RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/11/01/life-after-capitalism/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=top-of-nav&utm_content=hero-module

The information theory of economics

Anyone determined to provide a “new economics” must haul a heavy burden of proof up a steep slope of professional resistance. At the summits of academic prestige, economics presents a Delphic façade of math and marble.

A still higher barrier faces anyone suggesting major modification to the entrenched system of reasonably free markets and economic incentives associated with “capitalism.” Within recent memory, exponents of free markets — myself included — were celebrating a triumphalist “end of history.” Even China’s “Communist Party” and “Middle Kingdom,” self-consciously central in the order of the universe, were thriving as a self-evidently capitalist regime. China’s entrepreneurs were as “free to choose” as any “robber baron” of yore, particularly if their field was sufficiently technical to baffle the bureaucracy and so long as they didn’t under any circumstances compare their rulers to Winnie-the-Pooh.

With the U.S., Europe, and China all essentially organized by markets, dissenters retreated to government-funded universities, cranky leftist redoubts such as Harvard and the New York Times, and green movements thriving on money and lawyers from the disgruntled families of penitent or deceased entrepreneurs.

As autodidact supply-side paragon Jude Wanniski put it in 1980 — with credit to economists Arthur Laffer and Robert Mundell — to most observers, capitalism is simply “the way the world works.” And Wanniski was proved right. I long had criticized him for his judgment that Communist regimes were merely capitalist in a disguise of incompetence. But even this view may prove prescient, as today market-oriented regimes are blithely donning the same disguise.

With banks essentially nationalized and stultified by regulators and no longer making loans to entrepreneurial companies; with the nation recently locked down and masked because of COVID at the caprice of germophobic governors; with energy usage regulated, subsidized, priced, and litigated by bureaucrats around the globe out of a demented fear of CO2 emissions; with education run by manipulative ideologues with lifelong tenure and government appointments, funded by $1.5 trillion in guaranteed student loans; with money pumped up and propagated like gilded gas — we live in a new twilight zone beyond capitalism and freedom.

Thomas Sowell is lapidary: “Freedom is not simply the right of intellectuals to circulate their merchandise. It is, above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their ‘betters.’”

Still, for all the complaints in the air, let us give tribute to the far from dismal accomplishments of economic science.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/fire-marine-corps-commandant-david-berger-daniel-greenfield/

11 Marines came home in boxes after the bombing at Kabul airport carried out by an Islamic terrorist freed from a prison near Bagram Air Base that had been abandoned by Biden. Other Marines were seriously wounded and hospitalized for months after the attack.

All across America there are recruiting billboards for the Marine Corps with the message, “For Marines There Are Only Battles Won”. But in the runup to the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, the only things the Marine Corps really cared about were wokeness and race.

In April, Biden announced that he would be pulling all American forces out of Afghanistan. That same month the Taliban launched their offensive that would end with a takeover of the country.

When General David H. Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, testified before the House Subcommittee on Defense at the end of April, he did not refer to Afghanistan. Even while a skeleton force of hundreds of Marines remained in Kabul, Berger made no mention of them.

Instead, Berger spoke about racism.

Bizarrely enough, Berger began his presentation, not with the threats to the United States that the Marine Corps existed to fight, but by declaring that, “our nation has engaged in a long overdue conversation on race and social justice sparked by several visible incidents of institutional racism”. By that, Berger meant that Black Lives Matter mobs had torched a number of cities and their leftist allies had purged everyone who disagreed from every institution.

Berger assured House Democrats that he was happy to lead the purge of dissenting Marines.

“We have and will continue to actively work to identify recruits and Marines who hold extremist views and we look forward to participating in the Secretary of Defense’s new Countering Extremism Working Group to develop additional methods of keeping extremists from within our ranks,” Berger vowed, declaring war on fellow Marines instead of on America’s enemies.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/when_is_an_insurrection_not_an_insurrection.html

During the Kavanaugh hearings, hundreds of hysterical leftist activists stormed the Capitol and even managed to break into the Senate chamber. They were arrested and that was the end of it. On January 6, crowds of pro-Trump people, along with undoubted provocateurs and, almost certainly, FBI agents, entered the Capitol. Once in, they wandered around reverently and left—except for Ashli Babbitt, whom a Capitol Police Officer killed in cold blood. January 6 was called an “insurrection,” and Biden’s DOJ is using it as an excuse to hold political prisoners and terrorize into silence those who oppose Trump. And no, it’s not just a new, stricter standard, as Thursday’s “climate justice” riot showed.

Admittedly, the climate fanatics didn’t head for the Capitol. Instead, they besieged the Department of the Interior. Dozens of people managed to enter the building and, as you can see, a “riot”-ous time was had by all, including cops who used tasers to fend off the mob:

And that’s pretty much the beginning and the end of it.

When I check the New York Times’s home page in the wee hours of Friday, there’s no mention of the violent attack against a government agency, although there is a little headline (no link because the Times doesn’t deserve it) that the January 6 panel wants to press criminal charges against Steve Bannon. I don’t see anything about the climate protest on CNN’s home page either, although it has the usual hysteria about a “climate crisis.” I’m willing to bet the same will be true no matter which drive-by media outlet I check.

A healthy, free society cannot exist when there are two legal standards, one for the “in” crowd and one for the alleged “insurrection” crowd. Such blatant double standards mean that we are becoming a country without a rule of law. Instead, as is the case with any tinpot tyranny, the law exists solely to police people who oppose the ruling class.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/bill_ayers_a_familiar_face_in_the_birth_of_critical_race_theory.html

After Attorney General Merrick Garland sicced the FBI on unruly parents protesting Critical Race Theory (CRT) at school board meetings, it came to light that Garland had a dog in the fight.

That dog is son-in-law Xan Tanner, co-founder of Panorama Education, a leading distributor of CRT materials.  Among the materials Panorama has recommended for educators is an essay by terrorist emeritus and Obama pal Bill Ayers.

Titled “I Shall Create! Teaching Toward Freedom,” Ayers’s essay is the first in a 2019 collection by left-wing activist Lisa Delpit. If nothing else, Ayers has been consistent.  He has been pumping out frenetic anti-white cant long before it was cool, let alone mandatory.

Writes Ayers in this recent essay, “We must face reality and courageously confront history, tell the truth, and then destroy the entire edifice of white supremacy: metaphorically speaking it means burning down the plantation.”  The problem now is that Ayers is no longer an outlier.  The same FBI that hounded him and his fellow bombers is now hounding parents who protest his subversive nonsense.

What Ayers thinks would matter less were it not for his outsized influence on the educational philosophy of former president Barack Obama.  Were Obama merely a former president, his thinking would not matter much, either.  But Obama may be more than that.  Even Tucker Carlson has openly speculated that Obama is the guy running the show at the White House.  What seems clear is that Joe Biden is not.  

Equally clear is the mind meld between Ayers and Obama on educational issues.  In Obama’s 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father, the thoughts on educational reform are channeled through the soulful voices of two older African-Americans.  One goes by the name “Asante Moran,” likely an homage to the Afrocentric educator Molefi Kete Asante, whom Ayers knew.  In Dreams, Moran lectures Obama and his pal “Johnnie” on the nature of public education:

“The first thing you have to realize,” he said, looking at Johnnie and me in turn, “is that the public school system is not about educating black children.  Never has been.  Inner-city schools are about social control.  Period.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/14/will-worker-resistance-to-bidens-vaccine-mandates-tank-the-economy/

President Joe Biden’s command that private businesses require their workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is a shocking abuse of presidential power. Just as bad, by discouraging workers from staying on the job, it might tank the economy, which is already reeling from COVID-related shortages and soaring inflation.

On Sept. 9, Biden announced that businesses with 100 or more employees would have to require them to be vaccinated or take weekly COVID tests to prove they don’t have the Wuhan bug. This edict will affect as many as 100 million American workers.

One big problem: Cities, states and counties have in the past had authority to mandate things such as vaccines, not the federal government. Biden is literally creating a new authority for the presidency out of thin air, the kind of thing that authoritarian dictators do.

What’s more, Biden’s “order” is nothing of the sort. He announced it in early September, but has never released written rules for the government to enforce. So as of today, there is no “rule” or “order” to follow. Just a statement to the media.

The problem is, businesses, local and state government agencies, health providers, hospitals and others are forging ahead with their own plans to force workers to take one of the vaccines. And they’re using Biden’s phony “order” for cover.

The city of Boston, for instance, just suspended 812 workers for non-compliance. Boeing says it will require its workers to get vaccinated, or be suspended.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/576797-us-rejoins-un-human-rights-council-reversing-trump-exit

“The Human Rights Council is often lambasted for the election of members who hold the worst records for human rights violations and for a disproportionate focus on condemning Israel for alleged human rights abuses compared to other countries. ”

The U.S. on Thursday was elected to serve on the U.N. Human Rights Council beginning next year, rejoining the highly scrutinized international committee after leaving it in 2018 under then-President Trump.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the move, saying the council plays a “meaningful role” in protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, but suffers from “serious flaws,” including disproportionate focus on condemning Israel. 

“Together, we must push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded, including that each person is endowed with human rights and that states are obliged to protect those rights,” Blinken said in a statement.

The secretary had announced in February that the U.S. would return to the council as an observer, part of President Biden’s push to reengage on the global stage in general and among international forums, in particular.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2018, part of a series of withdrawals from international bodies. Then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Niki Haley criticized the council as exercising a “chronic bias against Israel” and a “hypocritical” body that “makes a mockery of human rights.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/americas-current-malaise-biden/

The word malaise, a general feeling of uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify, is creeping into discussions. It’s a politically loaded word, following its use by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 to describe the country he could not figure out to how lead.

Carter’s specific use of the term focused on the energy crisis, when OPEC monkeyed with America’s oil supply. But Carter saw that something much deeper was wrong. There wasn’t just an oil shortage to manage, but a recession of hope, a crisis of confidence that someone would have to lead America out of. He perceived that we were tired, worn down, unable to come together in common purpose and fix something.

It would be interesting to hear what Carter thinks about 2021, when things once again don’t work well. Flights don’t fly. Inflation has returned. Gas is expensive. Supply chain problems mean Americans for the first time since World War Two are rationing and getting used to hearing ‘we don’t have any and aren’t sure when we will’. Unemployment plagues us as COVID tore the wool off of many Americans’ eyes about how little meaningless jobs for sub-living wages contributed to their piggy banks or their sense of self-worth. Nurses who were last year’s heroes for working unvaccinated are fired today for being unvaccinated.

There appears no end to COVID. The promised conclusion, the vaccine, proved as rich a lie as two weeks to flatten the curve. Even fully vaccinated people are prisoners to restrictions and mandates that often make no sense, or at the very least vary so much from state to state as to challenge their usefulness. There is little faith that the economic devastation caused by mismanaged restrictions will ever be addressed; the poor will just get poorer. There is a declining sense that COVID is a problem that can be managed as it has been in much of the world (see Europe, especially Scandinavia). The conclusion is that no one is really in charge.