In 2017 my Website was migrated to the clouds and reduced in size.
Hence some links below are broken.
One thing to try if a “www” link is broken is to substitute “faculty” for “www”
For example a broken link
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
can be changed to corrected link
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
However in some cases files had to be removed to reduce the size of my Website
Contact me at 
rjensen@trinity.edu if you really need to file that is missing

Tidbits Political Quotations
To Accompany the June 28, 2018 edition of Tidbits
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2018/Tidbits062818.htm          
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University




USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl

In September 2017 the USA National Debt exceeded $20 trillion for the first time ---
http://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/national-debt-surpasses-20-trillion-for-the-first-time-in-us-history

Human Population Over Time on Earth ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE 


State Income Taxes Ranked From Highest to Lowest
http://www.businessinsider.com/state-income-tax-rate-rankings-by-state-2018-2


The Federal budget for 2017 ---
http://ritholtz.com/2018/04/federal-budget-2017/

Jensen Comment
Note that even before the 2018 corporate tax cuts the corporate income tax has been a shrinking part of the Federal budget of the most recent decades. I've long been an advocate of replacing it with a VAT tax but liberals and conservatives alike hate that idea.

Medicare and Medicaid are the least sustainable entitlements predicted for the future.

Interest on government debt is a huge worry since foreign interests (think China and the oil-rich nations of the Middle East) own so much of it with the threat that one day these large investors will stop rolling over their investments in USA debt.

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the booked obligation of $20+ trillion) ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2016/05/25/spring-2016-to-whom-does-the-us-government-owe-money-n2168161?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
The US Debt Clock in Real Time --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 
In 2018 Foreigners (think Asia and the Middle East) May Be Losing Interest in USA Treasuries ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/lackluster-u-s-bond-auctions-add-to-worries-of-foreign-pullback
Remember the Jane Fonda Movie called "Rollover" --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(film)
One worry is that nations holding trillions of dollars invested in USA debt are dependent upon sales of oil and gas to sustain those investments.

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the unbooked obligation of $100+ trillion and unknown more in contracted entitlements) ---
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/15/news/economy/entitlement-benefits/
The biggest worry of the entitlements obligations is enormous obligation for the future under the Medicare and Medicaid programs that are now deemed totally unsustainable ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

How Americans Get Health Insurance ---
http://ritholtz.com/2017/08/americans-get-health-insurance/


Here are the Ten Best Pieces of Advice from 2018 Commencement Speakers ---
Click Here

 

The Best Advice from 2018's Celebrity Commencement Speakers ---
https://moneyish.com/heart/the-best-advice-from-2018s-celebrity-commencement-speakers/

 

Eight Science Quotations from Commencement Speeches
https://todayinsci.com/QuotationsCategories/C_Cat/Commencement-Quotations.htm

 

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because it's been fertilized with more bullshit.
Anonomous

 

The Lucretius Problem is a mental defect where we assume the worst case event that has happened is the worst case event that can happen ---
https://www.fs.blog/2015/04/lucretius-problem/

 

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Aristotle

 

How many times have we heard ‘free tuition,’ ‘free health care,’ and free you-name-it? If a particular good or service is truly free, we can have as much of it as we want without the sacrifice of other goods or services. Take a ‘free’ library; is it really free? The answer is no. Had the library not been built, that $50 million could have purchased something else. That something else sacrificed is the cost of the library. While users of the library might pay a zero price, zero price and free are not one and the same. So when politicians talk about providing something free, ask them to identify the beneficent Santa Claus or tooth fairy.
Walter Williams

 

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Eric Hoffer.

 

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill

 

Shoot for the space in between, because that's where the real mystery lies.
Vera Rubin
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/28/remebering-vera-rubin/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=f053a9c4e2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-f053a9c4e2-234390133

 

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

In honor of his centennial, the Top 10 Feynman quotations ---
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/top-10-richard-feynman-quotations

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Margaret Wheatley
Even conversations that are not politically correct.

The Atlantic:  The Singapore summit actually made the world a safer place. The president’s critics won’t admit it ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/trump-kim-jong-un-summit/562934/

I have lots of ideas . . . I always have more ideas than I can possibly write about.” So he prays for discernment about what ideas to pursue and what ideas to let die. And increasingly, over the last three or four years, I pray more and more that God would teach me when it’s time to shut up. That’s the thing that I’m least good at. Just shutting up.
Alan Jacobs
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/04/23/alan-jacobs-christian-intellectual-internet-age

Magazines haven’t raised their rates since the 1950s. Even New Yorker staff writers typically don’t get health insurance ...
https://medium.com/s/story/how-much-is-a-word-worth-7fcd131a341c

The enemy is fear
We think it's hate
But, it's fear

Gandhi

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson

Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence --- by this time tomorrow we may have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought isn't it? We'd be back to where we started --- improvising.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Act I)

It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.

Babe Ruth, Historic Home Run Hitter
What's sad is to witness what Syria has become because nobody will give up.

And "because they're nonstate actors, it's hard for us to get the satisfaction of [Gen.] MacArthur and the [Japanese] Emperor [Hirohito] meeting and the war officially being over," Obama observed, referencing the end of World War II. 
President Barack Obama when asked if the USA of the future will be perpetually engaged in war.
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-on-americans-being-resigned-to-live-in-a-perpetual-war-2016-7

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. 
Joseph Campbell

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. 
George S. Patton

And many writers have imagined for themselves republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for there is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation: for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good.
Niccolo Machiavelli

If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.
Yogi Berra

Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau

You can get a lot farther with a smile and a gun than you can with just a smile.
Al Capone

Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.
Teddy Roosevelt

A new report from Judicial Watch reveals a concerted effort from Sen. John McCain’s office to urge the IRS under Lois Lerner to strike out against political advocacy groups, including tea party organizations ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/06/the-irs-scandal-day-1869-in-meeting-with-lois-lerner-mccain-staffer-requested-financially-ruinous-au.html

I suspect the Independent Counsel headed by Robert Mueller has an OJ problem --- is it possible to find an independent jury?
Bob Jensen

The Simpsons Take on Ayn Rand: See the Show’s Satire of The Fountainhead and Objectivist Philosophy ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/06/the-simpsons-take-on-ayn-rand.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Jensen Comment
The biggest problem socialists have is finding a country in history where socialism was sustainable. In the end even Castro admitted the Cuban model was unsustainable because too many people liked not working.

Philosophy shrugged: ignoring Ayn Rand won’t make her go away ---
https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophy-shrugged-ignoring-ayn-rand-wont-make-her-go-away?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5e680fd4b6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_21_03_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-5e680fd4b6-68951505

Correction: The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she taken from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.
Time Magazine buried this correction about it's faked cover picture --- buried it so almost nobody would see the correction.
The mother was previously deported in 2013 ---
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/22/mother-time-cover-deported/

Democrats Are Wrong About Republicans. Republicans Are Wrong About Democrats ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-are-wrong-about-republicans-republicans-are-wrong-about-democrats/

Supreme Court Upholds Trump Travel Ban, Giving President Win on Signature Issue ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-26/trump-travel-ban-upheld-by-u-s-supreme-court-jivrzei4?cmpid=BBD062618_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=180626&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Shell-Shocked FBI Employees On Trump's 2016 Win: Trump Voters Are 'Poor, Lazy Pieces of S**t' ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/06/14/shell-shocked-fbi-employees-on-trumps-2016-win-trump-voters-are-poor-lazy-pie-n2490890?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

Text Message From Leading FBI Agent: 'We'll Stop' Donald Trump From Becoming President
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/06/14/senior-fbi-agents-text-well-stop-donald-trump-from-becoming-president-n2490745?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=

Illinois Is Better Off Bankrupt ---
http://blog.heartland.org/2018/06/illinois-is-better-off-bankrupt/

It turns out that, if you are arrested, whether you get bail and whether you can pay it all depend on your randomly assigned judge (in New York City) ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/youve-been-arrested-will-you-get-bail-can-you-pay-it-it-may-all-depend-on-your-judge/
Jensen Comment
The same thing happens for most DUI cases in San Antonio where judges are heavily dependent upon law firms for political contributions. Law firms giving the most to particular judges often get the best deals for their clients.. I don't think "randomly assigned" applies to many court assignments in San Antonio.

Text of the Inspector General's Report Shaking Up the FBI ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-500-page-inspector-generals-report-in-900-words/

Thanks, Red Hen, for kicking out Sarah Huckabee Sanders
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/06/25/thanks-red-hen-for-kicking-out-sarah-huckabee-sanders/LrZ8CyqZvwtXkV6K7Cp3HN/story.html
The Boston Globe

Red Hen Restaurant Owner Followed Sanders Family To Next Restaurant to Continue Harassment…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/06/25/red-hen-restaurant-owner-followed-sanders-family-to-next-restaurant-to-continue-harassment/

Unlawful for DC Restaurants to Discriminate Based on Political Affiliation ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/marinamedvin/2018/06/26/unlawful-for-dc-restaurants-to-discriminate-based-on-political-affiliation-n2494439?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

Schumer Calls Out Mad Maxine: Calls To Harass Trump Officials In Public Are 'Not American' ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/06/25/schumer-calls-out-mad-maxine-calls-to-harass-trump-officials-in-public-are-not-n2494338?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

Ari Fleischer, who was a press secretary for President George W. Bush, tweeted Saturday: “I guess we’re heading into an America with Democrat-only restaurants, which will lead to Republican-only restaurants. Do the fools who threw Sarah out, and the people who cheer them on, really want us to be that kind of country?”
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/06/24/sarah-sanders-says-told-leave-virginia-restaurant/

What did Max Weber mean by the "spirit of capitalism?"
https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-max-weber-mean-by-the-spirit-of-capitalism?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9fe66d9984-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_14_12_53&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-9fe66d9984-68951505

Amazon Bans Group Who Just Won 7-2 Supreme Court Cake-Baking Victory As "Hate Group" ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/jerrybowyer/2018/06/20/amazon-bans-group-who-just-won-72-supreme-court-cakebaking-victory-as-hate-group-n2492682?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

A viral photo that appeared to depict a child detained at the border over his immigration status was actually taken at a protest, according to fact-checkers ---
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fact-checked-viral-photo-of-boy-in-enclosure-taken-at-protest-not-in-detention-facility

Sweden’s largest music festival cancelled over ‘migrant sex attacks’ ---
https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/06/swedens-largest-music-festival-cancelled-over-migrant-sex-attacks/#.WywnduA91Eg.twitter

Pension Spiking Fraud Restraint At Last:  Illinois chool districts can still award generous pay increases in the final years of a contract (as a way to pad pensions), but they’ll have to tap into their own funds and write a check to the state to cover the cost of their largesse.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-pension-spiking-rauner-schools-20180619-story.html

Little House On The Controversy: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Name Removed From Book Award ---
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/25/623184440/little-house-on-the-controversy-laura-ingalls-wilders-name-removed-from-book-awa
Bob Jensen's threads on banned books ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Banned

GM employs over 15,000 production workers in Mexico, pays the workers less than $3 per hour and exports over 80 percent of the vehicles to the U.S. to sell in the USA ---
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chevy-blazer-coming-back-and-itll-be-made-in-mexico/
The revised version of the Chevy Blazer will be produced in Mexico

PBS:  Congress passed a law that barred Chinese immigration to the United States. In addition, the law prevented Chinese nationals already living in the United States from becoming U.S. citizens. The Act was not repealed until 1943, following the advent of World War II.---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chinese-exclusion-act/#part01

Argentina has shanghaied the IMF once again ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/argentina-has-shanghaied-the-imf-once-again-2018-6

EU's 5-Point Migration Problem In A Nutshell ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2018/06/26/eus-5point-migration-problem-in-a-nutshell-n2494538?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

First Lady Melania Trump’s office confirmed to The Daily Caller Wednesday that they have notified the Secret Service about actor Peter Fonda’s suggestion, in a series of since-deleted vulgar tweets, that Barron Trump should be kidnapped ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabrown/2018/06/20/actor-peter-fonda-promotes-violence-against-dhs-secretary-nielsen-barron-trump-in-series-of-tweets-n2492744?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=

Inspector General's Report on the FBI and Clinton Email Scandal
The media and the Left are spinning the report as a vindication of the FBI from the charge of bias, when the opposite is the truth
.---
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/inspector-general-report-reveals-fbi-bias-in-clinton-email-investigation/

American Airlines to Pay $45 Million to End Consumer Antitrust Lawsuit ---
https://ss2.club/page/us/virus/virusKiller.php?clickid=20180618025858_542_GC2ee3me

A French Grocer Protested Stupid EU Food Regulations and Won ---
http://reason.com/archives/2018/06/16/a-french-grocer-protested-stupid-eu-food

The stunningly lopsided growth of US wind power, in 4 maps ---
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/5/2/17290880/wind-power-renewable-energy-maps
Jensen Question
While some European nations are now heavily dotted with coastal wind turbines (think Denmark and Holland) why is the West  Coast of the USA so reluctant to utilize wind power?

Trump Foundation --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Trump_Foundation
Also see
https://theconversation.com/why-new-york-state-is-suing-the-trumps-5-questions-answered-98375

Clinton Foundation --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Foundation

 




An Introduction to Ivan Ilyin, the Philosopher Behind the Authoritarianism of Putin’s Russia & Western Far Right Movements ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/06/an-introduction-to-ivan-ilyin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


Harvard:  Are Countries Prepared for the Increased Threat of Bioweapons?
https://hbr.org/2018/06/are-countries-prepared-for-the-increasing-threat-of-engineered-bioweapons?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_not_activesubs&referral=00563&deliveryName=DM7827


Bloomberg:  Now Even Swedes Are Questioning the Welfare State ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-26/now-even-swedes-are-questioning-the-welfare-state?cmpid=BBD062618_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=180626&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

. . .

Paying some of the world’s highest income-tax rates has been the cornerstone of Scandinavia’s social contract, with the political consensus in Sweden to save money for when the economy is less healthy. Yet the country is showing strains all too familiar in other parts of Europe with nationalists gaining support and Swedes increasingly questioning the sustainability of their fabled cradle-to-grave welfare system.

Resentment has built over the influx of more than 600,000 immigrants over the past five years, many from war-ravaged countries like Afghanistan and Syria, a huge number for a country of 10 million people. 

There are also soaring crime rates, gang violence, complaints about education and pregnant mothers even being turned away from maternity wards due to a lack of capacity. The number of people waiting longer than 90 days for an operation or specialist treatment has tripled over the past four years.

“The Swedish social contract needs to be reformed,” a dozen entrepreneurs including Nordea Bank AB Chairman Bjorn Wahlroos and Kreab Founder Peje Emilsson wrote in an op-ed in the Dagens Industri newspaper on May 31. “Despite high taxes, politics isn’t delivering its part of the contract in important areas. We get poor value for money.”

There are warning signs across Europe of what can happen if disillusionment goes unaddressed. In Britain, popular anger over rising immigration and creaking public services fueled the vote to leave the European Union. Nationalist parties, on the march across continent, just swept to power in Italy.

Unless the system is protected, Sweden risks ending up joining them and ushering in populist groups, said Leif Ostling, the former chairman of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise who quit in November after revelations of his tax affairs.

“There are big swings on the way,” said Ostling, 72. He has defended himself against public questions over an offshore account by asking what he gets in return for his money. “If there’s no will to understand the problem, you won’t solve it, and then I’m not prepared to pay any tax at all. And I think a lot of other citizens also feel that way.”

Continued in article


Here's an overview of China's Social Credit System --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System 
One big question is how to change your score once you're locked into place.


Guaranteed Income --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Difference_from_guaranteed_income

Guaranteed Income Experiment in Canada
In a three-year pilot funded by the provincial government, about 4,000 people in Ontario are getting monthly stipends to boost them to at least 75 percent of the poverty line. That translates to a minimum annual income of $17,000 in Canadian dollars (about $13,000 US) for single people, $24,000 for married couples. Lindsay has about half the people in the pilot—some 10 percent of the town’s population.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611418/universal-basic-income-works-if-you-do-it-canada-style/
 

Jensen Comment
The lead illustration in this article suggests that for some this is just a safety net raise for the disabled. As such it's a good deed but does not lead to eventual recipient productivity for the long-term disabled. In contrast, Stockton, California has a guaranteed income program aimed more at unemployed workers in need of assistance while training for job skills. Finland dropped its experiment after finding that the guaranteed income was not marginally reducing unemployment any better than earlier safety nets for the poor.

My point here is that when there are other safety nets for the poor are in place guaranteed minimum income will not reduce unemployment for people who will not or cannot work.

Engels and Later Marx used the phrase "industrial reserve army" as a catchall for the unemployed even in a communist or socialist regime ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour

Castro later discovered that supplying all citizens with egalitarian free housing, transportation, education, medical care, and food rations greatly destroyed incentives to work among many of the unemployed.

"Report: Castro says Cuban model doesn't work," by Paul Haven. Associated Press, Yahoo News, September 8, 2010 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100908/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_fidel_castro_5

Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.

The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

He said Castro made the comment casually over lunch following a long talk about the Middle East, and did not elaborate. The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg's account.

Since stepping down from power in 2006, the ex-president has focused almost entirely on international affairs and said very little about Cuba and its politics, perhaps to limit the perception he is stepping on his brother's toes.

Goldberg, who traveled to Cuba at Castro's invitation last week to discuss a recent Atlantic article he wrote about Iran's nuclear program, also reported on Tuesday that Castro questioned his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, including his recommendation to Soviet leaders that they use nuclear weapons against the United States.

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba has clung to its communist system.

The state controls well over 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in return for free health care and education, and nearly free transportation and housing. At least a portion of every citizen's food needs are sold to them through ration books at heavily subsidized prices.

President Raul Castro and others have instituted a series of limited economic reforms, and have warned Cubans that they need to start working harder and expecting less from the government. But the president has also made it clear he has no desire to depart from Cuba's socialist system or embrace capitalism.

Fidel Castro stepped down temporarily in July 2006 due to a serious illness that nearly killed him.

He resigned permanently two years later, but remains head of the Communist Party. After staying almost entirely out of the spotlight for four years, he re-emerged in July and now speaks frequently about international affairs. He has been warning for weeks of the threat of a nuclear war over Iran.

Castro's interview with Goldberg is the only one he has given to an American journalist since he left office.


Antifa Shares Names and Photos of 1,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Employees ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement


Stossel: Canada's Professor Jordan Peterson vs. 'Social Justice Warriors' ---
http://reason.com/reasontv/2018/06/19/stossel-jordan-peterson-vs-social-justic

Watch the Video

. . .

Peterson defends his position to John Stossel: "I don't care what people want to be called. That's fine, but that doesn't mean I should be compelled by law to call them that."

It's not just students who slam Peterson. In one TV interview, Peterson stayed calm while the host tried to put words in his mouth.

"You are saying that women aren't intelligent enough to run these top companies....You don't believe in equal pay," Cathy Newman, the reporter at Britain's Channel 4 News, insisted.

"No, I'm not saying that at all," Peterson responded. He hadn't said that. What he had said, is that natural differences explain most of the gender wage gap.

As an example, Peterson cites studies that find, in wealthy countries that focus most on equality, like Sweden, even fewer women major in science and math. Instead they pick fields that deal with people, like teaching, and men tend more toward technical fields.

 

Peterson says this shows that when men and women have the most freedom to decide what they do, they pick fields that line up with their natural biological interests.

That idea infuriates leftists. "It should infuriate them," Peterson tells Stossel. "Because I'm going right at the heart of the radical leftist doctrine."

That doctrine is social justice, the idea that all groups should have equal outcomes; that there should be just as many female CEOs, scientists, and computer programmers, because men and women are essentially the same. If outcomes differ, it must be sexism.

 

Peterson says that the focus on group equality is a spinoff of Marxism. That after Marxism failed spectacularly in the economic realm, Marxists applied their way of thinking to issues like the difference between men and women.

"We've got a hundred million corpses stacked up to demonstrate" the failure of Marxism, says Peterson. And the new Marxism-derived focus on group equality won't end any better.

Peterson calls for the opposite of Marxism–a focus on the individual.

He says people should stick with "the principles that govern the West; capitalist principles. The free market principles." With those principles "we do better than any place has ever done."

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness in academe ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness


Charitable Giving And The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/06/charitable-giving-and-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act.html

Alex Brill & Derrick Choe (American Enterprise Institute), Charitable Giving and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act:

This paper investigates how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act affects household charitable giving in the United States. We find that the law will reduce charitable giving by $17.2 billion (4.0 percent) in 2018 according to a static model and $16.3 billion assuming a modest boost to growth. Four-fifths of this decline is driven by an increase in the number of taxpayers who claim the standard deduction.

We also investigate two policy options that could boost total giving above previous levels: an above-the-line deduction and a tax credit.


Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Charged With Wire Fraud ---
Click Here

Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes, who reigned briefly as the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire over her promise to revolutionize blood testing, was criminally charged with defrauding investors along with the company’s former president.

The indictment announced Friday by the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco alleging wire fraud follows claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Theranos, Holmes and the company’s ex-president, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, lied about their technology while raising more than $700 million to build the medical-testing startup.

The indictment came out moments after Theranos said Holmes would be stepping down from the blood-testing company that has unraveled amid revelations that her main product was a fraud.

After the testing device that Holmes claimed would be able run hundreds of medical tests on a single drop of blood was shown not to work, Holmes was barred from running a clinical company by U.S. regulators and was sued by investors, and the company let go many of its employees.

Continued in article

June 16, 2018 reply from Denny Beresford

Bob,

The recent book, “Bad Blood,” details the Theranos story and is a fascinating read. Based solely on that book, the charges against Holmes and her colleague/lover Sunny seem well deserved. I highly recommend the book.

 

Denny

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


February 2018 California Bar Exam Results ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/06/february-2018-california-bar-exam-results.html


IBM's Project Debater --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Debater

NBC News:  New IBM robot holds its own in a debate with a human ---
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/tech/new-ibm-robot-holds-its-own-debate-human-ncna884536

Project Debater gets its knowledge from hundreds of millions of journal articles, but humans still have one key advantage.

The human brain may be the ultimate super computer, but artificial intelligence is catching up so fast that it can now hold a substantive debate with a human.

IBM’s Project Debater made its public debut in San Francisco Monday afternoon, where it squared off against Noa Ovadia, the 2016 Israeli debate champion, and in a second debate against Dan Zafrir, a nationally renowned debater in Israel. The new AI system is the latest grand challenge from IBM, which previously created Deep Blue, the program that beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, and Watson, which bested humans on the game show Jeopardy.

In its first public outing, Project Debater turned out to be a formidable opponent, scanning the hundreds of millions of newspaper and journal articles in its memory to quickly synthesize an argument on a topic and position it was assigned on the spot. The skinny, black, rectangular screen stands about five and a half feet tall, putting it around the same height as a human opponent.

“Project Debater could be the ultimate fact-based sounding board without the bias that often comes from humans,” said Arvind Krishna, director of IBM Research.

An audience survey taken before and after each debate found that Project Debater better enriched the audience’s knowledge as it argued in favor of subsidies for space exploration and in favor of telemedicine, but that the human debaters did a better job delivering their speeches.

This comes from Project Debater’s ability to “dive into a lot of data very quickly and gather information and numbers we don’t have access to quickly,” said Ranit Aharonov, manager of the Project Debater team in Haifa, Israel.

Project Debater looks for sentences and clauses in journals that are relevant to the topic and determines what the potential clashes could be around the topic, according to Aharonov. It then listens and thinks — an act illustrated by three dancing circles on its screen — before it prepares to deliver its counterpoints.

The AI isn’t trained on topics — it’s trained on the art of debate. For the most part, Project Debater spoke in natural language, choosing the same words and sentence structures as a native English speaker. It even dropped the odd joke, but with the expected robotic delivery.

When arguing in support of telemedicine, Project Debater said: “I can’t say it makes my blood boil because I have no blood,” and then launched into a passionate defense of technological advances.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This makes me wonder whether this IBM robot would be allowed to debate in Europe where new copyright laws are going to be very restrictive about having machines store knowledge from copyrighted articles.


 

The Simpsons Take on Ayn Rand: See the Show’s Satire of The Fountainhead and Objectivist Philosophy ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/06/the-simpsons-take-on-ayn-rand.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Jensen Comment
The biggest problem socialists have is finding a country in history where socialism was sustainable. In the end even Castro admitted the Cuban model was unsustainable because too many people liked not working.

Philosophy shrugged: ignoring Ayn Rand won’t make her go away ---
https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophy-shrugged-ignoring-ayn-rand-wont-make-her-go-away?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5e680fd4b6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_21_03_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-5e680fd4b6-68951505

June 25, 2018 reply from Paul Williams

Bob,

Early humans all lived in socialist societies -- tribes. It could very well be the case that if not for humans basic socialist tendencies we would not be here (David Sloan Wilson has summarized the extensive research on the science of human nature in Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others). Native Americans successfully populated North America for 16,000 years without the wisdom of Ayn Rand or Frederich Hayek.

The Incan and Mayan civilizations lasted many centuries and they were not capitalist societies. Even in the U.S. we socialized knowledge production and higher education through a system of State run universities, of which many AECMers have been direct beneficiaries. Humans' choices are not simplistically binary -- either what we have or disaster. Give human intelligence and creativity more credit than that. If you want to rely on history as some sort of confirmation that God created the earth billions of years ago to prepare it for what we have experienced in just the last couple of hundred years perhaps you need to go back further in history than the 18th century.

Paul

June 25, 2018 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Paul,

Last night on Sixty Minutes CBS did a Part 2 on the Isle of Eigg on the coast of Scotland ---
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-the-isle-of-eigg 

It is an interesting illustration of communal living for about 100 people in the 21st Century ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigg 

The main point is that communal living on Eigg today is no longer possible as it was in the days of hunters and gatherers. A rather minimal standard of living is scraped out due mainly to outside benefactors, particularly one anonymous benefactor that provided the funds to buy the island and to build renewable electric power. However, sustainable living comes mainly from the outside such as a popular musician who performs for money in the U.K. and tourists who visit for a few hours at a time (there are no overnight facilities or even restaurants for tourists).

The standard of living on Eigg is minimal, and the people block all immigration other than when a current resident brings in a new spouse. There is an elementary school for five children, but nothing is said about grades 7-12 or higher education. The residents seem to have few skills other than crafts. There is one mechanic who supposedly can "fix anything," but I doubt that he can fix anything technical with computers.

No mention is made of medical services, but my guess is that people in trouble have to be taken to the mainland. It's also not clear if the poor people on Eigg pay taxes or participate in the U.K. national health system. If so I don't know how most of them would raise the money to pay their taxes.

The point is that communal living in the 21st Century is quite dependent upon capitalism from the outside world if the Isle of Eigg is any example.

On its own communal living is no longer sustainable for residents nor is the community inviting to immigrants.

Bob

 




Bob Jensen's threads on health coverage are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

Bob Jensen's Tidbits Archives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm 

Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Summary of Major Accounting Scandals --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals

Bob Jensen's threads on such scandals:

Bob Jensen's threads on audit firm litigation and negligence ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm

Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Enron --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

Rotten to the Core --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

American History of Fraud --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudAmericanHistory.htm

Bob Jensen's fraud conclusions ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on auditor professionalism and independence are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on corporate governance are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance 

 

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

·     With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier

·     With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams

·     With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR

·     With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave  --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
By Bob Jensen

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

Bob Jensen's economic crisis messaging http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

Bob Jensen's threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/