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DEI Initiatives Create Environment Where ‘inclusion does not apply to Jewish students on campus’

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By Alexa Schwerha

A study published by Heritage Foundation showed a spike of anti-Semitic incidents occurring on college campuses at the same time DEI faculty continue being hostile to supporters of Israel.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs have become popular on campus to expand student comfort and inclusivity on college campuses. These centers serve as a space for students to connect and feel appreciated among their fellow peers, guided by experts and academics at the highest level.

But what happens when a specific group of students is left out of the mix?

It is not a question that college campuses and universities are not always the safe space for academic freedom and self-expression that they claim to be. Repeatedly, students with a specific point of view are criticized and intimidated to maintain a quiet disposition during their four-year journey through higher education. 

Who are these students? Those that are Jewish or are supporters of Israel.

DEI programs cannot fix the prejudices embedded in the swamp that is higher education; in some cases, these initiatives actually compound the discrimination already present.

244 anti-Semitic incidents were reported during the 2020-2021 school year, according to the Heritage Foundation’s report this month.

That number represents a 34.8% increase from the previous academic year. 

But how – or perhaps why – did that dramatic rise occur during a school year largely shunted to virtual attendance during COVID-19?

As Campus Reform has reported, Jewish students and supporters of Israel face intimidation and discrimination whether online or on campus. Incidents this year such as the chancellor at Rutgers University issuing an apology for condemning a “resurgence of anti-Semitism” does not help matters.

One University of Michigan student told Campus Reform in July that “[i]t is scary to be a Jew in America right now.”

In August, a person at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville desecrated the Star of David by eating a sticker depicting the Jewish symbol to protest the state of Israel.

Heritage Foundation’s December 2021 report, “Inclusion Delusion: The Antisemitism of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staff at Universities,” strongly suggests that DEI staff’s pretense to inclusivity actually makes campuses less tolerant environments for Jewish students and non-Jewish supporters of Israel. 

“What we found in our most recent paper is that higher education diversity bureaucrats—who are paid to promote inclusion—have a strange way of showing it on Twitter. DEI staffers tweet so inordinately and hyperbolically about Israel, relative to China, that they cross the line into antisemitism,” James Paul, a doctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas and the report’s co-author, told Campus Reform.

“Apparently ‘inclusion’ does not apply to Jewish students on campus,” Paul added. 

Heritage analyzed the Twitter feeds of 741 DEI faculty representing 65 universities to determine any favorability when it came to discussions surrounding Israel. The same analysis was conducted for China, in comparison.

Of the tweets, 96% expressed criticism of Israel, while a stark 62% were expressed positive opinions about China. 

“The overwhelming pattern is that DEI staff at universities pay a disproportionately high amount of attention to Israel and nearly always attack Israel,” the report states.

At the average university, Heritage finds that there is an average of 45 DEI staff tasked with the responsibility of creating an inclusive environment. The industry has become extremely profitable for these staffers, as well, and at the expense of the college community.

Ohio State University, for example, pays $10,097,051 to employ 131 diversity administrators.

Thirty of those employees earn more than $100,000 per year, and of the 99 salaried employees, the average salary calculates to $89,168.

Statements made about Israel included accusations of “genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and other extreme crimes,” according to Heritage.

These phrases were non-existent in the language used to refer to China, spare for the favorable use of the word “colonialism.”

Though the Heritage study did find minimal criticism of China for its human rights violations against Uighur Muslims and African residents, it also found that such critiques were less severely worded than language reserved for anti-Israel posts.

[RELATED: POLL: 50% of Jewish students feel they ‘need to hide their identity’ on campus]

“It would be impossible to review the inordinate attention that DEI staff pay to Israel relative to China, the nearly universal attacks on Israel and China without concluding that DEI staff have an obsessive and irrational animus toward the Jewish state,” the study states.

Paul told Campus Reform that the findings only support the claim that DEI staffers are not committed to fostering a true inclusive environment.

Jay P. Greene, a senior research fellow at Heritage and the report’s lead author, agreed with Paul’s assessment.

“After publishing three reports on DEI bureaucracy in K-12 and higher education, we find little evidence that DEI promotes inclusive environments or closes achievement gaps,” Greene told Campus Reform.

The bottom line is that students have a right to feel safe and secure on the campus of their choosing. They should not be subjected to pressure to hide or conform their worldviews to meet the standards of those claiming to provide an inclusive experience.

The prevalence of DEI staff and facilities on American campuses cannot and should not be a vehicle for the woke, liberal mob to continue their suppression of viewpoint diversity under the false banner of inclusivity.

The tweets featured throughout the study bear witness to the biased discrimination being waged on college campuses, and it is hindering students’ abilities to pursue an education in a truly free academic space.

*****

This article was published on December 19, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from Campus Reform.

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ZEV Subsidies Fail Equity, Economics, and Environmental Tests

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By Duggan Flanakin

Many have been saying for years that subsidies for zero-emissions (electric) vehicles [ZEV] pose unfair burdens on working Americans. Subsidizing (and mandating) an unwanted switch away from internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) while imposing diktats that have brought higher gasoline prices and record inflation also seems out of kilter with the widely championed tenet of equity.

But the lack of equity is not even the chief reason for ending EV subsidies, according to a new Manhattan Institute report from economist Jonathan A. Lesser, president of Continental Economics. “There is no economic basis for the billions of dollars spent subsidizing [the newest zero-emission vehicles].”

Lesser says that new ICVs today emit very little pollution, thanks to stringent emission standards and low-sulfur gasoline, and they will emit even less in the future. Moreover, ZEVs charged with the forecast mix of electric generation will emit more criteria air pollutants – sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates – than new ICVs.

As for the dreaded (but vital) carbon dioxide, ZEVs do emit less than ICVs, but the projected reduction in CO2 emissions – less than 1 percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions – will have no measurable impact on climate, and hence no economic or environmental value.

Lesser is not the only one with data that ought to dim the ZEV subsidy lightbulb. Danish climate expert Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus think tank, has long argued that the hype and mythologizing over ZEVs afflicts policy-making and leads to costly subsidies that produce little environmental benefit. Even in ZEV-happy Norway, the typical virtue-signaling ZEV owner drives the family ICV many more miles annually.

Swedish automaker Volvo compared its gasoline-powered XC40 with its fully electric C40, taking into account the extraction and processing of raw materials. Volvo found that manufacturing the C40 results in 70 percent more emissions than manufacturing the XC40 in the same factory on the same assembly line. The electric battery is the chief culprit.

If, Inside EVs suggests, the data presented by Volvo are any indication, it is quite likely that the manufacture of new ICVs is notably greener than that of all new ZEVs. The only apparent rationale for the subsidies is to favor subservient manufacturers or, perhaps, certain producers and exporters of ZEV components.

So why is President Biden, who claims to be a champion of the working class, pushing so hard for gazillions in new subsidies for ZEVs and ZEV charging stations? Subsidies, in general, have many downsides, notably that, by forcing the market in the “preferred” direction, they crowd out better ideas that might not yet be known to, or even thought of, by bureaucrats.

Admittedly, when Elon Musk rails against subsidies for electric vehicles, he is staring directly into the Biden Administration’s plan to provide tax incentives of up to $12,500 for union-built EVs that purchasers of his non-union vehicles would not receive. Tesla sales 2 years ago reached 200,000-vehicle threshold below which Tesla buyers could receive the current $7,500 federal credit, yet the company says it is prospering.

Musk now argues that the government should act more like a sports referee than a player on the field. Thus, he also opposes Biden’s huge layout for subsidized EV charging stations. But there may be yet another reason to deep-six yet another subsidy for wealthier EV owners, one that Musk himself once considered but that bureaucrats have not planned for.

Back in 2013, Musk unveiled a battery swap station designed about Tesla’s Model S, but few paid attention. The process proved to be complex and slow, and Musk switched its strategy to build out his Supercharger network. Other firms followed suit.

Others, notably Chinese automaker Nio, opted to develop the battery swap. Nio has completed more than 2 million battery swaps in China and is now building swapping stations in Europe. In the U.S., the battery swapping company Ample has until recently operated in “stealth” mode while raising $280 million in investment capital.

Ample founder Khaled Hassounah envisions placing battery swapping stations, each about the size of two parking spaces, at gasoline stations, grocery stores, and highway rest stops. A robotic arm will execute a “Lego-style” swap, replacing the spent battery with a freshly charged one in about 10 minutes. Ample uses small, lighter weight battery modules that can be added together to fit a wide range of vehicles.

Hassounah’s chief focus is on fleet vehicles. Not only does the battery swap system cut recharging time significantly, but fleet managers who opt in can avoid the cost of charging stations. Vehicles driven beyond the typical ZEV’s battery life may save significant sums via leasing. They also get the benefit of having the newest battery technology in their vehicles.

There are, of course, downsides. Many current and planned EV designs make the battery pack an integral part of the chassis. EV manufacturers may be disinclined to warrant vehicles with aftermarket batteries installed. And, of course, drivers can only swap out batteries where there are swapping stations. Pumping gas is still easier, quicker, and not subject to robot malfunction.

Moreover, swapping stations are not part of the Biden subsidy scheme – government rarely has any idea what the market is developing.

But isn’t that what Musk is belatedly joining in arguing? That government has no business being a player in trying to direct the evolution of American business. That means no subsidies – and no mandates, either.

*****

This article was published on December 19, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

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Selective News and Selective Enforcement

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By Neland Nobel

One of the problems with the mainstream corporate media is that they lie. Sometimes, they lie directly, but more often, it is just their choice of what stories to emphasize. It often is a lie of omission rather than a lie of commission.

Typically, they pick those stories that correspond to the current narrative being promoted by the Democratic Party. For example, CNN and MSNBC were largely silent with the coverage of the recent Jussie Smollett trial. They hardly ever run a story important to those of us in Arizona, such as the literal invasion of the state by illegal aliens.

However, they give breathless nonstop coverage to the January 6th Capitol riot, while ignoring the hundreds of riots perpetrated by Black Lives Matter. And it is true of local media as well. Seen any stories of late of what was the final disposition of those arrested for the riots in Scottsdale about a year ago?

Likewise, if any number of Asian women are pummeled by both black men and women, it’s a non-story. However, if a black is assaulted by a white, especially a police officer, you will never hear the end to it.

It is not clear if this kind of bias is just built into media or not.  Clearly, Fox News has stories they prefer to run with as well so you could argue that it is. But since the dominant media (TV networks, all but one of the cable networks, the sports networks, popular magazines, metropolitan newspapers, women’s magazines) are mostly Progressive in outlook, likely it is simply built in to the Progressive mind. They see what they want to see, and without balance in the media, there is no one to tell them they are narrow-minded. Further, they want to see what advances their ideas for political change.

However, no one wants to talk about one of the obvious spin-offs of the Progressive Democrat plan to open our borders to a mass invasion. Not only are they selective about stories, but they are also selective as to what laws they will enforce. 

The laws presently on the books prohibit what we are seeing. There is a legal process that you are supposed to go through to enter this country. Yet the Administration just chooses to ignore enforcing the law, and the mainstream corporate media is just fine in ignoring the problem. It is selective law enforcement coupled with selective non-coverage of a major news story.

Selective enforcement of the law IS a big story. A very big story.  It means the law is no longer being equally enforced. But the law is the cement that holds civilization together. It means politicians, rather than changing the law in a democratic and open process, can effectively change the law by themselves, simply but not enforcing laws they don’t like. It is hard to imagine anything more destructive to the rule of law and the democratic process than selective enforcement.

Then just to put on the finishing touch, the Progressive wants those that came illegally into the country to get the right to vote. This effectively cancels out the votes of citizens that have helped build the country, raised children, served in the military, and paid hefty taxes. If they cancel out your vote, what is the difference in the outcome than preventing you from voting?

Since illegals from other countries are now able to vote in New York City, and borders are invisible, why not let foreigners that live in other countries vote in our elections as well? It seems logical that once you allow illegals to vote, there is no self-limiting principle available.

And since New York City has a lot of population, New York state is pivotal in national elections. That means illegals could influence a national election. What goes down in New York City does not stay in New York City.

But let’s bring the problem of illegal immigration closer to home, back to Arizona. Just one of the problems involved in mass illegal immigration is turning the Sonoran Desert into a garbage dump. I can’t recall any national or even local environmental group mentioning this as a problem. Nor has Mark Kelly or Krysten Sinema said anything. Or the mayor of Tucson?

Both Tucson and Bisbee in recent years had ordinances against the single-use plastic bag, and it took an act of the Arizona legislature to get them to back off. You would think the sensitive people in Southern Arizona would be more concerned about what is happening around the border, insofar as environmental degradation. An occasional plastic bag is a threat to the desert but the wholesale trashing of the desert by thousands of illegal aliens is just fine with them. That is just a tad selective, is it not?

Now, in the scale of what is important, this likely does not rank with the destruction of the rule of law. On the other hand, it is something one can actually see.

This recently came to mind when a friend in Southern Arizona sent me some photos of the beautiful Sonoran Desert near Tucson. Whether he took them or retrieved them from the internet, doesn’t matter. What it shows is what matters.

We are often told how sensitive the desert is. With the lack of rain, things grow very slowly. There is plenty of outrage if a developer were to defile the desert. Heaven forbid if one were able to permit a copper mine in less than 10 years. There is even outrage from environmentalists if one departs from an approved hiking trail. To do so is to “bust the crust”, which is a sinful act that is disturbing micro-organisms.

Look at the photo above. How does “busting the crust” compare with this? Mark Kelly, are you there?

As mentioned before, this kind of destruction of the desert while important is not as important as the destruction heaped on the law by selective enforcement. However, it does present a powerful visual of what selective enforcement and selective news coverage look like.

Hostage Crisis Ends On Day 73—American Patients Now Have Access to One Antiviral Pill

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By Jeffrey A. Singer

Earlier this week I wrote about foot-dragging by the Food and Drug Administration regarding approval of two highly effective antiviral pills. With the omicron variant of COVID-19 rapidly spreading throughout the population, infecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated, these pills become even more important.

Merck applied to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of its antiviral molnupiravir on October 11, 2021—73 days ago. The drug was approved for emergency use in the U.K. on November 4. It is 30 percent effective in preventing COVID infections (including the omicron variant) from progressing to hospitalization, and no patient receiving molnupiravir died from infection. On November 30 an FDA advisory committee recommended its approval. As of this writing the FDA has not acted on the advice of the committee.

On November 16 Pfizer sought an EUA for its drug Paxlovid. The drug is 89 percent effective in stopping infections from progressing to hospitalization. Nobody receiving Paxlovid in clinical trials died from COVID. As of yesterday, the FDA had not even called a meeting of its advisory committee to look at the trial data.

Today the FDA finally acted. It granted Emergency Use Authorization to Pfizer’s Paxlovid without even waiting for an opinion from its advisory committee. The FDA director of its Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Patrizia Cavazzoni, MD, stated:

This authorization provides a new tool to combat COVID-19 at a crucial time in the pandemic as new variants emerge and promises to make antiviral treatment more accessible to patients who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19.

Still no word from the FDA on molnupiravir. But at least American patients now have access to one lifesaving pill. It took 73 days for that to happen. During those 73 days 87,569 Americans have died—1,811 died yesterday (source: worldometer).

As Michael Cannon and I write in Drug Reformation: End Government’s Power To Require Prescriptions, one intermediate reform that would partly mitigate the government’s infringement on our right to self-medicate would be for Congress to allow adult consumers to purchase drugs and devices that may not be FDA‐​approved but are approved by a list of designated countries’ drug approval agencies. Drugs approved by FDA‐​equivalent agencies in the European Union, U.K., Switzerland, Israel, and Japan immediately come to mind. Labels would inform consumers that the drugs or devices are not FDA‐​approved but are approved by a particular country’s agency. If such a law were in effect today, many Americans would have had access to Merck’s molnupiravir since early November. How many lives might have been saved?

Such a proposal, called drug approval “reciprocity” by some, was introduced in the U.S. Senate in imperfect form in 2015. Unfortunately, it did not advance to a vote. A modified version that limits reciprocity to public health emergencies was introduced on March 2020.

Hopefully, as America’s patients and doctors grow increasingly impatient with sclerotic regulatory agencies impeding a quick response to our public health emergency, reciprocal approval will get renewed attention.

*****

This article was published on December 22, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Cato Institute.

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What Is The Chance of Dying From Drug Overdose? 1 in 50!

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By Neland Nobel

In a world where everyone seems concerned about “safety”, and the government is issuing draconian edicts in a failing effort to stop the spread of a virus, it seems like a reasonable question to ask.  Recent data suggests drug overdose is the main cause of death of people in their middle years of life.

This development has followed in the wake of “progressive policies” reducing or eliminating penalties for using or dealing drugs, the legalization of marijuana, and a very lax view of “homelessness”, which itself is largely a drug dependency-linked problem.  Is rising drug usage, and rising drug deaths, caused by these policy changes, or are other factors at work?

Whatever the cause, it certainly deserves reexamination of the issue.  Just say NO seems to have been replaced by just say YES.

Further, it is hard to explain the selectivity of Federal and local health authorities.  If relatively few children die of Covid, the government goes into high gear with propaganda about vaccines and in some jurisdictions, requires children to be vaccinated to participate in schools or even to eat out at a restaurant.  Yet if young people die of drug overdoses, there appears very little concern.

Perhaps this is because in “progressive” jurisdictions, solving the problem would entail dealing with their open borders policy, the role of Mexican drug cartels, the malevolent role China plays in drug production and distribution, lax policies that produce drug usage, and new cultural norms formed by celebrities and popular culture that encourage the use of drugs.

We understand that treating drug users as criminals may not be optimal.  But what about those that profit from the long-term misery of others?  Should they not pay a penalty?  And if criminalization is not the answer,  what is?

What would an anti-drug culture look like?  What would be its attributes? What stops some people from using drugs at all, while others get addicted?  Are their genetic predispositions in play or is this more a matter of will and character? If it is more a question of character and will, how does one change society and popular culture that has glorified drug usage since the 1960s?

According to JUSTFACTSDAILY.COM, the answer to the question posed is an astounding chance of 1 in 50!  That is far higher than the chance of dying from Covid 19.

In addition, this figure does not truly capture the lengthy misery drug dependence can cause the individual or the collateral damage drug addiction inflicts on parents, siblings, friends, and employers.  

As bad as Covid has been (the author has had it), for most of us it is a bad flu that lasts about a week, with weakness that may linger for up to a month.  But it does not ruin our lives and does not wreck families and careers like a drug addiction.  Yet it seems the entire concentrated force of government is focused on this one health issue while ignoring the numerous deaths and societal destruction brought on by drug addiction.

According to JUSTFACTSDAILY: “If drug overdose deaths continue at their current pace, one in every 44 people currently alive in the U.S. will die of a drug overdose. Contrary to claims that providing more drug treatment through laws like Obamacare and legalizing marijuana would reduce such deaths, drug overdose death rates have skyrocketed since 2000, and more than 100,000 people per year are now being killed by them.”

Documentation:

Drug Overdose Deaths

Lifetime Risk (Excel)

Drug Overdose Trends

Drug Treatment Increases

Legalizing Marijuana

*****

Information for this article was abstracted from JustFactsDaily produced by James Agresti.

Covid Vaccination Incentives Could Cost Phoenix $29 Million

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By Elizabeth Troutman

The city of Phoenix will offer bonuses up to $2,000 to vaccinated city employees, costing the city between $25 million to $29 million.

The Phoenix City Council voted, 6-3, this week to approve the bonuses, which will go out to full and part-time employees by Jan. 18. City employees who do not have the option to work remotely already were set to receive $500 bonuses from American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Councilmembers decided to grant an additional premium bonus to those same employees if vaccinated.

The approval allows the city to give an additional $1,500 bonus to full-time employees and a $750 bonus to part-time employees who are fully vaccinated by Jan. 18. The city of Phoenix will use the remaining $198 million from ARPA to fund the bonuses.

The city issued a vaccination mandate for more than 13,000 employees in November, but a federal court ruling temporarily blocked the mandate. City officials said they paused the mandate to “further explore our options regarding implementation of the requirement, should it stand” in a Dec. 7 announcement.

Councilmember Betty Guardado, who voted in favor of the measure, hopes the incentive will increase vaccination rates.

“This is money that is going to come very handy to a lot of people that are out there that continue to keep us safe,” Guardado told Fox 10.

Councilmembers Ann O’Brien, Jim Waring and Sal DiCiccio voted against the measure.

DiCiccio accused the council of “politicizing” the COVID-19 vaccine in his statement at the formal meeting.

“While certain leaders were cowering in their homes, hiding from COVID, brave men and women, primarily from police and fire, were out there protecting us,” he said.

*****

This article was published on December 17, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

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A Feel-Good Story for The Holidays

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By Bruce Bialosky

Regular readers of my column know this is the time of year I break from addressing public policy issues and focus on positive aspects of life in accordance with the season. I am going to tell you a story about something I was involved in a few months back that will hopefully give you a warm feeling and some positive thoughts about how to guide your own actions.

I drive home most of the time on the same route. I turn off a main street onto a winding street that comes to a stop sign. At the stop sign, I turn left, but always look right to a street that is heading up a hill. For the first time, I can remember there was a car parked there which seemed quite out of place as there are no homes on that part of the street.

I thought the car was for someone visiting the houses to the left and I moved on. The next day the car was there and then the next day. I thought I might get involved, but nobody likes a buttinski, so I left it at that. Then on a Saturday afternoon, I decided to look because something appeared clearly wrong.

I drove around the car noting the make and model and the current condition. I wrote down the license plate and saw that the license plate frame was from a used car lot which included the phone number.

I called the lot and spoke to the general manager. I told him there might be a car stolen from his lot parked near my home. I gave him the information about the vehicle, and he went and checked his records. When he returned, he stated the car had been sold. He asked if it was alright to have the owner call me directly. I said absolutely.

Ten minutes later I received a call from Michael. After identifying ourselves he asked me to describe the car. Michael was a mix of emotions vacillating between disbelief and euphoria. He asked a couple more questions and smiled broadly through the phone and stated “Yep, that is my car.” Michael told me his car had been missing for a month. While he kept holding out hope, his girlfriend had urged him to give up the ghost and get some new wheels. He felt almost vindicated that his car was within reach of being returned to him.

Michael lives nearby so I told him to just come to my house and we would go over to the vehicle. It was a relief that the vehicle could be identified this way. A different scenario might have involved going to a police station, filing a report, waiting, and waiting to find out if the car was ever returned to the rightful owner — Michael.

Michael arrived at my house, and I got in his car and suggested the following: If the car is his and drivable, he will take the car to his home and I will follow him to his place, drop off a car and he could drive me back to my home. He was delighted with that as he thought he would have to get a buddy over to do all this. I said it was no big deal. He lives less than ten minutes away. Michael was just shocked at this entire scenario and said God was really looking down on him today.

We drove the winding roads to where the vehicle was located. He got out of the car and used his spare remote key to open it. The lights went on which was an excellent sign since the battery could have been dead from sitting unused for an extended period. He walked around the car and checked inside. He came back to the car I was in and happily told me the car was undamaged and the only thing missing was a CD case. He stood there for a moment in stunned euphoria.

We dropped off his recovered car and he jumped in the one I was driving. When I switched to the passenger seat, I called my brother who is quite knowledgeable about cars. I suggested that Michael might want to run the engine for 45 minutes to recharge the battery. My brother said Michael just needed to drive the car around for 20 minutes which I shared with Michael. That was now his plan directly after dropping me off.

When we started up the hill back to my house I turned to Michael and said, “Don’t even think of offering me a reward of any kind.” He said his girlfriend would want to send me a gift card. My response was “thank you, but no thank you – I am not interested in anything other than helping.”

We got out of the car, and I handed him a business card. I told him he may need to get ahold of me because he filed a police report and had to let them know the vehicle was recovered. Then I said, “Have a great day.” I thought about that and corrected myself. “That was silly; you are already having a great day.” Michael stood there staring at me with a smile that could light a Broadway marquee.

This entire episode took about two hours. Anyone who is victimized as Michael was in this case with his stolen car might just have a bit of faith restored with an act such as this.

While it’s said the ultimate act of giving is to do so anonymously, I share this story with you to perhaps demonstrate it often takes little effort to help another person. We can all be hopeful Michael’s Christmas is a bit better for the little episode we shared.

It’s so important to make someone happy

Make just one, someone happy

*****

This article was published on December 19, 2021, in FlashReport, and is reproduced with the permission of the author.

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Microschooling’s Growth In Arizona Is No Surprise

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By Michael McShane

The Roman philosopher Seneca is quoted as saying that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” When the coronavirus hit Arizona and parents were looking for options outside of their closed traditional public schools, they were lucky to find a proliferating network of microschools. But that lucky moment was years, if not decades, in the making.

In a new paper for the Manhattan Institute, I examine the phenomenon of microschooling in Arizona. After hearing from several parents who found microschools to be a godsend after they grew frustrated watching their school boards and administrators dither and prevaricate on COVID policies, I wanted to answer a basic question: Why here?

Executive Summary

Microschools, small schools that educate five to 15 students, have been among the most interesting recent developments in the K–12 reform world. Neither homeschooling nor traditional schooling, they exist in a hard-to-classify space between formal and informal learning environments. They rose in popularity during the pandemic as families sought alternative educational options that could meet social-distancing recommendations. But what they offer in terms of personalization, community building, schedules, calendars, and the delivery of instruction will have appeal long after Covid recedes.

One of the most prominent microschooling networks, Prenda, was founded in 2018 in Mesa, Arizona’s third largest city. It has experienced dramatic growth largely because of the way it attracts parents like those interviewed for this paper. It is no coincidence that Prenda’s emergence and expansion took place in Arizona, which has been a national leader in education innovation for a generation. Arizona’s cultural and policy environment foster and promote experimentation, diversification, and parental choice. The state’s thriving charter-school sector—no state has a higher percentage of students in charters—has developed an expansive, varied set of choice-based public schools. For decades, Arizona’s traditional public schools have been part of the state’s open-enrollment system, making more than a thousand district-run schools part of a choice system. And Arizona has been a national leader on private-school choice, passing the nation’s first “education savings account” program and today, via an array of state programs, enabling more than 100,000 students to access nonpublic schools.

This paper explores microschooling in the Grand Canyon State through parent interviews, a review of decades of public-policy reform and K–12 political battles, and an assessment of student performance data. A key lesson—one that reform-minded advocates in other states should consider— is that one cannot understand microschooling in Arizona without understanding Arizona.

Taking the Leap

Sophia Ortega is a mother in Buckeye, Arizona. In January 2020, her two children were enrolled in a high-performing, well-known charter school. But she was not happy with the school.

Her boys are, in her words, “energetic, rambunctious, and smart,” but too frequently, in their school, the first two characteristics were in tension with the third. A friend who had already pulled her children out of school had heard about Prenda, a small but growing network of microschools. Though Sophia was skeptical, PrendaCon, a gathering of Prenda educators and families, was taking place in two days, so she and her friend decided to check it out.

Prenda founder Kelly Smith’s opening presentation had Sophia hooked. The core values of Prenda aligned with her beliefs about parenting and education. The structure of the school day and the educational environment were what she wanted for her children. She was still hesitant— this would be a new approach to schooling—but the pandemic and the challenges that she faced as a single mother juggling full-time work and two children learning at home persuaded her to take the leap.

In September 2020, she started as a guide (Prenda’s term for a teacher) in a microschool hosted in her friend’s house. That school now enrolls seven students, six boys and one girl, ranging from kindergarten to sixth grade.

On a typical day, students arrive at 9 a.m. and play for about 15 minutes. At 9:15, Sophia starts the “Morning Standup,” where children gather in an “awareness circle” to do deep breathing and center themselves before talking about their goals for the day. Students also have an opportunity to share anything they would like with the group.

From 9:30 to 11:15, students work through “Conquer,” a personalized learning curriculum, on their Chromebooks. The microschool has a sectional sofa and blankets, and students are allowed to work wherever they find it most comfortable. Sometimes, students want some space; other times, they practically stack themselves on top of one another. When they need assistance, Sophia is available, though she is just as likely to see students asking one another for help. Conquer covers math, language arts, reading, and writing.

After a snack break at 11:15, the second part of the day begins: “Create,” in which students pursue individual art projects. Prenda offers students a bank of options, but as they age, they can develop their own projects. Students have to identify what the purpose of the project is and plan all the steps. They can present to their classmates if they wish.

The students break for lunch, 12:45–1:30, with a bit of playtime at the end, and then enter the third component of the Prenda instructional model: “Collaborate.” In this module, which runs from 1:30 to 2:20, students work on group projects, particularly in science and social studies. One example from Sophia’s microschool was a project by fourth- and fifth-graders that tracked a day in the life of a Bedouin, the Arabic-speaking nomadic peoples of the Middle Eastern deserts. As a guide, Sophia works to “get them engaged” and “get them excited about leading their own learning,” as she puts it.

When I asked why she got involved with Prenda, Sophia highlighted the key values that anchor Prenda’s work: “Start with heart,” “Figure it out,” “Dare greatly,” “Foundation of trust,” and “Learning > comfort.” “Start with heart” really spoke to her; it matched her parenting style, and she thought that it was missing from her kids’ previous schools. But she also thinks that “a lot of kids are afraid to dare greatly.” Encouraging students to take risks helps them to “stay at their learning frontier” and grow into happier, more confident young people.

Continue reading this article at Manhattan Institute.

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A Black Heretic on the Church of CRT

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By Craig J. Cantoni

A review of Woke Racism:  How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America

________________________________________________________

Woke Racism:  How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, by

John McWhorter, Portfolio/Penguin, 2021, 201 pages.

________________________________________________________

John McWhorter says some important things about wokeness and critical race theory in this book, and as a black man, he can say them without being ensnared by the Catch-22 of CRT, which holds that non-blacks are ipso facto racist if they criticize CRT.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t say it very well, in spite of teaching linguistics at Columbia University. The book appears to have been written hurriedly and loses the reader at times in fuzzy abstractions.

The main theme is that wokeness is a religion, and as such, it is futile to try to change the minds of true believers or to even have an intelligent, rational discussion with them. It’s akin to an atheist questioning the tenets of any of the major religions. 

This brings back memories of religion class in parochial school, when I would question a tenet of the Catholic Church. Instead of addressing my point, the nun would respond, “You have to have faith.” However, unlike the Church of CRT, I wasn’t canceled or called names. Of course, I would’ve been burned at the stake in medieval times.

McWhorter doesn’t say it this way, but we’re still in medieval times when it comes to discussing race in America. I’ve been through it all and was at the vanguard of much of it: civil rights, equal opportunity, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, affirmative action, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, detailed affirmative-action plans, college admission quotas, the Black Panthers, black liberation theology, racial encounter groups, racial sensitivity training, the diversity movement started by R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. and subsequently corrupted, and a lifetime of reading the works of black writers and the history of the evils and blessings of America.

That history is necessary for understanding where we are today and why much of CRT and wokeness is hokum. But McWhorter doesn’t get into that.

He is good, however, at giving examples of today’s cancel culture and how it has ruined careers. He also is courageous for speaking out against it. Surprisingly, though, his three recommendations for saving black America, while sound, doesn’t address a major reason for the widespread and seemingly intractable socioeconomic problems in so many African-American communities. He writes:

What ails black America in the twenty-first century would yield considerably to exactly three real-world efforts that combine political feasibility with effectiveness: There should be no war on drugs; society should get behind teaching everybody to read the right way [phonics instead of the whole word method], and we should make solid vocational training as easy to obtain as a college degree.

McWhorter is silent about the tragic impact of single parenting on black America, especially the absence of fathers from the household. Fathers are absent from African-American households at more than twice the rate of white households and seven times more than the households of certain Asian nationalities/ethnicities. Not surprisingly, those Asian households rank at the top in income, test scores, and law abidance.

The problem of missing fathers has become so entrenched that the words “parent” and “spouse” are now missing from inner-city lexicons, having been replaced by “baby momma” and “baby daddy.” Many baby daddies have children by multiple baby mommas, in a form of polygamy without marriage, a problem that also exists among poor whites, driven by changed social mores and poorly designed welfare programs.

This is a complex problem with a complex history and complex causes, but ignoring it will not solve it. Ever since Vice President Dan Quayle was skewered for his Murphy Brown comment, it has become the third-rail of sociology and politics, and, as such, is largely missing from discussions today about social justice.

As is commonly known, the liberal Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted the problem when he was a sociologist at the Department of Labor and wrote his controversial 1965 report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Less known is the 1963 book that he co-authored with Nathan Glazer: Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Moynihan would go on to be an esteemed U.S. Senator, and Glazer would go on to publish a book in 1988, The Limits of Social Policy.

In the introduction to a 1970 revised edition of their joint book, Moynihan and Glazer expressed their dismay with new and divisive racial categories and associated thinking, as follows:

In 1969, we seem to be moving to a new set of categories, black and white, and that is ominous.  On the horizon stand the fantastic categories of the “Third World,” in which all the colors, Black, Brown, Yellow, and Red (these are the favored terms for Negro, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican, Chinese and Japanese, and American Indian—a biologically and humanly monstrous naming, it seems to us—among some militants of southern California) are equated as “the oppressed” in opposition to the oppressing whites.

Beyond the Melting Pot and The Limits of Social Policy have remained on my bookshelf for decades, because they are scholarly, bipartisan works and thus unlike the propaganda, agitprop, sophistry, banalities, partisan rancor, and axe-to-grind protestations that pass today for intelligent writing and thinking about race, including the specious thinking behind critical race theory.

Woke Racism is better than those other writings, but not good enough to keep on my bookshelf.

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Reasons for Optimism – America Is Waking Up

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By Neland Nobel

For an American from the Conservative or Libertarian side of the spectrum, the last few years have been a difficult period.

While the seeds were planted years ago, we saw the full blooming of “Cultural Marxism” in the US, influencing almost all of our institutions ranging from major news networks, social media corporations, city administrations, local prosecutors, our military, even The Salvation Army is tainted, and most of our local schools and universities. That is just a partial list.

The simultaneous explosion of “wokeness”, the 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, transgender militancy, inflation, and Covid related tyranny, has made 2021 a particularly ugly year.

It extends so deeply into business culture today that advertisers and their ad agencies have all but eliminated white people from television ads. White people, you see, are the source of all evil and a diminished presence helps the world, even if it is demographically ridiculous.

Universities and corporations basically put out the word they would not be hiring white people, especially if they are men. Past wrongs can be righted by committing present wrongs. Reverse racism and segregation, the lowest and most despicable intellectual position, are now all the rage in institutions of “higher learning” and in human resource departments.

All of this cultural ferment, quite revolutionary in flavor, has largely taken over one of the major political parties in this country and severely influenced the opposition party as well. The result has been radical legislation that has spent vast sums of money unparalleled except in global war. This has saddled younger generations with unconscionable debt and current generations with the worst inflation in 40 years. It has created a vast regulatory state where hardly any separation of power is observed, leading to a regime of unelected bureaucrats exercising massive control over almost every aspect of society. This administrative structure showed its ability to resist democratic change with the election of Trump while at the same time shifting gears to support the radical Democrat agenda.

With the outbreak of Covid, this administrative structure and its attitude seemed to have birthed many tiny tyrants been ranging from omnipresent Dr. Fauci all the way down to Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego. Besides constant hectoring, they have forced mandates on all of us, destroyed medical privacy, closed schools and parks, restricted our work and travel, all while failing to control the virus. Their response to this failure is to double down on their policies.

In cultural matters, corporations lavishly subsidize Black Lives Matter, which openly calls for the destruction of the nuclear family and hetero normative behavior. Meanwhile, virtue signaling corporations and sports leagues play out their guilt for American slavery that ended 150 years ago, while ignoring present-day slavery in China.  Slavery only matters in the first country to move to abolish it. Otherwise, it is good business to trade with slavers.

With such pervasive influences operating, you might wonder what we have to be optimistic about?

In a nutshell, it is that the American people are waking up. The very boldness, tone-deafness, and extremism of the progressives may have finally awakened the American people. The polls clearly show this, with record low numbers for both President Biden and his cackling Vice President.

It is particularly interesting that Biden is losing the young vote as well as losing a significant portion of the Latino vote.

It appears the public is losing faith in Democrats in the one area they poll strongly, Covid policy. Mr. Biden said he had a plan and Trump did not. Yet Covid is more prevalent than ever and more Americans have died under Biden than under Trump. The public rightly asks if the vaccines are mostly ineffective, why would mandating their use be any more effective? Why push vaccines rapidly through the approval process while dragging your administrative feet on therapeutics? If we all, in the end, are going to get it, why the delay?

Above all, we got a good look at what government-run medicine looks like. It is top-down, one size fits all,  cover your administrative ass, bureaucratic/politically centered medicine, not patient-centered medicine.  You can start with your personal doctor. Next time he or she starts with “CDC guidelines say”, counter with you don’t care what distant bureaucrats think, you want to know what he or she thinks. You expect your doctor to treat you, not act like a postal employee.

People are growing weary of the restrictions and the dark and cranky manner the President addresses the virus. Most do not see the benefit of medical apartheid, dividing the unvaccinated from those that are, since the fully masked and vaccinated are both getting and transmitting the disease. Further, the contrast between Red states and Blue states is pretty clear. Blue states have worse outcomes and less freedom.

Mothers got an earful during the lockdown of what was being taught to their children and school districts revealed themselves as centers of left-wing indoctrination. Covid may turn out to be a blessing in at least this one area. Even teachers, usually highly regarded, revealed themselves as easily swayed or intimidated by the latest Marxist cultural fashion or just plain labor union thugs. As a result, homeschooling is booming, micro-schools are flourishing, and parents have become vocal opponents of school boards.

Social media has tipped its hand. Once thought a means to have a free global conversation, sort of an electronic Hyde Park where open discussion would flourish, the social media giants have been revealed as a group of censorious ideologues that directly interfere in our election process. Their actions have been so blatant, so biased, and their interferences in the elections so obvious, alternative and competing platforms are being organized. We are likely to see far more alternatives next year.

Left-wing late-night comedy is tanking and many now rightly regard progressives scolds as a threat to comedy itself. Left-wing news channels keep dropping in ratings and even the transgendered overreach is finally beginning to see counter-reaction. Women have discovered they have been defined away.

Meanwhile, well down from the intellectual and cultural plateaus, regular Americans are seeing their real wages shrink as food, gas, cars, homes, soar in price. It is not unusual to wait months to get air conditioners, household appliances, or the car you may want. Just engage in conversation the next time you lean over the meat counter with another patron and you will get the sense that Americans understand they are being screwed by their leaders. And no, most of these goods are not stuck off the Port of Long Beach in a Chinese ship. We don’t get our hamburgers from China.

However, our economic and cultural elites have been enjoying the “everything bubble”, the rapid price increases in stocks, bonds, art, gems, cryptocurrencies, real estate, that so far have protected them from inflation and tax increases.

But 2022 is increasingly looking like a “risk-off” year. The Federal Reserve, the enablers of excessive Congressional spending, has now painted itself into a policy corner. Increasingly, it looks like they either let inflation run or start to cut the money supply and raise interest rates in the face of multiple bubble-like markets. Historically speaking, such a policy conundrum does not end well.

When the donor class, the people who fund our politicians and Black Lives Matter, start to get hurt, you will hear the howls.  

Thus, a flock of irritated and angry chickens will come home to roost in 2022, just in time for the mid-term Congressional elections. A total humiliation of the Democrats is the minimum we would like to see.

Hopefully, the counter-revolution will be long, loud, deep, and long-lasting. We at The Prickly Pear will do all we can to see that it is.

The American people are waking up and understanding this is beyond partisan politics. Our institutions, our corporations, our educational establishment, our culture have been compromised by left-wing lunatics. This will require more than just voting. This will require a full-frontal assault on cultural Marxism. 

Defunding the Left is very important. Cut them off from tax dollars to the greatest extent possible. Getting viewpoint diversity in our universities is vital. With private universities, it may prove difficult, although even they get a flow of Federal dollars. They also have alumni that can’t be happy with what they see. But it would seem that some 23 Republican states, where the Governor and both legislative bodies are under GOP control, should prove to be a fertile area for education reform. There is no reason why a student going to a state university should be subjected to Marxist brainwashing. Private institutions will have to be reformed more through competition, loss of accreditation, and backlash from employers.

It is time for all of us to get in the fight.  To all American loving people – support alternative media like this publication, boycott woke corporations, attend school board meetings, try running for public office, contribute to campaigns, support corporations that don’t buckle to groupthink, and try to avoid doing business with those that do. Work to reform education and our universities so we get teachers that are more balanced.

We are now sort of like the Marines surrounded at the Chosin Reservoir. As General Chesty Puller observed, “We’re surrounded. That simplifies the problem. They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can’t get away now.”

Perhaps the Conservative breakout year will be 2022.

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Ducey Quietly Bans All Public Worker Vaccination Mandates

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By Cole Lauterbach

In an unannounced executive order regarding enhanced monitoring of COVID-19 metrics, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey banned public employers from requiring a COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment.

The order, signed Wednesday, primarily reactivates the state’s “enhanced surveillance advisory,” which requires most hospitals to provide consistent updates on ventilators, ICU beds, inpatient beds, ED beds, number of patients pending transfer out of hospitalization, as well as more detailed COVID-19 patient data.

One line stands out.

“No person shall be required by this state, or any city, town or county, to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine but a health care institution licensed pursuant to A.R.S. Title 36, Chapter 4 may require the institution’s employees to be vaccinated,” the order reads.

Ducey’s office commented on the measure Thursday evening, saying the governor has been clear and consistent — he’s pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine mandate.

“The executive order issued Wednesday is an extension of an order that has been in place throughout the pandemic. It is not new and its primary purpose is to allow the Arizona Department of Health Services to gather data essential to combating the public health challenges confronting our state,” a spokesperson said. “Critical information about hospital capacity, for example, would not be available without the collection of reliable real-time data.

“The section of the order concerning the banning of vaccine mandates has been in place since the vaccine became widely available in January. Again, this is not new.”

Ducey’s office said COVID mandates of any kind – whether they concern masks or vaccines – have proven to be divisive and counterproductive and that he believes Arizonans can and should make their own decisions about their healthcare, not an overreaching federal or city government.

Will Humble, director of the Arizona Public Health Association and former top doctor under Ducey, said the governor is misusing his executive powers.

“I would say ‘unbelievable’ but it’s totally believable,” he said Thursday.

Arizona House Democrats said Ducey is making the pandemic more severe.

“Tying the hands of local governments that want to take steps to prevent the spread of #COVID19 just deepens and prolongs the pandemic,” the caucus tweeted Thursday.

The order means the City of Tucson, which in August voted to require its 4,000 employees be vaccinated by Dec. 1, could be in for another court battle.

The city won various legal challenges from Republicans and even its police union to maintain its vaccination mandate. As of Dec. 1, Nearly 100% of employees are either vaccinated or have been granted an exemption.

*****

This article was published on December 17, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

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Omicron: The Lockdowners’ Last Stand

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By Ron Paul

Editors’ Note: We are not a scientific journal or institute so we don’t pretend expertise to comment on “science.” However, we certainly can comment on public policy and think we have some common sense. The obvious facts show that the Coronavirus and its variants are spreading, despite the emphasis placed by officials on preventative vaccines. With the obvious failure of the vaccines to stop the spread of the virus, how can enforcing mandates using vaccines that don’t work advance public health? We also don’t understand the reticence our national health and state officials have in determining the origins of the virus, their financial affiliation with pharmaceutical companies, the suppression of data about vaccine side effects,  and their constant food dragging as it pertains to therapeutics. It would seem that if vaccines fail, you would want to have a backup plan to treat the virus, which most people are going to get anyway. We have never supported lockdowns and don’t know why the government, and its partners in the giant social media companies, go out of their way to suppress dissenting opinions. Normally, when your doctor fails you and seems ineffective in treating you, you seek a second opinion. The patient is harmed when second opinions are put off-limits because the failing doctor either does not like the opinion or feels his turf has been invaded. Medicine should center on the patient’s needs, not the needs of politicians or unelected bureaucrats. Finally, while health concerns are important, they cannot and should not be the ONLY concern of officials and public policy. Our Constitution and our history of liberty are also very important. If we all will face the virus in one form or another, would you prefer to face it as a free man, or a slave?

Just as President Biden’s unconstitutional vaccination mandates were being ripped up by the courts, authoritarian politicians, public health bureaucrats, and the mainstream media announced a new Covid variant to justify another round of lockdowns and restrictions. The things that didn’t work last time would be a good idea to do again this time, they claim.

For these authoritarians, the timing of omicron’s emergence was perfect.

The variant was first discovered in South Africa, with the US and European media running endless scare stories. Authoritarian politicians used the manufactured fear to justify another attack on liberty. Europe shut down and became a virtual prison camp. In Austria, Germany, and elsewhere, citizens became non-persons without a vaccine passport.

South African health officials reported that the variant seemed to be more contagious but far milder than previous variants, as usually happens with such viruses. But the lockdowners would not hear of it. From Boris Johnson in the UK to DeBlasio in New York City, the variant was the perfect cover for them to put their boots back on the necks of terrorized citizens.

As to be expected, Fauci reveled in the emergence of the new variant, warning of “record deaths” for the unvaccinated. Similarly, President Biden warned that this would be a “winter of death” for the unvaccinated.

But here’s something the media isn’t reporting about the omicron outbreaks: they are taking place among the fully vaccinated. Cornell University, with 97 percent of the campus fully vaccinated and a mask mandate, has announced that it would return to online-only instruction after a massive Covid outbreak. Likewise, the National Football League has postponed several games this weekend due to Covid outbreaks, even though the League is virtually 100 percent vaccinated. And the National Basketball Association, which is above 95 percent fully vaccinated, has just announced that due to a surge in Covid cases it too will postpone games.

The vaccine is not working to prevent infection or transmission of the virus: cases are raging in states with the highest vaccine levels. Yet the “experts” continue to maintain that the only thing that can stop the spread of omicron is vaccines! More people are catching on that this makes no sense. If vaccines don’t stop the spread, how can vaccines stop the spread?

Meanwhile, South Africa, with one of the lowest rates of vaccination, has just announced that they are only seeing a tiny fraction of hospitalizations with omicron compared to previous variants. South Africa’s Covid response authority has written to the health minister recommending an end to containment efforts, contact tracing, and quarantines.

Unvaccinated South Africa is ending Covid restrictions while the hyper-vaccinated North is locking down. Something doesn’t add up.

Fauci loves to say that to question him is to question science, but this has nothing to do with science. It’s about power. Fauci, the political authoritarians, and the corrupt Big Pharma billionaires are trying to make a last stand, desperate to push omicron as a justification for further tyranny and profits. But actual science is not cooperating.

Omicron is spreading and vaccines are not stopping it. Thus far nearly half of the omicron infections are asymptomatic. Some experts are predicting that omicron will spell the end of Covid-19. But we know that as long as people like Fauci are around, Covid-19 will never end. Unless, of course, we repudiate the charlatans and profiteers and reclaim our liberty!

*****

This article was published on December 21, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.  Ron Paul is a medical doctor, a former U.S. Congressman, and has been a Presidential candidate both as a Republican and Libertarian.

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Are We Near the End of the Road to Serfdom? Part 1

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By Barry Brownstein

Recently I was drawn to reread Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Passages I previously overlooked leaped from the pages as if in bold print, signaling imminent danger to human progress. Hayek’s message never seemed more prescient and timeless: The descent into totalitarianism can happen anywhere.

Astonishing progress has been made in the past few centuries. A rich extended order has evolved, allowing human cooperation to lift billions out of dire poverty and bring a standard of living to the West that couldn’t have been imagined mere generations ago. Jonah Goldberg calls it “the Miracle of modernity,” yet few understand that the bounty we enjoy does not flow from politicians’ plans. Today, totalitarians are actively working to destroy the engine of human cooperation.

Let’s be clear: What Hayek saw as dangerous, what you see as dangerous, millions are now cheering for in the name of societal advancement.

Since 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has kept a Doomsday Clock as a metaphor for “how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies.” At the risk of mixing metaphors, surely the Road to Serfdom clock may be approaching midnight.

The Road to Serfdom was published in 1944, and naturally, Germany was on Hayek’s mind. Hayek clarifies that Nazism is not a function of “a peculiar wickedness” in the character of Germans, and false beliefs the Germans had taken on were not limited to Germany. At that time, Hayek observed in England, “There are few single features [of totalitarianism] which have not yet been advised by somebody.”

Of human nature, Hayek observed we are unwilling to look at our problems as they are rather than how we mentally made them up. “When,” he wrote, “the course of civilization takes an unexpected turn—when, instead of the continuous progress which we have come to expect, we find ourselves threatened by evils associated by us with past ages of barbarism—we naturally blame anything but ourselves.”

With Covid policies, civilization has traveled farther on the road to serfdom. We want to believe we can conquer Covid and return to normal. Beware. Politicians exploit our economic ignorance and our desire to find scapegoats. Consider this relatively mundane example: the Federal Trade Commission recently said “it is ordering Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, other large wholesalers and suppliers including Procter & Gamble Co., Tyson Foods and Kraft Heinz Co. ‘to turn over information to help study causes of empty shelves and sky-high prices.’” The FTC wants to see if “anticompetitive practices” are at work. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of economics or possessing pre-Covid memory would scoff at the idea that anti-competitive practices are causing the empty shelves. 

Hayek points out how we trick ourselves with the fallacy of good intentions. Looking at our actions we think, “Have we not all striven according to our best lights, and have not many of our finest minds incessantly worked to make this a better world? Have not all our efforts and hopes been directed toward greater freedom, justice, and prosperity?”

Believing our intentions are good, we conclude that bad results must mean we are victims. In Hayek’s words, “If the outcome is so different from our aims— if, instead of freedom and prosperity, bondage and misery stare us in the face—is it not clear that sinister forces must have foiled our intentions, that we are the victims of some evil power which must be conquered before we can resume the road to better things?”

Magical thinking abounds in a crisis. Hayek writes, “We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected.” In short, as the famous Pogo cartoon relates, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The Meta False Belief

Chapter 1 of The Road to Serfdom explains the meta mistaken idea. We no longer share a belief in this simple truth: “Wherever the barriers to the free exercise of human ingenuity were removed, man became rapidly able to satisfy ever widening ranges of desire.”

Instead of cherishing and preserving “the principles” that remove barriers to human flourishing, these principles come “to be regarded more as obstacles to speedier progress, impatiently to be brushed away.” Hayek clearly states the “fundamental principle” for the ordering of human affairs is to “make as much use as possible of the spontaneous forces of society, and resort as little as possible to coercion.” Human progress in an “infinite variety of applications” follows from this principle.

Today, few understand and value this principle. We are fearful of the unknown, and tyrants exploit our fears:

According to the views now dominant, the question is no longer how we can make the best use of the spontaneous forces found in a free society. We have in effect undertaken to dispense with the forces which produced unforeseen results and to replace the impersonal and anonymous mechanism of the market by collective and “conscious” direction of all social forces to deliberately chosen goals.

It is easy to apply Hayek to Covid policy. Tyrannical bureaucrats backed by their Big Tech enforcers suppress spontaneous forces generating effective treatments in favor of the blunt instrument of one-size-fits-all policies. Who would have suspected, for example, that the anti-depressant drug fluvoxamine may prevent Covid from progressing to the severe stage? Despite censorship, ridicule, and suppression, heroic medical researchers continue to develop treatment protocols. Those seeking treatment face barriers to finding and receiving treatment.

Redefining Freedom

What do you think freedom means? It may surprise you to learn that you don’t share a common understanding with family, friends, your professor, or the media. Hayek clarifies two types of “freedom”—freedom from coercion and freedom from necessity.

Classical liberalism is anchored on the principle of freedom from coercion. Hayek writes, “To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached.”

Freedom from necessity means something very different. Remember Hayek was writing The Road to Serfdom over 70 years ago. Already the word freedom was being redefined as socialists promised a “new freedom.”

The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the economic system” relaxed.

The liberalism that Hayek championed is being destroyed and, as Paul Kingsnorth wrote, in its place is being built a “technocratic state-corporate hybrid; a China-style social credit society, centralised, monitored, powered by algorithms, emphatically unnatural and unfree.”

Call it fascism, call it communism, the shackles of different flavors of totalitarianism differ slightly, but their essential characteristics are the same.

Hayek is clear, believing the idea that these two types of “freedom”—freedom from coercion and freedom from necessity—can be combined is delusional.

When we think of socialism, we may think of a salutary quest for greater equality. When we think of the excesses of totalitarianism, we think of the starving millions in Stalin’s Ukraine or today’s North Korea. We think of Nazi concentration camps or the killing fields of Cambodia. All genocides are fueled by accepting the idea that individuals don’t have the inherent right to be free from coercion. Principles, not good intentions, are the only safeguard of liberty.

There is No Common Good

Hayek explains, “The various kinds of collectivism, communism, fascism, etc., differ among themselves in the nature of the goal toward which they want to direct the efforts of society.” Yet here is where all these systems are the same. “They all differ from liberalism and individualism in wanting to organize the whole of society and all its resources for this unitary end and in refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the individuals are supreme.”

The delusion of collectivists is that their coercive plans will benefit all. Hayek observes that even well-meaning people ask, “If it be necessary to achieve important ends,” why shouldn’t the system “be run by decent people for the good of the community as a whole?”

In one of his most famous passages, Hayek succinctly explains why there is no such thing as the common good upon:

The “social goal,” or “common purpose,” for which society is to be organized is usually vaguely described as the “common good,” the “general welfare,” or the “general interest.” It does not need much reflection to see that these terms have no sufficiently definite meaning to determine a particular course of action. The welfare and the happiness of millions cannot be measured on a single scale of less and more. The welfare of a people, like the happiness of a man, depends on a great many things that can be provided in an infinite variety of combinations. It cannot be adequately expressed as a single end, but only as a hierarchy of ends, a comprehensive scale of values in which every need of every person is given its place. To direct all our activities according to a single plan presupposes that every one of our needs is given its rank in an order of values which must be complete enough to make it possible to decide among all the different courses which the planner has to choose. It presupposes, in short, the existence of a complete ethical code in which all the different human values are allotted their due place. [emphasis added]

Politicians invoke the common good to hide that they have no justification for imposing their values on others; their deception is effective. Well-meaning people adopt the belief that only an evil person would oppose the common good. To give a common example, the mayor or governor who insists that the new taxpayer-financed baseball stadium benefits all is hiding that the team’s owners, hotels near the stadium, and some fans benefit at the expense of those who pay taxes but have no interest in baseball.

Murray Gunn, an observer of interest rates recently wrote about the junk bond market: “The Fed has used its historic money counterfeiting scheme to effectively underwrite indebted corporates that would, under normal circumstances, have gone out of business.” Like all Fed interventions, those who drink from the punch bowl first are well-satiated, and the rest of us will pay for the cleanup.

We are told we are all in this together to fight Covid. Big Media censorship demands we deny harm from vaccines, thereby skewing decision-making. Medical professor Vinay Prasad warns of catastrophic harm from Covid vaccination programs aimed at teens. A professor recently told me he has never experienced so many students with mental health issues and students suffering from suicidal ideation. And now the Biden administration is recklessly considering joining China, Cuba, Argentina, and Venezuela as the only countries in the world to administer Covid vaccines to children under 5.

Weighing the subjective costs and benefits from vaccines does not mean you deny the menace of Covid. You may well benefit from your personal decision to receive the vaccine, but the data is clear: Since you can still transmit Covid your decision provides no benefits to others. The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a common good that is achieved by lockdowns and mandates. Lost jobs, lost lives via suicide, lost livelihoods due to vaccine injuries, growing mental health issues, and lives saved cannot be weighed on “a single scale of less and more.”

In short, as professor of psychiatry, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty writes, “Citizens are no longer viewed as persons with inherent dignity, but as fungible elements of an undifferentiated ‘mass’ to be shaped by supposedly benevolent health and safety experts.”

Consider how proud President Biden is of his son, Hunter. While Hunter was smoking crack and trading his family name for millions of dollars from foreign entities, millions of Americans were building real careers and raising families. Hunter will undoubtedly get all the boosters the CDC recommends while the President berates, demonizes, and imposes mandates that deprive others of their livelihood. Many of us do not share President Biden’s values. I deny the President’s power to impose his values on others.

There is no one “ethical code” we all share, yet politicians and bureaucrats use the coercive power of government to force compliance with their plans.

In the second part of this essay, I will explore how embracing the lowest common dominator leads us deep down the road to serfdom. In the meantime, let us remember that Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to warn that the descent into totalitarianism can happen anywhere.

Before destructive ideas that lead to totalitarianism can command widespread acceptance, tyrants must unite the population around a common us vs. them enemy. You can make a stand against this tactic today. As you go about your day, strive to see the common humanity in all. With liberty, everyone is a potential friend. Today, make no friend an enemy.

*****

This article was published on December 18, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from AIER, American Institute for Economic Research.

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Find Out Which States Best, Worst for Honest Elections

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By Fred Lucas

Georgia ranks at the top among states for the strongest laws in the nation to guarantee honest elections, while Hawaii ranks at the bottom, according to a new Election Integrity Scorecard from The Heritage Foundation.

Heritage’s scorecard, announced Tuesday, measures all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on a dozen election-related categories.

Categories in which scores may reach between 20 and 30 points are voter ID requirements, maintaining accurate voter registration lists, and rules governing absentee ballots.

A perfect overall score in providing for honest elections would be 100, meaning a top score in all 12 categories. Georgia had a total score of 83, while Hawaii’s score was 26.

“Americans need and deserve elections that they can trust,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a press release, adding:

Heritage’s Election Integrity Scorecard gives states a better idea of how their state laws and regulations compare to best practices and where they need improvement. In the coming weeks and months, Heritage will work with our state partners to ensure policymakers and officeholders have this valuable information to make reforms. At a time when cynicism runs deep on both ends of the political spectrum, the need to protect the people’s elections, and to safeguard the value of every citizen’s vote, couldn’t be clearer.

Heritage’s scorecard comes at the end of a year in which at least 18 states enacted significant election reform legislation. Although Republican lawmakers led many of those state reforms, the best and worst states as determined by the scorecard didn’t break down entirely along partisan lines.

For example, liberal-leaning Wisconsin, where a Democrat is governor, made the Top 10 for best states, while the staunchly conservative states of Utah and Nebraska are ranked in the 40s. So are Massachusetts and Vermont, two liberal-leaning states with Republican governors.

Following Georgia in the Top 10 are Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Kansas and Missouri tie for 10th place overall. based on their total scores in all the categories.

Bringing up the rear just before Hawaii on Heritage’s scorecard are Utah, ranked at 41, followed by New York, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Washington, Vermont, Oregon, California, and Nevada.

“No matter one’s politics, every reasonable American agrees that our electoral process should make it easy to vote and harder to cheat,” John Malcolm, director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, said in a formal statement on the scorecard, adding:

The right to vote is a sacred right that our leaders must protect. The Election Integrity Scorecard is the result of an intensive, in-depth review of state election laws and will provide voters, legislators, and election officials with a tool that can be used to compare their election system to a model system and that of other states. The model bills we provide can be used to improve their elections to guarantee both access and security. We strongly urge them to do so.

Other categories measured in the scorecard, with a maximum score of no more than 4 points each, are rules governing ballot harvesting and vote trafficking; access of election observers to ensure transparency; citizenship verification; rules on voter assistance procedures; vote-counting practices; election litigation procedures; rules governing voter registration; restriction of automatic registration; and rules surrounding the private funding of elections.

Currently, 35 states have some form of voter ID laws to ensure voters are who they say they are, but with varying degrees of implementation.

Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, and Tennessee received the highest score of 20 points for the implementation of voter ID laws. States with 0 points on this front are Hawaii, Maine, Nebraska, and Vermont.

“Heritage has been working for many years to protect the integrity of our elections in order to ensure that all eligible Americans are able to vote and that their votes are counted honestly [and] fairly, and are not diluted by fraud, errors, or mistakes,” Hans von Spakovsky, manager of The Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a former member of the Federal Election Commission, said in a formal statement. “Our new Election Integrity Scorecard, along with the Heritage Election Fraud Database, will help ensure that happens.”

The scorecard also ranks states on how up-to-date their voter registration lists are—and whether dead people or those who have moved out of the precinct or state are still listed.

Interestingly, states with a lower overall score and ranking in the bottom half of the list do relatively well in the category for accuracy of voter registration lists. 

Maryland (ranked 29 overall) gets 27 points out of a maximum of 30 in this category of accurate registration lists, while Colorado and Washington (34 and 45 overall, respectively) get 26 points.

Maine and Rhode Island (32 and 16 overall, respectively) get 25 points. At the bottom, North Dakota gets 9 points in this category, just below Hawaii, the scorecard’s overall worst, with 13 points.

Management of absentee ballots is a category with a maximum of 21 points that measures how well states authenticate absentee and mail-in voting. This category is tied closely with voter registration maintenance.

In 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission report stated that absentee voting was the aspect of elections most vulnerable to fraud.

Louisiana and Oklahoma got the strongest score on managing absentee ballots, with 19 points each. They are followed closely by Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, and Rhode Island, with 18 points each.

Ranked at the bottom in managing absentee voting are California, with just 2 points, Nevada with 3, and Washington with 4.

“Americans need and deserve a transparent system in which fraud can be easily detected and false allegations of fraud can be easily dispelled,” Heritage’s Election Integrity Scorecard website says.

The website notes that the right to vote is sacred and has faced numerous challenges throughout history, with the biggest current challenge being the integrity of the vote:

The fight for the right to vote is a storied part of America’s heritage. From the revolutionary cry of ‘no taxation without representation,’ to the marches of the suffragettes, to the struggle against Jim Crow laws, America’s successful efforts to expand and defend the right to vote are some of our nation’s greatest triumphs. …

Thankfully, we now live in a time when no serious person would dare to claim that any group of people should be denied the right to vote based on their race, sex, or any other immutable characteristic. But celebrating that triumph does not mean that the fight to defend the vote is finished. Our fight today is to preserve the integrity of each vote against fraudulent attempts to erase it.

*****

This article was published on December 14, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Daily Signal.

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A Constitutional Cure for Covid-19

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By Marilyn M. Singleton

Covid, Covid, Covid. Variant, variant, variant. Trust me, I’m the government’s highest paid employee, and “I represent science.” Show your papers, wear a mask, take a shot or lose your job. And the beat goes on for an infection where 99.95 percent of infected persons under age 70 years recover. It’s becoming clear that Covid-19 is not merely a disease but an excuse to concentrate power in the government.

It’s time for the political histrionics to stop. Multiple studies have shown that the consequences far outweigh any potential (and illusory) benefits of masks, lockdowns, and school closures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director admitted that the current Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, while helpful in reducing deaths and hospitalizations, do not stop transmission of the virus. “Breakthrough” cases in vaccinated persons are on the rise. Moreover, the current vaccines likely are not effective for the new, likely less lethal Omicron variant. Public health experts opine that the SARS-CoV-2 virus (that causes Covid-19) and its multiple variants are becoming endemic. That means SARS-CoV-2 and its infinite number of variants will not be eliminated, but become a manageable part of the human-viral ecosystem.

Sadly, our government is not responding in accordance with the scientific facts. Instead, federal and some local governments are mandating more vaccines, culminating in proof of vaccination to engage in society and continue living as a normal human being. This is not science. This is nascent totalitarianism.

Two lines from the 1990 Cold War era spy film, The Hunt for Red October foreshadowed our government’s warp speed trajectory to authoritarianism. “Privacy is not of major concern in the Soviet Union, comrade. It’s often contrary to the collective good.” And a White House official casually boasted, “I’m a politician that means I’m a cheat and a liar.”

It didn’t take long for President Biden to tell the big lie. As president-elect, Mr. Biden said there would be no vaccine mandates. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (the third in line for the presidency) brilliantly illustrated the intersection of lying and privacy. As late as August 2021, Speaker Pelosi said, “We cannot require someone to be vaccinated. That’s just not what we can do. It is a matter of privacy to know who is or who isn’t.”

Without skipping a beat, the executive branch issued three separate vaccine mandates: all federal contractors (including remote workers), an Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA) requirement for businesses with more than 100 employees, and a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requirement for employees, volunteers and third-party contractors of health care providers certified by CMS.

The judicial branch is fighting back against the President’s attempt to jettison the Constitution’s separation of powers clauses, a large chunk of the Bill of Rights, and Supreme Court precedents on bodily autonomy with these mandates. On November 9th, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put the OSHA mandate on hold. The Court reasoned that the mandate “threatens to substantially burden the liberty interests of reluctant individual recipients put to a choice between their job(s) and their jab(s).” And “the loss of constitutional freedoms ‘for even minimal periods of time … unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

Citing the lack of congressional authorization and harm to access to medical care, on November 29th a Missouri federal district court placed a temporary halt on the CMS health care workers “boundary-pushing” mandate. The government planned to enforce the mandate by imposing monetary penalties, denial of payment and termination from the Medicare and Medicaid program. The ruling covers providers in Kansas, Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

On November 30th, a Louisiana federal district court blocked the CMS mandate issuing a nationwide injunction in a lawsuit brought by 14 states (Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia). “If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by our Constitution would be in the same hands. … [C]ivil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency.”

That same day, a Kentucky federal district court issued a hold on the federal government contractors mandate, citing lack of authority of the executive branch—“even for a good cause”. The court reasoned that if a procurement statute could be used to mandate vaccination, it “could be used to enact virtually any measure at the president’s whim under the guise of economy and efficiency.” The ruling covers Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

The mainstream media finally reported on the toxicity and poor results of Dr. Fauci’s “standard of care” treatment, remdesivir. This prompted families to use the courts rather than watch their relatives needlessly die. Victories for patients are growing. A Chicago area judge recently ordered a hospital to “step aside” and allow a physician to administer ivermectin in an effort to save a dying patient. It worked.

People are tired of lies. When Google employees are signing a “manifesto” to fight the mandates, you know the seeds of revolt have sprouted.

*****

Marilyn Singleton graduated from Stanford and went on to UCSF Medical School. Then she attended UC Berkely Law School. See her at marilynsingletonmdjd.com.

This article was written on December 7, 2021, and is reproduced by permission from AAPS, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

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75% Don’t Trust Social Media to Make Fair Content Moderation Decisions

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By David Kemp and Emily Ekins

81% of Republicans think Facebook and Twitter’s Trump ban violated the First Amendment, strong liberals are three times more likely than conservatives to report users on social media, 58% of Americans support a First Amendment content moderation standard.

A new Cato Institute/​YouGov national survey of 2,000 Americans finds that three-fourths of Americans don’t trust social media companies to make fair content moderation decisions. The survey, conducted in collaboration with YouGov, finds that nearly two-thirds (60%) would prefer social media companies provide users with greater choice and control over the content they see in their newsfeeds rather than do more to reduce all users’ exposure to offensive content or misinformation (40%). It also finds that a majority (63%) believe social media companies have too much influence over the outcome of national elections.

81% of Republicans Think Facebook and Twitter’s Trump Ban Violated the First Amendment

Republicans (81%) believe that Facebook and Twitter violated the First Amendment when they elected to ban Trump, while Democrats (89%) say that the First Amendment was not violated. While Facebook and Twitter are private platforms and their decision to ban Trump did not violate the First Amendment, Republicans’ perception that they did highlights their strong emotional response to the banning.

Part of this emotional response may be explained by Republicans’ concerns that if Trump can be banned, then they themselves are also more likely to have their account suspended by these companies. Republicans (38%) are nearly four times more likely than Democrats (10%) to say that Trump’s suspension makes them feel like their social media accounts are more likely to be suspended. A quarter (25%) of independents agree.

On the other hand, most Americans (55%) agree with the decisions made by Facebook and Twitter to ban former President Donald Trump from their platforms following the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. But there is a large partisan split: 93% of Democrats and 54% of independents agree with the decision, whereas 85% of Republicans disagree.

Liberals Are Much More Likely than Conservatives to Report Users on Social Media

Strong liberals are nearly three times more likely than strong conservatives to say that they have reported another user to a social media company for sharing offensive content or false information. This behavior is highly tied to political ideology. Among social media users, 65% of strong liberals, 44% of moderate liberals, 32% of moderates, 21% of moderate conservatives, and 24% of strong conservatives have done this.

This strong ideological trend continues even if the results are constrained among those who use social media several times a day. Among very frequent social media users: strong liberals (72%) are about 2.5 times more likely than strong conservatives (30%) to have reported another person because of what they posted. Similarly, when it comes to blocking people, strong liberals (83%) are 30 points more likely than strong conservatives (53%) to have done this.

58% of Americans Support a First Amendment Content Moderation Standard

A majority of Americans (58%) say that social media sites should use the First Amendment as the standard for their content moderation decisions. Partisans disagree, with 82% of Republicans and 60% of independents supporting the use of the First Amendment and 64% of Democrats saying companies should set their own rules.

*****

Continue reading this article at CATO INSTITUTE.

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One Feminist’s Perspective On How The Transgender Agenda Harms Women & Girls

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By Beverly Hallberg & Kara Dansky

The following is the transcript for the She Thinks podcast:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. And I’m so excited about today’s guest. Kara Dansky joins us to share why she is furious with her party, the Democrat party, for pushing gender identity or what she refers to as gender insanity. Her premise is that the redefining of the meaning of the word sex and gender victimizes women and children. In our conversation, we’ll discuss things that often aren’t allowed to be said in mainstream media. We’ll get into how gender identity has seeped into our laws and the resulting implications, how parental rights are being ignored, and what it has meant for her to speak out on such a controversial issue.

Now to Kara Dansky. Kara Dansky is a feminist, attorney, Democrat, and public speaker. She serves as the chair of the committee on law and legislation for the global human rights campaign, the WHRC, and is president of the WHRC’s U.S. chapter. She has a 21-year background in criminal law and criminal justice policy. Having worked at the mayor’s office of criminal justice in New York, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at Stanford Law School and the Society of Council Representing Accused Persons in Seattle. She’s also the author of the new book, “The Abolition of Sex: How the Transgender Agenda Harms Women and Girls.” Kara, thank you so much for joining us on She Thinks.

Kara Dansky:

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Beverly Hallberg:

There’s so much I want to get into on this topic, but I’d first like to start with why you decided to spend your days fighting for women in an area that is so controversial? Many people don’t dare to touch it. What made you brave enough to not just deal with this issue but put yourself out there in the spotlight?

Kara Dansky:

Thanks for the question. It doesn’t really feel like bravery to me to just stand up and say that women are female and men are male. But the answer to the question is that in 2014, I was talking with a friend and I’ll say, I’ve always considered myself to be a feminist. And as you mentioned in my bio, my career trajectory took a little bit of a different turn. I went into criminal justice, but I still considered myself a feminist. And in 2014, a very good friend of mine brought my attention to the danger of the so-called transgender agenda or gender identity, as we like to say, and I started paying attention and I looked into it and in 2015, I joined the organization Women’s Liberation Front. And in 2016, I joined the board of that organization. That year, Women’s Liberation Front or WLF sued the Obama Administration over a policy memo that the administration had put out. And I’ve been doing the work ever since.

Beverly Hallberg:

Now you talk a lot about how the redefining of the words sex and gender makes victims of women and girls. First of all, explain to us why the words matter so much and what the implications have been?

Kara Dansky:

So the words are absolutely critical. And so I will never use the word transgender without putting it in quotes. And I make the case in my book or at least I try to make the case. I don’t know how well I do it but I make the case that the word transgender was simply invented. And the reason it was invented is that it comes from so-called queer theory, which is an academic theory that essentially obscures the meanings of words that point to material reality. But if the queer theorists had tried to sell Americans on the idea that sex isn’t real, it wouldn’t have worked. Americans know how babies are made. We all know the basic facts of biology. And so they had to make up a word. And the word that they made up is transgender.

Feminist Janice Raymond wrote a book in 1979 called “The Transsexual Empire,” which predicted all of this. And she re-produced it in 1994 with an introduction that talks about the invention of the word transgender and how it’s going to harm women and girls in particular, though we need to be clear, it harms everybody. The abolition of sex harms everybody. We can talk a little bit about that. But I just refuse to use the language of the opposition. And I think it’s really important that feminists and conservatives who are in this battle for material reality and of the right to privacy and safety of women and girls to not use the language of the opposition ever, I think that’s absolutely critical.

Beverly Hallberg:

And so let’s talk about what these words, where they have seeped into. So we may say, it’s fine if people want to use these words on their own, but we are talking about word choice. You were mentioning the Obama administration that has seeped into executive orders, how government agencies work, government departments, that is in pieces of legislation, especially under the Biden administration. Is there a concerted effort to try to change the meaning of words within legislation and bills that come to Capitol Hill?

Kara Dansky:

Literally yes. So, a little bit of history on this, in 2004, the United Kingdom enacted a new law called the Gender Recognition Act. And what that did was provide a legal mechanism for people who underwent a certain amount of hormone change and surgical change to get what in the UK is called a gender recognition certificate. Fast forward to today and we have the United States Congress inserting new language to literally redefine the word sex. So for example, in the Violence Against Women Act, I think it was 2013, Congress redefined the word sex to include the words “gender identity,” which are essentially just made-up words that have no coherent definition. They did it again this year in the Infrastructure Bill and they are seeking to do it in the so-called Equality Act, which would literally redefine the word sex in civil rights law to include things like gender identity, even though the definition of gender identity in the Equality Act is completely vague and incomprehensible.

So that’s what’s happening in Congress. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration for the first six months or so of this year, literally ordered federal agencies to redefine sex to include gender identity throughout federal administrative law. Those orders are the subject of a lawsuit that was filed by 20 states and in which my organization, the Women’s Human Rights Campaign’s U.S. chapter, has filed a brief arguing that in fact, the complete redefinition of the word sex to include gender identity violates numerous provisions of the U.S. Constitution, federal law and several provisions of state law.

Beverly Hallberg:

And what has really surprised me when I think about the women’s movement, feminism, often people think about the decades-long work to try to get women thought of as equal in the workplace. There are a lot of things that we could think of. I even know today, myself as a small business owner, I’m thankful for the strides that women made before me, so that I could be where I am today. And then when we see where it’s gone, it’s now to the point where people are saying somebody who is a biological man, that if he identifies as a woman, then he can break the glass ceiling for women. It’s really just shocking whether it’s in sports or in careers, how they lift up biological men as women and say that this is shattering the glass ceiling. I find that offensive, do most women find that offensive?

Kara Dansky:

I think so, certainly, feminists do. Literally, yesterday was the anniversary of a massacre of 14 women at a school in Montreal and a Canadian news program decided to acknowledge the anniversary of that massacre. And we need to be clear a man murdered 15 young women because they were women, several decades ago. And yesterday was the anniversary and a Canadian broadcasting corporation decided to acknowledge that anniversary by having a man who identifies as a woman speak on their behalf. And it’s just grotesque.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, you talk about the abolition of sex, it’s the name of your book. When we hear people want to use the terminology “gender identity,” it’s usually under the auspices that they’re trying to prevent discrimination, that we don’t want to discriminate, we want everybody to feel welcome and we want to be inclusive. Tell us how dangerous it is to abolish sex.

Kara Dansky:

Well, part of the problem here is that really across the political aisle, it seems to have been generally accepted that the phrase “transgender people” or “transgender athletes” or “transgender students,” that all of these words describe a coherent category of people for whom sex is irrelevant. That’s not true. And if we’re going to win the battle to fight for the right to privacy and safety of women and girls, we have to be very clear about that. So one implication that I think is not well understood is the phenomenon that we are literally seeing playing out today in prisons in the United States is that convicted rapists and murderers who are men are being housed in women’s prisons. A lot of people know that this is happening in California thanks to the Women’s Liberation Front for filing a lawsuit, challenging the law that allows that, mandates that. It’s also happening in Washington State but it’s also happening across the country.

And most Americans are kept in the dark about this because the media will not talk about it. So again, thank you for allowing me to talk about it here. Something else that I think most Americans just don’t understand because they don’t have a way to know this, is that the FBI tracks crime statistics by sex. And to the best of my knowledge the latest data available is from 2020, and it tracks crime according to male and female. And of course, as we all know, the overwhelming majority of violent and sex crime is committed by men against women. If we’re not allowed to acknowledge the reality of biological sex, we can’t talk honestly about the phenomenon of male violence against women. And that’s really, really dangerous.

Beverly Hallberg:

What do you say then — let’s take a specific example or a hypothetical example about a young biological boy, let’s say 13, 14 years old, feels that he is a woman, is bullied in the men’s locker room and wants to be able to use the females’ locker room because that is how he identifies. What do you do with these individual cases where somebody does feel bullied? Because these are the stories we often hear as the reason we need to change. Even the way locker rooms and schools deal with their policies.

Kara Dansky:

This is not a girls’ problem. If boys are bullying stereotypically effeminate men, young men, if boys are bullying gay boys, if boys are bullying other boys who like to wear stereotypically feminine clothing, then that’s a problem for the boys to solve. They need to stop doing that. They need to stop bullying young homosexual boys. They need to stop bullying boys who adopt stereotypically feminine characteristics and just accept these boys for who they are. But the solution is not to subject girls to having boys in intimate spaces. We know, for example, in Loudoun County, Virginia, the school district adopted a policy of allowing young boys into girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.

And a young girl was sexually assaulted in a bathroom in a high school in Loudoun County, Virginia. And there seems to have been a concerted effort on the part of the school district to cover that up in order to justify its policy of allowing boys, in this particular instance, the boy wore a skirt, and he was allowed access to the girls’ bathroom on that basis. And he has been convicted of sexually assaulting a girl. The answer is not to allow these young men into girls’ spaces. The answer is to persuade boys to stop bullying them.

Beverly Hallberg:

And when it comes to young people and we think about education, it’s also what they’re being taught, the curriculum, trying to encourage teachers. There have been reports of teachers or counselors at schools trying to encourage young people to embrace a gender identity that is different from their biological sex. And also leaving parents out. The parental rights are not part of even having this discussion with their children. There’s also the cult, as we have seen. Abigail Shrier has written about this, about young girls wanting to or identifying as the opposite sex. So there seems to be almost a way for young girls to become popular if they talk about themselves as being a boy versus their biological sex. So do you see that there is an agenda at schools within the schooling system, education system, to try to encourage young people to identify as something else?

Kara Dansky:

Absolutely. And it’s deliberate. And we know this because there’s documentation of the deliberate nature of this industry, as I describe in the book, to indoctrinate children, to confuse them into thinking that there’s some kind of identity that is unrelated to their actual sex. We need to understand that there is a tremendous amount of money behind this movement to persuade young people to disassociate from their bodies. This is all documented for example, in Jennifer Bilek’s blog, the 11th Hour Blog, she tracks the industry. She has done an incredible job of investigative journalism in understanding the power and the money behind this movement.

I want to get to your question about Abigail Shrier’s book but first I just want to make very clear, as you alluded to earlier, there seems to be an assumption that the movement to abolish sex is a bottom-up, grassroots movement to secure civil rights for a defined category of people. That is not what’s going on here. This is a very top down, top heavy, heavily funded industry that is pushing this into our schools, into our boardrooms, into our living rooms. It is capturing almost all aspects of American society. It’s extreme-

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah, it’s damaging young people in the process. I just wanted to ask you this question about the fallout of this, there is a woman, 23 years old, who’s been very brave in talking about her story of taking hormone treatments, testosterone in her teens. It was encouraged by people in her school. And she’s now talking about the harms of that. Are we hearing more stories from young women talking about what the harms have been, whether it has been through different pills, medicines they took, or even those who did go as far as to have surgery?

Kara Dansky:

Just curious, are we talking about Keira Bell?

Beverly Hallberg:

We are not. It’s someone else, I’m trying to remember her name offhand, but she started to become outspoken on this.

Kara Dansky:

Yeah, we are definitely hearing more and more. To its credit, I want to give 60 Minutes credit for having a segment that did cover some stories of young people who did go through hormonal and surgical procedures and came to regret it. We’re hearing more and more stories about this. I have personally spoken with a young woman who contacted me for help because she was having trouble at her place of employment. And she had thought she was a boy. She had a double mastectomy and she regretted it. And we need to talk about how heartbreaking this is, especially for girls, and all credit to Abigail Shrier for writing about the phenomenon. It’s very difficult in many ways to be a teenage girl, to start developing, to feel the physical discomfort that comes with that, to feel the discomfort of all of a sudden men starting to pay more attention to our bodies.

It can be a very difficult adjustment and it’s especially hard now because it was hard when I was growing up but today with the total onslaught of pornography, we’re seeing boys watching pornography at younger and younger ages. Of course, it’s hard to be a girl. Of course it’s easier in many ways to be a boy. And it’s understandable why some young women would want to find their way out of being hypersexualized in a society that hypersexualizes young women. But we have to also understand that all of these children, girls and boys both, are receiving hormones that are highly likely to result in permanent sterilization and potential lethality. These are very dangerous drugs that children are being permitted to take and young people, there’s a reason that we don’t allow young people to buy cigarettes or alcohol or vote or drive.

And even though in our society, reasonable people can disagree about what age it’s appropriate to allow children to buy cigarettes or drive, we can have those policy conversations, but if we’re going to limit the choices that young people can make, why on earth would we allow children to make the decision to permanently sterilize themselves? It’s horrible. And yes, the answer to your question is more and more young people are coming to regret their decision. They are also coming to understand, the vast majority of them understand, that what they were dealing with was sexuality and that they were same-sex attracted. And they were struggling with realizing that they were same-sex attracted. And so they made decisions to identify out of their actual sex.

Beverly Hallberg:

I think so much as we start to uncover more and more, as you were saying, the money, the power behind this, the agenda behind this, we find that so much about this is to cover up what they’re really trying to do. So the less that people know, the better it is for them to be able to move forward with their agenda. One area where I think it’s been hard for the transgender movement to gain traction, or at least there has been pushback, has been in the area of women’s sports. For example, there is a recent story that was widely circulated this past week, where a biological boy who identifies as female, name is Lia Thomas, 22-year-old transgender swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, has been shattering women’s records, no surprise, because Lia is a biological man. Do you find in the area of women’s sports that this is where people can really look at what the agenda is and say, “Hey, this isn’t fair. This is absolutely not fair.” Do you find traction in this area for those who view this as we do?

Kara Dansky:

Yes, and shoutout to my friend Beth Stelzer at an organization that she founded called Save Women’s Sports. She’s done a tremendous amount of work in helping lawmakers, especially at the state level, but also at the federal level, succeed in getting legislation passed to protect women’s sports for women. I just want to pause for a second and ask what you mean in your question, you used the phrase, “transgender swimmer,” that’s the kind of language I’m trying to get away from.

Beverly Hallberg:

No, teach me, teach all of us. That’s helpful.

Kara Dansky:

Yeah, I really… So, as you said in the introduction, I’m a feminist, I’m a lifelong Democrat. And I have been spending a lot of time, or the past couple years, working across the political aisle because I think this is very important. I think that this should not be a partisan issue and the media has done a tremendous job of framing it as a partisan issue. And I’m very frustrated with most media outlets for doing that. But one of my frustrations is that the Republicans, that I am very happy to work with, often use phrases like transgender athletes or transgender swimmer or transgender students. That’s hurting us. It’s hurting the movement to push back against gender identity, using their language makes it much more difficult for us to gain ground in the movement to push back against the enshrinement of gender identity in the law. So I appreciate you letting me say that.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah. So out of curiosity then, is the correct thing that you would always encourage people to say in that specific example would be biological boy, just say a boy?

Kara Dansky:

Boy. Yeah.

Beverly Hallberg:

That makes sense. That makes sense. And so I’m glad you brought up the media. I wanted to ask you just a little bit about what it has been like for you as a Democrat, talking about these issues. I read your piece that you had published in the Federalist, it was entitled “Democrats Like Me are Furious with Our Party for Pushing Gender Insanity.” So first of all, can I ask you why as a Democrat, you chose to submit your piece to a conservative outlet, would more left-leaning outlets not publish your opinion?

Kara Dansky:

Absolutely not. So I mentioned the 2016 lawsuit that WLF filed against the Obama Administration, Tucker Carlson invited WLF to appear on his show. And I was happy to do it. That happened in early 2017. I’ve been on the show several times since. I was very grateful to the Federalist for publishing that piece. I was very grateful to the New York Post recently for publishing another piece. Feminists like me, who publish in conservative media, get a lot of pushback for it. We get in trouble with a lot of radical feminists who don’t think we ought to be doing that, but we have a story to tell.

And we’re grateful to the outlets such as yourself, who are willing to give us a platform to tell our story. What a lot of Republicans, I think, do not know because there’s no way for you to know this, is there are countless Democrats, rank and file Democrats all over the country who are furious at our party leadership for what they’re doing. You have a lot of allies in a lot of rank-and-file Democratic communities, but the reason you don’t know that is because the media won’t say it.

Beverly Hallberg:

Final question I have for you before, well, actually our final, final question will be about your book but the final question I have for you before we get to that, is something that we often hear. And this goes back to the language and the words that we use, we often hear people using different pronouns than the biological sex of a person. So if you, let’s take that athlete, the male athlete competing against women, do you ever use the pronoun “she” for a biological boy or even if one, let’s say, you could take Caitlyn Jenner, do you refer to Caitlyn Jenner as a he or a she?

Kara Dansky:

“He,” of course, because he is. But we should say there are efforts around the world to actually criminalize the use of accurate sex pronouns. And it’ll be very interesting to see whether our first amendment protects us in a way, for example, that Canadian law does not protect Canadians. There’s an effort right now to make the use of accurate sex pronouns a hate crime. And it’s also happening in the UK. It’s happening in Scotland. It’s happening in a lot of places. It may not happen here. Our first amendment may protect us from that but we’ll see. The district attorney of San Francisco has recently issued an order, all of the staff in his office are now required to use so-called preferred pronouns in court, which could potentially mean that a rape victim might be required to refer to a male alleged rapist as “she” on the witness stand, which I would argue would constitute perjury.

But we haven’t seen any of this play out quite yet in the legal system, but it’ll be very interesting to watch. There is one case in the Sixth Circuit coming out of Ohio, where a professor refused to use so-called preferred pronouns. He was disciplined by the public university, his employer, but he was vindicated in court at the appellate level. So that’s a good sign that our first amendment might protect us in a way that, for example, Canadians aren’t protected.

Beverly Hallberg:

Final question for you. You tell us about your book. I know we’ve talked about it here but who is the book for? What can people expect if they read it?

Kara Dansky:

So the book is called “The Abolition of Sex: How the Transgender Agenda Harms Women and Girls.” And I wrote it really for average rank and file, across-the-political-aisle Americans who either might be very confused about what is going on here. And it’s completely legitimate to be confused about what is going on, on topics of sex and gender because there’s a deliberate effort to confuse us or Americans who see what’s going on and want to speak out about it but may not quite feel comfortable doing so for the reasons you laid out in your introduction. These topics can be hard to talk about but it’s not impossible. And I really want Americans to have the tools to talk with one another. If you’re a Republican talk with other Republicans, embolden other Republicans to speak out about this using accurate language. If you’re a Democrat and you agree with me but you’re scared to speak out, I understand that, that’s very understandable but we’ve got to do it if we’re going to make headway here.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, we thank you for your bravery. Kara Dansky, author of “The Abolition of Sex: How the Transgender Agenda Harms Women and Girls.” We so appreciate you joining us on She Thinks today.

Kara Dansky:

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

*****

This interview was conducted on December 10, 2021, and the transcript was reproduced with permission from  The Independent Women’s Forum.

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How Do the Feds Get Away with That?

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By George Leef

The tentacles of federal power over the states, localities and private institutions have been reaching further and further. Consider, for example, a case involving a small Christian school, the College of the Ozarks.

The college adheres to a strict biblical code of morality and among its requirements is that men and women live in separate dorms. That would never have been a problem until recently, with the advent of the notion of “gender fluidity,” whereby a person who is biologically male might “identify” as female or vice versa. Once the idea that such individuals are entitled to compel others to accommodate their personal conceptions took hold among leftists, it was inevitable that the government would find ways to punish those who “discriminated” against them. College of the Ozarks did so with its housing policy.

Now, you can scrutinize the US Constitution all day long and you won’t find anything saying that Congress has the power to dictate to colleges what their housing policy must be. In fact, you won’t find any reference to education at all. Education was among a great many matters that the Tenth Amendment declared were “for the states or the people, respectively.”

Nevertheless, the federal Department of Education has told College of the Ozarks that it must drop its housing policy or else. Or else what? Lose eligibility for federal student aid money, that’s what. The school sued in federal court to have the Department’s order invalidated, but the judge ruled against it. (For the details, consult this piece that I wrote about the case.)

Where does the Constitution empower bureaucrats in Washington, DC to demand that every college must conform its housing policy to their ideas of what’s right? Can’t we have schools that are different on that?

We certainly should. A “gender fluid” student who doesn’t want to be treated according to traditional sexual binary concepts can attend a college that is accommodating. There is no harm at all in leaving colleges free to set their own rules—but officious federal bureaucrats like to throw their power around.

Back to the legalities. If the Constitution doesn’t give Congress authority over colleges, how can a bureaucracy use the threat of loss of federal money as a cudgel to make them obey it?

That is the point of a new book by Philip Hamburger, a professor at Columbia Law School, Purchasing Submission. He observes that to a greater and greater extent, federal bureaucrats use their money, benefits, and sheer power to force state and local governments as well as non-governmental entities like College of the Ozarks to submit to them.

Hamburger has written previously about the unconstitutional spread of federal power, in his book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? In it, he argued that the vast administrative state—the “fourth branch” of government—is inconsistent with the Framers’ concept of good governance. It harkens back to the kinds of star chamber proceedings in England that the drafters of our Constitution wanted to prevent. The people were only supposed to have to obey laws enacted by their elected representatives and face punishments by properly constituted courts of law, but “administrative law” violates both of those precepts.

In Purchasing Submission, Hamburger shows that the problem of unconstitutional control goes far beyond the visible administrative state, which has to comply with statutes and is at least somewhat subject to judicial oversight. When federal bureaucrats dangle money in front of state and local governments, or private entities, in exchange for their compliance with conditions that they would have no power to impose directly, they are subverting our constitutional order. Hamburger calls it a “transactional mode of control,” and declares, “It is a strange mode of governance, in which Americans sell their constitutional freedoms—including their self-governance, due process, and speech—for a mess of pottage.”

The book abounds in examples that show how far the disease of control by unelected bureaucrats has progressed.

Consider the way federal highway funding has been used to pressure the states into changing their legal drinking ages, clearly a matter for them under the Tenth Amendment. But federal bureaucrats thought it would be good if all states had a drinking age of 21, and threatened to withhold money from any that didn’t go along. South Dakota sued, arguing that the feds had no authority to demand that it comply. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court sided with the federal government, weakly saying that while the drinking age was properly a state concern, the condition imposed was germane.

The better argument was expressed by Justice O’Connor in dissent. She wrote that while the government is entitled to insist that the states build highways that are safe, it is not entitled to demand that they “change regulations in other areas of the state’s social and economic life.”

Returning to higher education, the feds have used eligibility for federal money to make college officials adopt speech restrictions and one-sided procedures for the adjudication of sexual harassment allegations. In K-12, receipt of federal No Child Left Behind funding was conditioned upon states adopting federally mandated curricula.

Nor is money always the bait when the government wants to make unconstitutional dictates. Licenses can accomplish the same thing. The FCC insists that broadcasters must comply with its edicts if they want to be able to continue to broadcast. And the tax code is also useful; churches and charities have to relinquish some of their First Amendment rights if they want donations to remain tax-deductible.

Furthermore, Hamburger points out, federal agencies often use their already constitutionally dubious power as leverage to expand their power into blatantly unconstitutional domains. They do so by threats, letting regulated parties know that if they should challenge agency actions, they’ll face retribution. It’s sheer extortion. They usually get away with it.

This new mode of governance not only means that Americans have to obey rules that were not made by their elected representatives, but also that they will be judged by administrative tribunals rather than proper courts. The Founders’ vision for the nation has been badly subverted. The problem is that the courts have been derelict in dealing with this, often permitting agencies to continue extending their power in ways that undermine freedom and federalism.

Purchasing Submission is a brilliant lawyerly attack on a grave and ongoing problem. Hamburger’s thoughtful analysis will no doubt help future litigants prepare their strongest cases against it. If we are ever to get back to constitutional government in the US, we must absorb the lessons of this book.

*****

This article was published on December 12, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from AIER,  American Institute for Economic Research.

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No Pain Free Way Out

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By Ken Veit

The average person does not understand and could care less about Fed policy, Government budget deficits, and the National Debt. All he wants to know about “finance” is how much he earns and how much he has to spend to maintain his lifestyle.

Be that as it may, these big picture items have a major impact on our lives.

When the Government spends more money than it takes in, that requires the overspending to be financed by borrowing. When the Government borrows, it adds to the National Debt. The government borrows by issuing interest-paying bonds. Someone has to buy those bonds. As the National Debt grows, buying the Treasury’s bonds is seen as riskier for the investor. Would you rather borrow from someone heavily in debt or from someone with less debt?

In order to entice reluctant potential bond buyers, the seller has to raise interest rates.

However, the Government does not want to have to raise interest rates, because it means increasing its cash outlays, even more, compounding its deficit problems.

What has been happening is that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) has been buying government bonds that the public does not want. If this strikes you as just the left-hand selling to the right-hand, you are correct.

Most of the ever-increasing Government deficit is currently financed by the Fed buying the Treasury’s bonds. A lot of this was done under various crisis programs called “Q.E.” (Quantitative Easing), which were intended to be temporary in order to spur public spending and avert a recession. The Fed would now like to sell some of those bonds in the private market, but since those bonds were issued with low-interest rates, there is not much demand for them other than a discounted price. That means selling at a loss.

What happens to any losses suffered by the Fed? Answer: They are transferred to the Treasury. (Remember the part about the left hand and the right hand?). Losses transferred to the Treasury increase the National Debt still more.

The Fed also is involved with controlling interest rates. Although it does not set all interest rates, its actions have an enormous impact. At the moment, a 30-year Government bond pays an interest rate of less than 2%. With inflation running at over 6%, that means an investor buying these bonds gets a real rate of return of around minus 4%. It should not be hard to understand why investors don’t want to buy Government bonds currently.

To counter this reluctance, the Fed wants to restore interest rates to a normal level. They have kept interest rates low for a long time to counter various crises over more than a decade. It is time to get things back to some sort of “normalcy”. Otherwise, the problem of financing the Government’s enormous debt will only get worse, eventually causing inflation to spiral out of control. This happens because a Government bond is “money”, and when money loses value, that is the definition of inflation.

Wait a minute! There must be other solutions. Government spending could be reduced. Lots of luck on that one! Two-thirds of the economy is powered by consumer spending. A large amount of that spending is supported by “transfer payments”, which means Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, and other welfare payments. Transfer payments are part of Government spending.

Taxes could be raised. Unfortunately, it would take increases that are politically unacceptable. Even if virtually all of the wealth of the billionaire class were confiscated by taxation, it would only make a dent in the problem. Nearly half the population already pays no income tax, and Social Security and Medicare taxes are inarguably insufficient at current levels. To massively increase taxes on the “hard-working” middle class would cause a revolution.

We could default on the Debt, which is what many other countries have done in the past. They were not all poor countries. Countries like France and Spain, which were at one time the most powerful in the world, defaulted on their debts, costing them their pre-eminence.

Default is not an option for the United States. It would lead to the collapse of much of the world’s economy since economics is now a global issue.  We issue the “reserve” currency of the world, held globally in bond form.  A US default would trigger a worldwide financial panic.

The Fed is trying to navigate a fine line. They realize that they cannot permanently tolerate a bond market that offers negative returns. That means higher interest rates. They would like to reduce their bond holdings before they raise rates, in order to keep their value from plummeting. They also understand that raising interest rates too fast will crash the stock market since stock prices intrinsically reflect the discounted present value of future earnings. Discounting recognizes that the current value of profits earned in future years is not worth as much today as are current earnings.

More spending that is not properly funded (i.e., using the phony accounting employed by both Parties to sell their programs to an unsophisticated public) is only going to exacerbate the problems.

I was once told by my Congressman that the lack of financial understanding by members of Congress is appalling.

The hope is that the problems will disappear if the economy grows enough, and that justifies still more Government spending to stimulate growth. That would be fine if the evidence did not show that increased levels of government debt have diminishing returns. In other words, each level of new excess spending produces less and less growth over time. Wishing that was not the case does not make it so.

The Fed will likely adopt a gradual approach to reducing their bond-buying and the raising of interest rates in order to avoid spooking the financial markets. (Markets can handle anything except sudden changes in any direction of anything affecting them.) Their difficulty is doing it if inflation gets too high for too long. In that case, public and political pressure to “do something” will cause them to “go big” and in so doing crash the markets.

Of course, those on the Left would cut military spending in order to free up funds for their favorite projects. This would be a temporary solution until China attacks Taiwan, Russia attacks Ukraine, or Iran starts bombing Israel. The difficulty with being the world’s hegemon in a globally connected world is that we cannot simply sit back and say that whatever happens in the world is of no concern to us. Had we done that in WWII, might we all be speaking German today?

Another approach that might be employed that has not been suggested so far is to mandate that pension funds and insurance companies buy a certain percentage of Government bonds. That is not unusual in a number of countries. Of course, it means that returns on those assets are lower since Government bonds have lower percentage returns than private investments, but that disguises the problems from a politician’s point of view since the negative impact is spread over a much larger base. Of course, most pension funds are extremely underfunded today and are struggling to earn enough to enable them to meet their current obligations.

There are those who say, “To hell with financial markets. They only benefit the rich people.” However, that ignores the majority of people with 401(k) or other pension plans or savings that depend on investment performance for retirement security, as does Social Security itself. If financial markets plummet, the rich will find a way to protect themselves; the rest of us will suffer.

This budgetary conundrum sounds negative because there appear to be no pain-free choices.  There must be other solutions that shift the pain to someone else or make it disappear in a magical cloud.

Unfortunately, the only real solutions are a much more prosperous economy that generates the revenue and taxes to support what we want, or else we have to reduce our perceived needs to the level of our ability to pay.

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Radical Chic 52 Years Later

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By Craig J. Cantoni

Yesteryear’s radical chic morphed into today’s wokeness and virtue signaling.

Fifty-two years ago New York Magazine published “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s,” by Tom Wolfe. With his outstanding satirical talent and observational skills, Wolfe described the bizarre scene at a cocktail party at a 13-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue, the home of Felicia and Leonard Bernstein, the famous symphony conductor.

It was a fundraising event to raise money for the defense of 21 Black Panthers who were arrested on a charge of conspiring to blow up five New York department stores, New Haven Railroad facilities, a police station, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. In attendance were 90 people, including the upper-crust of high society, celebrities, and a few media personalities, including Barbara Walters, the famous journalist of the time. Black Panthers were honored guests.

Radical chic was the ultimate in progressive hypocrisy, naiveté, foolishness, and self-immolation. It predated the term “limousine liberal,” which in turn predated today’s wokeness and virtue signaling. As with its later incarnations, radical chic did little if anything to solve root problems in African-American communities or society in general.

Wolfe’s essay was as long as a novella, about 25 pages. It can be found in its entirety here. If you don’t have the time or interest in reading it, this commentary gives the highlights and relates them to today’s fatuous displays of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and critical race theory.

The photos that accompany the essay are priceless. Rich, pampered, bejeweled white elites with perfectly coiffed hair and wearing haute couture can be seen posing and mingling with the Panthers.

Wolfe described the Panthers as wearing “tight pants, the tight black turtlenecks, the leather coats, Cuban shades, Afros. But real Afros, not the ones that have been shaped and trimmed like a topiary hedge and sprayed until they have a sheen like acrylic wall-to-wall—but like funky, natural, scraggly . . . wild . . .”

His description of the party’s hors d’oeuvres is delicious:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. These are nice. Little Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts. Very tasty. Very subtle. It’s the way the dry sackiness of the nuts tiptoes up against the dour savor of the cheese that is so nice, so subtle. Wonder what the Black Panthers eat here on the hors d’oeuvre trail? Do the Panthers like little Roquefort cheese morsels wrapped in crushed nuts this way, and asparagus tips in mayonnaise dabs, and meatballs petites au Coq hardi, all of which are at this moment being offered to them on gadrooned silver platters by maids in black uniforms with hand-ironed white aprons . . .

Recognizing that it would be a faux pas for the Panthers to be served by blacks, the Bernsteins had retained white Latins as servers (and servants).

Speaking about the contradictions between the Upper East Side denizens and the Panthers, Wolfe wrote, “It is like the delicious shudder you get when you try to force the prongs of two horseshoe magnets together . . . them and us . . .”

One of the lawyers for the Panther 21 spoke to the attendees about the injustices of the justice system, including the bail system, which had placed “a preposterous” bail of $100,000 on each of the 21, “which has in effect denied them the right to bail.”

Clamor for bail reform continues today and has been implemented in some jurisdictions. Some say it has resulted in an increase in crime.

As with the killing of George Floyd, the killing of a black man in 1969 had precipitated calls for police reform. The man was Fred Hampton, the leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, who was fatally shot in a pre-dawn raid at his apartment by the Chicago Police Department.

However, there weren’t calls for defunding the police back then, as there were after the killing of George Floyd, probably because Hampton’s death wasn’t captured on video.

Speaking of defunding the police, present-day students at Columbia University, across town from the locale of the Bernstein cocktail party, had called for cutbacks in campus police after the Floyd tragedy. Due to a subsequent rise in crime at the university, students are now demanding an increased police presence.

At the time of Wolfe’s essay in 1970, the opposite of defunding the police had occurred. Law and order had become the mantra, driven in part by the infamous 1969 shootout between cops and Black Panthers in L.A., a shootout that resulted in the militarization of the police, according to some historians. That shootout had followed a shootout between cops and Panthers in Oakland, as well as the Panthers targeting cops for execution. There were also shootouts between rival black revolutionary groups.

And so the political pendulum has gone, swinging as wildly and dangerously as the pendulum in “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Many present-day politicians who called for defunding the police in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement had called for beefing up the police earlier in their careers. Joe Biden was one of them.

In a precursor to the teaching of critical race theory in schools today—a theory that says that whites and their institutions are inherently racist—the Panthers had opened Liberation Schools. While the schools taught students traditional courses in English, math, and science, their primary mission was to instill revolutionary consciousness by focusing on issues of class and institutional racism.

Anyway, back to the cocktail party.

A Panther leader named Cox addressed the attendees, explaining why the Panthers resort to violence: “As our Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton, says, ‘Any unarmed people are slaves or are slaves in the real meaning of the word’ . . . We recognize that this country is the most oppressive country in the world, maybe in the history of the world.”

At the same time, the Panther said that the group believes in Maoism. Wolfe didn’t remark on the contradiction of calling the U.S. oppressive but embracing an oppressive ideology that killed tens of millions of people. This is similar to today’s neo-Marxists who believe that the U.S. is an evil, oppressive empire, as if it would be the epitome of equality, social justice, and racial harmony if they ran things.

The Panther went on to say that there wasn’t anyone in the room who wouldn’t defend themselves and their family if someone broke into their house in the middle of the night to murder them. To which Wolfe wrote what must’ve gone through the minds of the white women in attendance:

. . . and every woman in the room thinks of her husband . . . with his cocoa-butter jowls and Dior Men’s Boutique pajamas . . . ducking into the bathroom and locking the door and turning the shower on, so he can say later that he didn’t hear a thing.

According to Wolfe, one Park Avenue matron was thrown into Radical Chic confusion by calls from the speaker for burning down buildings and other violence. She said, “He’s a magnificent man, but suppose some simple-minded schmucks take all that business about burning down buildings seriously?”

The Panther named Cox continued with a thinly-veiled anti-Semitic reference by mentioning that “the merchants in the black community who are the exploiters of the black community” should be giving donations. To which Wolfe wrote his reaction:

For God’s sake, Cox, don’t open that can of worms. Even in this bunch of upholstered skulls there are people who can figure out just who those merchants are, what group, and just how they are asked for donations, and we’ve been free of that little issue all evening, man—don’t bring out that ball-breaker.

Later in his essay, Wolfe wrote the following about the Panthers’ view of Jews:

The June, 1967, issue of another Panther publication, Black Power, had carried a poem entitled “Jew-Land,” which said:

Jew-Land, On a summer afternoon

Really, Couldn’t kill the Jews too soon,

Now dig. The Jews have stolen our bread

Their filthy women tricked our men into bed

So I won’t rest until the Jews are dead . . .

In Jew-Land, Don’t be a Tom on Israel’s side

Really, Cause that’s where Christ was crucified

One of the attendees, Otto Preminger, the famous Austro-Hungarian-born movie director, began disagreeing with the Panther speaker on his claim that the U.S. was oppressive. “You said zis is de most repressive country in de world. I don’t beleef zat . . . Do you mean dat zis government is more repressive zan de government of Nigeria?”

Lenny Bernstein then questioned the speaker on his threat that if white businessmen don’t give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from them and placed in the community, with the people. They had this exchange:

Lenny says: “How? I dig it! But How?

“You can’t blueprint the future,” says Cox [the Panther].

“You mean you’re just going to wing it?” says Lenny.

“Like . . . this is what we want, man,” says Cox, we want the same thing as you, we want peace. We want to come home at night and be with the family . . . and turn on the TV . . . and smoke a little weed . . . you know? . . . and get a little high . . . you dig? . . . and we’d like to get into that bag, like anybody else. But we can’t do that . . . see . . . because if they send in the pigs to rip us off and brutalize our families, then we have to fight.”

The journalist Barbara Walters later jumps in:

“I’m talking as a white woman who has a white husband, who is a capitalist, or an agent of capitalists, and I am, too, and I want to know if you are to have your freedom, does that mean we have to go?

Cox says, “. . . a lot of young white people are beginning to understand about oppression. They’re part of the petty bourgeoisie. It’s a different class from the black community, but there’s a common oppressor. They’re protesting about individual freedoms, to have their music and smoke weed and have sex. These are individual freedoms but they are beginning to understand.”

One of the Panther wives then says to Walters, “You sound like you’re afraid.” “

“I’m not afraid of you,” Barbara Walters says to her, “but maybe I am about the idea of the death of my children.”

Wolfe would go on to skewer the nouveau riche for their nostalgie de la boue, a nineteenth-century French term that means “nostalgia for the mud.” He explained that new arrivals to the upper class have always had two way of certifying their superiority over the hated middle class. “They can take on the trapping of aristocracy, such as grand architecture, servants, parterre boxes and high protocol; and they can indulge in the gauche thrill of taking on certain styles of the lower orders. The two are by no means mutually exclusive; in fact they are always used in combination.”

He continued:

During the 1960s in New York nostalgie de la boue took the form of the vogue of rock music, the twist-frug genre of dances, Pop Art, Camp, the courting of pet primitives such as the Rolling Stones and Jose Torres, and innumerable dress fashions summed up in the recurrent image of the wealthy young man with his turtleneck jersey meeting his muttonchops at mid-jowl, a la the 1962 Sixth Avenue Automat bohemian, bidding good night to the aging doorman dressed in the mode of an 1870 Austrian army colonel.

One can only imagine what he’d write today about not only the upper crust but also the highly paid knowledge workers and techies whose wannabe hipster image can be seen in their scraggly beards, tattoos, and hair that looks like a Medusa Head.

Wolfe explained why the upper-crust had weekend places away from the city: to get away in the summer from the hoi polloi:

When one thinks of being trapped in New York Saturday after Saturday in July or August, doomed to be part of those fantastically dowdy herds roaming past Bonwit’s and Tiffany’s at dead noon the sandstone sun-broil, 92 degrees, daddies from Long Island in balloon-seat Bermuda shorts bought at the Times Square Store in Oceanside and fat mommies with white belled pants stretching over their lower bellies and crinkling up in the crotch like some kind of Dacron-polyester labia—well, anyway, then one truly feels the need to obey at least the minimal rules of New York society. One really does.

According to Wolfe, one rule of nostalgie de la boue is that the “styles of romantic, raw-vital, Low Rent primitives” are good. Conversely, the “middle class, whether black or white, is bad.” To point out the hypocrisy of those who think this way, he spoke of their feigned affection for the Panthers, Latin grape workers, and Native Americans, using terms that would get him cancelled today and won’t be repeated by me. He then pointed out something that often applies today to those who claim solidarity with the disadvantaged but keep their distance from them:

At the outset, at least, all three groups had something else to recommend them as well: they were headquartered 3,000 miles away from the East Side of Manhattan, in places like Delano (the grape workers), Oakland (the Panthers), and Arizona and New Mexico (the Indians). There weren’t likely to become too much . . . underfoot, as it were.

Near the end of his essay, Wolfe quoted an editorial that the New York Times ran after the party. An excerpt:

. . . the group therapy plus fund-raising soiree at the home of Leonard Bernstein, as reported in this newspaper yesterday, represent the sort of elegant slumming that degrades patrons and patronized alike. It might be dismissed as guilt-relieving fun spiked with social consciousness, except for its impact on those blacks and whites seriously working for complete equality and social justice. It mocked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday was solemnly observed throughout the nation yesterday.

Black Panthers on a Park Avenue pedestal create one more distortion of the Negro image. Responsible black leadership is not likely to cheer as the Beautiful People create a new myth that Black Panther is beautiful.

The same could be said about much of today’s wokeness, virtue signaling, and critical race theory, but the New York Times isn’t about to say it.

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