ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A True Progressive Top Court Takes On Climate Change: The Case Of Germany Francis Menton

Posted By on November 16th, 2022

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-11-14-how-a-true-progressive-top-court-handles-climate-change-the-case-of-germany

Two of my recent posts have looked at critiques from the left of the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA — the June 30 decision that held that the Clean Air Act did not clearly give EPA authority to order the phase-out of all fossil-fuel generated electricity in the U.S. My July 5 post, “How To Think Like A Liberal Supreme Court Justice,” summarized Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in the West Virginia case. My September 12 post, “How The Left Views Administrative Law,” discussed the presentation at the Federalist Society convention by Professor Sally Katzen of NYU Law School, where she stated her belief that EPA did have the authority in question, and criticized the Court for having taken “an extreme action to shut down rule-making.”

But the Kagan dissent and Katzen presentation are just critiques of the approach to this matter taken by our constitutionalist-dominated Supreme Court. A separate question is, what would the liberals do if they suddenly found themselves in control of the top court — say, if a new Democrat-controlled Congress decides to create six new justices to be appointed by President Biden?

At the lunch following the panel where Professor Katzen spoke, I found myself sitting next to two lawyers who had come from Germany to attend the convention. One of them said to me, in essence, you have no idea what a country’s top court might do when it feels that its powers are unconstrained. He then referred me, on the subject of climate change, to a Decision from the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) from March 2021; and he gave me sufficient pointers to find information about the Decision in English.

It turns out that the Constitutional Court has an English-language portion of its website, where can be found both a press release of April 29, 2021, summarizing the Decision, as well as a full translation of the Decision itself. The full Decision has some 270 “paragraphs,” some quite long, and would likely be around 200 pages if typed out in the format used by our courts. It is unanimous, and there are no concurrences or dissents. Unlike cases from our Supreme Court, the Decision does not have a caption naming plaintiffs and defendants. They suggest referring to the Decision as the “Order of the First Senate of 24 March 2021.” (The Constitutional Court is divided into two halves, called “Senates,” of eight judges each. They divide the cases between themselves based on subject matter.)

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Socialized Medicine Is No Cure: Britain’s Broken Benefit System by Andrew Ash

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19089/socialized-medicine

Claiming that conservatives are less compassionate because many basic needs are not offered for free can miss the point. Too often what is offered are words; what is actually ends up being delivered may be sorely lacking — as disillusioned citizens in places such as Venezuela and Cuba have found out the hard way.

Of course, one does not become a “better person” by voting for giveaways that are all too often fraudulent or semi-fraudulent — a bait-and-switch in which what is delivered ends up being far from what has been promised, if delivered at all. For many people, however, it might satisfy a need to be perceived as being on the side of the “good” — which social promises always are; why else would a public buy into them?

Over time, as governments began to separate themselves from religion, many responsibilities of the church became transferred to the state. The gradual progression of socialist and Marxist thought, meanwhile, further increased the divide, while at the same time expanding the remit of governmental reach into people’s daily lives.

Immigration, changes in the workplace, a massive increase in disability payments (along with what constitutes “disability”), the length of time people remain unemployed and an increasingly bloated bureaucracy have all contributed to breaking the back of an outdated system.

If your needs are immediate, the struggle for medical care is even more uphill: the NHS is now advising patients to consider private healthcare.

Then there is dental care. As long ago as 1952, the British state’s initial offer of “free” dental work (and visits to the optician) had to be dramatically reined-in: the reality of the economics was not adding up.

The high rate of taxation in Britain, with a top income tax rate of 45% (for those who earn more than £150,000) and an “ordinary” rate of 20%, has many wondering if their “national insurance” deductions could not be better spent on private care when needed. As things stand, the majority of people — those without chronic medical conditions — appear to be paying for the few — the same business model as for private insurance companies.

Taking into consideration the challenge of rampant illegal immigration, the divisive nature of “woke” ideology that pits citizens against one another, the criminalisation of speech that constitutes “hate crimes” law, the softly-softly approach to fundamentalist terrorism, as well “transgender” infiltration into women’s sports, locker rooms and restrooms, media race-baiting and so on, it seems we have a bit of a problem on our hands.

The over-loading of the NHS, which would be alarming enough on its own, is merely [with the ever-increasing number of immigrants] the icing on a hugely unappetising-looking cake. Indeed, the total cost of providing healthcare to visitors and immigrants alone, was estimated at two billion pounds per year — as far back as 2013.

To compound matters, when exceptions to the rules are made for certain residents — such as allowing men in polygamous marriages to claim for wives who do not even reside in the UK, the bitterness can only grow. To blame the inevitable backlash on “racism” or “xenophobia” might seem to many a ruse to silence dissent.

Year after year, as the population has grown, the inevitable demand for state aid has risen, stretching resources, while breeding bitter rivalry amongst those vying for help — be it healthcare, social housing or state benefits. The dynamic between altruism and gratitude, has been replaced it with an increasingly authoritarian-looking bureaucracy on the state’s part, coupled with what many might regard as a cynical sense of entitlement in those expecting help.

Far from seeming like a comforting “safety net”, welfare now feels more like a soul-crushing method of state-enslavement.

There may well be little doubt that the state has good cause to implement anti-social measures to counteract the anti-social behaviour of some of its dependents, but inevitably such action creates a paranoid, suspicious landscape entirely lacking in empathy.

Sadly, the “safety net” we have in the UK today bears little resemblance to what its benevolent pioneers envisioned. Perhaps suggestions could be offered how constructively to improve it.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Feds Had Informants In Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for J6 Gamesmanship aside, it’s now evident the FBI infiltrated these two “militia” groups well in advance of January 6. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/14/feds-had-informants-in-proud-boys-and-oath-keepers-for-j6/

If Republicans eke out a win in the House of Representatives—which now seems likely—GOP leaders have promised to investigate numerous government scandals, including the irredeemably corrupt Federal Bureau of Investigation. One path of inquiry is how the bureau manufactures data to promote the phony narrative that “domestic violent extremists,” i.e., supporters of Donald Trump, pose a security threat to the country.

Whistleblowers recently disclosed how the FBI is “misrepresenting the scale of domestic violent extremism nationwide by categorizing January 6th-related investigations as organic cases stemming from local field offices, instead of all related to one single incident,” according to a report by GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee. 

Shortly after the Capitol protest, FBI Director Christopher Wray designated the four-hour disturbance as an act of “domestic terror”; federal prosecutors routinely compare January 6 defendants to terrorists, enabling the government to seek—and receive—extended jail time for misdemeanors convictions and justify indefinite pretrial detention for nonviolent offenders.

During his Senate testimony in March 2021, Wray described members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, two groups involved in the events of January 6, as “militia violent extremists.” When Senator Lindsey Graham (RINO-S.C.) asked Wray whether he considered either group a domestic terror organization, the director refused to answer directly, instead insisting “individuals” associated with both groups are “domestic terrorists.”

Those comments alone should be fireable offenses. Set aside Wray’s excuse-making for leftist rioters—in 2020, Wray laughably refused to apply the same label to Antifa, calling it a “movement or an ideology,” not a terror organization—no evidence exists to support Wray’s accusations that the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys mimic terror cells comparable to al Qaeda. Of the nearly two dozen members of both groups now facing charges tied to January 6, only one is accused of using a weapon (a riot shield) and it is alleged he used it to break a window, not harm a person, that afternoon. 

Members of the Oath Keepers who drove to Washington to attend the president’s speech left their legally transported weapons at a Virginia hotel rather than violate the city’s strict gun control laws. Worst “militia” ever.

And no one in either group carried a firearm into the building or on Capitol grounds.

BOOKS Comments turned off

How the World Went Woke The academic roots of today’s social upheavals. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-world-went-woke/

Note: My book The Victims’ Revolution was first published by Broadside Books, a HarperCollins imprint, in 2012. In February, Post Hill Press will issue the paperback edition, which includes a new foreword by Douglas Murray and a new introduction by me. Here is the latter.

Disney, which brought you Bambi and the Little Mermaid, creates a female Muslim superhero named “Ms. Marvel” and a robot who asks a transgender man for advice on female sanitary product. Larry Elder, a black GOP candidate for governor of California, is smeared by the Los Angeles Times as “the black face of white supremacy” for preaching a message essentially identical to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. When an 80-year-old woman complains to her local YMCA about a biological male lurking in the women’s locker room, she’s banned for being a transphobe. The Hachette publishing group cancels the memoirs of our most acclaimed living movie director because of discredited, decades-old molestation charges. The Biden Administration sets down strict vaccination rules for those entering the country with legitimate visas, but exempts people crossing the southern border illegally.

All this insanity didn’t come out of nowhere. Since the 1960s, as I describe in Chapter One of this book, the study of literature and other fields in the humanities and social sciences has been gradually transformed into something very different – and extremely distressing. An increasing focus on group identity – and on the strict division of humankind into oppressor groups and victim groups – fed the growth of such disciplines as Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, and Chicano Studies. I’m not alone in calling them “grievance studies,” and in considering them to be inimical to the serious study of human beings as complex individuals with a variety of virtues and defects.

This book is about those “grievance studies.” In preparing it, I read voluminously in these fields, attended conferences, sat in on classes, and performed interviews. I knew that I was taking on not just the entire American higher-education establishment but also the elite media that are its ideological allies. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when the New York Times Book Review ran – on its front page, no less – a loftily dismissive account of my book by a purported education expert who, calling it “out of date,” claimed that identity studies represented “a shrinking sector of academic life” and that his “younger colleagues” at a certain Ivy League college were “returning to close readings of literary classics.”

Those familiar with – and critical of – the actual situation in academia recognized this as a lie, and praised The Victims’ Revolution as truth-telling, plain and simple. Calling it “indispensable,” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, theorized that the Times had judged the book “too important to ignore,” hence the dishonest review. George Leef of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal agreed. “It’s revealing,” Leef wrote, “that the NYT editor realized that the book couldn’t be ignored, but had to be panned.” And Hoover Institution fellow Bruce Thornton called the Times review “a textbook illustration of how the academic establishment goes after anyone who exposes the corruption of a reactionary, failing institution.”

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Academic Anti-Semites Who Don’t Like Being Called Out for What They Are Criticizing Israel can be anti-Semitic. by Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/academic-anti-semites-who-dont-like-being-called-out-for-what-they-are/

In yet another tendentious display of virtue-signaling from a group of self-professed “scholars specializing in Antisemitism, Holocaust Studies, Modern Jewish History and related fields,” 128 academics cautioned the UN against adopting a tool for addressing anti-Semitism.

In a letter published in EUobserver on November 3rd entitled, “Don’t trap the United Nations in a vague and weaponised [sic] definition of antisemitism,” these woke scholars claimed to have “witness[ed] with growing concern politically motivated efforts to instrumentalize the fight against antisemitism at and against the United Nations. How, according to this group, was that occurring? In their delusional view, “Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan has spearheaded . . . efforts . . . to undercut the Palestinians and” of paramount importance to these scholars, “to shield the Israeli government from international criticism,”

Ambassador Erdan had pointed out that the UN itself has been a perennial hotbed of fanatical anti-Israelism, something which apparently offended this group who claimed that Erdan “has gone so far as to denounce the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) as ‘anti-Semitic’.” But the group’s primary concern was that “Mr. Erdan now seeks to fundamentally change the rules of the game by pressing the UN to adopt the “Working Definition of Antisemitism” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA WDA).”

As the 2016 Internal Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism continues to be adopted by organizations and universities who find it useful as a way of identifying instances of anti-Semitism—and especially the “new anti-Semitism” which couches itself as criticism of Israel—predictably, though unsurprisingly, groups that wish to continue to slander and libel the Jewish state, such as this group, have come out in opposition to it. What bothers these indignant individuals? Possibly the section of the IHRA definition that suggests that “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is anti-Semitic.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Deconstructing the demonization of the ‘settler’ The Israel-haters may not like it, but everyone, at some point, was a settler.by Benjamin Kerstein

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/writers/benjamin-kerstein/

The words “settlement” and “settler” have decidedly nasty connotations these days. I am not speaking only of the discourse on Israel and Zionism, in which the settlers in Judea and Samaria are routinely portrayed in the most negative possible terms. On a global scale, “settlement” and “settler,” as writer Victor Sharpe has been warning us for years, have become not only pejoratives but synonyms for absolute evil.

It is only fair to say that there are some good reasons for this. The dominant “post-colonialist” paradigm sees settlement as inherently colonialist, imperialist and often genocidal—the brutal oppression of indigenous populations of color by white Western empires. And indeed, this has often been the case.

Thanks to the prodigious efforts of Israel’s enemies, much of the world’s elite has applied this post-colonialist paradigm to the Jewish state. Israel, they claim, is a “settler-colonialist” society created by foreign conquerors who stole and continue to steal the land of “Palestine” from the indigenous population.

A great many people have dealt rather summarily with these charges, and I will not reiterate their arguments here. I will note, however, that once one begins to unpack the post-colonialist paradigm—with its metaphysical dichotomy of “settler” and “indigenous”—it becomes much more problematic than it appears at first glance.

One could argue, for example, that with the exception of a handful of sub-Saharan Africans, no one is indigenous to anywhere. The theory that different species of Homo sapiens rose up more or less out of the ground in various parts of the world—which was the foundation of 19th- and 20th-century racism—has been thoroughly discredited. It is now universally accepted.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Judgment day for Israel’s legal system By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/judgment-day-for-israels-legal-system/

 Nationwide outrage over the light sentence meted out by the Beersheva Juvenile Court last Wednesday to a Bedouin who sodomized a little girl two years ago sheds light on why the right garnered a clear victory on Nov. 1.

As the 25th Knesset is sworn in today (Tuesday), with coalition negotiations in full swing, the above heinous crime and measly punishment can help explain the election results. Chattering-class hysteria notwithstanding, the probability that Religious Zionist Party member Itamar Ben-Gvir will be given the public-security portfolio he’s been demanding is actually a relief to much of the public.

Ben-Gvir is by no means the only figure who’s been bemoaning the loss of Israeli governance in the Negev, which, despite being located in the south of the country, is often referred to as the “Wild West.” But his shouts about and proposed remedies for restoring law and order in that and other key areas have resonated far and wide; as has the rape case in question.

The horror story took place on a Friday night, after the child and her family had finished their Shabbat meal and gone to sleep. Three young men—two of them aged 17, and the third, who waited outside in a getaway car, past his 18th birthday—approached the house.

The “teenagers” had already burgled other residences, so they must have been feeling pretty confident when they entered this one. All their scrounging produced, however, was 50 shekels ($14.50) and a few toys.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Bends Over For Xi Not a word about COVID-19. by Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-bends-over-for-xi/

On Monday November 14 in Bali, Indonesia, Joe Biden met with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). According to the White House press release, “the two leaders spoke candidly about their respective priorities and intentions across a range of issues,” including “transnational challenges such as climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security, and global food security” and so forth.

As Charlie Spierling noted, in their opening remarks, Biden and Xi failed to mention “the coronavirus pandemic that came from China.” This lapse comes in the wake of mounting evidence that the pandemic originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That lab was funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci to conduct dangerous gain of function research that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible.

“Everyone had to agree to the narrative” enforced by Fauci, former CDC director Dr. Redfield recently revealed. In early 2020, CDC official Dr. Nancy Messonnier even complimented China on its handling of the pandemic. On Monday, former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus called out Biden for failing to bring it up.

“Why are we not talking about fentanyl — the chemical precursors that go from China to Mexico — the number one killer of young people? Why aren’t we talking about the origins of COVID-19?” Ortagus asked. “Are we just going to let them get away with this?”

The White House claimed Biden “raised concerns about PRC practices in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly.” But as Andrew Thornebrooke noted at The Epoch Times, “the Chinese Communist Party’s readout of the meeting did not mention any discussion of human rights.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Wait, This Is The Inflation News Everyone Is Celebrating?

Posted By on November 15th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/15/wait-this-is-the-inflation-news-everyone-is-celebrating/

The moment the government’s inflation number came out last Thursday, the stock market rocketed upward. President Joe Biden took a victory lap. It was less than expected! Inflation is cooling off!

Sounds wonderful. Except that prices rose in October by almost 8% year-over-year. That’s four times faster than the Federal Reserve Bank’s 2% target rate. And it marks the 20th consecutive month since inflation has been above the Fed’s target.

It also comes on top of previous record-level price hikes.

When prices started shooting up last year, the White House said it was no big deal because of the “base effect.” They said that prices seemed to be climbing rapidly in 2021 only because the COVID lockdowns had knocked prices down the year before. Since the base was low, the year-over-year comparisons made inflation seem higher than it really was.

“Over the next few months, as the base effects’ months drift further into the past, this distortionary characteristic of the price data should fade,” the White House said in a report in June 2021.

Except, that didn’t happen. Prices kept climbing even as those “base effect” months passed on by. And we are still seeing historically high price increases on top of historically high increases.

October’s year-over-year price spike of 7.7% is on top of the 6.2% increase in October 2021. In other words, prices last month were 14.4% higher than they were two years ago. Ask yourself, has your income increased by more than 14.4% over the past two years?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Silver linings to the GOP’s midterm shortfall

Posted By on November 14th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3733409-silver-linings-to-the-gops-midterm-shortfall/

Are there any silver linings to the disappointing midterm elections for Republicans? Yes, at least three: President Biden wants to run again, Donald Trump has been dethroned and the GOP cannot be blamed for the recession that looms over 2023. Put together, the results might oddly have given the GOP better odds of winning in 2024 than if the much-anticipated “red wave” had materialized.

Does this sound absurdly Pollyannish? Maybe, but it is also true.

First, Biden seems to think the midterms were a positive referendum on his performance. In his follow-up press conference, he exulted that “we lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic President’s first midterm election in the last 40 years.”

He rattled off his many supposed accomplishments, including: “creating” 10 million new jobs, “taking on powerful interests to lower…energy bills” and making “historic investments” to encourage building new semiconductor factories. All that “while lowering the federal deficit in the two years by $1.7 trillion….No administration has ever cut the deficit that much.”

The report card is dishonest. But give Biden credit for convincing voters that the economy was actually in tatters when he took over (it was growing at 6 percent, thanks to large stimulus spending and because it was in great shape before COVID-19 hit), that he engineered a dramatic drop in the federal deficit (actually, he pumped it way up before by law it began to recede) and that he somehow drove oil companies to lower prices, while in fact he recklessly drew down our Strategic Petroleum Reserves.