Happy St. Patrick's Day

From the 2018 St. Patrick's Day Parade in downtown Cleveland :^):

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Income inequality is fair

Image credit: ventura632.wordpress.com

A core Tea Party value is "free markets." Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell are two economists who are able to make complicated subjects accessible to Everyman. In his column today, Mr. Williams explains why capitalism is not a zero-sum game:

Some Americans have much higher income and wealth than others. Former President Barack Obama explained, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." An adviser to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has a Twitter account called "Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure" tweeted, "My goal for this year is to get a moderator to ask 'Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?'" Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for a wealth tax, complained, "The rich and powerful are taking so much for themselves and leaving so little for everyone else."

These people would have an argument if there were piles of money on the ground called income, with billionaires and millionaires surreptitiously getting to those piles first and taking their unfair shares. In that case, corrective public policy would require a redistribution of the income, wherein the ill-gotten gains of the few would be taken and returned to their rightful owners. The same could be said if there were a dealer of dollars who — because of his being a racist, sexist, multi-nationalist and maybe a Republican — didn't deal the dollars fairly. If he dealt millions to some and mere crumbs to others, decent public policy would demand a re-dealing of the dollars, or what some call income redistribution.

. . .

A system that requires that one serve his fellow man to have a claim on what he produces is far more moral than a system without such a requirement. For example, Congress can tell me, "Williams, you don't have to get out in that hot sun to mow a lawn to have a claim on what your fellow man produces. Just vote for me, and through the tax code, I will take some of what your fellow man produces and give it to you."

Let's look at a few multibillionaires to see whether they have served their fellow man well. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, with a net worth over $90 billion, is the second-richest person in the world. He didn't acquire that wealth through violence. Millions of people around the world voluntarily plunked down money to buy Microsoft products. That explains the great wealth of people such as Gates. They discovered what their fellow man wanted and didn't have, and they found out ways to effectively produce it. Their fellow man voluntarily gave them dollars. If Gates and others had followed President Obama's advice that "at a certain point" they'd "made enough money" and shut down their companies when they had earned their first billion or two, mankind wouldn't have most of the technological development we enjoy today.

. . .

The only people who benefit from class warfare are politicians and the elite; they get our money and control our lives. 

Say what you like about Bill Gates; Mr. Williams has a point. The full article is here. 

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Sen Rob Portman votes against Trump's national emergency at the border

From Breitbart:

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rob Portman (R-OH), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Roy Blunt (R-MO) voted in favor of eliminating Trump’s national emergency, which would make it harder to secure America’s southern border.

Not veto-proof but still sickening. 

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Your cell phone and Google

image credit: andysowards.com

Google Exec Admits to Congress That They're Tracking Us 

Even with 'Location' Turned Off

Paula Bolyard reports at PJ Media (via Blazing Cat Fur) on yesterday's congressional hearing:

A Google executive admitted during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that Google tracks users' phones  — even when their location history is turned off.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) questioned Google Senior Privacy Counsel Will DeVries about the company's tracking policies during a hearing examining online consumer privacy. Some of DeVries' answers will likely disturb consumers who thought there was a way to avoid being tracked by Google through their phones.

. . .

DeVries explained that it's "complicated" -- a word that he used several times as he tried to evade Hawley's questions about why Google tracks its users' locations.

. . .

PJM's Phil Baker explained in December 2018 how to turn off as many tracking features as possible on your phone, but ultimately, users need to understand that Google has the ability to track you anytime you're carrying your phone. As Congress and Big Tech continue to duke it out over privacy issues — which may ultimately lead to new laws designed to protect consumers' private data — it's imperative to understand that your smartphone is a sophisticated geotracking advice. For now, that is the price you pay for the "free" services Google provides.

Full article at PJ Media is here. I don’t use a cell phone very often, but I have already switched from using Google on my desktop computer. And it’s easy for computer illiterates such as myself. Instead of Google, choose DuckDuckGo or StartPage as your search engine in your default settings menu.

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Pushing back against Socialism

A.F. Branco cartoon credit: Townhall 

There are a lot of good editorials online this week comparing capitalism and socialism. But Alicia Colon is always one of my favorite contributors, and her column today begins

If Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had grown up as I did during the Cold War in the 50's the very last thing she would be promoting would be socialism.

Granted our circumstances were very different as my family was dysfunctional, poor and we lived in the tough streets of Spanish Harlem; unlike the new Democrat congresswoman who spent most of her teen years in a more posh neighborhood.

Nevertheless I benefited from a solid parochial education taught by anti-Marxist nuns.

AOC, as she is now known, is a product of academic indoctrination by Marxists professors who have obviously never read Animal Farm or 1984 and are enthralled with the socialist agenda.

. . .

As poor as we were, we felt fortunate to live in this great country where we had the freedom to become whatever we chose to be. Most of us wanted to become wealthy enough to leave the inner city and raise healthy families. That was not possible under communism where the state ruled over everyone's lives.

. . .

AOC and so many poorly educated millenials have become useful idiots for the progressive Marxists disciples of Saul Alinsky and the Frankfurt School that Andrew Breitbart warned us about. We, who lived in the ‘50's, learned how to think and reason so that the very idea of global warming smelled to high heaven. How on earth could we plan to save a planet that old based on data that has only been around for a few hundred years?

. . .

Unfortunately, the feeble-minded have the stage right now and it is up to us older citizens in the silent majority to cut through the lies of the progressive and lamestream press and recognize that it is no longer viable for Americans not to get involved with politics. One of the major parties has been hijacked and supports infanticide, anti-Semitism and boos when it hears the name of God.

The full article is here. And Roger L. Simon at PJ Media comes to the same conclusion:

Those of us who believe in the market, even with the usual reservations, should be preparing for battle. We have in our corner that some Democrats (Omar, AOC, etc.) are heading off a cliff. That's to the good, but complacency is our enemy. As the left would say, the struggle continues (la lucha continua). Let's turn it back on them.

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Speaker Pelosi rules out impeachment?

photo credit: (apologies to) paradigmsanddemographics.blogspot.com

Headline news! Joshua Caplan at Breitbart reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is ruling out impeaching President Donald Trump, arguing in an interview with the Washington Post Monday that “he’s just not worth it.”

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it,” Pelosi told the Post.

Translation: Speaker Pelosi must know that Robert Mueller's upcoming report has nothing. Full Breitbart report is here. 

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Nancy Pelosi's problem

Ben Garrison cartoon credit: conservativedailynews.com

Newt Gingrich’s take on the chaos in Congress:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi – and the old guard Democrats at large – are in a very difficult position.

The radical young voters the Democrats have been courting for years have finally elected like-minded radical young representatives – and Pelosi and her leadership team has no control over them.

A big reason why, as I mentioned on Hannity this week, is that there is a wide generational gap between Democratic House leadership and freshmen Democrats, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and others.

. . .

The result is, these new Democrats are throwing a party – and the grandparents aren’t invited. Pelosi and members of Democratic leadership are simply trapped in a cycle of responding to headlines. This is how you end up with the so-called Green New Deal, which is a work of complete legislative fantasy that would utterly bankrupt the country. It’s also how the House got to a second forced public condemnation of the new Democrats’ flagrant anti-Semitism. Pelosi simply can’t control the young, radical, progressive wing, which is ardently socialist, anti-Israel, and contemptuous of America and its history. 

. . .

Already, because of Pelosi’s inability to control her caucus, the Democrats can’t do anything positive. It’s making them desperate. The most they can do is focus their efforts on their shared vendetta against President Trump and everyone in his orbit.

. . .

These divides in the Democratic Party are only going to become more pronounced as Pelosi’s grip slips further. The new Democrats’ private party will become increasingly raucous until it has lost all touch with normal Americans. Moderate Democrats will have to continue answering for their colleague’s radicalism. Pelosi and the grandparents will not be invited along, but they will still be left cleaning up the mess.

The rest of Mr. Speaker's column is here.

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