Wednesday, August 31, 2016

What happened to my party? - The Orange County Register

What happened to my party? - The Orange County Register


Today, this is changing. Liberals now constitute roughly three in five Democrats, a share twice as large as in 1992, when we elected the first Clinton. Increasingly, liberals, or progressives, are at best ambivalent about economic growth, particularly in such blue-collar fields as fossil fuel energy, manufacturing, agribusiness and suburban homebuilding. Bill Galston, a former close advisor to Bill Clinton, notes that party platform “is truly remarkable – for example, its near-silence on economic growth.” In 2012, for example, Democrats touted the environmental and economic benefits of natural gas. This year’s party platform endorses ever-stricter regulation of the industry, while Sen. Bernie Sanders’ faction demands a quickly decarbonized economy.

Ironically, such steps will hurt precisely the blue-collar workers Sanders and his minions allegedly care most about. But the Vermont socialist’s base is not blue-collar production workers, but rather millennials, low-paid service workers and academics with few ties to tangible industries. Suspicious of broad-based economic growth’s impact on the environment, they logically favor redistribution of wealth over seriously growing the pie – in effect, contradicting nearly a half-century of mainstream Democratic thinking. The Bernie Bros and Gals think that higher taxes and more generous welfare benefits can turn America into a kind of mega-Scandinavia. They ignore the fact that, as author Nima Sanandaji has pointed out, the Nordic welfare state drew from generations of rapid growth built on small government, free markets and cultural factors, and that, in more recent years, countries such as Sweden have embraced a stronger free-market stance in order to pay for their generous welfare systems.

....
The Democratic Party’s embrace of racial equality in the 1960s represented an enormous step forward for both the country and the party, whose past was mired in slavery and segregation. Yet the Democrats leading the civil rights charge, like Hubert Humphrey, did not endorse the institutionalization of racial quotas. Old-line liberals preferred the notion, advanced by Martin Luther King, that discrimination on the basis of race is always wrong, and that people should instead be judged primarily on “the content of their character.”

Yet as the party has alienated its old white working- and middle-class base, racial and gender identity politics have become more important to Democrats. Older white women and minorities essentially saved Hillary’s campaign as she lost badly to Sanders among both the young and the remnants of white Democratic working- and middle-class voters. Now Hillary and the Democrats are likely to double down on racial identity politics. This can be seen in the courting of the Black Lives Matter activists and Latino nationalists and the stepping away from Bill Clinton’s embrace of tough policies on crime.

Hillary’s campaign website, as Oren Cass recently pointed out in a City Journal column, expends many more words talking about racial redress than about the economy. Clinton’s policy agenda, he notes, focuses more on “framing issues as who instead of what” in a way that divides people by gender, race, age and sexuality. This applies also to feminist politics that are intrinsic to her appeal. She has already talked about having a cabinet that is half female. Women certainly deserve more seats at the table, as they now outperform men in many areas, but chromosomes should not trump character in a democratic society.

But this kind of categorical imperative seems to have won over the Democratic Party, so much so as to render it unrecognizable to some of its old adherents. Similarly, it’s hard to see how more regulations, concessions to well-connected cronies and ever-higher taxes will revive the middle class. Since the awful alternative of Donald Trump makes the GOP even more noxious, can someone please point me to the closest dumpster fire?

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog


I’ve had an opportunity lately to speak to a lot of feminists about why so many young women are rejecting feminism, and one theme that has come up repeatedly is that feminism is interested in equal rights for everyone. I have yet to meet a single feminist who was not completely astonished to discover that not only do women have equal rights to men, they actually have more rights than men. Most feminists will backpedal when confronted with that reality and try to justify why they are deserving of more rights than men, but the stark fact remains that in 2014, women do indeed have more rights than men. Here are five legally enshrined rights that women have and men do not:

1. Women have the right to genital integrity

Regardless of how you personally feel about the practice of circumcision (I personally find it barbaric, cruel and completely unjustifiable), the legal fact is that infant girls are protected against any genital cutting of any kind and infant boys are not. Many feminists will argue that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a magnitude of brutality beyond male genital mutilation and while that may be true, I do not find the “it’s only a little bit brutal” argument to be very compelling. It’s like saying cutting off a toe is okay because cutting off a foot is much worse. Ultimately, the argument is immaterial to the fact that women have the legal right to be protected from having their body parts sliced off. Men do not.

2. Women have the right to vote without agreeing to die

In the US, citizens are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to democratically choose their own leaders through the process of casting a ballot in an election once they reach the age of 18. Women achieve this right by the simple act of surviving 18 years. Men may not actualize their basic rights as a citizen without first signing a Selective Service card, in which they agree that at the discretion of the democratically elected government, they will take up arms and die to defend their liberty and way of life. The draft. Men may vote if, and only if, they agree they will face death if required. Women have no such obligation, but they do get to vote for the governments that can potentially send men to meet death. Again, regardless of how you feel about the draft, women have the right to vote without agreeing to be drafted. Men don’t.

3. Women have the right to choose parenthood

I’ve written about this before, but it is worth repeating. Women have three options to absolve themselves of all legal, moral, financial and social responsibility for children they did not intend and do not want. Women may abort the child before it is born, they may surrender the child for adoption without notifying or identifying the father or they may surrender the infant under Safe Haven laws and walk away from all responsibility and obligation. Women cannot be forced or coerced into parenthood, but they are legally allowed to force men into financing their reproductive choices. In many states, men can be forced into financial responsibility for children whom they did not biologically father. As long as a particular man is identified as the father, he will be held accountable. Paternity fraud is legal. In no state is legal paternal surrender permitted without the express agreement of the mother.

Again, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with legal paternal surrender, the fact remains that women have the legal right to choose parenthood. Men do not.

4. Women have the right to be assumed caregivers for children

When parental relationships irretrievably break down, current custody laws assume one primary caregiver (almost always a woman) and one tertiary caregiver (almost always a man). In order to win equal or shared custody, the tertiary caregiver must litigate to prove they are worthy of equal parenting, a proposition that is not only very difficult to “prove”, it is also very expensive. The legal presumption of shared parenting upon divorce – that children have a legal right to an equal relationship with both their mother and their father following relationship breakdown – is strongly resisted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist organizations who know that women will almost always win custody of children under the default laws. In actual fact, men who can afford to purse legal remedies and challenge primary custody stand a good chance of winning, because women do not have the market cornered on loving or caring for children. So while the law does not specifically indicate that custody will be awarded to women, the defacto result of primary/tertiary caregiver custody law is that women have a legal right to be assumed caregivers for children. Men do not.

5. Women have the right to call unwanted, coerced sex rape

The original FBI definition of rape specifically identified women as the victims, excluding the possibility of male rape victims. When the FBI updated that, it did so in way that includes a small minority of male rape victims but excluded most male rape victims by retaining the “penetration” clause. Penetration of any orifice must occur for rape to have happened. The FBI does collect another set of statistics though, under the category of “other sexual assault” – it’s the awkwardly named “made to penetrate” category, which includes men who were coerced, tricked or bullied into penetrative sex with women they would otherwise not have had sex with. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey similarly considers the two types of assault separately, despite the fact that occurrences are virtually identical. 1.27M women report rape (p.18) and 1.26M men report “made to penetrate” (p.19). By collecting the information under separate categories, following the legal definitions, women have the right to have their rapes called “rape”. Men do not.

Why does any of this matter? Feminism is under attack in the popular media for failing to address real problems that have real consequences for real people. Despite insisting that feminism cares for everyone, and wants equality for everyone, the facts suggest the opposite is true. Women have more rights than men and those discrepancies need to be addressed. But more importantly, gender is just one thing that defines who a person is, what advantages and disadvantages they might have, what opportunities are in front of them, or foreclosed. Class, wealth, race, ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion – all of these things have a profound influence on individuals, and the only way to understand how a specific person can be helped or hindered is to see that person as a human being, first and foremost. Perhaps the reason I don’t need feminism is because what I really need is humanism. And maybe you do, too.

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog


I’ve had an opportunity lately to speak to a lot of feminists about why so many young women are rejecting feminism, and one theme that has come up repeatedly is that feminism is interested in equal rights for everyone. I have yet to meet a single feminist who was not completely astonished to discover that not only do women have equal rights to men, they actually have more rights than men. Most feminists will backpedal when confronted with that reality and try to justify why they are deserving of more rights than men, but the stark fact remains that in 2014, women do indeed have more rights than men. Here are five legally enshrined rights that women have and men do not:

1. Women have the right to genital integrity

Regardless of how you personally feel about the practice of circumcision (I personally find it barbaric, cruel and completely unjustifiable), the legal fact is that infant girls are protected against any genital cutting of any kind and infant boys are not. Many feminists will argue that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a magnitude of brutality beyond male genital mutilation and while that may be true, I do not find the “it’s only a little bit brutal” argument to be very compelling. It’s like saying cutting off a toe is okay because cutting off a foot is much worse. Ultimately, the argument is immaterial to the fact that women have the legal right to be protected from having their body parts sliced off. Men do not.

2. Women have the right to vote without agreeing to die

In the US, citizens are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to democratically choose their own leaders through the process of casting a ballot in an election once they reach the age of 18. Women achieve this right by the simple act of surviving 18 years. Men may not actualize their basic rights as a citizen without first signing a Selective Service card, in which they agree that at the discretion of the democratically elected government, they will take up arms and die to defend their liberty and way of life. The draft. Men may vote if, and only if, they agree they will face death if required. Women have no such obligation, but they do get to vote for the governments that can potentially send men to meet death. Again, regardless of how you feel about the draft, women have the right to vote without agreeing to be drafted. Men don’t.

3. Women have the right to choose parenthood

I’ve written about this before, but it is worth repeating. Women have three options to absolve themselves of all legal, moral, financial and social responsibility for children they did not intend and do not want. Women may abort the child before it is born, they may surrender the child for adoption without notifying or identifying the father or they may surrender the infant under Safe Haven laws and walk away from all responsibility and obligation. Women cannot be forced or coerced into parenthood, but they are legally allowed to force men into financing their reproductive choices. In many states, men can be forced into financial responsibility for children whom they did not biologically father. As long as a particular man is identified as the father, he will be held accountable. Paternity fraud is legal. In no state is legal paternal surrender permitted without the express agreement of the mother.

Again, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with legal paternal surrender, the fact remains that women have the legal right to choose parenthood. Men do not.

4. Women have the right to be assumed caregivers for children

When parental relationships irretrievably break down, current custody laws assume one primary caregiver (almost always a woman) and one tertiary caregiver (almost always a man). In order to win equal or shared custody, the tertiary caregiver must litigate to prove they are worthy of equal parenting, a proposition that is not only very difficult to “prove”, it is also very expensive. The legal presumption of shared parenting upon divorce – that children have a legal right to an equal relationship with both their mother and their father following relationship breakdown – is strongly resisted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist organizations who know that women will almost always win custody of children under the default laws. In actual fact, men who can afford to purse legal remedies and challenge primary custody stand a good chance of winning, because women do not have the market cornered on loving or caring for children. So while the law does not specifically indicate that custody will be awarded to women, the defacto result of primary/tertiary caregiver custody law is that women have a legal right to be assumed caregivers for children. Men do not.

5. Women have the right to call unwanted, coerced sex rape

The original FBI definition of rape specifically identified women as the victims, excluding the possibility of male rape victims. When the FBI updated that, it did so in way that includes a small minority of male rape victims but excluded most male rape victims by retaining the “penetration” clause. Penetration of any orifice must occur for rape to have happened. The FBI does collect another set of statistics though, under the category of “other sexual assault” – it’s the awkwardly named “made to penetrate” category, which includes men who were coerced, tricked or bullied into penetrative sex with women they would otherwise not have had sex with. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey similarly considers the two types of assault separately, despite the fact that occurrences are virtually identical. 1.27M women report rape (p.18) and 1.26M men report “made to penetrate” (p.19). By collecting the information under separate categories, following the legal definitions, women have the right to have their rapes called “rape”. Men do not.

Why does any of this matter? Feminism is under attack in the popular media for failing to address real problems that have real consequences for real people. Despite insisting that feminism cares for everyone, and wants equality for everyone, the facts suggest the opposite is true. Women have more rights than men and those discrepancies need to be addressed. But more importantly, gender is just one thing that defines who a person is, what advantages and disadvantages they might have, what opportunities are in front of them, or foreclosed. Class, wealth, race, ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion – all of these things have a profound influence on individuals, and the only way to understand how a specific person can be helped or hindered is to see that person as a human being, first and foremost. Perhaps the reason I don’t need feminism is because what I really need is humanism. And maybe you do, too.

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog

5 Legal Rights Women Have That Men Don’t | Thought Catalog


I’ve had an opportunity lately to speak to a lot of feminists about why so many young women are rejecting feminism, and one theme that has come up repeatedly is that feminism is interested in equal rights for everyone. I have yet to meet a single feminist who was not completely astonished to discover that not only do women have equal rights to men, they actually have more rights than men. Most feminists will backpedal when confronted with that reality and try to justify why they are deserving of more rights than men, but the stark fact remains that in 2014, women do indeed have more rights than men. Here are five legally enshrined rights that women have and men do not:

1. Women have the right to genital integrity

Regardless of how you personally feel about the practice of circumcision (I personally find it barbaric, cruel and completely unjustifiable), the legal fact is that infant girls are protected against any genital cutting of any kind and infant boys are not. Many feminists will argue that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a magnitude of brutality beyond male genital mutilation and while that may be true, I do not find the “it’s only a little bit brutal” argument to be very compelling. It’s like saying cutting off a toe is okay because cutting off a foot is much worse. Ultimately, the argument is immaterial to the fact that women have the legal right to be protected from having their body parts sliced off. Men do not.

2. Women have the right to vote without agreeing to die

In the US, citizens are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to democratically choose their own leaders through the process of casting a ballot in an election once they reach the age of 18. Women achieve this right by the simple act of surviving 18 years. Men may not actualize their basic rights as a citizen without first signing a Selective Service card, in which they agree that at the discretion of the democratically elected government, they will take up arms and die to defend their liberty and way of life. The draft. Men may vote if, and only if, they agree they will face death if required. Women have no such obligation, but they do get to vote for the governments that can potentially send men to meet death. Again, regardless of how you feel about the draft, women have the right to vote without agreeing to be drafted. Men don’t.

3. Women have the right to choose parenthood

I’ve written about this before, but it is worth repeating. Women have three options to absolve themselves of all legal, moral, financial and social responsibility for children they did not intend and do not want. Women may abort the child before it is born, they may surrender the child for adoption without notifying or identifying the father or they may surrender the infant under Safe Haven laws and walk away from all responsibility and obligation. Women cannot be forced or coerced into parenthood, but they are legally allowed to force men into financing their reproductive choices. In many states, men can be forced into financial responsibility for children whom they did not biologically father. As long as a particular man is identified as the father, he will be held accountable. Paternity fraud is legal. In no state is legal paternal surrender permitted without the express agreement of the mother.

Again, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with legal paternal surrender, the fact remains that women have the legal right to choose parenthood. Men do not.

4. Women have the right to be assumed caregivers for children

When parental relationships irretrievably break down, current custody laws assume one primary caregiver (almost always a woman) and one tertiary caregiver (almost always a man). In order to win equal or shared custody, the tertiary caregiver must litigate to prove they are worthy of equal parenting, a proposition that is not only very difficult to “prove”, it is also very expensive. The legal presumption of shared parenting upon divorce – that children have a legal right to an equal relationship with both their mother and their father following relationship breakdown – is strongly resisted by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist organizations who know that women will almost always win custody of children under the default laws. In actual fact, men who can afford to purse legal remedies and challenge primary custody stand a good chance of winning, because women do not have the market cornered on loving or caring for children. So while the law does not specifically indicate that custody will be awarded to women, the defacto result of primary/tertiary caregiver custody law is that women have a legal right to be assumed caregivers for children. Men do not.

5. Women have the right to call unwanted, coerced sex rape

The original FBI definition of rape specifically identified women as the victims, excluding the possibility of male rape victims. When the FBI updated that, it did so in way that includes a small minority of male rape victims but excluded most male rape victims by retaining the “penetration” clause. Penetration of any orifice must occur for rape to have happened. The FBI does collect another set of statistics though, under the category of “other sexual assault” – it’s the awkwardly named “made to penetrate” category, which includes men who were coerced, tricked or bullied into penetrative sex with women they would otherwise not have had sex with. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey similarly considers the two types of assault separately, despite the fact that occurrences are virtually identical. 1.27M women report rape (p.18) and 1.26M men report “made to penetrate” (p.19). By collecting the information under separate categories, following the legal definitions, women have the right to have their rapes called “rape”. Men do not.

Why does any of this matter? Feminism is under attack in the popular media for failing to address real problems that have real consequences for real people. Despite insisting that feminism cares for everyone, and wants equality for everyone, the facts suggest the opposite is true. Women have more rights than men and those discrepancies need to be addressed. But more importantly, gender is just one thing that defines who a person is, what advantages and disadvantages they might have, what opportunities are in front of them, or foreclosed. Class, wealth, race, ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion – all of these things have a profound influence on individuals, and the only way to understand how a specific person can be helped or hindered is to see that person as a human being, first and foremost. Perhaps the reason I don’t need feminism is because what I really need is humanism. And maybe you do, too.

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government


Many people assume that it is modern feminism, not the Constitution, that has secured freedom and political equality for women. In reality, the Constitution has always been compatible with women’s equal political rights and provides a framework for the expansion of those rights. Although contemporary feminists ostensibly pursue the goal of ensuring that men and women enjoy equal opportunity and treatment under the law, the feminist movement has largely strayed from this narrow mission in favor of a far more radical agenda. In the name of “equality,” it has sought to promote women’s full autonomy by eliminating gender distinctions and forcing gender parity. Achieving these goals would require a vast expansion of centralized government, the redefinition of freedom, and the destruction of equal protection and due process of law. This movement undermines America’s constitutional system, which limits the scope and character of the law with a view to protecting the individual rights of both men and women.

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government


Many people assume that it is modern feminism, not the Constitution, that has secured freedom and political equality for women. In reality, the Constitution has always been compatible with women’s equal political rights and provides a framework for the expansion of those rights. Although contemporary feminists ostensibly pursue the goal of ensuring that men and women enjoy equal opportunity and treatment under the law, the feminist movement has largely strayed from this narrow mission in favor of a far more radical agenda. In the name of “equality,” it has sought to promote women’s full autonomy by eliminating gender distinctions and forcing gender parity. Achieving these goals would require a vast expansion of centralized government, the redefinition of freedom, and the destruction of equal protection and due process of law. This movement undermines America’s constitutional system, which limits the scope and character of the law with a view to protecting the individual rights of both men and women.

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government

The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government


Many people assume that it is modern feminism, not the Constitution, that has secured freedom and political equality for women. In reality, the Constitution has always been compatible with women’s equal political rights and provides a framework for the expansion of those rights. Although contemporary feminists ostensibly pursue the goal of ensuring that men and women enjoy equal opportunity and treatment under the law, the feminist movement has largely strayed from this narrow mission in favor of a far more radical agenda. In the name of “equality,” it has sought to promote women’s full autonomy by eliminating gender distinctions and forcing gender parity. Achieving these goals would require a vast expansion of centralized government, the redefinition of freedom, and the destruction of equal protection and due process of law. This movement undermines America’s constitutional system, which limits the scope and character of the law with a view to protecting the individual rights of both men and women.

A Former Cop Takes On 'The War On Cops'

A Former Cop Takes On 'The War On Cops'


The original “Ferguson Effect” was supposed to be attacks on police everywhere, and for months that never happened. Instances of police being killed were actually dropping. But then Baltimore protests over the death of Freddy Grey turned into rioting; then Baton Rouge, Dallas, Minneapolis, and now Milwaukee. I began to realize this wasn’t hyperbole.

Mac Donald’s book starts with Ferguson. The Ferguson incident brought the issues of police racism and brutality to the forefront, and gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement. It is, unquestionably, the most divisive environment American law enforcement has seen since the Rodney King incident in California in 1991. The current environment may be worse, as the Rodney King issue was often framed as a California problem. The riots after the police officers were acquitted in the King case were severe, but they were limited to Los Angeles. Now, 25 years later, every city seems to be capable of bursting into flames as soon as a police officer fires a weapon.

‘Toxic environment’ for sons accused of campus sex offenses turns mothers into militants - The Washington Post

‘Toxic environment’ for sons accused of campus sex offenses turns mothers into militants - The Washington Post

In the course of a year, Sherry Warner-Seefeld went from high school teacher to activist promoting fairness for students accused of sexual misconduct. Explaining why, for her, means revisiting a night of shock and a phone call she will never forget.

She was grading social science papers on a cold, late January evening in Fargo, N.D., when her cellphone rang, she told The Washington Post.

It was her son, Caleb Warner, calling to tell her he had heard from a dean at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. A woman with whom he had had a short sexual relationship, the dean told him, had accused him of sexual misconduct, of nonconsensual sex, that she alleged had occurred on the night of Dec. 13, 2009.

The charge was filed after the winter break in January 2010, his mother said, after he had “made it clear to her that he was not interested in having a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.” Then out of the blue this notice arrives, with its intimidating legal language.
...
It was in this context that Caleb Warner’s case played out, after his mother got that phone call.

“Three days later they get to this hearing. They found him guilty that night and he’s immediately expelled. He’s not to set foot on campus. He falls to the floor and starts crying. That’s what he did for hours, lay on the floor and sob, fall on the floor and sob.”

The case of Caleb Warner might have ended then and there and never become public but for what happened next.

The family learned that the young woman had repeated her complaint against Caleb to the Fargo police, which assigned a detective to interview her.

The police investigator found so many holes and contradictions in the woman’s version of events that the police and a prosecutor concluded she was lying and charged her with filing a false complaint. She failed to show up for a hearing, however, left town and has not been heard from again, according to Warner-Seefeld.

Surely this would save her son from expulsion, the family thought.

But when the university was informed of the woman’s alleged lies, it refused to reopen Caleb’s case, saying, among other things, that the fact that she was accused of lying to the police did not mean she did. Besides, Caleb’s deadline for appeal or rehearing had passed.


...snip...

The experience inspired her to co-found, with other aggrieved mothers, an organization called FACE (Families Advocating for Campus Equality) designed to assist other parents who received similar phone calls and, bewildered and scared, don’t know where to turn.

Damien Walter’s Ugly Tie | The Liberty Zone

Damien Walter’s Ugly Tie | The Liberty Zone


I also note that aside from a few outliers, Dimwit’s blog averages about as many comments per entry as mine does – UNLESS he is writing about the Sad Puppies, which brings out the pusillanimous Puppy Kickers to pile on and pat one another on the back about how enlightened they are for hating that pulp fiction pablum. This tells me Dimwit simply trots out the Puppies when things get particularly slow on his Guardian blog, because let’s face it, folks – Dimwit needs the hits.

And that’s pretty much what he’s done in this latest gutless harangue.
For the last few years, the Hugo awards for science fiction have been campaigned against by a group of writers and fans calling themselves the Sad Puppies – mostly male, very white, and overwhelmingly conservative. Unhappy with sci-fi’s growing diversity, the Puppies have deliberately block-voted for certain titles to get them nominated for Hugos at the expense of a wider field. They say it is their goal to “poke the establishment in the eye” by nominating “unabashed pulp action that isn’t heavy-handed message fic”. I say it is to sponsor awful writers.

So Dimwit starts out with a deliberate lie, given that Sad Puppies 4 was run by all women, who are overwhelmingly libertarian, and that those “certain titles” recommended by the Puppies were voted on by anyone who has read a work and liked it, and included such SJW favorites as Ann Leckie.

Private Prisons: Justice Department Ban Is a Bad Idea | National Review

Private Prisons: Justice Department Ban Is a Bad Idea | National Review


The Department of Justice’s recent decision that the federal Bureau of Prisons should wind down its private-prison contracting was apparently based on private prisons’ bad record of safety and security violations relative to their public counterparts. It turns out, though, that the DOJ’s understanding of private prisons’ record is informed by a serious over-reading of faulty comparative studies, in particular a recent study by the Office of the Inspector General.

As a result of this over-reading, the federal government — and any states that follow the federal government’s lead — may not be able to take advantage of the power of contracting to provide incentives for good behavior.

* * *

First, let’s look at how the IG’s report compared public and private prisons. The report took the 14 private federal prisons and matched them with “14 comparable BOP institutions.” What made the public prisons “comparable” was that they housed male inmates with “the same security level (low), similar population sizes, and similar geographical locations.”

Early on in the IG’s report, the IG compares “annual per capita costs” for public and private prisons. Over fiscal years 2011–14, these costs range from $23,780 to $25,251 for public prisons, and from $21,838 to $23,003 for private prisons — an apparent savings of about 3 percent to 12 percent for private prisons. Wisely, though, the IG’s report cautions against drawing any conclusions from these numbers. There are many reasons a direct price comparison is problematic, but the report stresses one important reason in particular:

We were unable to compare the overall costs of incarceration between BOP institutions and contract prisons in part because of the different nature of the inmate populations and programs offered in those facilities.


How different were the inmate populations? Elsewhere, the IG explains:
As of January 2014, inmates incarcerated in private facilities were primarily non-U.S. citizens with 72.1 percent from Mexico, while the selected BOP institutions had an average of 11.8 percent non-U.S. citizens.

Every prison researcher understands that the demographic makeup of a prison is important, especially in a prison environment where gangs based on ethnic or racial affiliation play an important role. This is why the best empirical studies try to compare prisons that are matched in terms of demographic makeup. The IG report didn’t control for demographics, and it recognized that this made cost comparisons inadvisable.

The report goes on to compare how the public sector stacked up against the private sector based on eight measures of “safety and security.” Private prisons did better in two of those measures: urinalysis drug testing and sexual misconduct (both inmate-to-inmate and inmate-to-staff). But in the other six areas — contraband, reports of incidents, lockdowns, inmate discipline, grievances, and telephone monitoring — “the contract prisons had more incidents per capita than the BOP institutions.”

Remember, though, that the report was “unable to evaluate all of the factors that contributed to the underlying data, including the effect of inmate demographics.” So perhaps we should refrain from drawing any conclusions from this simple comparison of raw numbers?

Moreover, some of these measures wouldn’t really tell us much even if they did lend themselves more readily to direct comparison.

Consider, for instance, the contraband measures — cell phones, weapons, tobacco, and drugs confiscated. Private prisons had more contraband confiscations than the public prisons, but that can be interpreted both ways: Are the private prisons worse because more contraband was found? Or are the private prisons better because they try harder to find contraband? The trouble is that we don’t know the true amount of contraband; we just know about contraband confiscation, and that’s something that’s particularly manipulable by prison officials. In fact, I know one great way to keep your contraband numbers down: just stop searching for it.

Same goes for grievances: If private prisons have more grievances filed than public prisons, does it mean there’s more to complain about in private prisons? Or does it mean that private prisons make grievance forms more available or that inmates at private prisons are less concerned about retaliation if they complain? Again, we don’t know the true numbers of things to be aggrieved about; we just know the numbers of grievances filed.

* * *

On balance, though, one might think that the IG report is fairly harmless. Yes, it compares prisons that probably aren’t comparable, and some of what it measures has no obvious relationship to actual quality of confinement. No, we shouldn’t take it terribly seriously as a comparative study, since there already are better studies out there. But overall it does an okay job of not overstating its results; its basic recommendation is a call for further study.

Even a harmless study can lead to harmful changes, however. The Justice Department, not sharing the IG report’s caution, went ahead and read too much into its results. Where the IG’s office hedged its conclusions with caveats about comparability and merely called for greater investigation, the DOJ memo made broad claims:
Private prisons . . . compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.

Based on this slim reed, Deputy AG Sally Yates ordered the BOP to “either decline to renew” contracts as they expired “or substantially reduce [their] scope.” It’s not clear whether the DOJ was relying on studies other than the IG report, but if it was, I’d like to see those studies: All available evidence does little to suggest that private prisons are worse than public prisons overall, or that they cost more.

* * *

What will the result of this be? Let’s assume that (probable future) President Clinton maintains the DOJ’s new policy, and that BOP private-prison contracting winds down. This will affect roughly 25,000 inmates — about 15 percent of the total number of federal prisoners — who will have to be moved to BOP facilities. Of course, the DOJ’s policy is limited to the federal system — the states’ privatization policies are unaffected, except to the extent they want to follow the federal example. On average, states keep only 7 percent of their prisoners in private prisons, or 90,000 private state prisoners in all.

Will this be harmless? If private and public prisons don’t differ much on quality, that means the quality of confinement shouldn’t change much. If private prisons save some money, the cost of confinement should go up, though maybe not by much. It’s not clear whether either sector has an edge in reducing recidivism, so who knows what difference this will make on rates of re-offense.

The far greater problem is what might have been. Prisons have begun experimenting with performance measures and performance-based contracting — which, surprisingly, is almost unprecedented. These new metrics could offer substantial possibilities for improvement in prison conditions in the future. Monetary incentives could work in the public sector — think of performance-based bonuses for public-prison wardens — but the private sector is probably best positioned to take advantage of them: If there’s one thing the private sector is good at, it’s trying to make money in any way it can. The DOJ could have directed the BOP to take a “mend it, don’t end it” approach by truly making an effort to encourage higher quality through better contracting. The BOP could have taken the lead in developing state-of-the-art prison-contracting practices and helping to spread good performance measures nationwide. But that’s unlikely to happen now.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic

How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her.


Isn't this how Fahrenheit 451 got started?

Saturday, August 27, 2016

The Mote in Gernsback’s Eye | Brad R. Torgersen

The Mote in Gernsback’s Eye | Brad R. Torgersen


But Ms. Hogarth’s words struck a chord with me — they should, for any conservative who’s toiled in these spec fictional prose mines over the past 25 years. I said it last weekend: the field of Science Fiction and Fantasy does not like conservatives, nor libertarians, all that much. Being a conservative or libertarian (aka: classically liberal) in SF/F, in the year 2016, is akin to operating in enemy territory. Not because you’re out to get them as much as they’re certainly out to get you. Unless you can run silent, and run deep. Showing your cards — forcing them to admit that you exist — comes with a host of potential repercussions. You’ve definitely got to make up your mind about how you’re going to sail your way through this strange little ocean Hugo Gernsback dubbed “scientifiction.”

I attended a con once where the toastmaster said that they wanted all conservatives to “hurry up and die and leave the planet to the rest of us. No wait, they can stay as long as we can have their money.” And people applauded. That person wasn’t kicked out of the convention. They were feted and congratulated while I sat in the audience, pale and trembling, listening to the people around me cheer my demise. I have never, ever forgotten that moment. Or all the threatening ones after, both generalized or intimate, like the man who leaned into my face and told me the world would be better off without me and people like me. No one stepped in to tell him that he shouldn’t say such things. The people standing around us just nodded or smiled. One of them even said before leaving, “Your time is over. We don’t need you anymore, [expletive here].”


The mandarins of SF/F expend a lot of energy wrapping themselves in the flag of tolerance. But as any conservative can tell you, that tolerance runs pretty much one-way. A tolerance conversation (liberal to conservative) in SF/F often goes like this, “Hello, I am a tolerant caring compassionate liberal, and you’re not. You will sit there and politely listen to all of my ideas and theories, and not say a word. I will sit here and listen to all of your ideas and theories, and then I will explain to you why you’re a dirty bigot and a hater and an evil human being. We will both agree I am right, and you will apologize for being bad.”

That, dear friends, is how “tolerance” works in SF/F at this time.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Minimum Wage Increase Puts 1,400 D.C. Restaurant Employees Out of Work - Catherine Dunn

Minimum Wage Increase Puts 1,400 D.C. Restaurant Employees Out of Work - Catherine Dunn


D.C. restaurants have lost 1,400 jobs in the first half of the year. This loss—the steepest drop since the 2001 recession—follows a significant minimum wage hike.

Data suggests that the D.C. restaurant industry has been unable to absorb the higher cost of labor without reducing employment opportunities. Since mandating a base wage of $10.50 in July 2015 and another increase to $11.50 in July 2016, D.C. has seen employment in the restaurant industry trend downward, for a 3 percent job loss in 2016.

“Cities and states around the country that are considering a hike in their minimum wages to $15 an hour might want to take a look at how that’s working out in the nation’s capitol,” writes Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.

While D.C. has not yet increased its minimum wage to $15, the wage hikes it has implemented have put it well on that path. And, according Perry, even these more modest increases have had negative effects.

Using the neighboring suburbs in Maryland and Virginia as a “natural experiment,” Perry compared the employment rates in D.C., where the minimum wage had been raised, to the rates in states with lower minimum wages—$8.75 and $7.25 respectively.

He found that these suburbs actually saw an increase in hiring during the same period that D.C. experienced 3 percent job loss. Restaurant employment grew at a 1.6 percent rate for an additional 2,900 jobs.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Voter Fraud Is Real. Here Are 4 More Cases.

Voter Fraud Is Real. Here Are 4 More Cases.


Many on the left may celebrate the results in these cases, but it is increasingly difficult for them to deny the basic fact that election fraud exists. In fact, Heritage’s voter fraud database catalogues over 400 examples of individuals convicted of numerous offenses, from impersonation fraud at the polls, to duplicate voting, to schemes to buy votes and steal elections.

Some recent additions to the database include:

Kentucky

Ruth Robinson, the former mayor of Martin, Kentucky, was sentenced to 90 months’ imprisonment on a variety of charges that included vote buying, identity theft, and fraud.

With specific regard to the election charges, Robinson and co-conspirators James “Red” Robinson and James Steven Robinson threatened and intimidated residents of Martin in the run-up to the 2012 election, in which Robinson was seeking re-election.

The cabal targeted residents living in public housing or in properties Robinson owned, threatening them with eviction if they did not sign absentee ballots the Robinsons had already filled out. Robinson also targeted disabled residents, and offered to buy the votes of others. James “Red” Robinson was sentenced to 40 months in prison, and his son James Steven Robinson received a total of 31 months’ imprisonment.

Texas

Guadalupe Rivera and Graciela Sanchez illegally “assisted” absentee voters in Rivera’s 2013 re-election bid for city commissioner. Rivera won the election by 16 votes, but the result was invalidated after a judge determined that 30 absentee ballots had been submitted illegally.

Rivera pleaded guilty to one count of providing illegal assistance to a voter and was sentenced to one year of probation and a $500 fine. Sanchez also pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts of violating Texas’ election code and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

Iowa

Erin Venessa Leeper registered and voted in a 2015 school board election. As a convicted felon, however, she was ineligible to do so, and pleaded guilty to perjury last May. She was ordered to pay a $750 fine, plus $240 in court costs, and was sentenced to a suspended five-year prison term and two years of probation.

Wisconsin

Robert Monroe pleaded no contest to 13 counts of voter fraud, making him the worst duplicate voter in state history, according to Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf.

The judge in the case rejected Monroe’s claim that he was insane at the time, concluding that Monroe’s mental state did not prevent him “from appreciating the wrongfulness of his votes or from conforming his actions to election laws.”

Monroe will serve up to a year in jail, in addition to a suspended three-year prison sentence, five years’ probation, 300 hours of community service, and a $5,000 fine.

As the old adage goes, we are entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. These cases—along with the hundreds of other convictions Heritage has documented—are the inconvenient facts many on the left choose simply to ignore. Reasonable Americans should not follow their lead.

Elections—our most direct means of political participation—should be fair and untainted by fraudsters. Every time a vote is cast illegally, it nullifies a legitimate vote and undermines the entire system by eroding public trust in our political institutions. It is imperative that this not be allowed to happen.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Do you hear that? It might be the growing sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut and the chickens coming home..... - AEI | Carpe Diem Blog » AEIdeas

Do you hear that? It might be the growing sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut and the chickens coming home.....


George Mason University economist Walter E. Williams has said many times over many years that “Nothing opens the closed minds of college administrators better than the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut,” see examples here, here and here. And now thanks to rise of “campus crybullies,” who have largely been tolerated, if not actually enabled, by spineless and feckless college administrators on many campuses with safe spaces and trigger warning policies, we’re starting to hear that snapping sound become louder and more frequent than ever before.

....

Scott MacConnell cherishes the memory of his years at Amherst College, where he discovered his future métier as a theatrical designer. But protests on campus over cultural and racial sensitivities last year soured his feelings. Now Mr. MacConnell, who graduated in 1960, is expressing his discontent through his wallet. In June, he cut the college out of his will. “As an alumnus of the college, I feel that I have been lied to, patronized and basically dismissed as an old, white bigot who is insensitive to the needs and feelings of the current college community,” Mr. MacConnell, 77, wrote in a letter to the college’s alumni fund in December, when he first warned that he was reducing his support to the college to a token $5....


And alumni might also want to consider the extent to which their donations to their alma maters are helping fuel the “higher education bubble” illustrated in the chart above. There is no other consumer good or service whose price has increased over the last 20 years that even comes close to the soaring cost of college tuition and college textbooks, which have both tripled in price and increased by 200% since 1996. In contrast, overall consumer prices (based on the CPI for all items) have increased only 55% over that same period, which means that college tuition and college textbooks have increased in real terms by about 94% (see formula here) since 1996.

....

Friday, August 19, 2016

Four Years at a Liberal Arts College Turned Me into a Conservative | VICE | United States

Four Years at a Liberal Arts College Turned Me into a Conservative

Like everyone who cons themselves into attending a liberal arts college, I was captivated by the idea of changing the world by immersing myself in a diverse pool of academic thought, theory, and action. Boy, was I wrong! After my four-year stint at university, I was transformed from a plucky, young, free-thinking free spirit into a cranky, old, get-off-my-lawn conservative.

It all started with a quiet disdain for political correctness, a seed that grew—through the miracle of college—into a giant beanstalk. I quickly learned that, at liberal arts school, the general aim of each class was to identify something problematic, discuss it, and then refuse to do anything about it. We were expected to offer solutions, of course, but the only acceptable answers were noncommittal and intersectional. Any attempt to get to the actual root of a problem was generally seen as problematic too, and a politically correct policing was instituted to hinder any real solutions of important issues. Most group discussions devolved into us asking one another how to ask questions about something problematic without being problematic.

After a childhood and adolescence of being the only black kid in class, I never would have considered myself an enemy of political correctness. I was rather indignant about exposing cultural insensitivities until I was inundated with college classes that seemed dedicated to manifesting real and imagined enemies from every available shadow. So I began to check out and (much to my surprise) quietly echo the conservative sentiments against oversensitivity that I had once dismissed as bigotry.

After I became annoyed with political correctness, I started seeing it everywhere and gradually became convinced there was a conspiracy going on to brainwash me and my peers. Most of the guest speakers at my liberal arts school were leftist journalists, leftist activists, or leftist professors from other leftists schools. In my experience, the other slots were reserved for different types of sex workers: I attended a film lecture given by a very skilled paraplegic porn star who showed us some of her work and an art performance given by a woman who masturbated behind a curtain.

Once the initial thrill from exposure wore off, the lack of intellectual diversity was suffocating. I traveled further down a path of disillusionment and began to sympathize with those crazy conservatives who were always complaining about liberal media bias on FOX.

I needed some way to cope with all this. So I chose weed. I was typically high before, during, and after all of my classes. My best friend was the campus dealer, so I spent countless nights smoking spliffs on his dorm room floor and watching his clients stumble in and out.

Most of these clients are now working in New York finance or DC politics, which is what made me realize I'm a fan of limited government. The stupidest stoners I know are all on a fast track to becoming the future diplomats of the world, and I do not trust these goofs to make important decisions on our behalf. Their power must be constrained.

The only thing more pervasive than weed and irresponsible future leaders on a liberal arts college campus are useless majors. I'm not being judgmental, either—I have a degree in film and media studies and political science, which I chose mostly because they are subjects I like talking about. Many of my peers also chose to spend their scholarships and student loans on creative combinations of topics better learned on YouTube.

By the time graduation approached, none of us had developed any actual job skills, but we could sure as shit talk around important subjects. As such, the most we were prepared to do was spend more cash on grad school or go WWOOFing till we died. This led me to take a stance against providing free college education for all. No. Just, no. Let Europe have it. I only support the idea if those educations go toward protecting us against international hackers or figuring out sustainable agriculture. I'd only support giving a free education to a smart kid to get a degree in whatever the exact opposite of my degree is. Until the residual of the Bernie Sanders movement works through that loophole, I'm out.

I took on lots of debt attending college, but I never learned anything about how to manage it. I didn't learn about taxes either, but I was lucky enough to get a job right before my student loan payments kicked into gear. I accepted a corporate gig with a salary that felt exorbitant and immediately began plotting when I could move out of my parent's house. But everything changed when I got my first paycheck, and to my admittedly ignorant shock, I realized a helluva lot more money was missing than I anticipated.

"Income tax" seems like an abstract alien concept when you're not making any money, but it becomes much more real when cash has magically disappeared from your paycheck. I couldn't believe my peers and I had spent so much time shaming conservatives for wanting lower taxes. After making an income, the tax I paid on it was suddenly all I cared about. And stopping government waste seems way more important to me now than funding government programs.

A past version of myself would've called this prioritization problematically selfish. The current, cheerfully cynical version of me that college created knows I can spend my money much more wisely than any of the politically correct stoners with questionable degrees who are running the show in DC.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Donald Trump Voter Fraud Warning: He’s Right & Media Are Wrong to Dismiss It | National Review

Donald Trump Voter Fraud Warning: He’s Right & Media Are Wrong to Dismiss It | National Review


Arlen Specter, who served Pennsylvania for 30 years in the Senate, first as a Republican and then as a Democrat, strongly opposed voter fraud during his career. He openly scoffed at liberal claims that there is no voter fraud. “They don’t see what they don’t want to see,” he told me before this death in 2011. “I’m from Philadelphia. It’s been a way of life here.” He said that even though he was a Democrat he stood by his 2007 vote in favor of requiring photo ID in all federal elections.

Specter, as a former district attorney of Philadelphia, had personal knowledge of voter fraud. I reported in 2012 at NRO:
Specter was appalled at the activities of the far-left group ACORN, after it was discovered they were submitting hundreds of thousands of fake voter registrations around the country. As ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he unsuccessfully urged that a hearing be held on the ACORN scandal. He was shot down by, among others, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, who claimed, “Fraud is not systematic, and it doesn’t occur very much.”

Even after he switched parties in 2009, Specter still voted with a majority of the Senate to end all federal funding of ACORN. . . . “Every vote stolen cancels out that of someone else and attacks the heart of our democracy,” he told me. “That shouldn’t be a partisan issue but just one of basic integrity.”
The way to avoid disputed elections and political turmoil is to make sure as few problems as possible happen while votes are being cast. It’s almost impossible to detect fraud after secret ballots are thrown into a common pool. Sending properly trained election monitors — both governmental and private — where appropriate is one safeguard. Another is having prosecutors issue a warning right before Election Day that fraudsters will be prosecuted — a threat that the Obama administration has been singularly uninterested in. Giving federal grants to states to help them pay to upgrade and standardize their voting machines would also be a good step.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Addressing The Problem™ | Brad R. Torgersen

Addressing The Problem™ | Brad R. Torgersen

The Problem™ — according to those who’ve made it their business to fight The Problem™:

SF/F publishing is dominated by demographic W. Demographics X, Y, and Z are underrepresented. This is obviously because demographic W is prejudiced, and therefore excluding X, Y, and Z. Therefore demographic W is on the hot seat for making SF/F into a W-only club. So, what can obligatorily concerned, properly progressive members of W do to be more inclusive and celebratory of X, Y, Z, and also A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, and the ever-fabulous Q?

The chief problem with typical analysis of The Problem™ is that it fails to ask a very important question: wence the readership? Editors and authors are not birthed whole-cloth from the dust of the earth. They always begin as readers first. I repeat: editors and authors always begin as readers first. There is no author, nor editor, in the business of Science Fiction & Fantasy literature, who did not start out as a reader. Usually, in childhood and/or adolescence. 99.999% of all professionals began life (in the field) as avid fans of some sort, whether they were laser-focused on a specific author, or a specific sub-genre, or omnivorous cosmopolitans who imbibed everything the field had to offer. Thus, to understand a dearth (or surfeit?) of any demographic, within SF/F publishing, you have to go all the way back to the beginning.

Which kids are reading, and what, and why?

Thus, how many kids from underrepresented demographics, grew up in households where fiction reading was a common and encouraged form of entertainment? And out of that number, how many gravitated to SF/F explicitly?

Because it is entertainment we’re talking about, and where entertainment is concerned, De Gustibus can be an iron law.

The progressive conceit is that kids from underrepresented demographics don’t read SF/F because these children never “see” themselves enough — not in the characters, nor the stories, nor the ranks of authors and professionals. This argument always strikes me as particularly strange — for Science Fiction & Fantasy — since a great heap of SF/F (past, and present) has concerned itself with crawling around inside the heads of people and creatures who are decidedly different from the creators, as well as the audience. No sector of entertainment literature has devoted more time to examining Difference (note the caps) than SF/F. And even if you take the postmodernist deconstructionist approach (“All fiction is simply allegory for the sake of present-tense social and political commentary!”) you still find that SF/F has gone out of its way to explore the lives and thoughts of the marginalized, the alien, and the outcast.

In other words, this is a field that bends over backwards to put Difference front-and-center.

So, what else might be going on? Besides a subtle or unconscious plot on the part of demographic W, to exclude or marginalize the other letters of the alphabet? Especially when publishing is an enterprise that does not require any prospective professional participant to wear his (or her, or their) demographics on his (or her, or their) sleeve?

1) Kids are busy doing other things. This has been especially true since the invention of the television. The number of explicitly youth-focused, youth-oriented passtimes has exploded over the past 70 years. If it’s not music, it’s video games. If it’s not video games, it’s sports. If it’s not sports, it’s texting and chatting. If it’s not texting and chatting, it’s movies and series. And so on, and so forth. In any representative population sample of pre-teens and teens, you’re liable to lose 65% (or more) of that collective attention span, to entertainment that does not involve reading prose on a page.

2) Kids get their SF/F in other forms. This is a huge blind spot for that sector of SF/F literature that considers itself “true fandom” and which regards all other forms of SF/F — outside of literature — to be subsidiary or subervient. Since the late 1970s, the amount of televised and silver screen SF/F has increased dramatically, thanks to the birth of the Star Wars franchise; as proof-of-concept that spec-fictional content was a massive money-maker. Since then, studios cannot not churn out enough SF/F. Look at the big list of Top 25 all-time silver screen earners, and at least 22 of them are explicitly SF/F in some form. Throw in Japanese animation, and modern story-driven video games, and you’re staring at the greatest part of your average english-language teen’s spec-fictional diet. Movies, TV, anime, and games. That’s it. (S)he may not feel the need to seek out books or other forms of spec-fictional prose, simply because there is a universe of (often spectacular and enjoyable) spec-fictional content readily available — long before (s)he has to crack open a book.

3) Kids who are reading, may only be reading what is popular, or familiar. This is one of the great resentments among almost all spec-fictional scribblers: it’s not fair that movie or TV tie-in books, or the latest J.K. Rowling novel, soak up a vast (disproportionately vast?) number of reader dollars — which may or may not trickle down to the rest of us toiling in the salt mines. Scratch an author or editor taking aim at The Problem™ and you will almost always discover someone who is equally unhappy with the fact that Harry Potter or some other magical Fantasy doorstop series are co-occupying the Amazon bestseller rankings, versus this month’s latest “confrontational” pan-African indigenous perspectives gender-queer anthology — from AngryWymyn Press. (Click to donate to their patreon!)

4) Speaking of which, can we please (finally!) admit that what interests and fascinates your typical Intersectional Oppression Studies undergrad — at Oregon Coast University — is not necessarily what interests a majority of reading teens and pre-teens? No, not even the teens and pre-teens from marginalized demographics. Because not every X nor Y nor Z (nor even every Q) teen or pre-teen spends his/her/their time gazing endlessly at his/her/their navel. Thus, if the number of spec-fictional authors coming into the field from an Intersectional Oppression Studies background is large, the number of readers this pool might be directly speaking to, is pretty damned small. And no, scolding isn’t a great way to gin up audience enthusiasm. You can whip a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Especially the young, who will smell a moral sermon a mile away, and immediately run in the opposite direction.

Of course, that’s just the first layer of the cake.

Then, assuming a sufficiently large number of marginalized entry-level SF/F pros can be slapped together, how do we know which markets this body is submitting to? What kind of books or stories? Unless we’re dealing with a university or subsidy press (click to donate to the patreon!!) said publisher has to be in the business to do business. This means keeping at least one eye on the marketplace. And the marketplace is notoriously immune to being guilt-tripped into coughing up its dollars for an entertainment product being proffered like a kelp shake from a Whole Foods organic health bar. “Because it’s good for you!” may not necessarily be a winning sales pitch. In fact, it’s usually a horrible sales pitch. Calling the audience names, when they won’t follow the carrot or the stick, is also a horrible sales pitch. The audience wants to have a good time. Period. Non-subsidy prose publishing has to be accountable to this fact. Thus the endless tug-o-war between art and commerce. Between what is deemed “worthy” by the cognoscenti, and what is actually worthwhile to the consumer public.

Okay, so, we’ve tunneled through reader and author origins, the matter of ideology versus economy, and at last come to the ugly worm at the bottom of the Tequila bottle: are SF/F’s editors actually racist? Sexist? Homophobic? Transphobic? Yadda yadda?

Consider the fact that the total number of spec-fictional editors and publishers are self-styled progressives and liberals — by a gargantuan, wide margin — and it’s a head-scratcher. These are the people who go out of their way to broadcast to the universe that they are on The Right Side of History. They will spare no expense supporting the monthly flavor of Disenfranchised Artist. They are extremely proud to be left-wing, and they will haughtily declare their allegiance to progressive economic and political ideas.

And this is the body of people who are scheming — intentionally, or unintentionally — to keep the Other (note the caps) out of SF/F?

This is a field given over almost entirely to the progressive “side” of the ideological landscape. Thus when progressives attack the field for margnializing or excluding X, Y, or Z demographics, it’s a bit like watching a man pick up a hammer and smash his own thumb — because the thumb had it coming.


The market always wins | Brad R. Torgersen

The market always wins | Brad R. Torgersen


The Ghostbusters reboot failed, not because America hates women, but because America looked at this movie and said, “Two-point-five stars; maybe three at most, if we’re in a good mood.”

The audience doesn’t care about progressive eat-your-ideological-veggies politics. The audience doesn’t care about the demographics of the actors. The audience just wants to have a good time.

Likewise, you cannot command consumers to shun a thing, if that thing has already won them over. Remember Chick-Fil-A? Bunch of Social Justice Zealots (SJZs) commanded us all to “punish” Chick-Fil-A for (insert progressive political reason here) and the response — by Americans — was to give Chick-Fil-A a record week in profits. Any way you slice it, the SJZ plan wholly and utterly backfired. Because Chick-Fil-A chicken is delicious. People have known this for years. It’s why Chick-Fil-A has exploded nationally. Check out any Chick-Fil-A franchise at lunch or dinner, and you will typically see stacks of cars lined up around the lot, sometimes more than once, with a huge crowd at the registers inside. The anti-Chick-Fil-A “punishment” maneuver merely caused those ordinarily packed lines to go out the driveway, down the street, and around the block. Because the consumers said “F*** you, you can’t make us hate good food.” The consumers are still saying it, too.

So, please, let’s pause for a moment; to consider the boots-on-ground reality. Wagging your finger at people is never, ever a winning marketing strategy. Wagging your finger at the crowds is liable to have the crowds showing you a collective finger of their own — and it ‘aint the index finger. Because people like what they like, and they don’t like what they don’t like. De gustibus. You want to freight your product with all kinds of social justice ornamentation? Fine. Just be aware of the fact that you’re putting a stone around that product’s neck. Don’t be shocked when it sinks to the bottom, never to rise. It’s not the audience’s fault. It’s your fault for thinking the audience wanted or needed you to shove your politics up their collective ass.

Again, the crowds just want to have fun. I repeat: they want to have fun. Can you bring the fun? Can you make something that gets spontaneous laughter or applause, without it turning into an imitation of a Politburo session, where grown men collapse because they dare not get caught being the first one to put his hands back into his pockets? Maybe you think the Politburo sessions are an instruction manual, versus a cautionary tale?

Maybe you need to reconsider.

But wait, who am I kidding? Of course you won’t reconsider. SJZs never, ever reconsider. Smug self-righteousness is a hell of a drug. Once a person is hooked, (s)he loses all perspective, and becomes both myopic and deaf. That’s SJZism in a nutshell: myopic, and deaf.

But don’t say nobody warned you. The next time your movie or book — tricked out with all the latest virtue-signalling baubles — tanks. You spent too much time focusing on the wrapping paper, without paying enough attention to what’s inside. It’s the product itself that counts. Just like content of character counts. Remember who said that? I do. It was good advice.

Race -- End Racism by Ending Race

Race -- End Racism by Ending Race | National Review


A World without Racism

Racism is not a problem in the United States Marine Corps. There is no distinction between black or white Marines — or any color in between. Drill instructors, NCOs, and commanding officers alike teach their men that there are no races in the Marines — to the Corps, whether you are light green or dark green is irrelevant. We are all green, and that is all that matters. For many decades, Marines of all different shades have fought, bled, and died beside each other. Promotion is based on performance scores, not on race. Discipline is based on individual action, not on race. Marines identify as Marines, not as a race.

If more Americans discarded the divisive labels that are thrust upon us every day by government policy, progressive ideology, and popular culture, we would have a much more united, less factionalized, less racist society.

One of the first things I remember being taught in life is that skin color does not matter. Discrimination, segregation, and hatred are wrong. Separate is not equal. I took this nugget of truth to heart and I have tried to live my life in a manner that confirms that ideal. Race is an artificial human social construction, a construction which has been a powerful force in conquest, enslavement, segregation, apartheid, murder, and genocide. Race is a negative force; it is a way for people to justify division and separation between groups of people.
....
Unfortunately, our nation has changed from the United States I knew in my youth to the country that we live in today. While I concede that my perspective has changed from that of a child to that of an adult, I believe that our country — while never having fully succeeded in discarding racism in the past — has regressed in the last decade. It’s true that the evil, government-sanctioned horror that was chattel slavery and Jim Crow are long gone. Public schools have been integrated for more than four decades. In theory all U.S. citizens are equal under the law. In 2008, we elected a black president.

Yet despite these signs of progress, today we are mired in a backward-trending divisive ideology of self-segregation, fruitless categorization, and tribalism. I watched in profound sadness and disappointment in the winter of 2014 when, in the midst of the terrible self-destructive riots in Ferguson, Mo., President Obama, the man with the perhaps greatest opportunity to lead our country into reconciliation and unity since Reconstruction, instead further divided our country. I was listening, waiting to be led to a new America, and he left me disappointed and Ferguson burning. The end state of the progressive ideology that celebrates and reinforces race as an important distinction in employment, crime, education, and politics is a society that is further split into warring factions. It is rolling back the spirit of E Pluribus Unum. Instead of uniting the country as one, it seeks to divide us based on the color of our skin. Our young people are assaulted by a racial ideology that tears us apart. Divisive jokes, slurs, nicknames, and categorization confront our youth every day. Rap songs, social media, and popular culture all reinforce that divide instead of minimizing it. But instead of finding ways to move past these troubles, progressive ideology seeks to normalize racial slurs rather than eliminate them. SHARE ARTICLE ON FACEBOOKSHARE TWEET ARTICLETWEETI have experienced racism in my life. Things have been assumed about me because of my appearance. I have been called slurs. I have gotten in fights. I, too, have been categorized against my will. I am one of the millions of Americans who does not fit into the convoluted categories and divisions that government policy and racial ideology try to force us into. I refuse to be categorized based on my skin color or ancestry by anyone — but especially by the government. In order to exercise your constitutional right to buy a firearm in the United States you must fill out the ATF 4473 form from which a background check is conducted. Buyers are required by our government to categorize themselves by answering two questions: Question 10A on ethnicity requires you to check “Hispanic or Latino” or “Not Hispanic or Latino”; Question 10B requires a buyer to define himself by choosing at least one of: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or White.

Archaic classification systems are non-scientific, flawed, divisive, and pointless. How should a person answer whose parents and ancestors were Arabs born in Egypt? What about white people born in New Zealand? Are they not Pacific Islanders? Is it not insane that Lebanese, Pashtun, Bengali, Tamil, Turkish, Cambodian, Indonesian, and, of course, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Americans are all classified by our government as “Asian”?

One of the most insulting incarnations of racism today is the idea of race-based voting. Whenever politicians and media predict the outcome of the “Black vote” or the “Latino vote,” I cringe. How is it not racist for someone to assume — or even expect — an individual to vote based on the color of his or her skin? What is more racist than to ascribe a person’s political views to her physical appearance? Should not a person vote his conscience? Should not experience, philosophy, religion, economic status, residency, education, occupation, and morality have far more to do with an individual’s political perspective than his or her pigmentation? Expecting someone to think, behave, or vote a certain way based on skin color is as racist as segregation. And yet many who dare dissent from the politics they are expected to hold based on skin color are often called traitors or Uncle Toms. I am a conservative American who hates racism. I am in fact actively anti-racist: I want to live my life in a way so that my tiny corner of the universe is positively improved by practicing anti-racism. What is the end state of divisive racial ideology? It is unending division. For progressives, is there ever a point where Asian Americans, African Americans, European Americans, Hispanic Americans (another socially constructed category — arbitrarily divided from Native Americans) can just be Americans? Not that I’m aware of. Progressive ideology seems to want to divide us — permanently. Alternatively, the admittedly far-off and idealistic goal for American society from a conservative perspective is color blindness. If race shouldn’t matter in how we judge individuals, let’s treat it like it doesn’t matter. Let’s remove race as a criterion for consideration. Conservatives should work toward a society where nothing is influenced or decided based on the color of a person’s skin. A truly uniting policy would be to move beyond these feudal bonds of socially constructed imprisonment. Let us cast off any stereotypes, assumptions, benefits, grievances, or impairments based on the amount of melanin in a person’s hide.

Encouragingly, there is a precedent for this idea in American history — when disparate groups of English, Dutch, German, Swedish, Welsh, and Scottish colonists became, simply, American. Later, the Poles and Italians became Americans. The Irish — once thought to be too different to ever truly assimilate into our culture — became Americans. During the First World War many Americans of Germans descent made tangible changes in their customs and culture to become, simply, Americans. I am not advocating that you forget your heritage or ancestry. As free men and women, by all means celebrate your ancestry and heritage as you please, but remember that we are an American Nation, and that “American” is our nationality — something far more important and unifying than the artificial and destructive concept of race. So let me join with President Roosevelt and Governor Jindal in calling for an end to hyphenated Americans. Let us drop our tribal divisions and embrace our shared heritage and nationality. Let us unite as Americans. Let us remember that separate is not equal. I hope that, as Americans, we will move toward a color-blind, post-race, and post-racist society. That is the only way to end racism.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Hillary is Wrong on Wages

Hillary is Wrong on Wages


MYTH: Henry Ford paid his workers double the market rate so they could afford the products that they were paid to make. This is why we need a "living wage."

REALITY: Henry Ford paid these “efficiency wages” to lower the rate of turnover, absenteeism and the associated costs to the firm from either. The competitive free-market is why he raised his wages.

Henry Ford—who had paid his employees a competitive $2.25-2.50, struggled to maintain a satisfied workforce. Ford revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly-line production process, and in a period from 1908-1914, the composition of his workforce changed. The relative speed Ford could produce cars due to standardizing of parts and the specialization of his labor force, reduced the need and costs of skilled craftsman in the production process.

The change in skill level demanded for labor increased greatly the labor supply, and surprisingly, the turnover rates as well. For every 100 positions open, Ford had to hire 370 workers just to keep them filled. Absenteeism had reached 10% a day, further adding to production losses. One would think that with such high demand for these jobs, along with competitive market wages, it would satisfy the requirements to retain and elicit effort from his workforce, but this just wasn’t the case.

Implicit in these high turnover and absenteeism rates are losses incurred by Ford Motor Company. Search costs are those incurred by firms for finding a suitable employee to hire. Moreover, advertising, screening applications and interview processes take time and cost money. Even in low-skilled occupations, almost 22 person-hours are required to fill a vacancy. Even after an employee is hired, general or specific training is often needed before workers are able to produce commensurate with their pay, this training also makes them valuable to competition and their loss more costly to their employer.

By 1914, Henry Ford instituted a 5 dollar a day wage, available only to employees that had been with the company for at least six months. At the same time, only those job applicants that have been living at least six months in the Detroit area would be considered for employment. In the period of March 1913 to March 1914, the quit rate at Ford decreased by 87% and discharges decreased by 90%. Similarly, the absentee rate dropped by 75% from October 1913 to October 1914. Though, this wage increase perhaps didn’t help Ford maximize profits, it did raise morale, effort and productivity.

Sources:

1993a_bpeamicro_bishop.pdf

the-story-of-henry-fords-5-a-day-wages-its-not-what-you-think

w2101.pdf

Modern-Labor-Economics-Theory-Public

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

The Minimum-Wage Stealth Tax on the Poor | Hoover Institution

The Minimum-Wage Stealth Tax on the Poor | Hoover Institution

Imagine an antipoverty program with the following elements: a value-added tax in which the effective rate increases as family income declines. The tax revenue is distributed to families regardless of their income. Families below twice the poverty level get only one-third of the revenue, with only half of this amount going to families with children.
Most Americans wouldn’t cheer this program, nor would most political leaders champion it. Yet that is what happens when Congress raises the minimum wage.
In a peer-reviewed study, “How Effective Is the Minimum Wage at Supporting the Poor?” (forthcoming in the Journal of Political Economy), I analyzed who won and who lost after Congress raised the minimum wage in 1996 to $5.15 from $4.25, a raise that occurred in phases over the period 1996-97. That would be comparable to raising the current minimum wage of $7.25 to nearly $8.80. The results show the failure of minimum-wage hikes as an antipoverty policy.
To be sure, companies on their own—such as Wal-Mart last week—do raise the wages of their lowest-paid workers, typically when it is necessary to retain a stable, productive workforce. But this isn’t the same as a government-mandated, economy wide raise. Still, most Americans favor such mandated increases because they believe it helps poor workers support their families.
One problem is that only about 5% of families have children and are supported by low-wage earnings; another is that higher minimum wages cause some workers to lose their jobs. Advocates of a higher minimum wage argue that the number of workers who gain far exceeds those who lose. Whatever the credibility of this calculus, there is yet another problem: If someone’s income is arbitrarily increased thanks to a legislatively mandated wage increase, someone else must pay for it.
Since economic evidence indicates that higher minimum wages don’t significantly affect employers’ profit rates, advocates instead say that employers will pass on these increased labor costs by raising the prices of their goods and services—and that “society,” or more affluent consumers, will pay these costs.
But will low-income families earn more from an increase in the minimum wage than they will pay as consumers of the now higher-priced goods? My research strongly suggests that they won’t.
The first step in understanding why they won’t is to recognize that minimum-wage workers are typically not in low-income families; instead they are dispersed evenly among families rich, middle-class and poor. About one in five families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution had a minimum-wage worker affected by the 1996 increase, the same share as for families in the top fifth.
Virtually as much of the additional earnings of minimum-wage workers went to the highest-income families as to the lowest. Moreover, only about $1 in $5 of the addition went to families with children supported by low-wage earnings. As many economists already have noted, raising the minimum wage is at best a scattershot approach to raising the income of poor families.
The second step is to consider who actually bears the burden of higher labor costs that are passed on through higher prices of goods and services.
My analysis, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey, showed that the 1996 minimum-wage hike raised prices on a broad variety of goods and services. Food purchased outside of the home bore the largest share of the increased consumption costs, accounting for 21% with an average price increase of slightly less than of 2%; the next highest shares were around 10% for such commodities as retail services, groceries and household personal services.
Overall, the extra costs attributable to higher prices equaled 0.63% of the nondurable goods purchased by the poorest fifth of families and 0.52% of the goods purchased by the top fifth—with the percentage falling as the income level rose.
The higher prices, in other words, resembled a regressive value-added, or sales, tax, with rates rising the lower a family’s income. This is sharply contrary to normal tax policy. A typical state sales tax has a uniform rate—but with necessities such as food excluded, and this exclusion (which exists as well in countries with a value-added tax) is adopted expressly to lower the effective tax rate on consumption by people with lower incomes.
My analysis concludes that more poor families were losers than winners from the 1996 hike in the minimum wage. Nearly one in five low-income families benefited, but all low-income families paid for the increase through higher prices.
Consider a McDonald’s restaurant, often cited as ground zero in minimum wage debates. To cover costs of a mandated increase in the earnings of McDonald’s lowest-paid workers, customers pay more for the company’s food. The distributional question becomes: Which group comes from the least well-off families: McDonald’s customers or its lowest-paid workers? Economy-wide evidence shows that the customers disproportionately come from low-income families.

Dinner, Disrupted - The New York Times

Dinner, Disrupted - The New York Times

I am all in favor of San Francisco’s $13 per hour minimum wage (which rises to $15 by 2018), plus mandatory paid sick leave, parental leave and employer health care contributions. But labor costs at restaurants are inching past 50 percent of total expenditures, an indicator of poor fiscal health. Commercial rents have also gone bananas. Add the ever-rising cost of frisée and pastured quail eggs and it’s no wonder that many restaurants are experimenting with that unique form of sadism known as “small plate sharing,” which amounts to offering a big group of hungry people something tiny to divvy up. Even nontrendy joints now ask $30 for a proper entree — a price point, according to Mr. Patterson, that encourages even affluent customers to discover the joys of home cooking.
THIS is all fine at the handful of places that are full and profitable every night — State Bird Provisions, Lazy Bear — but, according to Gwyneth Borden of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, an alarming number are not. The bigger tech companies worsen the problem by scooping up culinary talent to run lavish free food programs that, as Ms. Borden said, offer workers “all-day bacon and lobster rolls and tacos.” This kills the incentive for employees to spend a penny in restaurants, especially at lunch. (Ms. Borden also told me that she can’t count the number of times she has heard an Uber or Lyft driver confess to being a former chef.)
Constant traffic jams and great restaurants in less congested cities like Oakland discourage suburbanites who used to cross the Bay Bridge for date night in San Francisco. Besides, as Mr. Patterson says, the city clears out on holiday weekends. “They all go to Tahoe,” he said. “You want to get a reservation somewhere? Just book a table during Burning Man.”