Data back up supporting government claims

Watching Fox news Sunday this last weekend and EPA director, Price. Chris Wallace dutifully trucks out a bunch of Obama statistics, obviously inflated, to support the clean air and water act. The fact that like so many Washington bills and theirs names are lies, but the statistics and data that they have manufactured from thin air needs to be addressed.

It's surprising that time price wasn't better equipped with counter fax and arguments supported by data and statistics to overpower the numbers that are put on the screen. This is a very similar situation to the CBO scoring of the repeal and replace Bill, the American healthcare act. Replacing the again deceitfully named Affordable care act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, is important. But the CBO projects that 14 million people that will lose coverage. And that top line number drives the liberal media story.

Therefore, when it comes to fireman regulations numbers need to be Gartner to support the claims of the Donald Trump administration. Numbers like 1 million jobs will be created by reducing this regulation that does not create or endorse pollution. The limited pollution that currently exists includes 200,000 particulate matter per 1 million air molecules and at 20% we are well below the range of pollution that meets the threshold for clean air standards. Therefore these regulations are excessive.

Likewise, when it comes to healthcare the same user data and statistics needs to be applied to demonstrate that Obamacare resulted in increases of premiums upwards of 100%. This reduces the effective care of the people receiving and over 50,000 people have suffered additional illnesses and diseases as a result. Over 1 million people have not received coverage they need because of Obamacare. In addition, 50 million people will receive improved coverage as a result of the repeal and replace bill.

All of the numbers above can be adjusted, and data back up and statistical analysis needs to be performed to generate numbers in similar slots. All I'm saying is that you can only compare false data with true data. And you can't be caught off guard when you're going to throw numbers at you. You need to get out the tennis racket and bat the ball back with better numbers and figures and statistics that support your claim. PR is a battle of numbers and The story behind the numbers. Therefore, once you defuse the bomb that the media is detonating, you can counter with your own facts and figures.

Then tell the story about how these numbers become real people in real lives. That's the key.

Capitalism and tariffs

 The conversation between free trade and fair trade suffers from a lack of clarity. When discussing these areas one must distinguish between the theoretical underpinnings of various economic theories ranging from command economies to open markets. And, we must understand the practical implications of decisions made within these systems that are strategic in nature and are designed to support the intentions and further the interests of leaders in these systems.

For example, we must understand that economics and politics are “war by other means,” Carl vonKlauswits stated as much. The fact is we live in a competitive world regardless of what you call your organizing philosophy. Capitalism requires open competition on a level playing field by moral men. Socialism clouds these issues and through ambiguous doublespeak and induces the individual blindness by many to equate Global markets with free trade. These are not the same.

There is a large misunderstanding about how capitalism relates to import and export tariffs. Free-market capitalism, from our nation’s founding has resulted in the most dynamic and productive economy and world history. By far the United States leads economic development across the globe. However, the theories and principles of capitalism don’t uniformly apply to nations across the world.

There are two forms of anti-capitalist actions. One, proactive actions of communists and socialists across the globe in opposition to free markets comment. Two, subversive actions and the ramifications of the maneuvers of corporations and individuals within a free-market economy that thwarts capitalism. Both are serious, and both are no different than ethically egregious actions taken in any other area of life. We all face enemies foreign and domestic, enemies from without and within.

In fact, most of the world’s population lives under modified socialism rather than free-market capitalism. This means that state actors including government and agencies, partner with and regulate the activities of corporations in these countries. And that’s a mild form of communistic “autocratic capitalism” which is simply an iteration of communism that allows oligarchs to build businesses that are publicly traded under strict relationships to the state.

These companies are co-ownership joint ventures between governments and corporations. Jack Ma Yun with Alibaba in China, Airbus in France and the Russian energy companies all follow the same model. They benefit from protection regimes that prohibit competition in their own country and structure tree deals with foreign countries that subsidize the production of it’s an services by these companies. They are financed and funded by the state. If this sounds familiar, the United States has essentially co-opted the financial sector buy funding banks through massive inflation due to Digital increases in US currency. Not to mention the GM bailout which Took over a public company with Government dollars.

 What we need to understand is that capitalism doesn’t raise the standards of behavior between competitors on a level playing field. Capitalism overtime drives up productivity and efficiency and innovation for those who practice capitalism well within their own borders. Then, it’s up to the nation which includes the Departments State, Commerce and Defense and many other agencies to negotiate a stance that is favorable to the whole nation vis-à-vis foreign governments, entities, corporations and extra-state players which seek to benefit from arbitrage in sectors in industries where the competition of capitalism has weekends some to the benefit of others.

 This is the essential issue in capitalism, it both promotes monopolies for businesses that maximize benefits to consumers and increases competition opportunities for smaller start-up firms. Economists ironically refer to monopolistic competition as two or three major companies within an industry that dominate the majority of market-share. However often single or pure monopolies rise up especially within local markets where a dominant player controls vast swathes of an entire industry. The same occurs on a national even global scale. Consider Google’s dominance of search, 80% of all search engine inquiries take place on Google. Or even Facebook’s dominance of social media, over 3 billion people are currently Facebook users. 

But these large companies use a form of crony capitalism to subvert existing laws and insulate themselves from the competition demands of smaller companies. This takes place through patent procurement, mergers and acquisition to buy up smaller companies, lobbying for laws and regulations that benefit their position, manipulating financial institutions, and many other public and private actions. All of this is anti-capitalism and encourages anti-capitalism by other companies in foreign nations.

The same types of actions are standard practice for international businesses that are virtually arms of their state governments. Government leaders profit from boards of directorates and interlocking trusts that acquire wealth through corporate ownership.  These firms become vicariously controlled by this international cabal. Where capitalism competes against socialism it is in the strategic interest above the nation promoting free markets to dissuade individuals in other countries from utilizing the power of government to prohibit competition from companies in a capitalist economy.  And it is to the detriment of the nation and companies and individuals in that nation when unjust laws are used against their own people based on advantages provided to socialist companies.

 Thus, to promote capitalism, we must allow for tariffs. We must recognize that our nation and companies and individuals within our country are competing against nations Sedona by the same laws rules and standards that we have. Because these nations and individuals overtly and covertly attack our system of economic organization and by extension a very national security, it is and it is in our interest and our national responsibility to protect and defend individuals and companies within our national boundaries.

Yes, this means that we should focus on America first. And in doing so the shining light in the city on the hill can be a beacon for other nations to raise the standards of their own economic actions and begin to compete fairly. A negotiation requires good faith from both parties. With trust, we engender one another to move forward in a positive direction. That’s the hope for the Trump administration and bilateral trade deals which use tariffs as legitimate sanctions on poor behavior, to trust but verify.

Disection of another peice from New York Times Liberal Journalism Equals Disaster

Bigger Than Bush

By PAUL KRUGMAN Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal Readers' Comments
Published: January 1, 2009

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.

So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.

That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.

The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.

But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

2016 Presidential Prediction

I predict that Donald J. Trump will run for the Republican nomination and win in a crowded field. He will then go on to beat Hillary Clinton in a barn burner election that will turn the tide of liberalism and usher in the next era of American Greatness.

Michael Smerconish: A conservative's case for same-sex marriage

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/news/opinion/article_ec77b2ba-00a2-11df-90db-001cc4c002e0.html

Let's talk through this... Michael is wrong on many levels. How should I correct thee, let me count the ways. 

Buffett and Gates Are Wrong about What Schools Need

by Andrew J. Coulson

This article appeared in The San Jose Mercury News on July 18, 2010.

PRINT PAGE

CITE THIS

Sans Serif

Serif

Share with your friends:

ShareThis

ill Gates and Warren Buffett want the world's billionaires to donate half their wealth to charity. If they're successful with just their American peers, they'll raise about $600 billion — an amount U.S. public schools spend in a single year. And therein lies a problem.

At the behest of Buffett and Gates, 14 of the nation's mega-rich gathered for dinner in New York City last May to discuss their philanthropic goals. Attendee and Fortune editor-at-large Carol Loomis recalls that fixing our education system was at the top of their lists, coming up "again and again."
Both of the event's organizers have long lamented our school woes. When Buffett recently wrote of his plans to give away 99 percent of his own wealth, he ascribed his financial success, in part, to "living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results." While that system rewards skilled stock traders like himself "with sums reaching into the billions," he observed, it "rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes."

]he freest, most market-like education systems consistently outperform school monopolies.

Buffett is right. In fact, education is perhaps the only field in which America's top performers don't enjoy tremendous financial success. This fact has profound implications for school quality, but Buffett is wrong about its cause.
Brilliant teachers aren't excluded from the billionaire's club due to any "capriciousness" of our market economy. They're excluded because public schooling exists outside that economy. It has no prices set by supply and demand, no meaningful competition, little professional freedom for educators, negligible choice for consumers, and no system for rewarding successful education entrepreneurs with profits or of penalizing failure with losses.
Our public school systems enjoy local monopolies on roughly $600 billion annually, and they lack the freedoms and incentives that drive innovation and efficiency in other fields.
We laugh at the $2,000 cell phones and CD players of the early 1980s. Their modern counterparts are fantastically improved — and cheaper. Even low-tech goods and services have become more affordable; grocery-store coffee costs half as much now as it did in 1970, adjusting for inflation.
By contrast, public schooling's productivity has collapsed. A full K-12 education for a 1970 high school graduate cost about $39,000, adjusted for inflation. The same figure for last year's graduates was about $150,000 — and expanded services to special-needs students account for little of the increase. But achievement at the end of high school has stagnated for four decades.
And that brings us to the hurdle facing Gates, Buffett and their well-intentioned friends: Improving education is among their top goals, but our schools have swallowed many trillions of additional dollars in recent decades without improvement. So even if they donate every penny to this cause, it might not do the slightest bit of good. Unless, that is, they recognize that the system itself is the problem — that monopolies cannot be tweaked into self-perpetuating excellence.

Andrew J. Coulson, a former Microsoft software engineer, directs the Cato Institute"s Center for Educational Freedom and is author of Market Education: The Unknown History.

More by Andrew J. Coulson

After reviewing the scientific literature for theJournal of School Choice, I found that the freest, most market-like education systems consistently outperform school monopolies. It is possible to reward our best educators financially and replicate their methods.
This is already happening in Asia's for-profit tutoring industry, in which the top teachers earn million-dollar salaries and the top chains serve millions of students worldwide. Even in the slums of the Third World, rickshaw drivers and day laborers are shunning free public schools in favor of fee-charging entrepreneurial establishments that offer their children a better education — a story recounted in James Tooley's magnificent book The Beautiful Tree.
The evidence is there if these titans of finance and industry wish to see it. For kids' sake, let's hope they do.

What's new about neo-cons and neo-libs?

Listening to a rather dry interview with author of Running Commentary and his vapid explanation of how Jewish liberals became Neoconservatives.

The argument is that Jewish Conservatives are new to the movement and distinct from it.

New liberalism was the catalyst for the split because of it's differences with classic socialism.

However both of these positions lack depth.

Conservatives welcome what Jewish intellectuals add in terms of analysis and theory. Of course simple participation in the cause is strong enough.

When have liberals been something other than statists? What this preceding view of liberalism demonstrates is that Reagan Democrats, Blue-Dog Democrats became disillusioned. It is not the ideology that changed but the truthful understanding of people that changed.