Tag Archives: Sociopath

Feb 15 2020

Widespread Poverty Stats Greatly Overstate the Number of Americans Who Are Destitute


By James D. Agresti, January 25, 2020

While pressing her agenda to expand means-tested welfare programs, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is claiming that the federal government’s poverty statistics vastly undercount the number of Americans who are “destitute.”

In reality, the exact opposite is true because those statistics omit a broad range of government benefits, charity, and unreported income. When these are counted, the poorest fifth of U.S. households consume five times more goods and services than the poverty stats reveal. These material resources amount to an average of more than $50,000 per household per year, making the poorest fifth of Americans richer than the averages for all people in most developed nations of the world.

AOC’s Claims

In a recent video, AOC alleges: “You would not know that our country is posting record profits because 40 million Americans are living in poverty right now, and if the poverty line was real—if it was around what some people think it should be—about $38,000 a year, we will be shocked at how much the richest society on the planet is allowing so much of its people to live in destitute [sic].”

Her number of 40 million is roughly equal to the Census Bureau’s figure of 38.1 million, or 11.8% of the U.S. population. This represents merely one of the widely different ways of measuring poverty, but it is the federal government’s official measure, and the media follows suit. As stated in a 2019 paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics: “The official poverty rate is also one of the most cited government statistics in the popular press.”

What’s Excluded

Without vital context—which AOC and most news reports fail to provide—the oft-cited Census poverty stats are highly misleading. For as the Census Bureau explains, they don’t “include the value of noncash benefits such as those provided by SNAP [Food Stamps], Medicare, Medicaid, public housing,” and a host of other goods and services that the poor receive from government and charities. More specifically:

  • Food Stamp beneficiaries received an average of $3,200 per household in Food Stamps during 2017.
  • Medicaid beneficiaries received an average of $7,794 per person in healthcare benefits during 2016.
  • Section 8 voucher beneficiaries received an average of $8,333 per household in rental assistance during 2016.
  • Head Start beneficiaries received an average of $9,871 per child in childcare and preschool benefits during 2017.
  • Other government programs provide noncash welfare benefits in the form of utility assistance, college grants, school lunch, school breakfast, community health centers, family planning services, prescription drugs, job training, legal services, cell phones, cell phone service, and internet service.
  • Federal law requires most hospitals with emergency departments to provide an “examination” and “stabilizing treatment” for anyone who comes to such a facility and requests care for an emergency medical condition or childbirth, regardless of their ability to pay and immigration status.
  • Private charities provide additional benefits to low-income people, such as food, clothing, housing, and healthcare.

Furthermore, Census income and poverty figures are obtained through household surveys, and low-income households don’t report much of their cash income in such surveys. Regarding this:

  • A study published by the American Economic Journal in 2019 found that 63% of all New York State households who received benefits from two major cash welfare programs did not report any of this money to the Census Bureau.
  • The same study found that people who did report receiving cash welfare from these two programs received an average of 65% more money from the programs than they reported to the Census Bureau.
  • In 2013, the chief actuary of the U.S. Social Security Administration estimated that 3.9 million illegal immigrants worked “in the underground economy” during 2010.
  • In 2016, the IRS reported that 63% of income not reported to the IRS by third parties (like employers) is never reported to the IRS by the people who receive the money.

The Big Picture

An official federal measure that accounts for all of people’s material resources is called “consumption.” Recorded by the federal government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, it is a comprehensive measure of the goods and services consumed by households. It is also the World Bank’s “preferred welfare indicator, for practical reasons of reliability and because consumption is thought to better capture long-run welfare levels than current income.” Significantly, a 2003 paper in the Journal of Human Resources explains that “consumption standards were behind the original setting of the poverty line,” but government changed to the current method because of its “ease of reporting.”

The Bureau of Economic Analysis normally reports consumption for the entire nation and doesn’t break down the data to show how people at different levels fare. However, it published a report in 2012 that does that for 2010. Placed side-by-side with the Census Bureau income figures that underlie its poverty stats, the differences are striking—particularly for the poorest and richest U.S. households:

The federal data graphed above shows that the poorest 20% of U.S. households consumed an average of $57,049 of goods and services per household in 2010, while they reported an average of $11,034 in pre-tax money income to the Census Bureau. This means that widely reported federal poverty stats exclude about 80% of the material resources of low-income households. Put simply, the poorest fifth of U.S. households consume five times more goods and services than the poverty stats reveal.

AOC argues that the federal poverty line for “1 earner & a mother home full-time” should be $38,000/year, as compared to the current line of about $26,000 for a family of four. She attempts to justify this by saying that the current line “doesn’t include cost of childcare, geographic cost of living, or healthcare.” What she neglects to say is that low-income households typically receive such items and many others for free or greatly reduced prices.

In contrast, most U.S. households earn their healthcare, housing, food, childcare, phone service, and such for themselves, while also paying taxes that fund these items for others. As a result, U.S. middle-income households consume only 26% more goods and services than the poorest fifth.

The impacts of this wealth redistribution are even more drastic for the richest fifth of U.S. households, who forfeit a large portion of their income to taxes and receive few government benefits. They report 15 times more pre-tax money income than the poorest fifth of households, but they consume only twice as much goods and services as the poorest fifth.

Given that the available data treat the poorest 20% of households as a single group, while 11.8% of U.S. residents are officially in poverty, one might assume that poor households consume markedly less than the $57,049 average for the group. However, other government data suggests that is not the case. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data on a subset of consumption called “consumer expenditures.” These show a mere $2,179 difference between the lowest 10% of U.S. households and the second lowest 10%. Since consumer expenditures exclude many forms of non-cash welfare, and eligibility for welfaredeclines as income rises, the poorest 10% may consume more goods and services than the second-poorest 10%.

Conclusion

Contrary to AOC, the facts are clear that frequently reported federal poverty stats vastly overstate the number of Americans who are destitute. Moreover, Just Facts’ recent study of data from the World Bank and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reveals that the poorest fifth of Americans consume more goods and services than the averages for all people in most developed nations of the world. In spite of these facts, AOC decries “economic injustice in America” and insists that the U.S. cannot “capitalism our way out of poverty.”

Feb 15 2020

The School Funding Inequity Farce


By James D. Agresti
November 25, 2019

Leading presidential candidates and major media outlets are claiming that school districts with high concentrations of minorities and poor children generally receive less funding per student than other districts. That hasn’t been true for at least half a century, but people are spreading this myth through deceptive studies that exclude federal funds.

In reality, a broad range of credible studies that include all funding sources show that such school districts are as well-financed as others.

The Claims

According to Democrat presidential hopeful and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, “our current approach to school funding at the federal, state, and local level underfunds our schools and results in many students from low-income backgrounds receiving less funding than other students on a per-student basis.”

Along the same lines:

  • Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times reported in early 2019 that “on average, nonwhite districts received about $2,200 less per student than districts that were predominantly white….”
  • Maria Danilova of the Associated Press (AP) reported in 2018 that “the highest-poverty” school districts “receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color….”
  • Democrat presidential contender and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders claims that “less is invested in the education of children from low-income families compared with their more affluent peers” because “school districts are funded out of local property taxes.”
  • Clare Lombardo of National Public Radio (NPR) reported in 2019 that “high-poverty districts serving mostly students of color receive about $1,600 less per student than the national average.”

With the exception of Sanders—who provides no evidence to support his claim—all of the others misrepresent their sources by failing to reveal that they ignore federal funds. Moreover, their sources obscure this fact in the following ways:

  • Warren cites a study by the Education Law Center, which refers to federal funding on page 2 but then never accounts for any of it. Instead, the study mentions on page 5 that it uses “actual state and local revenues” for its analysis.
  • The New York Times and NPR cite a report from EdBuild, which doesn’t say a word about the exclusion of federal revenues. Instead, it tacitly slips this into a separate webpage of “research methods“ that references “revenues from state and local sources” while ignoring federal revenues except when subtracting out charter school funding.
  • The AP cites a report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that repeatedly mentions federal funding, but when it presents the $1,200 and $2,000 underfunding figures quoted by the AP, it cites a study from the Education Trust that explicitly excludes “federal sources.” The Commission on Civil Rights doesn’t even allude to this fact—and to discover it, readers must go to the footnote and then locate the study from a citation with an unclickable link.

In short, these politicians and journalists never hint that their statistics exclude federal funds, and the sources they appeal to bury this crucial caveat. This ensures that only diligent readers with time to investigate will learn the truth.

Moreover, those who propagate this falsehood often call for more federal funds to fix this contrived disparity. But since they ignore federal funding, their proposals to increase it will not change the statistics they present.

Warren’s K–12 education plan, for instance, makes the false claim quoted above and then calls for “quadrupling Title I funding—an additional $450 billion over the next 10 years—to help ensure that all children get a high-quality public education.” Title I is the largest source of federal K–12 education funding, but because Warren doesn’t count this money in her statistics, her plan won’t affect her own measure of school funding.

The Reality

Wide-ranging studies that include all education funding—like those conducted by the U.S. Department of Education (1996), Ph.D. economist Derek Neal (2006), the left-leaning Urban Institute (2008), and the conservative Heritage Foundation (2011)—have all found that school districts with higher portions of minority students spend about the same amount per student as districts with smaller portions of minorities.

The Urban Institute study, which looks the furthest back in time, found that “differences in spending per pupil in districts serving nonwhite and white students are very small” since at least 1972.

Likewise, a study published by the journal Education Next in 2017 found that “per-student K–12 education funding from all sources (local, state, and federal) is similar, on average, at the districts attended by poor students ($12,961) and non-poor students ($12,640), a difference of 2.5 percent in favor of poor students.” The study also found that “this difference has not changed much since 1994–95,” the earliest data in the study.

Within school districts, research published by the Brookings Institution in 2017 found that “on average, poor and minority students receive between 1-2 percent more resources than non-poor or white students in their districts, equivalent to about $65 per pupil.”

The Property Tax Charade

Warren alleges that “school systems rely heavily on local property taxes, shortchanging students in low-income areas.” This was previously the case, but it hasn’t been so for decades. As explained by the Urban Institute:

In the past, because public schools were funded largely by local property taxes, property-rich and -poor school districts differed greatly in expenditures per pupil. Since the early 1970s, however, state legislatures have, on their own initiative or at the behest of state courts, implemented school finance equalization programs to reduce the disparity in within-state education spending.

Consequently, data from the U.S. Department of Education show that local revenues have declined from 83% of all school funding in 1920 to 45% in 2016:

Furthermore, the chart above only shows national averages. These don’t reveal the fact that school districts in low-income areas typically receive greater portions of their budgets from state and federal funds. For example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 2011 that some school districts receive no federal Title I education funding, while others receive as much as 36% of their budget from it.

Along with increasing shares of school funding paid by state and federal taxpayers, the inflation-adjusted average spending per student grew by 22 times in the same era:

False Justifications

Some people openly argue that federal funding should be ignored when comparing schools, because this money is meant to help disadvantaged students. However, federal law is at odds with such logic.

The Education Trust, for example, writes that it excludes such funds from its analysis because “federal dollars are intended—and targeted—to provide supplemental services to such specific groups of students as those in poverty, English learners, and students with disabilities.”

In accord with that view, the Obama administration published an issue paper stating that federal education funding “is intended to provide the extra help low-income students need to succeed, but it cannot do that if state and local funds are not evenly distributed to start with.” The administration also drafted regulations to impose this requirement on school districts.

In contrast, the applicable federal law explicitly states that “nothing in this subchapter shall be construed to mandate equalized spending per pupil for a state, local educational agency, or school.” Thus, the Congressional Research Service determined that the Obama administration’s proposed regulations “appear to directly conflict” with the law.

Federal law does require that states and localities not reduce their funding to schools when they receive federal funds. This provision says that states and localities can only use federal funds “to supplement the funds that would, in the absence of such federal funds, be made available from state and local sources,” “not to supplant such funds.” This does not require that funding be equal before or even after federal funding. It simply requires that states and localities don’t cut other funding just because they receive federal funds.

The law also requires that local school districts provide services that “are at least comparable” to all schools within their district before they receive federal funds. New York City, for example, cannot provide unequal services to schools and then use federal funds to equalize them. To meet this requirement, districts must provide similar staff-to-student ratios, “curriculum materials,” and “instructional supplies” to schools in their district in order to receive federal funds.

Nevertheless, politicians and unions sometimes create funding disparities within local school districts by agreeing to contracts that give senior teachers more pay and discretion to choose the schools where they work. These higher-paid teachers tend to avoid inner-city schools with high rates of crime and student discipline problems, resulting in lower spending-per student in poor neighborhoods. Federal law permits this practice by excluding “staff salary differentials for years of employment” from its compliance provisions.

Conclusion

Regardless of any rationale for excluding federal funds from school funding comparisons, it is deceitful to omit such money without even a hint. Yet, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Associated Press are doing just that.

Such disinformation is enabled by advocacy groups like EdBuild and the Education Law Center, which publish reports that exclude federal funds while burying this vital fact.

Warren takes the deception even further by leading people to believe that she actually accounts for federal funds. She does this by claiming that “the current investment in Title I—$15.8 billion—is not nearly enough to make up for state-level funding inequities,” but her supposed evidence for this is a study that excludes all of this money. This provides false grounds to continually demand more from taxpayers and to portray the U.S. education system as systemically racist.

Feb 13 2020

Socrates & the Third Edition


Armstrong Economics Blog/Products and Services

Re-Posted Feb 13, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Martin, Thank you for not only the brilliance you share but as a retired firefighter I have to say that your courage in the face of powerful, life threatening government / criminal agents and agencies impresses me as much or more. I was wondering if we can pre order copies of your latest book (3rd edition) from you directly? Thanks again for sharing your amazing gifts.
Sincerely
W

REPLY: Thank you. They can push you so far that death is not something which you fear. Once they push you that far, they lose all their power. They cannot threaten you anymore. I have no doubt that there are dark forces in New York City who will seek their revenge. I paid my respect to the cell where Socrates died. I have no doubt that they will contrive some way to try to silence me or our computer system, ironically similar to how corrupt forces conspired against Socrates himself. When that day comes, a letter will be released naming the individuals who I still am doing battle with to this very day. They have not relented but conspired in every possible way to try to deter people from even subscribing to our computer system. There have been others who have aided them because they are simply greedy and hope to get something out of it for themselves. Those are people whose ethics are up for sale to the highest bidder.

Unfortunately, we do not handle the sales of the books. That is all done through Amazon. It is a huge job to send out books, collect sales taxes for various regions, and simply deal with the ever changing legal landscape. It is a nightmare on a global level. We will get the third edition up soon.

 

Feb 13 2020

Why Justice Can Never Exist for Long Under Centralized Governments


Armstrong Economics Blog/Rule of Law

Re-Posted Feb 13, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I really appreciate you are a student of law. I believe you should also write a book on the evolution of law for your understanding from the role of King Solomon on to our modern system deserves recognition. You seem to trace the fall of the rule of law and government is linked to the concentration of power into a centralized state. You have attributed the collapse of communism to that inability of a central power to adapt to the demanding conditions of the economic evolution of society. Would you care to comment on this development of centralized power and its critical role in the collapse of western society by 2032?

Thank you for your very enlightening research.

DH

ANSWER: The evolution of the rule of law is fascinating. The biblical account of King Solomon presiding over two women in dispute over a child goes over the heads of most people. Solomon’s duty as king was the center of that account. The king’s role was to stand as impartial ruler between disputes. If you killed someone in ancient Greece, the family was to be the prosecutor — not the state. The only crimes that warranted a state trial were those against the gods or directly against the state as the victim. Hence, Socrates offended the state by corrupting the youth and stating his position that there was really just one god.

Many have disagreed with Benjamin Jowett (1817 – 1893), who was a professor at the University of Oxford who translated the complete works of Plato into English. They argue that Jowett was a prominent theologian and he translated the Greek words θεός (theós), meaning “a god” or “a deity,” and δαίμων (daímōn), meaning “divine being,” as “God” with a capital G whenever possible. The criticism of Jowett’s translation making Plato and Socrates into Proto-Christians is itself based upon prejudice.

The Greek gods were NEVER represented as pagan gods insofar as they were the creators of humankind or the universe. To the Greeks, in the beginning, there was only chaos. Then out of the void appeared Erebus, the unknowable place where death dwells, and Night. All else was empty, silent, endless, darkness. Then somehow Love was born and brought a start of order. From Love came Light and Day. Once there was Light and Day, Gaea, the earth appeared. Clearly, the criticism that Jowett interpreted the Greek in view of Christianity is not correct.

Socrates did not believe in the Greek gods as creators of anything because he believed in “the Good” nature of humans. Some argue that you can believe in “the Good” while still believing in the gods. This centers on the misinterpretation of the very role of the Greek gods. They were viewed more as super-beings which we could call saints insofar as each had a specific role. Poseidon was god of the sea, earthquakes, storms, and horses and is considered one of the worst tempered, moody, and greedy Olympian gods. He was known to be vengeful when insulted.

Socrates was accused at his trial of teaching people not to worship the gods of the state. That was considered a crime against the gods, which made it a state offense. In the Apology of Socrates, Plato relays that Socrates said in the opening remarks of his speech to the jury that his accusers “… have scarcely spoken a word of truth at all.” The rest of the Apology and all Plato’s other dialogues seem to support this statement. They were against Socrates for the Oracle of Delphi had said he was the smartest man in all of Greece and made many appear to be fools. By the end of Socrates’s speech in the Apology, Plato makes it very clear that Socrates is, in fact, a very pious man who honors the gods of the state, holds the god Apollo in high esteem, and who trusts the word of the Delphic Oracle. The charges were clearly made up to be against the gods for there were no other means to go against Socrates.

We only arrive at the corruption of the law with Magna Carts in England. The king was fining people as a revenue source and here we find the demand for a trial by jury rather than by the king. In order to keep the revenue stream flowing, this is where we see the development of the violation of “disturbing the peace” of the king. Suddenly, two people get into an argument and fight. The king interjects himself as a victim for these two people disturbed his peace. From there on, the rule of law becomes perverted as a means of raising revenue for the king. If you kill someone, it is no longer the family who is the victim, it becomes the king. The penalty becomes death and that conveniently means all your assets are forfeited to the king and your family is thrown out onto the streets.

JudgeJeffreys

One of the most notorious English judges of all time was Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys of Wem, (1645–1689), who was the man that inspired the English Bill of Rights in 1689 and the insertion of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause that became the Eighth Amendment in the United States. He is best known for the “Bloody Assizes.” Jeffreys created judicial murder routinely and took pleasure in doing so. He issued harsh sentences to nearly all defendants and in a protest against taxation and abuse of government, he ordered about 300 to be executed, and between 800 and 900 he ordered to be transported to the West Indies as convict laborers. On September 18-19th, 1685, Jeffreys alone sentenced 144 people to death earning him the notorious nickname “the hanging judge.”

Charles Hibbert in his work, the Roots of Evil, quotes from one of the court transcripts, on Christmas Day no less, when Jeffreys ordered:

“Hangman, I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady. Scourge her soundly, man; scourge her till her blood runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for madam to strip. See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly.”

  Roots of Evil. 1963 Ed p29

The British legal system was so corrupt that the slightest offense, even stealing an apple, resulted in the arrest and being sold into indentured servitude, all to profit the government. As Hibbert reported the sentence imposed read:

“Because you have committed this offence, the sentence of the court is that you shall no longer be burdened with the support of your wife and family. You shall be immediately removed from a very bad climate and a country overburdened with people to one of the finest regions of the earth where demand for human labour is every hour increasing and where it is highly probable you may ultimately regain your character and improve your future.” (Roots of Evil, p145)

Ever since the rule of law has been so perverted that it has devolved into simply legal and political persecution. Whenever you allow the political state to move into a centralized power, that is when justice merely becomes the will of the government, regardless of the form of government. Socrates believed in “the Good” of the people and he paid with his life for that mistake. Plato recorded a debate between Socrates and Thrasymachus. It was Thrasymachus who argued correctly that it did not matter the form of government. Once you allow a government to become centralized and thus powerful, justice ceases to exist.

Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wrote of the Roman Emperor Commodus and the collapse in the rule of law:

“Each distinction of every kind soon became criminal. The possession of wealth stimulated the diligence of the informers; rigid virtue implied a tacit censure of the irregularities of Commodus; important services implied a dangerous superiority of merit; and the friendship of the father always insured the aversion of the son. Suspicion was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation. The execution of a considerable senator was attended with the death of all who might lament or revenge his fate; and when Commodus had once tasted human blood, he became incapable of pity or remorse”

(Book 1, Chapter 4).

Hence the saying: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely!”

The rule of law has collapsed in Western society. They say God created the 10 Commandments, which we have translated into a billion laws. The greater the regulation, the greater the injustice. The very purpose of civilization ceases to exist because it merely becomes a contest between two philosophies with the left always seeking to suppress the right who simply wants to be free. This is ultimately why all governments are buried in a common grave dug by history.

Categories: Rule of Law
Feb 12 2020

Antifascism, a worthy cause


by Tabitha Korol and Kevin O’Neil

We can all fight for a cause, but “The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. – Marcus Tullius Cicero

They began as idealists, working to save the French-Jewish army Captain Alfred Dreyfus who’d been falsely accused of conspiring with the Prussian army.  The Dreyfus Affair of the mid-1890s and early 1900s was the impulsion for people to unite in support of the rights of the individual before a military authority that was rightly seen to be draconian and dismissive.  A worthy cause, yet the case divided France into the anti-Dreyfusards, fascist, Jew-hating ultranationalists, and the “Dreyfusards,” the anti-fascists who formed associations and humanitarian consensus to gain his exoneration.                

Today’s anti-fascists, “Antifa,” miss the point if they see themselves as successors to the Dreyfusards.  The latter were inspired by love of the individual, a positive inspiration, whereas Antifa is motivated by negative hatred for the establishment and the abuse of the individual who happens to disagree with them

Defining the term fascism has proven notoriously difficult.  There were German antifascists in the early 1900s who joined the Jewish working class to fight for dignity and better wages, and Italian antifascists who fought against Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party and Hitler’s growing influence.  There were also Spanish antifascists both before and during Spain’s civil war, with writers Orwell and Hemingway among their ranks.

But there are sufficient differences between the various fascist regimes that make it virtually impossible to identify a commonality.  However, most leading scholars agree that all fascists support the violent revolutionary overthrow of the state’s entire government to be replaced with a totalitarian system that diminishes the value of the individual to a mere component of the whole.  Any difference of opinion is seen as fair game to be silenced.

Antifa are a burgeoning collection of discontented militant-leftist groups who, convinced that white supremacism was responsible for chattel slavery and the Holocaust, are allied in their attempt to overthrow “white” western government by any means available, including violence.

British political theorist Roger Griffin, author of “The Nature of Fascism,” wrote, “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is … palingenetic,”  which means that a “rebirth” would follow the demolition of the existing political order.  By this scholarly definition, Antifa’s own methods and goals fulfill the criteria – not of anti-fascism – but of Fascism!

After interviewing 61 current members in 17 countries, Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” asserts that militant antifascism is a “reasonable, historically informed response to the fascist threat that persisted” after World War II and into recent years. They argue that every fascist or white-supremacist group has the potential of being the start of Mussolini’s original hundred or Hitler’s first fifty-four members of the German Workers’ Party.  Hence, they believe they have a righteous obligation to stop what they regard as fascist “violence, incivility, discrimination, and speeches that stimulate further white supremacy, oppression and genocide.”

      And fascism, real fascism, must be opposed.  Edmund Burke’s statement was never more apposite, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

In “The View from My Window:  The Ethics of Using Violence to Fight Fascism,” Elie Wiesel recalled familiar riots while he was watching one play out below his fifth-floor window in Berkeley.  It brought to mind the millions of people who fought fascism throughout Europe and he suitably wondered at what point resistance to fascism may be justifiable.

A very sobering question!  And whatever the “point” is at which action is justified, one thing is certain: we must be able to define fascism and be convinced that the group we oppose is truly fascistic.

Not only had Wiesel witnessed real fascism at work, but had suffered from it, and lost both parents and a sister to the Nazis.  He recalled the brave month-long resistance of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto when the Nazis came to liquidate it, April 19, 1943.   Move than fifty-six thousand Jews were killed, very few escaping.  This is the face of real fascism.

America is not Warsaw; neither is it remotely similar.  We are not ruled by an authoritarian power, and our laws are not for the subjugation of the individual but for his/her protection.  Antifa must ask themselves if they are even capable of actually recognizing true Fascism.

Columnist Mark Thiessen wrote in The Washington Times (6.30.17) that Antifa was the “moral equivalent of neo-Nazis.”  The statement may or may not be prescient, but it will not be the first time in history that a movement that began as an ideological liberator abandoned reason and descended into violence and incoherent rage.  In the famous words of Goya, “The sleep of reason produces monsters.”

If Antifa truly aspire to being worthy successors to the antifascist groups of history, they must urgently learn the meaning and methods of fascism and be prepared to come to some very disturbing conclusions.

abitha Korol

https://tinyurl.com/y7e6z63d

 

Feb 12 2020

Jussie Smollett Indicted by Chicago Special Prosecutor Over Faked Hate Crime….


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on February 11, 2020 by 

Breaking reporting out of Chicago indicates a special prosecutor in Chicago has indicted hate hoax actor Jussie Smollett.

The construct of the hate crime itself appeared to be connected to a DC scheme to advance the presidential ambitions of Kamala Harris who launched her bid for office simultaneously with the racially driven hoax.

CHICAGO – Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett was indicted Tuesday in Chicago by special prosecutor Dan Webb, stemming from the alleged racist and anti-gay attack on him that occurred in January of 2019, a source confirms to FOX 32 News.

He is due in court February 24.

Smollett told Chicago police last year that two men physically attacked him and yelled racial and homophobic slurs. But prosecutors insist Smollett faked the racist, anti-gay attack on himself in the hopes that the attention would advance his acting ca

Feb 11 2020

Immoral Choice? Study Shows Fetus Feels Abortion Pain Earlier Than 24 Weeks


152K subscribers

The Patriot Post is America’s News Digest. Find out why: http://bit.ly/2RztXJh —— A Journal of Medical Ethics study, written by a consultant to Planned Parenthood, now says that a fetus in the womb can experience pain much earlier than 24 weeks of gestation — as early as 13 weeks. Does this change the moral calculation of the pro-choice message, and third-trimester abortion? Here’s a link to the article Scott Ott mentions, by Amy Hall at Stand to Reason: http://bit.ly/FetalPain Bill Whittle Now with Scott Ott is a production of our Members. Join them today https://BillWhittle.com/register/
Feb 10 2020

Berning Academia and the Warren College Education: Loans Forgiven via Transgender Kids


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If we elect as president either Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, they promise to forgive almost all student loan debt, a move guaranteed to make college unaffordable, . Warren takes her brilliant education policy a step further by promising to allow a 9-year-old transgender student to vet her nominees for Secretary of Education. Right Angle — with Scott Ott, Bill Whittle and Stephen Green — is a production of our Members, who enjoy backstage content, the power to post to our Member blog, a vibrant comments system, Member directory and private messaging. Join us today, and find your people at https://BillWhittle.com/register If you’d like to get to know the hosts of Right Angle up close and personal, come with us on a Caribbean cruise May 15-18, sailing from the port of Miami to the Bahamas. We’ll stage live versions of our shows, engage in lots of Q&A and casual conversation over meals and drinks, among the Members and fans. Learn more and book your cruise today [TIME IS ALMOST UP TO REGISTER] at http://bit.ly/StratoCruise2020 Listen to audio versions of our shows on your favorite podcast app: http://bit.ly/BWN-Podcasts Tell Alexa: “Play Bill Whittle Network on TuneIn Radio” Watch us on Amazon’s Fire TV: https://amzn.to/2Pa1mI3
Jan 30 2020

Ukrainian Piggies


The Democrat’s barnyard stinks. They have been pigs at a trough of corruption for too long.

We’ve learned that even John Bolton stuffed $115,000 into his pockets thanks to a Ukrainian steel oligarch. Is that why he became a turncoat?

We know a thoroughly unqualified cocaine addict, Hunter Biden, was appointed to the board of a leading Ukraine gas company and raked in millions of dollars. His father Joe threatened a prosecutor who wanted to investigate his son. Quid pro Joe! Same with Romney’s son. Is that why the Utah senator has backstabbed the president after pleading for his support?

Pelosi’s son Paul has also benefited from Ukraine in a deal similar to Hunter’s. He has also brokered sports deals in Ukraine while being associated with corrupt con artists.

The Democrats continue to use Saul Alinsky’s tactic of blaming opponents for what they are doing. They are determined to affix the Ukraine corruption label on the president, even if it wastes an enormous amount of time and at a cost of millions of dollars from taxpayers.

This corruption started with Farmer Obama, who ran the most scandalous administrations in history. Unfortunately he has sowed a bitter a bitter crop of corruption–not only with Ukraine, but also in our judicial system, security agencies, and of course, the mass media. Pigs who get too greedy usually get slaughtered. We’ll settle for some justice.

—The GrrrTeam

Jan 30 2020

Ukraine & the Obama/Biden Grip on Corruption that Was a Silent Counter-Revolution


Armstrong Economics Blog/Eastern Europe

Re-Posted Jan 30, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Hi Mr Armstrong,
I so much appreciate your lifetime of work and dedication to the Truth. I really appreciate so much your history lessons and deep connected objective lessons into the cumulative interconnecting web of this world we live in.

I ask a large favor .

Could you explain some Ukrainian History and in particular go into the modern history of the economic war with Russia and the US Deep state and explain how the Biden’s , Obama and the Clinton criminal machine along with the entire corrupt web of scum have and continue to infect Ukraine and how you and socrates see the future for Ukraine and our region, please .

So many of our people have been killed, murdered, mutilated, tutored . Very few Americans have even a faintest idea what life is like to just survive here . Suicides everyday.
I would love to somehow expose the Biden’s , Clinton crime family and all those criminal psychopaths.

Our entire one beautiful culture has been forever destroyed by the American MIC . Out men have been destroyed , our best killed, and all that is left is alcoholism !! and now psychopathic old men from America, from Britain come here to use our women as prostitutes !!!

I cry for my country , BUT there is NO justice as America continues to kill millions of our people with their greed, their assassination teams!!. ALL in the name of GREED.
Even in America we see the destruction of the USA.

But at least our people here in Ukraine have morals and a strong spirit as we fight for our freedom .

You Americans (not you Mr. Armstrong, as you are a true Hero and a man of absolute moral fibre and deep honor !!) , but most Americans we see as naive, nascent but worse they are cowards .

Thank you Mr. Armstrong for being the rarest man of honor

ANSWER: I have personal friends in Ukraine. I heard back in 2013 that Ukraine would be an important country to watch and that has not changed as we can see with Trump’s impeachment. I was providing advice with respect to the revolution and explained that the key to success was to divide the government. Yanukovich was using Russians and East Ukrainian Russian thugs as riot police in Kyiv. I explained that they had to get the local police to turn against the imported police. Once they accomplished that, the revolution would see victory. I had personal friends there on the barricades and I knew others administering medical attention to the injured. Even my mother was concerned because she had come to know some of them as well.

I had personal friends who took pictures with Russian soldiers inside Ukraine before anyone knew they were even there. They asked if they were there to protect them, and they responded yes. They asked if they could take their photo with them and they said of course. I clipped the photo to protect my sources.

I believe the disinformation campaign began with the vast majority of pundits claiming the revolution was all orchestrated by the CIA. That was a cover-up so people would not look at the corruption of Obama/Biden and their effort to seize Ukraine. What was really taking place was the threats that if Obama’s/Biden’s handpicked successors were overthrown by the people again, that they would be on their own and the West would not protect them from the Russians.

kyiv-ukraine-winter

I know it was not a CIA plot. They are not that good. This was a legitimate uprising for I was talking directly with my contacts in Kyiv.

The government that Obama/Biden stuffed into Ukraine was one that was simply willing to switch sides to the highest bidder. Many were simply the very same people who supported Yanukovich. Biden’s level of corruption is off the charts. It has directly infected Ukraine and has done far more damage by preventing the Ukrainian revolution from accomplishing its goal. Unfortunately, the politics in America is so divided that the Democrats will protect the Biden corruption machine, which is just a twin to that of the Clinton’s.

CNN will NEVER publish the truth about Ukraine or the Democrats. It is no longer a news operation, it has become a propaganda machine that AT&T should be embarrassed to support. One has to wonder why AT&T has become so subversive threatening the image of America internationally and fueling the deepening division in America that will undermine the entire country long-term.

Anyone who dares to try to speak out about Biden and Ukraine in America is immediately attacked. If the Justice Department investigated Biden and his family, the Democrats would call it interfering with the 2020 election.

I believe you will see another uprising in 2022 where perhaps, at last, you will be able to overthrow the corruption supported by the Obama/Biden oligarchy machine. I am sorry that the media in America has become part of the corruption that oppresses your country. In Ukraine, the Obama/Biden grip on corruption was a silent counter-revolution that prevented Ukraine from achieving its freedom.

Categories: Eastern Europe