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Impotent Republicans Are a Joke—the Democrats Don’t Take Republicans Seriously – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2019

The question that needs asking and an answer is: What are the Democrats up to? Why is the Democratic Party, once a representative of the working class, helping the military/security deep state unseat a president elected by the working class? Why has the major figure in the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, defined the American working class as “the Trump deplorables”?

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/11/16/impotent-republicans-are-a-joke-the-democrats-dont-take-republicans-seriously/

Paul Craig Roberts

With the entirety of the presstitute media endeavoring to turn second-hand hear-say into an impeachable offense, do not expect to hear any contrary news. Such as:

This on Zero Hedge: Adam Shifty Schiff involved in illegal sodomite drug den EXPOSED: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-10-20/adam-shifty-schiff-involved-illegal-sodomite-drug-den-exposed

This on en Volve: BOMBSHELL: Feds Investigating Adam Schiff’s ‘Disturbing Behavior’ At Ed Buck’s Sex House Of Death!: https://en-volve.com/2019/10/09/bombshell-feds-investigating-adam-schiffs-disturbing-behavior-at-ed-bucks-sex-house-of-death/

This on Infowars: NBC MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT, FRIEND OF ADAM SCHIFF ARRESTED FOR SEXTING 9-YEAR-OLD: https://www.infowars.com/nbc-medical-correspondent-friend-of-adam-schiff-arrested-for-sexting-9-year-old/

This on thefederalist.com: Adam Schiff’s Star Witness Just Admitted Burisma Should Be Investigated For Corruption: https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/13/adam-schiffs-star-witness-just-admitted-burisma-should-be-investigated-for-corruption/?utm_campaign=ACTENGAGE

This on https://www.theepochtimes.com/criminal-indictments-could-be-coming-in-russiagate_3130866.html : Are Criminal Indictments Forthcoming: “All this suggests criminal deception of the FISA court, coordinated criminal leaks of classified information by U.S. intelligence agencies to disrupt the Trump presidency, the secret use of an asset by U.S. intelligence agencies to entrap a low-level Trump campaign aide, and the entrapment of Flynn, coupled with the criminal alteration of an FBI 302 to at least partially fabricate federal crimes against him.” https://www.theepochtimes.com/criminal-indictments-could-be-coming-in-russiagate_3130866.html

This on https://www.theepochtimes.com/barr-says-democrats-courts-are-engaged-in-efforts-to-cripple-presidential-power_3148046.html: Barr Says Democrats, Courts Are Engaged in Efforts to Cripple Presidential Power

With the absence of any integrity in the American print and TV media and the large presence of CIA, State Department, and Israel Lobby funded internet sites, Americans have no sure-fire way of knowing what information can be trusted. We do know that nothing said on CNN, MSNBC, NPR or written in the New York Times and Washington Post can be believed…

When you start thinking along these lines other puzzling questions come to mind. For example, why does the leadership of the Democratic Party seem to be in the hands of feminists and people of color on one side and crooks like Joe Biden on the other. What holds a party this naturtally divided together?

Why does an anti-white odor emanate from the Democratic Party, especially an anti-white heterosexual male ordor? Why are all of Epstein’s pedophile clients Democrats? Has the Democratic Party become the party of immigrant-invaders and sexual perverts?

Republicans come across as impotent, powerless, and stupid. They have stood there impotently while two of their more effective fundraisers and political advisers, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, were framed in broad daylight by the utterly corrupt Russiagate special prosecutor Robert Mueller and sentenced to prison. This never happens to Democrats. Only to Republicans. The Epstein case has disappeared…

Trump with the weakest response against an impeachment devoid of any evience is afraid to pardon Mueller’s victims, people convicted of offenses that are unrelated to the Russiagate investigation. The entire purpose of the false convictions of Manafort and Stone is to prove that Republicans are too scared to protect their own. Mueller’s purpose was to break-up the ranks of Trump supporters and turn them against one another. Once one runs for the exit, the rest follow…

Does Donald Trump only fight for himself? If so, we will see if he can by himself save himself.

Is Trump unable to fight because his own team belongs to the deep state?

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This is the BIG reason why corporate America has gone woke (plus 4 more) — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2019

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/473576-corporate-america-gone-woke/

Why have the biggest and most profitable American corporations embraced leftist politics, as seen in their woke advertising and social justice activism? Hint: It’s not because they’ve become non-profits and taken up philanthropy.

Judging by the Ted Talks of woke American CEOs, by the woke corporate advertising, and by the public relations campaigns promoting corporate ‘brand activism,’ one might reasonably conclude that the most successful, for-profit corporate giants in America have gone out of the money-making business to become centers of leftist political propaganda. And it’s not only the most woke corporate behemoths that promote leftist political notions. Go to a startup crowdfunding portal and count how many times the word “democratizing” is used to describe the mission of the startups there, or how many startup investments are pitched with the supposedly progressive political outlook of the prospective investor in mind.

What one encounters – from the boardrooms to the storyboards and beyond – is a nauseating, woke-up blend of equal parts Communist Manifesto, social justice handbook, sanctimonious sermon and used car sales pitch.

 

Just why has corporate America gone woke (while not yet broke)? Below, I run-down some of the possible explanations for woke capitalism or corporate leftism – from five to one – with five being the least compelling and one being the most.

5. The bosses are woke themselves. CEOs and other corporate executives went to business schools that weren’t that far away from social science and humanities departments. Business professors became friends with humanities and social science professors, who are notoriously left-leaning. Their leftism rubbed off on the business professors, who then spread it to their students, who went on to run corporate America.

4. To pander to their clients. Corporate leftism pleases the corporate customers with the most disposable income, those between 25 and 54, who likely live on the east and west coasts. This demographic includes millennials, whose politics are notoriously left-leaning. Choosing these “coastal elites” over the deplorables in “flyover states” has been an easy decision. The deplorables have less money anyway and they can go to hell if they don’t like corporate wokeness.

3. Being woke is easier than actually paying workers.  Corporate wokeness acts as a placebo, a substitute for economic concessions by corporations. The statements of woke CEOs, the woke ads, the woke activism – these cost a lot less than higher wages and better benefits for workers, or lower prices for customers. Plus, the dummies seem to fall for it every time.

2. To keep the government wolf from the door. Woke capitalism appeases the political elite, putting corporations in the good favor of liberal lawmakers, in the hopes of favorable treatment from the latter. As liberals, these political operatives are more likely to impose burdensome regulations or to initiate anti-trust legislation that would pose big problems. Why not tell them what they want to hear?

1. Wokeness is itself part of globalist capitalism. Leftist politics are perfectly compatible with and supportive of the agendas of global corporate giants. Global corporations and leftist activists want the very same things:

·       Globalism – or, in Marxist terms, “internationalism” – has always been a goal of the left and it has become a goal of multinational corporations. The latter extend their markets far and wide while the former think it advances the Marxist objective of “workers of the world unite!”

·       Unrestricted immigration: Provides cheap labor for corporations and makes leftists feel politically edgy and morally superior for being anti-racists who welcome everyone – whatever their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation – including Mexican gang members running drugs and children? –  into the country, but not to camp out in their living rooms.

·       Transgenderism or polygenderism, the leading edge of leftist identity politics, is also good for business. It creates new niche markets for corporate products, keeps the workforce divided, and distracts leftists with daily arcana and absurdities.

·       Getting rid of nations, stable gender, the family, Western culture and (why not?) Christianity – the hallmarks of leftist “progress” and avant garde politicking – also advances global corporatist objectives, removing any remaining obstacles to global corporate dominance.

By Michael Rectenwald,

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A Wokester's Nightmare: "The End Of The Era When Anything ...

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A Denver business is fined for not picking up other people’s poop

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2019

What’s going on outside of Mr. Bazyar’s business is likely a preview of what we’ll be seeing more of in San Francisco soon. As we discussed earlier today,
the new District Attorney there has announced his plans to
“decriminalize poverty” and end arrests and prosecutions of people doing
precisely what’s going on in the alley outside this shop. And once the
word gets around on the street that the cops won’t do anything about it,
the floodgates are open.

Being fined for aiding and abetting public pooping and drug use can’t be far behind.

The people that want to micromanage the minutia of your life lose control and blame the victim.

Government, cops, Mastercard…worthless, dangerous.

https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2019/11/12/denver-business-fined-not-picking-peoples-poop/

Upon seeing this story, you might be tempted to think it was about San Francisco, but it actually takes place in Denver, Colorado. Jawaid Bazyar is the owner of a communications company named FORETHOUGHT.net. His building is adjacent to an alley where groups of homeless people, prostitutes and drug addicts hang out. Recently, the problem has spiraled out of control and people have been urinating and defecating in the alley, along with leaving discarded hypodermic needles on the ground.

Despite having complained to the police repeatedly, nothing seemed to change and Bazyar grew distraught at the prospect of his employees having to clean up the potentially hazardous waste. The city of Denver responded by issuing him a citation and fining him for not keeping the property clean…

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Does Hillary Clinton Want Fact-Checking… or Censorship?

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2019

Imagine, for a moment, what might happen if various Democrat politicians came under attack by opponent ads. Let’s say Hillary Clinton runs for president again. Would she demand the media ban an ad that begins, “Hillary Clinton says she is a champion of women’s rights. Then why does she protect powerful men suspected of rape?”

Al Sharpton was one promoter of the infamous Tawana Brawley hoax. His history of accuracy is about as good as Alex Jones’, who initially claimed that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. I don’t expect that Zuckerberg will sit down with Alex Jones to hear his demands soon.

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/does-hillary-clinton-want-fact-checking-or-censorship

Barry Brownstein

 

Does Hillary Clinton Want Fact-Checking… or Censorship?

Recently Hillary Clinton blasted Facebook, Tweeting:

Facebook’s decision to allow false information in political advertisements is appalling.

Voters are being confronted by millions of pieces of misinformation.

A world where up is down and down is up is a world where democracy can’t thrive.

Other Democrats joined in. Virginia Senator Mark Warner said: “Facebook’s new ads policy allows politicians to run demonstrably false advertising on its platform. I don’t think that’s right.”

Both Clinton and Warner were referring to Facebook’s announced policy of exempting political ads from fact-checking. But in a world where Snopes fact checks the satirical Babylon Bee, we should all be skeptical of the fact-checking they have in mind.

It’s hard to imagine good intentions motivate these politicians. In any case, good intentions are not enough. Media fact-checking can easily be biased and result in censorship of views critical to various candidates.

Imagine, for a moment, what might happen if various Democrat politicians came under attack by opponent ads. Let’s say Hillary Clinton runs for president again. Would she demand the media ban an ad that begins, “Hillary Clinton says she is a champion of women’s rights. Then why does she protect powerful men suspected of rape?”

If Elizabeth Warren gets the Democratic nomination, would she ask for a ban on a hard-hitting ad that says something like:

Elizabeth Warren is a serial liar. Now she is lying again when she says the middle class won’t pay for her vast new spending programs. Economist Antony Davies says: ‘The 550 US billionaires together are worth $2.5 trillion. If we confiscated 100% of their wealth, we’d raise enough to run the federal government for less than 8 months. Perhaps our problem isn’t how much billionaires have but how much politicians spend.’ Senator Warren, your facts are wrong again.

If Bernie Sanders gets the nomination, he’d be outraged by an ad questioning why Sanders cozies up to communist dictators or one questioning his wife’s financial dealings.

How about a potential ad targeting Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar? “Minnesota has a proud history of tolerance. There is no room for an anti-Semitic hate monger in Congress.” Will a future fact-checker reject this ad because Omar and her supporters claim critics are “twisting her words”?

But let’s go beyond politicians. What about ads for public policies?

Should ads that argue for a ban on exposing young children to bewildering information on gender dysphoria be banned as “hateful”? Just over ten years ago, confusion over sexual identity was called gender identity disorder; no professional would have recommended that a seven-year-old boy begin transitioning to a girl at the urging of a parent.

Or imagine the outrage over a campaign ad calling for an overhaul of welfare programs saying the worst poverty “is not material poverty but poverty of soul.” Fact-checkers might say the ad blames innocent victims of poverty and is therefore false.

Since the official verdict is that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide, would a fact-checker reject an ad demanding an investigation into the coverup of his possible murder?

Recently Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg held a two hour “no-holds-barred” meeting with Al Sharpton and other “civil rights activists.” The meeting took place at Zuckerberg’s home; discussions centered on Sharpton’s objections to Facebook’s “decision not to fact-check ads and other content from politicians.”

Al Sharpton was one promoter of the infamous Tawana Brawley hoax. His history of accuracy is about as good as Alex Jones’, who initially claimed that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. I don’t expect that Zuckerberg will sit down with Alex Jones to hear his demands soon.

Political commentary and political ads have long included elements short on facts. Vigorous campaigns are a strength of our political system, not a weakness. Unlike other countries where “slandering” the leader can lead to imprisonment or death, politicians in America are not above criticism.

In Nazi Germany, it was an official fact that Jews were Untermensch, subhuman mongrels. In pre-Civil War America, it was a fact that slaveowners could treat blacks as property. Freedom of speech allows individuals to challenge “facts.”

Collectivists, including democratic socialists, always aim to suppress speech. Because their plans never stand up to reality, they must stifle the resulting dissent. Is that why Hillary Clinton and others want to suppress alternative views?

“Whether you can observe a thing depends upon the theory which you use,” observed Einstein. Often what is being disputed in politics are not facts but interpretations of events. If you have the right politics, there are very few things the media will not overlook.

Suppression of speech – not “false information” – threatens our Republic

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State Secrets and the National Security State | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2019

I’ve got a better idea: Let’s just dismantle America’s decades-long, nightmarish Cold War-era experiment with the totalitarian structure known as a national-security state and restore a limited-government republic to our land.

Jacob Hornberger is has thrown his hat in the Libertarian presidential candidate ring.

https://mises.org/wire/state-secrets-and-national-security-state

Inadvertently released federal documents reveal that U.S. officials have apparently secured a secret indictment against Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks who released secret information about the internal workings of the U.S. national-security establishment. In any nation whose government is founded on the concept of a national-security state, that is a cardinal sin, one akin to treason and meriting severe punishment.

Mind you, Assange isn’t being charged with lying or releasing false or fraudulent information about the U.S. national-security state. Everyone concedes that the WikiLeaks information was authentic. His “crime” was in disclosing to people the wrongdoing of the national-security establishment. No one is supposed to do that, even if the information is true and correct.

It’s the same with Edward Snowden, the American contractor with the CIA and the NSA who is now relegated to living in Russia. If Snowden returns home, he faces federal criminal prosecution, conviction, and incarceration for disclosing secrets of the U.S. national-security establishment. Again, his “crime” is disclosing the truth about the internal workings of the national-security establishment, not disseminating false information.

Such secrecy and the severe punishment for people who disclose the secrets to the public were among the things that came with the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state.

Recall that when the U.S. government was called into existence by the Constitution, it was a type of governmental structure known as a limited-government republic. Under that type of governmental structure, the federal government’s powers were extremely limited. The only powers that federal officials could lawfully exercise were those few that were enumerated in the Constitution itself.

Under the republic form of government, there was no enormous permanent military establishment, no CIA, and no NSA, which are the three components of America’s national-security state. That last thing Americans wanted was that type of government. In fact, if Americans had been told that the Constitution was going to bring into existence a national-security state, they never would have approved the deal and would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a type of governmental system where the federal government’s powers were so few that it didn’t even have the power to tax.

Under the republic, governmental operations were transparent. There was no such thing as “state secrets” or “national security.” Except for the periodic backroom deals in which politicians would make deals, things generally were open and above-board for people to see and make judgments on.

That all changed when the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II. Suddenly, the federal government was vested with omnipotent powers, so long as they were being exercised by the Pentagon, the CIA, or the NSA in the name of “national security.”

Interestingly enough, the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state was not done through constitutional amendment. Nonetheless, the federal judiciary has long upheld or simply deferred to the exercise of omnipotent powers by the national-security establishment.

An implicit part of the conversion was that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA would be free to exercise their omnipotent powers in secret. Secrecy has always been a core element in any government that is structured as a national-security state, especially when it involves dark, immoral, and nefarious powers that are being exercised for the sake of “national security.”

One action that oftentimes requires the utmost in secrecy involves assassination, which is really nothing more than legalized murder. Not surprisingly, many national-security officials want to keep their role in state-sponsored murder secret. Another example is coups initiated in foreign countries. U.S. officials bend over backwards to hide their role in such regime-change operations. And then there are the surveillance schemes whereby citizens are foreigners are spied up and monitored. Kidnapping, indefinite detention, and torture are still more examples.

Of course, these are the types of things that we ordinarily identify with totalitarian regimes. The reason for that is that a national-security state governmental system is inherent to totalitarian regimes. For example, the Nazi government, which was a national-security state too, had an enormous permanent military establishment and a Gestapo, which wielded the powers of assassination, indefinite detention, torture, and secret surveillance. And not surprisingly, to disclose the secrets of German’s national-security state involved severe punishment.

But it’s not just Nazi Germany. There are many other examples of totalitarian regimes that are based on the concept of national security and structured as a national-security state. Chile under Pinochet. The Soviet Union. Communist China. North Korea. Vietnam. Egypt. Pakistan. Iraq. Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Myanmar. And the United States. The list goes on and on.

And every one of those totalitarian regimes has a state-secrets doctrine, the same doctrine that the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA have.

A newspaper in Vietnam, which of course is ruled by a communist regime, reported that a Vietnamese citizen named Phan Van Anh Vu was sentenced to 9 years in prison for “deliberately disclosing state secrets.”

A website for the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that the Chinese communist regime charged a Chinese journalist named Yang Xiuqiong with “illegally providing state secrets overseas.” The Chinese Reds have also charged a prominent environmental activist named Liu Shu with “revealing state secrets related to China’s counterespionage work.”

The military dictatorship in Myanmar convicted two Reuters reporters for violating the country’s law that prohibits the gathering of secret documents to help an enemy.

RT reports that the Russian military will “launch obligatory courses on the protection of state secrets starting next year.

US News reports that the regime in Turkey is seeking the extradition from Germany of Turkish journalist Can Dunbar, who was convicted of revealing state secrets.

Defenders of Assange and Snowden and other revealers of secrets of the U.S. national security state point to the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of the press to justify their disclosures.

I’ve got a better idea: Let’s just dismantle America’s decades-long, nightmarish Cold War-era experiment with the totalitarian structure known as a national-security state and restore a limited-government republic to our land.

Originally published by the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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The Realist Report: (Israeli trained) Police State in America

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This is what keeps us working for the man | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2019

There is evidence that contract work, self-employment, and the “gig economy” are growing.

So the future I see is not one where you hunker down at a corporate job for 40 years. That never seemed particularly fulfilling to me anyway…

Rather, I see an end to the marriage between government and business. A time is coming where people are not cajoled into working their lives away at a meaningless job.

And the best part is, this option is already available to anyone who decides to reach out and grab it.

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/this-is-what-keeps-us-working-for-the-man/

By Joe Jarvis

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go,
I owe my soul to the company store.

Merle Travis wrote the song Sixteen Tons about working your life away in the coal mines and spending your whole paycheck–and then some–at the company store. You had no other options in the corporate mining villages of the early twentieth century.

The most famous version of the song came from Tennessee Ernie Ford. Sixteen Tons was covered by many others, including Johnny Cash, and even Elvis at some concerts though he never recorded it.

And South Park recently featured their own version in an episode called “Unfulfilled,” about working for Amazon.

Of course, South Park is a comedy cartoon series that parodies real-life events.

They depicted Amazon fulfilment centers as the only available jobs in the small Colorado town. People worked in dangerous collaboration with machines, and went home to spend their entire paycheck on Amazon.

Jeff Bezos was depicted as a telepathic villain. He would tune in to various Alexa streams to gauge the mood of the town. And anyone who didn’t do his bidding would have their Prime status revoked.

Comparing Amazon to coal mines is funny because it exaggerates a fear in society. Everyone buys from Amazon, so the small businesses go under. And everyone working for the small businesses goes to work for Amazon.

South Park did the same thing with a Walmart episode about a decade back. Walmart possessed some unknown power which compelled people to shop there, they were powerless to resist. Even better if they could work there and get an employee discount… despite the low pay.

And then Amazon came along to compete with Walmart.

And for the consumers, this is a win. Sure we can talk about consumerism and how much we need, but the fact is Amazon and Walmart provide the necessities for pretty cheap.

But I wouldn’t want to work for either one. Personally, I wouldn’t really want to work for any corporation.

Corporations are designed to resemble the feudal system as much as possible. And the government is the sweeper, making sure a corporate job is the best option for most Americans. It’s just like how the King and Lords conspired to keep the peasants in line, and extract as much work and wealth as possible from the system.

Think about it. The government makes you buy healthcare. Well, I might as well just get a job that covers it instead of trying to figure it out myself…

The government puts up so many roadblocks to self-employment or entrepreneurship–regulation, licensing, paperwork, compliance agencies… Why bother? I might as well just go to a job and go home, and not deal with the stress of it all.

Sometimes the government forces independent contractors to be considered employees instead. This increases the liability and responsibility of the company. But it takes away the contract worker’s freedom to work other jobs, set their hours, and remain independent. Now they have a boss, instead of being their own boss.

And people think they are getting stability from a corporate job, like it’s a sure thing. But don’t get too comfortable, especially if the job is highly specialized. What if you’re replaced by technology or younger workers? What do you do with 20 years experience in something obsolete?

You can be fired at any time. If it’s 5 or 10 years before you were going to retire… what are you going to do? Find a job that pays just as well? Rely on bankrupt Social Security?

Even if you are one of the few workers left who still have a pension, even private pensions in the USA are on shaky ground, over half a TRILLION dollars short on what they are supposed to pay out. Already certain companies have escaped or reduced their pension obligations, shafting their former workers.

But worst of all, corporations monopolize your time. 40 hours per week is a lot of your life. Add in commute times, and getting ready… you basically get 2/7 of your life to yourself.

And when a person is that predictable, they are easy to control. They are easy to police, to advertise to, and to tax.

You’ll buy a car, you’ll take out a mortgage–oh what a surprise how integrated the government is in the banking, auto, and oil industries…

You’ll keep your corporate job to pay for it all, and the income will be taxed. You’ll be encouraged to spend by the media and your peers, and the spending will be taxed.

Government policies funnel the workers into the corporations. The corporations keep the politicians in power. And the government taxes the hell out of the corporate workers’ steady reliable income.

To break the system, we need to make our own path, instead of being herded into corporate America.

And real alternatives exist, especially now. Do I need a full-time job? Do I need to commute to work? Do I need a car? Should I really saddle myself with student debt or a home loan at such a young age?

You don’t necessarily need college to get the skills required for your dream career. Owning a home is one option of many. And the sharing economy could even reduce the need to own a car, save us money, cut traffic and pollution.

The best economy I can imagine is one where individuals all try to solve the biggest problem they can find, based on their interests. Fill a need, provide a service, create a solution.

When you’re responsible for creating your own career, the skills you learn will not apply to just one industry. The hustle will not only benefit you in one narrow sector.

And yes for some people, this will resemble corporate work. But for many others, it could a job of their own creation that never even existed before.

There’s no right answer. It’s up to you to grab your ingredients and blend them all together. None of us will end up with the exact same shake. Don’t allow the government and corporations to hand you some bland concoction that works for them, as if it is the best or only option.

Because right now, the government and the corporations like the arrangement they have.

As I talked about the other day, it is important to change embedded traditions that don’t work anymore. But it can be tricky to see which ones are useful traditions–even if we don’t know why–and which are simply outdated burdens.

You always need options. One of the best ways to have options is to make a hobby a backup job plan. If anything ever goes wrong, start that business you always wanted to, or teach lessons in something, provide a service, or make a unique useful product not easily mass produced.

If my writing career suddenly came crashing down around me, I would probably become some sort of wilderness guide, leading foraging and hiking expeditions. I’d get more serious about studying wild medicinal plants, and make products to compliment my natural classes.

I’d probably start by looking into Airbnb’s “local experiences” platform that allows you to sell experiences to travellers. I would check out Etsy to sell products. And I would use my experience–and quickly gain more–with marketing to grow the business.

Times they are changing.

There is evidence that contract work, self-employment, and the “gig economy” are growing.

So the future I see is not one where you hunker down at a corporate job for 40 years. That never seemed particularly fulfilling to me anyway…

Rather, I see an end to the marriage between government and business. A time is coming where people are not cajoled into working their lives away at a meaningless job.

And the best part is, this option is already available to anyone who decides to reach out and grab it.

Be seeing you

Weigh the Pros and Cons of Self-Employment to Determine if ...

 

 

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Cracks widen in NCAA’s transparent pretense of amateurism

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2019

The only amateurs in amateur sports are the amateurs that think amateur sports are amateur.

Even as a dumb 60’s kid I thought it odd the money making World Cup skiers were the same supposed amateurs that compete in the Olympics.

Amateur college athletics, NBA players in the Olympics, it is all a very thinly veiled facade.

I wonder how (Olympic) sports (track and field in particular) would be viewed by the millennial snowflakes if they knew these were originally war “games”. I wonder how many participants know.

The NCAA, the Inspector Clouseau of virtue enforcement, might ponder the lament of a few University of Louisville students and alumni:
http://erietimes.pa.newsmemory.com/?publink=1ddee104b

George Will

Another college basketball season has begun, as has a new chapter in a debate that is more wholesome than its subject: the academiasports complex. Between now and March Madness – the NCAA basketball tournament whose broadcast rights reap about $1 billion a year – millions of people will be entertained by vertically unusual “student-athletes.” Some of them are accurately described as such, but all are so described because of prudence in the service of cupidity.

As college athletes generate billions for others, the debate concerns the policy whereby the recipients of the revenue refuse to allow the players even a modest trickle of the torrent of money. The refusers say that their determination to hoard the wealth is altruism in defense of virtue. Really.

“Student-athletes” is a denotation concocted to insulate institutions of higher education from the potentially costly conclusion that their remunerative, but essentially unremunerated, athletes are university employees eligible for workers’ compensation when injured, and for other rights and benefits. Now, however, there is a serpent in the NCAA’s garden, where the head gardener is nicely compensated: In 2017, NCAA President Mark Emmert’s net pay was $2.9 million. He is paid to keep pristine the amateur status of young athletes who, like all athletes, have a small window for earning from their perishable talents.

The serpent is a California law, which 14 other states are already thinking about emulating. It forbids schools to prohibit their athletes from earning money from endorsements and some other services. In response, the NCAA has rushed to stall – allowing athletes to profit from their names and images, details to follow. This is a small but widening fissure in the NCAA’s crumbling wall of resistance to allowing athletes to be among those who profit from their talents.

A horrified Sen. Richard Burr from basketball-mad North Carolina – Burr is a Republican – has proposed a punitive tax on the scholarships of athletes who try to take such advantage of the free market. Evidently profiting from young people’s talents is only for older adults, such as the 39 football and basketball coaches who are the highest paid public employees in their states. Including in Burr’s state, where UNC’s basketball coach is projected to make $4.1 million this year, a tad more than its football coach.

Two years ago, the NCAA shrugged when a sevenyear investigation – the Warren Commission’s investigation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination took fewer than 10 months – found that for almost two decades UNC administered a “shadow curriculum” of 188 fake classes, about half of them taken by athletes. The NCAA essentially said: Not our problem, the fraud was academic, not athletic, because some nonathletes took the courses.

Ohio State defensive end Chase Young might still win the Heisman Trophy as 2019’s premier college football player, which would have a significant cash value when he heads for the NFL. But his chances of winning it were damaged when he was suspended for two games. (He will return in time for Midwest Armageddon, aka the Nov. 30 Michigan game.) Young’s sin? Perhaps having a less-than-affluent family. He borrowed money from a “family friend” to pay living expenses and repaid the loan last summer. The NCAA’s more than 400 pages of arcane rules – they are compounds of complexity and vagueness – suggest that this loan might be an infraction. If Young’s family were affluent enough to support him, or if he were paid for the services he renders in the 102,780seat OSU stadium (three other college stadiums seat more), he would not have landed in hot water.

The NCAA, the Inspector Clouseau of virtueenforcement, might ponder the lament of a few University of Louisville students and alumni: A court recently said, sensibly, that they cannot sue the prostitute who wrote a book about her “services” for the school’s basketball players and prospective recruits. The litigious students and alumni say her book has exposed them to public ridicule when they wear Louisville’s logo.

A multibillion-dollar entertainment industry insinuated into higher education is a permanent invitation to ridicule. And paying players money commensurate with their value-added would open a Pandora’s box of new mischiefs, from recruiting to assigning value to the anonymous left tackle who protects the glittering quarterback, and saving crumbs for the volleyball teams. But what exists is a cafeteria of embarrassments.

When March Madness’ winning players cut down the nets, they will do so atop (The Bulwark’s Tim Miller reports) a Werner ladder using Fiskars scissors. These are two products from “corporate champions and sponsors” of the NCAA, the stern guardian of amateurism.

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Sponsors: How Far Will They Go?

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Now, I am White/Other – So Bite Me. (article)

Posted by M. C. on November 16, 2019

https://wp.me/p96pGH-oj

Published by samanthaharris

unextraordinarybint

It’s time to start lying about your ethnicity. Especially if you live in or around London.

In order to gain proper healthcare in the UK National Health System one must lie about where you originate. Shamefully, this is the only way to ensure the same care as everyone else is getting, especially on vaccines.

The British National Health System is now so corrupt I cannot see how it could be sorted out by continually lying about the health of different nationalities. For instance, according to NHS England every race other than whites are prone to health problems if they get obese. However, this is statistically incorrect. False. Not true. So why are the NHS doing this and continually getting away with it? Apathy? Corruption?

Check out the British national Body Mass Index calculator for the NHS compared the world wide one and you will see a difference in the advice given by ethnicity on the NHS calculator. If filled out for any ethnicity you will get the stark warning of:

“Your ethnicity means you will be at high risk of health issues at a BMI of 27.5 and above.”

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/bmi-calculator/

Now do it for the one beginning with W.

The truth is every human, regardless of ethnicity, is at risk of health issues with a BMI of over 27.5. Discrimination is when the same services and advice are not given!

This is a international Body Mass Index calculator – please note lack of ethnicity choice.

https://www.calculator.net/bmi-calculator.html

It’s that easy. Who is instigating these policies? I have complained about the BMI checker to the NHS on every front that I can…they don’t care. It’s like the mental health worker who comes around to visit me. She talks of her childhood and how her mother would invite white children over so ‘they could have a decent meal’. The same worker then would then tell me that as a Muslim woman she is more likely to be raped by skinheads and the racism towards her is terrible. As she wears western clothes I fail to to see how her being Muslim would have anything to do with it …I digress.

I read many reports – as much as one person can stomach on how badly BME staff are treated in the NHS and when reading articles and papers from the NHS I’ve discovered there is no evidence to back up their claims. None or very little. In fact everything points to equality within complaints against white or BME staff but that black staff are more likely to complain…that isn’t the same as black staff being mistreated.

It all makes for very frustrating reading. I’m not suggesting that instances of racism don’t happen – I know they do. However evidence is lacking for the numbers and shifts in policy funding towards certain ethnicity. Bad clinical judgement is bad clinical judgement regardless of the colour of the Doctor. The retraining of staff who continue to put patients at risk is not a fair policy to the patients.

Does race affect the treatment received? It’s very difficult to find out as there are no feedback reports which can be trusted to give an honest account. I know that feedback forms are kept away from patients whom the ward do not want the opinion of. I also know that complaints against NHS staff and NHS doctors are not listened to or in my case continue to be investigated years after the event…leaving me with no legal recourse.

This is now my personal opinion.

I am implying that some BME doctors are using race to hold off complaints that are totally valid and often to do with clinical judgement. I’m also claiming that some organisations are funnelling money towards preferred nationalities, like the South Asian Gene and Health program from the NHS to give preferred treatments and services. I believe that they are encouraged to do for political reasons to cause division.

Vaccines.

Regarding my grandchildren. They are both white European. Being born in the London area they are funded for TB vaccine but because my daughter put the first child down as white and the second as white/other – only the second child qualifies for TB vaccine.

Immediately my daughter became concerned for the first child. My daughter and I are fully behind vaccinations. We would like the grandchildren to be both immunised against TB as we know several people with TB in our local area. It seems although both children are funded for the vaccine but only children who are listed as white/other or of other non UK born descent will be given it.

Black British baby, Arab baby, Pakistani baby, etc all will be vaccinated on NHS but no white babies. I think this is unfair and is discriminatory against the white ethnicity.  Children are equally at risk as they both live in the area where TB is prevalent. All children are funded for the vaccine by the Government because they live in London so regardless of ethnicity they ought to qualify but that is not what the NHS Trusts are doing. This is corruption. Where does the money go that was ring fenced for all the children to be vaccinated?

However, as soon as I mention racism or discrimination against whites there is a silence from the NHS and the Quality Care Commission. I have requested evidence to support the funding of special health considerations for BME patients but have been presented with none nor can I find any evidence that black or brown or green or pink people get sicker more than others.

By continually telling Doctors that white people are stronger or less likely to get sick the NHS is creating a field where white people are profiled in a completely different fashion  to other patients. For instance a white woman complaining of heart or chest pain is much more likely to be told it’s anxiousness than if a man of South Asian descent presents with chest pain at A&E.

Although heart disease is the biggest killer of women (white or other) in Britain.

For my own story I can say that I have been discriminated against and have complained at length with no real satisfaction so I wont be quiet about the things which have happened to me under NHS system any more. I’ve discharged myself from most of the hospitals I was under as the mistakes are piling up to a dangerous level.

I’m fifty years old and ever since I saw my first NHS doctor at sixteen after passing out on a bus and then at home, I’ve had a hit and miss affair with GP’s.

An male Indonesian GP up in Stoke on Trent, gave me antibiotics for Shingles when I was twenty years old but didn’t tell me that my contraceptive pill wouldn’t work because of them…so the boyfriend who gave me shingles also gave me a pregnancy. These are life altering mistakes. It was a known side effect of the antibiotics but the GP failed to tell me.

I’ve moved around the UK a lot over the years and can say London is especially bad. Sometimes the doctors do not understand you and they get angry with you for requesting little things like asking them to wash their hands before touching your child. One African Doctor did this at North Middlesex Hospital, he still had blood on his hands from the previous baby and then he went to take blood from my daughter.

I would visit my GP in Woodgreen, London. He was an Indian doctor, for my pain relief as I have Ehlers Danlos… he would tell me to pop on the bench and take my panties off, every consultation. He would also urge me to sign for contraception I wasn’t getting (having changed to condoms for safety) for his funding.

I’d put up with it..like most sick people I needed my pain medication. Like most young mums I had plenty of other things to worry about and didn’t have time to complain about a doctor who was just as bad as the last one. At least I was getting some pain relief from him although I discovered the Emflex should have only been for short periods and after two years I started to have stomach ulcers and had to change pain relief.

Another time, during a routine operation to remove endometriosis from some of my other organs at North Middlesex hospital, London, whilst I was under a Pakistani Gynaecologist an attempt was made to trick me into having a full hysterectomy when I didn’t need it or want it.

He’d asked me on the ward if I just wanted it removed and I had firmly said no. The surgeon asked  me to sign a consent for the hysterectomy after giving me my pre theatre medication ie when I was heavily under the influence of major knock out drugs.

Thankfully I don’t knock out easy because I have Ehlers Danlos and was able to read the paperwork and refuse…other women were not so lucky. I went on to have a lovely baby boy a few years later as I’ve said others were not able to. The scandal was in the papers.

I was physically assaulted by several black nurses in Kings College Hospital London and I have verbally abused by several brown coloured skin doctors over the years. I realise that calling anyone brown skinned is not nice by why should I refer to people by their nationality when I have to be just ‘white’?

I would add here that I have never racially abused anyone until a few months when within the confines of my flat, in anger of the things I’m learning, I slipped up and called a Pakistani doctor a paki. Oh yeah, I get really mean.

In order to be politically correct in the UK I must refer to tanned skinned people as  ‘South Asian’ although many do not some from South Asia. It would seem less disrespectful to just visibly describe someone rather than get their nationality wrong but hey ho with all this categorisation in the UK I’m thoroughly fed up.

I should describe myself as blue seeing as I have Ehlers Danlos!

I miss the fantastic female GP  I had in Brighton in the 1980’s. She was Chinese. Without Dr Chung’s advice I would never have gotten the Ehlers Danlos diagnosed.  I can honestly say I’ve been discriminated against by almost every doctor I’ve had since her and they have mainly been of some sort of South Asian descent.

So being that the NHS is rather low on Chinese Doctors these days we have to live with what we have. I’ve realised that by changing my ethnicity on the paperwork it may make a difference to how I am treated so I’m doing it. If nothing more it will mess up the NHS neat little divisive tactics. If I had children at least they would be offered the vaccines they should have and are entitled to.

It’s sad, I realise but as we are all equally at risk at getting ill we cannot allow the NHS to funnel funds and treatments away from ourselves and our loved ones. Ideally the ethnicity lists and categories should be removed from the NHS health care system.

I have lost many friends over the last few years all were too young to have died and they died of preventable illnesses or undiagnosed cancer, missed tumours on scans or just plain neglect on NHS wards (white and in their fifties) or being pushed too hard by their family and never going to the doctor (my only black friend).

Equality can never be achieved by division nor should it be measured in profits.

The NHS is continually calling for less racism yet it promotes racism within it’s ranks and it’s treatments and then expects patients not to notice.  Well patients notice.

My ex-boyfriend had TB. He was tested and treated for it after having a cough. He was born and raised here in Watford but his family are from Uganda. Same age as me so he had the TB vaccine as a teenager under the old NHS system. When he got ill with cough he got screened for TB because of his colour and family background.

I am white British and as such I will not be screened for TB. For my own chest complaint went ignored for so long. In fact my cough was pleurisy (twenty years of pleurisy) right up to when I got a private x-ray to prove I had shadows on my lungs in 2009. Then the NHS diagnosed me as cystic lungs. I asked that they screen me for TB but it was refused as unnecessary as, I am told, it is impossible for me to get TB.

I speak to health professionals about my worries. They agree, unfortunately, and tell me it’s because of where I live. I agree with them but I obviously know that isn’t the case as I’ve lived all over the UK. Many professionals are leaving the UK, unable to cope with the mounting problems and hypocrisy. This isn’t the answer.

Whilst there are people treating the NHS as a cash cow for their own agendas, there are also Doctors of every colour and creed who would never consider treating patients differently regarding their colour. These Docs mustn’t be abandoned, nor should the system which has apparently abandoned them.

The National Health System is something exceptional. In theory it does work, the corruption and bare faced lies must stop as they make the system wasteful and divisive.

I feel a patient body should be set up for each national health trust, to check the literature being printed and circulated is factually correct as much of it currently isn’t and to ensure that all patients complaints are dealt with.

I hope this ethnicity rubbish isn’t being taught in Medical School as this problem will go on to cause much division, pain and heartache for generations to come.

National Health Service (NHS) culture is sustained by a set of core values including respect and dignity, compassion, and inclusion – the latter refers to a commitment to treat everyone with equal respect and significance.

https://nhsproviders.org/media/1846/nhs-providers-wres-implemetation-chairs-and-ceos-17-march-16.pdf

An example of the literature I am talking about…there is no evidence of these factors for the UK, Yvonne Coghill, the author, uses evidence from America to back up her claims.

Many thanks for reading.

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Still Fighting the Last War Against Socialism | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on November 16, 2019

Even in the midst of almost unimaginable material comforts made possible only by markets and entrepreneurs—both derided by socialists—we cannot manage to conclusively defeat the tired but deadly old arguments for collective ownership of capital.

https://mises.org/power-market/still-fighting-last-war-against-socialism

Jeff Deist

Why does support for socialism persist?

The short answer may be simple human nature, our natural tendency toward dissatisfaction with the present and unease about the future. Even in the midst of almost unimaginable material comforts made possible only by markets and entrepreneurs—both derided by socialists—we cannot manage to conclusively defeat the tired but deadly old arguments for collective ownership of capital. We’re so rich that socialists imagine the material wealth all around us will continue to organize itself magically, regardless of incentives.

It’s a vexing problem, and not an academic one. Millions of young people across America and the West consider socialism a viable and even noble approach to organizing society, literally unaware of the piles of bodies various socialist governments produced in the 20th century. The fast-growing Democratic Socialists of America, led by media darlings Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now enjoy cool kid status. Open socialist Bernie Sanders very nearly won the Democratic Party’s 2016 nominee for president before being kneecapped by the Clinton machine. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio helpfully announces “there is plenty of money in this city, it’s just in the wrong hands.” He freely and enthusiastically champions confiscation and redistribution of wealth without injury to his political popularity.

Rand Paul and Thomas Massie are outliers on the Right. Ocasio-Cortez and de Blasio are not outliers on the Left.

How is this possible, even as markets and semi-capitalism lift millions out of poverty? Why does socialism keep cropping up, and why do many well-intentioned (and ill-intentioned) people keep falling for something so patently evil and unworkable? Why do some battles have to be fought over and over?

The Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin War fell decades ago. The Eastern Bloc discovered western consumerism, and liked it. Bill Clinton declared the era of Big Government over, and Francis Fukuyama absurdly pronounced that Western ideology had forever won the day. Even China and Cuba eventually succumbed to pressure for greater economic freedoms, not because of any ideological shift but because it became impossible to hide the reality of capitalist wealth abroad.

Yet economic freedom and property rights are under assault today in the very Western nations that became rich because of them.

Today’s socialists insist their model society would look like Sweden or Denmark; not the USSR or Nazi Germany or Venezuela. They merely want fairness and equality, free healthcare and schooling, an end to “hoarded” wealth, and so forth. And they don’t always advocate for or even know the textbook definition of socialism, as professors Benjamin Powell and Robert Lawson learned by attending socialist conferences (see their new book Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World). In many cases young people think socialism simply means a happy world where people are taken care of.

Never mind the Scandinavian countries in question insist they are not socialist, never mind the atrocities of Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot, and never mind the overwhelming case made by Ludwig von Mises and others against central economic planning. Without private owners, without capital at risk, without prices, and especially without profit and loss signals, economies quickly become corrupted and serve only the political class. Nicolás Maduro feasts while poor Venezuelans eat dogs, but of course this isn’t “real” socialism.

History and theory don’t matter to socialists because they imagine society can be engineered. The old arguments and historical examples simply don’t apply: even human nature is malleable, and whenever our stubborn tendencies don’t comport with socialism’s grand plans a “social construct” is to blame.

These most recent spasms of support for the deadly ideology of socialism remind us that progressives aren’t kidding. They may not fully understand what socialism means, but they fully intend to bring it about. Single-payer health care, “free” education, wealth redistribution schemes, highly progressive income taxes, wealth taxes, gun bans, and radical curbs on fossil fuels are all on the immediate agenda. They will do this quickly if possible, incrementally if they have to (see, again, the 20th century). They will do it with or without popular support, using legislatures, courts and judges, supranational agencies,university indoctrination, friendly media, or whatever political, economic, or social tools it takes (including de-platforming and hate speech laws). This is not paranoia; all of this is openly discussed. And say what you will about progressivism, it does have a central if false ethos: egalitarianism.

Conservatives, by contrast, are not serious. They have no animating spirit. They don’t much talk about liberty or property or markets or opportunity. They don’t mean what they say about the Constitution, they won’t do a thing to limit government, they won’t touch entitlements or defense spending, they won’t abolish the Department of Education or a single federal agency, they won’t touch abortion laws, and they sure won’t give up their own socialist impulses. Trumpism, though not conservative and thoroughly non-intellectual, drove a final stake through the barely beating heart of Right intellectualism, from the Weekly Standard to National Review. Conservatism today is incoherent, both ideologically and tactically incapable of countering the rising tide of socialism.

Generals always fight the last war, and politics is no different. We all tend to see the current political climate in terms of old and familiar divisions, long-faded alliances, and obsolete rhetoric. We all cling to the comfortable ideology and influences that help us make sense of a chaotic world. As one commenter recently put it, liberal Baby Boomers still think it’s 1968 and conservative Baby Boomers still think it’s 1985. Generation X and Millennials will exhibit the same blinders. It may be disheartening to keep fighting what should be a long-settled battle against socialism, but today we have no other choice.

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Carbon Tax

Posted by M. C. on November 16, 2019

Carbon Tax - is it a key policy in the fight against climate change?

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