Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher and scofflaw, was hailed by some people as a folk hero and patriot recently when he—and his followers–engaged in a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Caty Enders (Esquire) described the scene in Bunkerville, Nevada, as pundits and politicians descended on the Bundy camp last week “to throw in their American flag hats with the BLM protestors.” She said that a FOX News van had been parked by the side of the road for days—and that “militia snipers kept a trained watch” up on a ridge “as Bundy held court.” She added that disciples of Bundy came from far and wide “to share their personal theories as to why the government was enforcing a court order.”
Bundy has had a number of advocates who have spoken in support of his militant stance against the BLM. Those advocates included some prominent politicians and members of the media. Sean Hannity was one of Bundy’s biggest boosters and helped to make him into a folk hero. Hannity talked with Bundy on a number of occasions on his Fox News show. Joan Walsh (Salon) asked a pertinent question about Bundy on Friday: “How does a guy who declared early on ‘I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing’ become a folk hero in the first place?” She said that both Hannity and Fox News should have realized that the Nevada rancher was “too toxic” prior to his “ongoing self-exposure as a racist.” She added that the extremism of Bundy’s statement about the US government “should have been warning enough that Bundy was not only crazy but dangerous…”
Enders posed a question that was in the same vein as Walsh’s: “Exactly how difficult was it, though, to determine pretty early on that Bundy and his followers were using the threat of force to back up some terrifyingly misguided beliefs?” Enders provided some insight into the thinking and beliefs of Bundy and disciples of his with whom she talked.
Members of the Bundy Brigade Speak Out
Enders spoke to a militia member named Mark who was affiliated with the Oath Keepers group. Mark explained to her “the truth behind public land management.” He said, “The assumption is that the BLM is part of the federal government. But we need to check the facts on that one. The BLM doesn’t work for the government: they work for the United Nations. They might as well be wearing blue helmets. If we find out there’s money being exchanged between Harry Reid and the Chinese government, no one should be surprised.”
Another Bundy disciple told Enders that “Bar-certified lawyers, like the ones who prosecuted Bundy, have sworn loyalty to the British government, whose statutes encourage sex with clients. ‘That’s what they do with all their clients.’”
Enders spent time talking to a former cop who chuckled as he related a story about one of his buddies who once worked as a sheriff in New Mexico. He said his buddy got into some trouble after he pulled over a group of illegals one night. He said his pal “didn’t have room to haul ‘em all, so he put a chain around their neck and put a padlock through it, went to the next one, then he chained ‘em to a tree!” Enders said that the former cop then buckled with laughter as he told her how his friend “left ‘em and went to town to get his pickup to haul ‘em all back in. So, you might imagine, that didn’t play well — ha! You’re a young’un, but everything wasn’t against the law, way back when.” The former cop also told Enders that it was now being proved that the Bureau of Land management was acting on orders “from Troy and Harry Reid, who want to build a solar farm on the land — or a wind farm.”
One of Bundy’s disciples drove a beige sedan covered with the following message:
IF YOU WERE BORN IN 1980 AND AFTER. YOU MAY BE IMPLANTED WITH A GOVERNMENT MICROCHIP WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE: GOOGLE DOCTORS THAT REMOVE MICROCHIPS.
Cliven Bundy, God’s Messenger
During the time that Enders spent at the Bundy camp, she witnessed one of the public addresses the Nevada rancher made to his followers. She said that as Bundy—who had just been given a standing ovation—took the stage, he didn’t seem pleased. She said that Bundy reproached the crowd “for failing to follow the word of God – to the letter …”— which he claimed was being “delivered through him.” He wasn’t happy that his supporters failed “to follow his instructions to tear down the toll booths at Lake Mead and disarm the Park Service.” Bundy added, “The message I gave to you all was a revelation that I received. And yet not one of you can seem to even quote it.” He continued, “The records of our bible — how long have they been kept? Thousands of years. They’ve been turned over generation after generation, buried, and all kinds of things happen to ‘em. And yet, here, something I felt was inspired [by God] and yet we haven’t even carried it forth for even a couple of days. Shame on us.”
Bundy expressed frustration because his followers hadn’t been able to deter the BLM “within an hour”—“as the revelation had prophesied.” When an hour had passed, Bundy reportedly got into his bulldozer and decided to march on the BLM himself. His dozer got stuck in the mud—and that led to Bundy’s receiving yet another revelation: “It come to my mind real plain — the good Lord said, ‘Bundy, it’s not your job, it’s THEIR job.’” Bundy reiterated that revelation a little differently in an effort to ensure that his followers understood what he had just told them, “This is not my job, it’s YOUR job.”
Bundy said that he received a message that morning after he prayed. He claimed that he heard a voice say, “Sheriff Gillespie, your work is not done. Every sheriff across the United States, take the guns away from the United States bureaucrats.”
Uncivil Disobedience
Even The Weekly Standard–as well as Glenn Beck–has been critical of Cliven Bundy. The magazine’s Scrapbook explained the whole Bundy situation with regard to grazing fees and court rulings. The Scrapbook said that what had transpired over the years didn’t sound “like the dread hand of tyranny, in Nevada or Washington, oppressing an innocent farmer, or pushing some law-abiding citizen around.” It said it sounded, instead, “like a rancher gaming the system to his own financial advantage, and disguising his scheme in populist rhetoric: refusing to pay a tax which others must pay, and ‘tying up the courts’—for two decades!—as he continues to ignore the law.”
The Weekly Standard:
Far from acting in an arbitrary or capricious manner, the federal government has shown patience and forbearance in the face of lawlessness that customarily lands people in jail. It is worth noting that Bundy’s rancher-neighbors and the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, who contend with the same federal policies, offer him little support.
Apocalypse Cow – Welfare Rancher, Part 1 (The Daily Show)
Apocalypse Cow – Welfare Rancher, Part 2 (The Daily Show)
SOURCES
Fox News’ new laughingstock: Cliven Bundy — and Stephen Colbert — will destroy Sean Hannity (Salon)
Uncivil Disobedience (The Weekly Standard)
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Elaine, I had not caught up with the comments and had not seen the Teresa Walsh article. It was informative. Thanks
Paul: “Supak – a call to authority is not a fallacy,”
Yes it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
“A is an authority on a particular topic
A says something about that topic
A is probably correct”
In Nick’s case, he does the double. He appeals to his own “authority” using anecdote in place of studies of the whole, and then he denigrates me by suggesting that a mere stagehand cannot possibly know about that which he is giving anecdotal evidence as proof of the whole.
Funny what stagehands can learn when they get a degree in Philosophy.
NICK: “What I’m saying is SSD went from being overly difficult under all administrations for a generation to a carte blanche under Obama w/ no due diligence in actually investigating claims. ”
What I’m saying is that you’re wrong. I’ve proven you wrong, and you ignore it. This is what BSers do…. So, I’m not surprised.
Reagan changed SSD to make it easier to get. You started your math in 2003 under Bush, and you ignored the fact that it was the Little Bush Depression that caused the increase. I even told you how recession cause people who were disabled but working to go get their measly little check.
Now you blame Obama for not doing the job of investigating claims. Not only is this BS, but it’s ignorant. Administrative judges investigate the claims on appeal. It is not easy to get past them.
I also explained how Republicans don’t hire enough administrative judges, and when Democrats go to clear the backlog, people blame the democrat.
“You covered a lot of other topics in your well thought and written SUBSTANTIVE comment. ”
So did I. But you ignored it.
“SSD went from a bureaucratic drain on legit claimants to a blank check. ”
Complete crap.
“Projectionists, but w/ the theatres going digital, they are becoming obsolete.”
Direct, ignorant attack on me. First off… Projections in theaters have been digital for a long time. Slides went away in the last century. In fact, now, much of the scenery is just white walls with projection on them.
But I also ran massive automation operations, like on Lion King, I did lighting, audio, and so much more.
But that personal attack, wherein again you suggest that stagehands can’t possibly know as much as you can, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I have destroyed your ignorant arguments, put up with your abuse, and not reported you for your “shiite liberal” comments because I was trying to be patient enough to see if you could learn that your blatant BS about Obama is wrong.
I was wrong. You cannot learn. You don’t care about facts. You are, in the Philosophical sense of the word, a bullshitter.
“Huffpo, Baltimore Sun and CNN. ”
Links? And looking at your references, you don’t even make it clear what those sources were saying and what was just your own BS.
I see Paul, of course, has a link to Sen. Coburn’s BS about disability. Coburn, a BSer of great stature, is making the same crappy arguments I already addressed.
In this case, we have a $4.5 million dollar fraud uncovered. In a system of $200 billion a year. I wonder if Paul is capable of doing that math.
And this, from Paul’s story:
“In 2011, an investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations confirmed a previous review that disability decisions made by judges were insufficient 22% of the time nationwide. Judges’ decisions were also found to be a result of poor hearing practices and insufficient medical evidence.”
INSUFFICIENT. You know what that means, Paul and Nick? It means we’re UNDERPAYING the people who actually deserve it.
Now, if this little $4.5 million out of a program of $200 billion is your “proof” that fraud is rampant in the system, then you guys need to be laughed at until the day you die.
The trouble with Harry….
I’ve thought his statements about Romney’s taxes were meant to “encourage” Romney to prove him (Reid) a liar by releasing more of his tax returns. IIRC, Romney was most reluctant to release any more than one year.
IMO, it was purely political and a poor tactic that has provided Republicans a sound bite for attacking Harry.
However, I also believe that had more tax returns been released, they would have proved embarrassing to the Romney campaign.
I am pleased that there is some form of acknowledgment that there are a few on here that are intent on disruption. Maybe the light is slowly turning on. I recall the days when this was like a family sit down. Agree to disagree, a few snarks here and there.
Today, we get told that enough has been posted, yet I don’t see any recompense for the one or two that really disrupt this blog.
We don’t have to agree with each other’s point of view, but we also don’t have to make it personal either.
I really get most unhappy when the guest bloggers are attacked and expected to turn the other cheek. I think that they should have a little more control on here than being expected to take abuse when it’s totally unnecessary.
I agree we need more taxpayers.
Put people to work by rebuilding our infrastructure and those people will pay income taxes. Wholesale firings of employees by state and federal governments works against a possible solution. They’ve done a lot of firing recently. Additionally, throwing people out of work increases the need of social services – an added burden on state and federal budgets – which increases the need for additional tax revenue.
It doesn’t make sense to worry about too few taxpayers but still call for shrinking the government. You cannot “shrink” and “increase” at the same time. Presently, the Republicans seem to think you can.
Thanks for the Milbank link, Elaine.
Cliven Bundy among the strangest of bedfellows
Dana Milbank
April 27, 2014
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/04/27/cliven-bundy-among-strangest-bedfellows/8210217/
Excerpt:
Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy knows how to start a stampede.
After Bundy, who became a right-wing hero for his refusal to acknowledge the authority of the federal government, wondered aloud about whether “Negro” people were “better off as slaves,” conservative figures who had celebrated his cause rushed to distance themselves from him.
Sen. Rand Paul, who had condemned the federal government’s attempt to enforce court orders against Bundy: “Offensive.”
Sen. Dean Heller, who had declared Bundy’s followers “patriots”: “Appalling and racist.”
And Sean Hannity, who had led a Fox News campaign that made a hero of Bundy: “Beyond repugnant.”
Bundy boosters are right to be appalled – but they should not be shocked.
The anti-government strain of thought that Bundy advanced has been intertwined with racist and anti-Semitic views over the last several decades. Not all people who resist the authority of the federal government are motivated by race, of course, and not all racists are anti-government. But there is a long symbiosis between the two.
Among those who rallied to Bundy’s defense in Bunkerville, Nev. – the supporters Heller, a Nevada Republican, labeled “patriots” – was Wiley Drake, an Internet preacher affiliated with the “Oath Keepers” movement. According to reports from the scene, Drake told the crowd of Bundy supporters that they shouldn’t bow to the “half-breed” President Obama.
In general terms, Bundy’s notion of state supremacy – “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing” – is a variant of states’ rights claims that go back to the Civil War and were revived in the segregationists’ opposition to civil rights laws. Because the federal government has been the protector of minority rights, states’ rights have long been used to justify discrimination.
Did Mitt Romney Release Enough of His Tax Returns?
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax returns on Friday.
By Teresa Welsh Sept. 21, 2012
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/09/21/did-mitt-romney-release-enough-of-his-tax-returns
Excerpt:
Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney Friday released his 2011 tax returns, following months-long calls to release more detailed information about his personal finances. He paid more than $1.95 million in taxes on nearly $13.7 million in income.
President Barack Obama and Democrats have been pressing Romney to release more of his financial records, but the Republican has only released the records for his taxes in 2010, and with Friday’s release, 2011. The millionaire and his wife say their taxes should not be a campaign issue and that they have followed all tax laws. After a Vanity Fair article revealed that Romney has bank accounts abroad in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, questions were raised about whether or not the candidate was guilty of tax evasion.
Democrats point to Romney’s secrecy as yet another way he’s out of touch with regular Americans, arguing that his stubborn refusal to release his tax returns proves he has something to hide. They have continually used the issue to paint Romney as a rich businessman who is unable to understand the economic struggles of the lower and middle class.
Previously Romney had only released his 2010 tax returns, which opponents say is not sufficient. Obama has released his returns for every year going back to 2000, although presidential candidates are not legally required to release their returns. The trend of candidates releasing the information was started by Romney’s father George when he ran for president and released 12 years of returns.
The Bundy Paradigm: Will You Be a Rebel, Revolutionary or a Slave?
By John W. Whitehead
April 21, 2014
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”—John F. Kennedy
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_bundy_paradigm_will_you_be_a_rebel_revolutionary_or_a_slave
Excerpt:
Those tempted to write off the standoff at the Bundy Ranch as little more than a show of force by militia-minded citizens would do well to reconsider their easy dismissal of this brewing rebellion. This goes far beyond concerns about grazing rights or the tension between the state and the federal government.
Few conflicts are ever black and white, and the Bundy situation, with its abundance of gray areas, is no exception. Yet the question is not whether Cliven Bundy and his supporters are domestic terrorists, as Harry Reid claims, or patriots, or something in between. Nor is it a question of whether the Nevada rancher is illegally grazing his cattle on federal land or whether that land should rightfully belong to the government. Nor is it even a question of who’s winning the showdown— the government with its arsenal of SWAT teams, firepower and assault vehicles, or Bundy’s militia supporters with their assortment of weapons—because if such altercations end in bloodshed, everyone loses.
…
So if average Americans, having largely lost all of the conventional markers of influencing government, whether through elections, petition, or protest, have no way to impact their government, no way to be heard, no assurance that their concerns are truly being represented and their government is one “by the people, of the people, and for the people,” as opposed to being engineered expressly for the benefit of the wealthy elite, then where does that leave them?
To some, the choice is clear. As psychologist Erich Fromm recognized in his insightful book, On Disobedience: “If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a revolutionary). He acts out of anger, disappointment, resentment, yet not in the name of a conviction or a principle.”
Unfortunately, the intrepid, revolutionary American spirit that stood up to the British, blazed paths to the western territories, and prevailed despite a civil war, multiple world wars, and various economic depressions has taken quite a beating in recent years. Nevertheless, the time is coming when each American will have to decide: will you be a slave, rebel or revolutionary?
Paul,
How many years of tax returns did Romney make public?
Sorry, Elaine,, my garbling the spelling of your name was a typo
laine: Remember Romney in the first debate asking, ” Mr. President, what are these tax breaks for sending jobs overseas that you speak of? I’m not aware of any tax breaks (like that).
Schulte: Social science is more of a science than economics.
In fact, social science is to astronomy what economics is to astrology.
I mean Paul Indoctrinated.
Wonderful Specimen,
“Social science is an academic discipline concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It includes anthropology, economics, political science, psychology and sociology. In a wider sense, it may often include some fields in the humanities such as archaeology, history, law, and linguistics.” (Wikipedia, “Social Science”).
randyjet,
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill
By Matt Taibbi
August 29, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
Excerpt:
Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America’s federal borrowing. “A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation,” he declared. “Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love.” Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it’s going to burn our children alive.
And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.
By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.
The unlikeliness of Romney’s gambit isn’t simply a reflection of his own artlessly unapologetic mindset – it stands as an emblem for the resiliency of the entire sociopathic Wall Street set he represents. Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it’s dusted itself off, it’s had a shave and a shoeshine, and it’s back out there running for president.
Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street’s greed revolution. He’s not a two-bit, shifty-eyed huckster like Lloyd Blankfein. He’s not a sighing, eye-rolling, arrogant jerkwad like Jamie Dimon. But Mitt believes the same things those guys believe: He’s been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution, a decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let’s-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let’s-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy. Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of “creative destruction,” and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America’s rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/republicans-stuck-with-cliven-bundy GOP glued themselves to Bundy and now they are stuck with him.
SWM – I really wouldn’t worry too much about what TPM has to say about the Republican Party. They have little influence there. 🙂
randyjet,
Mitt Romney’s Tax Dodge
A guide to how the multimillionaire twists the law to hide his massive fortune – and avoid paying his fair share in taxes
By Tim Dickinson
October 12, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/mitt-romney-s-tax-dodge-20121012
Excerpt:
How does a private-equity kingpin worth at least $250 million pay a lower tax rate – just 14 percent – than many teachers and firemen? By exploiting tax loopholes that favor the rich and hiding his money in the world’s most notorious havens for tax cheats. That’s what Mitt Romney has done, according to his 2010 and 2011 tax returns, a trove of secret Bain Capital documents unearthed by Gawker, and exposés by Bloomberg and Vanity Fair. “The bottom line,” says Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel at Citizens for Tax Justice, “is that these are ways to reduce your taxes that are only available to rich people.”
Are Romney’s tax dodges legal? It’s impossible to say for sure, given how little he has disclosed. But tax experts note that there are plenty of red flags, including an investigation by New York prosecutors into tax abuses at Bain Capital that began on Romney’s watch. “He aggressively exploits every loophole he can find,” says Victor Fleischer, a professor of tax law at the University of Colorado. “He’s pushing the limits of tax law beyond what many think is reasonable.” Indeed, a look at Romney’s finances reveals just how skilled he is at hiding his wealth – and paying a fraction of his fair share in taxes.
SWISS SECRECY
On his 2010 tax return, Romney disclosed that his wife Ann’s trust held $3 million in a Swiss bank account at UBS, which had just been busted by the IRS for abetting criminal tax evasion by U.S. citizens. As part of a $780 million settlement, UBS was forced to turn over the names of thousands of its long-secret clients, who were then offered a partial amnesty: disclose their hidden assets, pay penalties and avoid prosecution. Romney – who had omitted the Swiss account on previous financial disclosures – suddenly came clean. Did he reveal his secret account to avoid prosecution for tax evasion? “He’s not quite denied that,” says Daniel Shaviro, a professor of tax law at NYU. The record of paying an IRS penalty on the Swiss account could explain why Romney has been so determined to keep his 2009 tax return under wraps.
BERMUDA SHELL GAME
Romney has buried an unknown, and perhaps significant, chunk of his wealth in what SEC filings describe as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney” – driving speculation that the candidate is worth far more than he has disclosed publicly. Wealthy Americans frequently launder investments through such offshore shell companies, passing themselves off as foreign investors – a scam that makes them exempt from paying U.S. taxes, even on profits from American deals. Romney created his shell company, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, in 1997 and reportedly involved it in many of Bain’s biggest deals, including the takeover of Domino’s Pizza. Yet he failed to report its existence on any financial disclosures prior to his 2010 tax return, even though it is under his control. “What is this corporation? What does it do? Why was it set up in a tax haven?” asks Wilkins. “There’s a reason why it’s in Bermuda.”
LUXEMBOURG SHELTER
In 2000, when Romney was CEO of Bain, the firm hit the jackpot: A $40 million investment in the Italian yellow pages during the tech boom returned an astonishing $1 billion. Romney himself reportedly ended up with $50 million – a cut larger than Bain’s initial investment. To evade taxes on the gains, Romney steered the profits through Bain subsidiaries in Luxembourg, Europe’s most notorious tax shelter, where the money would be exempt from foreign taxes. In 2009, as a board member for Marriott, Romney also helped the hotel chain use the same tax tricks to shelter more than $200 million in Luxembourg. Marriott wound up paying less than half the corporate tax rate – just 16.9 percent.
Elaine- how did that happen!!! According to Harry Reid (speaking from the well of the Senate) Romney had paid no taxes in ten years. So, are you saying Harry Reid was lying his ass off?
Paul Schulte
Dredd – the biggest joke in academia is that there is no science in social science.
===========
The science in social science can be used in a print out of what you will answer to a set of questions in a lab environment.
Over and over again.
As well as for those who have the same impaired cultural amygdala circuits that plague you.
That is a hallmark of science: a hypothesis that predicts the outcome of a scenario based upon the precepts of the hypothesis.
Loud mouthed ignorance is also predictable by the social science Agnotology.
You are a wonderful specimen (like a certain senator) and contribute greatly to social science.
Thanks.
Dredd – that is the challenge of liberal social science: inventing things to prove themselves right about how they think.