Every once in a while I believe articles,which I have already posted, including pictures, need re-posting. I am doing so now with the above picture of a kneeless Maine and two articles below. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Why am I doing so.?
In the first article, I believe a lot of hypocrisy is involved and those involved have sought to draw attention to their grievances (questionable and maybe even over-blown) at an inappropriate time and place. There are other venues and outlets for speaking one's mind and exercising one's rights but on the playing field ,while our National Anthem is played, is not the place.
When Trump brought attention to the matter he did so in a manner which the mass media jumped on so they could highlight his own "churlish response" and could continue the food fight to make headlines. Trump is always the mass media's "fall guy."
I submit, as our president, he was correct in speaking out as he was in calling the families of military killed in action in defense of our freedoms. Once again, the mass media turned it into a side show with help from a Democrat "Ding Bat" seeking publicity who is also part of a Black Caucus impeachment group in Congress.
As for the second op-ed, it talks about how government got deeply involved in education and has nothing to show for the trillions spent. Ever since Carter intruded the government into public education it has all turned south. Nothing new there. It is the age old history of government involvement. Intrude, lower standards, spend billions, if not more, and have little to show.
What I believe will reduce racial animosity is contact, more contact between the races and eventually increased marriage between the races. Most rational people want the same thing for themselves and their families. The government helped to break up the family and this, not only altered the history of and weakened our nation, but also changed our values and the American Character.
Trump is president today partly because of Obama's failed policies and attempts to transform us into what we are not and do not wish to become ( except for the liberal radicals and hypocrites on both coasts) and Hillary, who offered nothing by way of change, did it in poor campaign fashion and could never overcome her distrust factor. Post the campaign, we now are justified in continuing our distrust both of her and her sleazy, but politically savvy, husband.
Move the clock forward and we now have liberal fascists in charge of our college campuses. The anti-free speech virus moved from the play ground of secondary education to college and university campuses. This is simply another step by those who want too destroy America. The NFL nonsense is connected because a public unable to reason, unwilling to speak out and hooked on entertainment that keeps it from focusing on real problems and manipulated by a biased mass media sought on earning money over informing, is the correct prescription for doom.
We are being fed messages and actions that are ulcerous at best and cancerous long term. We had better wake up and perhaps that is the message Trump's election sends. His policies are mostly good and corrective but his implementation is often, off key.
Meanwhile, criminalizing of our society remains a dangerous ploy regardless of the politics of those accused. If the effort to get Trump is the goal that is what the ballot box was meant to do. For those who do not like Trump vote against him. Trying to engulf him and cripple his ability to work on our behalf is another matter. Time will tell what it will be and at what financial and societal cost.
For sure it is evident Russians were guilty of trying to corrupt and interfere with our election process. Whether the Russian Government was behind all of this is likely but it is yet to be proved Putin was behind intervening. If so this is something we must stop at all costs.
Meanwhile we know Mueller's indictment goes back before Manfort's involvement in Trump's campaign and does not pertain to Russian Collusion. Perhaps that is coming so we will have to wait till Mueller moves forward.
We do know the Perkin Law Firm received a lot of money from the Obama and Clinton campaigns and much of that money went to other entities. Was this firm engaged in being a pass though, a conduit for the purpose of avoiding Federal Election Rules.
We also know an FBI informant was gagged during Mueller's tenure as FBI Chief and who claims he knows a lot of what was going on regarding Uranium One and The Steele Trump Dossier etc.
Yes, the jury remains out on these matters and we will have to see whether Mueller will investigate these smoking guns since all involved in the exchange of millions from the DNC, Clintons, etc. claim they know nothing about this, starting with Debbie Wasserman Schultz etc.
In the final analysis, will what Mueller does simply validate that Justice remains blind when it comes to legal equality or will those who broke laws receive their due? Are we a nation that no longer seeks justice for all or do we have two sets of rules. - one for us commoners and one for the elites, political or otherwise. Stay tuned.
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I have not commented on the market for some time so thought I would do so now.
Obviously the market has performed well but no one, statistically and based on history, can argue the market is cheap. It is high on an historical basis. That said, there are several areas that remain undervalued or behind - oil, oil service, energy related, healthcare, particularly drugs, and even selected banks and financial stocks, particularly casualty companies.
Oil stocks remain depressed because investors do not believe supply will remain restricted and inventories remain somewhat high. Also, no one knows what kind of winter we will have. Long term one has to believe near term dislocations will pass and these stocks will return to or near former highs.
Health care, specifically drugs, remain under pressure for a variety of reasons. First, the fact that politics has not resolved Obamacare leaves uncertainty. Second, pricing pressures have caused problems with drug company earnings and many profitable drugs are coming off patent. Generic prices have not gone unscathed as well.
Finally, low inflation and a modest rise in worker pay has left The Fed uncertain regarding a rise in interest rates. Hurricanes have caused significant damage and thus demands on casualty companies will rise. Though the economy is doing well the demand for loans remains subdued and tax modification remains uncertain.
I still believe all three sectors will have their day in the sun before this extended Bull Market ends.
As for the longer term, household debt is lower than it has been for many years,26 is the most common age in the U.S and the 30-39 segment is poised to accelerate from 43 million to 49 million over the next decade. I mention these age groups because when citizens hit 25 to 34 and then 35 to 44 you can expect large expenditures.
One other potential boost for market interest is that 52% of Americans are invested, directly or indirectly, in equities and the number of public companies has declined 35% since 1997. This represents a potential increase in market exposure/ownership..
The bull market is aging but a recession is not evident.
Dick
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1) Will the NFL Be the First Legal Monopoly in US History to Fail?
By James G. Robertson
Monday Night Football ratings are down. NFL ticket sales are down. Stadiums are half empty. The NFL may cut 10 Thursday night broadcasts from the lineup. NFL owners met in New York last week to deal with the kneeling crisis. Now consider this: the NFL is a private monopoly established by an act of Congress, and it looks like it’s going down. How is such a thing possible?
In 1961, after a federal court nullified the NFL’s exclusive two-year broadcasting contract with CBS, Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA). To overcome the court’s ruling, the SBA made it legal for individual teams to pool their broadcasting rights and to sell the pooled rights as a package to various broadcasting networks. By protecting it from Sherman anti-trust violations, Congress established the NFL as a legal monopoly.
Since then, it has been all but impossible for any other corporation to compete for the professional football dollar. From 1983 to 1985, the United States Football League tried, but ultimately failed, even though they sued the NFL for monopolistic practices and won the suit.
The suit alleged that the NFL inhibited the new league’s ability to obtain broadcast coverage, and thereby to generate revenue, and the new league asked for $1.69 billion in damages. The jury agreed that the NFL was a monopoly, but decided that the NFL’s television contracts did not violate the law. In the end, the upstart league was awarded only $3 in damages and it went bust.
Subsequently, the NFL flourished, with lots of help from taxpayers. In 2015, a report from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance said:
Since 1995, a staggering 29 of the 31 stadiums that house NFL teams received public subsidies for construction, renovation or both. Between 1995 and today, taxpayers have been forced to spend nearly $7 billion subsidizing NFL stadium construction and renovation projects.
The NFL is a cash machine. It generated about $14 billion in revenue in 2016. The average salary of an NFL player is $1.9 million per year. About 68% of NFL players are black. They’re all millionaires.
So here we are in 2017. Taxpayers build the factories (stadiums) where the NFL’s essential employees (football players) produce its saleable goods (footballs games). What a deal. Congress gives you a monopoly and the taxpayers build your factories. Then all you have to do is run the factory for half of the year and play a football game once a week. It’s a guaranteed gravy train for everyone. The NFL could profit forever. How could the NFL possibly foul it up?
To repeat, how is it possible to fumble a monopoly? Answer: turn it over to the race industry.
What does the race industry do? What is the essential and fundamental thing it does? It runs a shakedown scam. Here’s how it works.
The shakedown scam starts with an arbitrary claim of disparity. Anything can be interpreted as a disparity or as representing a disparity – history, symbolic statues, murder rates, income inequality, schools, police, low income housing, football players without a job – literally, anything.
The next step is to blame the disparity on society, in particular, some intangible quality of society. The more vague and ineffable you assign the nature of the blame the better. Racism is perfect. It can be everywhere and nowhere. It lives in the mind of someone else. You can call it up as needed, or dismiss it as needed.
The third step is to identify an evil doer associated with the ineffable source of the disparity. The targeted evil doer has to be a plausible representative of society, and must have the ability to pay up. With a targeted evil doer in mind, the fourth step is to mount a smear campaign against the evil doer. Any type of smear campaign will do, as long as it’s legal, and as long as it causes social and financial harm to the evil doer. The last step is to demand a payoff to stop the damage.
Colin Kaepernick ran the scam to perfection, and now we’re seeing the payoff. The disparity was his sense of injustice. After feeling the disparity, he took a knee during the nation anthem as a general protest against injustice in society. By doing it while on the job, he associated blame with the NFL, and made the NFL the representative of society. Taking the knee was the public smear campaign and it spread like a virus. Everyone was taking a knee, even the owners. It was designed to make the NFL look bad, and it worked. Many fans were insulted and they quit watching. When money started ebbing from NFL coffers, the NFL panicked and held a meeting to figure out how to stop the damage.
Now comes the payoff. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced that the NFL won’t force players to stand for the anthem, and that it will pivot to “community issues” to help players with their “activism.” Goodell and Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin signed a letter to Congress supporting criminal justice reform, because, of course, “we can’t arrest our way out of this” and we have to stop the “school to prison pipeline” in order to obtain social justice. If you have any doubt about black drug gangs and the epidemic of black violence in America, just follow Colin Flaherty’s daily crime documentary. Then ask yourself, “What kind of criminal justice reform is going to stop the crime?”
Confused Eagles defensive end Chris Long announced that he would donate the remainder of his salary this year to increase “educational equality.” How about that! The scammers shamed him into making a voluntary payoff! While we must applaud everyone’s charitable donations, at some point we have to ask, “Didn’t he get the memo?”
Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in 1979. Today it has more than 4,000 employees and an annual budget of $68 billion. Historical government budget data show that $1.6 trillion has been appropriated from the federal treasury for education since 1980. If we don’t have educational equality after $1.6 trillion of federal government meddling, how many trillions more is it going to take? Does Long really think his salary will buy “educational equality,” whatever that is?
And the shakedown scam hasn’t ended. After Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the 49ers to become a free agent, he was unemployed. Now Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett says that in order to resolve the kneeling crisis, Kaepernick has to be hired by another team. Kaepernick himself is suing the NFL for collusion, and he’s wangled a $1 million book deal for his story. He reportedly has a net worth of $22 million, but hey, every million counts.
See how this works? Reality doesn’t matter. Smear, shakedown, rinse, repeat.
The race industry has engineered a national hysteria about racism, white supremacy, inequality, and every other disparity that it can imagine. It believes that the shakedown scam is the best strategy for benefitting black America, and that destroying the NFL in the process will be a net plus. Anyone have any new ideas for making black millionaires?
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The liberal fascists in charge of higher education support “academic freedom” — for themselves.
I recently attended a panel discussion at my alma mater, the University of Texas in Austin. The topic was “Free Speech on College Campuses: Where to Draw the Line?” The event, held during Free Speech Week, was co-sponsored by UT’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE), the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis (IUPRA), and The Opportunity Forum, all funded in whole or in part by the state of Texas. IUPRA’s mission “is to use applied policy research to advocate for the equality of access, opportunity, and choice for African Americans and other populations of color.”
The discussion, led by the Interim Vice-President of DDCE, Leonard Moore, was framed in these terms:
College campuses do not want to become venues for hate speech. However, they also do not want to suppress the expression of free ideas. Recent incidents on college campuses involving controversial speakers have sparked a surge in disruptive and sometimes violent protests by activists. How should college campuses respond to hate speech? What are the constitutional limits on restricting speech on college campuses?
In the wake of recent, highly-publicized incidents at Middlebury, William & Mary, Berkeley, Claremont McKenna, Evergreen State, Texas Southern, and other colleges, the event attracted a large crowd, big enough to fill a lecture hall in the computer science building.
The panelists were UT journalism professor Robert Jensen, a radical activist; IUPRA Director Kevin Cokley, a professor in UT’s African and African Diaspora Studies Department (AADS); Shetal Vohra-Gupta, a social work lecturer, Associate Director of IUPRA, and one of the architects of UT’s “hate and bias incident policy”; Brianna Davis, a doctoral student at UT in Educational Leadership and Policy (and a staff member at DDCE); H.W. Perry, a non-lawyer professor of government and law; and Sharon Watkins Jones, Director of Political Strategies for the Texas ACLU. Remarkably, in light of the subject, none of the panelists held a law degree.
The sponsoring entities, together with the AADS Department, substantially comprise the interlocking directorate of UT’s diversity-Black Studies–social justicecomplex, which understandably are not a representative cross-section of the UT community. So why was this important topic placed under their purview? The answer is identity politics. In the name of “diversity” and “inclusion,” UT seeks to impose a “campus climate” free of “bias,” “discrimination,” and “harassment.” This, in turn, is used to justify campus speech codes and a “Campus Climate Response Team” to investigate complaints. The resulting bureaucratic arrangement inevitably — and by design — weaponizes grievances and stifles robust debate.
Oddly, given the centrality of free speech to the discussion, the U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment caselaw received scant attention, including the recent unanimous ruling in Matal v. Tam that so-called “hate speech” — private expression offensive to a particular racial or ethnic group — is protected. Indeed, legal scholars are well aware that unless speech falls within a handful of narrow exceptions — such as “fighting words,” defamation, obscenity, and utterances that pose a “clear and present danger” — it is absolutely protected. Few propositions of constitutional law are as well-established as the rule that the expression of ideas cannot be prohibited just because some people find the ideas to be offensive, disagreeable, or objectionable.
Nor was UT’s speech code discussed by the panelists, possibly because it is embarrassingly vague and overbroad, barring “hostile or offensive speech” if it is “not necessary to the expression of any idea described in the Institutional Rules on Student Services and Activities.” Clear as a bell? The ham-handed PC nannies at UT offer guidance to students about “insensitive” Halloween costumes, investigate off-campus fraternity parties for “inappropriate themes,” and scold student groups for conducting peaceful protests that purportedly “direct negative sentiment toward their peers.”
Unfortunately, many higher education administrators, especially those responsible for enforcing the prevailing notions of political correctness on campus, are oblivious to the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. The correct answer to the question posed by the program at UT is: Free speech should be permitted on college campuses to the full extent required by the Constitution, and complaints should be investigated even-handedly with the paramount goal of protecting free expression. Sadly, that is not the case at UT or many other colleges and universities across the country. In the name of promoting “diversity” and “inclusion,” free speech is routinely suppressed. And, ironically, the UT faculty and administrators responsible for promoting “diversity” seem utterly unconcerned with political or ideological
The panelists expressed a range of opinions, varying from far-left-of-center to merely left-of-center, but most accepted as a given that — absent intervention by the UT administration — students might be “harmed” by campus speech that is offensive, “hateful,” indicative of “privilege,” or tending to “oppress” a “marginalized group.” The moderator questioned whether the university might be doing college students a disservice by “coddling” them and treating them like “snowflakes” in order to shield them from opinions they may find uncomfortable (albeit which are prevalent in the real world), but the consensus from the panel was that “trigger warnings” and “safe places” are necessary and desirable. It is a sad commentary on the degree of political bias within academia that the representative from the American Civil Liberties Union was the most balanced speaker on the issue of free speech (although even the ACLU may be yielding to the “heckler’s veto”).
While the violent confrontation in Charlottesville occurred in a public park, not the University of Virginia campus, the proponents of campus speech codes cite “safety” concerns as grounds for restricting the First Amendment rights of students, student organizations, and outside speakers. By conflating physical violence with amorphous “psychological” and “emotional” harm, the would-be campus Thought Police justify censorship in the guise of preventing “hate speech.” As one of the panelists, Ms. Vohra-Gupta, wrote in an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle entitled “More universities need to embrace anti-hate policies”:
Freedom of speech is not an absolute right. The intent behind freedom of speech is the right to free speech without fear of government interference. It seems some have taken this constitutional right to mean having the freedom of speech without any interference at all. Universities have a right to ensure all students have access to an educational environment free from discrimination.… Universities are a beacon of learning, but without ensuring intent to engage in safe, open and civil dialogue as free speech was intended [sic], marginalized students will live in constant fear. (Emphasis added.)
The notion that the psychic tranquility of “marginalized students” (whoever they are) justifies suppression of other students’ free speech finds no support in First Amendment jurisprudence, but is a central tenet of “critical race theory,” from which UT’s speech code was derived.
In an IUPRA Policy Report co-authored by Ms. Vohra-Gupta, she contends that due to endemic racism on all college campuses “it is important to disrupt existing power structures and promote social justice for marginalized students of color.” Race-neutral policies are insufficient because “they promote White supremacy by invalidating students’ identities and experiences who are from different racial backgrounds.” Accordingly, “it is clear that the dominant ideology, White privilege, is not fully dismantled, the power differentials and lived experiences with which marginalized students of color come with is not recognized, and repercussions of covert (as well as overt) forms of racism are not handled in the most justice-based manner.”
Another IUPRA document co-authored by Ms. Vohra-Gupta advocates a definition of “hate speech” based on the subjective perception of the person to whom it is directed that it was “motivated by prejudice or hate because of that person’s race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex/gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability, or sexual orientation.” The document suggests that the criteria for serving on the “response team” responsible for investigating complaints include “majority representation of marginalized groups, knowledge base of intersectionality of oppression and how bias and prejudice exist in implicit and explicit ways, and passion to eliminate bias, prejudice, and oppression on campus.” IUPRA concludes that “Policies designed through dominant culture do not account for marginalized students’ concerns.” This pseudo-academic gobbledygook is a prescription for a kangaroo court. Not only is the IUPRA’s jargon-filled analysis intolerant of free speech and disrespectful of the First Amendment, by explicitly advocating race-based differentials for legal protection, it is also racist.
Predictably, given the orientation of the panelists, no one on the panel offered a coherent definition of “hate speech” — nor is there one. As near as I can tell, campus “diversity” enforcers believe that “hate speech” consists of the expression of views with which they disagree, especially if the speaker is a white male (often labeled a “white supremacist” or a member of a “privileged group”), the topic involves race (which makes the objectionable opinion “racist” or “discriminatory”), or the speaker is associated with a disfavored group such as a fraternity or conservative organization. I was surprised when Professor Jensen suggested that the entire Greek system at UT should be banned, even fraternities situated off-campus, on the ground that they are oppressive “rape factories.” Another panelist referred (without explanation) to a campus group, Young Conservatives of Texas, as having a “legacy of hatred.” So much for tolerance.
The overwhelmingly-progressive faculty and administration of UT must remain cognizant of the fact that that UT serves the public, and that Texas is a conservative state. The UT “bubble” is pronounced enough, and UT’s inbred “diversity bureaucracy” is even more insular. The panelists seemed incredulous that anyone could be opposed to affirmative action, or that outside speakers such as Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, or Milo Yiannopoulos should have a right to appear on campus. The panelists seemed amenable to curbing outside speakers based solely on the threat of violence by protesters, thus empowering the heckler’s veto. When the moderator of the panel mentioned that his sister voted for Donald Trump — as did a lopsided majority of Texas voters — the panelists, and many in the audience, reacted with disbelief. Even knowing someone with conservative beliefs seemed inconceivable to the panelists! Yet these are the “experts” convened to comment on campus free speech. Such cloistered attitudes reflect poorly on an institution supposedly devoted to promoting pluralism and intellectual diversity.
The panelists expressed a strong consensus in favor of their own academic freedom — the absolute right to dictate the content of the courses they teach and the style of pedagogy they adopt. But the students they teach — especially conservatives — should not enjoy reciprocal protection; they can fend with the Thought Police. This is abject hypocrisy. UT should rescind its restrictive speech code and adopt in its place the model policy recommended by the Goldwater Institute. If UT won’t do this on its own, the Texas legislature should impose a neutral policy by statute, as North Carolina has. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has made protecting free speech on Texas college campuses a priority. The Senate State Affairs Committee could begin by taking a hard look at the liberal fascists running amok at UT.
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