Today is a sad anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It is all the more sad due to the success of the Chinese regime to wipe out memories of the massacre in the country while crushing dissent. It falls to the rest of the world to keep the memory alive in the hope that truth, like water, will find its way through the most formidable walls.
On June 4th, the Chinese regime massacred students and citizens who gathered to demand freedom. Some estimates put the death toll in the thousands.
China has implemented an Orwellian rating system for citizens — tying their good behavior scores to the use of basic services and perks. Young people know little of the massacre and frankly may care even less. All of the young people who I have spoken with from China describe an apolitical generation with little interest in the massacre. One such Chinese person working in the United States as an au pair simply told us that she does not believe it ever happened because the government would not do such a thing.
In the meantime, outside of China, government officials are defending the massacre as necessary to avoid “turbulence.”
There will be a Congressional hearing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “Tiananmen at 30: Examining the Evolution of Repression in China,” at 10:00 a.m. – Noon
Some 23 Human rights organizations will hold at the Capitol a rally starting at 1:30 p.m.
Here is a list of activities for June Fourth [Tiananmen Square Massacre] 30th Anniversary (including events throughout the United States) (Human Rights in China, 30 May 2019)
The true identity of the “tank man” remains unresolved but his fate is assumed. (There were others who stood before tanks on that day). The British tabloid Sunday Express identified the man as Wang Weilin, 19, who was later charged with “political hooliganism” and “attempting to subvert” the nation. Like thousands of others, he disappeared with virtually all evidence the greatest fight for liberty in the history of modern China.
These events help guarantee that China cannot erase the memory of these incredibly brave people who gave their lives for basic human rights.
Parents, elect Joe Biden and you will accelerate the day in which the Chinese Communists become your children’s new masters
They have a billion souls more than us in population, their economy is rising fast, they are smart, they are sophisticated, and they are neck and neck with us in the race towards AI
And they are “not nice” to say the least
there will come a day when we look back and curse “Russiagate” as a terrible distraction from the real adversary
Yes, Kurtz, because Trump’s abandonment of the TPP and pushing China to find other sources for soybeans – they exist – while lacking any coherent bargaining position other than gratifying his own needy ego will no doubt pay big dividends and will not convince China that we are indeed the fools they suspected we might be.
ecause Trump’s abandonment of the TPP
Of course he abandoned it. No one knows what’s in it but lobbyists, and they only know about the carve-outs they secured.
The renamed TPP – which until the Obama Troll-in-Chief Trump, the GOP was expected to support in Congress – is in full bloom in the region, and without us.
“The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), also known as TPP11 or TPP-11,[2][3][4][5] is a trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. At the time of its signing, the eleven countries’ combined economies represented 13.4 percent of the global gross domestic product, approximately US$13.5 trillion, making the CPTPP the third largest free-trade area in the world by GDP after the North American Free Trade Agreement and European Single Market.[6]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_and_Progressive_Agreement_for_Trans-Pacific_Partnership
This guy Anon knows nothing. He quotes from Wikipedia because he is unable to paraphrase or even present a point of view. People can argue over TPP but the question of our IT being transferred to China and patents not being observed is not solved with the trade partnership we had. If it were we wouldn’t have the IT or patent problems.
When one looks at trade and if one understands it, Anon doesn’t, one recognizes that when the playing field is level eventually the buyers turn to the sellers with the least marginal profits along with the lowest prices. As China has progressed their salaries and total benefits have increased so that the costs of production have risen. People like Anon don’t look around at a labor force of hundreds of millions of people surrounding China and elsewhere in the world. They can produce those goods as well as China and should Chinese sales of goods suffer in the American market look for goods from Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. That is a considerable economic risk for China and they have already noted that Vietnam has stolen a portion of their industry.
Why has the US made such stupid deals in the past. You can ask our politicians such as Joe Biden and see how Joe’s son has utilized his father’s political capital in billions of dollars in value. You can look at Hillary Clinton and see much the same. Our politicians on both sides of the aisle have been selling out the American citizen especially American families. People like Anon are too wrapped up with their anger and hate so they end up helping those that are probably causing harm to his own children and future generations.
Allan clearly has no idea what the TPP was/is. It was/is a free trade agreement – with environmental and labor protections beyond any similar deal – between the Pacific Rim nations with the exception of China and designed to counter Chinese power and dominance. It is the world’s 3rd largest market and is successfully operating without our involvement thanks to Trump.
Don’t forget: Allan claims to be a classical liberal. The first classical liberal is widely reputed to have been Adam Smith who famously advocated something he called laissez faire. Don’t ask me. The conservatives of that time called Smith a Radical because he wanted to get rid of Royal grants of monopoly in addition to eliminating tariffs. I wonder what those archeo-conservatives would have thought about Pwesident Twump. Maybe Allan knows. Maybe not. Go figure.
Anonymous, you really don’t know much about classical liberalism. I don’t know that my beliefs are classical liberal but I think they are closer to a classical liberal than anything else that I can think of. A lot of brilliant people have contributed to what one thinks of when they think of a classical liberal.
Laissez faire is a good word to use if you understand what you are talking about. Your use of the word might lead one to think of anarchy, but Adam Smith didn’t believe in anarchy and believed in the need for the services of government. These terms are not on off switches rather blends. Hayek and Milton Friedman who also are frequently considered classical liberals also believe in limited government.
I hope this information is useful to you so you better understand the world around you.
Anon’s lack of brain power is why the Chinese have been stealing our IP for decades. He assumes the TPP protects us from such theft even though it occurs under his nose.
Free trade to us is free trade. Free trade to China is theft of our IP leading to loss of income and jobs, dumping leading to outsourcing, and all sorts of things. Anon can think only one level deep so one has to recogniz that what Anon says is worthless. His ideology counts more to him than American families and even his own family in the future when he is likely gone.
Allan’s right. I did it. It was me.
OK, this is clearly a bot. Nothing in that post relates in any way to what I posted.
If Allan is a real person, he should get up off his back and make sense.
On the other hand, nevermind.
You just don’t understand Anon, whether it is the undeveloped countries of the TPP or China we end up facing the same problem, inappropriate outsourcing that costs Americans jobs. When Americans are unemployed they produce nothing and add nothing, but they take from the general treasury. That general treasury has to take from business which causes the costs of business to climb. That causes a climb in prices and further outsourcing. That means a loss of jobs.
Did the TPP equalize trade? No.
Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
In this TPP study, the authors find: “TPP would generate net losses of GDP in the United States and Japan. For the United States, they project that GDP would be 0.54 percent lower than it would be without TPP, 10 years after the treaty enters into force. Japan’s GDP is projected to decrease 0.12 percent. ”
In brief the TPP lowers the tariffs Vietnam places on skis and snowplows. How does that help the US when Vietnam has no snow?
Yeah, but BO wanted it, so he and Shill will defend it, just like the Iran deal. Partisan Democrats have only one criticism of anything done by that Administration, and that’s that they were too cautious in servicing certain pressure groups.
I should qualify that by saying that crud like Jill have another menu of complaints, based on the assumption that the United States and Israel are the source of the world’s problems. Obama and Hellary are too sophisticated to think that way.
DSS, Shill is a rather benign leftist that doesn’t know very much, but one could probably sit comfortably with him at a barbeque. Anon is malignant, stupid and has a hair trigger.
Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump
Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!
8:01 AM – 13 May 2018
The TPP is more than just an attempt at reducing tariffs (it doesn’t end the inequities), it also places the US under laws not favorable to the US.
Do the rules shift investment to or away from the US? Away.
Who interprets those rules? Not the US.
Many complain about high drug costs. TPP was a win for big pharma and high drug prices in the US. It seems it enhanced monopoly prote ction of the pharmaceutical houses.
Back to China: Look at the ***”rules of origin”*** Suddenly goods are flowing fro countries not part of the TPP, China in particular, so China doesn’t have to abide by the rules if it dumps steel to a TPP country that enhances it and sells it to America. Bye bye more American steel. In the end though TPP excludes China it enhances their trade at the expense of TPP rules and the US economy. It prevents us from incentivizing China to act appropriately in trade.
Anon, as I have said over and over again, you are a shallow and ignorant person that doesn’t know what he is talking about. You provide your talking points that are meaningless and then when real information is provided you run away like the coward you are.
“…On December 30, 2018, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership entered into force. The first six countries to ratify the agreement were Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and Singapore. On January 14, 2019, the CPTPP entered into force for Vietnam.
The agreement will make it more difficult for U.S. businesses, especially farmers, to export to Japan. U.S. food will be more expensive than that from signatories like Canada…
All countries agreed to cut down on wildlife trafficking. That helps elephants, rhinoceroses, and marine species the most. It prevents environmental abuses, such as unsustainable logging and fishing. Countries that don’t comply will face trade penalties.
All parties have signaled that other members can join in the future. So far, the Philippines and China have indicated an interest. China, the world’s largest economy, would take America’s place in the agreement. That would radically shift the balance of power in Asia.
…TPP Pros
The original TPP would have boosted U.S. exports and economic growth. This should create more jobs and prosperity for the 12 countries involved. It will increase exports by $305 billion per year by 2025. U.S. exports would increase by $123.5 billion. It would benefit the machinery, auto, plastics, and agriculture industries.
It would have increased exports by removing 18,000 tariffs placed on U.S. exports to the other countries. The United States has already withdrawn 80% of these tariffs on imports. The TPP would have evened the playing field.
The agreement would have added $223 billion a year to incomes of workers in all the countries, with $77 billion going to U.S. workers.
The TPP trade area would have been bigger than the North American Free Trade Agreement, currently the world’s largest. In 2012, the estimated trade value between all countries was $1.5 trillion in goods. In 2011, it was $242 billion in services. It would have been smaller than the TTIP. That’s the other large regional trade agreement being negotiated. It’s between the United States and the European Union. Talks went into limbo when Trump took office.
Notably, the TPP excluded China. That was deliberate. It was meant to balance the trade dominance of both China and India in East Asia. The TPP would have given the United States an excuse to intervene in trade disputes in the oil-rich South China Sea. China has been beefing up its military to back its incursions in that area.
TPP Cons
Most of the gains in income would have gone to workers making more than $88,000 a year. Free trade agreements contribute to income inequality in high-wage countries. They promote cheaper goods from low-wage countries.
This would have been particularly true for the TPP because it protected patents and copyrights. Higher-paid owners of intellectual property would have received more of the income gains.
The agreement regarding patents would have reduced the availability of cheap generics. That will raise the cost of many drugs. Competitive business pressures will reduce the incentives in Asia to protect the environment. Last but not least, the trade agreement could supersede financial regulations. …”
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-trans-pacific-partnership-3305581
Anon, I take note that you have to copy your argument because you don’t understand the subject matter.
“Countries that don’t comply will face trade penalties.” Do those trade penalties directly affect China? No. They increase costs to TPP participating nations so that those nations outside of the TPP agreement can break those rules and based on *rules of origin* can sell their products at a lower price through a TPP nation. Anon, you are really stupid.
“China, the world’s largest economy, would take America’s place in the agreement. That would radically shift the balance of power in Asia.”
China already is the dominant player in that area and has seperate agreements with many of the TPP nations despite TPP so the impact of influence due to TPP is very limited. Tell us how China benefits especially when they benefit from the low tariffs when they use TPP as an intermediary? You can’t because you don’t know. You are dumb. That is why you copied an article in rebuttal.
“This would have been particularly true for the TPP because it protected patents and copyrights.”
This is exactly the problem we face with China and TPP hurts rather than helps.
Anon posting responses from op-eds is not a true rebuttal for it merely states an opinion and doesn’t challange the opinions being rebutted. It is an easy way out for the ignorant but doesn’t advance any discussion.
Per Jaghdish Bhagwati, a true free trade treaty would be 10 pages long. What these ‘free trade treaties’ are is assemblages of carve-outs. The characters who lobbied for the carve-outs understand their own deal in the treaty, but no one understands the whole thing. This is what Mitch McConnell wanted to ‘fast track’. Most of the Senate Republican caucus are fools. They hate Ted Cruz because he’s not a man who suffers fools.
DSS, people like Anon don’t understand what “carve-outs” are. We have been sold down the drain by our politicians over and over again. It is the stupidity of people like Anon that permits it to continue.
maybe but soybeans are fungible. you know what that means? the same
so the global price of soybeans is probably whatever it is based on global demand, adjusted by logistics factors most of all
in other words, chinese demand will continue to exist, and as purchasers buy from one place and supply dries up there, then, they will readjust to buying from another place
in other words, maybe we will sell less to europe, but if europe can’t buy as much from brazil because of the chinese, then europe will buy more from here. see?
kind of like illegal drugs. interdiction can have an effect, and local supply and demand can matter a lot in small locales. but gross supply and demand still are the primary factors for the overall general price and production decisions
the worser picture for soybeans right now is excess spring rain.
many soy producers will just grow more corn if they expect demand for soy to slacken
wet cold spring will hurt corn and soy alike
Kurtz, somebody is using your account post nonsense about soybeans. You are not known for that kind of nonsense.
Let’s just say there is a reason we are bailing those farmers out for the second year in a row to the tune of billions. It’s not over spring rain.
Kurtz, all Trump had to do was acknowledge Russian meddling. He should have done so in his inaugural speech. He should have said, “I’m a victim too. Now my victory’s tainted. So I want to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible”.
Had Trump shown that concern from the earliest stage, we would have had the Mueller Probe.
But Trump not only ignored the meddling, he dismissed it out of hand with endless references to ‘fake news’. That’s what’s sparked The Mueller Probe! And that’s why half the country still believes Trump bears some guilt.
If you’re the president and you keep dismissing a security threat, you become part of that threat. No military unit would retain a Commander who kept dismissing an obvious threat. That Commander was be cashed and quite possibly Court Martialed.
Kurtz, all Trump had to do was acknowledge Russian meddling.
I can never figure out if you’re stupid or your contacts and Correct-the-Record convinced you that we were.
Tabby, here you express the idea that dismissing threats is smart strategy for presidents. Then you have the audacity to question ‘my’ intelligence for thinking that strategy is weak. Well tell us then, “Did that strategy work for Trump?”
Trump has recognized and discussed threats decades before he became President. He is the President who has taken these threats seriously.
DSS, do you think this blog advertises in the left wing hit sites for stupid people to join?
Trump is continuing to collude with the Russians in his defense of them and Putin and refusal to acknowledge, let alone do anything about their past and present interference and whatever they plan for the future. This is self serving treason and his desperate attempts to hide his finances probably more obstruction.
I guess the people at Correct-the-Record told you to just keep lying.
This tells anyone on the right or left that Anon is a liar and a fool.
well they don’t do that against the CIC. history is littered with armies that had bad commanders in chief.
the Russian interference was very small on the large scale of things. Russia as an adversary is real, and has a dangerous military, but small social and economic signficance.
Contrast that to the massive signficance of China. Let’s put our attention where it can do us some good, perhaps?
the bigger question i want to raise here, just for imaginations’ sake, is how the Chinese could actually influence elections if they wanted to do so
https://www.theepochtimes.com/flushing-lunar-new-year-parade-dyed-red-with-chinese-flags-locals-upset_2796111.html
NEW YORK—The main street in Flushing, Queens, was lined with more than 100 large Chinese flags, rising like crimson peaks above the crowds and billowing violently in the wind, as revelers welcomed the Year of the Pig at the annual Lunar New Year Parade.
The annual parade, which draws thousands of spectators each year, is a celebration of Asian-American culture as well as the contribution of Asian-Americans to New York society, according to event organizers the Flushing Chinese Business Association.
Parade-goers were greeted not only with dragon dancers and performers donned in traditional Chinese dress, but also the sight of more than 100 Chinese flag-bearers stationed behind police barricades along the parade route on Flushing’s Main Street on Feb. 9.
The flag-bearers were spaced roughly six feet apart for the length of about five blocks along the main thoroughfare of the bustling Chinese enclave. Each wielded identical five-star flags—a symbol of the unification of China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—which stood at roughly eight feet and filled Main Street with the blood-red color that signifies the Party. No American flag of comparable size could be seen along the street.
Organized Effort
A reporter from the Chinese-language Epoch Times at the parade observed a group of people distributing the Chinese flags outside an entrance to the Main Street subway station at roughly 10:30 am, half an hour before the parade started. After receiving their flags, the bearers then moved to designated positions along Main Street, with each person positioned at a police barricade.
Reporters from The Epoch Times and sister media NTD Television, posing as bystanders, asked several flag-bearers whether they could also carry a flag. One flag-bearer told a reporter that only people who pre-registered were able to carry one and that they must stand in an area designated by the organizer.
One male flag-bearer of African-American appearance told a reporter that he was paid $200 to carry the flag this year, adding that last year he was paid $20. Another male, an apparent coordinator who was giving out flags, was observed telling recipients to keep their red envelopes safe, adding that the payment was $30. Red envelopes containing cash gifts are traditionally given out during Chinese New Year.
A middle-aged man wearing gray was also observed telling people around him, “If people ask you whether you get money [for holding the flags], tell them there’s no money.”
At 11 a.m. at the start of the parade, Li Huahong, the head of a CCP front group known as the Chinese Anti-Cult World Alliance (CACWA), was observed instructing flag-bearers in the area to unfurl their flags. She also was seen ordering flag-bearers to stand in their designated area. In the past, the CACWA has harassed and intimidated local adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual group that is currently banned and heavily persecuted in mainland China.
The CACWA is currently banned from participating in the Flushing Lunar New Year parade after violating the organizer’s rules in a previous year. The group had displayed Chinese flags during the parade, in breach of a rule stipulating that participants must only carry American flags. The group also put up banners bearing hate speech against Falun Gong on their float.
The group also was behind the recent protests at Lincoln Center in New York against Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York-based classical Chinese dance company whose mission, according to its website, is to revive 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture. The company’s portrayal of a divinely inspired civilization and the ongoing persecution of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong has drawn ire from the communist regime.
Locals Upset
Peter Tu, chairman of the Flushing Lunar New Year Parade and executive-director of the Flushing Chinese Business Association, said he was upset after seeing the spectacle during the Feb. 9 parade.
Tu said this was the second year the flag-bearers were present in the spectator crowd, but there appeared to be even more Chinese flags this year.
The local community leader said he could not stop people from bearing the Chinese flag on the sidewalks, but implored that they should also carry the American flag, as a sign of respect for the country that they’ve adopted as their home.
“The American government [has given] us a lot of opportunity to let us have freedom, to have [the] opportunity to make business as well as we can,” he said.
“So we can’t say that we … [do not] appreciate America.”
Tu said that this behavior hurt the image of Asian-Americans and undermined efforts to bridge the cultural gap between the community and mainstream America.
Many parade-goers also expressed disappointment with the display.
One middle-age woman was observed telling a flag-bearer: “You’ve come to America where you can enjoy freedom, but you want to convert this place to [China’s] Shandong province. You’re digging your own grave.”
One parade-goer told a reporter, “These people should be investigated, find out what their background is.”
One man told a reporter that Li had previously offered him money to stand for an hour holding the flag, and told him to escape if people took photographs. The man said he refused Li’s offer.
Another said: “The five-star red flag is a kind of evil. It represents dictatorship, a fascist uprising.”
CCP Influence Overseas
Experts have increasingly warned about the Chinese communist regime’s efforts to co-opt overseas Chinese communities as part of its campaign to expand its influence in Western countries, including in the United States.
The CCP targets diaspora communities through its United Front Work Department (UFWD), a party agency tasked with spreading Beijing’s agenda overseas. As detailed in his 2018 book, “Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia,” Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Australia’s Charles Sturt University, explains that the UFWD seeks to infiltrate and co-opt overseas ethnic Chinese communities to both silence dissident voices and shape a sympathetic stance from Western societies towards the regime.
A 2018 report by Washington think-tank the Hoover Institution also raised concerns about CCP influence on Chinese-American communities. Titled “Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance,” the report, written by 22 top China experts, says that the CCP’s focus on diaspora communities has intensified in recent years to “become an important element in overall U.S.-China relations.”
“Beijing … views Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that presumes them to retain not only an interest in the welfare of China but also a loosely defined cultural, and even political, allegiance to the so-called Motherland,” the report says.
“Such activities not only interfere with freedom of speech within the United States but they also risk generating suspicion of Chinese Americans even though those who accept Beijing’s directives are a very small minority.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/nyregion/falun-gong-queens-federal-lawsuit.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/90177771/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-system-is-expanding-overseas
A report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says China’s social credit system will begin expanding past China’s borders to monitor Chinese citizens wherever they are globally. The system will also start applying to international companies that do business in China. As a result, the social credit system is not just shaping the behaviors of Chinese citizens beyond their border but international companies as well. If an international business gets a low social credit score, it could lead to fines for the company, higher interest rates for loans, or even the blacklisting of its products.
The threat of a negative social credit ranking recently pressured international airlines based in the U.S. and Australia to remove Taiwan on their international websites. It is feared that as China continues to roll out its social credit rating to businesses, those companies will feel they have no choice but to adhere to the Chinese Communist Party’s ideologies and worldview if they want to keep operating in the country.
ASK YOURSELVES THIS
what is my “SOCIAL CREDIT SCORE” according to the PRC?
You think perhaps, oh, I am not Chinese, so I don’t have one.
ha, ha, ha, stupid laowei
why would they NOT try and include us in their massive surveillance and control scheme too?
if you enter their country for tourism. if you send any money for any purpose directly in the stream of commerce. if you post on any of their owned media. if you use any “APPS” on your iphone which are owned by Chinese companies—
then I would bet, you have a “social credit score” too
enjoy your new masters, if you elect a president who doesn’t hold a keen edge against them.
and even then, it may still be an inexorable process. prospects are very troubling!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278
https://medium.com/predict/have-you-checked-your-social-credit-score-e36fe5a67051
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained
understand where you will be in this equation, foreigner, you big nosed hairy round eyed ghost person
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClOXMF80alY
revenge for the opium wars is long in coming but as you can see from this popular film “Yip Man” with donny chen beating a british boxer into a dead pulp, it still looms large in the national imagine.
Are you kidding? Democrats were accusing Trump of being a Russian Manchurian candidate. It was a complete hoax.
Trump was a victim of Russian meddling, in the form of the fraudulent dossier for which Hillary paid Russian agents in order to defraud voters.
He did say that over and over again.
“Kurtz, all Trump had to do was acknowledge Russian meddling.”
Along with a closed mind you apparently have closed ears as well.
“there will come a day when we look back and curse “Russiagate” as a terrible distraction from the real adversary”
Kurtz that is what the hate America crowd is looking for.
i think they are just naive and think they can get a temporary leg up from their foolishness in water cooler and cocktail party type conversations and maybe some perks if they have a politically oriented job.
Maybe they believe that american system will just reign supreme because of well the recency effect, that’s all
i think they prattle on about diversity and multiculturalism and they think nature is kind
nature is not kind. it does not care about “equality.” likewise their cherished diversity arises through the brutal processes of biological competition and the necessities of survival. diversity is destroyed by nature with the same carelessness with which it brings forth life in the first place.
nature can do away with us too, if we are weak and stupid. and it will.
America has a foe alright and if any foe exists it is China. Not the people, not the good hearted people of China, just the PRC system.
I think if I was the PRC Chicom leadership, I would make a 50 year plan to advance China in technology far and fast enough along towards AGI that it will essentially own the world before long and then nobody will be able to organize any resistance because they will own the lines of communication worldwide
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-tweaks-tech-supremacy-plan/4825319.html
oh wait, it’s not a 50 year plan, it’s a 25 year plan. this is just great alan, we may live long enough to see the world enslaved!
that is why the sanctions against Huawei are important and the trade war is crucial
the Belt and Road Initiative is another thing like this. Oh, they’re very, very clever. In a war of strategy against Washington, I feel we are deeply outmatched
Anon,
Given your claim that MediCare and MediCaid set low pricing, how do you explain the massive inflation in health care costs since these programs (and others) were instituted c.50 years ago.
These programs, and other government actions, prttey much prevented any elements of “the free market”. When you claim that the so-called “free market did not work”, well, duh, of course it won’t work when you destroy it.
Tom, had you been paying attention, there were discussions as far back as the 1980’s regarding medical advances and the ability of government and private insurance to pay for those advances.
One person needing an organ transplant is going to negate the insurance premiums of hundreds of payees. No one has figured out a way around this yet. The most brilliant experts are stumped. Do we ration healthcare? ..No one has an answer..!
But if you think our healthcare system can function on purely free-market principles, you should write a book explaining how and collect the Nobel Prize.
25 years ago I read “The Select” a novel by F. Paul Wilson. Wilson, a medical doctor moonlighting as a novelist, wrote this story about a diabolical med school. The book wasn’t that remarkable. But the novel hit upon an issue that concerned Dr Wilson: ‘The ability of society to pay for medical advances’.
It was clear to Wilson that our medical system was gong to crash at some point. Because medical advances were overloading the business model of our healthcare system. Wilson’s book was published in 1994, shortly after the Clinton’s failed drive for Universal Healthcare. Wilson knew the free market offered no solutions. There’s no profit in healthcare if everyone has access.
https://www.amazon.com/Select-F-Paul-Wilson/dp/0688046185
L4D says–Health care is a public good in exactly the same way that military defense is a public good. The Nation State has a duty (not a right) a duty to care for the health of its people in exactly the same way that The Nation State has a duty to defend the lives and the liberty of its people with force of arms if needs be.
Surely you have a right to hire private security forces to defend your private property. But only The Nation State in the pursuit of its duty can force you to pay taxes for the military defense of The Nation. Likewise, you have a right to contract for private health care insurance. But only The Nation State in the pursuit of its duty can force you to pay taxes for the health care of The Nation. If you don’t like paying your taxes, then you don’t really like The Nation State either. Do you?
What’s the difference between a right versus a duty? Do you have a duty to live? Or merely a right to live? Do you have a duty to be free? Or merely a right to be free? Do you have a duty to keep and bear arms? Or merely a right to keep and bear arms? Is free speech a duty? Is religious faith a duty? Who has got the power to force you to live, to force you to be free, to force you to keep and bear arms, to force you to speak or to force you to have religious faith?
Now who has the power to force you to be healthy?
I just saw L4B’s comment, and would like to express my appreciation for her additions to the usual platitutudes and horseshit** that is expected of her.
L4D says–Of the two of us, which one put the tutu in the word platitude?
Did you notice this article was about the People’s Republic of China?
Did you know that’s a communist state?
Did you know in theory that “all have access to medical care” in China?
Did you know that’s a complete lie?
Did you know that Chinese patients –always– with health insurance or not– have to pay money on the barrel to get any surgeries? Like bags of cash paid in hand to doctors, on top of everything else.
2005 story and it’s much the same
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113373075798913517
i hear the preferred method for such bribes is to find an extended family member who is a communist and send THAT guy, with the cash, because otherwise the bribe might not be a success, and they would just pocket the money and wait for the patient to die anyways. But if the brib-er is a CPC member, maybe they will have some pull
it’s that bad. that’s China. Worker’s paradise
Since the article about China was the leader, I will keep coming back to it.
It’s not that the Chicom PRC leadership doesn’t care about health care in China. That is, so long as they can get their own personal needs met ok. That’s good enough.
The rest of the slave population, who cares? Let them manage with such tools as they can devise. The national leadership is focused on international competition and global strategy against the American Hegemon or Empire or whatever you call it.
They don’t care about health care or whether or not people live a few more years or not. That’s below their radar. Big Don is supposedly the greatest threat to America, and “putin.” Ha! Can you imagine? Xi probably has a belly laugh every day over the stupidity of our vaunted “Free press.”
In America, the national debate is focused on things like that and whether or not trannies can use whatever potty they wish. Really, is there hope that America won’t be enslaved by the PRC within 25 years? I don’t have much. that’s why I’m learning Chinese. and I post under a fake name., I don’t want them to find these posts and stick me in the gulag when I should be retiring to a comfortable venue instead.
maybe in 10 years the Chinese will just buy Russia outright if they want to bother.
One way or another, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch, whatever they decide to do.
Putin is probably a big missed opportunity.
The US might have made friends with him to help contain China. so much for that idea.
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/russia
Kurtz, you ignore the fact that Russia – not China – interfered in our election and may have impacted the final result and as far as we know is still at it. They are also interfering in European elections in an effort to break up the EU and the alliance of democracies which they view as a threat. Of course Trump shares all these goals with Putin and is his actual apologist and water carrier, China is doing none of those things. The point is not that long term China is a bigger threat – as well as bigger market – but that right now we have an aggressive opponent who appears to own our President and is fomenting problems in our critical alliances.
Kurtz, you ignore the fact that Russia – not China – interfered in our election and may have impacted the final result a
We don’t know what China did do or did not do because cretins like John Brennan didn’t care. As for Russia, they bought Facebook ads. Which had no significant effect. That’s something Hellary partisans cannot bear to acknowledge.
hmm, yes russia interfered. a wee bit. enough to justify the allegation and not much more. a pittance of FB ads.
and so what? how many elections has the US interfered in the past 70 years?
and whatever the Chinese do, is mostly undetected. I don’t claim to know, i just suspect.
I see no evidence that Putin “owns” trump. That is just hogwash. You can’t seriously believe that.
I remember when a PLA general gave donations to Bill Clinton, that was whitewashed as “right wing media conspiracy theory” as you guys would call it today.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-was-bill-clintons-russia-1488585526
I am sure they are way past that on sophistication these days.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/21/one-of-americas-biggest-chinese-language-newspapers-toes-beijings-party-line-china-influence-united-front/
I doubt Bill Clinton did much for the PRC even after his bribe. A smart official can take a bribe and deliver nothing in return.
Of course, they did succeed in stealing the plans to the W88 warhead. which is probably aimed at us today
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/06/world/breach-los-alamos-special-report-china-stole-nuclear-secrets-for-bombs-us-aides.html
“There’s no profit in healthcare if everyone has access.”
Peter, why don’t you explain your comment?
Remember Ralph Nader, ca. 1975, yammering on about ‘superprofits’. Peter’s not a young guy.
DSS, Peter has almost zero knowledge of socialism, communism, the nanny state and capitalism. He can’t even respond to the question as to whether or not he believes in private ownership and profit. He doesn’t (or didn’t) know the difference between socialism and communism. He has only end point talking points so anywhere in the middle he is forced to be mute due to ignorance.
Based on such ‘superignorance’ how do you expect him to understand Nader’s ‘superprofits’?😀
I’ll repeat what I overheard a doctor say shortly after MediCare was passed in 1965.
He basically said that unbelievable amounts of money would be made, as this was a boon to health care providers.
So the expansion of coverage, the lowered write-offs from uncompensated services, and the enormous spike in demand resulting from “free” healthcare to a large group of “consumers”, would mean much higher revenues for health care providers.
Allan, my guess is that Peter assumes that universal health care would be accompanied by stringent price-setting and price controls.
Part of Bernie’s MediCare for All proposal is to force drug companies to lower their prices by 50%. He can pretend that this will have no impact on the development of new drugs, the survival of companies in the industry, or even the availability of current drugs on the market.
That’s only one of Bernie’s fantasies re MC for All.
Tom, Peter is ‘not’ a Bernie Bro nor does Peter support Medicare For All.
I have said many times that a robust form of Obamacare would be a whole lot cheaper and less disruptive than Medicare-For-All.
Peter,
You seem to believe that profit will be gone when there is universal coverage. Allan ask you for clarification of the statement you made to that effect.
ObamaCare was primarily about cost- shifting. Prof. Gruber let his guard down and was caught on tape admitting as much.
There are a lot of different parts to ObamaCare, and I think the mandate is one aspect that has been revoked.
A more expanded version of ObsmaCare would presumably re-instate the penalties, which had been scheduled to rise dramatically over the years.
That’s one feature of the cost shifting goal of ObamaCare, and the objective was to “motivate” younger, healthier taxpayers to subsidize premium restrictions that would benefit the older insured population.
It would take a lot of time and detail for you to lay out your vision of an improved ObamaCare, but presumably it would include maintaining the massive increases in MediCaid enrollment and the MediCaid budget.
We saw an increase from 50 million Medicaid-covered Americans to 70 million Americans on MediCaid. That huge spike probably accounts for the bulk of the additional Americans covered by ObamaCare.
Tom, Republicans have no plan whatsoever. And there are no free-market solutions.
So I don’t know what it is you’re arguing for.
You seem to suggest that free-market solutions exist. And again, if you can explain how, in a book, the Nobel Prize is your’s.
Tom, Republicans have no plan whatsoever. And there are no free-market solutions.
Peter, one thing that you’ve made clear to everyone is that you don’t know business, economics, or actuarial problems from tiddlywinks.
==
Tom, like anyone else, has to ponder the following:
1. How to make prices transparent to the end-user.
2. How to limit public financing of medical care.
3. How to set up stable actuarial pools among the consumers of medical care and l/t care.
Obamacare fails on all three counts.
==
There isn’t some magic 3d way. If you’re not going to use market mechanisms to ration, you have to use administrative mechanisms. There are costs everywhere you turn.
( The doctor I overheard actually opposed MediCare. He was a lot closer to the end if his career than the beginning, so his comment was more of a warning about massive government spending to come, than anything else)
Tom, let’s nationalize grocery stores and watch the lines pile up behind the filet minon.
Edward Annis wrote the book Code Blue Health Care in Crisis. He was the individual chosen to speak to Kennedy and later became the head of the AMA. He discussed the situation in a very clear fashion. If you can’t get it I looked up a video that provides a bit of history and Annis’s speach (Kennedy as well) that I heard a long time ago. Very worthwhile to listen to and if one reads the book one recognizes the alternatives offered so that the program would be more financially secure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqVkOlhbsEM Annis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFesycofKk4 Kennedy
Annis was a brilliant thinker.
It’s easy to “know” that “the free market offers no solution” when you crush elements that are central to the operation of a free market.
The massive government programs of the past couple of generations have gone a long way to obliterating elements of a free market in the health care industry.
This is the kind of issue, Peter, where a face-to-face discussion/ debate could go on for hours…..trying to conduct it in this kind of forum, especially given the lack of “user-friendly essentially” of this site over the past year, makes it much more cumbersome and time-consuming.
And I have spent a lot of hours in past years involved in extended discussions on this topic when these comments threads were more “workable”.
Getting close to midnight, I can easily see an extended exchange going past dawn.
I don’t have the time for that, and given the many hours spent in previous years going over this same area, and countering the same platitudes, I’m not real keen on spending more time going around in circles.
I would bet, that between “hands-on” experience with the healthcare system (i.e., 9 hospitalizations from the mid-1970s into the late 1980s, Addisonian Crises), discussions with MD friends and a relative who careers spanned from the 1940s to the present, a near lifelong interest in political and budgetary issues, that I have a better resume, a more complete perperspective, than somebody spitting out talking points.
I could add a few more things to that resume, but it’s now past midnight. I’ll just say that I have both a comprehensive ” micro and macro” background when it comes to a variety of aspects of the healrhcare industry, going back to my late teens and continuing to this day.
You and I have been through this issue of medical/ technology advances before, and I won’t review it here. But explain why that $50 a night hospital room is now $1500 a night for a broken leg, all because of the fact that we’re not doing organ transplants!?!
Again, irems like those organ transplants explains why OVERALL COSTS OF HEALTHCARE are higher, but it does not help that individual who could handle a $50 a night stay in the hospital saddled with a $1500 bill in 2019.
That’s like saying the cost of Honda Civic should go up 3000% over the years because there are more higher-end, higher priced Maseratis, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis.
should be “because of the fact that we’re NOW doing organ transplants”; so-called “auto-correct” put in “NOT” doing organ transplants.
Peter, there is no such thing as total purity. Additionally, you need to define your terms because you are very awkward. The fact is that a nation could theoretically spend more money on healthcare than its GDP. That means that rationing must occur, but that is not a peculiar phenomenon to anyone as rationing is a daily event. You do that everytime you buy something. You even ration your time. Ratining is part of a capitalist system.or a socialist system. The only difference is who does the rationing.
I was paying attention, and I remember the exchange, Peter. People who like to point to technological advances as the primary driver of health care inflation act as if there were no technological advances when health care inflation was contained.
I pointed that out to you before, using the example of a doctor from 1900 not recognizing much of medical science if he were to be transported to 1965. Just as a doctor from 1965 would find much of 2019 medical technology unrecognizable.
I guess you weren’t paying attention when I pointed that out in a previous exchange. The other other that I’ve mentioned……I’m not sure if it was in a recent exchange with you or Anon….is that obviously a transplant is expensive, and paying for something that is that advances and complex is understandably a costly process.
That does not explain why routine surgeries and related care that has NOT changed a huge amount from, say, 1965, us now 30x more expensive then it was then. Gall bladder surgery or hernia surgery are two examples…..the surgical procedures are basically similar, with the exception of laparoscopic techniques that are now commonplace. There is the equipment cost, bit the reduced recovery time should compensate for/ offset the cost of that equipment.
Let’s say that your grandfather had hernia surgery in 1965 and you remember that a 4 -day hospital stay, the surgery, and the follow-up care cost $500 back them ( equivalent to c. $3,500 in 2019 inflation-adjusted dollars). You go in for basically the same procedure today, and find that there will be a 2 day hospital stay, and the total cost will be $10,000- $15,000.
If you ask why that costs 30-40 times what grandpa paid with a 4 day hospital stay, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to tell you it’s because of the cost of organ transplants.
You can point to the expenses of some of the more uncommon, complex procedures as a factor in the increase of TOTAL healthcare spending, but you can’t use that example to explain away the massive, across-the-board inflation on the much-more-common procedures and services.
Tom, towards the end of the 20th Century, uninsured patients became an increasing drain on medical providers. So medical providers increasingly passed the costs onto people ‘with’ insurance. That trend was documented in numerous news stories throughout the Clinton and Bush eras. I’m surprised you didn’t see them.
Peter, you have things all wrong. You ought to look at the numbers.
Tom, I partially answered this question in an exchange just before bedtime, but OK.
Medicare sets prices and pays less for the same procedures as private insurance, largely because if providers want that business and they’ll take the lower fee. By the way, that is the principle which the entire rest of the developed world uses to keep their costs down to about 60% of what we pay while still providing universal coverage.
Medicare increases the overall costs of medicine in this country because ….duh…. more people get medical care. I would hope we agree that is not the problem, but the rising costs for procedures and hospital stays. I am not expert on this but apparently the rise in procedure costs is due to advanced technology – yay – more end of life expenses – booh, and this is partly probably due to Medicare – and the tendencies of private insurance to just pass it on to consumers as long as they are willing and able, and the Turkish rug market pricing practiced by the health care industry where what is paid is whatever they can get – booh, raspberry, booh..
The clear answer – and based on both Medicare and the rest of the world’s experience – is price setting by the government. You can call it price negotiating if that sounds better.
How did you end up babbling about Medicare in a post about current history in China?
exactly and what a foolish thing it was to bring up
here the SCMP tells a lie back in 2014 that bribes to doctors would not be allowed. Ha, ha, ha
https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1432823/no-more-red-envelopes-allowed-hospitals-chinas-national-health
cash hongbao still required for surgeries
that’s the worker’s paradise for ya; that’s what “free medical access for all” leads to in the end
Anon,
MediCare has probably set reimbursement rates since it was instituted, but I’d have to double-check that.
MediCaid reimbursement rates are said to be somewhat lower than the MediCare rates, although I think that varies somewhat from state to state.
Given that these programs have been around for a couple of generations, that price fixing should have helped contained health care cost inflation.
Instead, the opposite happened. Prices in that sector have exploded in the couple of generations since they came into being.
Tom, it is a fact that Medicare pays less than private insurance for procedures, and I tried to cover some other explanations for why procedure costs – and hospitalization costs – continue to rise. I might also note that Medicare overhead costs are lower than private insurance added overhead and profit, though in fairness, Medicare does not budget enough for enforcement of it’s rules and resultantly Medicare fraud is a real problem which adds to it’s otherwise low overhead.
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/presentation/52818-dp-presentation.pdf
PS I left out the fact that the total amount spent on health care in the US of course is higher because of Medicare – more people have care under it than would otherwise through only private insurance.
As a side personal note, my lifelong Republican mother lived to be 93 – a good life and not a bad death – and of course had Medicare coverage for her later years as almost all with regardless of party or politics. Except for her last 4 days in the hospital – and no heroic end of life measures were tried – she spent her last years at home and then living with us. The point is, she – nor I, who drove her to her regular check-ups – never had any complaints – or reason to – with her Medicare coverage. It goes without saying that both of us were very happy and thankful for that.
Anon,
More more will be spent on healthcare as you more people covered, as you said. So when, for example, you add 20,000,000 people to MediCaid during the Obama Administration, of course more …..primarily taxpayer money…..will be spent on health care.
I didn’t argue that point.. on your other point, your belief that technology is the main reason for healthcare inflation, I’ve already been over that with Peter very recently and with others in the past.
If a heart transplant’s total cost is $200,000 ( I don’t know the cost, I’m just presenting a guess for the sake of illustration), that is a factor in the increased amount of total spending on health care. I never suggested otherwise.
So there are two points you are “debating” with me when there’s no disagreement.. But I’ll repeat what I very recently said hear in this thread at least twice:
Explaining away a 30-40fold increase in basic, routine proscedure by citing something like heart transplant doesn’t “add up” for a lot of reasons. I’ll use a somewhat different example/ illustration. than I used a few days ago.
Let’s say that there is a small niche market for high-end, exotic vehicles that average $100,000 in price. That affects overall prices spent on new vehicles, especially if that end of the market grows a bit.
There is a difference between OVERALL spending on new vehicles, but that $100,000 price tag at the high end of the market does not explain why those in the market for a $20-25,000 vehicle should see those vehicles spiking in prices at a rate far higher than the general rate of inflation.
That’s why I used the example of “routine” surgeries like gall bladder or hernia operstions. There may be a million of those 2 operations annually. Those operations are not, or should not be, 30-40 times more expensive than they were a couple of generations ago. For the very few…….a miniscule percentage of total operstions…..that are feature very advanced and complex technology……they are done at great expense. Again, the charges, the “compensation” for those procedures will obviously be much higher, and increase OVERALL spending on healthcare. But it does not follow that the UNIT costs for every routine surgical procedure should explode.
The second point I made earlier was that there were considerable technological advances for generations WITHOUT massive inflation in healthcare. Those who attempt to cite technological advances as the primary reason for the runaway inflation in the healthcare field like to pretend that there were no technological advances before the last couple of generations.Just because the “Maserati/ Ferrari/ Lamborghini” segment of health care is pricy doesn’t explain the wild inflation in ALL areas of healthcare.
Tom, I said technological advances explained part of increased medical costs, not all or even most and I mentioned other possible reasons.. I’m not going into the weeds with you on your “calculations” if any comment I make will be so easily misrepresented, and especially since I clearly stated my position, which I stand by.
Tom, in every other field new technology starts out very high in price and then the price drops becauase there is a market place. A relatively small flat TV started out in the $10,000 to $20,000 range but fell to the hundreds despite technological improvements and a much larger size. One has to ask themselves why in medicine does the price keep climbing even though the technology is not all that different than technology in other areas.
You either know or can figure out why. Anon can’t provide the answer even if this was an open book test and Anon was staring at the answer.
The answers are relatively simple as are the solutions.
We hear Anon arguing that the ACA is wonderful and caused premium prices and costs to fall dramatically, but is what he says true? You know the answer but Anon can’t figure it out even though Karen gave him a lot of legitimate answers and a lot of Anon’s numbers are nothing but BS.
One has to ask themselves if the ACA is working out so well, why haven’t more insurers come in with more programs so that they can make more money? Why are people leaving instead of trying to enter the program? Why did the ACA have to force people to stay by fining them if they left? Why other competition wasn’t permitted? You know the answers or can figure them out. Anon never will.
Market systems work passably for mundane medical (and allied) expenses if you can ensure transparent pricing. That’ll work for roughly half the households in the population in a typical year. For another 1/3 (roughly speaking), a goods and services market can function under a certain deductible. but most of your expenses are going to have to be met by 3d parties.
Tabby, I think you and i are in some agreement here. ‘Yes’, I think the free market can handle routine and mundane expense. But it was never meant to handle things like Kidney Dialysis and other chronic conditions. 60 years ago we would have said goodbye to many patients we feel obliged to keep alive today. And to a large extent that explains why costs keep spiraling out of control.
Peter, what do you buy on the free market to protect yourself in case your house burns down? Fire insurance. One can do the same for kidney dialysis.
Actually, you really can’t.
DSS, you are wrong. The government has prevented the insurance market from offering policies that cover major diseases like cancer and likewise it prevent insurers from offering high deductible insurance as primary coverage. The cost to cover a treatment for a disease is already integrated into ones present premiums.
I don’t know where you get the idea that private insurance doesn’t work. Private insurance doesn’t have to cost anywhere near what we pay today. The high costs are a product of government interference.
I didn’t say that Allen. There are some systemic problems with private medical insurance, but that’s not at issue here.
The question is is there a viable market for insurance conta chronic kidney disease. And, no, that particular problem is one I do not think can be addressed with private medical insurance.
Then what did you mean, DSS? Your four words weren’t clear.
There are systemic issues with all insurance policies.
There is no market for any specific insurance unless there is demand and the legal ability to provide it. Therefore, I don’t expect an insurance policy specific for dialysis. Something like that would be combined under a catastrophic policy. In any event renal dialysis could be covered under private insurance though I believe Medicare will take over the costs after a relatively short time period.
Don’t think so.
“Don’t think so.”
DSS, don’t think so what? You don’t think Medicare takes over the coverage for dialysis? You don’t think catastrophic policies ever existed? What don’t you think?
https://acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2019/01/17/denmark-american-leftists-were-not-socialist
Denmark is not a socialist country, but rather a capitalist nanny state. The government confiscates at least half of everyone’s income. Even low income earners pay 57% in taxes.
Communism is the end goal of Socialism.
Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of history would be concerned about the rise in Socialism’s popularity.
The argument that Socialim hasn’t been properly tried before is bogus. Every time economic socialism is tried it has failed. The only way a nanny state can survive is when it is paid for by a strong capitalist economy. When the goodies become too burdensome, then the economy collapses. Full Socialism, in which it is illegal to earn a profit, and owning private property is banned, always fails.
Socialism is a nihilistic existence. Nothing you can do will improve your life. You are only allowed what the government wants you to have. You don’t even own your own labor.
If only 31% of Americans feel that Democrats are moving towards too much Socialism, that means that there is far more support for this among Democrats than Republicans (obviously), and that those polled don’t know their history. This has been the product of years of anti-capitalist propaganda.
I have a friend who grew up in Ukraine under the USSR. All capitalism was outlawed. People only had what their government gave them. Her father ran a business, which had to be black market. They were able to eat better and have warmer clothes than their neighbors, but they lived in fear that they would be discovered. There was no concept of ownership of things. When she took her young son back to Ukraine to visit with her mother, the neighborhood kids took away all his toys. There was no “mine”. Things belong to everyone.
If voters don’t become more savvy, then they will vote to destroy the prosperity of our country, and sink us into Venezuela.
Karen, on quality of life surveys those ‘capitalist nanny states’ rank pretty high. But if you think Denmark is on the slippery slope to communism then you possibly have mental problems.
It astounds me that anyone under 90 could be terrified of communism in this age of globalization. The ‘election’ of Donald Trump and the Brexit drama in Great Britain are signs that people all over are deeply worried about employment and financial security.
Here in L.A. nearly half the population has trouble making their rent each month. Just the other day I read that a significant number of Americans would have trouble paying an unforeseen expense of just $400. What’s more, small towns around the country are losing jobs at an unsustainable pace. Trump got the White House because people in the so-called rustbelt are worried about their future.
The Federal Minimum wage is still just $7.50 per hour. The power of Labor Unions is a decades-long low. The Millennial generation could be saddled with student debt well into their 40’s. Millennials, in fact, are putting off marriage, children, home and auto purchases. Every indicator suggests that current economic trends are creating serious inequality.
Therefore when people like Karen S tell us that communism is the greatest threat to our nation, one has to question her sanity. I can only conclude by repeating what I’ve noted many times: ‘rightwing media dumbs-people-down’.
” Just the other day I read that a significant number of Americans would have trouble paying an unforeseen expense of just $400.”
Peter, that has to do with personal money management not the system of government. I am leaving the other talking points alone for now because they are just silly statements made by a person who refuses to understand the problems involved. You call the discussion of fundamentals “stupid”. That is why you remain uneducated at such an advanced age.
ok, well I must be dumb, but I am terrified about the rising power of the Chinese Communist Party.
Not all Chinese communists are bad guys to be sure. A lot of them are swell. In general they don’t let losers into the CPC. Why, I know one who’s got some nice condos for rent in LA area come to think about it. I am sure there are plenty more. and you prolly knew that already Peter
https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/chinese-buyers-eye-los-angeles-over-all-other-cities-102034
But, the issue is not what the individual does, it’s what the group as a whole does.
That’s why Tianenmen is a worthy reminder.
Kurtz, one can track NYC real estate to see some that is on the mind of the Chinese.
Capitalist Nanny States aren’t Socialist countries, though, are they?
Hence my opposition to Socialist governance, and anti-capitalist propaganda here.
In addition, when the benefits programs become too severe, then those nanny states have had to cut back over the years. Just like I said…repeatedly. I would also add that immigration is sharply restricted to those countries. They cannot afford unlimited immigration given the expensive benefits.
There is an ocean of difference between a lush benefits system paid for by a capitalist economy, and a Socialist country.
I have said this more than once. Where are you going astray so that I can clarify?
Los Angeles rent is high because the supply is less than the demand.
Over population from immigration that is too high creates freeway gridlock, also putting intense pressure upon rents in urban areas.
The federal minimum wage is supposed to be entry level work for the unskilled. Most get a raise within their first year. If we are trying to cobble together a middle class lifestyle for millions of people on minimum wage, then it would require a minimum wage of like $50 in places like San Francisco, which would then jack up the price of everything from a cup of coffee to a gallon of milk, as prices are hiked to compensate for labor costs. That would still leave people struggling to buy food.
The problem is that people are trying to exist permanently on minimum wage jobs. That’s never going to work. That’s the problem that has to be addressed, not the actual cost of minimum wage. There has to be upward opportunities. A place to go other than plateau..
The Millenial generation needs to stop going into vast amounts of student debt for unmarketable degrees like gender studies or the anthropology of women in porn. That leaves them in debt without job prospects.There needs to be data available to students on what the job market is like, and what they can expect to earn, with each degree so they can make a smart choice. Getting a useless degree in basket weaving or the oppression of dodge ball, and then expecting the government to wipe out their debt, is destructive to their own future and the country’s.
If you question my sanity because I oppose murderous regimes like communism, it’s like doing so because I oppose Nazism.
You know what the problem with globalization is? The rest of the globe does not have Western values. I’ve traveled to many different places in the world. There were parts of the world where kidnapping for ransom was common, cartels ran the villages, I couldn’t show my legs in shorts or skirts, sometimes you have to cover your hair, and beating women was normal.
The UN put human rights abusers onto the human rights council. Globalization means more of this. It means that most of the world, with non-Western values towards women, religious tolerance, and gays, would get to dictate the rules for everyone else. Globalization leads to Facebook cooperating with the Chinese government in censoring its citizens, or even imprisoning them for critical speech. Globalization leads to the proliferation of anti-semitism.
Nations are comprised of people with generally similar values. The average viewpoint in America is different than that in Latvia, Bangladesh, Russia, or China. We are all different. That’s lovely for travel, when you do it safely. But people associate with others with similar views, in nations.
Dissolving those national borders mean we all get mixed up with cultures that are overwhelmingly aggressive towards women, gays, etc. I prefer to travel to experience the ups and downs of other cultures, and then to come home to my own country, where we vote on how we run things.
Karen, I favor public education, state university systems, community colleges, a government funded military, government funded roadway system, Medicare, government public parks, weather services, health inspectors, etc. and now you’ve figured out that I do this because I actually want a worker’s paradise and full on communism.
Damn, Karen you just too smart!
Anon – did I say that? No, I didn’t.
Straw man argument.
It is also false logic to consider any service that the government undertakes in a capitalist country to be equivalent to a Socialist country.
Why are you fighting instead of just talking?
Karen, I favor public education, state university systems, community colleges, a government funded military, government funded roadway system, Medicare, government public parks, weather services, health inspectors,
What you favor is conflating a half dozen different activities under one rubric.
1. A health inspector is law enforcement official. There is no such thing as a private health inspector except in cartel systems. You have health inspectors because you have information imperfections in markets and because you have careless lying people around.
2. Roads and military services are what economists call ‘public goods’. Which is to say that the characteristic of the good or service in question is such that beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries cannot be differentiated once the service is generated and / or consumption by one party is not rival to consumption by the other. The characteristic of public goods is that they don’t emerge spontaneously on open markets.
3. Parks are a common property resource. Usufruct requires regulation or the resource gets trashed. Now, you can certainly have private facilities which provide similar amenities, but in those cases, there are rules and privileges associated with membership. (While we’re at it, amenities like parks are a tiny share of total public expenditure and can generally be handled by local government. Ken Burns is a putz).
4. Weather services are useful because the government can corral a great deal of capital and manpower for comprehensive coverage. Our weather service is a subunit of an agency called NOAA. The thing is, the total headcount at NOAA is about 10,600 FTE, it amounts to < 1% of total federal headcount. It also partially substitutes for viable commercial services. AccuWeather has been operating since 1962.
5. 'Public education' is almost wholly unnecessary for primary and secondary schooling. Schooling is a fee-for-service activity which emerges naturally on open markets. You have two or three niche markets for which public authority or agency as a delivery vehicle is called for: one would be schooling for incorrigibles that no one else wants (or who are incarcerated), schooling in remote areas (e.g. Eastern Oregon), and high overhead schooling. Provision for these clients would account for a single-digit share of total enrollment. Competing locally-rooted philanthropies can provide schooling for the vast majority – funded by vouchers to address distributional complaints. For parents who wanted to use tuition-funded schools or to home-school, you can allow them to cash-out their voucher for a sum roughly equal to their personal contribution to it's face value. We have public schools due to sheer inertia and due to vested interests which are properly destroyed.
6. Public higher education isn't strictly necessary (it's a fee for service activity which can be provided by private producers) and most state systems are horribly bloated and riven with institutional politics. The one reason to have public authorities providing higher education is to address distributional questions in a matrix where unit costs can be consequential. They do that badly.
7. Medicare addresses a distributional question. The trouble has been for five decades that the program was part and parcel of the abolition of the price system in medical care, which has been crucial to the inefficiency in that sector.
What Anon doesn’t mention is a desire favoring individual freedom. Most of us have some agreement with much of what he said, but what he doesn’t say and never says is how those systems would work while protecting individual freedom.
Public education: Fine idea until it becomes public indoctrination. That type of person would not like Charter Schools unless they too indoctrinate or otherwise impede individual freedom.
Roadways: Fine idea until the roadways are built based on political interests and one’s freedom to travel and trade is inhibited.
Military: Absolutely necessary but what type of military? Some would like the army to be similar to Stalin’s and Kim’s supporting the leader while the people die.
Take note how empty Anon’s statements really are. Is he a radical Stalinist? No, but he is stupid enough to support ideas that lead to such a leader.
The distribution of man-hours between various subjects is going to vary according to values, as well as the content of material outside of the trades, the sciences, and mathematics. The trouble has been that local schools are less and less responsive to community values and more and more responsive to guild prejudices which can be remarkably uniform across time and space.
DSS, that problem can in part be rectified with vouchers so that parents can choose the school of their choice and let the public schools, where possible, compete among one another as well.
The power of the public schools unfortunately have shifted from the people to strongly entrenched political groups in part based on the teachers union. In NYC I have read that suspended teachers even for sexual abuse continue to be paid but do not teach. Instead they show up for the entire day at a designated place and then go home when the teaching day is over.
I know two teachers decades ago during a NYC budget crisis that took early retirement. It was manipulated so that the retirement fund would pay them instead of the NYC school system. They each received a bulk payment of $150,000 per year for the two years before they would have retired and then were paid retirement benfits based on the years worked plus the two years.
NYC paid for two young teachers probably at half the salary so that in total the cost to the system (for just those two teachers as this retirement was city wide) was around $450,000 instead of $300,000 and the cost to the students was inexperienced teachers instead of experienced ones. NYC is a strange place. It seems the public schools are there for the teachers and Democratic organizations not the students.
“I have a friend who grew up in Ukraine under the USSR. ”
Karen, I have those very close with similar histories. Healthcare was free. The night before going to the doctor a visit was made to the doctor’s home and money dropped off to make sure he would see the patient the next day. To get the right drugs they imported them and gave half to those servicing them. When staples were arriving at a store people would line up to be able to purchase them. Those at the back of the line lost out. (I am familiar with immigrants and more than one ethnicity and from more than one continent since most of the family I have known were either immigrants or first generation. Many arrived with only the clothing on their backs. All arrived legally and some had to wait a significant length of time before enterring the US. All were checked for disease and all were grateful that they made it here. All integrated into the norms of society while maintaining their own identity and ethnicity. Some came under conditions that placed them at considerable risk of death. I don’t remember any of them receiving significant government benefits though I do know there were some educational programs that I don’t think were utilized.)
Peter does not know the difference between capitalism and socialism. He thinks the definition of capitalism is stupid while at the same time tries to convince people that socialism is an answer to captialism’s abuses. He doesn’t know how socialism and communism are related. That is why he makes his ridiculous statements but refuses to define the operative words he is using.
Peter relies on putting talking points together that contradict one another. He is unable to use raw numbers because raw numbers prove him wrong while conflated numbers can prove any point one wants to make. He is a joke unwilling to discuss the fundamentals of capitalism (private ownership and profit) and socialism. He thinks such a discussion is stupid.
The immigration you described is the American way. Integrating into the new country while retaining some traditions of the old.
I am at a loss as to how to explain Socialism and Communism to Peter. It’s difficult to argue with someone who doesn’t understand.
My father specialized in the USSR and Middle East. I cut my teeth listening to the stories of these very different places.
Did your father know Richard Pipes?
Peter is a dreamer. He probably thinks in a semi artistic way where he puts things together so they look and sound good even if they don’t make sense. Take note how he doesn’t even know the definition of capitalism, conflates the nanny state with socialism and communism, and doesn’t understand the relationship between socialism and communism. His mind is closed shut so there is no way for him to learn. He is not a malignant fellow like the other poster who has a bad temper which is probably representative of him in his private life. I would love to have Peter open up and truly discuss things because what he seeks is not that disimilar to what we all seek.
Allan:
I asked him, and he said not personally. He said that they often consulted with experts at the Rand Corp in Santa Monica. This would have been years ago, by now.
Interesting. The west and the east might not have as much personal communication with one another.
I mentioned Pipes again to Peter who thinks he understands socialism, communism and Peter’s newest addition Stalinism. I haven’t heard a peep and don’t expect to. The nation is in trouble mostly from ignorance within rather than the military might outside.
American Conservatives Deliberately Confuse Socialism With Communism
Here’s a comment from Karen S. at 12:42 pm
“A socialist country outlaws making a profit and owning property. Any capitalist businesses are black market”.
Based on this comment, are we to believe that no business in Denmark or Sweden is allowed to profit..??
Karen seems to think so. But is she being sincere on this? Or is Karen willfully blurring the lines between communism and socialism?
According to a March report by the Global Strategy Group, a P R and Research firm, 77% of Fox News viewers feel the Democratic party is moving in ‘too socialist’ of a direction. But only 31% of the total American public believes that Democrats moving ‘too socialist’.
Therefore, based on Karen’s comment, one might surmise that viewers of Fox News are unreasonably concerned about the ‘dangers’ of ‘encroaching socialism’. This could explain why Karen willfully confuses socialism and communism. As a Fox News viewer, Karen is gravely afraid that Democrats are becoming too socialist.
Regarding Above:
Here’s a link to that report the opinions of Fox News viewers and how they differ sharply with the general population.
https://navigatorresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Navigator-March-Fox-News-Memo-F03.19.19.pdf
In this video, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich documents numerous points in history where Republicans exaggerated the ‘socialist threat’.
This is what Robert Reich does in lieu of actual scholarly writings. This man held an appointment at Harvard Law School for decades. Per GoogleScholar, he’s placed one (1) article in law reviews in the years since 1985 (editorial decisions at law reviews, btw are made by law students). For puzzling reasons, people got the idea in their heads ca. 1981 that he was an economist, because he’d worked at the Federal Trade Commission. He has no background in the subject. Political science journals at one time provided a forum for him, but not in the last 25 years. He gets published in public policy journals even though he has no demonstrable quant skills, because at this he gets his after-dinner remarks published by academic starf**ckers.
Tabby, regardless of Robert Reich’s background, is it not true that conservative Republicans have a long history of exaggerating the ‘dangers’ of socialism?
Had we really listened to this crowd we never would have gotten the 8 hour workday, Overtime Pay, Collective Bargaining, The Minimum Wage, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
In other words, almost ever piece of progressive legislation in the last 100 years would have never happened had we heeded conservative fears about ‘creeping socialism’.
Peter, look around the world and see what has eventually happened. Learn what socialism is. Read on Marx or Das Capital. Educate yourself before you speak further. I expect these types of uneducated responses from the young that have been poorly educated but if you were born before Kennedy was assassinated there is no excuse.
Had we really listened to this crowd we never would have gotten the 8 hour workday, Overtime Pay, Collective Bargaining, The Minimum Wage, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Peter, annual working hours in the United States declined to current levels during the generation prior to 1920. It wasn’t a function of federal intervention in labor markets. Collective bargaining antedated the Wagner act, but the social reality of it was more apparent in that era because it relied on labor meatheads exercising strong-arm tactics.
The minimum wage law instituted in 1938 was absurd. The population of the United States was such and the age structure of that population was such that in a healthy labor market, at least 52 million people would be employed at any one time. Total wages and salaries paid in 1938 amounted to $43 bn, so the mean annual wage in a healthy labor market would have been just north of $800 per year or 43 c an hour given a typical complement of working hours. They set the minimum wage at 25 c an hour, or 58% of what would have been the mean wage in a healthy labor market. That would be the equivalent of a $15 an hour minimum wage in today’s economy and it priced 1/4 of the labor force out of on-the-books employment. It did that at a time when the labor market was already badly injured. The unemployment rate during the period running from 1929 to 1941 averaged 18%. That law was one of the reasons why.
As for the Social Security law, the authors of it never incorporated in it a mandate to maintain the ratio of beneficiaries to workers at a fixed ratio, which would have required cohort-specific retirement ages. They also did not index benefits to prices. Hence all the backing-and-filling that’s been necessary the last 40 years. The troubles with the old age program are fairly simple. They added the disability program in 1957 and have never been able to prescribe a set of standards that didn’t lead to mission creep.
As for Medicaid and Medicare, If you fancy 50 years of cock-ups in the realm of medical finance are some Triumph of Progressive Policy, the rest of us can have a good laugh.
Tabby, you’re essentially arguing that we don’t need social safety nets nor any minimum wage. Which identifies you as a Libertarian Fundamentalist.
If it weren’t for Social Security and Medicare, middle class families all over the country would go broke caring for elderly parents. No family would ever have the money to send their kids to college. Care for seniors would wipe-out all but the richest. No middle class family would have any wealth to pass on to their children. Everyone would be poorer!
And nowhere in your comment do give any clue of what seniors should be living on. But I’m sure you’ve got ideas for privatization plans where Wall Street, of course, would offer a full line of retirement plans for folks on Main Street.
I eagerly await absurds program being incorporated into the 2020 GOP platform. “We don’t need no stinkin SS and Medicare!”
No, I’m not arguing that, Peter. You have your usual reading comprehension issues and Anon / JanF’s sorosphere contacts tell him stupidity is strategy.
Peter, legislatures do not enact aspirations. They enact actual programs and set up public bureaucracies to administer those programs. There are costs and benefits to those programs. There are hidden problems in those programs. You fancy that we should evaluate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid based on antecedent aspirations and not on actual performance. You fancy we ought to compare their operation to your Ayn Rand fantasy and not to the extant modes of common provision present at the time they were enacted.
You get your history from Ken Burns. Get it through your head: capable filmmakers aren’t necessarily knowledgeable.
It seems like Peter is putting words in Absurd’s mouth there.
this discussion is not moving very far or fast
How do you exaggerate the dangers of Socialism, which killed over a 100 million people? It’s like you’re saying that we’ve exaggerated Nazism.
Karen, you’re trying to reach us from a parallel universe. Consequently the text of your comments is hazy on our screens. Like it was smeared with Vaseline, perhaps. But it looks like you’re saying ‘socialism killed 100 million’. ..Did that happen in your universe..? I’m asking because that didn’t happen here.
Karen is equivocating. Technically speaking, The Bolsheviks who came to power in The Soviet Union called themselves “socialist revolutionaries”–communism was supposed to be something far off in the future when the dictatorship of the proletariat would no longer be necessary.
Meanwhile, the revolutionary socialists were distinguishing themselves from their predecessors who thereafter became known as parliamentary socialists, or, in some places, democratic socialists.
However, the ballpark death toll of 95 million as attributed to various Marxist, Maoist, or other Communist Regimes (revolutionary socialism) has some support from the author Matthew White who has made a specialty for himself in measures of death in his “Great Big Book of Horrible Things.”
That’s not what “equivocating” means. I have been quite clear.
The Great Big Book of Horrible Things – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Big_Book_of_Horrible_Things
The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities is a popular history book by Matthew White, an independent
L4D says–Excerpted from the article linked above:
White’s methodology for creating the list was gathering all available data on atrocities and attempting to discern consensus estimates for each one’s death tolls. His focus is on armed conflict, with famine and disease relating to such conflict counting for the statistics, while natural disasters and economic events do not. White notes that there is no atrocity for which the statistics can be agreed upon worldwide.
One of White’s conclusions is that no one system of government is obviously more murderous, and anarchy can be worst of all. He furthermore claims that governments don’t kill people, rather people kill people. Another conclusion is that chaos is more deadly than tyranny.
Tell us Peter why the 100+ million die?
Alan, for the thousandth time, there is a difference between the capitalist ‘nanny’ state and Stalinism. And if you can’t distinguish that difference, then you shouldn’t be commenting here.
‘I’ shouldn’t have to waste my time repeatedly denying that I’m a communist because I don’t support a return to the Dickens era. We don’t have to go back there. Nor must we return to the Robber-Baron Gilded Age.
There’s a reason Paul Ryan washed-out from the national stage. When all you ever talk about is the need to cut programs (while cutting taxes for the wealthy) the public tunes out. The public eventually says, “This guy’s a downer. Make him go away”.
PH, Allan=waste of time.
I don’t unless I feel it necessary to correct yet another misrepresentation of fact.
The reason he ‘washed out’ is that he proved hopelessly ineffectual in every position of trust he was handed and finally figured he’d get paid in the lobbying business.
“Alan, for the thousandth time, there is a difference between the capitalist ‘nanny’ state and Stalinism.”
Peter, since you don’t understand capitalism, socialism, communism and the nanny state there is no chance of you understanding Stalinism. Apparently you recently learned a bit about the ‘nanny’ state from Karen. Kudos to Karen.
Perhaps now with your better understanding you can answer the question, do you agree with the right to private property and profit?
Skip Stalinism and go to socialism. Do you prefer socialism over capitalism?
Previously you were dumbfounded by the questions. Try answering them now and don’t pretend you have any expertise. You don’t.
Dickens pointed out a problem that can occur in all economies, but we have seen that capitalism succeeded while socialism did not.
Peter, are you being serious that you don’t know about that figure of deaths caused by Socialism, or just being sarcastic? Do you also not understand the connection between Socialism and Communism? Tenets of Marxism? Lenin? Gentile?
I can post the data if you truely don’t know. The problem with blog posts is sometimes they don’t convey tone. Well, insults are conveyed pretty clearly, but sometimes hyperbole is not.
PH:
If you are truely interested in learning, then I will provide a few links. I only have about 5 more minutes. If you’re just going to ignore any facts I provide, then let me know so I don’t waste time.
http://holodomorct.org/
The Holodomor was not a natural famine. Read about what happened, and why the memorial statue in Ukraine is a child.
The problem with Socialism outlawing making a profit, and owning property, is that people refuse to give up their righs and their businesses. There is dissent and criticism.That’s where the murdering part always comes in.
Yeah, Karen, I’m sure we’ll all be on the lookout for any candidates proposing murderous socialism.
Anti-capitalism is dangerous. The alternative is Socialism which, by definition, removes individual rights in order to ban capitalism, i.e. making a profit, as well as owning property.
You can be sarcastic all you want, but I am sincerely concerned about this.
This Socialist experiment has been tried, and failed, so many times. It never delivered utopia, and instead resulted in the loss of individuals rights, deprivation, and the government kills citizens who dissent.
It is so ironic that Democrats are so worried about Trump abusing power, and yet the Left is agitating for a Socialist country, which would create an all powerful State. How do these two positions coexist in the same party?
https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/socialism-ruin-nations/
Karen, the world is not black and white and as has been demonstrated to you several times, democracies enlist means which can accurately be described as socialism in completely benign and effective ways, and have done so here for well over several centuries. Nothing you are saying makes sense and whatever you are “seriously concerned about”. it is not reality.
Anon:
Anti-capitalism expressly means a Socialist government, NOT a capitalist nanny state? Get it? You are espousing the capitalist nanny state. Anti-capitalists are pushing for an actual socialist government like the USSR. Hence why I adamantly oppose the anti-capitalist rhetoric of AOC, Bernie, et al, and why I was concerned when the politician was booed for critiquing the socialist direction of the Democrat Party. In addition, the Green New Deal would be taking us away from capitalism, into socialism. It would ban air travel, for example.
This isn’t the traditional nanny state platform of the DNC. They are going full socialist, which would make us comrades with Russia. Ironic.
i would agree they have exaggerated the dangers of socialism. even as they supported large scale socialistic measures such as medicare or medicaid. but so what? there is a question of degree. Democrats are as much the champion of our system as Republicans are, over the long haul. Basic liberal democratic capitalism with a large dose of social programming. Not too much difference but hey, the differences may matter, kind of like the small difference between human and chimp DNA means a lot.
and look at the Democrats exaggerating the threat of Russia even as they roll out the red carpet for Chicom influence. Politicians are professional liars it seems to me.
Peter, you’re 60 years old. You can quit fussing over what the cook kids fancy.
Must be a typo, Absurb. You meant to say “kook”? Keep in mind that Peter is posting from Hollywood.
What does one of the experts and an avowed Marxist think of socialism until he decided to look at the facts? Being a good Marxist at the time his PhD was on Das Capital.
Socialism for the Uninformed
Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.
While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.
With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.
The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist “exploitation,” shouldn’t it?
But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts — such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.
Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.
When Senator Sanders cries, “The system is rigged!” no one asks, “Just what specifically does that mean?” or “What facts do you have to back that up?”
In 2015, the 400 richest people in the world had net losses of $19 billion. If they had rigged the system, surely they could have rigged it better than that.
But the very idea of subjecting their pet notions to the test of hard facts will probably not even occur to those who are cheering for socialism and for other bright ideas of the political left.
How many of the people who are demanding an increase in the minimum wage have ever bothered to check what actually happens when higher minimum wages are imposed? More often they just assume what is assumed by like-minded peers — sometimes known as “everybody,” with their assumptions being what “everybody knows.”
Back in 1948, when inflation had rendered meaningless the minimum wage established a decade earlier, the unemployment rate among 16-17-year-old black males was under 10 percent. But after the minimum wage was raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation, the unemployment rate for black males that age was never under 30 percent for more than 20 consecutive years, from 1971 through 1994. In many of those years, the unemployment rate for black youngsters that age exceeded 40 percent and, for a couple of years, it exceeded 50 percent.
The damage is even greater than these statistics might suggest. Most low-wage jobs are entry-level jobs that young people move up out of, after acquiring work experience and a track record that makes them eligible for better jobs. But you can’t move up the ladder if you don’t get on the ladder.
The great promise of socialism is something for nothing. It is one of the signs of today’s dumbed-down education that so many college students seem to think that the cost of their education should — and will — be paid by raising taxes on “the rich.”
Here again, just a little check of the facts would reveal that higher tax rates on upper-income earners do not automatically translate into more tax revenue coming in to the government. Often high tax rates have led to less revenue than lower tax rates.
In a globalized economy, high tax rates may just lead investors to invest in other countries with lower tax rates. That means that jobs created by those investments will be overseas.
None of this is rocket science. But you do have to stop and think — and that is what too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach their students to do.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is http://www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.
Alan, Karl Marx was a social critic of capitalism in the 19th Century. Few, if any, Americans would want to go back to that early level of capitalism.
But maybe ‘you’ would, Alan.
Peter, your statement is almost too dumb to respond to. You wouldn’t want to go back to the cave man would you? Are you saying there is something wrong with private ownership and profit in a competitive marketplace? You have been taught Marx’s theory on exploitation by those that seem to lack an understanding of human nature and what entrepreneurship brings to the table. They also forget that to get from Marx’s starting point to his end point one will require a totalitarian state and will never arrive at the end of that dream.
Alan, Marx never laid the groundwork for any economic system. He simply critiqued capitalism as it existed in the 19th Century. And almost all his criticisms were correct. Most of the issues Marx alluded to can be found in the stories of Charles Dickens.
Capitalism in the 19th Century was generally cold and heartless. But we never would have gotten beyond that stage had we listened to the fear-mongering of conservatives with regards to socialism.
“Alan, Marx never laid the groundwork for any economic system.”
“He simply critiqued capitalism as it existed in the 19th Century.”
These sentences seems to say Marx wasn’t providing an alternative to capitalism and all he did was criticize.
Do you wish to expand on your statements or revise them?
It seems your study of capitalism and Marxism relies on a book of fiction and that you find that people who believe in private ownership and property are monsters.
Let us skip the stupid stuff and get to the meat of the discussion. Is there something wrong with private ownership and profit in a competitive marketplace?
Alan, you desperately want to paint me as a communist. I am no such thing!
For years I worked in Beverly Hills and saw the rich and famous every day. In fact, as someone who has been around the rich and famous for years, I can tell you, without hesitation, that they are doing just fine. Your concern for their welfare is greatly misplaced.
Peter, I am not trying to paint you as a communist, something you do without anyone else’s help whether you are one or not. I simply question what you are trying to say. Your answers lack the needed contemplation of human nature and unintended consequences. You need to seriously question your own beliefs and recognize you are full of contradictions. That hamstrings your ability to think and destroys any argument you wish to make.
Peter, I am still waiting for the answer to the question asked but not answered.
Is there something wrong with private ownership and profit in a competitive marketplace?
Alan, I’m not going to dignify your stupid question. But I can tell you this, the culture of Hollywood is all about money. And I’m okay with that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be living here.
L4d says–Among the many grievous wrongs that the socialist revolutionaries in The Soviet Union did, two deserve special attention:
1) They outlawed trade unions and industrial unions, thereby claiming a State monopoly on labor that was substantially worse than the feudal system and very nearly as bad as the peculiar institution of chattel slavery.
2) They effectively outlawed religion (albeit, in stages, beginning with the confiscation of Church property and the eviction of the clergy from Church lands–an important source of food–but eventually moving on to banning private worship services in peoples homes) thereby depriving the people of consecrated weddings and consecrated funerals on top of everything else of which the people were deprived.
Surely forced industrialization and forced collectivization were also grievous wrongs. But the two wrongs stated above are the ones that eventually brought communism down in The Soviet Union.
“Alan, I’m not going to dignify your stupid question. But I can tell you this, the culture of Hollywood is all about money. And I’m okay with that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be living here.”
Peter, your reply demonstrates you can’t distinguish between socialism and capitalism. The question was “Is there something wrong with private ownership and profit in a competitive marketplace?” The answer is private ownership and profit in a competitive market are good. You were cheering socialism (Marx) that says private ownership and profit are not good.
Instead of not dignifying the “stupid question” you made yourself look like a fool.
Tell us again “Is there something wrong with private ownership and profit in a competitive marketplace?” or do you prefer socialism (Marx)?
Dickens lived in the fossilized class system of England at that time. The upper class married into more wealth, and had income-generating property. Being “in trade” might make money, but it was sneered upon. Mothers consulted that red book of the peerage.
Younger sons went into the military if they did not stand to inherit.
There was no upward class mobility.
Individuals did not have strong individual rights, for example, protecting them from abuses by an employer. There were no protections from an unsafe work environment. For example, Elizabeth Gaskell’s book North and South (not the Patrick Swayze movie, RIP) touched upon one of the earliest industrial diseases – fibrosis of the lungs due to the inhalation of cotton fluff.
Jobs open to women at that time were governess, seamstress, factory worker, prostitute.
There is no comparison with Dickensonian England and present day. Socialism most certainly was no improvement upon the state of capitalism at the time. It was responsible for the deliberate murder of over 100 million people. The Ukrainian farmers who refused to give up their ancestral farmland to the collective were starved to death – and children died most, in the Holodomor.
I would say that the Socialist genocide, the Holodomor, was Dickensonian England multiplied a thousand fold.
Good intentions does not excuse murderous results.
What was it the stable master said in Black Beauty to the groom? Something about ignorance causes more mischief than evil?
Karen, Dickens was mid career ca. 1845, smack in the middle of Britain’s commercial and industrial revolution. The landed interest wasn’t facing imminent rout, but their position was eroding noticeably. You can see that in the political realm with the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in mid-century.
Jobs open to women at that time were governess, seamstress, factory worker, prostitute.
You fancy no women worked in office employment?
Karen, the professional-managerial class at that time was a narrow segment of society. Outside the agricultural sector, wage work was what was available to the vast majority.
Clerks were generally men. The lowest clerical positions could be filled by women, mostly from the 1880s onward.
Prior to that, there were also scullery maids, cook, wet nurse, dairy maid, rag woman…There must be a few more but they slip my mind at the moment.
Apropos of this discussion is this thesis on Clerical work in London, and Marxism:
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1446670/1/U602595%20redacted.PDF
Only fragmentary data tables.
The 1860 Census returns can be searched by occupation, Karen.
I’m locating 69,000 farmers, 60,000 teachers, 6,500 nurses, 3,000 clerks, 1,700 merchants, 700-odd sales women
v. 70,000 seamstress, 7,700 cooks, 7,200 ‘factory’, 4,700 maids,
v. 297,000 domestics, 176,000 servants, 26,000 laborers,
BTW, there were several hundred physicians and lawyers listed.
There was a famous woman who was the first woman to qualify as a physician, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. She founded a hospital that employed women. She was refused entry to medical school, but hired private tutors, and eventually was allowed to attend a few classes there. In 1861, the male students sent a letter of complaint to the school about her presence in their classes. She received a certificate in anatomy by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, through private studies. And so, in 1862, the school was unable to bar her admittance because she had the qualification.
In 1865, she passed her exam and became a licensed physician. Before that, there were exactly zero women doing so openly. However, there was a woman who pretended to be a man, Dr James Barry. She pretended to be a man for her entire life in order to be a doctor.
Any female claiming to be a doctor prior to 1865 was not licensed.
The Medical Act of 1876 allowed any qualified applicant to be licensed regardless of gender.
I will add that women did most certainly infiltrate male jobs by pretending to be men. This was actually rather common in, of all places, the British Royal Navy. They passed as male and got paid their wages, and awarded prize money. If they were discovered, they could be put ashore with nothing. However, there was a certain tradition of many captains turning a blind eye if the discovery wasn’t too egregious.
What I am saying is that during Dickens’ time as a writer, there were far fewer options available in the rigid class and gender structure of society. Those problems were not the fault of capitalism itself. Speaking of which, capitalism is only as fair as the system over which it operates, the most fair of which is one in which there is strong individual rights and representative government.
Wait, I was wrong. I looked it up. Anderson did not actually receive her medical degree until 1870, after she received her medical license. She put together her qualifications for licensure through private studies, tutors, and taking various classes at medical schools where she was barred from entry as an actual student.
She was, however, qualified to take her medical license exam in 1865. She learned French so that in 1870 she could obtain a real medical degree where women were more welcomed in medical school.
She had to open her own hospital in order to find a job, as no hospital would employ her.
For some people, difficulties are just obstacles to be overcome.
What I’m saying to you is what I said before when you were kvetching about arranged marriages in Malaysia.
In Victorian England, you’re not living in a cul-de-sac in Fresno. You’re a lot closer to subsistence in an economy with a far less elaborate and refined division of labor. Although productivity had been considerably improved with implements, productive activity was crucially dependent on raw labor to a degree it seldom is any more.
Look at the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in our own time. Mining and petroleum, the building trades, machine repair, &c. are occupations almost entirely occupied by men. It doesn’t matter how many dippy magazine articles they read, women simply cannot or will not do these jobs and do not seek them out or seeking training to work in those fields.
Cycle back to 1845, and remove labor saving implements, and you’ll see that women doing wage work were employed in occupations which were analogous to domestic life, or which had features in common with domestic life (e.g. the supervision of children). It doesn’t have much to do with ‘rigid class structures’ or guys being mean to girls. It has a great deal to do with what work there was to be done and what work was suitable for women as biological beings.
Cultural norms arguably made the division of labor more categorical than it would have been under a regime of strict comparative advantage, but that’s still the case today. It’s just that on the supply-side of the labor market cultural norms operate on people’s self-concept. On the demand-side it’s manifest in a strong if not insuperable bias against career-changers over 35.
No clue why this ‘rigid class structure’ meme is floating around in your head. It’s doubtful in 1845 that you had many women among the nobility and gentry in Britain interested in competing for positions in the small pool of professional-managerial jobs or in the pool of skilled posts (be they in offices, on construction sites, in mines, in factories, or what have you).
I put up the numbers to show the distinction between your image of the past and the actuality.
This is Absurd 8:
I agree with you. Women are physically unsuited to some jobs, past and present, and statistically show little interest in others, while there are individual outliers.
The point I was trying to make was that Dickensonian obstacles were not due to any inherent evil in capitalism itself. Peter’s position appeared to be that Marx opposed capitalism due to its inescapable unfairness, and brought up Dickens.
In present day, it is mainly talent, work ethic, familial ethics and values, and personal choice that drives much of the job distribution.
I think that’s a misunderstanding of the theory of exploitation of labor. the word exploitation is not really a perjorative so much as just an adjective. the owner adds value with added labor, above the cost of labor. or else the labor is not added. that is neutral and properly descriptive of the hiring process. it is in my mind essentially true that the employer “exploits” the labor in that sense.
It is usually a good thing for the worker to have the employment however, which turns their unpaid time and effort, into money. So that can be true at the same time.
Marx derived his labor theory of value from Ricardo. There is usefulness in considering these theories. The problems mostly come in with all the moralizing.
“the word exploitation is not really a perjorative so much as just an adjective. ”
Kurtz, think what you wish but you have to take into account what the word means to those who you are communicating with. You are adding more confusion to Peter’s brain which already is totally confused.
Peter couldn’t even answer the simple question: “Is there something wrong with private ownership and profit in a competitive marketplace?” or do you prefer socialism (Marx)?
“Marx derived his labor theory of value from Ricardo.”
Kurtz, didn’t Marx misinterpret Ricardo?
The sophistication of productive technology and associated processes was lower in 1848 than it is today, Peter, and per capita income in real terms was correspondingly lower, in Britain about 11% of what it is today. You’re contention is what, that we have technological improvements and more refined division of labor due to the Wagner Act and minimum wage laws?
“The goal of socialism is communism.”
Vladimir Lenin
Your ignorance on the topic is astounding. It’s like you’ve been brainwashed. Snap out of it.
L4D says–Lenin was a propagandist. The question as toward what goals socialism should be aimed was the central bone of contention between the revolutionary socialists (Marxist-Leninists) versus the parliamentary socialists (everybody else who called themselves socialists). Of course, they also quarreled over the method for achieving their goals–revolution versus democratic elections. Lenin’s slogan did not settle the issue. The parliamentary socialists in Europe–later known as democratic socialists–played a supporting role in the eventual defeat of communism in The Soviet Union primarily by supporting trade unions and industrial unions in Eastern Bloc countries such a Poland, for instance. Have you heard of Lech Walesa?
Lenin was a clever warlord and a communist Bolshevik. the wimps he crushed like so many dim light bulbs under his boots were socialists and called Mensheviks. Lenin was brilliant in so many ways that all of whom came after him were not. But he was brutal, too. He was smart enough to allow the NEP when his crazy communist schemes disrupted production too much and the brutality was not enough to keep people fed.
the role of Solidarity was a small factor. don’t over rate it. the collapse of the Soviet Union was complicated but it included among many factors, a lack of will on the part of the head of state, such will as Deng did not lack when he gave his orders and the PLA followed them.
Any Socialist is a propagandist. What are they going to do? Tell the truth? The Oktoberists learn Lenin propaganda from nursery school onward.
Other quotes by Lenin, who took advantage of the “stupidity” of the public long before Obamacare.
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
‘One man with a gun can control 100 without one. … Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms.’
“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
“Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not our task to descend to the level of the ‘working masses”
“Exchange, fair or unfair,always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie.”
“It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed”
“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”
Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it.
This push for Socialism is one of the most ignorant trends in American history. It requires the utter failure of the public education system to produce people so uneducated and without reason to believe that Socialism is a good thing.
Making a profit = capitalism
Socialism = the government gives you a stipend
Think about that for a moment. Under Socialism, you are barred from making a profit. There is zero you can do to improve your life. Work hard, or not at all, you may not earn a profit.
The Democratic Socialists (a misnomer) declared on their website that people don’t actually work for money, but rather satisfaction. That is actually called “volunteerism.” Nobody scrubs a public toilet or hoses the feces off the streets of San Francisco for the satisfaction of the work. People get their first jobs in fast food for the money.
Give people money for nothing and millions of people won’t get off the couch.
Here’s the thing about Socialst or Communist countries. Those in power live large. My Dad said that when the USSR fell, they discovered secret phone lines for the Communists. While the rest of the country faced the usual deprivation, the ruling Communists could use this secret phone line to get any luxury item they desired.
It’s always the same story. Socialist politicians claim there is some existential problem, and if citizens will cede their autonomy and rights to the government, the government will care for them like a benevolent parent. All their problems will be solved. Class struggle, Global Warming, Income inequality…whatever crisis they can drum up, they couch in terms of an existential threat, and their very lives depend upon having the government handle everything for them. They are enticed with freebies. Everything will be free. The government will provide.
Nanny states are capitalist countries that succumb to the lure of the free stuff, but don’t want to go Full Socialism. So their capitalist economies pays for the social programs. This can go on until and unless politicians keep heaping benefits on the pile, to the point that the economy collapses.
I would agree that the distinctions between communism, socialism, and capitalism are all blurry in practice. OF course they are. All contemporary economies outside the DPRK maybe are essentially what economists call “mixed” economies. And one of the more capitalist enclaves, Hong Kong, persists under Communist ownership. er, cough, I mean rule. One country two systems. or whatever they say.
But the ideals matter, if we are to be educated and have a meaningful conversation.
Kurtz, the “ideals” are poison to pragmatic governing. Of course capitalism doesn’t fit all needs of citizens, nor does socialism. Those proposing “one size fits all” solutions are almost always the worst kind of simplistic thinkers and impediments to rational thought.
which is why after the disastrous experiments of Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist party liberalized its economic doctrines to allow market mechanisms to operate.
Subject to retaining absolute political control over the nation. Remember that folks. They got rid of chattel slavery but enslaved the whole Chinese population in the bargain. Maybe they are better masters than those who came before, but masters they remain.
Kurtz, no doubt the ChiComm’s will do whatever and we cannot claim it is now a bastion of civil rights, but, based on the free travel allowed citizens as well as the experiences of those I know who have visited China for extended periods over the last 25 years, the changes have been revolutionary – there are no more communes and people must wend their own way without the benefits and drag those institutions represented and normal life in the country is mostly ….normal.
certainly it’s better than it was in the days of the Japs raving the country, the brutality of the Civil war, the insane great leap forward, the concommittant great famine, the insanity of the Cultural Revolution. all of which wise men like Deng lived through and somehow survived.
Deng is the architect of modern China and the use of market mechanisms and an end to state controlled production was his primary legacy. A legacy of: prepare yourselves…. capitalism
The failures of the current system relate to a lack of an independent judiciary, mostly, if you ask me. the problem for the Chinese state, is that you can’t have a one party totalitarian state and an independent judiciary at the same time.
They know this, the top Chicoms are not stupid, they are not wicked. I do not believe that. They are strong. and they are in charge and they didn’t claw their way to the top by being weak, or by following any sorts of cultural conventions the likes of which we have grown up with and toss about this blog every day.
Some of our cultural conventions are priceless treasures. Some of our habits drag us down.
It’s up to everyone to figure out what’s what along those lines.
Kurtz, my good friend – a botanist who worked on his specialty with fellow academic botanists in a big city and later planned and installed a specialty garden in their botanical park – recounted how in the early days – 25-30 years ago – their life was centered on their commune which was in the city. By the time of his last visit – 4 years ago – that was all over and people were more or less on their own. From what I read, this was a national revolution in what had been the paradigm for 40-50 years and like the break up of Soviet eastern Europe both traumatic and liberating, depending.
Cool! it’s fun to hear these stories about the old days!
This cracker thinks he is the Solomon in the world of politics.
Kurtz, Peter is Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty.
I think the writing is on the wall in Hong Kong. Chinese dissidents should consider getting out.
China has to decide, at some point, what it is going to do with Hong Kong, the island of smog, cough, I mean fog. It has already declared the annual commemoration illegal. What’s it going to do about it? Don’t wait to find out. Perhaps they should legally immigrate here and leave the ruin left behind to the Communists.
When I was last in Hong Kong just before Xi took over the communist party and before he took over the premiership the people didn’t seem concerned which surprised me. I don’t know if their outward appearance had to do with them facing the problem for so many years or a belief things wouldn’t change.
I think that complacency is going to burn them. China owns Hong Kong, which makes it a far different place than the West.
Hong Kong has other existential problems, as well. My friends used to live there, and they would send me pics of the air quality advisory. It always seemed to be red.
“I think that complacency is going to burn them.” (Hong Kong)
Complacency is burning us. Years ago I agreed with US policy of not looking and acting as if China were an enemy but I didn’t agree with the policy of feeding China what it needed to become the bully in the school yard. We are now paying for that neglect and Trump is trying to reverse the tide. I think it would have already been reversed but for Democrats acting against the best interests of the nation.
“I think that complacency is going to burn them.”
Prescient, Karen! That said on June 8 and on june 9 https://www.wsj.com/articles/massive-crowds-take-to-streets-in-last-fight-for-hong-kong-11560075915 A very repressive move.
Bring the marshmellows.☹️
The Current PH:
“Based on this comment, are we to believe that no business in Denmark or Sweden is allowed to profit..??” As I’ve told you repeatedly, in this and other blog post threads, neither Denmark nor Sweden are socialist countries, but rather market economies, so no, we are not to believe that no company turns a profit there.
If no company was permitted to earn a profit, and the state controlled industry, then it would be a socialist economy. They certainly taxed the Hades out of their citizens, which reduced their prosperity at some point, until they started pulling that back. But no, neither Denmark nor Sweden are totalitarian Socialist regimes.
It is interesting that the Nordic Socialist myth is so widespread that prime ministers have had to make public statements to educate Americans that they are, in fact, capitalist. I’ve even posted links to their exact statements in the past on other threads.
Unfortunately, their efforts appear to be in vain.
Neither Denmark nor Sweden went full Socialist into the totalitarian state and the state seizure of all means of production. Rather, they toyed with massive welfare states paid for by astronomical taxes. Here is how it went, in a nutshell:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/10/15/bernie-sanders-scandinavia-not-socialist-utopia/lUk9N7dZotJRbvn8PosoIN/story.html
Karen, if you don’t know the difference between socialism and Stalinism, you need to go back to school.
It seems you would have believe our only choice is between Robber-Baron-like capitalism and Stalinism. Like there’s ‘no in between’! Like we should bring back debtors prisons and workhouses just to show our commitment to capitalism.
One imagines you have no familiarity the works of Charles Dickens.
Peter, Karen knows what she is talking about. It is you who is throwing these terms around with a total lack of understanding. She tried to explain to you the relationship between socialism and communism but apparently it fell on deaf ears. You injected Stalinism and Dickens along with the Robber Barons into this specific discussion hoping that by providing well known names it would show you knew what you were talking about but instead it demonstrated a near total ignorance along with a closed mind.
I had asked Karen if her father knew Richard Pipes. Can you figure out why? Do you know who Richard Pipes was? Start putting things together.
Peter:
“It seems you would have believe our only choice is between Robber-Baron-like capitalism and Stalinism. Like there’s ‘no in between’!”
Did I say that? Why, no I didn’t. In order for “Robber Baron” capitalism to operate, there has to be little individual rights. For example, the Chinese government merrily poisons its workers in the workplace, and drives them like slave labor regularly. No, I specifically, and repeatedly, stated that capitalism is only as fair as the underlying foundation upon which it operates. The most fair system is one of capitalism in a structure of strong individual rights and a representative government.
I have also expressly, and repeatedly, differentiated between the capitalist nanny state and the socialist economy were the State has seized the means of production and banned making a profit.
Marx never created an actual economy. It is impossible for workers to run everything, logistically, which is why there was Stalinism, Leninism, et al. This is why, inevitably, there is a ruling government class, which lives very well, and the rest of the citizenry which struggle with deprivation.
Russia is the birthplace of Socialism. To say that it didn’t “do it right”, or that the entire series of failed socialist countries didn’t do it right, is absurd. Do you remember what Einstein said about fools repeating the same experiment but expecting a different result?
Anti-capitalist rhetoric expressly opposes the capitalist nanny state and seeks to establish a socialist government, making us comrades to Russia.
Honestly, I’ve repeated these points multiple times and you keep coming to the exact same, incorrect conclusions about what I’m saying. What don’t you understand here?
Karen, you have repeated this argument ad nauseum and in way too much detail – it’s not that interesting or compelling – but the rub is your associated “concern” that Democrats are Stalinists.
BS
“…but the rub is your associated “concern” that Democrats are Stalinists.
BS”
We know that it’s being pushed by the Repugs — and Karen is one. It’s one of their strategies, but — yes — it’s BS.
“A second major police raid on a big media outlet in Australia in less than a week – a hugely invasive assault on @abcnews over leaks about the Afghanistan war. Again, there is clearly a concerted pattern by western powers to escalate attacks on journalism” -Glenn Greenwald
ABC’s Sydney headquarters raided by Australian Federal Police over Afghan Files stories
By Lorna Knowles, Elise Worthington and Clare Blumer, ABC Investigations
Updated 45 minutes ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-australian-federal-police-afghan-files-stories/11181162
About the other raid:
https://cpj.org/2019/06/australia-police-raid-sunday-telegraph-annika-smethurst.php
Australian police raid home of Sunday Telegraph journalist Annika Smethurst
June 4, 2019 11:55 AM ET
New York, June 4, 2019–Australian Federal Police today raided the Canberra home of Annika Smethurst, a politics editor for the Sunday Telegraph, and searched her property, computer, and cellphone, according to news reports. In a statement, police said the search warrant was part of an investigation into the alleged leak of national security information. In April 2018, Smethurst reported on a government proposal to expand powers for Australia’s cyber-intelligence agency. The report included images from a top-secret document, the BBC reported.
“Journalists have a duty to publish information, including leaked information, that lets the people know what the government is doing in their name,” said CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney. “The raid on Sunday Telegraph journalist Annika Smethurst is clearly designed to intimidate national security reporters from doing such a public service.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48511217
OT: Chinese have high IQs, by what measure?
All I’ve seen them to is steal “Free” American ideas.
Read Richard Lynn., Their population does have high IQs, depending on what segments you look at, it varies. And, even discounting for a certain amount of cheating and inflation on testing. They are smart for sure.
The European populations may, proportionately, more super high IQ persons like 2 std dev above the mean, like a more dispersed bell curve at the end, which helps account for our historical record of invention perhaps.
Of course, keep in mind some of the inventions which made Western powers great– movable type, gunpowder, compass, paper money– seem to have actually originated in China.
at the end of the day, it’s not just average IQ that matters but also cultural things. just as Malcolm Gladwell explored in Outliers. A good book, which actually discusses Richard Lynn, by the way
Another good day to join the John Bitch Society!
Ph you Youtube/Google/Wordpress changing others/my videos I posted.
We see your American hatin azzes, you will learn to come to heal you Phicking Commies/Fascist!
June 4: China’s Longest Night
by Gordon G. Chang
June 4, 2019 at 4:00 amhttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14333/tiananmen-square-anniversary
During the night of June 3-4, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army viciously cleared Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where more than a million people had gathered, talked, sung, and celebrated. During the night thousands died. Blood marked pavements, corpses littered streets and alleys. Pictured: A military parade in Tiananmen Square on September 3, 2015. (Photo by Jason Lee – Pool/Getty Images)
As June 3 passed into June 4 in Beijing in 1989, enraged citizens defended streets and neighborhoods as soldiers and armored vehicles of the murderous 27th Army, along with the 38th, moved from the western approaches of the Chinese capital to the heart of the city. It was China’s longest night.
By the morning of the 4th, the self-styled army of the Chinese people, the People’s Liberation Army, had viciously cleared Tiananmen Square, where more than a million people had gathered, talked, sung, and celebrated since the middle of April. The papier-mâché Goddess of Democracy, a monument to freedom that dominated the square, was smashed.
During the night thousands died. Blood marked pavements, corpses littered streets and alleys. Protests in the Chinese capital and about 370 other cities were put down. The ensuing political crackdown lasted years, and there was an immediate end to efforts to liberalize the economy.
For many, it was the end of hope. Dissidents surreptitiously fled China for Hong Kong and points beyond. Not all were so fortunate as to make it out of the country.
Deng Xiaoping, paramount leader of the time, wanted to make a point: the Communist Party was prepared to kill in great numbers to keep power.
His three successors have taken a different approach. They released a low — 241 — official death toll. Most estimates put the dead in the thousands. Moreover, officials avoid mentioning the event that had almost turned into an uprising. Chinese high school students have been given only one line in a textbook.
As a result, many grew up in China not hearing of “that 1989 affair” as officials have called it. “The only thing I can remember about June 4 is watching television and hearing that riot police had died,” Lu Jing, a high school student in 1999 told AFP. “I don’t believe any students died. China in this respect is democratic as China wouldn’t hurt its own people.”
To maintain rule in the face of such a horrific event, Chinese leaders have whitewashed the Beijing Spring and diverted the attention of the Chinese people by, among other things, promoting “Han nationalism,” a racist, xenophobic ideology. Due in part to its victim narrative — Beijing says it is now entitled to right wrongs from the 19th century — the Chinese state has become a dangerous actor. It has, among other things, been dismembering neighbors, closing off the global commons, systematically violating international rules, supporting rogue regimes, proliferating weapons technologies, attacking democracy.
Any attempt to stop such conduct is met with Beijing angrily claiming a violation of its sovereignty. For instance, in response to American tariffs imposed as a remedy for the annual theft of hundreds of billions of dollars of intellectual property, the Communist Party in the middle of last month declared a “people’s war” against the United States, effectively branding Washington an enemy of China.
Beijing these days is increasingly turning disputes into national and international crises, a symptom of an insecure ruling group. At the heart of that insecurity is the Communist Party’s continual need to justify dictatorial rule to an increasingly sophisticated populace. The wound of Tiananmen makes its leaders even less sure of themselves.
China’s despots should be concerned as they have clearly lost hearts and minds, something evident even among those living close to their leadership compound in the center of the Chinese capital. The Party rolls out one “patriotic” campaign after another, but people in Beijing and elsewhere have tuned them out. The authorities can ban Peppa Pig, for instance, as they did last year because the adorable cartoon character became a slacker and “gangsta” symbol, but the Chinese people happily ignored the prohibition and officials had to relent, rehabilitating her this year.
In this situation, the Party has resorted to intimidation and coercion to keep people in line. The world’s most sophisticated surveillance state is adept at oppression, especially as it adopts and perfects mechanisms of control. For instance, within months it plans to amalgamate local “social credit systems” into a national one, to give every Chinese person a constantly updated score based upon factors such as political obedience. Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s general secretary, is creating what the Economist termed “the world’s first digital totalitarian state.”
Xi, with his social credit scoring and other mechanisms, has been attempting to reverse the trend toward openness, and this has accompanied his effort to return the economy to a state-dominated model. Both initiatives are an all-out assault on modernity.
For decades — the Party celebrates 70 years of rule on October 1 — Mao and his successors have kept themselves ensconced, but as Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania recently wrote, “These guys are placeholders.”
Yes, they are merely temporary. They rule because they coerce, not because they lead.
The hope that China can liberalize itself starts with the Chinese people. And the conversation about liberalization begins, as a practical matter, in the only place on Chinese soil where Tiananmen is publicly discussed and mourned, where that coercion is least felt.
That place is Hong Kong, where tens of thousands gather each anniversary in a park to mark the event with candlelight.
That must be galling to General Secretary Xi, and he is taking steps to rein in Hong Kong and end the annual vigils. To bring Hong Kong to heel, he has forced Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to push what is called the “extradition bill,” amendments to the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminals Matters Ordinances.
If China can “extradite” Tiananmen dissidents and others, there will be no more Tiananmen vigils, and Hong Kong will no longer be a refuge. It is in Hong Kong — and only Hong Kong — where there is some semblance of liberty in the People’s Republic of China.
There was a semblance of liberty in the months before Tiananmen, and many saw Deng’s refusal to accept change as the final stand of communism in China. But on June 3 and June 4, he made it clear the Communist Party would stop at nothing.
China’s longest night, unfortunately, continues.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow.
Chang is wrong on a some key assertions. First of all, he’s too sure that bad loans will bring the banks down. This comes from a Western style perspective. Chinese accounting is oqaque to outsiders. hell it’s opaque to everybody. And as any businessman knows, all you have to do is cover the current obligations. A huge leverage position is not a problem if you can cover the interest and even then, if the creditors can’t call the loan, then leverage is a big SO WHAT.
Secondly, there is nobody in mainland China anywhere near powerful enough to displace the CPC. They absorb all of the best people in China. THey are all coopted. It is a national mafia where the best can join. There is no competition for political leadership and certainly none emerging in any sector that can argue to be native and not under indirect influence and control of laowei. Which is all they need to say about Taiwan or the HK opposition to defang them on the mainland.
It is a super stable regime and Chang is woefully wrong when he argues the contrary.
But, he makes a lot of interesting points nonetheless.
Kurtz, too many bad loans will bring any entity down. Maybe you wish to quote what he said that prompted your response.
“They absorb all of the best people in China.”
That is your assumption and it isn’t true. People may join the party but that doesn’t mean they fully adopt it. Right now it appears Xi has total control over China but he doesn’t. Years ago before Xi took power those with a better understanding of the world and China knew that when the technocrats took over the government would be more difficult and individual freedom would be reduced. That is happening. The regime is only stable in the present. If the regime doesn’t produce it will disappear. The more totalitarian a dictatorship is the less productive they become.
well, I am just guessing, but it seems me like a lot of the top joins the party, just because it’s the party. They don’t just accept anybody. You gotta bring stuff to the table. It’s fairly exclusive, is my impression
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/business/jack-ma-communist-party-alibaba.html
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/college/coll-china-politics-002.html
(old article but i doubt much has changed)
In China, the CPC now claims 68 million members—although this number easily makes it the largest party in the world, it only accounts for 5% of the entire population. For a longtime workers, peasants and government officials dominated the Party; now more intellectuals, business managers, and other professionals have joined the Party. In 2001, Jiang declared in his speech celebrating the eightieth birthday of the Party that private entrepreneurs, private business owners, self-employed artists, white-collar professionals employed by foreign companies and joint ventures are welcome to join the Party. The power base of the current regime has shifted away from its traditional constituency to the new social strata that represent the advanced force of production and new culture. Some commentators pointed out that the Chinese Party-state has had a right turn although still turning on the left light.
The party membership symbolizes status, power, opportunity and sometimes privilege; therefore, it is extremely difficult to be accepted by the Party and to become a formal member. The wooing to the acceptance may take many years, but it first starts with the expression of an individual’s willingness to join. The aspirant often moves closer to the party cell leaders and party members, submits a letter of application, and invites the scrutiny from the Party. To attract attention from the Party, the applicant has to show his or her political activism and correctness, build strong support from the party leaders, win popularity among the ordinary people, and carefully create an image of being selfless and principled. Many times, merely personal connections and bribes can work well. Once the party cell leaders are convinced that the applicant is worth their time and energy, they are going to invite the applicant to listen to some party meetings and participate in some other activities. A veteran party member will also be assigned to act as a liaison between the Party and the applicant. After several rounds of evaluation and sometimes more application letters from the applicant to show the soul-searching process and the catharsis of mind (actually a strategy of self-promotion), the party cell may decide to convene a meeting of the party members to consider the application. With two sponsorships from the party members, the applicant (often one out of eight) can be accepted as a party member with one-year probation. During the probation period, the Party will put on a microscope to examine the applicant, while also mobilizing ordinary people to send their feedback. If the applicant can survive the probation, then after a year, he or she becomes a formal member of the Party. Certainly this process can be very idealistic. As a matter of fact, many people, particularly among the farmers and urban workers, the Party has lost its attractiveness. Many people joining the Party with no ideal but utilitarian purpose—after all, the party membership is still an important passport to opportunities.
The CPC has been plagued by the loss of ideological enthusiasm and the rampancy of corruption among its members for the past two decades, the most recent decade got worse. According to the official statistics, from 1997 to 2001, 124,000 communist members were purged from the Party. In a recent survey among the party members (total 1,131) working at universities and on white-collar professional jobs in Shanghai, 11% did not accept or only partially accept the Party constitution; 31% of those white-collar professionals and 17% of those from universities believed that it is okay for them to have a religion or to participate in religious activities, despite the fact that the communist belief is atheistic. Several high-profile cases revealed that some party leaders have become Buddhists, members of the Falun Gong and followers of many other folk religions. Some officials also invite Fengshui masters or sorcerers to bless government sites or buildings. The clash between the Chinese government and the Falun Gong is a typical case pointing up the threat that the CPC has perceived from a heretical belief system. After the 1999 clampdown by the government, the Falun Gong has organized numberless resistances through low-tech as well as hi-tech methods, within and without China. Since 2004 the Falun Gong published Nine Commentaries on the CPC to discredit its ideology and launched a campaign to call on the Party members to quit their organization. It claimed that up to the first month of 2006, 7 million have left the CPC—including those who are living overseas and once were active members before they migrated. History is still evolving, so at this moment we cannot have a full assessment on the challenge and damage that the Falun Gong has inflicted upon the CPC ideologically and organizationally.
Besides the external challenges, the Party has its biggest enemy within itself: rampant corruption. A few China specialists have concluded that the CPC has actively and effectively put many institutions, regulations, and policies in place to control corruption, therefore, the Chinese communist regime has put the corruption issue behind. However, most China watchers would be less optimistic. Some have argued that corruption has structural causes—the nature of the regime is responsible, or cadre corruption is only part of the institutional involution of the regime; some have concluded that China’s anti-corruption efforts have been futile.
What I said was: “That is your assumption and it isn’t true. People may join the party but that doesn’t mean they fully adopt it. ” To do certain things even in business one has to join the party. Therefore, the people are not absorbed into the party (“They absorb all of the best people in China.”).
From the very liberal British newspaper The Independent“TWITTER ‘ACCIDENTALLY’ SUSPENDS CHINESE DISSIDENTS’ ACCOUNTS AHEAD OF TIANANMEN SQUARE ANNIVERSARY”
Twitter, the same outfit that still won’t admit shadowbanning anyone who speaks out on the right according to automated algorithms that apply a “guilt by association” approach to censorship now “accidentially” deletes hundreds of accounts whose holders criticize China.
Twitter depends on public credulity to get away with social engineering its corner of social media, allowing offensive remarks that break their own rules as long as leftists such as Peter Fonda make them, while cracking down hard and “permanently suspending” (removing) accounts of conservatives such as James Woods for things unrecognizable as breaches of Twitter’s rules.
One might think that Twitter admires censorship of political opinions so much that they commemorated the anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacres by suspending the accounts of critics of China. It’s not like Twitter has a fund of trust among people who don’t agree with its owner Jack Dorsey’s politics.
Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️♂️
Verified account @SharylAttkisson
$50,000.00 Whistleblower Award offered in Attkisson v. DOJ/FBI for govt. computer intrusions. Please RT
@TheJusticeDept won’t hold those accountable for govt. spying on me, so I’m self-funding fight for justice.
https://twitter.com/SharylAttkisson/status/1135329043778351104
Here’s what’s in the Singapore newspaper today
They’re not too worried about Tianenmen. They’re wondering if a war will break out and drag them down with it.
https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/st-editorial/us-and-china-must-agree-to-disagree
This isn’t a “US and China must agree to disagree” situation. China’s building artificial islands in the shallow parts of the South China Sea, and in defiance of a World Court ruling, making military bases on them, declaring them Chinese territory, and asserting territorial claims over the entire Spratly Islands chain.
Over a dozen other countries bordering on the South China Sea make claims over the same territory. Quoting the Straits Times article:
The issue isn’t “agreeing to disagree”, any more than Germany’s claim to lebensraum and its invasion of its neighbors was.
well, China is acting as a sovereign, and thumbing its nose at whatever international things it wants. And it will continue to do so.
Germany did not have nukes. And Germany was not the biggest population in the world at the time.
China is no Germany; as in, China’s in a lot better position than Germany was in the 1930s.
That aside, clearly they have some similar features to the NS regime. Strong ethnocentrism is one. Somehow it’s a problem for example, that Victor Orban wants to excude middle eastern Muslim refugees from entering Hungary, which makes him a racist and a bigot.
But Xi Jinpeng is not a bigot for tossing a million or so non-CHinese Uighur Muslims into labor camps. Nobody calls Chinese CP racist. Hmmm. Hard to understand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sld51YyVQxM
Yes; but Joe Biden says China is not a problem. So, vote for Joe, if you like Xi Jinpeng, Joe is his man!
The day of Tieneman Square was the day I lost most of my naïveté towards government.
I saw those students risk everything for freedom, and I really thought we were going to swoop in and save them. We did not intervene, as it would have been an act of war with China. I think those students thought we would help them, too.
That was the first time I saw the realism of a Communist regime, and what it means to not have individual rights. Abstraction in a text book is one thing, but actually seeing hopeful kids get mowed down is quite another. This is one of the reasons why I have an intense, visceral reaction to the common Democrat support of Communism and Socialism. The Chinese thought they were promised the common good, through an all powerful government, too.
They don’t even have the power to complain.
Karen, your claim the Democrats ‘support communism’ is so utterly disconnected from reality that it makes you a cardboard caricature of a Trumper.
They consistently undermined every effort to resist it after 1968, with the solitary exception of Jimmy Carter’s program to finance the Afghan insurgency.
Tabby, communism has been is steep decline since the 1980’s. The deficiencies of capitalism is now a much bigger issue in most of the world. Though ‘you’ might live in world that longs for the Dickens era.
The use of market mechanisms to enhance the Chinese national economy, under Chinese Communist leadership, is the explicit policy of the CPC since Deng. This is considered to be a situation comparable to a bird cage, which metaphor has been used
https://macropolo.org/analysis/change-of-plans-making-market-capitalism-safe-for-china/
CPC OWNS chinese capitalism as a system. It is theirs. They can change it as a matter of dictated policy. There are no elections and the only Congress is the party congress.
China has the largest population in the world and maybe soon the biggest economy. Accordingly, it is rational to argue that communism is NOT in steep decline whatsoever.
labor conditions have improved a lot in china the past 20 years but if you’re looking for a dickens era setup you can probably find one in China somewhere, run by guys who have a Chinese communist cadre overseeing their operation.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/09/amazon-contractor-foxconn-pay-workers-illegally
Karen is likely getting paid to post comments and advance a certain agenda.
(Jonathan Turley is not the one who is paying her, just to be clear.)
Libel.
No. It says “likely.” It’s just an opinion. Sue me, honey.
Karen asks, “Why don’t I have the time to pursue my many interests?”
Newflash: It isn’t because of the Affordable Care Act.
People who are unequal to a debate have nothing else to fall back on than the classic false logic of ad hominem, and obsessing.
Your comment reflects a coping strategy (on your part), Karen S. It must be true or else…
Actually, that’s the common description of the classic ad hominem in debate.
The difference…is that Karen S obviously likes to waste copious amounts of time here. Some people just pop in from time to time, and aren’t about to waste much time and energy — especially with people who have a fixed agenda.
It takes 5 minutes of my time to scroll past most of the comments and see if there is anything interesting.
My God. How much time do you spend, counting every word that I write and how many posts, fretting over what I might be doing every day? Why does Karen S have better wifi today? What is she doing? Didn’t you spend all afternoon once counting how many posts I’d written in the past 4 days?
I take up a lot of real estate in your very troubled mind. Look at the control that I have over you. Obsession. Sorry to hear you are still clearly so unhappy with your life. Those who insult others virtually 100% of their interactions are not happy, fulfilled people. It’s impossible to be both happy and rude.
There’s a “find” function, Karen. It take less than a second to search for info.
I’ve been away from the internet, enjoying myself for the last nearly two hours. I popped in to see if JT’s posted anything new, and see that you’re still blabbering away.
You lost your gold-plated health insurance. (One might guess that there’s more to your story than you’re admitting, but frankly I don’t really care.) Welcome to the real world. It’s a jungle out there…
And I’m quite happy, honey.
Blabber on…
The Affordable Care act can be distilled down to the following question.
What kind of human being defends a law that:
1. Increased annual deductibles from a PPO from $500 to $12,000
2. Created a network where most good doctors don’t accept individual policies
3. Took away access to many of the top cancer treatment centers
4. Instead of improving access to healthcare for the poor, it created a two tier system in which the poor and now the unsubsidized middle class individual policy holders cannot access the same quality doctors as employer policies
5. Increased premiums
Who does that? Well, besides internet trolls who can’t think of a single thing useful to say, and therefore all they can do is the equivalent of throwing poop like a howler monkey.
No Karen, the ACA cannot be distilled down to your false talking points.
Sure it can. Go too coveredca.gov and look it up.
How about, instead of saying something isn’t true because you don’t like my facts, researching the facts?
I’ve posted plenty of articles from left-leaning publications admitting that cancer centers don’t accept Obamacare, and that it created a two tier health care system.
That’s the problem with facts. They just are, regardless of how you feel about them.
Again, what sort of human being supports such a system that does that? $12,000 deductible? Really?
From the Covered CA government website, 2017:
Medical Deductible
Individual: $6,300 Family: $12,600
From the Covered CA government website, 2019:
Medical Deductible
Individual: $6,300 Family: $12,600
My PPO deductible used to be $500 when Obama got elected.
Like I said, what kind of reprehensible human being defends this monstrosity?
This is for the middle class, not rich people.
I’ve looked it up and I’ve produced the data. You’re wrong. The trends you decry – as you should – all began prior to the ACA and in the case of premium rate increases, they slowed since it’s passage. If you had junk insurance before – didn’t really cover much – you couldn’t keep it since minimum standards were part of the law. It is estimated that something like 2-3 million people were affected by this. Meanwhile the number of individuals who have coverage have increased by approximately 20 million.
Anon – your claim was thoroughly debunked. I have already posted the below. When you write such statements, you are prevaricating. But for those who are not aware that you ignore contradicting facts…
I also explained to you, in great detail, how they came up with that figure by not counting any costs that don’t count towards max caps – such as paying to see an out of network doctor, or for all the prescriptions that aren’t covered. In brief:
The initial catastrophic jump, from $500 deductible to $6,000, and then $12,000. That means an 1100% jump, then only a 100% jump.
That 100% jump seems minor, and a slowing down from the 1100% increase, but it was $6,000 in a year. You have to understand math. Let’s say that there were a series of adjustments, as deductibles rose from $50, to $100, to $500. Percentage wise, they were significant, but they were not a significant sum total of money. For instance, an increase from $1 to $3 is 200%, but it’s still only $3. There are behaviors you can take to save money when your medical costs are a deductible rather than a premium. A few jumps in deductibles were still very affordable. Cost sharing can save medical costs. However, a jump from $500 to $12,000 is not affordable, which should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. When the dollar amount gets high, even a small percentage increase is a significant amount of money. That is why people refinance their mortgage to save just a single percentage point. Percentage wise, you are not saving much money, but dollar wise, you are. You have to understand the math so as not to be taken advantage of.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwhelming-evidence-that-obamacare-caused-premiums-to-increase-substantially/#359f668715be
“Two scholars at the renowned Brookings Institution, Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg, have published an analysis finding that “average premiums in the individual market actually dropped significantly upon implementation of the ACA [Affordable Care Act].” This contrasts with a plethora of evidence, including a rigorous 2014 Brookings study, showing that the ACA significantly increased premiums. In this post, I discuss methodological concerns with the Adler and Ginsburg approach as well as evidence that leads most scholars to reach a very different conclusion.”
First, unlike Adler and Ginsburg’s approach, Brookings 2014 study used actual data and found that “enrollment-weighted premiums in the individual health insurance market increased by 24.4 percent beyond what they would have had they simply followed…trends.” Second, S&P Global Institute found that average individual market medical costs increased substantially between 2013 and 2015, up an estimated 69%. Third, 2014 insurer data shows that premiums for individual market Qualified Health Plans (QHPs), ACA-compliant plans certified to be sold on exchanges, were much higher than premiums for individual market non-QHPs, mostly plans in existence before 2014 that did not comply with the ACA.
Remember, any plan that did not include 26 forms of birth control without a copay (and instead had high premiums to pay for it, on the assumption that women were too dumb to add), was not ACA compliant.
Anon:
“I’ve looked it up and I’ve produced the data. You’re wrong.” The $12,600 deductible I posted was lifted directly from the Covered California website. So, literally, I’m not wrong. These are facts, Anon. Deal.
What kind of human being sits there and defends a $12,600 deductible for the middle class? Seriously? What the actual hell are you arguing about? It’s $12,600, up from $500?
Tell you what, Anon. Put your money where your mouth is. Cancel your insurance and get an unsubsidized, individual policy. No employer policy. No Medicare. Whatever you had, get rid of it, and get one of the policies that you keep telling me is so fantastic. Good luck finding a doctor.
It’s really ironic, someone who’s never had an Obamacare individual policy, explaining to someone who did, that she’s wrong about it.
For anyone missing a moral compass, it is unethical to remove access to healthcare from one group in order to give it to another. In this case, the latter still didn’t get access to quality health care. They are still second class patients, only now they have more company.
Karen, yeah, you’re a regular debate queen in your own mind. You haven’t debunked anything, though you know your way around right wing sources. Congratulations. Your latest is from another un-objective advocate who is now on Trump’s economic team (that’s gonna’ look bad on his resume!).
Let me know when you have a plan to cover the 20 million you want to get kicked off of the ACA, but you better hurry. The GOP has had 10 years and have come up with nada, bupkus, zilcho and the democrats will likely take over again in 2020.
Anon:
“Karen, yeah, you’re a regular debate queen in your own mind. You haven’t debunked anything, though you know your way around right wing sources.” You are acting remarkably foolish. I literally got the $12,600 deductible from the Covered California website.
Facts, Anon. Deal with it. You can flounce around all you want, but it won’t change the facts.
What kind of human being stands by a $12,600 deductible for the middle class?
Well, someone who cannot accept the facts in front of him.
Here’s an idea. How about if you want to improve access to healthcare for the poor, then you work on healthcare for the poor, instead of taking it away from the middle class? Get it?
If you love Obamacare so much, then go on it yourself. They could use the premiums.
There’s more to Karen’s situation than meets the eye, I suspect. I doubt that we’re getting the full story and we never will, unless some unbiased, objective party were to step in and look at the full picture, including net worth, income, etc. and lay it all out — which isn’t going to happen. We’re getting Karen’s version and we’ll be hearing about it until…
Anonymous:
“There’s more to Karen’s situation than meets the eye, I suspect.”
Except for the fact that even NPR penned articles supporting my experience…
https://www.ipi.org/ipi_issues/detail/at-md-anderson-you-can-have-cancer-care-or-obamacare-but-not-both
“The world famous Houston-based M.D. Anderson Cancer Center accepts several insurance plans. But one type of insurance it will not accept: Obamacare.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/obamacare-can-be-worse-than-medicaid-1530052891
“Many of the country’s top hospitals are off limits to patients covered by Obamacare’s current plans.”
Thanks for that objective review:
“John C. Goodman is a libertarian economist. He was the founding chief executive of the free-market thinktank the National Center for Policy Analysis. He is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute. The Wall Street Journal and The National Journal have called Goodman the “father of Health Savings Accounts.”
John Goodman is also considered by many to be the father of HSA’s which was successful for so many. Obama is considered the father of the ACA which is a failure.
“The Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) is a think tank based in Irving, Texas and founded in 1987 by Congressman Dick Armey to “research, develop and promote innovative and non-partisan solutions to today’s public policy problems.”[1]
IPI is an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN), a network of right-wing “think tanks” and other non profits spanning 49 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico.[2]
The conservative Capital Research Center ranked IPI as amongst the most conservative groups in the US, scoring it as an “eight” on a scale of one to eight.[3] IPI has received funding from corporations like Exxon Mobil and organizations like the Kochs’ Claude R. Lambe Foundation, Scaife Foundations, the Bradley Foundation and others.”
Anon – you are ignoring the fact that I provided an entire range of sources, including the WSJ, NYT, and NPR.
You want to pick one of them I deliberately included from the right side, so that I encompassed the entire range? That’s not legitimate.
And your statement that my insurance was “junk” was, once again, not true.
An ACA non compliant policy was one that did not have 26 forms of birth control without a copay, and instead had extremely high premiums. Almost no policy had all 26 forms without a copay.
My insurance was just a regular PPO, from one of the major carriers, accepted everywhere. It wasn’t a catastrophic only policy, but rather had a very generous benefits package. It had a wide selection of birth control with a $5 copay. Therefore, it was non compliant. Of course it had maternity coverage. I had a child with it. I never was turned down by a provider for my health insurance. I have asthma, and it covered my health care. $500 copay. It really was affordable, rather than in name only as the ACA.
Out of the entire catastrophe of the ACA, there is one, single aspect that I like. One. Out of 6 feet of regulations when stacked. That’s the pre-existing condition requirement for coverage. Really, though, that’s not really insurance at all, but cost sharing.
When politicians mess around with health insurance, you end up with a $12,600 deductible.
Get with the times. The New York Times. Left leaning media started admitting that Obamacare was unaffordable and that good providers didn’t accept it in 2016.
The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sunday-review/sorry-we-dont-take-obamacare.html)
“Anyone who is on these plans knows it’s a two-tiered system,” said Ms. Moses, describing the emotional sting of those words to a successful entrepreneur.
“Anytime one of us needs a doctor,” she continued, “we send out an alert: ‘Does anyone have anyone on an exchange plan that does mammography or colonoscopy? Who takes our insurance?’ It’s really a problem.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/03/506742736/obamacare-plans-dont-always-include-top-cancer-centers
“Being told that you have cancer can be scary. Discovering that your health insurance plan doesn’t give you access to leading cancer centers may make the diagnosis even more daunting.
As insurers in the plans set up under the Affordable Care Act shrink their provider networks and slash the number of plans that offer out-of-network coverage, some consumers are learning that their treatment options can be limited.
One reader wrote to Kaiser Health News last month saying that she was dismayed to learn that none of the plans offered on the New York health insurance marketplace provides access to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where she is a patient.
Memorial Sloan Kettering is a well-regarded cancer center that is affiliated with two key organizations: the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the National Cancer Institute. The cancer center participates in New York’s Essential Plan, which is available to lower income people on the state’s exchange, but doesn’t participate in any of the regular plans designated as bronze, silver, gold or platinum.”
Karen, given that upwards of 20 million people who were previously not covered are now – that is mentioned in your 1st link – you are arguing for reforms to the ACA, not it’s abandonment. Big surprise, given that a program of this scale will have kinks to work out, and even more so when the current president and his GOP enablers are constantly trying to sabotage the program. When the Democrats take over that office – we’ve won 6 of the last 7 votes, so that is likely – and hopefully the senate again we’ll start fixing it. By the way, that is what most Americans want to happen.
As to this particular problem, we need laws requiring docs and hospitals to take ACA patients or suffer consequences. The AMA still limits the numbers in med schools and they are subsidized in their training by tax dollars, as are many if not most hospitals. If they don’t like it, they can seek a career in the NBA.
Anon:
“you are arguing for reforms to the ACA, not it’s abandonment.”
No, I’m not. Any law that stacks up to literally 6 feet high is not good legislation. Any law that is not passed with bipartisan cooperation in regards to healthcare will not be good legislation. Any law that is “too big to fail” and may never be repealed, simply because it is too onerous, is not good legislation.
The problems with the ACA are foundational. That is why there are Exchanges now across America with only one, or in some cases, zero, carriers.
The responsible action is to abolish the ACA. Submit a draft of new bills that address very specific aspects of healthcare. Each bill should be no more than 10 pages long, and every member of Congress should read it in its entirety. This would make the overall raft of laws adaptable. You can rework parts that aren’t working, instead of throwing up your hands and saying, oops, it’s just too big to rework or change now.
Pass a law, analyze the result, adjust. Change it if need be.
Those 20 million people that you mention did not get access to the same quality healthcare as an employer policy. Nope. They are still a lower caste of people, only they now have millions more company. You guys just screwed over millions of people, and didn’t give anyone else access to anything better than they could have accessed at a county hospital.
Is it OK to deny access to healthcare to millions of people who used to have it, in order to give it to 20 million people who didn’t? Does it bother you that those 20 million still don’t have access to the same quality of care that you do? And now millions more who used to, don’t anymore?
How many people have to be hurt for it to matter to you?
Those who never had insurance may not realize that they still don’t have high quality care. It’s just better than nothing. Only millions of people got screwed over just to produce the result of…better than nothing.
Don’t you want the poor to have access to great doctors? Why defend this caste system?
What Anon is doing is shifting the chairs on the Titanic deck and then counting the chairs in groups. When he is done though the actual number of chairs hasn’t increased he suddenly has 700% more. The man cannot count.
He also cannot reason. A lot of the increase came from Medicaid, shifting methods of paying etc. while the middle class picked up the bill and went without care.
Insurance does not equal medical care. It merely reserves a space in line for whatever people wish to call the care provided down the road.
Outcomes are what count. Will I get better. Will I live or die. Anon is a moron when it comes to trying to equate outcomes with how many people were sold tickets and are waiting on line.
Many insurance policies that were excellent had to be given up and in exchange expensive policies were provided that offered worse care and likely much worse outcomes.
One of the reasons for the penalty for not carrying the ACA was that no one (a payer) in their right mind would pick the very much more expensive ACA policy over the policy they had before. That tells one the value of the ACA policy very quickly.
Karen, the average national ACA deductible is about 1/2 of what you claim for California, still too high, but guess what? That trend began before the ACA, as did exploding premiums. As I noted, since the bill was passed, there has been no opportunity to improve on the bill as your party has sought to undermine it starting before it was actually implemented with some success and the courts threw out a critical element for cost controls at the beginning. I suggested a fix for docs and hospitals not taking patients. Your favored Brookings study was 5 years ago in 2014 and is counter to plenty of other research from kaiser, etc.
Wake me up when you have a better idea that also covers as many people. Your party has failed and is getting in the way of the current system and needed improvements and is actively sabotaging it. By the way, the rest of the developed world provides health care at about 60% of what we pay and they all feature more government involvement, not less, though the systems vary from complete socialism to mixes of private and government insurance with private docs and facilities.
I have a business insurance audit in the morning I’m working late on and I better finish it. I’ll respond again later tomorrow.
” That trend began before the ACA, as did exploding premiums”
The unmanageable trend of higher insurance costs was mostly caused by government. Each government policy increased premiums even if initially there was a slight drop. There is a lag time for people to learn the system and to game it.The ACA is just another one of the interventions that has caused prices to dramatically climb. Anon is behind the times and lies a lot.
Anon:
“Karen, the average national ACA deductible is about 1/2 of what you claim for California, still too high, but guess what?”
I lifted the $12,600 deductible directly from the Covered CA website, a link of which I provided previously. That was for an unsubsidized, middle class family. No kidding, if you average out deductibles for people who are subsidized, the average would be lower. Your point?”
“That trend began before the ACA, as did exploding premiums.”
Debunked, and I explained the math to you. Increasing a premium from $1 to $3 is a 200% increase. The total difference is only $2. Increasing a premium from $250 to $375, hypothetically, is only 150% increase, but the difference is $125. The percentage increase is lower, but the overall dollar increase is quite a bit higher. That is why people refinance their mortgages to only save a percentage point or two. The percentage is negligible but the total savings is significant. This has been explained to you. I have also included articles discussing the flawed methodology in the original article, and how most scholars come to a different conclusion now. Ignoring evidence and repeating a debunked premise is bad science.
The discussions about Obamacare on this blog are apropos of the architect admitting that he relied upon the stupidity of the American public to get it passed, because if they were transparent about the real costs, it never would have.
That explains how people doggedly persist in defending a $12,600 family deductible for the unsubsidized middle class. It takes blind faith, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary, to maintain such an untenable position.
Here is Gruber admitting, on tape, how they hid Obamacare’s costs from the gullible public. Heh. You are defending a law designed to take advantage of, and I quote, “the stupidity of the American voter.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/11/10/aca-architect-the-stupidity-of-the-american-voter-led-us-to-hide-obamacares-tax-hikes-and-subsidies-from-the-public/#256ec7eb7c05
“Today, new video surfaced in which Gruber said that “the stupidity of the American voter” made it important for him and Democrats to hide Obamacare’s true costs from the public. “That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” said Gruber. “But I’d rather have this law than not.” In other words, the ends—imposing Obamacare upon the public—justified the means.”
“The discussions about Obamacare on this blog are apropos of the architect admitting that he relied upon the stupidity of the American public to get it passed,”
In Gruber’s wildest imagination I don’t think Gruber believed there were many people as stupid as Anon who even after the fact can’t recognize that the ACA was depending on the stupidity of Americans and even said so.
More video evidence, from the designers of the law themselves, that it would severely increase costs for the unsubsidized middle class:
“In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the designers of the Affordable Care Act explains that up to one million Americans should expect “severe” and “uncomfortable” increases in their health insurance costs over the next year. ”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/25/obamacare_architect_ezekiel_emanuel_we_will_see_severe_or_uncomfortable_cost_increases_for_one_million_people.html
A law meant to benefit the poor should have (1)given the poor access to high quality health care and (2) never impacted the middle class who already had health insurance they liked.
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/24/obamacare-to-blame-for-soaring-drug-costs-aei.html
“What we have is an under-insurance problem,” he said. “People are now under-insured, especially for catastrophic drugs if they get a disease like cancer or something like that because of these new [narrow] formulary designs … popularized by the Affordable Care Act.”
“If the drug is not on your [Obamacare] formulary list, you have no co-insurance. You’re completely on your own,” said Gottlieb, an advisor to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Bush presidency. The agency, a division of the Health and Human Services Department, administers government health-care programs, including Obamacare. “Since these plans are the predominant structures in Obamacare, they’re starting to migrate into commercial plans” in the workplace, he said.”
Karen:
You were right and I was wrong on deductibles:
“The average deductible for a 2019 bronze policy — which have higher deductibles, but lower premiums than other tiers of Obamacare plans — is nearly $5,900, while the average maximum of out-of-pocket limit is just under $7,000, according to Health Pocket, an online health insurance shopping tool. Family bronze plans have an average deductible of just under $12,200 and an average out-of-pocket maximum of nearly $14,000.
Prior to Obamacare, some individual market plans had deductibles of $10,000 or more, said Sabrina Corlette, research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.
“The ACA was an improvement over a lot of what was available before,” she said. “But it definitely could be better.”
That said, some 54% of those who signed up for 2019 plans qualify for cost-sharing subsidies, which can greatly lower their deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. Individuals earning less than $30,350 and families of four making less than $62,750 are eligible for this assistance.
The Trump administration is also playing a role in boosting how much people have to pay for care since the limits are set annually by the federal government. The 2019 cap was 7% higher than the year before, the largest increase since the law took effect in 2014….”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/politics/fact-check-obamacare-deductibles/index.html
Your study on rising premiums is 5 years old and while a favorite of political advocates you cite, not the “last word”.
“Health care costs have been rising, but at a slower pace since the ACA was launched. Since 2010, health care costs have increased between 3.5 percent to 5.8 percent a year. In the 10 years prior to that, they rose between 4.0 percent to 9.6 percent. That’s according to the annual “National Health Expenditures Summary,” published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”
The article includes a link to the National Health Expenditures Summary.
https://www.thebalance.com/the-truth-about-obamacare-3306075
Anon – thank you for acknowledging the Covered CA family deductible of the unsubsidized middle class.
“Prior to Obamacare, some individual market plans had deductibles of $10,000 or more.” Those were likely catastrophic policies. They had extremely low premiums, only covered major medical, and were designed for healthy young people.
Most people had PPOs, like I did, that had great benefits, and deductibles of around $500.
You have to be savvy to parse the pro-ACA propaganda. For example, the way that quote above was worded, one would think that regular PPOs like mine cost $10,000 in deductibles.
When a policy was labeled non-ACA compliant, one would think it was just a catastrophic only plan, or something with poor coverage. However, anything that charged a copay for birth control, or that offered 15 versions instead of 26, would be non-compliant.
Speaking from experience, any health insurance I ever had, prior to Obamacare, covered birth control with around a $5 copay.
Propaganda termed this a war on women because of a $5 copay, and not having all 26 forms of birth control in existence. Now women pay $12,000 in family deductibles and hundreds of dollars in premiums for insurance that isn’t accepted by the best doctors. Now they are worse off, with many middle class women either canceling insurance altogether, not being able to actually see a doctor because they cannot afford the deductible on top of the premium, or having to choose between insurance or keeping the lights on.
It’s like politicians thought women can’t do math.
Not having pre-existing conditions as an impediment to coverage is great, but the coverage politicians came up with is horrid.
A guy just told me last week that he had to cancel his family’s insurance because since he doesn’t qualify for a subsidy, he can’t afford Obamacare. While this is anecdotal, I have provided articles supporting that it is representative of reality.
You asked me for a better idea. I’ve said the following more than once:
They should have made a plan to help the poor, not take away access to healthcare from the middle class on individual policies. The poor still don’t have the best care, but now they have more company. Unethical. Repeal Obamacare, open the free market back up so that insurance companies can give consumers what they want, instead of what the government tells them they must have, and replace it with a plan to help the poor.
Karen, your proposal for a replacement for the ACA isn’t a proposal, it’s a pipe dream. The “free market” already failed to either control costs or provide universal coverage, and for obvious reasons. Your proposal does nothing about rising health care costs, which was a major goal of the ACA, though weak coming out of Congress – big surprise that powerful interest resisted this part – and further weakened by the courts and the GOP. Still it has had some success in this regard but needs more teeth. As I noted, this isn’t rocket science as the rest of the developed world does this – including universal coverage – for on average 60% of what we pay. They have a variety of systems, but all feature government “negotiating” prices if you want in on the market. None of them do it with a “free market”.
Anon,
“Your proposal does nothing about rising health care costs”
Neither does yours.
The underlying causes of the rising health care costs (diet and lifestyle) is not effectively addressed by anyone. Making care universal does not fix lousy diets and unhealthy lifestyles.
Preventative care doesn’t address it seriously as far as I can tell, considering the care my family members get.
50% of kids at or below the poverty line are overweight or obese. There are teens getting liver transplants because they have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease from a fructose-hammered liver. There are kids with high blood pressure. What is seriously being done, beyond just medication and surgery, to address such things? I haven’t heard anything seriously being discussed. Heaven forbid we increase the amount of money they get but then limit what can be bought to mostly unprocessed food.
While ‘food stamps’ can be used at farmers markets, that doesn’t do anything to help people who may not have any idea how to cook fresh broccoli or just choose not to eat it.
I know people who have terrible health issues, who aren’t even on food stamps, who refuse to eat vegetables and refuse to change the way they eat. They are obese, diabetic, have hypertension, breathing issues, and would rather pop pills than parsnips.
All that processed food that is a large proportion of the standard American diet–is anyone going to seriously address the dearth of micronutrients in such food or the extensive use of HFCS in packaged food?
Doctors are excellent at acute care, but they do need better training for preventing and actually addressing chronic disease. Subclinical deficiency in magnesium, for instance, is associated with a whole host of chronic diseases (diabetes, migraines, hypertension, arrhythmias, constipation to name a few). Doctors primarily only check serum magnesium, which says little about the body’s actual stores, and, can actually appear normal even if a deficiency exists (DiNicolantonio has a great article in the 2018 BMJ Open Heart about this).
Europe has a radically different food and activity culture than we do. That has to be changed here before any kind of healthcare costs go down. And that has to change at the individual level.
https://khn.org/news/health-insurance-costs-crushing-many-people-who-dont-get-federal-subsidies/
“These increasing costs plus rising deductibles and copayments have driven millions who don’t get a subsidy to drop their coverage or turn to cheaper, less comprehensive — and sometimes inadequate — insurance.
Overall, about 4.4 million fewer people who buy coverage on their own were insured in 2018 compared to 2015, a decline from 18.8 to 14.4 million. Most of the decline occurred among people who don’t get subsidies.”
Even though Anon claims that this only affected 1 to 2 million people, the actual figure is far higher. How many people does it take for Anon to care about?
We witnessed the explosion in health care costs AFTER massive new government programs were put into effect over 50 years ago. Prior to the introduction of MediCare and MediCaid, health care costs rose at a pace comparable to the overall CPI.
As those programs were put in place and expanded, health care costs rose at nearly 3x the rate of inflation. When that happens year after year, decade after decade, you have unit costs up about 2500-3000%. (The overall cost of living over the same period rose about 600-700%).
Anon’s observation that the free market failed to control costs is fundamentally flawed, since the free market ( or ANY real level of transparency or competition vital to the function of free market) have been squashed by the characteristics of these govenment programs. And other aspects of government influence/ control exercised.
So people who argue to that “to the free market hasn’t worked to control health care costs” can tell us how “well” massive government intervention has “helped” to control costs.
“Anon’s observation that the free market failed to control costs is fundamentally flawed”
Flawed and loaded with generalizations that are meaningless. He doesn’t have a grasp of the facts and cannot put things together in their proper perspective. Ignorance abounds. On the other hand you are correct, government action has directly correllated with increased costs. In fact we haven’t had a free market in healthcare since WW2.
Tom, life expectancy has been increasing for decades. That’s the reason Social Security and Medicare have been thrown out of whack; ‘seniors are living too long’.
When Social Security was first implemented, back in the 1930’s, men retired as 65 and were dead within 10 years.
When Medicare was first implemented, only the most resilient seniors lived past 80.
These days seniors routinely live well into their 80’s. That’s the reason these entitlements have spiraled in costs. What’s more the Boomers started retiring in 2011.
The increase in life expectancy, combined with retiring Boomers, is the reason S.S. and Medicare are now out of whack. It’s the reason why pension plans all over the country have too many liabilities.
But these reasons don’t mean that S.S. or Medicare are failures. That’s only the opinion of Libertarians who want to privatize entitlements so they can preserve tax cuts.
Tom, medicare and medicaid set pricing which is lower, not higher than non-medicare services. Yes, total medical expenditures increased (partly) because there were more people receiving care, but per procedure costs were not increased due to these programs.
I also refer you to other developed countries who provide health care and universal coverage for approx 60% of what we spend.
Lastly, the ACA does have cost control measures which are admittedly weak and need to have more teeth when we get political leadership again interested in saving and improving our health care system. Still they have been judged to be mildly effective.
Anon’s assessment of Medicare is totally wrong as usual. He doesn’t have the slightest idea of what causes costs to rise. The volume of marginal services can fiscally destroy the program. He needs to learn how to add and multiply.
Iit appears that my responses to Peter and Anon failed to post, so I’ll summarize both. First, if Anon’s theoery that MediCare and MediCaid setting low reimbursement rates is an example of gvt. programs controlling costs, then what is the explanation for the unprecended explosion in health care costs that came in the wake of these programs?
A related response to Peter…..we actually had a naerly- unprecedented back to back yearly declines in U.S. life expectancy AFTER ObamaCare was passed. So I can see that there might be some cost containment benefits in the government programs if you’re TEDUCIMG life expentency.😉
Leaving that aside, the aggregate costs of these programs, why does a night in the hospital ( bare charges) that cost $50 in @970 no cost $1500? It’s one thing to look at the TOTAL COST of a program; obviously, when more people are swooped into a program, the total costs will increase. But that DIES NOT EXPLAIN a c.30-fold increase in unit costs. So the canard that increased longevity makes things more expensive doesn’t fly when you’re trying to explain away massive, unit cost spikes.
Between comments not posting, and inability to proofread comments before posting thanks to some changes last summer, there are some difficulties trying to use this site.
U will add that several years ago , I went into a good deal of detail about the Ponzi- like aspects of programs like MediCare, and reviewing the &0+ year history of U.S. healthcare, or a program like MediCare, involves a very long comment that I don’t plan on getting into tonight.
I will emphasize that anyone who claims that “the free market hasn’t worked” with respect to healthcare either does not understand the free market, the history of American healthcare, or both.
Since I can’t proofread this, there will likely be numerous typos.
Karen S,
Start your own blog, where you’ll surely get all the attention you richly deserve.
We have a regular variety pack of “anonymouses” here on this thread. I look forward to this particular “anonymous” giving the same advice to those more “deserving”, like L4B.
As the anonymous who displays the characteristics of “the troll-groupie anonymous”, I can confidently predict that that ain’t gonna f***Ing happen.
Karen S says: June 4, 2019 at 10:48 PM
“I take up a lot of real estate in your very troubled mind. Look at the control that I have over you. Obsession. Sorry to hear you are still clearly so unhappy with your life.”
Similar sentences from another commenter have been deleted from this blawg–twice already. Let’s see how long this third attempt lasts.
Sheep Disturbance.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
Article 1, Section 8 provides Congress the power to tax merely for “…general Welfare…,” deliberately omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual welfare. The same Section provides Congress the power to regulate merely trade, exchange or “…commerce among the several States…” to preclude bias or favor by one state over another, and no power to regulate anything else. The Constitution provides individuals the right to private property “…in exclusion of every other indivdual…” including individuals of the governmental type. Congress has no power to tax for, or otherwise impose, redistribution of wealth, control of the means of production (i.e. regulation), social engineering or central planning.
The entire communistic American welfare state is unconstitutional including affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, rent control, social services, forced busing, minimum wage, utility subsidies, WIC, TANF, HAMP, HARP, Education, Labor, Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing,” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Charity is conducted in the free markets of the private sector, litigation in courts and redress of grievances by petition.
For one, Communism is the end result of Socialism. Democrats support Socialism today to a surprising degree. It is most certainly not a conservative position. It’s one of the myriad ways the Democrats alienate conservatives or anyone who had the mos basic grasp of history.
Democrat support for Socialism has become so popular that a San Francisco politician was just booed, for extended minutes, when he criticized the Socialist platform for presidential candidates.
If you think Socialism is not a problem in the Democrat Party, then you are not au courant. I take Socialism very seriously, because it is a murderous paradigm that requires human rights abuses to exist. Since we are small business owners, obviously I would not support a Socialist government that makes earning a profit illegal.
Why would anyone want every person in America to become a charity case, dependent upon the government to decide what they may eat or where they may live? What day they may go to the store, and what “free goods” they might be allowed to have?
If the Republican Party became enamored of Socialism, then I would say that it has to clean up its act. But this is a specifically Democrat problem. It was foreseeable. The Democrat Party is bigger and bigger government, and there is no bigger government than Socialism, leading to Communism.
Why would my opposition to Socialism be so offensive to you? And why would you be in denial that this is a specifically Democrat problem?
Here is the Left leaning Atlantic on the extremism in the Democratic Party, which of late has not been very democratic. Obviously, The Atlantic has to be anti-Trump in every article that they write, claiming that Republicans support white nationalists, and yet it managed to recognize that Democrats have a very serious problem.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/progressivism-making-democrats/586372/
Nice try Karen. The most popular Democrats in the primary so far is the centrist Biden and it’s not close. Democrats picked up seats in Suburban districts and the centrist Pelosi keeps a short leash on House members, most of whom are opposed to impeachment. The centrist Hillary cleaned Bernie’s clock in 2016 and the same is about to happen in 2020.
By the Way, your concern trolling aside, our education system and state universities are socialistic and have been for several centuries, as are social security. medicare, and medicaid. Much of our research is funded by government. As fas as I know, there is no murder or enslavement in the operation of these programs and if you try to take them away, the aging MAGA crowd will string you up.
I fervently hope that the DNC pushes the Socialists out. What really shocked me was when Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper was booed for several minutes when he criticized the Democratic support for Socialism and far Left policies. This is not the purview of a few wild eyed people in the subway. The more Democrats go far Left, the more those very suburban districts will be alienated. Who do you think AOC, Ilham Omar, and Bernie Sanders are going to attract?
It is common for people to claim that all socialism is, is the free stuff. That’s actually the carrot used by Socialist regimes in order to get people to give up individual rights. They offer a solution to whatever problem people have – free health care, free homes, free food, free clothes. We’ll take care of you, just become perpetual wards of the state.
Booming capitalist economies can support some of that free stuff, but eventually, the list becomes so long that the taxes become confiscatory, and goodbye to the golden goose that paid for it all. When the government takes over an industry, one can say it is socialized.
The current rhetoric is anti-capitalist. That means economic socialism.
It is a bit coy to pretend that every single thing the government pays for is Socialism.
Are universities socialized? No, not really. The State does not decide what is to be taught, such as Common Core in the public education system, or what students are allowed to learn. They are not completely financed with taxes, as students pay tuition, and for books.
Right now, the argument is shifting away from using capitalism to pay for those goodies promised in Socialist countries, and going full Socialist.
The best examples of people living as wards of the state are Native American reservations. Tribal members are not allowed to own the property where they live, so many are dilapidated. There’s no point in improving what you don’t own. They rely on government handouts to live.
No one thrives on a Res. They are some of the most depressing places you’ll ever see. The argument, from inside, is that they need to be taken care of even more by the government. It is shocking to see the depths to which government care brought a once proud people.
Those tribes that do not live on Reservations, under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, thrive by comparison.
An exception are the casinos. While none of the gambling leads to individual success, it does pour extra money into the coffers to be doled out. Paid for by capitalists.
Karen, our education and state universities feature state paid staff, state owned facilities, and it is paid for from taxes. State employees determine the curriculum. It is socialistic and it is both highly beneficial and benign in the matters you fear. It is near universal that military forces are socialistic. There are places where socialism makes sense, as in these examples.
Anon – the government does not determine what is taught in universities.
I clearly explained socialism above. While the government did take over the public education K-12 system, we are a capitalist country.
A socialist country outlaws making a profit and owning property. Any capitalist businesses are black market.
A booming capitalist economy can pay for benefits programs, but when the economy goes socialist, then capitalism becomes illegal.
Government employees – the faculty – determine curriculum in state universities. Sometimes, and mostly unfortunately, the legislature meddles in that process.
Public K-12 education is and has been government run for over 200 years.
There are virtually zero purely socialist countries, just as there virtually zero purely capitalist countries anymore. The most developed countries have a mixture of a capitalist economy with certain socialistic services, and considering the military, this has been the case for hundreds of years, and longer.
I don’t know where you are getting your definitions, but they don’t fit the real world.
“Public K-12 education is and has been government run for over 200 years.”
There is a difference between federal control and local control. As control over education has moved to the higher levels of government the costs have radically increased and the education has suffered.
Anon:
“Public K-12 education is and has been government run for over 200 years.” Yes, which is why I referred to universities.
The government rolled out Common Core, deciding what students across America must learn, and how to learn it, compared with universities, where professors can create their own curriculum. You can learn different things in different universes and classes, but in every school across America, kids learn CC.
Instead of teaching proper math, Common Core spends more time teaching gimmicks, and very little time teaching correct mathematics.
For example, instead of teaching children how to multiply two 2-digit numbers, lining them up, carrying numbers, they use the Lattice Method:
https://youtu.be/I7ULHPi69Z4
In order to add, kids have to draw a diagram, make tens, regroup, and take like 5 different steps. 5 + 7 becomes a complicated, multi-step, tortuous process.
Common Core needs to be put into a locked box, and then put into a larger box, welded shut, weighted down, and then dumped into the Mariana Trench.
This is what happens when government takes over a single industry. Should the government start running universities, then there will be State-approved curriculum at the university level.
As I mentioned before, a strong capitalist country can pay for the “goodies” some Socialist dictators tempt their people with, while maintaining capitalism and individual rights. However, this falls apart either when the programs become too expensive and crash the economy, or Socialists decide to go Full Socialism, eliminate capitalism, and in doing so, abolish individual rights.
Prior to a few years ago, Democrats simply wanted the Nanny State. High taxes and spending, and lots of programs. That is the scenario outlined above. Now, Socialism is trending in popularity, along with anti-capitalist sentiment, furthered by Russian propaganda in universities and other places. Anti-capitalism specifically means the next leap beyond the Nanny State, and into oppression.
If Democrats don’t turn this ship around, we already know where Socialist countries end up. This is dangerous.
Government employees – the faculty – determine curriculum in state universities. Sometimes, and mostly unfortunately, the legislature meddles in that process.
The legislature never meddles and has every reason to meddle.
Karen, your post on education doesn’t make any sense, nor does your equating socialistic programs with tyranny.
A professor at a state university is a state employee. A teacher at a county school is a county employee, Both are government employees. Your complaint then isn’t with “socialism” but what you view as wrong headed policy from. Some states legislatures and governors are pushing teaching the bible in public schools. Is that socialism too, or just a bone head idea from on high?
As to the dangers of “socialism”, you understand that there is a difference between Soviet Russia and Sweden, right?
Lastly, thank you so much for your concern about the Democratic party. We really appreciate it, but we got this.
Anon – what part aren’t you getting?
The government took over K-12, paid for by tax payer money and bonds. The government decided what will be taught in every school across America – Common Core – which sucks. Schools cannot get away from teaching Common Core. The Teachers Unions successfully lobbied to require Charters and Private Schools to also teach Common Core, to take away competitive advantage.
Universites may be either private or public.
State universities use state employees. However, the State does not decide what will be taught in every class in every university across America. There is not a national Common Core in Universities. The class options in Ole Miss is different than that at USC.
Where are you stuck?
Do you understand the difference between a capitalist economy paying for some freebies, and a full Socialist economy? You know Sweden isn’t a Socialist country, right??
Various Prime Ministers have had to come forward and inform Democrat politicians that they are not Socialist countries, because these misperceptions have taken root.
A capitalist nanny state is expensive. At some point, it can crash the economy. A true Socialist country is a different beast altogether. It uses the promise of those freebies as an incentive to take away individual rights, and, by definition, bans capitalism.
Public K-12 education is and has been government run for over 200 years.
Actually 170 – odd years. And there’s no necessity for state-run primary and secondary schooling anymore. Declines in transportation costs have expanded the range of the good while increases in population density have almost eliminated demand-constrained natural monopolies. The reason public agency is used as a delivery vehicle is sheer inertia coupled with the vested interests of various crooked occupational guilds.
Public education features strikes for which firing and hiring of replacement workers is illegal. That’s a good racket if you can create it. The lazy, greedy, striking, thug teachers unions did just that.
Workers under the Constitution are free to strike.
Businesses/organization managements under the Constitution are free to fire strikers and hire replacements.
“Karen, our education and state universities feature state paid staff, state owned facilities, and it is paid for from taxes. State employees determine the curriculum. It is socialistic and it is both highly beneficial and benign in the matters you fear.”
One can clearly see that our education system clearly failed Anon. It created a non thinking boor.
Succeed or fail, teachers must appear for work or be fired. Period.
All organizations retain the right and are free to fire and replace strikers under the Constitution.
Illegal and unconstitutional legislation has favored strikers, unions and elected officials.
Teachers strike for ridiculous pay levels and every other public worker union and elected officials get “comparable pay” and proportional raises. Corruption has succeeded in Congress, legislatures and municipalities making elected officials the co-beneficiaries of codified public worker AWOL status and absurd and compulsory wage and salary hikes.
The singular historical American failure has been the Supreme Court and the entire judicial branch.
The constitutional freedom and right to fire AWOL workers and hire replacement workers must be restored.
Republicans and conservatives would certainly approve PRIVATIZATION of all governmental redistribution programs to make them constitutional, rational and financially viable – allowing the communistic redistribution schemes to “wither on the vine.”
I ‘ll post wherever I can find a reply box, and preferably one that I can see and proofread as I’m typing. In my comment to Peter, I noted that the back-to-back annual declines on U.S. life expectancy experienced after ObamaCare was fully inplemented, than I can understand the “cost benefits” of that.
I also mentioned that when you expand a government program by tens of millions of people, obviously the total cost of those programs will grow. That does not, however, explain why a $50 a night stay in the hospital in 1970 would now cost 30x that now. The UNIT COSTS of virtually any aspect of health care delivery have increased way beyond the overall CPI since these government programs supposedly reduced the rate of inflation in health care services. Again, is the huge governmental role in health care delivery over the past couple of generations has been so effective in containing costs, why is it that we had an unprecedented explosion in the cost of health care?
High fructose corn syrup. Effectively wasn’t around until 1980s.Use of that went way up afterwards. Obesity and diabetes incidence started to zoom upwards.
Glenn Greenwald today:
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1135951874366922752
There’s a movement throughout the west to turn journalists who report on and publish classified information into criminals. This thuggish Australia search of Annika Smethurst’s home is more evidence of that. But the greatest threat is the Assange indictment: that’s the blueprint:Glenn Greenwald added,
The New York Times
Verified account @nytimes
A raid on an Australian journalist’s home was believed to be the first such action in the country in more than a decade. A union for media workers called the search “an outrageous attack on press freedom.”
https://nyti.ms/2HU9bzc
9:50 AM – 4 Jun 2019
In the Sydney Morning Herald:
‘Dangerous act of intimidation’: AFP raid home of News Corp journalist
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/afp-raid-home-of-news-corp-journalist-over-national-security-reporting-20190604-p51ub0.html
https://soundcloud.com/conversationswithslava/julian-assange-indicted-an-interview-with-john-kiriakou-recorded-on-may-10-2019
John Kiriakou is a patriot.
It’s “Crazy Abe” Lincoln’s unconstitutional suspension of Habeas Corpus and seizure of power all over again.
I have a great idea for national policy in the land of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, Article 1, Section 8 of which precludes taxation for “individual welfare” or communistic redistribution of wealth and social engineering, and any form of regulation beyond trade, exchange or “…commerce among the several States, lets send the brutal, totalitarian, communist “dictatorship of the proletariat” in China all of our wealth, intellectual property, enterprises and jobs. Let’s just give away all our money, our businesses and now our national sovereignty.
These are great ideas engendered and perpetuated by American globalists consumed with immutable global dominion of communism. Alternatively, these are treasonous ideas which were denied and deliberately precluded by the American Founders in Article 1, Section 8 and through the immutable and inviolable constitutional right to private property.
In the NY Times a few days ago:
30 Years After Tiananmen, a Chinese Military Insider Warns: Never Forget
A former People’s Liberation Army journalist defied a political taboo to describe the bloody crackdown in Beijing and urge a national reckoning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/world/asia/china-tiananmen-square-massacre.html
Thats a good article thanks
“gestures like building a “Goddess of Democracy” on the square ”
I want to share a little bit about the “Statute of LIberty” as an icon. It is based on the Greco-Roman “Libertas,” goddess of liberty. The goddess of liberty has a crown of light, a halo that is. But she also wears a Phyrigian cap. The Phyrigian cap is a symbol used in other historical art such as depictions of Liberty Leading the people by Delacroix, about the French revolution
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/later-europe-and-americas/enlightenment-revolution/a/delacroix-liberty-leading
See the red slouch cap? Phyrigian cap.
That denotes a freed Phyrigian slave. Lots of Phyrigian slaves in antiquity. Slaves could be freed by various means such as manumission in a will, manumission by purchase, or manumission by conquest.
Manumission by conquest, is what we call, “Liberating the people.”
The idea relates as much to National Self Determination more so in history, than any “Voting,”
Spartans were not fighting at Thermopylae for voting. But they were fighting to stay in charge of their own state and not let the Persians take over. That is “Liberty” understood in the sense of national self determination. Not voting, democracy, libertinism, etc
Liberating slaves by conquest has happened. But it is also often the false slogan and excuse of a conqueror. Ie, “we had to burn the village in order to save it.”
Communism as an Asian national political movement, in my humble opinion, was mostly about national liberation in the narrow sense of ethnic self determination against foreign colonial powers.
It was never quite as much about Marxist things like the means of production and so forth.
It still isn’t now less so than ever.
Anything that smacks of laowei things to the Chicom leadership, which they can’t utterly own and exploit, they will sideline, censor, and suppress.
“Goddess of LIberty” is a distincly Western icon, from antiquity, with strong roots in the French and American revolutions.
It was probably a dumb move on the part of the students to raise it up in the first place.
If I were an Asian (I am not) but if I were and living over there in China or Vietnam or the DPRK, I would be very careful about choosing Western symbols. That will not be effective. Choose instead things that will echo the sense of “liberty” which relates to national self determination as much as it does to anything else, and it will be a more effective flag to fly.
Just a thought.
Two great posts.
The PRC is a huge country and poorly administered. At the same time, it is a huge country and in a big place with countless souls, bad things can easily persist, most of all, corrupt officials
among the massacres of the 20th century, this one was a pretty small one for China. barely on the radar screen for scale.
For example, let’s find out why Chinese hate Japanese, from a recent episode (recent on their scale of time)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
the CPC communist party of china runs the show. they are not the worst national leadership in the world by far. I will say as communists go, they are not very communist in the marxist sense. that is generally lucky for the nation.
the senior leadership are actually pretty good i think but it’s the low level officials that as in other centuries, persist with the petty oppression and corruption that troubles the every day chinese person in so many ways.
about chinese students. they can get a little crazy. keep in mind the 1989 leadership included some who had been oppressed by the insane student lead fanatics called the Red Guards in the late 60s.
The Red Guard, inspired by Mao’s demented “war on the four olds,” destroyed countless priceless cultural artifacts and made culture-war on such supposed social problems as the “feudalistic” practice of honoring one’s own parents too much. Quite a problem that was I guess, or so they thought; seems crazy to me but what does a laowei know?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards
having lived through that disastrous mess and many others, maybe the Chicoms had a good reason to reign those students in.
I am just trying to consider all the angles, not apologizing for them on the whole.
The horrifyingly ignorant and iconoclastic destruction of cultural treasures by the crazed Chinese students called the “Red Guards” makes the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban look like “kid stuff,”
I can understand why some leadership beware setting Chinese students free with chants of ANYTHING. They are liable to get out of hand very quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Olds
The Four Olds or the Four Old Things (simplified Chinese: 四旧; traditional Chinese: 四舊; pinyin: sì jiù) was a term used during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76 in the People’s Republic of China to refer to the attempts of Communists to destroy elements of Chinese culture pre-communism. The Four Olds were: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.[1] The campaign to destroy the Four Olds began in Beijing on August 19, 1966, shortly after the launch of the Cultural Revolution.[2]
The term “four olds” first appeared on June 1, 1966, in Chen Boda’s People’s Daily editorial, “Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons”, where the Old Things were described as anti-proletarian, “fostered by the exploiting classes, [and to] have poisoned the minds of the people for thousands of years”.[3] However, which customs, cultures, habits, and ideas specifically constituted the “Four Olds” were never clearly defined.[4]
On August 8, the Central Committee used the term at its 8th National Congress. The term was endorsed on August 18 by Lin Biao at a mass rally, and from there it spread to Red Flag magazine, as well as to Red Guard publications.[4]
Calls to destroy the “Four Olds” usually did not appear in isolation, but were contrasted with the hope of building the “Four News” (new customs, new culture, new habits, new ideas).[4] The idea that Chinese culture was responsible for China’s economic backwardness and needed to be reformed had some precedent in the May Fourth Movement (1919), and was also encouraged by colonial authorities during the Japanese occupation of China.[5]
Campaign
[pictures]
The remains of Ming Dynasty Wanli Emperor at the Ming tombs. Red Guards dragged the remains of the Wanli Emperor and Empresses to the front of the tomb, where they were posthumously “denounced” and burned.[6]
The campaign to Destroy the Four Olds and Cultivate the Four News (Chinese: 破四旧立四新; pinyin: Pò Sìjiù Lì Sìxīn) began in Beijing on August 19.[3] The first things to change were the names of streets and stores: “Blue Sky Clothes Store” to “Defending Mao Zedong Clothes Store”, “Cai E Road” to “Red Guard Road”, and so forth. Many people also changed their given names to revolutionary slogans, such as Zhihong (志红, “Determined Red”) or Jige (继革, “Following the Revolution”).[4]
Other manifestations of the Red Guard campaign included giving speeches, posting big-character posters, and harassment of people, such as intellectuals,[7] who defiantly demonstrated the Four Olds.[3] In later stages of the campaign, examples of Chinese architecture were destroyed, classical literature and Chinese paintings were torn apart, and Chinese temples were desecrated.[4]
The Cemetery of Confucius was attacked in November 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, when it was visited and vandalized by a team of Red Guards from Beijing Normal University, led by Tan Houlan.[8][9] The corpse of the 76th-generation Duke Yansheng was removed from its grave and hung naked from a tree in front of the palace during the desecration of the cemetery in the Cultural Revolution.[10]
Red Guards broke into the homes of the bourgeois and destroyed paintings, books, and furniture; all were items that they viewed as part of the Four Olds.[11] Many families’ long-kept genealogy books were burned to ashes.[citation needed] The Chinese government stopped short of endorsing the physical destruction of products. In fact, the government protected significant archaeological discoveries made during the Cultural Revolution, such as the Mawangdui and the Terracotta Army.[5]
Many artists and other cultural professionals were persecuted by vigilantes, although some cultural advances came about because of the period, including the integration of “new” western instruments and ballet into Peking opera. Traditional Chinese medicine also advanced despite the Four Olds campaign, most significantly by the derivation of the anti-malarial drug artemisinin from the qinghao plant.[5]
Upon learning that Red Guards were approaching the Forbidden City, Premier Zhou Enlai ordered the gates shut and deployed the People’s Liberation Army against the Red Guards. After this incident, Zhou attempted to create a more peaceful code of conduct for the Red Guards, with the support of cadres Tao Zhu, Li Fuchuan, and Chen Yi. This plan was foiled by the ultra-leftists Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing, and Zhang Chunqiao. Although many of Zhou’s other initiatives to stem the destruction failed because of their or Mao’s own opposition, he did succeed in preventing Beijing from being renamed “East Is Red City” and the Chinese guardian lions in front of Tian’anmen Square from being replaced with statues of Mao.[12]
This statue of the Yongle Emperor was originally carved in stone, and was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. A metal replica is in its place.
The remains of the 8th century Buddhist monk Huineng were attacked during the Cultural Revolution.
The Cemetery of Confucius was attacked by Red Guards in November 1966.
A frieze damaged during the Cultural Revolution, originally from a garden house of a rich imperial official in Suzhou.
Appraisal of damage
No official statistics have ever been produced by the Communist party in terms of reporting the actual cost of damage. By 1978, many stories of death and destruction caused by the Cultural Revolution had leaked out of China and became known worldwide.[13]
a civil war which results in countless casualties has happened time after time in Chinese history. a skirmish in a civil war that never got off the ground, is not among the major features, over the millenia.
back to the Red Guards and the schizoid “war on the four olds”
had there ever been a time for such a cultural upheaval in all of China’s four thousand year history? I doubt it. I doubt if even the Mongols engaged in such a destruction of widely cherished cultural and social treasures. again from wiki:
“examples of Chinese architecture were destroyed, classical literature and Chinese paintings were torn apart, and Chinese temples were desecrated.[4]
The Cemetery of Confucius was attacked in November 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, when it was visited and vandalized by a team of Red Guards from Beijing Normal University, led by Tan Houlan.[8][9] The corpse of the 76th-generation Duke Yansheng was removed from its grave and hung naked from a tree in front of the palace during the desecration of the cemetery in the Cultural Revolution.[10]
Red Guards broke into the homes of the bourgeois and destroyed paintings, books, and furniture; all were items that they viewed as part of the Four Olds.[11] Many families’ long-kept genealogy books were burned to ashes.”
Many average Chinese people have NO CLUE how insane and horrifying this episode was from a social perspective. The Chinese culture literally worships ancestors. The idea of desecrating Confucius’ tomb, desecrating corpses, and burning genealogies is literally sacrilegious.
I think the Chicoms have put more effort into hiding this exceptionally destructive and sacrilegious episode from the Chinese population, than they have into hiding Tianenmen square incident.
excuse me if I share this because i had a certain amount of formal education devoted to Asian history language and culture, and for all the many hours we spent learning and discussing Chinese communist related topics, and that was plenty, I never received a good picture of how crazy the Cultural Revolution really was.
Probably because, as one of my friends often claimed to me, our chief professor in these topics, was a communist! I thought he was joking at the time. Now I wonder. at the very least, Marxist, as most university historians truly are.
Communists don’t like this supremely insane episode to get wide circulation.
nor do they like people to hear about the similar cultural genocide that Maoists put on in Cambodia, slaughtering people just because they were proficient in such awful things as traditional dance.
The Russian Soviets at least protected the Hermitage, when they took St Petersburg. They had their eye on making some money from the treasures, at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_sale_of_Hermitage_paintings
it would be more efficacious if you got your own blog and posted there ad nauseam ad infinitum
Scroll past if you do not want to read it. Others may enjoy the posts, as I did.
Prairie, your advice to John is solid. Unlike some others that post on this blog anonymously Kurtz places his name up top so one can easily scroll by all his posts if that is what they desire.
Diane should be polite and consider doing the same as should all the other anonymous’s who don’t afford that type of opportunity. The anonymous label sometimes occurs by accident caused by WordPress code.
L4D says–Read it and weep, Mr. First Name Only. L4D has been posting the handle L4D on all of L4D’s Anonymous comments ever since Smith started blocking all comments in which the user name field was filled in with the letters Late4Dinner. That was not too long after Smith started blocking all comments in which the Email field was filled in with L4D’s email address. There is no accident about it. Ask DSS.
But far more importantly, the chances that Mr. Kurtz is actually named Kurtz are very nearly zero. And, most importantly of all, Allan is the absolute last commenter on this blawg who can tell anyone else to be “polite” and “go away” and “stop bothering people” without wallowing in his own rudeness.
Smith will delete this comment in three, two, one . . . “?”
Diane, you are a lightweight so perhaps your comments simply float away. You are still posting and I am seeing your postings every day. If Darren was truly trying to get rid of you I wouldn’t see any of your posts. You like to blame others for your problems.
Have you tried just placing your name in the name line everytime you post? Try it and see what happens.
Kurtz is a nom de plume. I only fail to attach this when my rejoinders are very short and probably not worth posting anyhow
The horror!
https://youtu.be/IPeHO1r8paU
enjoy the great Marlon Brando reading TS Eliot
The blog is full of your comments.
If your email was blocked, what did you do? It’s very rare for that step to be taken, and always for cause.
And then there’s the Chinese military Hell March video. I do like the female uniforms at the 4:52 mark. No trade deals here. As JT would say, “what do you think”?
hao hao mei nu lai la
It’s revelatory when a totalitarian regime bares its teeth. It’s why I so enjoy the TDS crowd like “Mad” Maxine, “Seized” Jerry and “Don’t believe your lying eyes, see I’m holding three fingers” Pelosi. Don’t get me started on “Cowgirl” Jackson Lee or “Seesaw Guam” Johnson.
Behind those humanitarian smiles is bloodstained teeth waiting for power.
Timely reminder that the Chinese government is amoral and cannot be trusted.
We are in an undeclared cold war; regrettably but necessary.
Good for Trump for calling them out; 30 years of pretending that Tiananmen Square never happened brought us no benefits.
The first item on any congressional display of politicking should be a list of all american businesses that do business with china and a response from those companies as to why they would, in any way, assist or benefit this pernicious regime.
L4D says–Rumor has it that the globalists regard The People’s Republic of China as the world’s largest market for consumer goods–someday. Other observers claim that The PRC is the world’s largest labor market and that there are no trade unions nor industrial unions allowed in Communist China. Still other observers are quick to point out the general lack of environmental regulation in The PRC. If you put it all together, you should be able to answer your question as to why American businesses–such as The Trump Organization, for instance–would, in any way, assist or benefit this pernicious regime.
L4D says–One story with two links for finicky readers who probably won’t believe either of them anyway:
Trump Chinese Business Deal Raises ‘Serious Concerns,’ Says U.S. …
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-china-business-deals-raise-serious-ethics-concerns_n_5b2f097ce4b0040e274384b0
Jun 24, 2018 … Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, has a deal to license the … President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive …
China Contributes $500 Million to Trump-Linked Indonesia Project …
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-contributing-500-million-trump-linked-project-indonesia/
May 14, 2018 … The Chinese government is extending a $500 million loan to a state-owned … the perception of impropriety” surrounding Trump’s business dealings, … Trump refused to divest his Trump Organization holdings upon taking …
L4D says–Excerpted from the first article linked above:
At issue is a $500 million loan from the Chinese government to an Indonesian resort and theme park project in Jakarta. Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, has a deal to license the Trump name to the resort, which includes hotels and a golf course. China agreed to the funds just 72 hours before Trump denounced penalties against Chinese telecom giant ZTE for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. The president said the U.S. had to act to protect Chinese jobs.
[repeated for emphasis]
The president said the U.S. had to act to protect Chinese jobs.
that’s a big nothing.
“A subsidiary of Chinese state-owned construction firm Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) signed a deal last week with the Indonesian firm MNC Land to build an “integrated lifestyle resort,” as part of Beijing’s global influence-expanding “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative.”
so trumps licensing to a golf course some foreigners are building in jakarta. of course the Chinese Belt and Road initiative is involved in development over there, big question would be, what isn’t it involved in? in case you didn’t know, China is a big lender to infrastructure projects around the world
great to hear that indonesians value the Trump Brand.