good faith. I agree that widespread political ignorance and scientific ignorance are serious dangers, but differ when it comes to the solutions.

Instead of demonizing each other, we should recognize the considerable common ground that exists on the need to constrain majoritarian abuses in many areas. You don’t have to be a libertarian to recognize that completely unchained democracy is likely to be a menace. That recognition might help us have a more productive discussion on the issues where we differ.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/10/who-wants-to-put-democracy-in-chains/

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wolfandpravato · 7 years

Text

Who wants to put democracy in chains?

I. Chaining Down Democracy through Judicial Review.

II. Majoritarian Democracy vs. the Modern Regulatory State.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/10/who-wants-to-put-democracy-in-chains/

#Law #Lawyer

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