Mere days after a Bernie Sanders supporter shot Congressman Steve Scalise and two black members of his police detail, a Connecticut professor posted a Medium article on Facebook declaring: "Let Them F*cking Die." The professor went on to write that white people are "inhuman a**holes" who still prop up a "white supremacy system," so black people should not help them if their lives are in danger.
"I'm fed the f*ck up with self identified 'white's' [
sic] daily violence directed at immigrants, Muslim, and sexual and racially oppressed people," Johnny Eric Williams,
associate professor of sociology at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., posted on Facebook Sunday,
Campus Reform reported. "The time is now to confront these inhuman a**holes and end this now."
How should the allegedly oppressed "end this now"? Another post explained that. "It is past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be 'white' will not do, put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system," Williams added in another post, including the hashtag #LetThemF*ckingDie.
On Thursday, Williams also posted a
Medium article by that very title, which lamented that black Capitol Police officers who were assigned to Scalise's detail had acted to protect him. The article, posted under a pseudonym, advocated letting white people die, as a form of combatting white supremacy.
What does it mean, in general, when victims of bigotry save the lives of bigots?
For centuries, black people have been regarded as sub-human workhorses whose entire purpose is to serve white people’s whimsies.
For centuries, queer people have been regarded as sub-human degenerates whose whole existence was an anathema to cisgender heterosexual people’s off-hand sensibilities.
The article attacked even the idea of morality as a tool for the immoral to oppress the moral. "They, these white/cisgender/heterosexuals, have created entire systems, philosophies, and values in which goodness, peace, and benevolence are virtues — but only, always, in other people. In themselves, though, it is only ever pretense."
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3)
So We Are In Secular Stagnation...
By Charles Gave
…really? I would advise readers to consider the chart below.
On first blush, its lower pane supports the stagnationist camp. After all, both the US and France have seen a slump in their “structural” GDP growth rate, as shown by the seven year moving average. Since 1977 this measure has fallen by a third in the US, and by two thirds in France. Yet, look at the chart’s top pane and it is clear that this growth slump has hardly been generalized. Since the late 1970s, Sweden, the UK and Switzerland have seen their growth rates rise structurally, and the same pattern can be found with Canada, Germany and Australia.
Cause and effect
So why have certain economies tumbled into relative decline, while others have not? A useful approach may be to compare France and the UK, which are similar in size, population and demographic profile. Both countries are European Union members with big banking sectors that in recent decades have had to manage profound de-industrialization.
Consider the chart below which shows a ratio of real GDP in France and the UK. No adjustment is made for currency movements as this will introduce unnecessary noise into the analysis. The obvious point is that between 1955 and 1981, France’s economy massively outperformed the UK’s. Since 1981, the reverse has been true.
The trend change corresponded to a political shift in both countries as to the proper role of the state. Under Margaret Thatcher, the UK forged a new path by lessening the role of civil servants in managing economic activity. In France, François Mitterrand expressly aimed to expand the scope of government.
To be sure, the UK Labour Party got back into power in the late 1990s and spent the next decade running socialist policies that caused government spending as a share of output to rocket higher. Fortunately, sanity was restored after 2010 when a Conservative-led government dialed back UK public spending. In France, the picture is different as there have not been politically-inspired changes in the trend of government spending—the ratio has simply ground higher, irrespective of who was in power.
The next task is to explore potential cause-and-effect linkages between public spending and the divergence in the structural growth rates of France and the UK. As such, consider the chart below which reconciles growth and government spending in the two economies.
The chart above shows that in 1980 France started to spend more on government than the UK. By 1985, France’s structural growth rate slid below the UK rate and has not recovered. The logic behind this chart has been borne out in many economies: beyond a certain threshold (that varies by country) more state spending causes the structural growth rate to fall. This relationship follows, as in a government-dominated economy “destruction” of inefficient activity is all but impossible, which in turn limits the scope for fresh “creation”. This insight was explained by Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.
What about the US?
In the US, a similarly straight forward picture emerges, with the big increase in government spending that took place after 2009 being the main cause of the subsequent decline in the US’s structural growth rate.
By way of contrast, consider the reverse case of Canada, which in the mid-1990s slashed government spending to good effect. In two years Canadian government spending was cut from 31% of GDP to about 25%. The ensuing 18 months saw predictable howls of protest from economists that a depression must follow. In fact, not only was a recession avoided but Canada’s structural growth rate quickly picked up and in the next two decades a record uninterrupted economic expansion was achieved.
As an aside, I would ask readers to cite one case in the post-1971 fiat money era when a big rise in government spending did not lead to a structural slowdown. Alternatively, if they could cite an episode when cuts to public spending resulted in the growth rate falling. I am always willing to learn and change my mind!
To conclude, “secular stagnation” is an idea of ivory towered economists. Schumpeter showed how bloated government and unnecessary regulation crimps activity. The perhaps unfashionable answer remains to privatize state enterprises, deregulate markets and break up too-big-too-fail banks. In simple terms, some government is good; too much government is bad.
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4) How'd that referendum on Trump work out?
The special election in the 6th District of Georgia was universally billed "a high-stakes referendum on Trump" in all the much hyped build-up coming from the left and its media allies. Not a local election, not a fluke election. A moment-of-truth Referendum on Trump.
After all, weren't President Trump's poll numbers down? Didn't the "resistance" put on a mega-protest show and continue its tantrum in all the days-of-rage riots on college campuses? Wasn't President Trump engulfed in scandal for colluding with the Russians to win the 2016 election that was rightfully Hillary Clinton's? Weren't the leftists whispering, "President Pence"?
Rubbing their mousy hands together with glee, it's pretty clear that leftists thought they had a certain victory in the bag with that "narrative," along with a perfect post-election analysis, no matter what the Georgia voters thought about it.
Get a load of this now comical pompous pre-election analysis that ran earlier this week in the New York Times (emphasis mine):
The hard-fought battle for Mr. Price's seat in Atlanta's northern reaches has not only become a financial arms race – by far the most expensive House contest in history – it has evolved into one of the most consequential special elections in decades.
Republicans, weighed down by Mr. Trump's growing unpopularity, must demonstrate they can separate themselves from the president enough to hold suburban districts that only now are becoming battlegrounds.
And Democrats, facing a restive base hungry for victory after disappointing losses in Montana and Kansas, are under pressure to show they can notch something more than a moral victory in the sort of affluent seat they will need in order to take back the House majority.
An outright win in Georgia would serve as validation of the party's overall strategy.
Didn't turn out as they thought it would.
So it was a referendum on Trump? Maybe so. Lookee here: what were the locals saying when Karen Handel won the special election last night? From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Handel thanked President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans who supported her in the nationally watched runoff, leading to cheers of "Trump, Trump, Trump" from the crowd at the Hyatt Regency in Dunwoody.
Trump! Trump! Trump! Guess it really was a referendum, but not with the "narrative" Ben Rhodes and all his fellow Democratic Party coevals and media toadies thought it would be. Apparently, hating Trump is not sufficient to win elections these days.
The reality it shows is that Georgia voters and Americans in general are tired as heck of the left's kitchen-sink Energizer Bunny-style efforts to delegitimize President Trump – whether through tantrums, thuggery, lawsuits, special prosecutors, fake news, gobs and gobs of campaign cash, or "any means necessary."
Handel wasn't always riding high in the polls, but when it came down to brass tacks and the coinciding news was in all the disgusting efforts to stop President Trump and the agenda the people elected him to accomplish back in Washington, Handel's numbers crossed the victory threshold.
Democrats, of course, are horrified, though some are trying to put the best possible face on it, and others are vowing to double down on extremism.
What they won't do is take an honest look at themselves and why voters chose Trump.
There are two things to observe about this.
One is an observation from Peggy Noonan, who pointed out a few months ago that Trump's support isn't likely to tank or fade for the simple reason that voters took a long time to make up their mind on whether to support Trump. Making that mental "investment," they weren't about to scrap it over something small or stupid.
The other thing is that Democrats have yet to confront the problem as to why they are losing elections. The big reason is that they have swung hard left on every single issue they once had moderates on – immigration, government spending, health care, law and order, terrorism. In every single instance, it's a stance that benefits some special interest group and leaves the average voter with the bill.
What's more, it's a creepy kind of left-wingery – one that benefits corporate interests at the expense of Main Street. Whenever some big-spending, freedom-ending intrusive Democrat program is rolled out "for the children," you can bet there is a plethora of corporate hipster crony capitalists slavering in the rafters over all the new contracts to come. The backwash is massive speaking fees these corporate beneficiaries shovel out to Democrats once the programs are enacted. This is not the party of the little guy.
And it's an inflexible, brittle astance as well. Like Obama, the left finds it impossible change course when it goes too far. It just keeps digging deeper and deeper into its left-wing party line, intensifying it and thrilling its special interest activists and Sorosian NGOs determined to "make a difference."
Voters can see that – and yet at election time, the Democrats don't run one of these new-style extremists emblematic of who they now are. Such extremism is reserved for leftist representatives in safe and longtime seats such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). The Democrats run what they claim is a "moderate," figuring that voters won't notice how far the party has shifted left. Figuring that the youth gambit would work in the States as it did in France and Canada, they ran a candidate who tried to capitalize on his youthfulness – in this case, the 30-year-old documentary filmmaker named Jon Ossoff, who didn't even live in the district he purported to represent. He just said he hated Trump – and proposed a raft of tax hikes to prove he was a business-as-usual Democrat, not a new-style street extremist or Sorosian crony.
It doesn't work.
Now the Democrats are left with a steaming pile of $23 million in campaign debt, shelling out $200 per vote, all because they thought hating on Trump was a winning strategy that would thrill the voters. And if that isn't clear enough a message, a similar race in the 5th District of South Carolina came out the same way.
The left wanted a referendum on Trump. Today, they got it.
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5)
The Next Step on North Korea
New sanctions against China’s traders and financiers might work.
The horrific death of Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old student held in a North Korean prison for 17 months, highlights the brutal nature of the rogue regime and underscores the urgency of stopping its nuclear ambitions. The next step should be to sanction the Chinese financiers and traders who sustain Kim Jong Un.
President Trump built up expectations of Chinese help after his April summit with President Xi Jinping. That was a long shot given China’s failure to rein in its ally in the past. But it made sense diplomatically, putting Mr. Xi on notice that tougher U.S. action would follow if he failed to deliver. But on Tuesday Mr. Trump tweeted, “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!”
As the Journal reported last week, the Administration asked Beijing to crack down on some 10 Chinese companies and individuals that trade with North Korea. If China refuses, the U.S. is prepared to act unilaterally by the end of the summer. The U.S. should now move with dispatch to use tougher sanctions to deprive those on the list from access to the international financial system.
Skeptics are right that United Nations sanctions have done little to stop North Korea, but the sanctions that drove Iran to the negotiating table were far tougher. And a new report from the Washington research group C4ADS suggests that the North’s trading network is highly vulnerable to the new sanctions.
The report dispels the misconception that North Korea obtains materials and technology for its weapons through an invisible network that can’t be stopped by sanctions. It says the same small number of Chinese individuals and companies that dominate legal trade with the North also supply it with “dual use” goods to build nukes and missiles. As sanctions have tightened, this network has grown smaller and more consolidated. That’s because there are only a few individuals who have the skills and connections within China and North Korea to continue trade under these circumstances. Pyongyang will find it hard to replace them.
The U.S. stumbled across this North Korean vulnerability in September 2005 when the U.S. Treasury named Macau’s Banco Delta Asia a “primary concern” for North Korean money laundering. The bank was forced to freeze $25 million in North Korean assets, but the knock-on effects were huge. Trade that depended on the bank ground to a halt, and other banks cut their business with North Korea.
In a tragic miscalculation, the Bush Administration released the frozen funds two years later in return for North Korea returning to disarmament talks, which went nowhere. North Korea moved most of its trading network to China, and the Obama Administration let the North Korea problem grow as it focused on other priorities.
North Korea is now a few years away from fielding an intercontinental missile, and U.S. options are dwindling. A pre-emptive military strike is the last resort because the Kim regime could kill millions with conventional and nuclear weapons. But now that Beijing has been given the chance to help and either refused or failed, the U.S. and its allies have to use every sanction and other tool available to prevent the Kim regime from doing to millions what it did to Otto Warmbier.
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6)
Liberman: Abbas is dragging Israel into war with Hamas
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman underlines that Israel has no intention of initiating armed conflict on any frontier. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will halt all financial payments to Gaza in the future and in so doing push Israel into war with Hamas, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned on Thursday morning as he addressed the annual Herzliya Conference.
“I have no intention of initiating any military activity; not in the summer and not in the fall, not in the South and not in the North. Our objective is to prevent war and the only way to do that is through credible deference,” Liberman said.
He blamed internal Palestinian politics for creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza such that its 2 million residents are living on less than four hours of electricity a day.
“We do not have to enter Gaza forcibly, but this crisis is not about to be resolved,” he said.
Israel this week began to reduce what will be a 40% reduction of the 120 MGW of electricity it provides Gaza, a move which leave its residents with two hours of power a day.
Israel did so at Abbas’s request, after he said he would only pay 40% of the bill to the Israel Electricity Company, which is now Gaza's main provider of electricity. Depriving Gaza of electricity is one Abbas’s tactics to weaken the group, so that he can regain control of the Strip decade after Hamas ousted Fatah in a bloody coup.
In the last couple of months Abbas has also stopped sending medication to the Gaza and has cut payments to the governmental employees there.
“This was not a tactic that he [Abbas] plans to use only once,” Liberman said as he warned the situation would get worse.
With regard to the electricity, Abbas “has not made a one time reduction. He will continue to reduce [electricity] payments and to stop playmates all together in a few months both for the fuel and the medicine and payments of [civic salaries],” Liberman said.
Abbas has taken this step unilaterally without consulting Israel, Egypt or Jordan, he said.
“He is saying that we are just trying to weaken Hamas,” Liberman said. But the only logical conclusion is that there is a double strategy here in which Abbas is crippling Hamas also out of a hope that “he will drag Hamas into a conflict with Israel.
US anti-ISIS envoy vows not to let Iran threaten Israel from Syrian Golan
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