RUTHFULLY YOURS

David Harsanyi has already written a fine critique about the recent NPR story “Should We Be Having Kids in the Age of Climate Change?”, but the entire NPR article is such a bit of weapons-grade stupidity that as someone who works professionally on energy and climate policy, I need to offer an even more forceful rebuttal.

It’s hard to know what’s more shocking and depressing—that there are large numbers of people out there who take nonsense like this seriously or that our government-funded radio network has reporters credulous enough to report on it without a trace of mockery.

Nobody knows what will happen to our future climate, and you can find estimates from serious scholars ranging from the dire to the optimistic (I lean fairly strongly toward the latter view). But betting that climate will cause catastrophic disruption to human populations, at least in countries like America – changes so disruptive that they would make child-bearing a bad idea – is simply, based on history, a terrible bet. NPR’s piece is a pure form of climate propaganda in which arrogance, both on the part of the reporter and her subjects, masquerades as self-sacrifice.

The article informs us that “scientists and world leaders agree” that a change of over two degrees Celsius ”would trigger cataclysmic consequences” (scientists are agreed on no such thing, and not having crystal balls, it wouldn’t matter if they did agree—they simply can’t know).

One of the stars of the NPR article, Travis Rieder, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins with one child, claims to know about ethics, but he clearly knows nothing about history, which, at least in the developed world, has been rife with failed predictions of environmental doom and a continued under-estimation of human resiliency (a finding extensively documented 35 years ago by economist Julian Simon and built on by countless scholars since).

Segregation is back. These past few weeks have seen controversy over black-student housing ads for roommates directed to “people of color” only, and over colleges and a law school that created separate class sections restricted for black students.

What is going on? It appears, alas, that public universities have formally reintroduced and made fashionable racial segregation, in the guise of creating safe spaces for “their” minority students — to endorse, fund, and foster black separatism in higher education. And that’s what the University of Connecticut has instituted with its plans to open a dormitory on its Storrs campus, where black male students will be clustered and separated from their peers of other skin colors.

But the last thing that campuses should be doing these days is encouraging racial isolation and stereotyping, along with a sense of grievance and a victim mentality. All that is certain to make race relations at our universities worse, not better.

The claim, according to University of Connecticut officials and documents obtained by us through a freedom-of-information request, is that this housing segregation will help address the lower graduation rates of its black-male students — lower as compared with male students of other colors and with women. But the social science here is iffy and laden with the paternalism, doubletalk, and the soft bigotry of low expectations whereby black men are burdened and labeled as being “at risk.”

UConn boasts that this “choice” of housing is precisely what its black-male students need and want. If so, the decades-old lament of social psychologist Kenneth B. Clark has come full circle: He observed that white racism would have gained its greatest triumph had it been able in the 1950s and 1960s “to persuade its black victims that segregation was not only acceptable but desirable in itself, and that the justification for this separatism was color alone.” Clark’s research on the effects of Jim Crow segregation was prominently cited in the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down segregation on the ground that separate public schools are “inherently unequal.”

Nonetheless, UConn sought and got a grant from a private educational foundation to fund the “special” dorm. Only after criticism from us and a few others, including two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, did UConn change its public rhetoric — explaining that the dorm would be “open” to any students who identified with the African-American male experience. But there’s no doubt that racial classifications will be used and racial segregation encouraged.

A week ago in Minneapolis, Republican donors attending a Trump fundraiser were assaulted, robbed and spat upon by a violent leftist mob as they were leaving the event. Attendees say that even though there was a strong law enforcement presence at the convention center downtown where the fundraiser was held, they were not afforded any police protection when coming to and leaving the event — and even more incredibly, there were no arrests.

Many people who attended the event told Fox 9 that police seemed to back down from intervening, but the Minneapolis Police Department insists there was no stand-down order.

Twin Cities News Talk TCNT morning hosts Andrew Lee and MN state Senator David Osmek took calls on Monday from attendees who also said that the police seemed to be holding back. One male attendee claimed he was told by more than one officer that law enforcement had been ordered to “stand down” — and that the order had “come from the top.”

The first caller, Carol, said that as attendees were leaving, they were urged to use alternative doors because the protesters were by the front doors. Because it was raining outside, she wrapped her autographed Trump sign in her sweater so it wouldn’t get wet.

“When we came out on the sidewalk, there weren’t any protesters,” she said. But it didn’t take long for the mob to figure out what was happening. “We were ambushed,” she continued. “They came running at us — I was grabbed. Women with bandannas over their noses and mouths screamed obscenities at us.” She noted that she didn’t see any police in the immediate area.

Carol said that when she screamed, the thugs mocked her and called her a “white supremacist.” She said that when she wrestled herself away, her Trump sign became uncovered. When the protesters saw it, she said she ran really fast across the street and that once she crossed the street, the mob stopped pursuing her.

Another caller, Cynthia, said she was dropped off about a block away from the convention center because her driver didn’t want to get in close proximity to the intimidating mob.

For a change, we come not to bury a college president but to praise him. His name is Robert Zimmer, and nearby the University of Chicago president defends the educational and societal virtues of free speech on college campuses. Let’s hope he wears body armor to the next faculty meeting.

Mr. Zimmer’s public coming out is all the more notable because it appears to be part of a university-wide message. The school’s dean of students, Jay Ellison, has written a letter to incoming freshmen noting that the desire for “safe spaces” from discomfiting speech or ideas will not override the academic community’s interest in rigorous debate.

“Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn, without fear of censorship,” Mr. Ellison wrote for tender millennial ears. “You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”

This is so refreshing we want to keep going. Mr. Ellison’s letter adds that Chicago’s “commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

The letter comes with a monograph by dean John Boyer discussing the university’s “history of debate, and even scandal, resulting from our commitment to academic freedom.” Maybe Chicago’s example will inspire spinal infusions at the likes of Rutgers, the University of Missouri, and even the timorous souls at Yale.

As President Obama ends his second term, he’s leaving plenty of political parting gifts. The latest is a 35% single-year increase in the federal budget deficit, and a rising trajectory of spending and debt as a share of the economy. Hillary Clinton’s campaign promise of more “stimulus” spending next year suddenly looks a lot more politically problematic.

That’s the story you haven’t read from the Congressional Budget Office’s latest fiscal and economic outlook released this week. For the 2016 fiscal year that ends next month, CBO now forecasts that revenues will rise by only $26 billion while outlays will increase by some $178 billion. The federal deficit will therefore rise from $438 billion to $590 billion, the biggest deficit since 2013.

The revenue shortfall reflects the decline in corporate profits and slower economic growth; the second quarter was revised down to 1.1% Friday. Meanwhile, outlays will rise 5% thanks in large part to the automatic spending drivers of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (which has soared thanks to ObamaCare). Net interest outlays will rise 11% this fiscal year despite historically low interest rates as overall debt continues to increase.As a share of the national economy, debt held by the public—the kind the Treasury must repay—will increase to 76.6% this fiscal year. That’s the highest share of GDP since 1950 when the debt burden was winding down after World War II. It was 52.3% in President Obama’s first year in office, and it usually is flat or falls during an economic expansion.

No such debt reduction is on the horizon now. Thanks to ObamaCare and his refusal to reform entitlements, Mr. Obama has set the federal fisc on an even uglier path long after he’s left for a tour of the world’s great golf courses. CBO says spending will keep rising and so will debt as a share of GDP—to 77.2% in 2017, 79.3% in 2021 and 85.5% in 2026. (See the nearby chart.) All of this assumes no change in current policy and no economic recession. The odds of the latter are close to zero.

One intriguing question is whether Mr. Obama has planned it this way. One of his abiding goals has been to reorient federal spending away from defense toward more income redistribution and social spending. He has achieved that to some extent during his eight years in office, but his spending wedge will grow even more pronounced as the years go on. Budget room for defense will shrink as the entitlement state expands. He is Europeanizing the U.S. military budget.CONTINUE AT SITE