Displaying posts published in

October 2022

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Will We the People Step Up? The upcoming midterm elections will be a test of this ancient – and vital – question. by Bruce Thornton

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/will-we-the-people-step-up/

Ever since ancient Athens, every election in states where all citizens have the right to vote is a referendum on the question whether or not the masses have the capacity to govern themselves. Indeed, as one historian argued, political philosophy was invented 2400 years ago to demonstrate that the answer is “no.” Ordinary people without wealth, education, or “the splendor in the blood,” as Pindar called nobility, by nature are incapable of managing the state, which requires, to paraphrase Woodrow Wilson, the “hundred who are wise” to rule over the “thousands who are foolish.”

The upcoming midterm elections will similarly be a test of this ancient question, perhaps the most consequential since World War II. For at stake may be the survival of our Constitutional order and its protection of our unalienable rights and political freedom, which have been under assault for a century now.

The stakes of this election have been raised by the excesses of the wide leftward swing of the Democrats away from the Constitution’s divided powers, jeopardizing the autonomy of civil society, individual rights, fiscal sanity, and reality itself. Indeed, so egregious and just plain lunatic are some of the policies and ideas promoted by the Dems, that their party should not just lose control of Congress, but see its leftward drift definitively repudiated.

Most of us can catalogue the manifest failures of this administration and Congress. Trillions of dollars in fiat money––like this summer’s $740 billion so-called Inflation Reduction Act, part of the $4 trillion Biden has blown in just two years––are the accelerant of the current inflation bonfire, the worst in 40 years.

This damage, moreover, is the result of transparently stupid policies. One key indicator of economic health is cheap energy, but it has skyrocketed in large part because of the suicidal war against domestic oil and natural gas production that just two years ago had made the U.S. a net exporter of energy.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Covering for Fetterman May Cost Media a Senate Seat Like most liars, the media lied itself into a much worse situation. by Daniel Greenfield

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/covering-for-fetterman-may-cost-media-a-senate-seat/

The media could have pushed for the truth after Lt. Gov Fetterman’s stroke, instead, it continued to favor the woke Frankenstein because he had all the left views.

As the campaign continued, it doubled down on the cover-ups because the media was now stuck with a candidate that it was beginning to realize was broken, but was now the standard bearer of its party.

Up until the debate, the cover-up continued. Anyone in the media who insisted on asking questions about Fetterman’s functionality was threatened and smeared.

Then the debate arrived and Fetterman’s performance made it clear that there was something wrong there.

Now the media has defaulted to praising his “courage” for running and attacking anyone who points out the obvious as “ableist”.

This follows the familiar media cover-up pattern.

It’s absolutely not true
Maybe it’s a little true, but conservatives are blowing it out of proportion
It’s absolutely true and we should all embrace it

Much like drag queens in schools and the Taliban overruning Afghanistan, we’re in phase 3 now. Fetterman is clearly disabled, but that means he’s just like FDR and we should admire him. Maybe that position might have been respectable if it had been the default one all along.

The media could have pushed for the truth after Lt. Gov Fetterman’s stroke, instead, it continued to favor the woke Frankenstein because he had all the left views.

As the campaign continued, it doubled down on the cover-ups because the media was now stuck with a candidate that it was beginning to realize was broken, but was now the standard bearer of its party.

Up until the debate, the cover-up continued. Anyone in the media who insisted on asking questions about Fetterman’s functionality was threatened and smeared.

Then the debate arrived and Fetterman’s performance made it clear that there was something wrong there.

Now the media has defaulted to praising his “courage” for running and attacking anyone who points out the obvious as “ableist”.

This follows the familiar media cover-up pattern.

It’s absolutely not true
Maybe it’s a little true, but conservatives are blowing it out of proportion
It’s absolutely true and we should all embrace it

Much like drag queens in schools and the Taliban overruning Afghanistan, we’re in phase 3 now.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Fake Science Fuels Climate Extremism David Barker

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.aier.org/article/fake-science-fuels-climate-extremism/

“Follow the science,” we are told, especially the junk science that climate alarmists invent.  I recently debunked a piece of junk climate science whose alarmism was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, CBS, and elsewhere. The junk science was produced by the Federal Reserve. Fed officials claimed that warming will cut economic growth by a third, but my simple statistical analysis showed their results were within the margin of error and that minor improvements and new data flip their result!  

Mainstream economics shows that warming will have minor economic effects compared to the economic growth we expect over the next century. That is a problem for the climate lobby, which unfortunately includes the Fed. Since economic growth will swamp the economic effects of global warming, the Fed set out, it seems, to prove that warming will reduce growth. The fact that Florida, on average 26 degrees warmer than Michigan, has grown faster didn’t faze them.

The Fed isn’t the only institution to fall into chicanery. The study was published in a peer-reviewed academic economics journal, given wide media coverage, and cited in a congressional report to justify the Green New Deal.  Bogus research makes big splashes. But when it is debunked, there isn’t a ripple.  

The best economic model, validated by a Nobel Prize for William Nordhaus, shows that if nothing is done to reduce emissions, warming will reduce world GDP by about three percent by the year 2100.  If global GDP continues to grow at the rate it has been growing, then the world in 2100 will be five times richer than it is today. A three-percent reduction in GDP would make us 4.8 times richer instead of 5.0 times. Not exactly catastrophic! Mainstream economics doesn’t deny climate change and accepts that some policies to mitigate it might pass a cost-benefit test. But it does not predict a climate apocalypse, even if we do nothing.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Progressives Have Descended Into Madness — And Are Dragging The Rest Of Us With Them Bob Maistros

By on October 26th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/26/progressives-have-descended-into-madness-and-are-dragging-the-rest-of-us-with-them/

Demented

1 : mad, insane

2 : affected by or exhibiting cognitive dementia. Merriam-Webster

So America is really, truly, genuinely, actually, not kidding, experiencing a debate as to whether it is “ageism” or “ableism” to question the fitness for office of:

A soon-to-be octogenarian quasi-president who

habitually walks off podiums reaching out to shake hands with the air and then wanders around confused;
frequently interrupts himself mid-sentence when he lapses into incoherence;
regularly utters policy statements laden with global import that must be immediately walked back by White House staff; and
recently looked into the audience seeking a deceased politician – whose passing he was there to commemorate.

A candidate for United States Senate, the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body™, who

earlier this year suffered a massive, debilitating stroke yet refuses to release his medical records;
in his rare public appearances never fails to mangle multiple words, phrases and thoughts;
informed a liberal network reporter that he required a closed captioning device to comprehend her interview questions; and
required one in last night’s debate.

Puh-leeze. It is not discrimination in any way, shape, or form to expect that at a minimum, a president be sufficiently sentient to represent his nation with dignity on the world stage. Or a senator be capable of engaging intelligently with his colleagues, the public and the media without his spouse’s or technological intervention.

Rather, sophists’ attempt, on purely political grounds, to protect public figures who fall under the second definition of the term “demented” offered above is perhaps the most conclusive proof ever that the progressive movement has completely descended into the first.  And is slowly but surely dragging the rest of this once truly exceptional nation with it.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Myth of the Nonviolent Drug Offender Criminal-justice reformers should stop deluding themselves and the public that “mass decarceration” will be anything other than a bloodbath.Devon Kurtz

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/myth-of-the-nonviolent-drug-offender

Devon Kurtz is the director of public safety policy at the Cicero Institute. He also mentors people coming out of prison in his home state of Vermont.

After President Biden pardoned Americans convicted of federal marijuana possession last week, reform advocates praised his action as a “historic” step away from mass incarceration, while critics lamented it as another blow to public safety. The truth is somewhat less momentous: the pardons affect only about 6,500 people, none of whom is currently in prison, and drug crimes account for only a small portion of America’s prison population.

The extreme reactions on both sides are consistent with the public’s warped perceptions of the effects of drug enforcement on our criminal-justice system, which activists and the media have propagated through books like Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and documentaries like 13th. This component of the prison-reform narrative is disingenuous and distracts from the more pressing work of finding solutions to violent crime.

Of the approximately 145,000 people in federal prisons and 1,040,000 people in state prisons, less than 3.5 percent are incarcerated for a conviction related to drug possession. Even when one expands the scope beyond mere possession to all other types of drug offenses (many of which are associated with violent cartels and gangs), the proportion rises only to 18 percent.

The hard truth for criminal-justice reformers is that violent offenses are far more prevalent among America’s prisoners. At the state level—where nine in ten prisoners are incarcerated—almost 60 percent of inmates committed violent crimes. Roughly 143,000 people are imprisoned for convictions related to sexual assault and 155,000 for homicide, compared with 146,000 for all drug crimes combined. The idea that America’s “mass” incarceration is a result of drug crimes is absurd.

America’s incarceration “problem” relates directly to its violent-crime problem. The nation’s incarceration rate—roughly 639 per 100,000 people—is four to six times that of its high-income peers in Europe and Asia. Without context, that statistic is alarming, but when we consider that America’s homicide rate is 7.5 times higher than those same peer nations, our incarceration rate seems more justified.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Blue Vs. Red: 2022 Test Scores Show Devastating Toll Of School Shutdowns By Luke Rosiak

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-vs-red-2022-test-scores-show-devastating-toll-of-school-shutdowns

Academic proficiency plummeted in 2022 to among the lowest on record following the coronavirus school shutdowns, and children in Democrat-run states where teachers union demands led to extended school shutdowns bore the brunt, data released Monday from a national test known as the “nation’s report card” showed.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is administered to fourth and eighth graders every few years, allowing for a comparison of reading and math proficiency by state between 2019 — just before the pandemic — and 2022. The decline in math scores was the sharpest ever since the test began in 1990, and the average math scores were the lowest since 2005. The average eighth grade reading score was the lowest since 1998.

“Today’s NAEP results are the proverbial final nail in the coffin,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who won election in 2021 in a blue-leaning state largely because of fury over Democrats’ education policies, said Monday. “If this doesn’t wake you up, then you’re clearly trying to cover up your own bad decisions. In the business world, if this was your report card, there would be an immediate change in management. You would be fired. And I think that’s what voters did.”

He said leaders kept “schools shut for an unnecessary amount of time, forcing students to learn through a screen and telling them that’s a meaningful education,” and that coronavirus decisions followed decades of similarly bad education decisions.

The map at the top of this article shows how badly the number of fourth-graders who scored at least “basic” in reading fell compared to before the pandemic in each state. Basic is the lowest of the three tiers — basic, proficient, and advanced — and those who do not have even basic reading skills by fourth grade are at risk of serious problems when it comes to employment and higher education later in life.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off

House midterms: Past the point of no return by Byron York,

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/house-midterms-past-the-point-of-no-return

The midterm elections are now two weeks away. Some political commentators have an interest in portraying them as one big, suspenseful, down-to-the-wire contest. Maybe some of those commentators are partisan. Maybe some just think it’s good for business. But the fact is, at this point, the midterm results, as far as the House of Representatives is concerned, are pretty much set in stone. Republicans are going to win. Democrats are going to lose. The Senate is moving in that direction, too. It might already be there.

“What’s about to happen is very obvious,” said one Republican deeply involved in midterm races. “Voters think the economy sucks. Voters think Joe Biden sucks. Therefore, voters think Democrats suck. End of discussion.”

Most people wouldn’t put it quite so bluntly. Or maybe they would. In any event, here is a quick, step-by-step synopsis of how things came to this point over the last 18 months:

Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!

1) One party, the Democratic Party, controls the House, the Senate, and the White House.

2) The party’s margins of control in both the House and the Senate are so thin that even a narrow midterm loss would result in loss of the majority.

3) The opposition party has always been in a strong position to win because unpopular presidents like Biden, with an approval rating of 42.6% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, always lose seats in the midterm elections.

4) Economic events, especially inflation, have unfolded in a way that favors the opposition party.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The State of the Races By Richard Baehr

By on October 26th, 2022

1. A lot of people are asking me for my predictions. I expect to make final forecasts right before election day. However, to save time and not have to respond to lots of individual emails, an update is provided below. After the election, I will discuss the results and the implications for 2024 at the Restoration Weekend conference of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, in Phoenix, November 10-13.  There are many substantive speakers at this event on a wide variety of topics.  Information is provided below. At the 2018 event I was on a panel discussing the 2018 results right after a talk by Victor Davis Hanson. So, in a sense, thinking of a rock concert, Hanson “opened” for me.  

https://restorationweekend.org

2. Certain things seem pretty clear, and other things are very unsettled.  Republicans seem to have momentum, both in House, and Senate races. If you don’t believe me, look at Nate Silver’s models and forecasts at fivethirtyeight.com. Nate Silver’s model predicts the chances of a GOP takeover of the House are 80%. Two weeks ago, the GOP chances for control were 68%.  Most forecasts (RCP, Larry Sabato, Cook Political Report, 538) project   final House numbers for the GOP in a range of 230 to 240. Redistricting, which was played to the hilt in many states by both parties to the extent they could, has limited the number of competitive races. Ohio and Illinois are probably the two states with the most partisan redistricting.  House races may produce some strange results this year. The Democrats could win and hold Alaska’s only House seat. A Republican could win a House seat in Rhode Island. 

For the Senate, Silver has GOP chances are 45%, and were 29% two weeks ago. In other words, the GOP looks likely to win the House, and the Senate control is very much a tossup. Silver’s model incorporates among other factors, polling results (higher weights to more recent polls, and those with greater historic accuracy), as well as state or district voting history. 

At the moment, many Senate races are in play. Democrat-held seats which could shift include Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Washington State and Colorado are uphill for Republicans, but very good candidates have made these races competitive.  GOP held seats in play include Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and maybe Utah and Iowa. One big difference between the parties is that vulnerable Democrats are all incumbents. Three of the four most vulnerable Republican held seats are open- Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina. In most cycles, incumbency is a big advantage, especially in fundraising. Challengers are sometimes not picked until the late summer and are underfunded for the general election. 

On the other hand, one factor working for Republicans in some of the closest Senate races are likely big wins for GOP governors- Ohio, Georgia and New Hampshire in particular, as well as Iowa, and a stronger than expected  GOP candidate for Governor in Arizona. In Pennsylvania, the Democratic governor candidate seems well ahead, and is helping John Fetterman try to reach the finish line.

Incumbency may be a mixed blessing this year. Voters seem by and large miserable and unhappy (look at right direction, wrong direction surveys). Inflation and interest rates are high. Home values and stock market values have sharply dropped. We have a national crime wave, focused on cities where Democrats are in complete control, and politicians seem unable or unwilling to address the problem. Personal insecurity is a big deal. New York State has a close governor’s race, largely as a result of crime numbers. Bail reform, stifling how police can behave, greatly reduced police staffing, prosecutors more concerned with keeping criminals out of jail, than protecting their victims, are all making voters very sour on this issue. Covid lockdowns were often unnecessary and caused great economic damage, and very poor educational results with kids schooled via zoom. The incredible number of illegals allowed in the country at our wide open southern border suggests national lawlessness, and almost a complete abdication of responsibility by the federal government. 

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

NAS President Peter Wood Addresses the Pending Racial Preferences Cases

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/nas-president-peter-wood-addresses-the-pending-racial-preferences-cases

The following are remarks that NAS president Peter Wood presented at a meeting of “Oasis,” an informal group of academics and intellectuals that periodically gathers at the faculty club at New York University.  Dr. Wood was invited to comment on the pending U.S. Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College.  The National Association of Scholars filed an amicus brief in the case on the side of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., which represents Asian students who argue that Harvard has unlawfully discriminated against them on the basis of race.  

Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College is scheduled for argument before the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of this month, on Monday the 31st, Halloween. It is a matter of pure coincidence that this month has also brought the release of Halloween Ends, the thirteenth movie in the world’s most commercially successful horror franchise. For those whose filmic education stopped with Ingmar Bergman or Jean-Luc Godard, Halloween tells the tale of the rambunctious Michael Meyers, who likes to murder babysitters on October 31, generally in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Babysitter Laurie Strode, played by the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, has a knack for escaping Mr. Meyers’ knife. One or the other or both of them die at the end of the movies, only to spring back to screen life in the next sequel.

I bring this up, of course, because the parallel is uncanny. Here is a story about a terrifying and seemingly unstoppable force that destroys the lives of young people with impunity. It is met with heroic resistance and is seemingly doomed to be defeated once and for all, only to rise again. It is no small matter that Mr. Meyers owes his longevity to state officials who, over and over again, fail to do their duty. He escapes from an insane asylum, the morgue, incineration, and numerous other seemingly terminal destinations. Racial preferences in college admissions owe their longevity to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, but of course not just her.

I am among those that hope and expect that racial preferences in higher education will end, if not on Halloween proper, at some point in our lifetimes. If next June the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions, of course, that decision will not mean an end to racial preferences anytime soon. But it will be a significant step in the right direction, and it will help those of us who seek to bring more and more pressure on colleges and universities to finish for once and all the Meyers-esque career of racial preferences.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM, BOOKS Comments turned off

The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews David L. Bernstein

By on October 25th, 2022

https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2022/10/the-new-progressivism-makes-no-room-for-jews/?utm

In 2016, as “intersectionality” escaped from academia to become a progressive buzzword—and came to to signify a doctrine that all just causes are linked and complementary—David L. Bernstein began to suspect that it was apt to be used against the Jews. As he pointed out in an article published that year, activists argued under the banner of intersectionality that anyone opposed to racism in the U.S. should also oppose the existence of Israel. He thought, however, that there was hope:

While I didn’t say so explicitly, I’d come to believe that the mainstream Jewish community needed to find a way to include the Jewish narrative in the intersectional matrix—to complicate it—so that Jews and Israel were not viewed as the perennial oppressors and Palestinians the perennial victims. Concerned about the growing backlash to my article, I used the opportunity [to participate in a panel discussion with some of my critics] to soften my stance on the topic, stating “I still have much to learn,” and that “intersectionality is a complex, interesting, and nuanced phenomenon that we need to understand, not just from the perspective of the pro-Israel community, but from its own perspective as well.”

Bernstein, at the time still president of the left-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), soon learned that there was little room for such a compromise position:

[In 2020], the JCPA pulled together a Zoom meeting for a coalition called Jews for Criminal Justice Reform, which included top Jewish criminal-justice activists from around the country. After an inspiring talk by Paul Fishman—a former federal attorney from New Jersey—on the need to end mass incarceration, we broke up into smaller groups to discuss next steps. A lawyer named Jared, the group facilitator for my breakout session, asked, “What do you all think our criminal-justice reform priorities ought to be?” Ariella, a young professional staffer from a Jewish civil-rights organization, interjected, “Before we talk about strategy, there’s a lot of internal work we have to do in the Jewish community. We need to recognize our complicity in white supremacy and ensure we have black Jews at the forefront of these efforts.”

Continue reading →