This Time Socialism Will Work Because We Are Going To Do It Right

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I know that this week everybody’s attention has been diverted to the Kavanaugh confirmation circus. Have we missed anything important? Before we all move on, I want to draw readers’ attention to one of the more preposterous items to appear in the New York Times this week (I know that’s a low bar). The article appeared on Monday (October 1) with the headline “Detailed New National Maps Show How Neighborhoods Shape Children for Life.” The sub-headline is “Some places lift children out of poverty. Others trap them there. Now cities are trying to do something about the difference.” The reporters are Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui.

What makes this article preposterous? It’s preposterous because it’s yet another exemplar from the genre of “this time we’re going to do socialism right and finally it’s going to work.” Of course, the word “socialism” itself is not used. But the subject of the article is publicly-subsidized housing for the poor — classic “to each according to his needs” redistributionism. We all know that this sure hasn’t worked so far.

Let’s start with some background so that you will understand where this article fits in. . . .

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How To Tell That The Battle To Stop Kavanaugh Is Over

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Is the battle to stop the Kavanaugh confirmation ongoing? Or really, is it over? No official admission of defeat has been issued by Senate Democrats or any of their allies. Yet there are many clues out there, and they all seem to be pointing in the same direction: “this is over.” Of the many clues, which one is the most definitive?

Here are some of candidates:

  • An early clue was the emergence of second and third accusers Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick. Could these two transparent frauds have been better selected if the only purpose was to undermine the potential credibility of the only potentially credible accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? I mean, in case you might have been inclined to give an apparently damaged woman (Ford) the benefit of the doubt, and in case you might have thought it unlikely that there could be anyone out there so malicious and so overcome with hatred and anger for all things Republican that they would make up completely fake stories about old sexual assaults, now you know. . . .

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Attention Yale Alumni

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If you didn’t go to Yale, you probably don’t pay much attention to how insane that place has become in the past several years. I bring this up today because a guy named Jamie Kirchick is running an insurgent candidacy for Yale Trustee. He needs about 5000 signatures to get on the ballot, and apparently is a few hundred short. And today (at midnight) is the deadline for submitting signatures.

As to the insanity at Yale, here are some reminders if you need them: . . .

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In Case You Didn't Realize, It's All-Out War Out There

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If the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings have done anything for us, it has been to make absolutely clear that our political arena today is in a state of all-out war. The old term was “polarization.” That seems so quaint now.

It’s not my purpose to weigh in on the credibility contest between Judge Kavanaugh and his main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. What’s more notable to me is that the Democrats, to a person, have shown that they care so desperately about stopping this guy. It’s not just that the principal accusation in question is so old, and so completely uncorroborated, and involving people of such a young age, that I would never have thought that Senators of either party would have brought a witness like this forward in such a context. But then there are all the surrounding indicia of no-holds-barred fight to the death: holding the accusation secret for six weeks and then springing it on the eve of a vote in a Hail Mary play for delay; dishonoring the accuser’s request for anonymity and turning her into roadkill of proceedings where all that counts is momentary political advantage; the sudden last-minute emergence of multiple additional accusers, each more preposterous than the next, including one alleging that the nominee organized a dozen or so gang rape parties.

And of course, meanwhile, as one example, there is the near total lack of interest in recent, credible, well-corroborated reports of physical abuse of two women by the Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, who is also the Democratic candidate for Attorney General of Minnesota.

You could be forgiven for concluding that there must be something much more important at stake here than what did or did not happen at some house in the DC suburbs in the summer of 1982. Or, at least, something that is perceived as being much more important. . . .

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The Never-Ending Saga Of Climate Futility

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There are two essential elements to climate change advocacy, which are not necessarily that closely related. Element number one is the idea that human “greenhouse gas” emissions, principally CO2 from burning fossil fuels, are causing a crisis of global warming that poses an existential danger to mankind. Element number two is that our government must and can address the crisis by imposing laws and regulations to restrict use of fossil fuels and thus emissions of CO2, thereby “saving the planet.”

Maybe you accept element one. This post only addresses element two. Here’s the fundamental question: Even assuming that element number one is completely accepted, is there anything that the U.S. can do to address the question of CO2 emissions that is other than an exercise in total futility, particularly given what is going on in the rest of the world?

Let’s consider a few data points for this month. First up, we have the ongoing saga of the litigation over the Obama administration’s so-called “Clean Power Plan,” currently becalmed in the DC Circuit. . . .

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With Elections Approaching, How Is Progressive New York Doing?

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While you are probably focusing on the mid-term elections for the federal House and Senate, here in New York State we also have all the executive offices up (Governor, Comptroller, Attorney General), and the entire state legislature as well. (New York City elections are on a different schedule, next to occur in 2021.) So it’s an appropriate time to ask how our progressive blue-state model of government is doing.

The short answer is, in New York we pay far more for our government than those in other states, for below average results. New York State has been declining economically relative to the rest of the country since at least the 1930s, and there is every reason to believe that that trend will continue. Meanwhile, the voters will overwhelmingly vote for continuation of current policies.

At the City Journal, Nicole Gelinas summarizes the situation over the past 10 years in a September 21 article titled “New York’s Lost Decade.” She could just as easily have made it eight decades, but whatever. The short summary is that tax revenues, particularly from the securities industry in New York City, have increased substantially; and yet the money has been swallowed up by hiring more people and paying them more to do the exact same thing, with no notably changed results. Poof! and it’s gone. . . .

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