Tidbits Political Quotations
To Accompany the August 15, 2019 edition of Tidbits
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/Tidbits081519.htm            
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University




My Latest Web Document
Over 400 Examples of Critical Thinking and Illustrations of How to Mislead With Statistics --
-
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm

Animated  Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010) ---
A Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010)

USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/
The published debt is a lie
Here's the real booked debt ---
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/

In September 2017 the USA National Debt exceeded $22 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 



 

While a move is underway to destroy the American Dream of rags to riches (by taxing away the riches) the Chinese dream is on the rise.
The Chinese Dream
How a Chinese billionaire went from making $16 a month in a factory to being one of the world's richest self-made women with an $8.3 billion real-estate empire
---

https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-richest-self-made-woman-wu-yajun-net-worth-2019-2

Top 50 Billionaires in China ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_by_net_worth

Jensen Comment
The question for students to debate is why a supposed communist country allows so many billionaires to rise up from poverty.
That's supposed to happen in the USA where a child growing up in deep poverty (think Oprah Winfrey or Howard Shultz) became a multi-billionaires.
But is it also supposed to happen under communism? If so, why?

 

One reason is that many billionaires can afford to pour lots of money into high risk ventures. When's the last time you heard about a high risk (think Silicon Valley) venture in Europe?

 


Wikiquote from Wikipedia --- https://www.wikiquote.org/

 

History will prove former President Donald Trump was correct about Mexico one day funding an impenetrable wall --- to keep out over 2 billion starving green immigrants seeking to enter Mexico from the north.
Bob Jensen

 

Some Fatherly Words of Wisdom from Jack Bogle, Founder of Vanguard Investments, to My Sons ---
https://jborden.com/2019/06/16/some-fatherly-words-of-wisdom-from-jack-bogle-founder-of-vanguard-investments-to-my-sons/

 

Milton Friedman:  The Lesson of the Spoons ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/spoons-are-in-aisle-9.html
Chopsticks would be even better

 

The Young Left’s Anti-Capitalist Manifesto: Its goal is to remake our economic system — and the Democratic Party ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-young-lefts-anti-capitalist-manifesto/

 

I have a complaint about America today, and it is simple: we don’t love business enough ---
Tyler Cowen
https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2019/Klingbigbusiness.html

 

"In Praise of Cheap Labor," by Paul Krugman, Slate, March 21, 1997 ---
https://slate.com/business/1997/03/in-praise-of-cheap-labor.html

 

Corruption in general has a deleterious effect on the readiness of economic agents to invest. In the long run, it leads to a paralysis of economic life. But very often it is not that economic agents themselves have had the bad experience of being cheated and ruined, they just know that in this country, or in this part of the economy, or this building scene, there is a high likelihood that you will get cheated and that free riders can get away with it. Here again, reputation is absolutely essential, which is why transparency is so important. Trust can only be engendered by transparency. It's no coincidence that the name of the most influential non-governmental organization dealing with corruption is Transparency International.
A Conversation with Karl Sigmund:  When Rule of Law is Not Working
https://www.edge.org/conversation/karl_sigmund-when-the-rule-of-law-is-not-working

Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates. Criminals on Wall Street and one particular U.S. Congressional Committee stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds. Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poors rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors. Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime. Suddenly nobody trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide. Hank Paulson now wants the American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to normal. Meanwhile, Hank's buddies, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted. Momma always said: '"Sniff the chocolates first Forrest." Things generally don't pass the smell test if they came from Wall Street or from Washington DC.
Forrest Gump as quoted at http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.sport.tennis/2008-10/msg02206.html

It is not that machines are going to replace chemists. It’s that the chemists who use machines will replace those that don’t ---
Derek Lowe

Gallup: Americans Say No. 1 Problem is 'Government,' No. 2 is 'Immigration' ---
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/survey-americas-no-1-problem-government-no-2-problem-immigration

 

"If you open the borders, my God, there's a lot of poverty in this world, and you're going to have people from all over the world. And I don't think that's something that we can do at this point."
Bernie Sanders
https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-says-he-does-not-support-open-borders-2019-4

 

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on ad infinitum ---

Augustus De Morgan

Prior to 1980 what was unique about the year of his birth in 1871?
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/De_Morgan.html

 

 

12 inspiring quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.---
https://www.businessinsider.com/inspiring-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-2017-1

 

21 oustanding Warren Buffet quotations ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-21-best-quotes-2019-2

 

The Atlantic:  The Swiftly Closing Borders of Europe ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/12/europe-france-italy-immigration-border/578179/

Italian Minister tells NGO Italy doesn’t want migrants: “Our ports are closed!” ---
https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/12/italian-minister-tells-ngo-italy-doesnt-want-migrants-our-ports-are-closed/#.XB6WCZMs_Xo.twitter

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

Gandhi

 

13 of the (alleged) most famous last words in history ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/famous-last-words-in-history-2017-10

21 of Michelle Obama's most inspiring quotes on work, success, and relationships ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-obama-most-inspiring-quotes-advice-becoming-2019-1

 

19 unforgettable quotes from legendary Marine Gen. Jim 'Mad Dog' Mattis, who quit as Trump's defense secretary ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/general-mattiss-best-quotes-2016-11

 

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

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

 

The Economic Ignorance of Bernie Sanders ---
http://reason.com/archives/2018/08/09/the-economic-ignorance-of-bernie-sanders

 

Bernie Sanders’ New Campaign Advisor David Sirota Once Touted Hugo Chavez’s ‘Economic Miracle’ in Venezuela ---
http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/19/bernie-sanders-david-sirota-venezuela

 

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

Thomas Sowell (controversial conservative black economist) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell
The 30 Best Thomas Sowell Quotes ---
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/the-30-best-thomas-sowell-quotes/

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

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 gave up earlier.

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

Today, humanity fabricates 1,000 times more transistors annually than the entire world grows grains of wheat and rice combined  ---
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2018/12/11/energy_and_the_information_infrastructure_part_3_the_digital_engines_of_innovation_jevons_delicious_paradox_110368.html

I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig. ... You get dirty and besides the pig likes it ---
George Bernard Shaw

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

From John F. Kennedy to Oprah and Steve Jobs, here are 20 of the best commencement speeches of all time ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-graduation-speeches-of-all-time-2016-6

21 quotes from self-made billionaires that will change your outlook on money ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/self-made-billionaire-quotes-that-will-change-your-outlook-on-money-2016-12

 

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

 

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
Lincoln on How to Handle Criticism ---

https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/03/27/abraham-lincoln-criticism/?mc_cid=855d203b71&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

 

The Economist:  A new kind of left-wing doctrine is emerging. It is not the answer to capitalism’s problems ---
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/14/millennial-socialism?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/2019/02/14n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/na/202273/n

 

Inside Los Angeles' Skid Row, the epicenter of the homeless crisis ---
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/los-angeles-homlessness-skid-row

 

10 Things We Learned From Night One of the Democratic Debates in Detroit on July 30 ---
https://time.com/5639682/2020-democratic-debate-detroit/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20190731&xid=newsletter-brief

The most important thing we learned is that the candidates don't want to discuss how to fund the $20 trillion annual cost of their new programs such as the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, Free Medications, Student Loan Forgiveness, Free College for Everybody, Guranteed Annual Income, African American Reparations, Open Borders, Vast Increases in Housing Subsidies, Infrastructure Funding (think roads, bridges, and railroads), and Free Food.

If these spending programs wipe out stock markets and bond markets by taxing investors they will also wipe out USA pensions for teachers, firefighters, and business employees.

 

Kamala Harris Wins The Big-Spender, Free-Stuff Primary ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2019/08/01/kamala-harris-wins-the-bigspender-freestuff-primary-n2551052?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f

 

Walter E. Williams ---
Being Racist is Easy Today ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/07/31/being-a-racist-is-easy-today-n2550780?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=07/31/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

Walter E. Williams
How Important Is Today's Racial Discrimination?
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/08/14/how-important-is-todays-racial-discrimination-n2551543?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=08/14/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

What Trump Got Right About Baltimore ---

https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/08/07/was-trump-right-about-baltimore-n2551215?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=08/07/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

How Fact Checkers Mislead With Statistics
Ilhan Omar Defended by Media and Fact Checkers
---
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnrlottjr/2019/07/31/ilhan-omar-defended-by-media-and-fact-checkers-n2550908?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=07/31/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

Rational discourse about the federal budget has become virtually impossible ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/rational-discourse-about-the-federal-budget-has-become-virtually-impossible.html

 

Friedrich Hayek --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
The year 2019 marks the 75th anniversary of the publication in 1944 of F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom
-
--
https://economie.esg.uqam.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2019/03/Caldwell_Bruce-Mars2019.pdf

 

The Guardian:  UN peacekeepers refused to help as aid workers were raped in South Sudan –--
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/un-peacekeepers-refused-to-help-south-sudan-rebels-raped-aid-workers-report

They were standing in line for their turn

 

Paul Krugman --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman
Paul Krugman’s Most Evil Idea ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/paul-krugmans-most-evil-idea.html

Jensen Comment
Never fear. Paul Krugman will swoop down from Fantasy Heaven and show the USA how to raise $20+ trillion dollars to fund the Democratic Party platform programs for Green Initiative costs combined with free Medicare-for-All, free medications, free nursing homes, free college, guaranteed annual income for 350+ million residents of the USA, interest on eventual $200+ trillion of national debt, free food, free housing, Social Security benefits, pensions, and other safety nets. Please swoop down and save the USA pensions and the rest of the USA economy Paul. Meanwhile the economy seems to be rolling along with relatively low unemployment and record stock prices and record pension fund levels. Those damn Republicans are really killing us Paul --- that is before you swoop down to make big improvements in our economy and its incoming hordes of undocumented immigrants. It never dawned on me that you can raise $20+ trillion just by using the printing presses.

 

Illegal Immigration Invasion Reaches Unprecedented, Unmanageable Proportions ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/628562-illegal-immigration-invasion-reaches-unprecedented-unmanageable-proportions-special?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI

 

Border Chief Reports that 5,800 “Fake Families” were Discovered at the Border ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3768773/posts

 

Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs ---
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
Jensen Comment
Regulating and taxing may negate the benefits of legalization (cheaper versions from outside the USA will crush the expensive legal alternatives).

 

The New Yorker:  Alan Dershowitz, the Devil's Advocate ---
Click Her

 

Obama reportedly upset about far-left swing of Democratic contenders ---
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/obama_reportedly_upset_about_farleft_swing_of_democratic_contenders.html#ixzz5vZzZWjiy

Fraud and Corruption Bring Big Payoffs ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2019/08/03/fraud-and-corruption-bring-big-payoffs-n2551135?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=08/04/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

Prop. 106 is the wrong answer to Phoenix’s pension debt ---

https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/prop-106-is-the-wrong-answer-to-phoenixs-pension-debt

 

Illusion of a Balanced Budget:  Gov. Cuomo’s fiscal games could hurt him ---
https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/from-the-right-gov-cuomos-fiscal-games-could-hurt-him

 

Italian Leader Blocks Migrant Ships from docking: 'Italy is Not a Refugee Camp' ---
https://neonnettle.com/news/8356-italian-leader-blocks-migrant-ships-from-docking-italy-is-not-a-refugee-camp-

 

Mexico replaces China as top US trading partner ---
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/top-us-trading-partner-is-no-longer-china-thanks-to-tariff-war-2019-08-04

 

The labor share is not in general falling ---
https://www.nber.org/papers/w26136#fromrss

 

Pigouvian Tax --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
A Swedish town has become the first in the country to introduce an official street begging permit (that must be purchased)
---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/the-pigouvian-culture-and-polity-that-is-sweden.html

 

The Atlantic:  Remembering the Peerless Toni Morrison ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/remembering-toni-morrison/595576/

Hear Toni Morrison (RIP) Present Her Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech on the Radical Power of Language (1993) ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwDqfDJVzdBddswpmPXQxXFNNNr

The Guardian:  Closing the Libraries Means Abandoning the Mentally Ill
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/02/closing-libraries-vulnerable-mental-health

Jensen Comment
Does something seem inconsistent and sub-optima here. The mentally illl and/or homeless people might abandon the libraries if they had somewhere better to go such as a comfortable hotel where they could come and go voluntarily like they do now in libraries. And parents feel uneasy leaving letting teenagers study in libraries filled with scruffy homeless and/or drug addicts. I'm sure there are externalities such as having comfortable hotels for the homeless will attract more homeless (maybe hordes)  to come to town. But it seems that there have to be better solutions for both constituencies. Of course these better solutions come at a cost. A library is not a comfortable hotel, and providing a comfortable hotel is expensive in terms of added services (think clean beds 24/7), And libraries that are not used much in inner cities for library services must justify the costs of staying open as libraries.

 

Getting More from Less ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/more-from-less.html

 

Ben Carson still underrated. And this start-up wants to put a tiny house in your backyard.---
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/456718-carsons-affordable-housing-idea-drawing-undue-flak

 

Complete List of Clinton Associates Who Died Mysteriously Before Testimony, Including Jeffrey Epstein ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/634756-here-it-is-complete-list-of-clinton-associates-who-allegedly-died-mysteriously-or-committed-suicide-before-testimony-including-jeffrey-epstein-special?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI

 

Vertical Forest is a model for a sustainable residential building, a project for metropolitan reforestation contributing to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity without the implication of expanding the city upon the territory ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/bosco-verticale.html

Jensen Comment
Seems like this is a good idea as long as there is sufficient and reliable water for the "forest." This provides a whole new environment for both Tarzan and King Kong.

How to Mislead With Statistics (delay notification of data errors)

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders just slammed the Swiss drug giant Novartis over a new controversy swirling around the world's most expensive drug ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/novartiss-zolgensma-data-manipulation-gets-scrutiny-from-us-senators-2019-8

 

Joe Biden:  Poor Kids Are Just as Smart as White Kids ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-gaffe-poor-kids-just-smart-white-kids-2019-8

 

The UK, German and Italian economies are all tanking at the same time ---

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/uk-german-and-italian-economies-all-tanking-at-same-time-2019-7-1028376665

 

CNN Fails to Note Crime Jumped After Colorado Gun Control ---
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2019/08/11/cnn-fails-note-crime-jumped-after-colorado-gun-control

 

Former Yale Law School Dean Does not Like the Damaging Rubric of Diversity or Political Correctness
‘The Assault on American Excellence’ ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/13/author-discusses-highly-critical-book-about-american-colleges?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=5bec369ed3-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-5bec369ed3-197565045&mc_cid=5bec369ed3&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

 

The Jeff Bezos approach to charity ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/the-jeff-bezos-approach-to-charity.html

 

Thoughts on Detroit ---
https://www.perell.com/tweetstorms/detroit

Jensen Comment
There are several types of cities. First there are cities that are huge like London and Mexico City. The there are cities that are large with relatively small suburbs like San Antonio. In the USA there are quite not-so-big cities where the population recides largely in the Suburbs --- like San Francisco, Baltimore, and LA. Then there are historic cities that had ethnic subsections that are not so markedly ethnic these days --- Exhibit A is New York City. Detroit lost over a million residents in less than five decades. Residents escaped lousy schools that are unsafe for various reasons, most notably drug dealing and gangs. Automobile manufacturing moved south not just for higher wages. Union militancy made it difficult to adapt to automation and other technologies. Cities with the biggest population losses suffered from extremes in City Hall corruption. Exhibits A and B are Detroit and Chicago.
The above article is weak on statistics but reasonably informative about what to expect if you visit Detroit. Detroit fell behind cities like San Francisco and New Orleans as conference centers.

Barbra Streisand Is So Upset About Trump, She Had to Perform a Parody of ‘Send in the Clowns’ ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/636037-barbra-streisand-is-so-upset-about-trump-she-had-to-perform-a-parody-of-send-in-the-clowns-special?utm_source=c-mid&utm_medium=c-mid-email&utm_term=c-mid-GI
Jensen Coment
I don't think this rendition will sell in Israel where they don't laugh so loudly at the new town named after Donald Trump.

New York Governor Cuomo Decries 'Growing Cancer' of Anti-Semitism After Three Hasidic Jews Attacked Within One Hour in Brooklyn ---
https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-hasidic-jews-attacked-brooklyn-hate-crime-1453973

 

Open Borders Inc.: Who's Funding the Wicked War on ICE?
https://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2019/08/14/open-borders-inc-whos-funding-the-wicked-war-on-ice-n2551644?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=08/14/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

George Soros most likely is out to destroy the USA --- What better way than to open the borders to billions of people?

Something Stinks: AOC’s Known District Donors Are Nearly Non-Existent, FEC Records Show ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/636665-ocasio-cortezs-known-donors-from-her-own-district-are-nearly-non-existent-fec-records-show-special?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI
She's probably a George Soros plant.

Google Insider Releases Hundreds of Internal Documents on Google’s Deceptive and Totalitarian Tactics ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/636731-huge-google-insider-releases-hundreds-of-internal-documents-on-googles-deceptive-and-totalitarian-tactics-against-conservatives-special?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI

Jensen Comment
Perhaps Trump should encourage (rather than punish) the EU (especially France) for tax-gouging USA technology companies (especially Google)
Why does Trump keep wanting to help Google?

 




 

We know physicians and other health care providers will have huge income losses under Medicare-for-All? Who will have the big income losses under College-for-All?
Who’ll Take a Pay Cut for Free College?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wholl-take-a-pay-cut-for-free-college-11563404022?shareToken=st7bc13470eeb840e0ad81041fe2c97565

Democratic candidates for president, in their impressive expansiveness, are promising free college. Some limit their proposals to community colleges, others to state-run schools, and a few, going for broke, want also to forgive student debt for private-college tuition. Since no realm of American life has undergone greater inflation in recent decades than higher education, this is no piddling promise. The cost to taxpayers could be in the trillions, though the prospect would please a nephew of mine who this autumn is sending a son to Dartmouth at the annual price of $76,000.

If government is going to pay for college, at least it ought to try to bring down the cost. I taught at a university for 30 years and have a few suggestions. Start at the top: I would reduce the salaries of university presidents by, say, 90%. (At the institution where I taught, the president made more than $2 million when last I checked.) I would also evict them from their rent-free mansions and remove their cadres of servants. The contemporary university president, after all, has little or nothing to do with education, but is chiefly occupied with fundraising and public relations. If universities were restaurants, the president would be a maître d’. To encourage their fundraising skills, perhaps they could be paid a small commission on the money they bring into their schools—cash, so to speak, and carry—excepting that on money used to erect more otiose buildings filled with treadmills, computers and condom machines.

The next big cut in the cost of higher education would be in superfluous administrative jobs, for the contemporary university is nothing if not vastly overstaffed. All those assistant provosts for diversity, those associate deans presiding over sensitivity programs, those directors for student experience—out, out with them. I would also suggest dispensing with courses that specialize exclusively in victimology, the history of victim groups told from the point of view of the victims. Young men and women do not need reinforcement in their already mistaken belief that they are victims because of their skin color, ethnicity or sexuality.

Another place serious money could be saved is college athletics. I’ve read that the highest-paid public employee in most states is the state-university football coach. The school at which I taught is not a state school, but its reasonably successful football coach earned $3.3 million in 2017, ranking him only 32nd among all college football coaches.

Nick Saban, the football coach at the University of Alabama, earns $8.3 million a year. Mike Krzyzewski, the basketball coach at Duke, earns $7 million. The argument for these astonishing figures is that football at Alabama and basketball at Duke more than pay for themselves. The Alabama football “program,” as they like to refer to this most brutal of sports, with its postseason games and television fees, brings in nearly $100 million a year. Duke’s perpetually winning basketball teams doubtless result in more student applications and alumni donations.

Under pure capitalism, Messrs. Saban and Krzyzewski might be said to earn their pay. But if higher education is to be free, as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would have it, we are no longer talking about capitalism. Coaches’ salaries could be greatly reduced and the money earned by college sports—which means chiefly football and basketball—would need to be turned over to the federal government to help pay the cost of education itself.

Which brings us to the faculty. Faculty jobs in American universities have risen well in excess of any visible improvement in the quality of university teachers: $200,000-a-year-or-more professorships are now not uncommon. When I began teaching in my mid-30s, an older friend, long resident at the same university, said to me, “Welcome to the racket.” What he meant is that I would be getting a full-time salary for what was essentially a six-month job, and without ever having to put in an eight-hour day. At the tonier universities, professors in the humanities and social sciences might teach as few as three or four courses a year, the remainder of their time supposedly devoted to research. Like the man said, a sweet racket.

Under free higher education, perhaps it would make sense to pay university teachers by the hour, with raises in the wage awarded by seniority. Surely they could not complain. After all, the two most common comments (some would say the two biggest lies) about university teaching are, “I learn so much from my students” and “It’s so inspiring, I’d do it for nothing.” A strict hourly wage for teachers, as free university education may require, would nicely test the validity of that second proposition.

Free higher education—what a splendid ring it has, sufficient tintinnabulation to cause one to forget the old axiom that you get what you pay for.

Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “Charm: The Elusive Enchantment.”


In Europe and Elsewhere Free College Education Means College is Only for the Intellectually Elite
Countries that provide more public funding for higher education tend to have fewer graduates over all
(restricting college education or free job training to only the most intelligent 1/3 or Tier 2 graduates ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/08/countries-often-sacrifice-postsecondary-attainment-when-they-expand-subsidies?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=5f76e299a1-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-5f76e299a1-197565045&mc_cid=5f76e299a1&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Democratic politicians -- many of them vying for their party's 2020 presidential nomination -- propose free college programs or other major investments in higher education that reflect systems in countries like Finland and Sweden. But an American Enterprise Institute report released Thursday argues that when developed nations dedicate more public resources to postsecondary education, they tend to produce fewer graduates.

 

The institute's customarily contrarian resident fellow, Jason Delisle, and co-author Preston Cooper, an education research analyst at AEI, compared 35 high-income (gross domestic product per capita above $30,000) member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which produces statistics on countries’ total institutional spending, college attainment rates among 25- to 34-year-olds, and government subsidies. The OECD includes almost all large Western and Central European countries, Australia, the Baltic states, Chile, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, North America, Scandinavia, South Korea and Turkey.

 

Each country makes sacrifices when it prioritizes one aspect of higher education -- attainment rates, institutional spending and government subsidies -- over another, Delisle said, a reality he thinks is often ignored during debates about free college. Politicians in the U.S. like to suggest America can “learn from other countries and take the good parts” of their education systems, without considering the impact subsidized education has on the overall quality and accessibility of college, Delisle said.

 

“If you have a heavily subsidized system, that leads a country to ration higher education, leading to a system that’s more selective,” Delisle said. “That’s not an egalitarian higher education policy, which a lot of policy makers on the left insist is the case.”

 

“If you want less college, one way to do that is to make it free,” he said.

Delisle’s interest in researching international spending on higher education was piqued during the 2016 presidential campaign, he said, when Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent, began promoting his plan to eliminate the cost of attending public colleges and universities. More recently, on June 24, Sanders announced his College for All Act, which if passed would eliminate tuition at public institutions and subsidize learning with 100 percent government funding -- 67 percent from Washington and 33 percent from individual states.

 

“[The legislation] makes certain that all Americans, regardless of income, can get the college education or job training they need to secure decent-paying jobs by making public colleges, universities and trade schools tuition-free and debt-free,” Sanders said in a news release.

However, college admissions would become much more competitive if the U.S. could not rely on tuition to fund its institutions, Delisle said, though the goal of free college policy suggestions is to increase the number of students with degrees.

 

“The whole public university system in Finland has an admissions rate on par with elite U.S. colleges,” Delisle said. “Not quite as selective as Harvard or the [Ivy League colleges], but if you took a Berkeley, or a [University of Virginia] -- imagine if the entire education system of the U.S. had to meet UVA-level test scores.”

 

In the report, Delisle highlights Finland, which ranks first among the 35 countries in government subsidies provided for tertiary education (international equivalent to an associate degree or higher in the U.S.). Ninety-six percent of Finland’s higher education resources are public, but its attainment rate -- the proportion of citizens ages 25 to 34 with a degree beyond K-12 education -- is less than 45 percent, placing it 25th among OECD countries. South Korea-based higher education, on the other hand, gets about 36 percent of its funding from the government and achieves a 70 percent attainment rate, the highest among OECD countries, according to the report.

The U.S. ranks 31st for subsidies and third when it comes to institutional resources, which is measured as the amount of money -- a combination of government funds and private dollars -- spent on each full-time-equivalent student. These numbers are also adjusted for a country’s GDP per capita, so as not to penalize countries with smaller economies for spending less.

 

The report praises more investment in higher education from government and private sources as positive, suggesting that “generally, institutions with greater resources have more latitude to offer a high-quality education.” This could bring criticism from “our colleagues on the right” who prioritize spending reductions, Delisle said.

“We gave [spending] a positive spin, and we also gave attainment a positive spin,” Delisle said. “There are definitely people on the right who would say, ‘We have too many people with college degrees and spend too much on higher education.’”

 

The OECD includes subsidized student loan programs in its spending metrics, so while governments in the U.S., U.K. and Australia are increasingly providing loans and debt forgiveness, that’s not counted as public funding in the report, Delisle said. Instead, student loans are considered individual expenditures on tuition, though they could be paid off by these governments in the future.

Loans should be kept in mind when reading the report, Delisle said, but they don’t have enough impact in the U.S. to shift the country’s ranking, since the government uses more of a “safety net” model for specific groups of students in need. But forgiven loans make up a higher share of Australia’s and the U.K.’s subsidies, which can’t be seen in the OECD data, he said.

There are other contextual differences between countries that are also absent from data in the report, because these differences are vast and difficult to measure, Delisle said. One variance -- countries’ typical age range for college attainment -- could affect how the report is read, said Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates.

 

While the AEI report analyzes 25- to 34-year-olds who may or may not have degrees, students in Nordic countries tend to start college later and often take breaks from their learning to participate in the labor market, Usher said. Additionally, Nordic countries have a lower wage premium for college-educated adults than the U.S., he said.

 

“Those countries tend to look fantastic when you look at adult education -- it’s actually adults who are going back and forth and taking breaks” from higher ed, Usher said. “Here, it’s normal at age 25 to have a degree. There, it’s not so normal.”

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Only the radical left in the USA would destroy a nations economy to give free health care, free medicine, free college, guaranteed annual income etc. to everybody who wants it. Combined with the green new deal and existing safety nets the estimated cost is over $20 trillion per year. As Nancy Pelosi says: " How do we pay for that?"

Bob Jensen's threads on Tertiary Education in the USA Versus Europe ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Tertiar


Former Yale Law School Dean Does not Like the Damaging Rubric of Diversity or Political Correctness
‘The Assault on American Excellence’ --
-
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/13/author-discusses-highly-critical-book-about-american-colleges?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=5bec369ed3-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-5bec369ed3-197565045&mc_cid=5bec369ed3&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Controversial Issues in Affirmative Action Hiring and Pay Raises ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#AffirmativeAction

Controversial Issues in Affirmative Action Hiring and Pay Raises  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#AcademicStandards


Beto: Trump Is 'An Open, Avowed Racist' And That's The Reason There's Violence In America ---

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2019/08/04/beto-trump-is-an-open-avowed-racist-and-thats-the-reason-theres-violence-in-n2551140
Jensen Comment
Yeah, Impeach Trump and make Beto President to eliminate all violence in the USA
Beto apparently did not conduct research on the reasons for violence in the USA

 

Mass Shootings in the USA ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States#Differing_sources

 

Terrorism in the USA ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States

 

Mass shootings aren’t growing more common – and evidence contradicts common stereotypes about the killers ---
https://theconversation.com/mass-shootings-arent-growing-more-common-and-evidence-contradicts-common-stereotypes-about-the-killers-121471

 

The men behind the US's deadliest mass shootings have domestic violence — not mental illness — in common ---

https://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-mass-shootings-almost-all-have-domestic-violence-connection-2017-11
 

Jensen Comment
I don't think dividing domestic violence from mental illness is that simple.

 

There's a definitional problem with the phrase "deadliest mass shootings." Deadliest can be defined in terms of the number killed and injured in one incident like the Las Vegas shooting incident for which we probably will never know the cause.

And there's the problem of limiting the definition of indiscriminate terror to "shootings." What about the 9/11 terror that killed over 3,000 people?

 

Deadliest can defined it in terms of frequency of incidents with more than four killed or injured --- in which case domestic violence is the cause in a majority instances.

 

Racism is scary because it seems to be on the rise among white supremacists, but the UN tells us that with lots of money ISIS is patiently planting sleeper cells to commit terror worldwide. They will probably inflict greater damage (think dirty bombs). "Just you wait 'enry 'iggins just you wait!"
https://www.thebaghdadpost.com/en/Story/42360/Terrorist-sleeper-cells-ISIS-fighters-remain-in-Iraq

I've always been opposed to the entire idea of white supremacy. However, the media is being entirely unfair and inconsistent when confounding desire to destroy President Trump's election chances with desire to reduce mass shootings and other terror. The media tries to mitigate Islamic terror reporting, because we're increasingly dependent upon Islamic society to report terrorists before they inflict damage, and we don't want to discourage our Islamic friends in this regard (reporting terrorists). At the same time the media forgets that we are increasingly dependent upon white supremacists to report racist killers before they can inflict damage or in helping to find the racists who inflicted damage. It's the white supremacist friends of extremists that we hope will report lowlifes planning attacks (think school mates). Making people declare their white supremacy before they can report the lowest of lowlifes is dysfunctional in our media.

The media repeatedly hammers President Trump for once having said (the Charlotte incident) that there are good people on both sides of a street confrontation between white supremacists and Antifa, but the fact of the matter is that we most certainly hope there are good guys on both sides of the confrontation who will report acquaintances who are plotting deadly terror.


How to Mislead With Statistics
U.S. Crime 'Good Guys With Guns' Can Rarely Stop Mass Shootings, and Texas and Ohio Show Why 'Good Guys With Guns' Can Rarely Stop Mass Shootings, and Texas and Ohio Show Why ---
https://time.com/5644578/good-guys-with-guns-el-paso-dayton/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20190807&xid=newsletter-brief

Jensen Comment
This is a classic biased article from a left wing rag.

In accountancy we hear over and over that financial audits are often failures at detecting employee pilfering, and it's true that financial statement audits are not designed to detect pilfering by employees in part because audits to detect employee pilfering are prohibitively expensive unless there is prior suspicion that narrows the search.  Financial statement audits are designed to test overall conformance of financial reports to reporting standards. However, only naive analysts conclude that financial statement audits do not prevent some employee pilfering.

The problem is that we can never conduct very useful research on the impact of financial statement auditing on preventing employee pilfering. How do you catch a moonbeam in your hand? How many employees are discouraged from pilfering when they know that internal and external auditors will be poking around their records?

The Sandy Hook School Shooter knew that there were no armed teachers, administrators, or police officers on duty at the school the morning he shot up a bunch of little kids. Would he have been so brazen if he knew there were armed officials all around the school.  Would he instead have picked a softer target like a restaurant or a park when the school was no longer a marshmallow target?

We'll never know. How to you catch a moonbeam in your statistical database?

There are no perfect employee pilfering prevention measures just like there are no perfect mass shooting prevention measures. But it's a politically-motivated conclusion that "guns rarely stop mass shootings." Schools are softer targets than gun shows because there are fewer guns on site.  

How many mass shootings take place at gun shows?


Where are there open borders, no passports or visas required, and free health care?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/open-borders-in-svalbard.html

Jensen Comment
Terms for welfare (think housing, heat, and food) are not clear if you're not totally disabled.
I don't think the economy has the capacity to absorb 1,000 new immigrants per day like the USA.
What about hordes of unaccompanied minors?
The bottom line is that borders would not remain open if immigrants poured into Svalbard.
The truth is that in Norway itself it's very difficult to get citizenship, and Norway pays unwanted immigrants to leave the country.


‘You Have to Provide Evidence’: A Journal Article on Black Lives Matter Draws Scholarly Fire ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/You-Have-to-Provide/246819?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&cid=at

The journal Ethnic and Racial Studies is standing by an article that has proved controversial among sociologists and race scholars. The article, about the Black Lives Matter movement, was peer-reviewed and underwent major revisions before being published, the journal said on Tuesday.

“I just don’t see that,” said Jennifer Patrice Sims, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Alabama at Huntsville who said she had reviewed for the journal before.

Sims is one of many academics who criticized the article for what they called its lack of intellectual rigor and ignorance of scholarship. More than that, the scholars say, the article is a case study in how the machinery of academic publishing can be sympathetic to certain types of arguments, often made by white men, while women of color see their work rejected or ignored.

In the abstract of the article, “Black Lives Matter at Five: Limits and Possibilities,” the author, Adam Szetela contends that the theoretical framework and orientation of the movement, as understood through its co-founders, hinder the movement’s own goals “as well as the possibilities for a broader vision of social justice.” He writes that scholars have uncritically celebrated the movement and its leaders, which obscures its “considerable problems.”

(The article says that Szetela is affiliated with the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Szetela was a graduate student during the fall 2018 and spring 2019 semesters but is not now a student, the department chair said in emails.)

The problem with Szetela’s article isn’t that he criticizes Black Lives Matter, said Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University who called attention to Szetela’s article on Twitter. “No concept is perfect. Everything can be critiqued,” she said in a phone interview. “But if you’re going to do that, then you have to provide evidence.”

Szetela didn’t, she said. For one, the article lacks a methodology section, Buggs said. He uses terms like “Oppression Olympics” and “wokeness,” but does not define them or indicate under what framework he uses them, she said. (After this Chronicle article was published, Szetela emailed The Chronicle to point out that he cited a 2017 book by another scholar — in which she uses the phrase “Oppression Olympics” — in the same sentence where he uses the phrase.)

In his article, Szetela writes, “intersectionality … papers over the class conflicts that exist between blacks. Despite its theoretical ‘wokeness,’ it is apparent that intersectionality in practice often considers class less important than the aforementioned categories of ascriptive identity.” This passage shows that Szetela does not understand what intersectionality means, Buggs said, because class is “literally at the center” of intersectional theorizing.

Continued in articles

Jensen Comment
The toughest test of academic spirit is not when articles are published with no evidence. The toughest test is publishing unpopular articles (especially among social scientists) when the evidence leads to unpopular and politically incorrect conclusions. Exhibit A dates back to the research of Arthur Jensen and later Charles Murray that found differing intelligence scores and personalities on the basis of genetics ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen

Charles Murray --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientis 

April 2019:  Politically Correct Middlebury Still Cannot Keep Conservative Speakers Safe --- 
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/18/middlebury-calls-lecture-conservative-polish-leader-amid-threats-protests?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=779d04ade1-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-779d04ade1-197565045&mc_cid=779d04ade1&mc_eid=1e78f7c952 
 

Jensen Comment
What conservative would want to join this faculty or join the student body?
Is Middlebury so against diversity?

Charles Murray and the Bell Curve --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)

Race and Intelligence --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Debate at Middlebury Over Co-author of the "Bell Curve" (race and intelligence) --- 
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/02/28/debate-middlebury-over-co-author-bell-curve?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=979f5ef0d8-DNU20170228&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-979f5ef0d8-197565045&mc_cid=979f5ef0d8&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

The (Political Correctness) Mob of Students at Middlebury
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mob-at-middlebury-1488586505?mod=djemMER

A mob tries to silence Charles Murray and sends a prof to the ER.

Once again a scholar invited to speak at a university has been shouted down by an angry mob clearly unable to challenge him intellectually. On Thursday at Middlebury College, allegedly an institution of higher learning, a crowd of protesters tried to run Charles Murray off campus. Mr. Murray is the author of many influential books, including “Coming Apart,” which the kids might read if they want to understand their country and can cope without trigger warnings.

Amid the shouts, Mr. Murray was taken to another location where he was able to speak. But a Middlebury professor escorting Mr. Murray from campus—Allison Stanger—was later sent to the hospital after being assaulted by protesters who also attacked the car they were in. As if to underscore the madness, the headline over the initial Associated Press dispatch smeared Mr. Murray rather than focusing on the intolerance of those disrupting him: “College students protest speaker branded white nationalist.”

Middlebury President Laurie Patton apologized in a statement to those “who came in good faith to participate in a serious discussion, and particularly to Mr. Murray and Prof. Stanger for the way they were treated.” While she believes some protesters were “outside agitators,” Middlebury students were also involved—and she said she would be “responding.”

Mr. Murray tweeted: “Report from the front: The Middlebury administration was exemplary. The students were seriously scary.” Let’s hope President Patton follows through with discipline to scare these students straight.

Harvard and Princeton Leading Scholars Argue for "Truth Seeking"--- 
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/16/ideological-odd-couple-robert-george-and-cornel-west-issue-joint-statement-against?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=bdb7326f2a-DNU20170316&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-bdb7326f2a-197565045&mc_cid=bdb7326f2a&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Stylistically and politically, Robert P. George and Cornel West don’t have much in common. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, is one of the country’s most prominent conservative intellectuals. West, a professor of the practice of public philosophy and African and African-American studies at Harvard University, is a self-described “radical Democrat” who, in addition to many books, once released a spoken-word album.

So when George and West agree on something and lend their names to it, people take notice -- as they did this week, when the pair published a statement in support of “truth seeking, democracy and freedom of thought and expression.” It’s a politely worded denunciation of what George and West call “campus illiberalism,” or the brand of thinking that led to this month’s incident at Middlebury College, where students prevented an invited speaker from talking and a professor was physically attacked by some who were protesting the invitation.

“It is all too common these days for people to try to immunize from criticism opinions that happen to be dominant in their particular communities,” reads the statement. “Sometimes this is done by questioning the motives and thus stigmatizing those who dissent from prevailing opinions; or by disrupting their presentations; or by demanding that they be excluded from campus or, if they have already been invited, disinvited.”

Sometimes, it says, “students and faculty members turn their backs on speakers whose opinions they don’t like or simply walk out and refuse to listen to those whose convictions offend their values. Of course, the right to peacefully protest, including on campuses, is sacrosanct. But before exercising that right, each of us should ask: Might it not be better to listen respectfully and try to learn from a speaker with whom I disagree? Might it better serve the cause of truth seeking to engage the speaker in frank civil discussion?”

All of us “should be willing -- even eager -- to engage with anyone who is prepared to do business in the currency of truth-seeking discourse by offering reasons, marshaling evidence and making arguments,” George and West wrote. “The more important the subject under discussion, the more willing we should be to listen and engage -- especially if the person with whom we are in conversation will challenge our deeply held -- even our most cherished and identity-forming -- beliefs.”

Such “an ethos,” they conclude, “protects us against dogmatism and groupthink, both of which are toxic to the health of academic communities and to the functioning of democracies.”

George said in an interview Wednesday that signatures for the statement were flowing in at rate of several per minute, and that the names reflect all points of the ideological spectrum. “We’re gratified,” he said, adding that the statement aims to “encourage -- put the courage in -- people to stand up for themselves” and for the values of the academy.

“The goal is a heightened sense among faculty, administrators and students -- all three categories -- that they must refuse to tolerate campus illiberalism,” George said. “It’s a shared responsibility of everybody to not only refuse to participate in it but to refuse to accept it. In order for colleges and universities to fulfill their missions, there has to be an ethos, an atmosphere, an environment, in which people feel free to speak their minds -- where people are challenging each other, and thus learning.”

The immediate impetus for the statement was indeed the shouting down of Murray, author of the controversial book The Bell Curve, at Middlebury; the professor who was injured at the protest is the next signatory, after George and West. But the authors say they’ve long been concerned with a turning tide on colleges campuses that’s led to the shouting down and disinvitation of invited speakers, and other forms of what is arguably intellectual censorship. They’ve been trying to model the kind of civil dialogue they’re advocating for several years, teaching and speaking together publicly about the benefits of a liberal arts education -- including recently at the American Enterprise Institute.

Yet college illiberalism continues to grow, in their view. Just recently, for example, George said, Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, who has argued in favor of abortion and euthanasia for severely disabled infants in some instances, was interrupted by disability rights protesters throughout an appearance via Skype at the University of Victoria in Canada.

George blamed the phenomenon on a campus culture of rightful inclusion that has been somehow “corrupted into the idea that people have the right to be free from hearing positions they disagree with.” That’s exacerbated, he said, by an emergent “consumer model” of education, in which colleges and universities competing for enrollments don’t want to offend their “customers,” even if the product -- higher education -- is supposed to be “challenging students’ deeply held convictions and helping them to lead examined lives.”

Singer announced on Twitter that he’d signed the petition. George pointed out that Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, who is anti-abortion and in many ways Singer’s ideological opposite, also signed on.

Continued in article

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


The Financial State of the USA's Three Largest Cities ---
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/the-financial-state-of-the-3-largest-us-cities

On Oct. 30, Truth in Accounting released its annual reports for New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. The analyses show the financial condition of the nation's three largest cities at the end of the 2017 fiscal year. Click on the name of the city to download its report.

1. New York City

·         Taxpayer Burden: -$64,100

·         Money needed to pay bills: $185.5 billion

·         Grade: F

2. Los Angeles

·         Taxpayer Burden: -$6,000

·         Money needed to pay bills: $7.7 billion

·         Grade: D

3. Chicago

·         Taxpayer Burden: -$36,000

·         Money needed to pay bills: $32.5 billion

·         Grade: F

Jensen Comment
Don't worry, when the Democrats swoop in in 2020 the plan is to print about $20 trillion a year to balance the budget.


Read It and Weep
Financial State of the Union
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/financial-state-of-the-union

The U.S. government is the largest, most diverse, most complex and arguably the most important financial entity in the world. The Department of Treasury, in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget, annually prepares the Financial Report of the United States Government. Included in the report are the government’s balance sheet, liabilities, notes to the financial statements, and management discussion and analysis. The data reported in this Financial State of the Union comes from that report.

Certain material weaknesses in financial reporting and other limitations on the scope of the auditors’ work resulted in a disclaimer of opinion, which means the auditors could not form an opinion on the report. While the U.S. Comptroller General cautions the readers of the Financial Report that amounts reported in the consolidated financial statements and related notes may not be reliable, this Financial Report remains the best information available on the federal government’s financial condition.

Our Financial State of the Union report found that the financial condition of the U.S. government worsened by $4.5 trillion in 2018. The report also breaks down the national debt to a per-Taxpayer Burden, which is each taxpayer's share of the federal government's bills after assets have been tapped. 

 

Details are at
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/Financial-State-of-the-Union-2018.pdf


 

Kamala Harris Wins The Big-Spender, Free-Stuff Primary ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2019/08/01/kamala-harris-wins-the-bigspender-freestuff-primary-n2551052?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f

How do they plan to finance this orgy?


 

High School Naps May Boost Learning for Sleep-Deprived Teenagers ---
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2019/08/high_school_naps_may_boost_learning_for_teenagers.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58899472&U=2290378&UUID=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f

The optimal nap runs from 8:30 am until lunch time
 


 

These 23 Metro Areas Account for More Than Half of the $19.5 Trillion US GDP ---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/08/01/23-metro-areas-account-for-more-than-half-of-us-19-5-trillion-gdp/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter&utm_content=AUG022019a

 

Jensen Comment
But those 23 metro areas can't go it alone. They depend on the rest of the USA (or world in general) for food, electric power, gasoline, military defense, labor supply, recreation, beer, wine, mariguana, etc. We like to think we're important even here in Sugar Hill even if we only have one store (a cheese house) and Polly's Pancake Parlor.

 


Robustness Statistics --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics

How to Mislead With Statistics

State gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings in the US: cross sectional time series ---
https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l542

Outcome variables
We used the Supplementary Homicide Reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting System (1998-2015) to obtain counts of mass shootings by state. We compiled these data in line with the most commonly used definition of a mass shooting: one event in which
four or more individuals were killed by a perpetrator using a firearm and the perpetrator themselves did not count toward the total number of victims. These mass shooting events were analyzed in total and stratified as to whether the mass shooting was domestic or non-domestic in nature. Domestic mass shootings included instances where the perpetrator committed the act against an immediate family member or partner. Non-domestic mass shootings included all other types of relationships, such as acquaintances, employees, employers, friends, neighbors, strangers, extended family members, and others. Florida was excluded due to non-participation in the Uniform Crime Reporting System program.

Jensen Comment
The above article is badly misleading in that its conclusions are based largely on rounding error in computing averages and denominator effects that destroy robustness. The study focuses on rare events, it's conclusions and displays are unstable to slight sensitivity analysis.

I will focus my criticisms on Figure 2 where Rhode Island, Delaware, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Arkansas each have rounded averages of zero mass shootings across 17 years. There were mass shootings in those five states, but their averages round  to zero. The worst state in Figure 2 is Vermont that has the highest average of three mass shootings across those same 17 years. Thus the lowest five states have zero mass shooting averages and the highest state has an average of three mass shootings. The difference from lowest to highest (in Figure 2) I suspect is heavily to heavily be rounding error and is not as significant as it appears in Figure 2.

There also is what is known as a denominator effect that destroys robustness in Figure 2 due to the low population of 600,000 people in Vermont. Such a low population destroys much of the robustness in comparing the highest mass killing state (Vermont) with more populated states like California, New York, Arkansas and Delaware. The same applies to low population states of Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Alaska.

The study concludes as follows:

Discussion
Our analyses show that US state gun laws have become more permissive in recent decades, and
that a growing divide in rates of mass shootings appears to be emerging between restrictive and permissive states. A 10 unit increase in the permissiveness of state gun laws was associated with an approximately 9% higher rate of mass shootings after adjusting for key factors. A 10% increase in gun ownership was associated with an approximately 35% higher rate of mass shootings after adjusting for key factors. On the absolute scale, this means that a state like California, which has approximately two mass shootings per year, will have an extra mass shooting for every 10 unit increase in permissiveness over five years. It will also have three to five more mass shootings per five years for every 10 unit increase in gun ownership. These results were also consistent across multiple analyses and when stratified as to whether or not mass shootings were committed by someone in a close relationship with the victims.

I contend that the above conclusion is unstable (not robust) such as the conclusion that a restrictive state like Rhode Island has a hugely greater divide (an average of zero mass shootings per year) with a permissive state Vermont (with an average of three average mass shootings) ---  a conclusion that does not, based upon this study, justify legislation for more restrictive gun laws to reduce mass shootings. The authors of the above study are not responsible in pointing out the lack of robustness in their displays and discussion. For example the five states shown in Figure 2 to have zero average mass shootings all had mass shootings that were so rare they rounded to zero. The worst state (Vermont) had an average rounded up to three in Figure 2. But in reality the difference between the worst state (Vermont) and the five best states is not really 3-0 = 3. This difference is somewhat due to rounding differences combined with denominator effects rather than robust statistical outcomes.

The first rule of statistical analysis is discuss the robustness of the outcomes. The above study lacks a robustness analysis.


How to Mislead With Statistics
For years, the estimates of nonfatal gunshot injuries published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have grown increasingly unreliable ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-one-hospital-skewed-the-cdcs-gun-injury-estimate/


 

Stanford:  What Happens to Local Jobs When State Taxes Go Up?
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/what-happens-local-jobs-when-state-taxes-go?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Stanford-Business-Issue-168-8-11-2019&utm_content=alumni

 . . .

A Race to the Bottom

Does that mean states will increasingly find themselves in competition to reduce corporate tax rates?

Not exactly, says Rauh. At the moment, he says, many states are actually setting high tax rates and then offering generous targeted tax subsidies to individual companies.

“It seems that the race is happening in very targeted tax incentives, the prime example being the competition for Amazon’s second headquarters,” he says. “State authorities are setting high statutory rates and then doling out tax breaks to companies that they judge as having value to their state.

“This is in a way an even worse kind of race to the bottom,” Rauh adds. “It leaves substantial discretion in the hands of government officials, who may offer tax breaks only to companies of their choosing, with political considerations possibly affecting their decisions. Tax policy should not tilt the level playing field of economic competition.


 

Stanford:  Good News and Bad News on Tax Evasion ---
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/good-news-bad-news-tax-evasion?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Stanford-Business-Issue-168-8-11-2019&utm_content=alumni

 

 




Health Insurance

 

SHOCK: CNN, MSNBC Battle Warren on Cost of Medicare-for-All (the banned cost questions from in the Democratic debates)---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/627161-shock-cnn-msnbc-battle-warren-on-cost-of-medicare-for-all-special?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning following the first night CNN's Democratic presidential primary debates, both the hosting network and MSNBC offered serious push back against far-left candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA) over the cost of her version of Medicare-for-all.

CNN host Anderson Cooper pressed Warren on what her ideas would cost Americans, particularly union workers, who liked their health insurance. Meanwhile, MSNBC host Chris Matthews aggressively grilled the Senator about how sharply taxes would need to go up to pay for her plan, and he appeared frustrated at her refusal to answer the question (we know, we were shocked too).

Sparks were flying almost from the beginning of Matthew’s questioning after he pointed out that she and Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) were offering voters the moon when it came to healthcare. “There will have to be more money or your pay[-outs] won’t go up. You guys dodged that tonight,” he accused.

That kicked off a heated back and forth that lasted over two minutes (click “expand”):.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: No, no. It's not a dodge. It’s about where--

MATTHEWS: No, because Jake Tapper kept saying: How much of your taxes are going to go up and you said --

WARREN: How much are your costs going to go down.

MATTHEWS: No, no, no, different question. How much will your taxes go up?

WARREN: No. It's how much of your costs because it’s how much families end up spending.

MATTHEWS: I know that argument. I know how you cover it.

Matthews was growing visibly frustrated with Warren’s refusal to answer the question and brought up how she regarded it as a “Republican talking point”. “It's not a Republican talking point, it’s a question,” he huffed.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
There are major that Medicare-for-All will cost untold  trillions:

1. Expanded population of coverage to over 350 million residents of the USA (including undocumented residents)

2. Expanded coverage beyond present Medicare coverage including totally free medications to a majority of people (no donut holes), especially enormously expensive nursing home care that Medicare now excludes
    It will also cover new and/or experimental medications and treatments that cost millions each patient having relatively rare ailments.
    Coverage that Europeans have attempted to minimize such as extending the life of terminally ill patients that are euthanized elsewhere in the world

3. Magnetic attraction for billions of sick and disabled people to sneak into the USA from the rest of the world

Some estimates run over $20 trillion per year when you add in the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, Free Medications, Student Loan Forgiveness, Free College for Everybody, Guaranteed Annual Income for all citizens and non-citizens, African American Reparations, Open Borders, Vast Increases in Housing Subsidies, Infrastructure Funding (think roads, bridges, and railroads), and Free Food.

If these spending programs wipe out stock markets and bond markets by taxing investors they will also wipe out USA pensions *think CREF and CalPERS) for teachers, firefighters, civil service workers, and business employees.

 

The bottom line is that $20+ trillion in new spending will wipe out the economy of the USA.

 


Nate Silver:  Medicare For All Isn’t That Popular — Even Among Democrats
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/medicare-for-all-isnt-that-popular-even-among-democrats/
Jensen Comment
Having a government medical insurance option is not so unpopular, but contrary to Bernie Sanders ranting it turns out employees really don't want to lose their employer-funded private health insurance.

NYT Opinion from the University of Pennsylvania Provost
Democrats
should skip the argument over Medicare for All and find the best ways to tackle affordability ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/opinion/democrats-health-care.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

 

Bernie Sanders: "You’re Damn Right We’re Going to Destroy Private Health Insurance" --- 
Click Here

Nancy Pelosi on single-payer health care: "How do you pay for that?" ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/medicare-for-all-isnt-that-popular-even-among-democrats/

Kamala Harris' New Health Care Plan, Like Her Old Health Care Plan, Is a Cynical, Muddled Mess ---
https://reason.com/2019/07/29/kamala-harris-new-health-care-plan-like-her-old-health-care-plan-is-a-cynical-muddled-mess/

Health Care Debt (especially for municipal worker retirees) is Strangling Cities
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/healthcare-debt-is-strangling-cities

NYT:  The health care public option in Washington state ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/the-health-care-public-option-in-washington-state.html

News Item Prior to November 8, 2016 Election of President Trump
Major Chicago Hospitals Not In 2017 Obamacare Marketplace Plans -
-- 
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/major-chicago-hospitals-not-in-2017-obamacare-marketplace-plans/f55d6c23-d9b1-452f-8c75-73635bd83d07

Some of Chicago’s largest hospitals said they will not be part of any Cook County Affordable Care Act marketplace plans in 2017.

 

University of Chicago Medical Center and Rush University Medical Center both said they don’t plan to be in network for any Obamacare marketplace plans next year. 

 

 

The change means patients with doctors at those hospitals will either need to find a plan off the marketplace, and lose Obamacare subsides, or find a new doctor.

 

Northwestern Memorial Hospital said it will also be out of the marketplace, but will have exceptions for some of its partner hospitals.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Similar resistance is expected to Medicare-for-All price controls on hospitals and health care professionals.




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/