Tidbits
Political Quotations
To Accompany the July 15, 2020 Edition of Tidbits
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2020/Tidbits071520.htm
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University
My Latest Web Document
Over 600 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 national debt is a lie
Here's the real federal debt ---
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/about/our_national_debt
Debt to GDP Ratio by Country 2020 ---
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-national-debt/
Human Population Over Time on Earth ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE
MIT's Links to Covid-19 Trackers Around the World ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/07/1000961/launching-mittr-covid-tracing-tracker/
Johns Hopkins University:
Updated Map and Table on the Number of Coronavirus Cases for Every Nation
---
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Accuracy is subject to wide margins of error for every nation and varies greatly
between nations.
Covid019 in New Hampshire
---
https://www.nh.gov/covid19/
The best maps for comparing
counties and towns in your state are provided by your state. For example, here's
the map showing the distribution of cases for New Hampshire counties and towns
---
https://www.wmur.com/article/new-hampshire-coronavirus-map/32009329#
Beautiful News Daily (news and statistics to offset all of
today's bad news) ---
https://informationisbeautiful.net/beautifulnews/
Here's a humorous and serious TED talk that seriously argues why the world needs billionaires
https://www.ted.com/talks/harald_eia_where_in_the_world_is_it_easiest_to_get_rich
Why did Cuba abandon its socialist/communist dream of equality for everybody?
The Guardian: This was the egalitarian dream of Cuba in the 1960s: For years in
Cuba, jobs as varied as farm workers and doctors only had a difference in their
wages of the equivalent of a few US dollars a month.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/12/cuba
Here's a somber and serious Guardian article on why the Cuban
model of income equality for all is a disaster ---
Fidel Castro says his economic system is failing ---
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/09/fidel-castro-cuba-economic-model
The Singapore Dream: How Singapore's richest man went
from welding in a factory for $14 per hour to owning a $17 billion hotpot
restaurant chain ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/life-of-singapore-richest-man-from-welder-to-hotpot-billionaire-2020-1
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?
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell admits they were
WRONG for 'not listening' to Colin Kaepernick's protests against police
brutality and that players can kneel from now on ---
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-8393793/NFL-commissioner-Roger-Goodell-admits-WRONG-handling-Colin-Kaepernick.html
NFL says players' protests during national
anthem should be allowed ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52945934
Wikiquote from Wikipedia --- https://www.wikiquote.org/
The True Meaning of Memorial Day Isn’t a
Three-Day Weekend ---
https://www.ozy.com/news-and-politics/the-true-meaning-of-memorial-day-isnt-a-three-day-weekend/78579/?utm_term=OZY&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyDose%20%282020-05-25%2016:37:44%29&utm_content=B
When the Great Scorer comes to write against your name, one unforgiveable sin (racial profiling) outweighs all the good you've done in life.
Bob Jensen
Kobe Bryant: We need to make the most of
every minute we have ---
https://www.newsweek.com/i-wont-take-see-you-later-granted-148449
Hermann Weyl born in Hamburg, Germany. He wrote,
"One may say that mathematics talks about the things which are of no concern to
men. Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight---brilliant, sharp, but
cold ... thus we are clearest where knowledge matters least: in mathematics,
especially number theory." ---
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Weyl.html
Also see Mathematical Analytics in Plato's Cave
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Analytics
And nevertheless conclude that the optimum
amount of restriction of immigration is zero point zero, zero, zero? Amazing.
Economics are generally skeptical models that yield corner solutions ---
https://www.econlib.org/do-you-talk-about-it-in-open-borders-yes/
Jensen Comment
To the list of questions I would add "Do your talk about the Tragedy of the
Commons?"
The problem with open borders is somewhat related to the economic problem of
"The Sharing of the Commons" where giving everybody the right to use a free
resource leads to everybody losing that resource. At what point will allowing
billions of people share in the free medical care, free college, and other
scarce resources ruin it for everybody ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
History of United States Immigration Laws ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwGCkZzrvQkcFbRplBPwBFwmFDs
Open immigration can’t exist with a strong
social safety net; if you’re going to assure healthcare and a decent income to
everyone, you can’t make that offer global ---
Paul Krugman
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/724654-open-immigration-can-t-exist-with-a-strong-social-safety-net
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
Assorted Charlie Munger Quotations ---
Walter E. Williams: Insults to Black
History ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/06/24/insults-to-black-history-n2571095?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=06/24/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Walter E. Williams: The True Plight of Black Americans
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/
Walter A. Williams: The Nation's Report Card
How are K-12 schools doing under President Trump versus
President Obama?
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/05/06/the-nations-report-card-n2568167?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/06/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Jensen's Comment
Most K-12 schools were probably doing better when I was a child than they're
doing today. The downhill slide is greatest in the gang-ridden schools,
drug-infested urban schools like Chicago and New Orleans. Throwing money at such
schools is not the answer until life at home recovers.
Finland knows this, which is why Finland's dads spend more time with school
children than the moms or the teachers.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/dec/04/finland-only-country-world-dad-more-time-kids-moms
Walter E. Williams: Insane News Tidbits
---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/05/27/insane-news-tidbits-n2569329?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/27/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Milton Friedman: The Lesson of the
Spoons ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/spoons-are-in-aisle-9.html
Chopsticks would be even better
Rep. Ilhan Omar Calls For “Dismantling” of US “Economy and Political Systems”
(VIDEO) ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/944250-radical-seattle-city-councilmember-kshama-sawant-vows-to-overthrow-the-united-states-and-replace-with-a-socialist-world?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI&utm_content=1Cugtgg08BDw-1AwBlaN1Qmmriw..A
Jensen Comment
Republicans are most grateful that Omar played a huge role in getting Biden
nominated
Radical Seattle City Councilmember Kshama
Sawant Vows to Militantly (think Castro) Overthrow the United States and Replace with “a Socialist World”
---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/944250-radical-seattle-city-councilmember-kshama-sawant-vows-to-overthrow-the-united-states-and-replace-with-a-socialist-world?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI&utm_content=1Cugtgg08BDw-1AwBlaN1Qmmriw..A
Also see
https://mynorthwest.com/1850633/rantz-socialist-kshama-sawant-militant-takeover-amazon/?
Jensen Comment
Do you think she's being paid a lot of money under the table by Trump to improve
his election chances?
"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
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
Also see
The
enemy is fear
We think it's hate
But, it's fear
Gandhi
12 inspiring quotes from Martin Luther King
Jr.---
https://www.businessinsider.com/inspiring-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-2017-1
‘Never Be Afraid’: William Faulkner’s Speech
to His Daughter’s Graduating Class in 1951 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2020/05/never-be-afraid-william-faulkners-speech-to-his-daughters-graduating-class-in-1951.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
21 outstanding Warren Buffet quotations ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-21-best-quotes-2019-2
Also see
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-25-best-warren-buffett-quotes-in-one-infographic/
History of United States Immigration Laws ---
https://rapidvisa.com/history-of-united-states-immigration-laws/
Walter E. Williams: Rotten Education
Isn't Preordained: in 2016, in 13 Baltimore high schools, not a single
student tested proficient in math ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/05/20/rotten-education-isnt-preordained-n2569005?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/20/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
As of 2018 nearly a third of all
Russia’s medical facilities had no running water and more than half lacked hot
water. Around 40% lacked central heating and in 35% the sewage (removal) didn’t
work.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/russia-fact-of-the-day-6.html
Jensen Comment
But the Russians led the way in hacking USA's computer networks and elections.
Much depends upon the setting of priorities by political leaders. These leaders
probably defend their decisions by saying that destroying the USA and capitalism
in general have longer-term benefits than hospital hot water and sewage removal.
More On the Way: Budget deficit rises to
record $2.7 trillion amid pandemic: CBO ---
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/506460-deficit-rises-to-record-27-trillion-amid-pandemic-cbo
Jensen Comment
The simple solution is to print trillions of dollars without having to borrow or
tax to reduce the deficit
China & Kazakhstan disagree over designation
of ‘new’ virus as worse than COVID-19 ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/china-kazakhstan-disagree-over-designation-of-new-virus-as-worse-than-covid-19/
The Guardian: China's Great Firewall
descends on Hong Kong internet users ---
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/china-great-firewall-descends-hong-kong-internet-users
Jensen Comment
Just another step in China's strategy to take over the world
Six Weeks, Six Cities, 600 Murders ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2020/07/05/six-weeks-six-cities-600-murders-n2571887?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Do Trump's Border Walls Work?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/do-walls-work.html
More than a dozen businesses and property
owners are suing the city of Seattle over its tolerance of, and alleged support
for, an "autonomous" protest zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The city's
approach, they argue, has led to lawlessness, property damage, and a decline in
commerce and property values ---
https://reason.com/2020/06/25/seattle-autonomous-zone-sparks-class-action-lawsuit-from-local-businesses/
This Progressive City Has Been Releasing
Vandals, Arsonists, & Violent Protesters Back To The Streets ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/946763-this-progressive-city-has-been-releasing-vandals-violent-protesters-back-to-the-streets?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI&utm_content=06zogopD0FR_-qkpQTYmRsUU8Iw..A
Would you want to move to Portland after all this?
Why do Portland police even bother anymore?
Portland is an example of how urban
anarchy commences before criminal gangs move in to restore order
Willie Nelson to Headline Joe Biden’s $100,000
Per Person Virtual Fundraiser ---
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/29/willie-nelson-to-headline-joe-bidens-100000-per-person-virtual-fundraiser/
Sister pulls out gun and saves her brother from
would-be robbers (who nevertheless shot her brother) ---
https://www.arklatexhomepage.com/news/sister-pulls-out-gun-and-saves-her-brother-from-would-be-robbers/
A typically divided
Supreme Court ordered changes to a government
consumer-finance watchdog created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis,
ruling the agency’s structure was unconstitutional because its director held too
much unchecked power ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-orders-restructuring-of-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-11593441215?mod=djemCFO
AOC says proposed $1B budget cut to NYPD isn't
enough: 'Defunding police means defunding police’
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/aoc-asked-defunding-police-her-130800430.html
The Guardian: China sterilising ethnic
minority women in Xinjiang, report says ---
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/29/china-sterilising-ethnic-minority-women-in-xinjiang-report-says
All conservatives are racist
Nov 3 We Will Find Out How Many Racists Live in America ---
Rob Reiner
https://entertainment--news.com/2020/07/04/rob-reiner-says-we-will-find-out-how-many-racists-live-in-america-on-election-day/
In other words the USA election of the USA president and members of Congress is
only about one issue --- racism. There are no debatable election issues such as
the economy, unemployment, foreign trade, taxation, defense, government
spending, legalizing shoplifting, defunding police ala NYC versus Minneapolis,
climate change, health care, illegal immigration, infrastructure, abortion,
freedom of speech, gun control, burning selected history books, etc. If you vote
for a conservative you are by Reiner's definition a racist.
Hey, Disney, Hamilton Betrayed His Wife And
His Country ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/rogermckinney/2020/07/06/hey-disney-hamilton-betrayed-his-wife-and-his-country-n2571933?bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&utm_campaign=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=thdaily
Supreme Court's LGBT Discrimination Ruling Forces
Harvard To End Ban on Single-Gender Clubs ---
https://reason.com/2020/07/01/supreme-courts-lgbt-discrimination-ruling-forces-harvard-to-end-ban-on-single-gender-clubs/
Jensen Comment
I assume this also applies to single-gender fraternity/sorority houses. Welcome
to the 1950s; Not really since fraternities and sororities can no longer be
binary.
In 2020 "single gender" clubs and fraternities will face the issue that there is
no longer a concept of binary "single-gender." Can testosterone tests be
required for club membership like such tests are required in athletics (not in
Connecticut)?
Largest Amphetamine Bust In The World Nets 15 Tons Of Pills Reportedly Made By
ISI ---
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/01/largest-drug-bust-italey-fifteen-tons-captagon-pills-isis/
California's Energy Regulations Hurt the Poor,
While 'Green' Subsidies Benefit the Rich ---
https://reason.com/2020/07/10/californias-energy-regulations-hurt-the-poor-while-subsidies-benefit-the-rich/
CNN: Hydroxychloroquine helped save coronavirus patients, study shows patients less likely to die ---
As COVID-19 cases spike in US, mask
misinformation also spreads ---
https://factcheck.afp.com/covid-19-cases-spike-us-mask-misinformation-also-spreads
Jensen Comment
Requiring almost perfect masks for nearly 8 billion people in the world almost
certainly won't pass any realistic cost/benefit test just like demanding
perfection in most anything in life does not pass the cost/benefit test. This is
what gave rise to the decision theory term of satisficing ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
How much does it cost to make, distribute, and maintain 8 billion space suits
with air tanks even though doing so might reverse dire overpopulation forecasts
and racial profiling?
WHO Quietly Admits China Didn’t Self-Report
Coronavirus, Contrary to Prior Report ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/who-quietly-admits-china-didnt-self-report-coronavirus/
NY Times: Philanthropy Rises In Pandemic As
Donors Heed The Call For Help ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2020/07/ny-times-philanthropy-rises-in-pandemic-as-donors-heed-the-call-for-help.html
Jensen Comment
This is a blessing given that tax breaks for charitable deductions were greatly
eliminated under Trump's tax "cuts." Congress is now working to restore some of
those tax benefits of gifts to charities.
In a remote area of Papua, a box of instant noodles
costs 2 grams of gold ---
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/07/03/in-a-remote-area-of-papua-a-box-of-instant-noodles-costs-2-grams-of-gold.html
Jensen Comment
This illustrates how markets get complicated when remote tribes have increased
demand for goods (think cell phones and instant noodles) manufactured far away.
Either they must have something to trade (e.g., gold or other natural resources)
or they must be subsidized by central governments. It's harder and harder for
tribes on earth to maintain hunter/gatherer economies. Although Covid-19 is not
devastating as pandemics go, such tribes are vulnerable to deadly pandemics
evidenced in history.
The epicenter of Christianity has moved south
from North America and Europe to South America and Africa ---
https://www.christianpost.com/voices/7-exciting-trends-in-global-christianity-no-5-will-surprise-you.html
BBC: Hong Kong security law:
Pro-democracy books pulled from libraries ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53296810
The BBC and Sky News media figures suddenly
discover that UK Black Lives Matter is a radically left-wing group ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/british-media-outlets-wake-up-begin-distancing-themselves-from-uk-black-lives-matter-organization/
Huge Setback to Fight Against Climate Change
Local governments in China are accelerating
their construction of coal-fired
power plants as
part of pandemic recovery. Some analysts worry that impulse will extend
to Central Asia and Africa, where China is the top
investor in
mines and power projects.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-06-27/bloomberg-new-economy-china-s-post-covid-climate-choice?sref=ZCCexVBt
Toilet paper and tissues are
major drivers of deforestation in Canada’s boreal forest, according to a new
report ---
https://www.nrdc.org/resources/issue-tissue-how-americans-are-flushing-forests-down-toilet
Washington and Lee faculty vote to change the
university's name ---
https://columns.wlu.edu/professor-brandon-hasbrouck-on-university-name-change/
CBS: Non-Hispanic whites are now a
minority in California, according to new census data ---
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whites-now-a-minority-in-california/
Would it be racial discrimination if only the white minority had
to pay tuition at Caifornia state universities?
Tesla Shareholders Rebel Against Elon Musk’s Whopping $56 Billion Pay Package
---
https://observer.com/2020/07/tesla-shareholder-seek-oust-elon-musk-stock-pay-plan/
The Harpers free speech letter and
controversy ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/07/the-harpers-free-speech-letter-and-controversy.html
Bob Jensen's threads on the tragedies of political correctness
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
NBC was caught ‘padding’ their coronavirus
coverage in a big way ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/946832-coronavirus-infections-and-deaths-continue-to-rise-in-us-at-alarming-rate?utm_source=c-mid&utm_medium=c-mid-email&utm_term=c-mid-GI&utm_content=5iEzoSRA3OwmMZouDYnIqL3RgHsaffHcB6hB5DcjF-f0.A
Coronavirus: Kenyan schools to remain closed
until 2021 ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53325741?utm_term=OZY&utm_campaign=daily-dose&UTM_content=Wednesday_07.08.20&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Final
India Has Banned TikTok --- plus 58 Chinese
apps
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/29/1004616/india-bans-tiktok-plus-58-other-chinese-apps/
LA County schools won't open in the fall due
to COVID-19 ---
https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/la-county-schools-wont-open-in-the-fall-due-to-covid-19
Trump administration rescinds foreign students
rule ---
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/507293-trump-administration-rescinds-policy-to-strip-visas-from-foreign
Trump gets no special protections because he’s president and must release financial records, Supreme Court rules
The Faculty Association at California State
universities has demanded that all “Black Native, and Indigenous students”
should be given free tuition as a “redress for systemic anti-Black racism in the CSU” ---
https://summit.news/2020/07/07/california-faculty-demands-free-studies-for-all-black-students-charges-that-education-is-grounded-in-white-supremacism/
Jensen Comment
California would like tuition to be free for all students but cannot deal with
it now given the enormous deficit (well on its way toward $100 billion) in the state budget for existing social
programs (think out-of control Medicaid).
Left for administrators and legislators are the operational definitions of
"black native" and "indigenous" students. Another question is when Hispanic
students are also indigenous since there are various genetic origins among
Hispanics.
Also left undefined is which universities participate. Would this include free
tuition at flagship universities or only universities in the CSU System?
Would this cover both legal and undocumented immigrants in California or are
they considered not "native"?
When I was on the faculty at the University of Maine tuition was free for
residents of Indian reservations. This was not exactly a success since so most
parents on these reservations discouraged their children from going to colleges
and leaving the reservation. I once had a Penobscot student whose parents
disowned her when she went to the nearby University of Maine. She toughed it out
and got her diploma while standing alone at the graduation ceremony.
Political Correctness --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness
Penn State Retracts Statement Saying Conservative Voices Are Important:
Leftist Ideology is the Only Politically Correct Ideology ---
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/09/penn-state-retracts-statement-saying-conservative-voices-are-important/
“Dear conservative students. Your viewpoints are important,” the announcement read, referencing the isolation and self-censorship many conservative students experience on left-wing campuses. According to the schools Director of Strategic Communications, it was part of a statement aimed at creating a supporting and inclusive environment for students.
. . .
The University quickly crumpled, and retracted the statement.
Jensen Comment
By withdrawing support for debating ideologies that are not politically correct
Penn State is ignoring the appeals of Norm Chomsky and some other liberals
That hints that academe is marching
lockstep toward one ideology. Noam and others are worried!
The inmates are guarding the asylum.
Penn State University training film on how to liberal
faculty can deal with military veterans who refuse to be politically correct ---
An analysis by The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/PennStateVeteran.htm
Penn State issued a public apology for producing the video
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/13/qt#196252
The Harpers free speech letter and controversy ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/07/the-harpers-free-speech-letter-and-controversy.html
Noam Chomsky and Other Scholars Feer the Dangers of Losing Open
Debate and Toleration of Differences in Ideology ---
https://www.ibtimes.com/noam-chomsky-malcolm-gladwell-address-cancel-culture-open-letter-3007684
In an open letter, a group of public figures and writers warn readers about the pros and cons of the current world climate (mania).
The piece, titled " A Letter on Justice and Open Debate," featuring signatures from 150 public figures including the likes of J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, and Noam Chomsky, was published on the Harper's Magazine website on Tuesday with plans to make a reemergence in the October issue of the magazine.
"Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial," the letter begins. "Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts."
"But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."
Specifically speaking to their craft and the dire consequences if mindsets don't change lanes, they conclude, "As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us."
It seems not everyone was happy with the letter, though. After it was published both historian Kerri Greenidge and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan announced the withdrawal of their support on Twitter.
Who decides which books to burn?
Franklin Pierce Biographer
Urges Consideration Of 14th President's Progressive Civil Liberties Record
Before Removal Of His Name From UNH Law School ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2020/06/franklin-pierce-biographer-urges-consideration-of-14th-presidents-progressive-civil-liberties-record.html
No chance
'Black
Lives Matter' was painted on the streets of New York City and Washington, D.C.
as a way of city officials showing their support for the movement. Questions
have been asked (address to the NYC Mayor) about whether or not other political
groups and organizations should have the ability to paint their messages on
city-owned and maintained streets ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/07/11/conservative-womens-group-has-an-interesting-request-for-bill-de-blasio-n2572317?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=07/12/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Only politically correct messages, in the socialist Mayor's eyes, are allowed.
The Mayor actually helped the mob paint the streets with BLM graffiti in front
of Trump Tower ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/de-blasio-bans-large-gatherings-after-he-helps-paint-black-lives-matter-in-front-of-trump-tower/
Bob Jensen's
threads on political correctness ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
From the Chronicle of Higher Education on July 9, 2020
Some Scholars Have Long Talked About Abolishing the Police. Now People Are
Listening. What Comes Next?
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Some-Scholars-Have-Long-Talked/249149?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1357562&cid=at&source=ams&sourceId=296279
A few years ago, Forrest Stuart would find himself in an academic version of "Who’s on First."
To write Down, Out, and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row, the associate professor of sociology at Stanford University spent five years roaming one of Los Angeles’s poorest neighborhoods. He watched citizens contort their lives to avoid interactions with police officers, who would frequently question them for sitting on a corner. Stuart himself was stopped 14 times that first year. He spent evenings with those officers, listening to what he called their discordant ideas about punishment and compassion. The officers saw the two ideas as mutually dependent, Stuart wrote, even as he watched the people entangled in the criminal-justice system lose their housing, their jobs, and their hope.
At book talks, Stuart would lay out these themes and talk about the need for systemic changes, like the necessity of a large-scale redistribution of wealth. But then someone would inevitably ask: What reforms did he think were needed? How should the police be dealing with the people of Skid Row?
He would answer: The police shouldn’t be interacting with these people.
More hands would fill the air. Stuart didn’t understand the original question, people insisted. What new policies did he recommend?
Again, Stuart would tell them that no new policy would yield good results. What we need, he’d say, is less policing. Back and forth they’d go, speaking past each other. Even other sociologists, outside of his subfield, would look at Stuart as if he were some “crazy radical,” he said.
But that was before. Before May 2020, when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd, a Black man, for nearly eight minutes as he died, igniting protests around the world.
“Nobody looks at me [like I’m] crazy when I say this anymore,” Stuart said in a recent interview, “which is just totally nuts.”
. . .
The Limits of Academe
However, traditional channels of academe have their limits. Lisa Guenther, a philosopher at Queen’s University, in Ontario, and a social activist, sees a tension between the imperatives to represent the university and to build the abolitionist movement. Universities “hire someone who, you know, maybe has a title like Queen’s National Scholar in Critical Prison Studies and Political Philosophy, which is my title, and then they write some articles and publish them and you might get some grants and that sort of thing,” she said. But that can operate as a sort of alibi, deflecting attention “from the ways that the university, itself, is operating in continuity with colonialism, with anti-Black racism.”
Certain social-science disciplines have long overlooked the roles of the criminal-justice system and policing. After the uprising over the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, many scholars in political science “appeared to be caught off-guard, as if events had pushed them onto unfamiliar empirical and conceptual terrain,” the researchers Joe Soss and Vesla Weaver wrote in a 2017 paper that called out the mainstream subfield of American politics for “largely and unreflectively ignoring the role of the police.”
Now, said Weaver, an associate professor of political science and sociology at Johns Hopkins, that’s changing. Otherwise, she said, “look how stupid and obsolete we look if we can’t say anything about police power when this is the central issue of the day.”
But historically, the Black radical tradition did not come out of the university, said Joy James, a professor of humanities and political science at Williams College, who spent years anthologizing the writings of incarcerated intellectuals. Academics sometimes assume that articles and talks are really beneficial to their subjects, James said. But while prison-abolition scholarship might lead other free people to sign a petition, make a donation, or vote accordingly, “it doesn’t really open prison doors.”
Sometimes students, too, get caught up in the theoretical and lose sight of the real, practical work, said Carl Suddler, an assistant professor of history at Emory University, who wrote Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York. He remembers when he was an eager undergraduate who traveled to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to help with the reconstruction effort. “I went in thinking about the big picture, like, How are we going to destroy structural racism in a week?” That is, until a woman in the Lower Ninth Ward told him, “Honey, we’re just trying to get speed bumps in our neighborhood.”
That served as an “earth-shattering” lesson for Suddler about the balance between study and practice — one that he passes along to students who want to dismantle oppressive and racist systems. You can read. You can theorize. But you’ve also “got to get into these communities,” he said, and listen to them.Forrest Stuart, of Stanford, thinks academics like himself will have to grapple with a somewhat different role. Previously he saw his work as that of diagnosis, exposing the damage done by exploitative systems. That’s what sociologists do. But they hesitated, he said, to offer tangible recommendations.
Now more people are convinced by the diagnosis, Stuart said. Not only that, but they want to know what’s next. They want a prescription.
Essentially, the world has changed, and scholars will decide how to change with it.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The trick is to abolish police without turning the largest cities back into
Black ghettos and ganglands while rural White homes and towns become armed
fortresses.
If you want to scare older Republicans,
older Democrats, and especially older minorities living in high crime hot spots
in the USA into voting for Trump in November 2020 articles like the ones above
and below might do the trick.
Joe Biden Says Police Have 'Become the Enemy,'
'Absolutely' Should Defund Them ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/07/08/joe-biden-says-police-have-become-the-enemy-entertains-defunding-them-n2572130?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Jensen Comment
Defunding police in praise of Kaspernik
is not a smart way to attract older voters from the very, very large subset of
older voters. It's also not a good way to attract tourists to our USA cities and
other tourist attractions. Is this helping Trump more than hurting Trump?
Pew Research: Recent protest attendees
are more racially and ethnically diverse, younger than Americans overall ---
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/24/recent-protest-attendees-are-more-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-younger-than-americans-overall/
Jensen Comment
Media coverage at the protests, especially persons chosen to interview, leads us
to believe that there were many more than 17% Black people in those protests.
Pew analysts make the point that ethnicity among protesters differs greatly from
ethnicity of the total voting public in the USA. This probably is the reason
that Biden and the Democratic Party are not quick to support all of the protest
leader demands, including legalizing shoplifting, reparations for Blacks, defunding of police,
guaranteed annual income, Medicare-for-All, etc. Some of these demands are
losers in the 2020 Presidential campaign.
BBC News: Antifa: Left-wing militants on
the rise (in the entire free world) ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40930831
St Louis and Baltimore Beat Out Chicago In Rankings of the Most
Dangerous Cities on Earth---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2020/07/09/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-3/2/
Jensen Comment
Not good news for tourism, business development, or police defunding, although
existing police seem to be failing a lot in the world's most dangerous cities
(think solving fewer and fewer murders). NYC is striving to overtake St Louis
with defunding and deteriorating police relations under a socialist mayor. How
much will police defunding contribute to upper income and business flight from
our largest USA cities?
This article especially reveals how criminal gangs have ruined policing in
Mexico's cities.
Seattle will cut its police force down to 630
police officers for a city of over 750,000 residents having over 800,000 911
calls annually. There will be no emergency SWAT force ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/948019-seattle-city-council-to-defund-police-leave-600-officers-no-tactical-or-heavy-arms?utm_source=c-mid&utm_medium=c-mid-email&utm_term=c-mid-GI&utm_content=697zxgAhCmuHg4vas74EBzlnoWM3eNVp0oCrhLuQnY-I.A
Jensen Comment
I wonder if the entire city will become a no-go zone unsafe for tourists, sports
fans, and conventioners. Don't you wonder what this will do to the price of real
estate and the number of businesses that will close because of fear? Will
shoplifting and looting now be legal in Seattle? Would you want to be a
firefighter without armed police protection?
USA cities with the most and the least police
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/05/15/cities-with-the-most-and-least-police/
Ankeny, Iowa has the most law enforcement officers with 104.7 per
100,000 residents
University Place, Washington has the least law officers with 48.2 officers per
100,000 residence
Six Weeks, Six Cities, 600 Murders ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2020/07/05/six-weeks-six-cities-600-murders-n2571887?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
AOC says proposed $1B budget cut to NYPD isn't
enough: "Defunding police means defunding police"
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/aoc-asked-defunding-police-her-130800430.html
Connecticut is Counting on Flight From NYC
Connecticut's Big Bet on the Suburbs Might Finally Pay
Off ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/connecticut-suburbs-coronavirus-new-york-real-estate-houses-for-sale-weston-fairfield-11594558882?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst
The New York Times: Defund the Police
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
The Atlantic: Defund the Police ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/defund-police/612682/
New York City's Mayor is Jumping for Joy:
NYC's Police Applications for Retirement are Now Running 100 Per Day
https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/nypd-limits-retirement-applications-amid-411-surge-this-week/
Portland Rioters Assault Police With Sling
Shots and Lasers ---
https://www.foxnews.com/us/riot-declared-in-portland-cops-oder-protesters-to-leave
Six Weeks, Six Cities, 600 Murders ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2020/07/05/six-weeks-six-cities-600-murders-n2571887?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Do Trump's Border Walls Work?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/do-walls-work.html
More than a dozen businesses and property
owners are suing the city of Seattle over its tolerance of, and alleged support
for, an "autonomous" protest zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The city's
approach, they argue, has led to lawlessness, property damage, and a decline in
commerce and property values ---
https://reason.com/2020/06/25/seattle-autonomous-zone-sparks-class-action-lawsuit-from-local-businesses/
This Progressive City Has Been Releasing
Vandals, Arsonists, & Violent Protesters Back To The Streets ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/946763-this-progressive-city-has-been-releasing-vandals-violent-protesters-back-to-the-streets?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI&utm_content=06zogopD0FR_-qkpQTYmRsUU8Iw..A
Would you want to move to Portland after all this?
Why do Portland police even bother anymore?
Portland is an example of how urban
anarchy commences before criminal gangs move in to restore order
Young Mother Killed By BLM Mob for Allegedly
Saying ‘All Lives Matter,’ National Media Fully Ignores ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/947222-young-white-mother-killed-by-black-lives-matter-mob-for-allegedly-saying-all-lives-matter-national-media-fully-ignores-special?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI&utm_content=1Cugtgg08BDw-1AwBlaN1Qmmriw..A
Video: Black Lives Matter protestors demand that Target
stop calling the police on shoplifters ---
https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2020/06/29/video-black-lives-matter-protestors-demand-that-target-stop-calling-the-police-on-shoplifters/
Otherwise they threaten to shut it down
The New Yorker on the Dark Side of Dollar
Stores ---
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-true-cost-of-dollar-stores?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1331449&cid=db&source=ams&sourceId=296279
Jensen Comment
Imagine what low income neighborhood stores will become with defunded police?
Ask AOC, the New York Times, and The Atlantic about what the solution is to the
"Dark Side of Dollar Stores"?
The Present Moment Has Set Blacks Back a
Half-Century ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2020/06/30/the-present-moment-has-set-blacks-back-a-halfcentury-n2571585?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=06/30/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
FiveThirtyEight: Most Americans balk at
defunding the police ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-like-the-ideas-behind-defunding-the-police-more-than-the-slogan-itself/
Defunding and dismantling police departments ala Minneapolis will
not be a 2020 winning election platform stance, although replacing corrupt
officers and increasing police budgets may be a winner like in Camden, NJ. But
Camden is a city of 77,000 residents. How do you dismantle and replace an entire
police force in a city with over a 300,000 residents?
Jensen Closing Comment
Is academe playing a much larger role in re-electing Donald Trump than it wants
to admit?
The surprise may come in
November unless academe along with city governments and Joe Biden tone down the
rhetoric on defunding police.
Liberals are tipping their hands too early on police defunding.
Destroy the USA later after Donald Trump is out of the barn.
How long has it been since you watched the movie entitled Mad Max ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max
How to Mislead With Statistics
California's Energy
Regulations Hurt the Poor, While 'Green' Subsidies Benefit the Rich ---
https://reason.com/2020/07/10/californias-energy-regulations-hurt-the-poor-while-subsidies-benefit-the-rich/
Jensen Comment
This is a classic problem of short-term versus long-term benefits.
The real issue is whether subsidies to wealthy corporations and wealthy universities might greatly benefit all earthlings (rich and poor) in the long-run. For example, R&D supplements to Big Oil may help those companies find and develop low-carbon energy solutions that are much more important to the planet than solar panels on housing for the rich and poor owners.
And it's not just R&D. Big Oil companies are already investing heavily in
alternative energies (think windmill farms) --- possibly more than the public
sector is investing in such alternatives. Subsidies to Big Oil might hasten
their replacement of carbon-based energies.
How to Mislead With Statistics
New York Is Having a Violent Summer, But It's Not Because of Bail Reform ---
https://reason.com/2020/07/09/new-york-is-having-a-violent-summer-but-its-not-because-of-bail-reform/
Jensen Comment
This article is misleading because it fails to mention the effect of bail reform
on lesser crimes, particularly shoplifting. To the extent that bail reform
essentially legalizes shoplifting it can do great harm to areas where
shoplifting is heaviest. For example, in the poor parts of Los Angeles, Chicago,
St. Louis, and Baltimore having no punishments for shoplifters means that stores
in those poor parts will eventually close up giving less shopping alternatives
(think grocery stores, pharmacies, Walmarts, Targets, etc.) to the poorest
residents of the cities.
If you want more stores in the ghettos you have to prevent shoplifting in most every way possible, including punishing the shoplifters.
Will half of Oklahoma and other swaths of the USA become
Indian reservations?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-indian-lands-include-eastern-oklahoma-supreme-court-rules-11594304003?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst
WASHINGTON—Oklahoma state officials and business groups reacted cautiously to a Supreme Court ruling Thursday that declared a swath of the state near Tulsa to be part of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation, as the implications for criminal cases, taxes and regulation remained unclear.
The 5-4 court decision by Justice Neil Gorsuch enforced 19th-century treaties the U.S. made with the Creek, a landmark recognition of Native American rights that potentially could lead to nearly half the state being classified as Indian country, if similar agreements with the neighboring Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole tribes are honored.
At issue was whether Oklahoma’s admission to the Union in 1907 dissolved the Muscogee (Creek) reservation that now adjoins its second most populous city, Tulsa. The Supreme Court case arose when Native Americans prosecuted in Oklahoma state courts began contesting their convictions, arguing that as residents of an Indian reservation they could only be tried in federal court.
Justice Gorsuch based his opinion firmly on the ground that despite the many steps Congress had taken to diminish Creek self-government, it never formally extinguished the tribe’s sovereignty. To disestablish the reservation, he wrote, Congress must explicitly say so.
But from its opening lines the opinion made clear that the sometimes shameful treatment of Native Americans solidified the court’s resolve to recognize the Creeks’ rights.
“On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever.”
Over time, “Congress has since broken more than a few of its promises to the Tribe,” he wrote. But Thursday, “we hold the government to its word.”
Continued in article
No, the Supreme Court didn’t give away half of Oklahoma — but
it is a big deal ---
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/10/21318796/supreme-court-mcgirt-oklahoma-native-american-neil-gorsuch
Jensen Comment
In 2020 the USA will probably at last negotiate "fair compensation" for these
stolen lands. But "fair compensation" will probably mean running money printing
presses 24/7.
My reply to Jagdish Gangollon on July 12, 2020
http://www.native-languages.org/penobscot.htm
History: Like other Wabanaki tribes, the Penobscot Indians were longstanding enemies of the Iroquois, particularly the Mohawk. This led them to side with the French and Algonquins in the costly war against the English and Iroquoians. The English paid out bounties for dead Penobscots, but it was European diseases (especially smallpox) that really decimated their nation, killing at least 75% of the population. Still angry with the British, the much-reduced Penobscot tribe supported the Americans in the Revolutionary War, and having picked the winning side they were not expelled from New England, remaining on reservations in their native Maine to this day. Recently the Penobscot Indians and their Passamaquoddy allies--despite formidable harassment from white neighbors--successfully argued that their treaty rights had been violated, and in 1980 received a settlement of $81 million for land that was illegally stolen from them. The Penobscot tribe was able to buy back some of their ancestral lands, and today they are a sovereign nation working to maintain their traditions, language, and self-sufficiency.
Jensen Comment
While visiting my daughter in 2010 I drove across the bridge (next to Old Town)
that leads to the sparsely populated Penobscot Island Reservation. It seemed to
me that, aside from having new Bingo Pavilion, the island looked as
poverty-stricken as it did while I was on the faculty of the University of Maine
1969-1978. Some of the former residents of the Island may be living in Monaco,
but I doubt it.
· Sixty percent of NBA players go broke within five years of departing the league. And 78 percent of former NFL players experience financial distress two years after retirement.
· Most professional athlete earnings are compressed into just a handful of years.
· Keeping up with the Joneses can be financially fatal for newly rich athletes.
Are there any scientific studies that address the differences in Covid-19 death rates among Blacks in the USA versus most Black nations around the world?
COVID-19 More Prevalent, Deadlier in U.S. Counties with Higher Black
Populations ---
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-haiti-virus-infections-peaked.html
Why are the USA's Blacks are dying at higher rates from COVID-19?
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/04/09/why-are-blacks-dying-at-higher-rates-from-covid-19/
Jensen Comment
Haiti is filled with Black and mostly poor residents. Haiti claims only 79
people died from the virus as of June 28, 2020 (Johns Hopkins University put
this number at 105 dead).
Given that Haiti's health statistics are perhaps dubious, it nevertheless seems
that scientists are still unable to explain why the virus death rates among
detected Covid-19 cases are so low in Haiti relative to the USA
Since the first cases were detected on March 19, Haiti has only had 4,309 people
test positive for the new coronavirus, of whom 73 have died, according to figures published on
June 28, 2020 ---
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-haiti-virus-infections-peaked.html
The authorities admit however that the statistics do not represent the full scope of the disease in the country, given the low number of tests carried out. But they insisted nevertheless that the figures allowed them to assess the disease's progress across the country.
"We had expected to reach the peak during the 27th week of the epidemic," which would have been the last week of June, "yet, on the basis of our observations, from the 22nd week, at the end of May, we saw a downward tendency in the numbers we are counting," said Dr Dely.
"We cannot be complacent because we don't know what changes may arise as we speak. Will we see another wave? We cannot know how the disease is going to behave," he said, noting that Haiti was still in "a period of strong transmission."
In a country of 11.2 million people, scientists predict a best-case scenario of around 2,000 deaths during the epidemic, while gloomier predictions put the final toll closer to 20,000.
Many Haitians have dismissed the seriousness of the disease, shrugging it off as a "small fever" and refusing to get tested, especially in the capital Port-au-Prince.
Even as the airports, schools and the border with the Dominican Republic have been closed since March 19, most day-to-day activities have carried on across the country.
Staying at home is not an option for the vast majority of Haitians, who depend on the informal economy for their survival.
Continued in article
Johns Hopkins University dashboard statistics on Covid-19
accumulated cases and deaths among all
racial groups as of June 30, 2020 ---
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
USA 127,425 dead/2,636,538 cases (out of 330+ million, with 60% White, 18% Hispanic, 13% Black)
Nigeria 2,657 dead/25,694 cases (out of 207 million, with less than 1% white)
Nigeria has a relatively low number of reported cases with a very high death rate among those reported casesSouth Africa 2,529 dead/159,201 cases (out of 60 million, 80% of whom are Black and 8% white)
Kenya 148 dead/6,366 cases (out of 49 million, 82% of whom are Black and less than 1% white)
Haiti 105 dead/5,975 cases (out of 11 million, 95% of whom are Black and 5% mulatto or white
Ethiopia 103 dead/5,846 cases (out of 104 million, with less than 1% white)
Somalia (90 dead/2,924 cases)
Somalia has a somewhat higher death rate but less than the USA's death rateChad 74 dead/866 cases
Chad has a relatively high death rate but probably only detected very serious casesNiger 67 dead/25,694 cases
Gabon 42 dead/5,394 cases
South Sudan 36 dead/2,007 cases
Guinea 31 dead/2,001 cases
Zambia 22 dead/1,594 cases
Tanzania 21 dead/509 cases
Tanzania has a somewhat high death rate but probably only detected very serious cases
I understand that Black nations most likely have under-reported Covid-19 cases,
but I also suspect that something important is going on to protect most Black
nations from Covid-19 high death rates among detected cases.
The higher death rate Black nations (Nigeria, Somalia, Chad, and Tanzania) may
have only detected Covid-19 in their most serious cases
I repeat:
What makes Blacks in the USA seemingly much more prone to dying from
Covid-19 than Blacks living in most Black nations?
Things to consider:
Something to look at are that life expectancies for Blacks are higher in the USA
,and Covid-19 is much more deadly for older people.
Survivors of all deadly diseases in poor nations are more apt to have stronger anti-bodies since they
have endured more diseases with inadequate health services.
Mostly Black nations have relatively fewer foreign visitors from the outside
world, but this does not explain why death rates among detected Covid-19 cases
are so much lower than in the USA.
Are there any scientific studies that address the differences in Covid-19 death rates among Blacks in the USA versus Black nations around the world?
College Fall 2020 Plans And U.S. News
Rankings: Higher Ranked Schools Are More Likely Online, Lower Ranked Schools Are
More Likely On-Ground ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2020/06/college-fall-2020-plans-and-us-news-rankings-higher-ranked-schools-are-more-likely-online-lower-rank.html
Jensen Comment
The higher ranked schools are apt to get a superior incoming class whether they
are online or onsite --- what Harvard students want most is the name "Harvard
University" on their diplomas and the grade inflation assurance that they most
likely will graduate from Harvard with a cumulative gpa of A- or higher whether
their classes were online or onsite.
Lower ranked schools are most apt to
get is a better incoming class if they promise nearly all onsite courses.
Reasons are complicated, but students seeking an on-campus experience in a
lower-ranked university are not after the prestige name of the university as
much as they're after all things they can get only on campus --- getting away
from home, a face-to-face social life, a love life, and (alas) student parties.
What are they sacrificing by choosing a lower-ranked university?
That
prestigious name on the diploma and assurances of that A- graduation gpa. And
they're losing that powerful alumni club provided by the Ivy League universities
where old alumni lean toward hiring new alumni or admitting new alumni into
their prestigious graduate programs. In the Ivy League it's still pretty
much of an alumni club.
I know one applicant accepted by both Harvard and Texas A&M who
chose Harvard because it was easier to be a 4.0 graduate from Harvard where the
median grade averages of all graduates is A-
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/harvard-grade-inflation-_n_4384848
Professor Mansfield gave two grades to every student who took his
Harvard course. One was an A for the student's transcript. The other was a
secret grade to let the student know about actual performance in the course.
Are the $1 billion NYPD budget cuts
"accounting gimmicks"? ---
https://www.data-z.org/news/detail/nypd-budget-cuts-an-accounting-gimmick-former-commissioner
Jensen Comment
These "budget cuts" are not reductions in spending. However, the real test is
whether the the shifting of funds can lead to more effective outcomes. For
example, will shifting of funds from the NYPD to the NYC Department of Education
lead to greater safety of children? This is especially important where NYC
public school students are the least safe such as when protecting them from
rival gangs, drive bye shootings, and drug purchase temptations. I'm dubious of
the NYC Mayor's plan for most of the police budgeting shifts. He announced that
much of it will go for new public housing. Urban crime festers in public
housing. Will he just be creating more crime with less police to fight crime?
Having fewer police on patrols has to create slower response time to emergencies.
There are also what economists call externalities. By not having the police and courts discouraging shoplifting we will have more people not being punished for shoplifting. But the externality of not restraining shoplifting is that there will be fewer stores in areas of NYC where shoplifting is the most prevalent.
There will probably be a lot more police officer overtime rewards since fewer police officers increases the probability that the ones that remain will be paid for more security details like sporting events, theatre district patrolling, business watching, wealthy neighborhood watching, etc. Most of those rewards will be off-budget and paid directly to police officers. Are overworked police officers less effective in their day jobs?
New York City's Mayor is Jumping
for Joy: NYC's Police Applications for Retirement are Now Running 100 Per
Day
https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/nypd-limits-retirement-applications-amid-411-surge-this-week/
Who decides which books to burn?
When the Great Scorer comes to write against
your name, one unforgiveable sin
(racial profiling) outweighs all the good you've done in life.
(No that's not quite right)
Woodrow Wilson (the 28th President (a Democrat) of the USA) ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson
Author
During his academic career, Wilson authored several works of history and political science and became a regular contributor to Political Science Quarterly, an academic journal.[55] Wilson's first political work, Congressional Government (1885), critically described the U.S. system of government and advocated adopting reforms to move the U.S. closer to a parliamentary system.[56] Wilson believed the Constitution had a "radical defect" because it did not establish a branch of government that could "decide at once and with conclusive authority what shall be done."[57] He singled out the United States House of Representatives for particular criticism, writing, divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seignories, in each of which a standing committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within reach [of] the full powers of rule, may at will exercise an almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself.[58]
Wilson's second publication was a textbook, entitled The State, that was used widely in college courses throughout the country until the 1920s.[59] In The State, Wilson wrote that governments could legitimately promote the general welfare "by forbidding child labor, by supervising the sanitary conditions of factories, by limiting the employment of women in occupations hurtful to their health, by instituting official tests of the purity or the quality of goods sold, by limiting the hours of labor in certain trades, [and] by a hundred and one limitations of the power of unscrupulous or heartless men to out-do the scrupulous and merciful in trade or industry."[60][page needed] He also wrote that charity efforts should be removed from the private domain and "made the imperative legal duty of the whole," a position which, according to historian Robert M. Saunders, seemed to indicate that Wilson "was laying the groundwork for the modern welfare state."[61]
His third book, entitled Division and Reunion, was published in 1893.[62] It became a standard university textbook for teaching mid- and late-19th century U.S. history.[51] In 1897, Houghton Mifflin published Wilson's biography on George Washington; Berg describes it as "Wilson's poorest literary effort."[63] Wilson's fourth major publication, a five-volume work entitled History of the American People, was the culmination of a series of articles written for Harper's, and was published in 1902.[64] In 1908, Wilson published his last major scholarly work, Constitutional Government of the United States.[65]
President of Princeton University
See also: History of Princeton University § Woodrow Wilson
In June 1902, Princeton trustees promoted Professor Wilson to president, replacing Patton, whom the trustees perceived to be an inefficient administrator.[66] Wilson aspired, as he told alumni, "to transform thoughtless boys performing tasks into thinking men." He tried to raise admission standards and to replace the "gentleman's C" with serious study. To emphasize the development of expertise, Wilson instituted academic departments and a system of core requirements. Students were to meet in groups of six under the guidance of teaching assistants known as preceptors.[67][page needed] To fund these new programs, Wilson undertook an ambitious and successful fundraising campaign, convincing alumni such as Moses Taylor Pyne and philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie to donate to the school.[68] Wilson appointed the first Jew and the first Roman Catholic to the faculty, and helped liberate the board from domination by conservative Presbyterians.[69] He also worked to keep African Americans out of the school, even as other Ivy League schools were accepting small numbers of blacks.[70][a]
Wilson's efforts to reform Princeton earned him national notoriety, but they also took a toll on his health.[72] In 1906, Wilson awoke to find himself blind in the left eye, the result of a blood clot and hypertension. Modern medical opinion surmises Wilson had suffered a stroke—he later was diagnosed, as his father had been, with hardening of the arteries. He began to exhibit his father's traits of impatience and intolerance, which would on occasion lead to errors of judgment.[73] When Wilson began vacationing in Bermuda in 1906, he met a socialite, Mary Hulbert Peck. Their visits together became a regular occurrence on his return. Wilson in his letters home to Ellen openly related these gatherings as well his other social events. According to biographer August Heckscher, Wilson's friendship with Peck became the topic of frank discussion between Wilson and his wife. Wilson historians have not conclusively established there was an affair; but Wilson did on one occasion write a musing in shorthand—on the reverse side of a draft for an editorial: "my precious one, my beloved Mary."[74] Wilson also sent very personal letters to her which would later be used against him by his adversaries.[75]
Having reorganized the school's curriculum and established the preceptorial system, Wilson next attempted to curtail the influence of social elites at Princeton by abolishing the upper-class eating clubs.[76] He proposed moving the students into colleges, also known as quadrangles, but Wilson's Quad Plan was met with fierce opposition from Princeton's alumni.[77] In October 1907, due to the intensity of alumni opposition, the Board of Trustees instructed Wilson to withdraw the Quad Plan.[78] Late in his tenure, Wilson had a confrontation with Andrew Fleming West, dean of the graduate school, and also West's ally ex-President Grover Cleveland, who was a trustee. Wilson wanted to integrate a proposed graduate school building into the campus core, while West preferred a more distant campus site. In 1909, Princeton's board accepted a gift made to the graduate school campaign subject to the graduate school being located off campus.[79]
Wilson became disenchanted with his job due to the resistance to his recommendations, and he began considering a run for office. Prior to the 1908 Democratic National Convention, Wilson dropped hints to some influential players in the Democratic Party of his interest in the ticket. While he had no real expectations of being placed on the ticket, he left instructions that he should not be offered the vice presidential nomination. Party regulars considered his ideas politically as well as geographically detached and fanciful, but the seeds had been sown.[80] McGeorge Bundy in 1956 described Wilson's contribution to Princeton: "Wilson was right in his conviction that Princeton must be more than a wonderfully pleasant and decent home for nice young men; it has been more ever since his time".[81]
. . .
Historical reputation
Wilson is generally ranked by historians and political scientists as one of the better presidents.[2] More than any of his predecessors, Wilson took steps towards the creation of a strong federal government that would protect ordinary citizens against the overwhelming power of large corporations.[328] He is generally regarded as a key figure in the establishment of modern American liberalism, and a strong influence on future presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.[2] Cooper argues that in terms of impact and ambition, only the New Deal and the Great Society rival the domestic accomplishments of Wilson's presidency.[329] Many of Wilson's accomplishments, including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the graduated income tax, and labor laws, continued to influence the United States long after Wilson's death.[2] Wilson's idealistic foreign policy, which came to be known as Wilsonianism, also cast a long shadow over American foreign policy, and Wilson's League of Nations influenced the development of the United Nations.[2] Saladin Ambar writes that Wilson was "the first statesman of world stature to speak out not only against European imperialism but against the newer form of economic domination sometimes described as 'informal imperialism.'"[330]
Notwithstanding his accomplishments in office, Wilson has received criticism for his record on race relations and civil liberties, for his interventions in Latin America, and for his failure to win ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.[3][330] Sigmund Freud and William Christian Bullitt Jr., an American diplomat, collaborated in the 1930s on a psychological study that was published in 1966. [331] They argued that Wilson resolved his Oedipus complex by becoming highly neurotic, casting his father as God and himself as Christ, the savior of mankind.[332] Historians rejected the interpretation. Diplomatic historian A. J. P. Taylor called it a "disgrace" and asked: "How did anyone ever manage to take Freud seriously?"[333]
Many conservatives have attacked Wilson for his role in expanding the federal government.[334][335][336] In 2018, conservative columnist George Will wrote on The Washington Post that Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson were the "progenitors of today's imperial presidency."[337]
In the wake of the Charleston church shooting, during a debate over the removal of Confederate monuments, some individuals demanded the removal of Wilson's name from institutions affiliated with Princeton due to his administration's segregation of government offices.[338][339] On June 26, 2020, Princeton University removed Wilson's name from its public policy school due to his "racist thinking and policies."[340] The Princeton University Board of Trustees voted to remove Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs, changing the name to the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. The Board also accelerated the retirement of the name of a soon-to-be-closed residential college, changing the name from Wilson College to “First College.” However, the Board did not change the name of the university's highest honor for an undergraduate alumnus or alumna, The Woodrow Wilson Award, because it is the result of a gift. The Board stated that when the university accepted that gift, it took on a legal obligation to name the prize for Wilson.[341]
Continued in article
Princeton Strips Wilson Name
From School, College
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/06/29/princeton-strips-wilson-name-school-college?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=33ab119ab6-DNU_2019_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-33ab119ab6-197565045&mc_cid=33ab119ab6&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
\
Princeton University on Saturday removed Woodrow Wilson's name from its School of Public and International Affairs and a residential college. Wilson was a Princeton alumnus and president of the university. Christopher L. Eisgruber, the current president, wrote to the campus, where protests in 2015 (and before that) called for removal of the name. In April 2016, a campus committee "recommended a number of reforms to make this university more inclusive and more honest about its history. The committee and the board, however, left Wilson’s name on the school and the college," Eisgruber wrote.
Today, he wrote, "the tragic killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks drew renewed attention to the long and damaging history of racism in America."
He added that the board acted because "Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time. He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice. He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in this country, a practice that continues to do harm today. Wilson’s segregationist policies make him an especially inappropriate namesake for a public policy school."
Jensen Comment
I started this thread module with the following:
When the Great Scorer comes to write against your name, one unforgiveable sin (racial profiling) outweighs all the good you've done in life.
That's not
entirely true. Hypocritical scholars will forgive you if you had sufficient
political correctness like Flannery O'Connor ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannery_O%27Connor
The New Yorker: How Racist Was Flannery
O’Connor?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor
Jensen Comment
Hypocritically her defenders pardon her
for being a racist of her time while being unwilling to forgive George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson for being slave owners, albeit kindly slave owners,
of their time. But then scholars are often hypocritical in defending their own
for sins that they rant about in others.
Like Woodrow Wilson, Flannery O'Connor's racism was mixed with both bad racism and good things for Blacks. Wilson for example, fought against child labor and better working conditions for workers of all races with "a hundred and one limitations of the power of unscrupulous or heartless men to out-do the scrupulous and merciful in trade or industry." Woodrow Wilson must be erased from history.
Flannery
O'Connor in her personal life was a racist. But in her many writings liberal
scholars point out that there are some of her memorable words for fighting
against racism ---
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/06/how-flannery-oconnor-fought-racism
Flannery O'Connor must live on.
Liberal scholars will praise her political fight against racism whereas they will tear down all the good things Woodrow Wilson did for Blacks and other minorities. Hence the following:
When the Great Scorer comes to write against
your name, one unforgiveable sin (racial profiling) outweighs all the good
you've done in life unless you were sufficient in political correctness.
Bob Jensen
I doubt that any university will remove any awards or praises to Flannery O'Connor like they are in the process of removing all awards and praises of Woodrow Wilson.
And guess who gets left in the curriculum --- Wilson or O'Connor?
Who decides which books to burn?
Franklin Pierce Biographer
Urges Consideration Of 14th President's Progressive Civil Liberties Record
Before Removal Of His Name From UNH Law School ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2020/06/franklin-pierce-biographer-urges-consideration-of-14th-presidents-progressive-civil-liberties-record.html
No chance
Bob Jensen's
threads on political correctness ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
How PwC is using VR to shake up bias trainings and get employees to think
about their hidden prejudices
https://www.businessinsider.com/using-virtual-reality-for-diversity-and-inclusion-trainings-2020-7
. PwC and tech startup Talespin have teamed up to train employees on implicit bias using virtual reality.
· VR-based implicit bias training immerses its participants in scenarios where they learn to make inclusive hiring decisions and point out instances of discrimination.
· Studies have shown VR learners required less time to learn, had a stronger emotional connection to the training content, were more focused when learning, and were more confident about their takeaways from the training.
· It comes at a time of public reckoning that current corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives aren't doing enough, especially when it comes to implicit bias during the hiring process.Virtual reality could permanently alter the way businesses approach diversity and inclusion trainings.
Despite spending billions of dollars on D&I initiatives, US companies are more segregated now than they were 40 years ago, and implicit bias in hiring remains one of the biggest culprits. Implicit bias refers to the unknown assumptions people make about others based on their gender, ethnicity, age, or minority status, rather than their professional qualifications.
Some companies are exploring new options for diversity trainings. PwC is one of them.
The professional-services firm is working with software company Talespin to implement VR-based implicit-bias training programs —and it could be a new frontier for how companies approach diversity, equity, and inclusion training.
The Big 4 consulting and tax firm completed a pilot with Talespin last year, and it has since used virtual reality programming to train over 4,000 employees on implicit bias.
How the VR training works
The training places employees in simulated office settings designed after actual PwC offices, where they speak with virtual characters through a head-mounted display. During the five-to-seven-minute training modules, they are prompted to make decisions about who to hire and promote, and must use inclusive leadership practices introduced prior to the simulation.
Kyle Jackson, CEO of Talespin, told Business Insider that PwC employees using the VR tool are trained on how to recognize unconscious bias when hiring. They have to think about how even a candidate's name on a résumé can stir up implicit biases, he said.
Studies have shown, for example, that résumés with names that sound "white" get more call backs than those that don't. Employees using the VR training are asked to formulate responses if these biases are expressed in a hiring meeting by a colleague, or a senior partner.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Double Standard: Black Washington Post Editor Goes Racist On
White Women, Paper Defends Her Racist Comments
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2020/06/28/screenshot-wapo-global-opinions-editor-deletes-vile-tweet-warning-white-women-of-revenge/
Karen Attiah, the Washington Post’s Global Opinions editor, just deleted this that said, “White women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karen’s’. And not calling for revenge”:
The lies & tears of White women hath wrought:
-The 1921 Tulsa Massacre
-Murder of Emmet Till
-Exclusion of Black women from feminist movements
-53% of white women voting for Trump.White women are lucky that we are just calling them "Karen's".
And not calling for revenge.
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) June 28, 2020
The Deleted Clause of the Declaration of Independence ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/07/the-deleted-clause-of-the-declaration-of-independence.html
Also see
https://notesonliberty.com/2017/07/04/the-deleted-clause-of-the-declaration-of-independence/
Jensen Comment
Eliminating slavery in the USA proved not so simple as leaving the above phrase
in the Declaration of Independence. Nearly 100 years later it would take over
$32 trillion and unimaginable suffering in a tragic Civil War to free the
slaves.
The following quotation is taken from
https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/
The Civil War was one of the most devastating events in the history of the United States. It lasted from 1861 to 1865 and has been estimated to have a direct cost of about $6.7 billion valued in 1860 dollars. If this number were evaluated in dollars of today using the GDP deflator it would be $160 billion, less than one-fourth of the current Department of Defense budget. This would be inappropriate, as would be using the wage or income indexes. The only measure that makes sense for an expenditure of this size is to use the share of GDP, as the war impacted the output of the entire country. Thus the relative value of $6.7 billion of 1860 would be $32.7 trillion today, or over 150% of our current GDP. The $6.7 billion does not take into account that the war disrupted the economy and had an impact of lower production into the future. Some economic historians have estimated this additional, or indirect cost, to be another $7.3 billion measured in 1860 dollars. This means the cost of the war (as a share of the output of the economy) was nearly $68 trillion as measured in current dollars.
New York algebra
fact of the day---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/new-york-fact-of-the-day-2.html
Take here in New York, where in 2016 the passing rate for the Regents Examination in Algebra I test was 72 percent. Unfortunately, this (relatively) higher rate of success does not indicate some sort of revolutionary pedagogy on the part of New York state educators. As the New York Post complained in 2017, passing rates were so high in large measure because the cutoff for passing was absurdly low — so low that students needed only to answer 31.4 percent of the questions correctly to pass the 2017 exam.
Walter E. Williams: Charter Schools and Their
Enemies ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/07/08/charter-schools-and-their-enemies-n2571960?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=07/08/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Walter A. Williams: The Nation's Report Card
How are K-12 schools doing under President Trump versus
President Obama?
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2020/05/06/the-nations-report-card-n2568167?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/06/2020&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Jensen's Comment
Most K-12 schools were probably doing better when I was a child than they're
doing today. The downhill slide is greatest in the gang-ridden schools,
drug-infested urban schools like Chicago and New Orleans. But the slide is
virtually everywhere in the USA.
Throwing money at such
schools is not the answer until life at home recovers. Finland
knows this, which is why Finland's dads spend more time with school children
than the moms or the teachers.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/dec/04/finland-only-country-world-dad-more-time-kids-moms
Over the past half century, the United States has been the birthplace of the
majority of the world’s biomedical innovations ---
https://www.americanactionforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2016-05-17-Drug-Patents-Checkup.pdf
Especially note the 1991-2010 trend.
Rewarding financial risk taking is the main reason for this trend.
The Nation and The Little Red Hen: The
Covid-19 Vaccine Should Belong to the People ---
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/the-covid-19-vaccine-should-belong-to-the-people/
Jensen Comment
Consider this scenario. The clear winner by far in the vaccine race ends up
being a patented vaccine from a company that invested in the high risk race of
developing a Covid-19 vaccine. The Nation argues that the company should
not profit from its high risk investment for the public good. I argue that it's
the story of
The Little Red Hen all over again between the original and revised versions
of this fable ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Red_Hen#Revisions
The Nation is actually praising Malvina Reynolds' version of The
Little Red Hen with short-term myopia. If companies cannot profit from
investment risks guess what happens. For
the next pandemic down the road companies will not invest in vaccines or cures
if it becomes highly likely that there will be no rewards for risky investments.
Risk taking investments are then left to governments --- the least efficient and
most corrupt monopolies worldwide.
The days it's popular to lambaste the big pharma patent cartels, and I'd be the first to admit that there are enormous abuses in buying up patents on existing reasonably-priced medications and jacking up prices. Thus I conclude that clear abuses should be punished.
But when the next pandemic rolls along in the USA where financial risk taking is not rewarded for the invention of new cures and vaccines, you will be greatly reducing the probabilities of finding the best new cures and vaccines. The Nation's editors are long-time advocates of socialism, but are unable to point to a single nation that has ever sustained itself with socialism. All socialist experiments are reverted to or are in the process of reverting to capitalism that rewards risky investments.
Racial Profiling Concerns Are More Important Than Public
Health
Facemasks are required in Lincoln County, Oregon with the following exceptions:
https://www.co.lincoln.or.us/sites/default/files/fileattachments/health_amp_human_services/page/7581/directive_6-16-2020.pdf
Also see Newsweek ---
https://www.newsweek.com/oregon-county-exempts-non-white-people-mandatory-face-mask-order-1512895
The following individuals do not need to comply with this Directive:
- Persons with health/medical conditions that preclude or are exacerbated by wearing a face covering.
- Children under the age of 12. Children over the age of 2 but under the age of 12 are encouraged to wear face covering but not required to do so.
- Persons with disabilities that prevents them from using the face covering as described in this Directive. These persons must be reasonably accommodated allow them access to goods and services.
- People of color who have heightened concerns about racial profiling and harassment due to wearing face covering in public.
Hi Zafar,
The best the USA can do is Rank 23 on the Government Corruption Index ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
We barely beat out Chile at Rank 24 and the Bahamas at Rank 29
You would have us believe the USA will jump to Number 1 in the world as soon
as Donald Trump and all those other Republicans are thrown out of power in
November 2020.
I hope you're correct on this.
It will be a breath of fresh air once Joe Biden takes over. He never helped his son become a multi-millionaire. It's a dirty Republican lie.
Democrats in government are above corruption. I really looking forward to all that honesty moving into power, especially once this power becomes monopoly power.
One of the hallmarks of socialism's failures in practice has been government
corruption. Your beloved Cuba, Zafar,
comes in at a very corrupt Rank 60 among corrupt government officials. Bolivia
is at Rank 123. Must be all those corrupt Republicans in government positions in
Cuba and Bolivia.
Wonder why Venezuela isn't even ranked?
Seriously, one of the big sources of government corruption is nation size. Most of the high-ranking nations in the corruption index linked above are relatively low population nations that are much more subjected to voter watchdogs. By the way, those high ranking nations all have billionaires (alas Iceland only has one) in the private sector, most of whom got rich from financial risk taking in capitalist economies.
And to Elliot I will say that closing the wealth disparity problem that worries you so much will not help matters if the poor become worse off, which is what will happen with open borders. Wealth disparity is not the problem. The problem is the degree of poverty among a nation's poorest residents. On this the Gini index is horribly misleading since being poor in Somolia is not the same as being poor in the USA where our poorest citizens have the safety nets of food stamps, Medicaid, housing subsidies, welfare, free k-12 education, etc.
Sweden and nearly 90% of the other developed nations that lowered their top
marginal tax rates did so because they discovered that very high marginal tax
rates were dysfunctional to their entire economies (including the poor) ---
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MarginalTaxRates.html
Especially note socialist Bolivia
Nations lowering their top marginal tax rates increased rather than decreased wealth disparity.
Table 1 Maximum Marginal Tax Rates on Individual Income*. Hong Kong�s maximum tax (the �standard rate�) has normally been 15 percent, effectively capping the marginal rate at high income levels (in exchange for no personal exemptions). **. The highest U.S. tax rate of 39.6 percent after 1993 was reduced to 38.6 percent in 2002 and to 35 percent in 2003. 1979 1990 2002 Argentina 45 30 35 Australia 62 48 47 Austria 62 50 50 Belgium 76 55 52 Bolivia 48 10 13 Botswana 75 50 25 Brazil 55 25 28 Canada (Ontario) 58 47 46 Chile 60 50 43 Colombia 56 30 35 Denmark 73 68 59 Egypt 80 65 40 Finland 71 43 37 France 60 52 50 Germany 56 53 49 Greece 60 50 40 Guatemala 40 34 31 Hong Kong 25* 25 16 Hungary 60 50 40 India 60 50 30 Indonesia 50 35 35 Iran 90 75 35 Ireland 65 56 42 Israel 66 48 50 Italy 72 50 52 Jamaica 58 33 25 Japan 75 50 50 South Korea 89 50 36 Malaysia 60 45 28 Mauritius 50 35 25 Mexico 55 35 40 Netherlands 72 60 52 New Zealand 60 33 39 Norway 75 54 48 Pakistan 55 45 35 Philippines 70 35 32 Portugal 84 40 40 Puerto Rico 79 43 33 Russia NA 60 13 Singapore 55 33 26 Spain 66 56 48 Sweden 87 65 56 Thailand 60 55 37 Trinidad and Tobago 70 35 35 Turkey 75 50 45 United Kingdom 83 40 40 United States 70 33 39** Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers; International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation.
How to Mislead With Statistics
Surprising study: Urban density doesn’t cause more COVID-19 infections, even
promotes lower death rates ---
https://www.studyfinds.org/surprising-study-urban-density-doesnt-cause-more-covid-19-infections-even-promotes-lower-death-rates/
Crowded city streets, subways, and buses have been considered the most likely places to become infected with COVID-19 over the past few months. Surprisingly, however, a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health concludes that densely populated spaces aren’t actually linked to higher infection rates.
Even more confounding, the study’s analysis indicates that crowded, dense locations are associated with lower coronavirus death rates.
In all, COVID-19 infection and death rates were assessed across 913 U.S. metropolitan counties. After researchers accounted for additional factors like race and education, the population density within each county was not significantly linked to infection rates. As mentioned, denser counties, as opposed to more rural, sprawling areas with smaller populations, were associated with lower death rates. The study’s authors speculate this is because denser, urban areas often offer better healthcare services.
Instead, higher coronavirus infection and death rates seem to be linked to a metropolitan area’s size, not its density. So, cities that are very big and stretch across multiple counties that are “tightly linked together through economic, social, and commuting relationships” appear to be most at risk of high coronavirus infection ratesContinued in Article
Jensen Comment
I think the populated density issues are more complicated than density per se
(think population per square mile). For example, the above study concludes that
"densely populated spaces aren’t actually linked to higher infection
rates".
However, I contend that the most dense populations vary greatly in terms of lifestyles.
Los Angeles differs greatly from New York City in many ways, including the LA's
relative lack of public transportation relative to NYC. Also in NCC it's extremely common for workers to move out of
NYC when they retire. And if they retire in a another dense area like Miami or
LA
their lifestyles change because they are no longer commuting daily over long
distances by public transportation to get to and from jobs. The public indoor
places of Manhattan and San Francisco are crowded many hours of each day
relative to the public indoor places of Miami, LA, and Houston.
My point here is that population density as a predictor of Covid-19 infections and deaths confounds many other issues like demographic differences of residents, lifestyle differences, etc. But density should not be eliminated as a contributing factor to the multivariate set of interactive causes.
Both the risks of infection from Covid-19 and the risk of dying when infected
are multivariate and interactive.
Except for age I don't think we can factor out any one variable (like population
per square mile) from all the other interactive causes.
And density is a continuum. Southern New Hampshire is much less densely
populated than Northern New Hampshire. And Southern New Hampshire is very much
less densely populated than New York City.
New York State has a population of 19.5 million out of which over 8.2 million live in NYC. New Hampshire has a population of 1.4 million out of which 110,000 live in Manchester, NH.
As a retired total recluse living on food and drink ordered from Amazon, your odds of testing positive for Covid-10 are probably about the same in NYC or New Hampshire's Manchester or Littleton in the north. If you're a patrol cop or hospital worker your probability of testing positive is much higher in dense NYC or Manchester. However your probability is even lower in Littleton relative to Manchester and points along I-93 leading toward Massachusetts.
Now consider the following map of New Hampshire where the state's highest
population density is skewed toward the southern part of the state ---
https://www.nh.gov/covid19/
Note that "50+" in the color coding
includes such large numbers as 500 and 800.
In the middle of New Hampshire my guess is that nursing home residents contributed to nearly all of the 6, 7, AND 16 numbers shown on the map below.
I contend that the Covid-19 infection rates along the southeastern boundary are relatively high because this is where NH workers commuting to Massachusetts (think Boston) are most likely to live in NH. These NH state line residents most likely were infected due to working in Massachusetts (think NH medical professionals who work in Massachusetts hospitals)
Contrary to the conclusion of the above "Surprising Study," the one thing I'm certain of is that people who move from New York City to northern New Hampshire at the present time ipso facto have lower probabilities of becoming infected unless they live like a recluses before and after the move.
IRS Releases 2019 Data Book ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2020/07/irs-releases-2019-data-book.html
The new Data Book shows that during FY 2019, the IRS:
· Processed more than 253 million individual and business tax returns and forms, with nearly 73% of them filed electronically. Of that total, about 154 million were individual income tax returns, with about 89% of them being e-filed.
· Collected more than $3.5 trillion in Federal taxes paid by individuals and businesses, with the individual income tax accounting for about 56% of the total.
· Issued nearly 121.9 million refunds to individuals and businesses totaling more than $452 billion. The bulk of them — more than 119.8 million totaling over $270 billion — went to individual income tax filers. Of that total, nearly 17.3 million included a refundable Child Tax Credit and nearly 24.6 million included a refundable Earned Income Tax Credit.
· Attracted nearly 651 million visits to IRS.gov, its popular website.
· Set up more than 2.8 million new payment or installment agreements, with nearly 1.1 million of them established online at IRS.gov.
· Reinvigorated its non-filer compliance initiative by closing over 364,000 cases under the Automated Substitute for Return Program, resulting in nearly $6.6 billion in additional assessments.
· Completed nearly 2,800 criminal investigations.
Updates on Medical Insurance
Trump's Medicare chief has a big decision to make over whether
doctors should be paid for phone calls and video visits. Here are the 3 biggest
concerns she's weighing over the future of healthcare ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/cms-administrator-seema-verma-on-the-future-of-telehealth-2020-7
The Trump administration's Medicare chief is presiding over a major healthcare overhaul during the coronavirus pandemic, where millions more people are seeing doctors over phone and video.
· The move to virtual care happened because of temporary changes pushed by Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, overseen by Seema Verma. The changes caused a huge jump in telemedicine use. Before the pandemic, about 13,000 people on Medicare saw a doctor over telehealth in a week. By the week ending April 25, 1.7 million patients had these visits, according to figures from CMS.
· But in the months ahead and ultimately once the pandemic is over, policymakers will face big decisions about how much virtual care should continue, how much to pay for it, and who gets it.
· "I think that it is crystal clear that we need to continue telehealth," Verma told Business Insider. "I think in what capacity, how we do reimbursement, determining in what types of medicine it works best in — all of that is going to continue to evolve. But the case for telehealth is clear."
· CMS will have a major influence, but the agency can't go at it alone: It's up to Congress to decide which providers can use video visits and whether patients can see a doctor from home.
· Still, CMS has the power to change a slew of regulations. Both state and federal lawmakers will watch what happens with the temporary telehealth changes in Medicare, which reaches 40 million seniors, to decide whether to make them permanent and whether to overhaul rules on private health insurance.
Continued in article
Walmart will begin offering health insurance to consumers ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-breaks-into-health-insurance-2020-7?IR=T&utm_medium=email&utm_term=BII_Daily&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_campaign=BII
Weekender 2020.7.10 - Marketing
Open immigration can’t exist with a strong
social safety net; if you’re going to assure healthcare and a decent income to
everyone, you can’t make that offer global ---
Paul Krugman
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/724654-open-immigration-can-t-exist-with-a-strong-social-safety-net
Bob Jensen's threads on health insurance ---
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/