Category Archives: Politics

Eat The Poor

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One of the truths of the modern liberal societies is that helping the poor is a lucrative way to make a living. America spend tends of billions on poverty programs, but most of the money ends up in the hands of middle-class bureaucrats and the wealthy interests who back these policies. The fact is, there’s a lot of money to be made in the ghetto, mostly by people who never set foot in the ghetto. This was posted over at Marginal Review and it provides some interesting facts about anti-poverty programs.

Liberals are shocked (shocked!) that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his co-partisans would consider cutting Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants and other programs that serve the neediest Americans. They have accused Ryan of trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.

But long before Ryan unveiled his “Path to Prosperity,” politicians of both parties had been redistributing government spending away from the truly destitute and toward everyone else.

In the past few decades, the federal social safety net has gotten lusher and, on its face, more generous. Spending on the major safety-net programs nearly quadrupled between 1970 and 2010, and that’s after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to calculations by Robert A. Moffitt, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University. He included both “means-tested” programs that are explicitly intended to combat poverty (such as food stamps, Medicaid, housing aid, Head Start, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the earned-income tax credit) and social insurance programs (Medicare, Social Security, disability insurance, workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance).

There have been, however, winners and losers during that massive expansion.

Since the mid-1990s, the biggest increases in spending have gone to those who were middle class or hovering around the poverty line. Meanwhile, Americans in deep poverty — that is, with household earnings of less than 50 percent of the official poverty line — saw no change in their benefits in the decade leading up to the housing bubble. In fact, if you strip out Medicare and Medicaid, federal social spending on those in extreme poverty fell between 1993 and 2004.

That’s right, the hero of the 1990’s actually reduced spending on the poor. It’s not mentioned in the article, but the Clinton years were a decade of greed, at least as it is defined by the Left. The worst abuses in finance, government and politics have their roots in the Clinton Era. The Boomers ran wild through the institutions of government as soon as they gained control. That included shifting money from the poor to their friends on Wall Street. It was a bust-out.

Since the early 1990s, politicians have deliberately shifted funds away from those perceived to be the most needy and toward those perceived to be the most deserving. The bipartisan 1996 welfare reform — like the multiple expansions of the earned-income tax credit — was explicit about rewarding the working poor rather than the non-working poor. As a result, total spending per capita on “welfare” slid by about two-thirds over the past two decades, even as the poverty rate for families has stayed about the same. Many welfare reformers would consider this a triumph. If you believe many of the poorest families are not out of work by choice, though, you might have a more nuanced view.

Meanwhile, there is probably greater political cover for expanding the safety net for the middle class (that is, the non-destitute). As mid-skill, mid-wage jobs have disappeared — what’s known as the hollowing-out of the labor market — middle-class families have lost ground and are demanding more government help. These middle-class families, alongside the elderly, are also substantially more likely to vote than are the poor. The feds have whittled away at welfare, and (almost) nobody has said boo; touch programs that the middle class relies on, and electoral retribution may be fierce.

What the blogger fails to understand is the welfare system has nothing to do with addressing poverty. It never has and it never will. At one level, it is riot insurance, keeping the populace in a city like Baltimore from burning the place to the ground. It is job number one for state government. The city government is just a criminal enterprise run by the locals as a skimming operation. The state, however, treats them as camp guards for a massive reservation. Welfare is just a part of the defense network.

Welfare is never sold this way. Americans want to believe they are special and that’s how the ruling class exploits them. Welfare is sold as a way to uplift the poor and give them opportunities to have the American dream. A great many middle and upper class people like getting some grace on the cheap through social welfare programs. That way, they can pretend they are doing something. It takes less work than charity and they can have more time to watch TV or shop for more crap on-line.

The welfare system is also a massive jobs program. Local government gets money for patronage jobs. Hiring an army of case workers, who just happen to be related to the ruling clan is good for business. State government gets money to run their patronage operations, which can often be testing grounds for the latest social engineering schemes. RomneyCare was just such an example. Of course, the massive bureaucracy at the Federal level is also another patronage racket.

That is the main attraction of guaranteed minimum income schemes is that they eliminate the need for a vast army of patronage workers. It also eliminates the ability of Congress to buy votes and bribes with the programs. The math does not make any sense, but it will be a way for the ruling class to trim the vast bureaucracy, when they no longer want to support it. They can sell it as a raise for the recipients and cost cutting measure for the tax payers.

Here’s a PBS version of the argument and here is a NYTimes version. The Left has some minor people out promoting it as the start of a campaign to make it their top issue next decade. Destroying health care started with a trial run in the 1980’s and three decades later they were finally able to swing the wrecking ball. In the near future, a minor candidate will run fro president on UBI. Then the next cycle a major candidate will run on it. Finally, it will be pushed through by the Left.

 

The Toad is a Rat

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“A dog that will bring a bone will carry a bone” is one of those old time aphorisms that does not make a lot of sense to people today. it was a pithy way to say, “Someone who will steal for you will steal from you.” More generally, it means that people of low character are low character in all of their dealings. Like so much of our cultural inheritance, this sense of character has been mostly lost, but the reality of it is a fixture of the human condition. Here’s an example from the news.

The former mob snitch has become a regular in the White House, where he has met with the 44th president in the East Room, the Roosevelt Room, and the Oval Office. He has also attended Obama Christmas parties, speeches, policy announcements, and even watched a Super Bowl with the First Family (an evening the man has called “one of the highlights of my life”). During these gatherings, he has mingled with cabinet members, top Obama aides, military leaders, business executives, and members of Congress. His former confederates were a decidedly dicier lot: ex-convicts, extortionists, heroin traffickers, and mob henchmen. The man’s surreptitious recordings, FBI records show, aided his government handlers in the successful targeting of powerful Mafia figures with nicknames like Benny Eggs, Chin, Fritzy, Corky, and Baldy Dom.

Later this week, Obama will travel to New York and appear in a Manhattan hotel ballroom at the side of the man whom FBI agents primarily referred to as “CI-7”–short for confidential informant #7–in secret court filings. In those documents, investigators vouched for him as a reliable, productive, and accurate source of information about underworld figures.

The ex-informant has been one of Obama’s most unwavering backers, a cheerleader who has nightly bludgeoned the president’s Republican opponents in televised broadsides. For his part, Obama has sought the man’s counsel, embraced him publicly, and saluted his “commitment to fight injustice and inequality.” The president has even commented favorably on his friend’s svelte figure, the physical manifestation of a rehabilitation effort that coincided with Obama’s ascension to the White House. This radical makeover has brought the man wealth, a daily TV show, bespoke suits, a luxury Upper West Side apartment, and a spot on best seller lists.

Most importantly, he has the ear of the President of the United States, an equally remarkable and perplexing achievement for the former FBI asset known as “CI-7,” the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Of course, Sharpton was always a hustler. he figured out that the quickest route a high paying, but low effort life was as a black agitator. He does not care about black people, other than as aprop in his act. That’s why he had not trouble operating as a fink. For a guy like Sharpton, everything has a price, as he values nothing but his own base appetites, which are ample. Amusingly, this also makes Sharpton an Uncle Tom, which suggests the good Lord has a sense of humor.

A lengthy investigation by The Smoking Gun has uncovered remarkable details about Sharpton’s past work as an informant for a joint organized crime task force comprised of FBI agents and NYPD detectives, as well as his dealings with an assortment of wiseguys.

Beginning in the mid-1980s and spanning several years, Sharpton’s cooperation was fraught with danger since the FBI’s principal targets were leaders of the Genovese crime family, the country’s largest and most feared Mafia outfit. In addition to aiding the FBI/NYPD task force, which was known as the “Genovese squad,” Sharpton’s cooperation extended to several other investigative agencies.

TSG’s account of Sharpton’s secret life as “CI-7” is based on hundreds of pages of confidential FBI affidavits, documents released by the bureau in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, court records, and extensive interviews with six members of the Genovese squad, as well as other law enforcement officials to whom the activist provided assistance.

Like almost every other FBI informant, Sharpton was solely an information source. The parameters of his cooperation did not include Sharpton ever surfacing publicly or testifying on a witness stand.

Genovese squad investigators–representing both the FBI and NYPD–recalled how Sharpton, now 59, deftly extracted information from wiseguys. In fact, one Gambino crime family figure became so comfortable with the protest leader that he spoke openly–during ten wired face-to-face meetings–about a wide range of mob business, from shylocking and extortions to death threats and the sanity of Vincent “Chin” Gigante, the Genovese boss who long feigned mental illness in a bid to deflect law enforcement scrutiny. As the mafioso expounded on these topics, Sharpton’s briefcase–a specially customized Hartman model–recorded his every word.

In all seriousness, it took some balls to wear a wire. It may make him a dirt bag, but he was a dirt bag long before he became a rat so I’m not sure this matters a whole lot. The fact that Obama pals around with this odious toad is the bigger issue. It undermines everything Obama has said about race in America. When it gets down to it, racial solidarity trumps everything if you are black. In fact, it pretty trumps everything no matter your race. That’s a reality of the human existence.

The Soviet States of America

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Way back in my youth, I got a close up look at Progressivism. This was back in the early Reagan years when I was a part time employee for a Congressman. I was just a kid and a nobody, but the wife of the rep took a liking to me and that gave me the run of the place, so to speak. I used to have lunch with the Congressman two or three days a week. He was a nice man, but about as interesting as vanilla ice cream. That’s true of every elected official I met in Washington. privately, they were very dull.

The interesting people were the aides and activists. The ones on the Right were full of excitement about finally turning back the liberal tide. Even as a kid, I thought they were delusional, but they were fun. On the other hand, the old liberals defending the status quo were scary. They were deadly serious and ideology was everything. These were not people interested in free and open debate. They wanted to win and they were not interested in free-thinkers or critics in their midst.

The lesson I have carried with me ever since is this. Unless and until the Right comes to terms with what they are facing, America is doomed. These are not people with whom you can reason or compromise. They are fanatics. More important, their fanaticism transcends any sense of propriety. They will use any means necessary to destroy anyone who is seen as an obstacle. These are evil people who exist to undermines their host societies, which they loath and detest with all of their being.

The Bush years cured me of any hope for the American Right. Nice people in many cases. The problem is they are all like Jonah Goldberg. They make wonderful arguments in defense of civilization. They are often very good at warding off the zombie attacks from the Left. Their defect is they think the Left is just a bunch of people mistaken on matters of fact or reason. That’s not the case. The Left is a cult of lunatics no different from Islam. There’s no reasoning with them.

Until civilized people take the same view of the cult that sprung up on Rue Saint-Jacques, civilization is doomed. Maybe that’s starting to happen. This column by Kevin Williamson on NRO, of all places, takes an unvarnished view of the death cult running the culture.

The convocation of clowns on the left screeched with one semi-literate and inchoate voice when my colleague Jonah Goldberg, borrowing the precise words of one of their own, titled a book Liberal Fascism. Most of them didn’t read it, but the ones who did apparently took what was intended as criticism and read it as a blueprint for political action.

Welcome to the Liberal Gulag.

That term may be perverse, but it is not an exaggeration. Mr. Weinstein specifically called for political activists, ranging from commentators to think-tank researchers, to be locked in cages as punishment for their political beliefs. “Those denialists should face jail,” he wrote. “You still can’t” — banality alert! — “yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. You shouldn’t be able to yell ‘balderdash’ at 10,883 scientific journal articles a year.” “Balderdash” — a felony. At the risk of being repetitious, let’s dwell on that for a minute: The Left is calling on people to be prosecuted for speaking their minds regarding their beliefs on an important public-policy question that is, as a political matter, the subject of hot dispute. That is the stuff of Soviet repression.

But then Soviet-style repression has long been a dream of the American Left. Consider the abuses of psychiatry that were the great hallmark of the Soviet way, and then consider that there is a cottage industry today among left-wing psychiatrists arguing that conservative political views represent a form of mental disorder. That psychiatric approach to suppressing dissent has spread quickly through the intellectual sewers of the Left, with writers everywhere from Daily Kos to Salon diagnosing instances of “RWA” — right-wing authoritarian — disorder among their political rivals. Robert Altemeyer, the father of this asinine school of so-called thought,  denies that there exists such a thing as a left-wing authoritarian.

If Mr. Weinstein’s preferred method of enforcing intellectual conformity — coercion through state violence — seems extreme, consider that the jihad against Brendan Eich of Mozilla was no simple exercise in the operations of civil society. (Even if it were, it still would have been wrong; it is not as though social pressure cannot be put to illiberal and contemptible ends, something that gay-rights activists, of all people, should appreciate.) Mr. Weinstein’s victims of state repression are only hypothetical; Mr. Eich is a victim of state suppression in fact. His donation of $1,000 to a Proposition 8 group was made public through the commission of a crime by political powers — namely, the leaking of confidential IRS data to left-wing groups by their sympathizers within the agency. The leak was not intended to destroy Mr. Eich but rather to destroy Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign; Mr. Eich is nonetheless entitled to expect justice from the Department of Justice. Congress believes that it knows who the leaker is; but he has not been, and almost certainly will not be, prosecuted for his crimes. The reason for that is that the current management of the Department of Justice sympathizes with his political positions and does not wish to intervene to prevent the abuse — at the hands of government officials — of those it regards as its political enemies.

I’ve mentioned a few times that the Obama administration has been doing, with reckless abandon, what Nixon was merely accused of doing, in the articles of impeachment drawn up by Congress. If you want to measure how far down the pit we have fallen, ponder that for a second. Nixon was forced out because he contemplated doing that which we associated with authoritarianism. Today, the mass media celebrates a President using the IRS as a political weapon, conducting political prosecutions, spying on the citizens and refusing to enforce the people’s laws.

Williamson is mostly a faker, so no one should think he is anything but posing here or that the Right is starting wise up. The only way to dig out the fanatics from the culture is through the rough methods of revolution. I don’t see that happening. Instead, we will stagger on toward a soft, feminine authoritarianism. Heretics will be exiled to the fringes of life, but not thrown into camps. A sort or weird and semi-violent Shakerism among whites will eventually give way to a Latin authoritarianism as the white population is over run my Hispanic peasants from the south.

Why We’re Doomed

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This piece in National Journal is a good example of why America is doomed. It’s not that Gingrich is a festering carbuncle of man or that he is a moral nullity. Politics, going back to the Alcibiades, has been populated with loathsome parasites. It’s that people like Gingrich are now the bets the ruling class can offer. He’s not some unusual character that appears from time to time. he is the norm. Now society can last when it is ruled by people who write things like this.

Within a year, nine out of 10 Americans could be dead. And whatever causes the national apocalypse—be it North Korean malice or the whims of the sun—the downfall will ultimately be our own fault.

That’s the fear of Newt Gingrich and other members of a high-profile coalition who are convinced that our fragile electrical grid could be wiped out at any moment.

Their concern? Electromagnetic pulses, the short bursts of energy—caused by anything from a nuclear blast to a solar flare—that can wreak havoc on electrical systems on a massive scale. And the coalition believes it’s coming soon.

“I think we’re running out of time,” said Peter Pry, a former CIA officer and head of a congressional advisory board on national security. And if the worst happens? “This gets translated into mass fatalities, because our modern civilization can’t feed, transport, or provide law and order without electricity,” he said.

While some see the coalition as alarmist—and others dismiss them as out-and-out quacks—the coalition boasts some prominent and influential names. Pry and Gingrich are joined by former CIA Director James Woolsey.

“It wasn’t difficult persuading them” to join the coalition, Pry said. Gingrich “has known about EMP and cared about it for many years.”

Last year, Gingrich told members of Congress that an EMP attack “could be the kind of catastrophe that ends civilization—and that’s not an exaggeration.”

What does Gingrich know about physics? The answer is nothing. He was a history instructor at a strip mall college and he likes dinosaurs. There’s nothing wrong with history. Lots of people are history buffs. It’s that history is not science, so even if you are a well regarded historian, your opinions on science are no better than the guy who mops the floor at the university. In fact, in this case, the guy mopping the floor has the good sense to know this material is out of his reach.

The fact that the nation takes seriously a guy like Gingrich on anything, much less issues he is uniquely unqualified to discuss is far more worrisome than solar flares or an nuclear attack. Gingrich is a crank and not the funny entertaining type either. He is the weird guy who lives at the end of the lane type of crank. The guy parents warn their kids to avoid. His ideas are mostly nonsense, but he believes them with the intensity of a fanatic. This is not a guy who should have power over others.

The Pod People: Harry Reid

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I’m fond of calling our ruling class Pod People. They look like us and make sounds that seem human, but they are nothing like us. It’s a take off of the gag used in the movie The Live. The aliens use some sort of technology to disguise their presence. To humans, the aliens look like humans, just very successful. That’s the way our world feels these days. Here’s a good example from Hairy Reed.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said the fault of struggling to sign up on the Obamacare exchanges didn’t lie with the faulty website, but with the people who weren’t “educated on how to use the Internet.”Explaining the reasoning behind the latest Obamacare delay, Reid said too many people just didn’t know to use their computer properly and needed more time. Apparently, it had nothing to do with the well-documented failings of the website that have embarrassed the White House for months.

“We have hundreds of thousands of people who tried to sign up who didn’t get through,” he said. “There are some people who are not like my grandchildren who can handle everything so easily on the Internet, and these people need a little extra time. It’s not — the example they gave us is a 63-year-old woman came into the store and said, ‘I almost got it. Every time I just about got there, it would cut me off.’ We have a lot of people just like this through no fault of the Internet, but because people are not educated on how to use the Internet.”

It’s just the latest strange moment for the embattled Reid, who’s facing an increasingly uphill battle to keep a majority of Democrats in the Senate. Reid also recently implied all Americans telling their stories of Obamacare’s harmful effects were liars, and he has incessantly bashed the Koch Brothers as “un-American” and “against everything that’s good for America.”

Unfortunately for Reid, he has a far higher negative rating with the public than the Kochs.

Back in the 1990’s I used to get a kick out of reading legacy media talk about the Internet. Watching them fumble on TV with the basics was great theater. The strange thing about our elites is they are always late to the game, but then pretend to be experts long after most people take the “new thing” for granted. The Internet is a good example, as the people in charge were the last adopters., but now they demand the right to regulate it as the experts on the subject.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE

Those Hitler Loving Frogs

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The new brings news that French voters have gone big for the fascists in their recent elections. They don’t call them fascists these days, but we know what they mean by “far right.” After all, anyone who is not 100% committed to post-national globalism must be Hitler or at least Mussolini. Of course, as soon as they get control of the state, they will suspend democracy and impose a dictatorship, so it is critical that the fascists never win an elections. This news sounds ominous.

France’s far-right National Front party dealt a major blow to the ruling Socialists Sunday after several of its candidates took prime position in the first round of local elections.

The main centre-right opposition UMP party also hailed a “big victory” as initial estimates showed it came out trumps in the elections, as President Francois Hollande suffers record unpopularity against a backdrop of near-zero growth and high unemployment.

According to preliminary results from the interior ministry, the UMP and allies took 47 percent of the vote nationwide while the Socialist party and allies took 38 percent, and the FN five percent — far higher than its 0.9 percent result in the first round of 2008 municipal polls.

That’s strange. That headline was a bit misleading. Both 47% and 38% are larger than 5%, at least for all known values of five. Maybe democracy works differently in France but here in America, you don’t win much of anything with five percent of the vote. The panic seems a bit out of line, given that fringe parties are always a part of European politics, most polling in the single digits.

Applauding what she said was “an exceptional vintage for the FN”, Marine Le Pen — head of the anti-immigration, anti-EU party — said the polls marked the “end of the bipolarisation of the political scene”.

Although the FN had been expected to do well, the first round results were far better than expected.

Far-right candidates came ahead in several key towns and cities that will put them in pole position in the second round on March 30.

France's local elections

In the former coal-mining town of Henin-Beaumont in northern France, Steeve Briois went a step further and achieved 50.3 percent, an absolute majority which made him the outright winner and mayor.

Under municipal election rules in France, any candidate who gets more than 50 percent is declared the winner and there is no need for a second round.

The FN hopes to claim the mayorship of 10 to 15 mid-sized town after the second round, and if it achieves that, it will have beaten its previous record in 1997 when it had four mayors.

OK, it looks like the FN did well in rural areas while the Slightly Less Socialist Than The Socialists (UMP) did well in the major urban areas. Still, five percent is five percent, so the hyperventilating is a bit ridiculous. It reveals the paranoia and insecurity of the globalists despite their total control of the world. Maybe they know something that is not obvious to the rest of us. Alternatively, maybe they just need a bogeyman to keep everyone from noticing what’s happening in the West.

For Americans, this is a glimpse of what’s on the way. The FN is mostly what the Democratic Party looked like in the 1950’s. That’s populist, patriotic and protectionist. In France today, being patriotic is like being a Klansman in New York City. Populism is about as tasteful as a septic tank. Of course, protectionism is considered on par with witchcraft. The idea that the government should put the interest of citizens ahead of foreigners is a banned concept in France. In a generation, that will be true of America.

Why Are Jews Liberal?

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If you read Destructive Generation, something that leaps off the page is the fact that Jews are wildly over-represented in radical politics. Just looking at the Weathermen, about half the founding members were Jews. Huey Newton and the Black Panthers were largely brought to life and sustained by Jews in California. Of course, communism in America was very Jewish. You don’t have to be Kevin McDonald to notice that Jews have an outsized influence on American radicalism.

Even accounting for the fact Horowitz may have highlighted the Jews he knew in the movement, it is impossible not to conclude that Jews were way over represented in radical politics.  When one percent of the population is 30% of anything, that’s a clue. It’s not just the number. In Horowitz’s telling, Jews more often than not played the defining role in these radical movements. After all, Barak Obama would still be fixing parking tickets in Chicago without the Jewish radicals.

If you put “why are Jews liberal” into search engine out comes this list of links. When you get 12 million links, it must be an oft-pondered query. It is not as popular as that figure would suggest. Change “liberal’ to “midget” and you get 47 million hits. Make of that what you will, but the fact remains that Jews are over-represented in radical politics and lots of people are curious about it. That’s why it turns up with millions of links when you search the topic. people are curious about it.

Norman Podhoretz wrote about this in 2009. Podhoretz repeats the old line, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” It’s one of those classically Jewish gags that seems to acknowledge the truth, but subtly shifts the focus away from it. One the one hand you have bourgeois people, the Episcopalians, and on the other hand you have Puerto Ricans. No has strong feelings about Puerto Ricans nor are they associated with subversion, espionage and communism.

Jewish Radicalism is one of those things that seems to only get attention from anti-Semites, which is a shame. Jews don’t quite fit into the anti-Semitics bucket, as they will support radicals who are anti-Semites. In other words, the radicalism trumps the tribal loyalty. Obama captured 78% of the Jewish vote, despite being mildly anti-Semitic and hanging out with anti-Semites.

Most American Jews sincerely believe that their liberalism, together with their commitment to the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle, stems from the teachings of Judaism and reflects the heritage of “Jewish values.” But if this theory were valid, the Orthodox would be the most liberal sector of the Jewish community. After all, it is they who are most familiar with the Jewish religious tradition and who shape their lives around its commandments.

Yet the Orthodox enclaves are the only Jewish neighborhoods where Republican candidates get any votes to speak of. Even more telling is that on every single cultural issue, the Orthodox oppose the politically correct liberal positions taken by most other American Jews precisely because these positions conflict with Jewish law. To cite just a few examples: Jewish law permits abortion only to protect the life of the mother; it forbids sex between men; and it prohibits suicide (except when the only alternatives are forced conversion or incest).

The upshot is that in virtually every instance of a clash between Jewish law and contemporary liberalism, it is the liberal creed that prevails for most American Jews. Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right. And to the dogmas and commandments of this religion they give the kind of steadfast devotion their forefathers gave to the religion of the Hebrew Bible. For many, moving to the right is invested with much the same horror their forefathers felt about conversion to Christianity.

The response to his query and the book that followed was predictable. The NYTimes dragged out an old warhorse to defend the faith, so to speak. First you discredit the man:

Norman Podhoretz loves his people and loves his country, and I salute him for it, since I love the same people and the same country. But this is a dreary book. Its author has a completely axiomatic mind that is quite content to maintain itself in a permanent condition of apocalyptic excitation. His perspective is so settled, so confirmed, that it is a wonder he is not too bored to write.

Then dismiss the argument:

The veracity of everything he believes is so overwhelmingly obvious to him that he no longer troubles to argue for it. Instead there is only bewilderment that others do not see it, too. “Why Are Jews Liberals?” is a document of his bewilderment; and there is a Henry Higgins-­like poignancy to his discovery that his brethren are not more like himself. But the refusal of others to assent to his beliefs is portrayed by Podhoretz not as a principled disagreement that is worthy of respect, but as a human failing. Jews are liberals, he concludes, as a consequence of “willful blindness and denial.” He has a philosophy. They have a psychology.

The long and short of it is we have one person asking the obvious question. Why are Jews liberal? His answer is that liberalism has become the religion of The Tribe. That’s a bit of a tautology, but at least it moves the ball down the field. The alternative theory as seen here, here and in the NYTimes book review is the typical boilerplate we see from the Left every day. “The reason for X is we are the good guys and down in the valley, where the bad people dwell, is Y.”

Podhoretz’s explanation is good for a number of reasons. One is it fits with something we know about liberalism. It is clearly a religion. This political ideology provides the inner measures traditionally considered to be a religious territory, such as ethics, values, symbols, myths and rituals. At the same time, its attachment to the Standard Social Science Model, appeals to those raised in the Talmudic tradition. Instead of divining God’s will from the Torah, liberals divine the will of “science.”

Successful minority groups the world over have one thing in common. That is they attach themselves to the strongest element of the ruling class. Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire, is a good example. He is not Mexican. He is Lebanese. He is also tight with the ruling class. He has to be as he controls 90% of the telephone market. If he does not make sure the guys with guns are well compensated, they may decide Carlos needs some competition. In other words, minorities can be useful to the ruling elite.

The trouble with this theory is Jews have been out front in American culture and politics for generations now. The days of Jewish entertainers, for example, passing themselves off as Italians are long gone. Joe Lieberman was a Vice Presidential candidate 15 years ago and probably kept Gore in the race. Lieberman was a very respected political figure and very publicly Jewish. Modern Jews don’t have to cozy up to the elite for protection, as they are the elite and mostly in control of America.

There are a few other things to consider. Catholics, Episcopalians and Baptists have not followed the same path. Catholics used to be a core Democratic constituency, but that was more class and economics than religion. Plus, when they left their old church, they did not join the new faith. Instead they started voting Republican. Protestants certainly swapped the old religion for the new in many cases. Episcopalians, for example, are mostly way out on the far left these days.

Genetics may hold the key. Jews, as known in the West, are not the same Jews as in the Middle East. Most Jews in the West are Ashkenazim, not Sephardim. They have a very different evolutionary arc and they have a different history. It’s not just the issue with you know who. The Jews of central and eastern Europe are different people from the Jews of Italy, Spain and the Middle East. Recent studies suggest Ashkenazim descend from the earliest Europeans.

The majority of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from prehistoric European women, according to study published today (October 8) in Nature Communications. While the Jewish religion began in the Near East, and the Ashkenazi Jews were believed to have origins in the early indigenous tribes of this region, new evidence from mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on exclusively from mother to child, suggests that female ancestors of most modern Ashkenazi Jews converted to Judaism in the north Mediterranean around 2,000 years ago and later in west and central Europe.

The new findings contradict previous assertions that Ashkenazi mitochondrial lineages originated in the Near East, or from mass conversions to Judaism in the Khazar kingdom, an empire in the north Caucasus region between Europe and Asia lasting from the 7th century to the 11th century whose leaders adopted Judaism. “We found that most of the maternal lineages don’t trace to the north Caucasus, which would be a proxy for the Khazarians, or to the Near East, but most of them emanate from Europe,” said coauthor Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in the U.K.

Given the state of religion in Europe 2,000 years ago, it is rather amazing that a group of people would elect to become monotheists, much less Jewish. A religion requiring a relatively high degree of literacy and one that comes with a rational legal code is going to make them even more unusual. It is not too much of a reach to think that Ashkenazim are hard wired to believe and to believe a certain way. Those unique traits and a high degree of endogamy meant those traits were reinforced through mating.

This is, in part, the Kevin McDonald argument. He takes it well beyond this point, arguing that Jews are purpose built to undermine white nations. That’s a bit ridiculous from the perspective of science, but a lot of people believe it. Maybe it does not matter, as Jews are wildly over-represented in radicalism. Why that is so is not all that important. Like blacks voting Democrat, what matters is accepting that Jews are never going to be on the side of bourgeois white people.

Imaginary Tax

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This post over at Marginal Revolution raises a question that never gets talked about in conservative circles. Conservatism today is mostly libertarianism with some lip service to cultural issues, so you would think they would be champions of scrapping business taxes entirely. Even if they could not muster the courage for that, they could certainly champion simplification. That seems like a thing that no one can oppose, as no one thinks more complexity is every a good thing.

Yet, we never hear much from supposed pro-capitalist types about a zero income tax on business. Politically, it has the obvious defect of seeming to be pro-rich people, but people are not that dumb. Some will fall for the liberal argument conflating business with the rich, but most could be persuaded to see that is false. Persuadable voters can also be sold on an idea that will get them a job or a raise, too. A zero business tax would instantly make America a magnet for every global corporation on the planet.

There’s another piece that would be good politics. The candidate running on this idea could tie it to political reform. Our politicians no longer serve the people. Instead they extort money from business by selling them indulgences in the form of tax breaks. John McCain has often said he spends too much time shaking down businesses and threatening them with taxes if they don’t give him money. Remove the weapon and he and his pals can no longer use that weapon to shake down business.

The other benefit is it would allow the Republicans to make the Democrats talk about the details of business taxes. Corporate taxes end up in one of two places. That’s the price of the product or the employee’s paycheck. Taxing business is a false populism. that the Left has for years used to fool the working man. A reasonably savvy pol could turn this on its head and argue it is a hidden tax on working people. It’s not an easy sell, but it shift the frame and breaks the Progressive paradigm.

But, Republicans are not called The Stupid Party for nothin’.

Smokey And The Fatman

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It used to be that public health was focused on the health of the public, which meant basic sanitation, medical care and so forth. An expanded definition would include education about nutrition and prevention of disease though vaccinations and public education. Today, public health means pointless virtue signalling from the ruling class over things that have little to do with public health. The news brings word that New Jersey’s governor is looking to tax e-cigarettes.

Cash-strapped New Jersey is leading the charge against e-cigarettes, with Governor Chris Christie and state legislators proposing high taxes that could propel sales into the black market and diminish the state’s tax intake.

Fox News reports that the booming, currently still unregulated e-cigarette industry is enticing a number of states to propose new taxes to cover for the sales. While the health effects of e-cigarettes are still not fully known, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that e-cigarettes have “far fewer of the toxins found in smoke compared to traditional cigarettes,” and many individuals suggest that they have been able to stop smoking cigarettes by switching to this nicotine-providing alternative. One study found that e-cigarettes are as effective as nicotine patches in helping smokers quit.

Lots of people who have switched to the e-cigarettes and then quit using nicotine entirely. Even heavy smokers, who have tried all of the other remedies have found relief through vaping. They don’t start vaping in order to quit nicotine, but that is a happy result of making the switch. it turns out to be an effective way to break the habit, because it first eliminates the link between the hundreds of chemicals in cigarettes and the nicotine. This seems to make quitting less difficult.

You would think that would be welcomed news by the anti-smoking people, but you would be wrong. They never gave a damn about the health of smokers. The people in these movements just like pushing people around. The advent of e-cigarettes is now making that plain. Instead of encouraging harm reduction, they are trying to ban this new gadget. New York City also banned e-cigs, which is hilarious as it is impossible to enforce, as the user can do it undetected with little effort.

Of course, the politicians just want the money. The hilarious part is this whole thing is it pits the busybodies against the legal plunder crowd. The anti-pleasure fanatics are out trying to ban the sale of cigarettes, while the blood suckers in every state capital are trying to figure out how to make more money from the sale of cigarettes. One side is quietly encouraging vice in order to tax it, while the other side loudly condemns, while quietly happy to have people to lecture.

A group of state attorneys general are asking the nation’s top pharmacy chains to follow rival CVS and stop selling tobacco products.

The prosecutors sent letters to Walgreens (WAG, Fortune 500) and Rite-Aid (RAD, Fortune 500) as well as three other retailers with pharmacies in their stores — Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, Fortune 500) as well as grocers Kroger (KR, Fortune 500) and Safeway (SWY, Fortune 500).

“There is a contradiction in having these dangerous and devastating tobacco products on the shelves of a retail chain that services health care needs,” the AGs wrote.

The push is being made by a bipartisan group of prosecutors, led by New York AG Eric Schneiderman and Ohio AG Mike DeWine, from 26 other states and territories.

The funny part is watching the pols struggle to come up with a way to tax something that may be impossible to tax. There are millions of sites selling these things. Taxing cigarettes is relatively easy. The distributors are licensed by the states and put a tax man on-site. Taxing bits of metal that can be shipped from anywhere on the planet for pennies is a different matter. You could tax nicotine at the manufacturer, but then you raise prices of all sorts of other goods. Nicotine is used in pesticide, for example, in the organic food business. There’s some irony.

Fake Indian For President!

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People dismiss Elizabeth Warren as a light weight who got a little lucky. That may be true to a great degree, but she is an ambitious light weight. She wants to be the first fake Indian in the White House. She has carefully staked out the right turf and is a favorite of the hard bourgeois Left. When she was running for the Senate, middle-class women were ecstatic for her. Warren’s Facebook page has that cultish vibe to it. It is the sort of fawning that makes normal people uncomfortable.

Today comes news she is prepping a book for later in the year. This is a common thing for pols with an eye on a presidential run. They are written to make life easy for the press covering them. Well, easier for the liberal press swooning over a Democrat candidate. Republicans tend to write books that are used as ammunition against them, because Republicans are dumb. Warren’s next book smells like a campaign platform that her friends in the media can use to promote her candidacy.

The conventional wisdom is Clinton will run away with the 2016 nomination. It is her turn and she has dirt on everyone that could run against her. The Democrats usually abhor retreads and losers, but their bench is empty right now. Warren could probably challenge Clinton as both the authentic Progressive and the authentic Progressive women in the race. There’s a lot of bad feeling toward Clinton from the Left, but running against someone with Clinton’s body count is not wise.

In Washington it is an open secret that Warren is quietly feeling out supporters and donors. Hillary is old and looking rough. If she falters, Warren is going to want to be ready. Publishing a book no one will read is another way to touch the donor base. They will be asked to buy in bulk. If after the midterm the Party is looking for someone around whom they can rally, Warren could be right there to play the Bobby Kennedy role to Hillary’s Humphrey. If not, then 2020 is a possibility.

The thing that no one sees coming is the growing populism in the country. Someone on the Right may figuring it out, as the GOP is a fragile shell of a party. That said, the nation is led by the Left, so that’s where populism will have a real impact if it becomes a thing in politics. Warren is someone who could tap into that and become the new face of bourgeois Progressivism. That assumes that Hillary does not run and win and Hillary does not have these challengers killed.