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  • Scattershots – 14aug18 (updated 15aug18)

    You can get away with a lot of  illiberal theatrics and demands in a liberal society, and one of the great, eternal challenges for democratic governments is to figure out how much one can tolerate before the forces of illiberalism corrode the liberal order.  Jonah Goldberg (2018)

    George Rebane

    ‘Google gives back’ gushes the 13aug18 Union reporting that the company “invests $100K (gasp!) for Nevada workforce development”.  The affair lasted one day and was a marketing event for the company’s business software under the guise of “helping Nevadans develop digital skills needed for job placement and advancement”, which ‘development’ in one day is a joke.  But it did give Reno’s JOIN, a government sponsored workforce development agency, a little feather in their cap – at least they’re doing something.  Meanwhile, Google got a real PR boost and advertising multiplier by spending less than they accidentally drop off their loading docks on any given day.  The real news to note was the mention of Nevada’s net yearly migration rate of 5.5% – #2 in the nation – ably boosted by emigrants from California driven out by our state’s butt stupid palette of public policies, regulations, and taxes.

    Trump’s ‘the press is an enemy of the people’ understood contextually is something that has needed to be said and explained in more detail than possible in a punchline tweet.  The few center right news outlets, compared to the legions of leftwing outlets, survive primarily because of their outsized audiences who frequent them for the markedly more comprehensive coverage of what’s happening than is available in the carefully self-censored lamestream media.  A local confirmation of that over the years have been RR’s leftwing readers whose comments reveal that they first ‘hear’ of events, ideas, and happenings from RR commentaries and its commenters.  They then label and attack the same as products of a few isolated and fevered far-right brains from these foothills, being completely unaware of the related national reportage and debates.  If CNN, MSNBC, HuffPost, NYT, … didn’t cover it, then it never happened.  When such news coverage blankets the country, then Americans who are already overly challenged, under-educated, and busy with their daily affairs are effectively propagandized from one perversely ideological perspective.

    RLCrabb180814

    Today’s contribution from our cartoonist RL Crabb, filched from the pages of the 14aug18 Union, is a view from the purported mid-road vantage that appears to suffer a bit from Bob’s ongoing bout with TDS.  I wonder what pinned dolls he would have pictured with Obama had he been so inclined.

    Speaking of the lamestream’s promotion of the ‘white supremacist threat’, it turns out again that there is no such threat simply because the number of white supremacists in the country is insignificant.  Their only voice is the one manufactured and given to them by the Left which needs an ideological bogeyman against which to play their socialist siren song.  The weekend’s ‘Unite the Right 2’ march of the 20 gave ample evidence of that, as it also demonstrated the alt-Left’s ability to marshal mobs of counter demonstrators, numbering in the thousands, whose hate-filled prescriptions for the United States and its leadership were duly recorded on numerous videos, of course, not aired on the lamestream.

    Naipaul“Curmudgeon” nobelist VS Naipaul (Literature, 2001) died over the weekend.  Naipaul had the courage to observe that all cultures are not of equal worth or quality, and “unapologetically insisted on the universality of Western beliefs.”  For this he was vilified by progressives as a racist.  Naipaul identified “the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement” as the tenets of a “universal civilization” contributed by the west that stood in stark contrast to the Islamist world’s “philosophical hysteria”.  This hysteria has yet to be recognized and denounced by the Left, whose elitists see it as a manageable and existential force that can be used to weaken and bring down western civilization.

    [15aug18 update] Sen Fauxcahontas Warren (D-CT) finally exposed her communist destination for us by introducing legislation in Congress that would launch the biggest government grab of private property in the country’s history.  She describes it in ‘Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders’ in the 15aug18 WSJ.  There she instructs us that “American corporations exist only because the American people grant them charters. Those charters confer valuable privileges—such as limited legal liability for their owners—that enable businesses to turn a profit. What do Americans get in return?”  Well, for openers, the answer to that is EVERYTHING that we see around us.

    WarrenHer Accountable Capitalism Act would remove corporations generating more than $1B annually from shareholder control and make them assume “fiduciary responsibilities beyond their shareholders”.  The new order would make such businesses into “benefit corporations” under a hodgepodge board and management structure which is guaranteed to completely truss up for-profit enterprises in new deep layers of regulation and litigation.  More specifically, “Benefit Corporations fundamentally change how a company is permitted to act. In addition to creating shareholder value like other for-profit companies, a Benefit Corporation must provide a general public benefit, namely, a material positive impact on society and the environment as a whole. Specific examples include providing low-income individuals or communities with beneficial products or services, preserving the environment, promoting economic opportunity, and improving health in the community.”

    If that socialist cum communist has her way, then ‘Venezuela here we come’ will be the new tune on everyone’s lips.

    The Democratic Party is now our openly declared socialist party in fact and deed.  It has finally realized the reason the Socialist Party of America closed its doors in 1956 – ‘the Democrats are adopting all of our social goals’ – as its former members migrated to their new political home.  Today, according to a just released Gallup poll, almost three of five Democrats view socialism favorably over capitalism, and confirm that ‘Democrats are Officially the Party of Socialism’.  But you can bet the farm that once they get back in power, they ain’t stopping there (see Fauxcahontas above).

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  • Sandbox – 13aug18

    [Would you attend a demonstration for something you support if you knew ahead of time that you would be outnumbered and confronted by thousands of counter-demonstrators with a history of fomenting violence and dedicated to silencing your viewpoint?  gjr]

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  • The bigotry of the Left

    George Rebane 

    This post grew out of comments by one of our prominent leftwing readers who hides his identity under the letter M.  This commenter ascribed a quote by white nationalist leader Jason Kessler about the variation in IQ scores between individuals of various population groups. (more here)  M rejects such results (here) and considers such citations as evidence of “the Conservative Echo Chamber Revealed”.  The man(?) has persistently proven himself to be poorly informed, yet continues to demonstrate that deficit at every opportunity.

    Bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance. (Merriam-Webster)

    I believe M and his ilk would have demonstrated against limited access roads (aka freeways) had he known that they were invented by/under Hitler.  He has left an ample trail in these pages to confirm him as a bigot according to the M-W definition.  While many RR commenters don’t agree with the full credos of white nationalists and, say, ‘black lives matter’ proponents, there is no evidence of hatred or intolerance here when debating their ideas.  Just because Kessler or Sharpton state something, should not mean that it must be rejected out of hand, and those vilified who happen voice agreement with that particular statement.  But that is not the way of bigots.

    For those who share M’s deficits, the ranking of aggregate IQ scores among the various ethnic/racial groups has received the imprimatur of none less than the American Psychological Association, the largest and most prestigious professional organization of psychologists.  I summarized that ranking in ‘How many people do we really need?’  To show the wholesale bigotry of the progressive Left, they believe in uni-step that humans, a species that has measurable differences in all their attributes, cannot have them in certain politically prescribed dimensions, IQ being one of them.  And anyone who cites counter evidence or even proposes additional studies on the matter are labeled as racists and either attacked or summarily dismissed.  (more here)

    We must always return to the sad fact that the orthodox Left is and has been the most sclerotic and unscientific ideology embraced on God’s green earth.  Wherever they have managed to seize the reins of government, they have inevitably hewn to policies that have repeatedly taken populations down the road to disaster and despair.  That is why in the best style and teachings of Saul Alinsky (Rules for Radicals), they loudly accuse their opposition of their own shortcomings.

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  • The Liberal Mind Revealed – Example #439 (updated 11aug2018)

    ‘The beatings will stop when morale improves.’ – wall sign in forced labor camp

    George Rebane

    “Trained historian” Paul Moore’s piece in the 9aug18 Union argues that ‘Investigation is not done until you have all the evidence’.  I kid you not, this gentleman really has a mind that works out such logic.  And I can guarantee you that he also takes these cognitive powers into the voting booth.  Moreover, the saddest part is that Mr Moore is not some one-off in our community, nor in our beloved land.  There are millions like him out there with such neurological wiring, all working to fundamentally transform America.

    Mr Moore starts out by taking Darrell Berkheimer’s 4aug18 column (here) to task for asking that Mueller conclude his investigation in a timely manner.  Our trained historian then lectures us that such investigations don’t and can’t have a natural or externally prescribed terminus.  Why?  Well, according to More, Mueller was tasked to dig up culpable evidence of Donald Trump’s criminal wrongdoings, so his logic inexorably leads him to to conclude that such evidence exists, and that the investigation’s natural conclusion should be when such evidence to impeach and indict President Trump is finally discovered.  In Mr More’s universe the probability is one (certainty) that Trump is guilty, the evidence of that guilt exists, and is yet to be discovered.

    In that same universe there is no concept of investigations which continue to turn up negative results will also lower the likelihood that the sought for evidence actually exists.  Specifically, the Mores of the world don’t understand the notion that the longer an ongoing investigation comes up empty, the lower the chances that it will ultimately come up with the sought for evidence.  The converse of that is that the longer an investigation produces no evidence, the higher the probability that no such evidence exists.  In more reasonable worlds, such demonstrably barren investigations have been regularly terminated as a matter of course.  But today, people of Mr Moore’s ideologically constrained capacity can conclude only that the reason no such evidence has been found is that we haven’t yet looked long enough.  So it appears that Mueller’s people have landed in some very attractive federally paid sinecures, charged with conducting a nationally divisive, perennial investigation that can terminate only after having found “all the evidence” of a criminal or treasonous conspiracy required to indict and convict a sitting president.

    [11aug18 update]  In the sense of full disclosure, I need to again remind readers (especially those of the leftward tilt) that I am a child, student, and defender of western civilization.  And when we talk of nationalism, I am a nationalist who conforms to Merriam-Webster’s definition.

    Nationalism: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.

    Now the logic of the local lefties immediately extends those declarations to people who are therefore necessarily oppose non-western civilizations, and who actively and without cause suppress the interests of other nations.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As an occidentaphile, I become a defender only when western civilization is suppressed and/or attacked.  Else, as a conservetarian I promote diversity in the Westphalian sense, since such diversity underpins global decentralization of knowledge and control, and provides the world with multifarious ongoing experiments in governance so that all can see what works and what doesn’t.  (Also known historically among our several states as the Great Experiment.)

    In the same sense I am an American nationalist when other countries, geo-political institutions, and/or those seeking an extra-constitutional transformation of our country seek to suppress, abbreviate, or attack American interests – the prime being its endurance on the American landmass as the sovereign constitutional republic which was bequeathed to us by our Founders, and which we have defended with our blood and treasure over the centuries.

    Now, since I am white, which is an acknowledged ‘race’ by non-whites, am I automatically then a white nationalist?  Not necessarily, when we study its broadly accepted non-partisan definition.

    White nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism that holds the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity.  Its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation.  White nationalists say they seek to ensure the survival of the white race, and the cultures of historically white states. They hold that white people should maintain their majority in majority-white countries, maintain their political and economic dominance, and that their cultures should be foremost.

    As my apologetics over the years attest, I am therefore not a white nationalist, since I don’t consider culture to be race-dependent as is obvious by the worldwide acceptance of the major tenets of western culture by people from all races and backgrounds.  By various kinds of ongoing intercourse, all cultures and races have evolved, homogenized, and will continue doing so as we trade and mate with each other.  All forms of ‘racial purity’ will be erased sooner or later, if that has not already happened.  What people (of all races) like me oppose are the rapid fundamental transformations of their cultures and nations implemented through fraud or force as dictated by ideological cohorts working to overturn the established (traditional?) order that is accepted by a free people.  And all such bets on tolerance are off when we encounter threatening tyrannies who unabashedly abolish the Bastiat Triangle of rights.

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  • Bar to Employment is Lowered

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 August 2018.]

    Used to be that for most jobs you had to show some serious education and experience in your background in addition to good appearance and character.  And things really got tougher during the depths of our last recession, employers could be real picky about whom they hired.  Well things have now changed, and the change confirms the new growth track that our economy has taken since the 2016 election.

    According to some leading staffing firms, we hear of companies now hiring people, not necessarily on the basis of what they know, but how motivated and teachable they appear to be.  One such large firm “estimates one in four of (its over 10,000) employer clients have made drastic changes to their recruiting process since the start of the year, such as skipping drug tests or criminal background checks, or removing preferences for a higher degree or high-school diploma.”  Of course, one demonstration of teachability and motivation is what kind of skillsets you’ve been able to garner on your own.  (more here)

    Several staffing firms are even turning down clients who are not aware of today’s jobs landscape, and refuse to budge on tight salaries, required education, and relevant experience.  Their message to such employers is “we can’t help you fish for the few underpaid or unaware applicants (still) left out there.”

    Before we start celebrating this new twist in the employment picture, let’s consider the kind of people, specifically voters, that such hiring practices will produce.  Pre-educated hires will be taught a very narrow and focused set of skills in their new workplaces – initially, just enough to do the job.  From where would they then get the breadth that a broader education provides about our country, societal issues, basic civics, and fields other than the one in which they have landed?  My concern is that prematurely terminating an education will produce a lot of what may be called one-tune piano players – good at what they do, but knowledgeable in little else.

    We already see examples of that when we look at today’s wealthy and prominent entrepreneurs who quit school early, pursued their dreams, and were successful beyond their wildest hopes.  And now that they’re rich, their uninformed opinions on matters way outside their fields are valued as if they were oracles on Mt Olympus.  But the overwhelming fraction of today’s young early hires will not become rich, and they will have to pick up their broader knowledge of the rest of the world and its happenings from backyard BBQ conversations, and whatever time they can spare after work from family and TV.  Not a promising path to becoming an intelligent voter, and a very promising way to become someone who will base their vote on a silver-tongued politician’s unexamined and most recently broadcast sound bite.

    So let’s turn the page from this hiring surge and consider what more and more experts are saying about the longer term prospects for jobs, people who understand the increasing role of intelligent machines in the workplace.  As you have heard in these commentaries, machines are replacing humans at an increasing rate in all kinds of tasks imaginable.  In the latest (7aug18) issue of Forbes, Dr Kiran Garimella, chief scientist & CTO at a high-tech company, writes ‘Job Loss From AI?  There’s More to Fear’.  He points out that we have already started the transition from human to machine workers.  And the skills most “immune to AI” are also “the most impervious to mandatory formal training methods because they stem from innate passion or prodigy-like natural skills. Examples are higher math, theoretical physics, the higher levels of art and music, and so on.”  In short, not too many of us are blessed with those passions and natural skills, and even those workers will see “their role will become either minimal or move up the cognitive scale.”

    Personal relevance remains the overarching issue.  Contented people have always found a good answer to ‘what do I do that sustains the community of which I am a part?’  When that question no longer has an answer, then social order becomes brittle, and all futures look uncertain and not very promising.  How many voters even now understand enough to prepare for such a future?

    My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

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  • Sandbox – 8aug18

    [Here is the latest on the real 2016 collusion AND conspiracy with foreigners (British and Russians) that was designed, bought, and paid for by Hillary and the DNC to derail the Trump campaign.  Since there is no evidence of the obverse, why are not Hillary and the DNC being investigated?  gjr]

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  • The Ninth Circuit Court on CCW and Open Carry

    George Rebane

    Recently a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees a right to openly carry a gun in public for self-defense, finding that Hawaii overstepped its authority to regulate firearms possession outside the home.” (more here)

    This ruling brought up questions on how we Californians, especially those with Concealed Carry Weapon permits, will be impacted.  Since CCW permits are issued by county sheriffs, in a private communication I asked our Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal –

    1. Will current non-CCW permit holders in California now have open-carry included in their 2nd Amendment rights?
    2. What is the impact of the present rulings on existing Nevada County CCW policy?
    3. Will California’s sheriffs come out with one unified coherent interpretation of how this impacts our 2nd Amendment rights, or will we wind up with county-specific interpretations that may or not arbitrarily criminalize the unwary who cross county boundaries, or will everyone remain silent on the matter and let Californians just take chances sorting it out by themselves (sort of like the MJ situation between feds, state, and counties)?

    With Sheriff Royal’s permission I share his response with our readers –

    “Our current laws stay in effect until a court of competent jurisdiction finds the laws of the State unconstitutional or the laws are changed by the legislature.  Our State Sheriff’s attorney has advised us that the case was remanded back to the trial court to proceed.  Chances are that the case will again end up back before the 9th Circuit for an “en banc” panel review, and based on the outcome, may invalidate California’s current laws and/or then be appealed to the US Supreme Court for final determination.  We have been advised things remain status quo at this time.  Stand by to stand by. … As an FYI, the 9th indicated that the 2nd Amendment does not pertain to or cover CCW’s.  We’ll just (have) to wait to see how it all works out.”

    Due to the sheriff’s last observation about the 2A and CCWs, I offered that “it does cause me a bit of puzzlement why the 9th indicated that the 2A doesn’t pertain to cover CCWs.  CCW permit holders are the most law-abiding people in the land according to FBI crime stats.  Sworn LE officers have a very low crime rate, but one that is still SIX times higher than that of CCW holders, and the 2A doesn’t cover (them)?”  Sheriff Royal’s response to this was - 

    “Interestingly, the three judge panel were all repub. appointees. I think when this issue comes back to the 9th, they’ll render an opposing decision because the majority of that court is liberal leaning thus forcing the issue to the Supreme Court. In light of the soon to be composition of the Supreme court, you may see the ultimate decision be supportive of open carry.”

    So, per Sheriff Royal’s counsel, the open carry and CCW provisions will remain unchanged, and it will be business as usual as we “stand by to stand by.”  Question asked and answered.

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  • Scattershots – 4aug18 (updated 8aug18)

    “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know that just ain't so.”  Mark Twain, et al

    George Rebane

    Leftwing columnist Darrell Berkheimer makes his occasional foray into substantive socio-political subjects and blows it again.  In his ‘Will Violence or a Funeral End Incendiary Talk’ (4aug18 Union), the man demonstrates his limited abilities in spades.  He blames today’s politically polarized incendiaries as being solely fomented by President Trump, and executed by rightwingers.  His evidence?  He can only cite the reception of CNN’s extremely virulent leftwing journalist Acosta at a Trump rally who was greeted with shouts of ‘CNN sucks!’, and then some crazy individual (political affiliation unknown) with a bat smashing a TV station’s car.  And there ends his research into the country’s political incendiaries.  He is totally blind to the literally hundreds of incitements from the political left and leftwing public confrontations that by charitable estimates are practiced around 50:1 by Democrat politicians, journalists, and leftwing street mobs.  Nowhere are mentioned such Congress critters as Maxine Waters and Lizzy Warren, and NYT editor Sarah Jeong.  Nowhere does he see the Left’s countless demonstrations and thuggery performed in office buildings, at neighborhood residences, in stores, on blocked streets, college campuses, classrooms and auditoriums, … .  It’s only the Right that is the progenitor and practitioner of hate speech and violent confrontations.  But then, we have never expected anything more from Mr Berkheimer.

    The cost in lives and cash of natural and political disasters has declined markedly under the post-war world order led and maintained by America.  The Left would have us believe that all has been going the other way, and they have published reams of fake factual lies to make their case.  The real fact of the matter has been studied and documented by more sober analysts like the late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling, of the Gapminder Foundation documented in his Factfulness (2018).  It turns out that death rates and property losses have plummeted as the world has grown more populous, densely packed, and with enormously more stuff at risk since WW2.  This reality does not fit well into the anti-capitalist progressive narrative, so it has been both suppressed and redecorated into an ongoing political and journalistic barrage to convince the light thinkers and otherwise engaged of exactly the opposite.  It’s easier to argue for more central planning, control, taxes, and regulations if you can make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. (more here)

    [6aug18 update]  As many have known for some years, the alternative energy source biofuel mandates have not lived up to their hype.  The EPA recently released its ‘Biofuels and the Environment: The Second Triennial Report to Congress’. (access here)  It turns out that all the extra thousands of acres of corn and soybeans planted to make the ethanol based fuels are “wreaking havoc on the atmosphere and soil” (more here).  So what was initially sold as another feel good alternative to fossil fuels has just had its list of dirty laundry extended by none other than the agency that has been champion of cleaning up the environment.  This is nothing new, the problems with biofuels have been known and reported for years – here’s a 2008 piece from none other than The Washington Post.  But somehow the Left’s narrative on the negative effects of biofuels hasn’t been affected by these longstanding findings.  It seems that environmental quality is really not that high on the progressives’ agenda.  I wonder what their real objective is.

    [7aug18 update]  US land use is an important piece of knowledge for the noggins of those of us debating public policies in these pages.  A reader sent me this link (here) to a Bloomberg news piece that has a whole lot of land use information presented in an interesting graphical format.  Be sure to puzzle on it for the upcoming quiz.

    Hilary Hodge is returning to politics after losing in a close race to Supervisor Dan Miller in the June primary. (more here) She will next try to get on the Grass Valley City Council, and she’ll be bringing all her qualifications, enthusiasm, and outside support to her next attempt to enter the local political game.  As most people who recall her Union autobiographical columns know, the lady is woefully short on private sector economics and work experience.  She would greatly bolster her resume and ability to serve the public were she able to show that someone took money out of his own pocket to pay her for demonstrating some productive skills in the job market.  But as most of us have come to know, politicians don’t have to have experience in the private sector before regulating and legislating for it.

    [8aug18 update]  The Left (including some locals) claim that the real accomplishment at the 9jun16 Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer was an agreement for the Russians to release Hillary’s emails that were sent and received on her private email server.  However, those emails began to be released prior to 2016 to all, including Wikileaks, by our State Dept, not the Russians.  Wikileaks collected these emails and made them available in a searchable online archive with the included statement – On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. More PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016, and a set of additional 995 emails was imported up to February 2, 2018.

    So it seems that to plan the release of the purported (not confirmed by our intelligence) Russia-hacked Hillary emails after their release had already commenced is a moot argument designed for people not versed in the use of calendars. (more here)

    However, our intelligence people state that Russia did hack the DNC email server, and purloined over 100,000 emails with much embarrassing information about the internal operations of the Democratic Party and by Democrat bigwigs. (more here) These were first released to DCLeaks in June 2016 and then later in July 2016 to Wikileaks.  None have claimed that any of these emails were doctored or contained false information.  And no one has tied the Trump campaign to the acquisition and/or release of these emails to the public at large.  All we have is a daily stream of allegations through and by the lamestream that somehow Donald Trump was behind the whole thing since Hillary lost.  And today Mueller stands ready to indict the entire White House in a week or two – as Eliza assured us, 'Just you wait 'Enri 'Iggins, just you wait!'  And waiting we still are.

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  • Sandbox – 3aug18

    [A reader sent me a link that reminds us that the contention that a large fraction of Democrat voters are developmentally challenged is actually a fundamental truth that the Democratic leadership and liberal elites jealously believe in and fight/oppose public policies that will expose its fallacy.  Yes, it is the Dem leadership and elites who believe that their constituents are simply too dumb to figure out how to get voter IDs (more here).  gjr]

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  • Cato on Immigration and Open Borders (updated 3aug18)

    If Democrats don't want foreigners involved in our elections, why do they think it's OK for illegals to vote?

    George Rebane

    The Cato Institute is the nation’s foremost libertarian thinktank.  It has a long record of publishing well thought out and researched policy analyses which it freely makes available on its website.  I have now and again cited their research, and even a few of their opinion commentaries, although I don’t always agree with all their libertarian viewpoints – that is why I call myself a conservetarian.

    Yesterday (31jul18) Dr Jeffrey Miron, Cato’s Director of Economic Studies and director of undergraduate economics studies at Harvard, published a commentary in USA Today titled ‘Forget the Wall Already, It’s Time for the U.S. to Have Open Borders’.  In it he argues that the US should open its borders to allow free ingress and egress to one and all with no interference or mediating actions by our government.  When I read Miron’s piece I was shocked at what appears to be an insane policy proposal by an organization which the Rebanes have supported for years.  I still don’t know whether this is Miron opining on his own, or announcing Cato’s considered policy on borders and immigration.

    The main takeaway from my now several readings are that his proposed policy will end America as we know it in literally all dimensions. Open borders will do away with the sovereign nation-state, the first attribute of which is that it controls transit across its borders, and what goes on within those borders.  This is the fundamental tenet of the Westphalian order under which the international order has been conducted since 1648.

    The United States, and any country for that matter, with such open borders will quickly experience the full brunt of the tragedy of the commons (cf Garrett Hardin) as people across the globe make their way into America in the attempt to enjoy our economy, freedoms, and social welfare programs.  The duration of such happy times will end very quickly as Americans of all political hues realize what a tragic mistake we have made as the country’s institutions begin to collapse.  (more here and here)

    And such migrations will be doubly disastrous if the borderless world envisioned by Miron comes to pass.  Miron promotes global government with central planning and control taken to the limit.  And he naively asks us to believe that massive cross cultural human movements will not immediately require draconian control measures put in force to stop lawlessness and riots on a scale never before witnessed on this planet.  Miron is unaware that for good reason nature abhors monolithic structures of control and repositories of data/knowledge.  What the man advocates across the world is nothing less than the end of civilizations with a Mad Max world contending with Big Brother trying to maintain control.

    I annotated Professor Miron’s commentary.  You can download the annotated pdf file and read it in your Acrobat reader if you wish.  Download Forget the Wall Already – GJR

    [3aug18 update]  Here It’s again worth pointing out that the Right believes America to be exceptional because of the system of governance and commerce our Founders bequeathed us.  The Left continues to tell us that America is not exceptional, it is evil, and that our system must be changed.  Now the rest of the world, especially those who vote with their feet, fervently believe that America is indeed most exceptional since they are willing to leave everything and risk everything to enter our land by hook or crook.  So here’s the ongoing contradiction that the Left and the so-called centrists ignore – since by the world’s vote America is exceptional, and yet by the Left’s argument it was not our social systems that made us so, then the only explanation that remains is the racist one that it was the white Europeans and their melded cultures rewarding work and risk that have made America the most desired destination on this planet.

    This explains the Left’s insane (and racist) assault on western culture and America as the exceptional sovereign nation-state.  Our continued existence as a capitalistic country populated by a free and entrepreneurial people flies in the face of everything that the Left preaches in our schools, throughout our public forums, and in concert with our enemies around the world.

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54 comments on Scattershots – 14aug18 (updated 15aug18)