Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Barr
- Moore
- Reaction
- Slavery
- Renewables
- Boston
- Loyalty
- Barr. Attorney General Bill Barr went before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week ostensibly to answer questions about the Mueller report on the Russian Collusion investigation. The first round of questions from the assembled representatives of the People were not questions at all. Rather, they were little speeches coupled with no small amount of messenger shooting. The only questions democrats got around to were “When did you quit beating your wife?” equivalents. He was unflappable. Chief Mueller leaker Andrew Weissman wrote a letter that Mueller sent to Barr complaining about the 4-page summary of the report the previous week and then leaked it to the Washington Post the night before the hearing in order to muddy the waters for Barr. Didn’t work. Barr called Mueller upon receipt of the letter and asked him what the problem was. After repeated questions from Barr, Mueller told him he was upset about the way the media was portraying what was in the report, particularly the unredacted portions of the report. Jerry Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee got into the act with an invitation for Barr to speak before their committee. Nadler’s tweak was for his staffers to question Barr for 30 minutes, a clear attempt to set up a perjury trap. Barr does not answer to staff, so he politely declined the honor. Subpoenas are sure to follow along with contempt of congress charges this week. Barr did make a bit of news in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said there was an active investigation into FISA abuse, particularly using the Clinton campaign funded Fusion GPS dossier. He also told the committee everyone must stop using the criminal system to pursue political differences. This must stop, and Barr is about to stop it, which is why we saw a lot of James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan making the rounds of MSNBC and related shows going after Trump. Flop sweat was pretty thick all week from those three. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/04/25/going-to-be-a-bombshell-digenova-gets-specific-over-alleged-fisa-abuse-not-going-to-need-1-lawyer-going-to-need-5-748514
- Moore. President Trump’s last two nominees for the Federal Reserve, Herman Cain and Stephen Moore both withdrew from the process after congressional pushback. Cain who now hosts a talk show was taken down with resurrected allegations of sexual dalliances. Moore withdrew after several senators decided that his concern over the changing role of men in the economy was anti-woman, insufficiently considerate and so he must be destroyed. In reality, the Federal Reserve is at the heart of the unaccountable, disconnected power of the Swamp, and is one of the last places to be drained. For decades, the Fed has operated so as to primarily benefit their friends and close associates in the investment and banking world, forgetting completely about the rest of us and their assigned mission. Free marketeers like Cain and Moore must never be allowed to get their fingers on those levers of real power which is why we see the Senate pushback. For now, the opposition has won a reprieve. Their problem is that Stephen Moore is still well embedded in the Trump economic team and will be able to do far more damage to the funders of the Swamp the he would have ever done on the Fed where he would be mostly out of sight and out of mind. Moore went on CNBC’s Squawk Box last week and said his biggest concern in the economy over the last 25 years has been the decline in male earnings for both blacks and whites over that time. Feminists instantly seized upon this as an anti-female position, which demonstrates their view of the world as a fixed pie over which we fight ever more vicious battles over pieces of a fixed sized pie. Free marketeers believe that we can and will grow the size of the pie, something that is to the swamp what a Crucifix is to a vampire. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/30/stephen-moore-says-the-decline-in-male-earnings-is-big-issue-for-the-economy.html
- Reaction. One of my political observations is that the Laws of Physics also apply to the political world. Problem is that world is a non-linear system, and an action will not necessarily generate an opposite or equal reaction. The reaction may not happen at all or when it does will be wildly larger than expected and in a completely different direction. I believe that the rise of the white nationalist / white supremacist movement is a logical, albeit nasty reaction to decades of white men being targeted by every single democrat for over half a century as the cause of the problems of the people they pander to. Additionally, the political left along with their enablers in the media have spent all that time dividing Americans into groups, pitting them against one another, and celebrating when those Americans start looking at their tribal identities rather than their individual identities. Is it any surprise that an increasing number of younger whites are now starting to play that game? It is sadly predictable as night following day. One of the commentaries about the 2016 election was that white men who supported Trump finally started voting as a group. I don’t know how much of that took place, but expect it was a non-zero number. This is a long way of getting to another reaction, this one is the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement, triggered by the endemic – learned and celebrated – anti-male bitterness sown by feminists against men over the last half century. MGTOW adherents follow a lifestyle of dealing with women as though women are enemies of men, essentially the mirrored worldview of the prototypical man-hating feminist. They avoid building relationships or friendships with women. And with the rampant man-hating climate in the public schools, higher education, and among the female-dominated HR Departments and #M3Too these days, who can blame them? Neither of these movements is going to end well. The only surprise is that anyone is surprised by either one. https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/how-feminism-is-driving-the-growing-trend-of-anti-women-subcultures/
- Slavery. Herbert Spencer quote from The Coming Slavery, 1884:
All socialism involves slavery…. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires.
One of the things we see in the modern world (as an aside, perhaps it was always there and I am just old enough to finally notice), is that people, generally become and do what they claim most to hate. AntiFa becomes fundamentally fascist. Socialists become slavers. Black Muslims who claim to hate slavery join the only major religion that still takes, sells, and keeps slaves. Richard Rahn wrote in the Wash Post last week a short history of slavery and its modern forms of socialism and fascism. If your definition of slavery is that it is a condition where an individual is deprived of much of the product he or she produces along with much or all of their property, that net gets really wide. Formal slavery was mostly abolished in the so-called civilized world. But new variants socialism, fascism and communism all grew out of the intellectual world in the 19th Century and were adopted in the 20th Century, with deadly effect, 100 – 200 million dead in the 20th Century alone. The new socialists, many of whom are running for the democrat nomination, want to jack up tax rates to 70 – 90%, ignoring a century of experience that people will go to great lengths to avoid paying those taxes, and in return, the various governments levying them will go to even greater lengths to make sure they do. In California, local and state governments are busily levying all manner of fees, rules, regulations, and other “helpful” limits to any sort of ability for anyone but a few fabulously wealthy people to create and retain wealth. The term “wage slave” is increasingly applicable as is the term “serf” as the middle class is busily destroyed by economic serfdom and new feudal society California is building for itself. Unhappily, they are also exporting that system nationwide. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/22/socialism-fascism-and-communism-enslave-and-they-d/
- Renewables. Finally, some actual data on the costs of phasing in renewable energy into the electrical generation mix. This one comes out of the University of Chicago. The bottom-line conclusion is that even a minimal increase in the percentage of solar / wind in an electrical grid (1 – 4%) will raise electrical costs 11 – 17%. Another way to look at it is that reducing CO2 emissions costs $130 – 460/ton. Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are the largest and most popular climate policy enacted in the US. To date, they have been passed by 29 states and the District of Columbia. Seven years after passage of an RPS program, required renewable share of generation is 1.8% higher with average retail electricity prices 1.3/kwh higher, or 11% higher. 12 years after adoption, the numbers are even worse, with a 4.2% increase in renewables share, a price increase of 2.0 cents/kwh, or a 17% price increase. These costs represent the additional costs and burdens that renewables (solar and wind) put on the existing generation and distribution system. https://westernfreepress.com/national-trend-to-mandate-renewable-energy-as-major-power-source-is-ill-conceived-and-foolish/
- Boston. The sanctuary city movement just hit a bit of a snag in Boston last week as the US Attorney indicted a MA District Court Judge and Trial Court officer on obstruction for preventing an ICE officer from taking custody of an illegal defendant during a news conference on April 25. The judge helped the illegal escape out the basement door of the Newton District Court with the court officer assisting. Needless to say, the indictment triggered the expected reaction when a pair of local district attorneys filed a civil suit to block immigration arrests in state courthouses. It only took 4 days for them to prep and file the lawsuit in a US District Court. Clearly things aren’t all that busy in the Boston criminal scene these days as these ladies have time to put this sort of thing together. The lawsuit also included several pro-illegal advocacy groups, meaning it will be paid for by US taxpayers. The claim in the lawsuit is that the arrests violate “common law privilege” against civil arrests in courthouses. Their problem is that ICE are criminal arrests as the illegals have broken federal law by virtue of being illegals.
- Loyalty. Latest on the college and university diversity front is the demand that students, faculty and employees sign Loyalty Oaths in support of diversity. Loyalty Oaths were trotted out in the post-WWII red scare world as a vehicle to ensure anti-Communism was enforced. At the time and for decades afterwards, the political left and intellectuals railed against them, eventually getting them removed. But like segregation, loyalty oaths are back and back in a big way. UCLA now requires tenure track applicants to write full statements outlining their commitment to diversity, not unlike the loyalty oaths Mao required from people in China. Mao chose loyalty over merit, not unlike what UCLA is now installing. He phrased it as “Red vs expert.” US Riverside, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley all require similar oaths. This will end as bad for US universities as it did for the Chinese people under Mao. One other tangential observation is that those that who are now burning books will shortly be burning people. We have seen how this proceeds and it never ends well for anyone involved. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/universities_now_requiring_loyalty_oaths_taken_to_diversity.html
More later –
– AG