RUTHFULLY YOURS

The movement to raise the federal minimum wage has become ever more ambitious. In 2013 proponents deemed $9 an hour acceptable; today the demand is for $15.

Economists point to a crucial question: Will a higher minimum wage reduce the number of jobs for the country’s least skilled workers? President Obama says “there is no solid evidence that a higher minimum wage costs jobs.” On the contrary, a full and fair reading of the evidence shows the opposite. Raising the minimum wage will cost jobs, particularly those held by the least-skilled.

Economists have written scores of papers on the topic dating back 100 years, and the vast majority of these studies point to job losses for the least-skilled. They are based on fundamental economic reasoning—that when you raise the price of something, in this case labor, less of it will be demanded, or in this case hired.

Among the many studies supporting this conclusion is one completed earlier this year by Texas A&M’s Jonathan Meer and MIT’s Jeremy West, which reaffirmed that “the minimum wage reduces job growth over a period of several years” and that “industries that tend to have a higher concentration of low-wage jobs show more deleterious effects on job growth from higher minimum wages.”

The broader research confirms this. An extensive survey of decades of minimum-wage research, published by William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board and me in a 2008 book titled “Minimum Wages,” generally found a 1% or 2% reduction for teenage or very low-skill employment for each 10% minimum-wage increase.

San Bernardino mass-murderer Tashfeen Malik wrote social-media posts that endorsed jihad and expressed disdain for America. Yet, that did not cause U.S. immigration agents to question her admission into our country, much less deny it. In fact, our government consciously avoided learning about Malik’s Islamist rants.

Commentators stunned by this dereliction are attributing it to “secret” guidance issued by the Department of Homeland Security. In truth, there is nothing secret about it. The instruction to refrain from scrutinizing social-media commentary, a precious source of intelligence, is a straightforward application of what passes for the official Obama administration “anti”-terrorism strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism.”

Malik, a native Pakistani, who immigrated to the United States in July after living for a time in Saudi Arabia, joined her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, in slaying 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., earlier this month. The jihad’s Bonnie and Clyde were finally killed in a gun battle with police.

Encumbered with a fossilized illiberal ideology, progressives must rely on what Robert Conquest called “thought-blockers”––empty words and phrases that comfort and rouse the party faithful, and camouflage the lack of coherent argument, consistent principles, and empirical evidence. More important, these empty words and phrases that lie at the heart of progressivism are the tools for increasing the progressives’ political power and influence, at the expense of everybody else’s freedom.

Here’s a quick catalogue of a handful of such verbal evasions: “Imperialism,” “colonialism,” “racism,” “black lives matter,” “sexism,” “war on women,” “income inequality,” “one percent,” “fair share,” “Islamophobia,” “nothing to do with Islam,” “climate change consensus,” “microagressions,” and “diversity.” Most lack any specific content or connection to historical evidence, and are devoid of consistent principle. They are ideological spells either chanted by the dim-witted or manipulated by the clever who lust for power and influence.

Take “diversity,” an important pseudo-concept that has lain at the heart of race-based college admissions and preferences since the 1978 Bakke vs. University of California Supreme Court case. In that decision, Justice Lewis Powell asserted that an undefined “diversity” could allow taking account of race in college admissions, for it was a “compelling state interest” that justified an exception to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on discrimination by race. In 2003, in Grutter vs. Bollinger the Supreme Court reaffirmed the “compelling state interest” of diversity since it provided, as Justice Sandra Day O’Conner argued, “the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”

After Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook killed 14 Americans in their corner of the Jihad over in San Bernardino, the media began its long laborious search for their moment of “radicalization”.

The assumption that the intersection of terrorism and Islam can only be an aberration lead to the conviction that there was some moment in time at which Malik and Farook became “radical extremists”. Initial reports pegged that moment of “radicalization” as having happened at some point during the twenty minutes after Farook left the party. When the amount of firepower and preparation made the idea of a twenty minute radicalization massacre seem silly, the media tried to stretch it back for weeks.

Now they’ve had to give in and pull back that dreadful moment of radicalization for years.

But what if Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were never “radicalized”? What if neither of them “influenced” the other? What if both were exactly what they appear to be, devout Muslims who hated America and believed that it was their religious duty to kill Americans? What if this attitude did not show up last week or last year? What if it was the way that their culture and religion taught them to live?

A lot of people care about climate change, but not nearly as much as they do about other issues, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Just 7% of respondents said they think climate change is the top issue the federal government should address, with other issues, namely terrorism and the economy, at the top of the list. When asked specifically about climate change, closer to half — 41% — of respondents said they support taking immediate steps to address the problem.

The poll underscores a challenge facing President Barack Obama and other politicians who are pushing sweeping government actions to address climate change: How to make the case for a continued, concerted focus on an issue when most voters prefer a government focus on other things?
The chance timing of the United Nations global climate change conference in Paris coming two weeks after terrorists killed 130 people in that same city has fueled a political debate about which threat is greater and which the Obama administration should focus on more, an either/or dynamic White House officials reject.

“They’re both critically important,” said Ben Rhodes, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, at a press briefing during the U.N. climate talks, which concluded this past weekend. “And we have to do both at the same time. And they pose different threats.”

“At least three of the five Taliban leaders traded last year for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have tried to plug back into their old terror networks, a government official familiar with the intelligence told Fox News, describing it as an attempt to “re-engage.” March, 2015….rsk
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will face a military trial on charges that he deserted his unit in Afghanistan in 2009 and endangered the lives of soldiers who searched for him, the Army said Monday, a move that means he could be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty.

Sgt. Bergdahl, who was subsequently captured by the Taliban before being returned to the U.S. in a controversial prisoner exchange in 2014, is accused of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

The decision to pursue a court-martial was reached by Gen. Robert Abrams, who heads Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. It comes two months after an Army officer recommended that Sgt. Bergdahl, 29, not face jail time or a punitive discharge from the military.

Following an Article 32 preliminary hearing in the case, Lt. Colonel Mark Visger recommended in October that Sgt. Bergdahl face a special court-martial—essentially a military version of a misdemeanor court—according to Sgt. Bergdahl’s civilian defense lawyer, Eugene Fidell.

The juxtaposition of two headlines on the front page of a recent New York Times suggested ideology supersedes facts. The first: “Arms Stockpile is Found in Home of Two Suspects.” The second: “A Couple Who Lived Quietly, Motives Unknown.” Both headlines, it need hardly be said, dealt with the recent Islamist terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. It has been a failure to connect the dots that characterizes not only the liberal press, but more importantly the Administration. Most egregious was the failure of both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to detect the couple who had been radicalized since at least 2013 – before they met – and who left overt traces of their jihad-extremist sympathies on social media.

While Donald Trump’s remarks about temporarily banning Muslims immigrants from entering the country were reprehensible, they were understandable given the willfulness of the Administration as to the enemy we face. A week ago, Mr. Obama spoke to the nation from the Oval Office. While he mentioned terrorism, he did not use the modifier, Islamist. Mr. Trump’s reaction is a negation of Mr. Obama’s thesis – that his policies are working. When the pendulum swings to the left, it is propelled back an equal distance to the right. It has been the failure of the Obama Administration’s policies regarding immigration and Islamic terrorism that has given rise to the demagoguery of Mr. Trump.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whistleblower Philip Haney made a startling series of revelations Thursday evening (12/10/15) on Fox News’ The Kelly File. Haney described how he began investigating scores of individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat. He maintained the groups were exploiting the visa waiver program to transport suspected jihadist operatives in and out of the U.S., thus he started tracking them, and recording these findings within a DHS database. Haney’s efforts (as summarized by Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller) were eventually noticed by the National Targeting Center (NTC), which operates as an umbrella organization in U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Haney was subsequently asked to work for the NTC and rivet his attention on these Deobandi-related organizations. Over the course of his investigation, Haney received an award for identifying more than 300 potential jihad terrorists with links to the Deobandi affiliates.

Tablighi Jamaat certainly merited the attention Haney was giving it, having been connected to a series of jihad terrorist attacks, which included targeting the U.S.: the October, 2002 Portland (Oregon) Seven, and September, 2002 Lackawanna (New York) Six cases; an Aug. 2006 plot to bomb airliners en route from London to the U.S.; attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, in July 2007; and involvement in the July 7, 2005, London bombings, which killed 52 and injured more than 700. French investigators have further estimated Tablighi Jamaat ideological indoctrination was associated with 80% of their jihad terror cases.

Haney’s fastidious investigations raised serious concerns about the San Bernardino Deobandi movement-affiliated Darul-Uloom al-Islamia mosque—attended by jihad-waging killer Syed Farook. In addition, Farook’s jihadist accomplice wife, Tashfeen Malik, attended a traditionalist Islamic education center in Pakistan, also connected with the Deobandi movement. Notwithstanding his patriotic, yeoman efforts, DHS shut down Haney’s probe, and revoked both his security clearance and access to the databases he compiled. Retributive investigations against Haney by DHS and the Obama Justice Department, however, revealed no wrongdoing on his part. Tragically, as Haney explained, had his probe not been terminated for alleged “civil rights violations” of jihad-indoctrinated Muslim followers of the Deobandi movement: