2019 - Page 4 of 16 - Civic Finance

Imagining Chelsea Clinton’s America

October 13, 2019/by Edward Ring

“I think about the country they’re living in right now it’s not the country I want them to grow up in.”
– Chelsea Clinton, speaking on “The View” (ABC), October 2, 2019

It’s nice to know we have Chelsea Clinton to advise us on the state of America today. And since Chelsea Clinton reliably channels the conventional wisdom of the establishment Left in America, it is useful to wonder what sort of country her children would grow up in, if she could wave a wand and let the Left win every battle for the next twenty years.

Not that much magic is needed. The miraculous arrival of Donald Trump may just be a speed bump on the road to Chelsea’s utopia. So let’s get busy – how would Chelsea’s dream unfold?

It would begin with President Trump losing the 2020 election. The relentless onslaught of corporate media attacks would sway low information fence sitters who only read headlines. That, combined with an overwhelming advantage in support from the political bureaucracies, the intelligence community, public and private sector unions, globalist billionaires, and ballot harvesting operations that would make Boss Tweed blush, would tilt the balance decisively in favor of the Warren/Harris ticket.

Along with the White House, if we’re to remain true to Chelsea’s fantasy, control of the Senate would pass to the Democrats, who would also extend their majority in the House of Representatives. With power to match their vigor, the Warren administration would get to work. In every area, transformative legislation would pour out of Washington. A few highlights:

Medicare is extended to all residents of America, citizen and noncitizen alike.
Versions of AOC’s “Just Society” suite of legislation, along with the “Green New Deal” is passed by both houses of congress and signed by President Warren.
$500 billion in “reparations” are approved for descendants of African slaves.
The US pledges to accept all refugees as directed by the United Nations if they aren’t admitted to other nations – over 1.0 million refugees per year begin to arrive in the U.S., along with 1.0 million illegal migrants, along with 1.0 million legal migrants.
The minimum age to vote is lowered to age 16.
Border wall upgrades and extensions are stopped, ICE is abolished.
Race and gender quotas are extended into all areas of society and aggressively enforced.

By 2024, progressive control of all branches of the federal government ensure Warren’s reelection. By now the electorate is firmly convinced that whatever inequalities exist in the nation are the product of racism and sexism, requiring sweeping remedies. At the same time, a supermajority of voters now believe that no cost is too great to prevent “climate change.” With these two issues the top priorities for voters, the electoral algebra becomes immutable. And where the rhetoric of resentment and fear prevails, heretofore unthinkable policies follow.

How the Left consolidated its power in the 2020s centered around one fundamental shift in how Americans lived. Fulfilling a process that began nearly a century earlier, but finally completed during the Warren administration, it became virtually impossible for any household with income below the top 20 percent to pay their bills. As a consequence, free tuition, free healthcare, and rent subsidies became necessary for most of the population to survive. Just as a supermajority of voters believed the rhetoric of identity politics and climate politics, a supermajority of voters could no longer pay their bills without depending on the government.

The irony was that it was Democratic policies that caused everything to cost so much. The “Just Society” and “Green New Deal” agenda were merely extensions of leftist policies that had been creeping forward for decades, all with the approval of Wall Street, multinational corporations, and the super rich. Central to this agenda was to restrict the growth of cities and ration the use of energy and water, in order to prevent climate change.

At the same time as investors and corporations were harvesting trillions in profits and capital gains by cutting out any competitors to develop land, energy, or water infrastructure, millions upon millions of economic and political refugees were pouring into the United States each year. The means to accommodate these new arrivals within the footprint of existing cities was a gold mine for the propertied elite, but wreaked havoc on ordinary Americans trying to make ends meet. With demand outpacing supply at every turn, there was bound to be a squeeze.

In city after city, draconian ordinances overrode zoning laws with decades of precedence. Investors could demolish single family homes and erect fourplexes, or more units, where one household had previously stood. Rent control laws, combined with mandated conservation retrofits (to prevent climate change), made it hard for anyone apart from large institutional investors to maintain rental properties. Single family homes became worth more to buyers if they were demolished and replaced with apartments. New laws made it obligatory to accept Section 8 renters whose rent would be paid by taxpayers. Corporate behemoths busted block after block, in city after city, turning communities into government housing projects. Those who objected were branded as racists, deniers, xenophobes, and NIMBYs. They were silenced.

Chelsea Clinton, of course, along with all the politically connected, well fed animals in this new Animal Farm called America, resided in a gated community. These elite communities were not technically exempt from resettlement laws, densification zoning, and landlord obligations to admit Section 8 and similarly taxpayer subsidized renters. But they had a critical mass of super rich, super connected residents, who deployed private litigation to chase block busting investors to more remunerative pastures.

After Warren’s second term, in 2028 the anointed heir, Kamala Harris, stepped into the presidency. America had now firmly become a one-party state, following trend-setting California. At this point another watershed would be reached, as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both entering their 80s, would retire from the U.S. Supreme Court. Replaced by hard core leftists, the court would swing into action on a host of issues where they had been the last holdout.

For example, the high court finally ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in a the landmark case pioneered a decade earlier in Juliana v. United States. The court agreed that fossil fuel corporations had knowingly misled the public about their role in causing climate change, and ordered trillions in reparations. More spending. More bureaucracy.

By the time the leftist machine reelects Harris in 2032, however, problems caused by the leftist agenda are becoming untenable. But it’s not America’s domestic tranquility that is out of control. America, with help from a profitably partnered Silicon Valley elite, has become an extremely efficient police state. The online censors silence and erase dissidents. Individualized psychographic diagnostics, fed by the panopticon of wired devices, identify and neutralize anyone rebellious enough to even consider moving beyond protest rhetoric. And the propaganda machine grinds on, mingling messages expertly crafted to manipulate voters alongside immersive virtual fantasies that make living in the real world almost irrelevant.

The rest of the “real world,” however, by now has had enough of America. While the Leftist cabal at home rationed investments in energy, infrastructure, and the military, in exchange for massive entitlement spending, resentment grew overseas. In place of genuine economic growth, the U.S. GDP and the U.S. dollar was collateralized by asset bubbles created by artificial scarcity.

America’s financial power was becoming recognized as fraudulent, hollowed out by years of malinvestment. But around the world, ostensibly to combat climate change, but in reality to maintain the imperium against rising competitors, the U.S. continued to thwart investment in affordable fossil fuel, or even nuclear power.

To keep the scam alive, billions of dollars were sent without conditions to kleptocratic but compliant despots, and the strategy worked until restive populations, denied affordable energy and water, rebelled en-masse. Across Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, revolutions raged. In the ensuing breakdown, desperate hordes demolished what paltry reserves of forest were left (and so much of the land was covered with solar panels and biofuel plantations, owned by multinationals). Within months, they consumed the fragile, final remnants of wildlife in a starvation induced frenzy.

By 2034, when President Harris ordered the U.S. military to intervene in dozens of hot spots, America’s depleted, obsolete capital ships and planes could not respond. Nearly two decades of budgetary famine, combined with a war fighting doctrine that focused primarily on what gender pronouns to enforce, had left America’s military a hollow shell. Other nations took notice.

In a move long planned, the fascist superpower allies, China and Russia, announced a new world order. Overnight, confidence in American preeminence collapsed, and with it, the value of the U.S. dollar. The collateral fueled asset bubble that had offered decades of phony propulsion to the U.S. economy imploded, and with that, America’s federal government lost its ability to dole out free rent, health care, tuition and food. But the Left had one more card up their sleeves.

While America’s leftist overlords had neglected every tangible activity that might nurture a genuinely productive economy, they never faltered in their program of mass indoctrination. America’s citizens were appalled and anxious at the depression they faced, but they were primed to believe whatever they were told as to the cause. All the same answers were trotted out, with a new twist: “It’s the Chinese and the Russians,” thundered Kamala Harris through her teleprompter. “They are going to impose an oil and gas economy on our comrades around the world, destroying the planet,” she screamed. “We must stop them at any cost,” were her obedient admonitions, as her corporate leftist puppeteers veered the nation towards total war to clean things up and stimulate the crashed economy.

Unfortunately, in the stupefying cataclysm that ensued, America’s Left had overplayed their hand, and found themselves outgunned by their adversaries. A hypersonic glide vehicle, released from a ballistic missile, found its way to a certain gated community, obliterating it, along with many other communities across the land. Chelsea Clinton’s America ended in that moment, at least for her. But it was the America that she’d wanted her children to grow up in.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Edward Ring

Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, and other media outlets.

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CalPERS is Investing in Chinese Companies

October 12, 2019/by Edward Ring

On October 1st, 2019, the People’s Republic of China celebrated its 70th anniversary. The centerpiece of their festivities was a massive military parade down the streets of Beijing, and the centerpiece of that parade was China’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-41. This missile travels at a speed of Mach 25, carries multiple nuclear warheads, and can reach the United States in under 30 minutes.

California’s public employees will be pleased to know that their retirement funds have invested in companies controlled by the Chinese military, which manufacture parts for the DF-41 missile, along with a range of aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, and airborne weapons.

For that matter, these pension funds not only invest in Chinese companies (and index funds, tracked by mutual funds, that are heavily weighted with Chinese companies) directly involved in manufacturing military equipment and surveillance equipment, they also invest in Chinese companies involved directly or indirectly in human rights, labor rights, and environmental protection violations all over the world.

California’s largest public employee pension fund, CalPERS, provides a case in point. In search of the elusive and eternal 7 percent annual return, CalPERS nonetheless foregoes investments in Iran, Sudan, assault rifles, tobacco products, and thermal coal. But CalPERS continues to invest in Chinese companies.

A review of what is still the most recent report on CalPERS investments, dated 6/30/2018, show there is no summary wherein their international investments are subtotaled by country. A keyword search under “China” turns up 172 companies, partnerships, etc., nearly all of which (by virtue of their name) are probably based in China, with a total market value of $3.1 billion. This is obviously understating the total, since, for example, one of the listed companies, “Bank of Chongqing Co Ltd,” is almost certainly a Chinese company, but along with many others, is not within that total.

Roger Robinson, president and CEO of RWR Advisory Group, a Washington DC based risk consultancy, is an expert on U.S. investments in China. When reached for comment, he posed the following question, “Why would CalPERS hold in their investment portfolio Chinese and Russian companies either actively, or passively via index providers, that have been sanctioned by the U.S.?

Robinson, who earlier served as chairman of the congressional U.S./China Economic and Security Review Commission, elaborated on the risks facing pension funds that invest in China. “Doesn’t being sanctioned represent an asymmetric material risk to the share values and corporate reputations of these companies, and if so, are California’s public employees being properly protected as investors?”

Concerns about U.S. investment in China is spreading. Earlier this year, according to a press release from his office, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R, Florida) “requested information from MSCI, Inc. (MSCI) regarding the company’s controversial decision to add Chinese companies in its equity indexes. MSCI indexes are listed on U.S. stock exchanges and available to retail investors. The MSCI Emerging Market Index includes 24 countries with emerging economies, including China. Specifically, Rubio requested information regarding whether MSCI examined the potential for funding Chinese companies involved in the Chinese government and Communist Party’s military, espionage, human rights violations.”

Because mutual funds that collectively manage direct investments totaling several trillion dollars will mirror the selection and weighting of companies in the MSCI index, their decision to increase their holdings in Chinese companies offers a tangible benefit to those companies. It translates directly into increased U.S. investment into China by any pension system that includes MSCI tracking funds in their portfolios.

In response to a request for the total value of CalPERS investments in Chinese companies, CalPERS did not answer, offering an innocuous non-reply “CalPERS is a global investor, with holdings in approximately 49 countries. Our Annual Investment Report reflects all investments at the end of the most recent fiscal year.”

While there is a legitimate moral argument for constructive engagement governing investment policies, even with a nation as problematic as China, that argument becomes strained when examining certain companies that are part of the CalPERS investment portfolio.

A blistering report published by Bloomberg Businessweek in Sept. 2018 highlights abuses committed by China Communications Construction Co., which CalPERS owned shares in as of 6/30/2018. The in-depth article recounts fraudulent bidding practices, corruption, environmental violations, mistreatment of workers, national security concerns, and even a role in building Chinese military bases on reefs in disputed areas of the South China Sea. Bloomberg writes, “There’s no shortage of companies, including American ones, that have been accused of bribery and environmental damage when operating abroad. Yet the number and scope of allegations involving CCCC set it apart.”

Another Chinese company where CalPERS owns shares is China Aerospace International Holding, a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., which is operated by the People’s Liberation Army, and China Unicom, a company which, according to the Washington Post, helped build and operate North Korea’s internet network.

When contacted regarding its Chinese holdings, the following response came from CalPERS: “CalPERS has a fiduciary duty to ensure retirement benefits for our members after a career in public service. To that end, we will pursue and explore all legal investments that help us further that goal.”

While investing in China remains legal, it may be argued that these investments, at the very least, challenge CalPERS divestment principles. On page 15 of their Total Fund Investment Policy, human rights violations are an important focus.

When asked about how ongoing and escalating human rights violations by the Chinese regime in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, and within Central China could be reconciled with their divestment principles, the response from CalPERS was “CalPERS believes engagement with the companies we own is the most fruitful way to enact change. In limited cases, divestment decisions have been mandated by legislative action and by the Board in accordance with our policies.”

A troubling article published in Epoch Times in July 2019 exposed allegedly deep ties between the Chinese regime and the Chief Investment Officer at CalPERS, Yu Ben Meng. The article claims that Meng’s position as deputy CIO at China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which he occupied from 2015-2018, “have provoked controversy about the operations of the largest public retirement fund in the United States.”

SAFE is responsible for managing over $3 trillion in foreign reserves controlled by China. According to Investopedia, “Its mandate includes the study and implementation of policy measures for the gradual advancement of the convertibility of the renminbi (CNY), China’s official currency.” Apart from the Chinese military, maybe, it’s hard to imagine an organization more central to the global strategy of the Chinese regime than SAFE. Meng’s role as deputy CIO with SAFE almost certainly put him in regular contact with the most powerful people in China.

CalPERS did not react favorably to a question about Meng’s role with SAFE. When asked “Is it plausible to assume that when the Chinese hired Mr. Meng to occupy a high ranking position with SAFE from 2015-2018, that the Chinese government relied on his loyalty to the Chinese regime,” the response was:

“Your suggestion is patently absurd, and frankly, offensive. Ben Meng is a United States citizen born in China. He is globally respected investor, serves as a member of the CFA Institute’s Future of Finance Advisory Council, and is an associate editor for the Journal of Investment Management. Mr. Meng has a Ph.D. from University of California, Davis. In addition, he not only has master’s degree in financial engineering from University of California, Berkeley, but has also taught at the Haas School of Business where he was the recipient of the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching. Mr. Meng was hired by CalPERS after a rigorous recruitment for the CIO position and was found to be the most qualified and best-positioned candidate to lead the investment office and to help ensure the security and sustainability of the CalPERS fund.”

This is indeed a touchy subject. But what happens if constructive engagement with China fails? What if the momentum of history finds the United States in another cold war, this time with China?

Here, quoted from People’s Daily (use Google translator), is Meng’s reaction in 2017 to working again in his native China, after moving to the U.S. at age 25, “In a person’s life, if there is an opportunity to work for the motherland, this responsibility and honor is unmatched by anything.”

This Chinese “motherland,” as reported earlier this month by NPR, is now “The U.S.’s top intelligence threat.”

Nathan Yu, an investigative reporter for Epoch Times who has covered communist China for years, had this to say when asked if Yu Ben Meng might have a conflict of interest as chief investment officer of CalPERS. “He was part of the Thousand Talent Plan which is operated by the Chinese regime, but we don’t have proof that he has ties to the Chinese Communist Party other than what is available to the public.” As reported in June 2018 by the South China Morning Post, “China’s “Thousand Talents” programme to tap into its citizens educated or employed in the US is a key part of multi-pronged efforts to transfer, replicate and eventually overtake US military and commercial technology, according to US intelligence officials.”

CalPERS did not respond to multiple follow up requests to disclose whether or not Yu Ben Meng has ever received a security clearance from the Chinese regime, or was ever a member of the Chinese communist party. In a follow up email, their statement read “We have no additional comments, other than what we’ve said: Ben is a U.S. citizen and an investor respected globally for his skill and integrity.”

Yu elaborated on the risks of investing in China, highlighting both a financial and moral hazard. “There are so many uncertainties when you go to China to invest. Most investors have not thought through the circumstances in China. It is a country without any transparency. A country that puts the communist party above the law. If there is ever serious instability going on in China against the ruling communist party they will use whatever means available to control the investments and financial markets. If anything like that happens it is a big risk to all the investments from the US in China.”

On the moral hazard of investing in China, Yu had this to say. “Of course it empowers the Chinese regime to have the money flowing in. The investment from the US to China empowers the Chinese regime and helps the regime to continue its human rights violations and persecution of religious groups. Investors really need to think about the values behind their investments. When Americans invest in China it violates our values and empowers the values we’re against – we empower the forces against transparency and rights of personal happiness. The Chinese regime has no respect for the right to pursue happiness.”

An August 2019 article in the Atlantic offers a sobering assessment of China’s intensifying espionage offensive against the United States. But the writer concludes with a caution against overreacting, pointing out “China is both a rival and a top trade partner. The economic and research relationship between the two countries benefits them both. At the same time, Chinese immigrants and visitors to America risk being unfairly targeted if U.S. officials fail to find the right balance.”

The challenges and controversy facing CalPERS is certainly bigger than who they’ve hired to be their CIO. There are gaping contradictions in their investment policies, which exclude nations like Iran and Sudan, yet favor nations like China which are just as repressive to their citizens, and pose a far greater threat to the security of the United States.

The risks and hazards of U.S. pension funds investing in Chinese companies, directly or indirectly, is not going away. In August of this year, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D, New Hampshire), joined with Senator Rubio in a bipartisan effort to pressure the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which manages pension assets for federal employees, to “reverse a decision that is set to channel billions of US dollars into funding Chinese companies that they say support Beijing’s military, espionage and domestic security efforts.”

It’s worth asking Mr. Meng, along with all of his deputies in the CalPERS investment office: When are you going invest tens of billions in equity positions in California’s infrastructure projects? When are you going to accept lower rates of return, so you don’t have to chase emerging markets that include China, which is arguably the biggest security threat the United States has ever faced? And when are California’s public sector unions, to whom you answer, going to establish investment rules that benefit an American “belt and road” initiative, instead of furthering the strategic objectives of a murderous regime halfway around the world?

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Edward Ring

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Beto O’Rourke’s Finest Hour is Debunked in Banned Video

October 8, 2019/by Edward Ring

On July 30th, 2019, sharing a stage in Detroit with nine other Democrat contenders for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination, Beto O’Rourke outdid himself. His finest moment came midway through the debate in response to a question about racism in America.

In a well rehearsed tirade that went well beyond his allotted time, O’Rourke – who fancies himself a cross between Jack Kerouac and Martin Luther King, with a soupçon of Che Guevara and a dash of Mother Teresa thrown in – denounced America’s entire identity, from founding to the present, as defined by violent white racists. His opening line went something like this:

“This country [dramatic pause, as if the weight of it all is too much for him emotionally], though we would like to think otherwise, was founded on racism, has persisted through racism, and is racist today.”

In another corner of America, someone was watching O’Rourke on July 30th, recording what he was saying and was about to say. This man wasn’t running for president, and he doesn’t work for a major news network. But his name is Vincent James, one of the most data driven video journalists in all of American alternative media. That attention to detail has earned James, and his channel, “The Red Elephants Vincent James,” over 290,000 online subscribers and his videos have been watched over 34 million times, just on YouTube.

Just on YouTube because the assortment of facts that James posted in response to O’Rourke’s unfactual diatribe was banned from YouTube, and has to be viewed on BitChute. This video, still up on BitChute, is entitled “How the Left is Pushing America Further Right,” and Exhibit A is O’Rourke’s cavalcade of lies, which James exposes and debunks, one at a time.

Beto’s Examples of White Racism, #1
Disproportionate Sentencing

O’Rourke’s first point, following his opening, was “There are 2.3 million people behind bars tonight while we enjoy our freedom, disproportionately comprised of people of color…”

For James, as he puts it, exposing this particular falsehood is picking low hanging fruit. He immediately refers his viewers to “Table 43A of the FBI 2017 Crime Statistics,” shown below.

The inimitable Vincent James doesn’t stop at pointing out the obvious, that total arrests for murder in the US in 2017 were 9,468, of which, 5,025 were blacks. He then does something that is yet another example of the power of alternative media – on screen, using his cell phone calculator, he shows the viewer how to use that information to calculate crime rates per 100,000 of population, which is a common way for actuaries and other analysts to measure human behaviors. As it turns out, he demonstrates that Blacks in the U.S. were arrested for murder in 2017 at a rate of 12.5 per 100,000, whereas the rate in that year for non-Hispanic Whites was 1.4 per 100,000, nine times less likely.

One of the hallmarks of watching Vincent James is his painstaking attention to statistical data, and he doesn’t disappoint in this video, putting up a series of compiled bar graphs that show how, in every significant category – murder, robbery, rape, assault – Black crime rates per 100,000 are approximately five times greater than the rates for Hispanics, and approximately ten times greater than the rate for non-Hispanic Whites.

These are fairly straightforward facts, coming from the FBI, and these facts, according to James, are the reason Blacks are incarcerated at a higher rate than members of other ethnic groups. But James isn’t done. If you want attention to detail and lots of data, watch Vincent James.

He then corroborates the FBI statistics with CDC data, displaying a report (depicted below) showing that homicide rates – meaning all murders whether or not there was an arrest – are also about ten times higher among Black victims than among non-Hispanic White victims. He corroborates that with a May 2019 study by the Violence Policy Center which looked at these rates per state and came up with similar findings to the CDC.

James demonstrates, pretty much irrefutably, that the reason Blacks are disproportionately more represented in prison in America is because Blacks commit disproportionately more crimes.

Beto’s Examples of White Racism, #2
A “Rise” in Hate Crimes

James is just getting warmed up, however, as he examines O’Rourke’s next point. As O’Rourke put it:

“But it was only until this administration, and this president, (heavy pause, dramatic gesticulations from the gangly SJW), that racism was invited out into the open [another heavy pause, audience applause]. For the last three years, there’s been a rise in hate crimes in every single one of them; those counties that hosted a Trump rally in 2016 saw on average more than a 200 percent increase in hate crimes.”

To lead into his response, another dizzying array of debunking statistics, James coolly explains “the term ‘White’ and the term ‘hate crime’ have become sort of a collocation at this point, but it’s absolutely false.” He then pulls out the FBI statistics on hate crimes by race of offender and victim, and shows the overall number of hate crime convictions in 2017, 6,370, was only slightly higher than the number of hate crime convictions in 2016, at 5,770.

James then cites studies – always with onscreen images of the actual data – showing, on the other hand, a sharp rise in hate crime hoaxes in recent years. But his most noteworthy point is that it is not White people who are committing the most hate crimes, and it isn’t even close. This is something that runs utterly counter to Beto’s entire spiel, and by extension, to the entire narrative being fomented by the Democrats and the media in America today.

As shown in the next image grabbed from his video, James has analyzed FBI data on hate crime convictions by perpetrator and calculates a rate of 3.5 per 100,000 Black Americans, compared to a rate of 1.1 per 100,000 non-Hispanic White Americans. This is an astonishing finding. While these rates are low in both cases, a Black American is more than three times as likely to commit a hate crime as a White American.

One has to ask, who is going to compile and report this data, if not Vincent James? Will this sort of information ever appear on CNN, or even on Fox? This is not pleasant data to review. But neither is Beto O’Rourke’s phony sermon, filled with lies and calculated to foment racial tension. The next slide James prepared further illustrates the absurdity of claiming that Whites, overall, are the most likely commit acts of violence against members of other races. And again, it’s not even close.O’Rourke wasn’t through, however, and neither is James. O’Rourke’s next target was America’s racist system of public education.

Beto’s Examples of White Racism, #3
Racist Bias in School Punishments

Struggling to contain his indignation, O’Rourke offered yet another example of endemic racist behavior on the part of White Americans towards “people of color:”

“In a kindergarten classroom, a four or five year old child [“of color”] is five times more likely to be disciplined, or suspended, or expelled, than a white child and by the same teacher for the same infraction in the same classroom today.”

James proceeds to dig out an NPR report on the study O’Rourke referenced, highlighting on the screen the actual text of the article where it does state that there is a higher rate of discipline, but it’s three times higher, not five times higher. And that’s just for starters.

The study, “Data Snapshot: School Discipline,” produced in 2014 by Obama’s Dept. of Education, says nothing about the same teacher administering differing punishments based on race, or for the same infraction, or even whether the suspensions they tracked are the result of repeat infractions vs first offenses. And, as James shows, the NPR report summarizing the study acknowledges that the study made no attempt to explain why there might be a disparity in suspensions.

Where the Dept. of Education steers clear of explanation, however, James dives in, offering reasons that might be obvious to anyone who isn’t determined to merely ascribe all statistical disparities based on race to the all encompassing bromide “white man bad.”

Most obvious, and color blind, is the parental status of K-12 students. The next two tables show an extremely high correlation between success in school and parental status. In the first table, immediately below, it can be seen that children in single mother homes are 2.5 times more likely to find themselves in juvenile detention. As the next table shows, this translates into a much higher likelihood of a child not completing high school.

The next slide, below, shows that nearly all high school dropouts come from single-mother households. The absence of two parents, typically the absence of the father, is the variable most highly correlated to failure to graduate high school. And this is also perhaps the primary factor that leads to fewer opportunities later in life (and higher rates of incarceration) for African Americans.

That assertion is backed up by hard data. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, presented by the Kids Count Data Center, 65 percent of African American children are being raised in single parent households, compared with 23 percent of non-Hispanic Whites, and 16 percent of Asians.

Beto’s Examples of White Racism, #4
Immigrants Are More Law Abiding Than Natives

Maintaining his state of apoplexy, O’Rourke turned now to the topic of immigration, stating:

“When Trump’s talking about this invasion of immigrants who are coming to get us, who by the way, commit crimes at a far lower rate than anyone born in this country…”

James immediately unleashes an avalanche of published statistics and data that clearly contradict Beto’s assertion. One of the most memorable, and telling, was the following, taken from a study summarized in an article published in 2017 by The Hill: According to the FBI, 115,717 murders were committed in the U.S. from 2003 through 2009, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office documents that criminal immigrants committed 25,064 of these murders.

This is a stunning statistic. In a lengthy follow up, James cites numerous studies looking at these statistics by individual states. It is evident that it is far easier to prove, if one were so inclined, that in fact criminal immigrants are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in the United States, not the other way around.

Beto’s Examples of White Racism, #5
African Slaves Built America

As part of the Democratic push for “reparations,” the conventional wisdom now holds that most of what constitutes the current assets of the American nation were built on the backs of slaves; that without their presence, the nation would not have attained great wealth; that the fruits of their labor were denied them and indeed explain the wealth disparity seen today between Black and White Americans. Or, as O’Rourke put it:

“White people were literally kidnapping people from West Africa to bring them here to build the greatness of this country on their backs and then denying their ancestors the meaningful opportunity to enjoy in the wealth that they had created.”

James counters this argument with rather compelling logic. First, only 4 percent of southerners owned slaves and it was an undeveloped agrarian community, whereas in the north there were free men building an industrial economy. Second, North America received millions fewer slaves than Central and South America – so if these slaves were so critical to building a prosperous nation, why aren’t the nations of Central and South America doing better than America?

Continuing, James points out that the vast majority of infrastructure built in the 19th century – railroads, bridges, highways – were built by Irish or Italian or Chinese immigrants, all of whom worked without benefits and endured great adversity. Finally, to put it in perspective, James notes that during the 19th century, the Arab slave trade was 100 times worse, with millions killed, and that slavery in that part of the world is ongoing even to the present day.

Beto O’Rourke Represents the American Left

Putting things in perspective, unfortunately, is not something to expect from “Beto” O’Rourke. And while democratic voters, as evidenced by poll after poll, are tired of his act, they aren’t tired of the script. Telling lies regarding rates of incarceration, hate crimes, school punishment, illegal immigrant crime rates, and the legacy of slavery, is the currency of the Left. It’s almost all they’ve got.

Is this why YouTube had to take down this video by Vincent James? Because he bothers to dig up data, from impeccable sources, that absolutely demolishes these false assertions?

The title of the video by Vincent James doesn’t mention O’Rourke, he is just a telling exemplar of something being done by American politicians and mainstream media personalities – rampant, continuous, biased, alienating lies piled upon lies – that has got to stop. The primary point of the video James produced – and got banned – is that these lies being told by the American Left are pushing America’s White men to the Right. And the more absurd and extreme they get with their lies, the more White men will be pushed rightwards, and the further in that direction they will go.

It’s interesting to wonder exactly what it was that got this video banned by YouTube. If you watch the entire 36 minute presentation, you’ll probably have an idea or two. But when the establishment tells lies about almost every issue surrounding race, over and over, for what now amounts to most of any young person’s life, they start to look for answers elsewhere. The cognitive dissonance is simply impossible to ignore.

Should anyone be surprised that a growing number of young White men might question their supposed “privilege,” when for their entire lives they’ve known that they must go to the back of the line for every job, every college admission, every promotion, and every government contract?

Beto O’Rourke, and all his ilk, from the halls of Harvard to the penthouses in Pacific Heights, are hypocrites, demagogues, corporate socialists, globalist shills, borderline traitors, and fools, preaching a false gospel that is both nihilistic and naive. It is to the credit of people seeking truth, like Vincent James, that they remain measured in their condemnation of an establishment that has targeted them for destruction.

The noble high road is to reject racism in all its forms. And it is not racist to argue, using compelling data, that the prevailing form of racism is not coming from the Right these days, it is coming from the Left, and it is not directed against “people of color,” it is primarily directed at White men. Perhaps the biggest risk, and the biggest potential tragedy, is that these alienating lies darken the souls of everyone they touch, undermining the natural compassion towards all people which is a defining element of American character.

In the spirit of compassion, one might suggest to Vincent James, and to all of his like minded cohorts, that they are not alone. These lies they’re being fed harm everyone, Black and White. You cannot heal lingering wounds by obsessing over them. You cannot nurture upward mobility by teaching victimhood and dependence.

“Beto” O’Rourke may stand 6′ 4″ tall, but his message is small, dark, depressing, and useless.

Vincent James, along with every other right-of-center vlogger, is encouraged to expand their repertoire. They might not only continue to debunk the lies, but also make common cause with Americans of all colors who recognize that what the Left preaches is the death of industry and happiness; the destruction of a fine nation and a glorious culture. Here are some people he might connect with who share many, if not most of his views. It is likely they will get on very, very well:

Taleed Brown, Brandon Tatum, Will Johnson, Candace Owens, David J. Harris, Jr., Larry Elder, Pastor Mark Burns, Terrence K. Williams, Keith and Kevin Hodge, Dr. Carol Swain, Chandler Crump, Anthony Brian Logan, Lynnett Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, Mike Nificent, Patricia Dickson, Antonia Okafor, Horace Cooper, Star Parker, Allen West, Wayne Dupree, CJ Pearson, Jesse Lee Peterson, and Jon Miller – a woefully incomplete list, there are so many more, but a good start…

Most important of all, Vincent James, and every other truth seeking, data driven iconoclast whose life work online sits on the edge of the deplatforming abyss, is urged to never compromise, but always evolve. The censors who would silence him should think twice. Facts and logic have a funny way of having the last word, no matter what.

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Edward Ring

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San Francisco’s Prop. A – Expensive Insanity Marches On

October 8, 2019/by Edward Ring

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
– Albert Einstein

There is no solid evidence that one of history’s greatest geniuses ever said this, but its applicability to California’s housing crisis is too big to let attribution get in the way. Because California’s politicians are trying to solve the problem by doing the same thing over and over, and the result is always the same – the problem just gets worse.

One current example of how California’s ruling class continues to attempt fabulously expensive, laughably feeble “solutions” to increasing the stock of “affordable housing” can be found in San Francisco’s Proposition A, “Bond Issue for Affordable Housing.” Voters will decide whether or not to approve Prop. A on November 5th.

One misperception regarding these bonds may be found on the proponent’s website “Yes on A,” where they claim “this $600 million bond will fund the construction of more than 2,800 affordable housing units over the next four years.” This implies a cost of $214,285 per unit. But that’s not even half the story.

The average cost these developers are turning in to construct “affordable housing” and “permanent supportive housing” in California’s big urban areas bottoms out at around $500,000 per unit. For example, in Los Angeles, the Measure HHH bond, approved by voters in 2016, poured $1.2 billion into construction of supportive housing. Three years later, with only a few units ready for occupancy so far, the estimated cost is over $500,000 per unit.

In San Francisco, the cost to construct a new apartment hovers around $700,000 per unit. At this rate, $600 million dollars will only pay for 857 apartments. Acknowledging this, proponents of San Francisco’s Prop. A intend to use most of the money to rehabilitate existing public housing. Which is to say, all this money will have a minimal impact on total housing stock in San Francisco. So what’s really going on?

Taxpayers Cover Nearly 100% of Affordable Housing Costs

To get the rest of the story, it’s first necessary to understand how any new affordable housing or supportive housing gets funded. Because of state and local policies that make it almost impossible for developers to build anything, the commercial price of a modest new apartment in California’s urban centers ranges between a half-million and $750,000 per unit. “Affordable housing” projects are no exception, and it’s important to realize that taxpayers cover 100 percent of the costs. When these bonds are issued with language that implies a total taxpayer contribution via the bond of $214,000 per unit (SF Prop. A), or $117,000 per unit (LA Measure HHH), taxpayers need to know where the rest of the money comes from – because all of it comes out of their pockets.

An illustrative example of this is found in the project summaries disclosed by the City of Oakland, showing the use of funds for their share of the Measure A1 “Affordable Housing Bond.” Measure A1, passed by voters in Alameda County in 2016, allocated $580 million for the construction of “affordable local housing.” The table shown below, taken from the City of Oakland report, shows the total project cost, and as can be seen, taxpayers funded nearly all of this project.

On the above table it can be seen that the Measure A1 Bond only contributed 3 percent to the construction of 87 affordable housing units. But the total project cost was a whopping $64 million, which equates to a cost of $736,000 per unit. And as can be seen, matching loans from the City of Emeryville (7.2%), the City of Oakland (3.2%), plus other federal and state sources (17.6%) constituted much of the remainder. The biggest source of funds, “LIHTC Equity,” at 42.9 percent, bears further explanation.

LIHTC stands for “Low-Income Housing Tax Credit,” and these tax credits, which can be bought, sold, and traded, represent a one-to-one reduction of a corporate tax bill. They are not a tax deduction, they are a tax credit, meaning that for any profitable corporation that pays taxes, their face value is equivalent to that same amount of cash in the bank. Who pays for tax credits? Taxpayers, since whenever taxes are avoided in one place, the resulting shortfall in tax revenues has to be covered by other taxpayers.

Taxpayer Funded Affordable Housing is a Patronage Racket and a Rigged Lottery

There are alternatives to the insanity of spending $750,000 of taxpayers money to build “affordable housing” for low income families and “supportive housing” for homeless people. The insanity of current policies should be crystal clear. According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, “As of January 2018, California had an estimated 129,972 experiencing homelessness on any given day.”

By most accounts that number is understated because of flaws in how HUD manages the annual count, and the number is rising, not falling. But using that number, it would cost roughly one hundred billion dollars to get every one of California’s homeless individuals “permanent supportive housing” as it is currently designed and funded. This is impossible. This is insane. Again, what’s going on?

According to Thomas Busse, treasurer for the Libertarian Party of San Francisco, which is the only organization that has come out in opposition to Prop. A, “San Francisco’s ‘Affordable Housing’ is a patronage racket making housing less affordable.”

Busse explains further, stating “What San Francisco programs do are crowd out natural affordable housing with program affordable housing – distorting the market. This removes housing from the market at the bottom end, pushing the market rate up for those who don’t win the affordable housing lottery. The Mayor’s Office of Housing is called that for a reason: it reeks of patronage. The local housing lotteries are rigged – this has been reported on extensively over two decades.”

An October 7th report in the San Jose Mercury offers a vivid example of how affordable housing policies can actually increase costs to tenants. The article describes how an apartment building in Antioch was converted to affordable housing, but when the renovations were completed, the tenants actually ended up paying more in monthly rent. These renovations to existing housing (referred to in the bond text as “rehabilitating”) are exactly how most of the Prop. A money could be applied. And once the property is converted to “affordable housing,” the owners are exempt from property taxes.

Californians need to realize not only that it is insane to expect taxpayer funded housing this expensive to ever solve the state’s housing and homeless crisis, but that it has become a lucrative scam for all parties involved. To expand on the implications of the property tax exemption, for example, consider this finding by Reason Foundation researcher Marc Joffe, as reported in Fox & Hounds Daily: “Affordable housing projects are often operated by not-for-profits that qualify for a ‘welfare’ exemption from property taxes. In San Francisco, a total of $2.4 billion of real estate is shielded from property taxation due to this exemption.”

What libertarian Thomas Busse refers to as “natural affordable housing” is the only practical solution to California’s housing crunch. Streamlining the permitting process, reducing the requirements to be granted a development permit, lowering the extortionate building fees, taking away the exemptions granted nonprofit developers, and expanding the urban footprint are all ways to bring down the cost of housing. If taxpayer funds must be used, set up pre-fab homes, or, for that matter, durable tents, in low cost areas. But using government funds to convert existing housing into tax exempt “rehabilitated” “affordable housing” that costs tenants more in rent is insanity.

There are additional solutions to California’s housing and homeless crisis, but they encroach on many conventional pieties. Many of the homeless on the street, to indulge in rank heresy, are there by choice. When it is impermissible to arrest and hold vagrants for petty theft or possession of hard drugs; when it is impermissible to require vagrants to move out of public spaces unless you can provide them with free and “permanent supportive housing;” when it is virtually impossible to commit demonstrably insane people to asylum care; when public shelters offer food and urgent care without any preconditions whatsoever (sobriety, drug counseling, drug testing); when the weather on the coast of California rarely dips below freezing – you will have an aggressive, problematic homeless population. Forever.

A memorable essay on San Francisco’s homeless crisis was just published in City Journal by the incomparable Heather MacDonald. She writes, “For the last three decades, San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. The city has done so in the name of compassion toward the homeless. The results have been the opposite: street squalor and misery have increased, even as government expenditures have ballooned.”

Another famous quote of indeterminate origin and indisputable wisdom goes as follows: “The first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one.” San Francisco’s politicians have to understand the solutions they’re offering to solve their housing crisis and homeless crisis are insane. And they aren’t sort of insane, or arguably insane. They are batshit crazy insane.

New approaches are needed.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Edward Ring

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How Much Will YOUR City Pay CalPERS in a Down Economy?

October 4, 2019/by Edward Ring

When evaluating the financial challenges facing California’s state and local public employee pension funds, a compelling question to consider is just how much more will they demand from their clients in the next economic downturn?

It’s noteworthy that CalPERS still hasn’t issued their actuarial analyses for the period ending 6/30/2018, even though a year ago, the 6/30/2017 analyses were available. Could it be related to the fact that the DJIA index on 10/01/2018 was 26,447 and as of midday 10/01/2019 it sits at 26,599? Between 6/30/2018 and 6/30/2019, did CalPERS have a bad year? And what does that mean?

What is alarming in the case of CalPERS and other public sector pension funds is the relentless and steep rate increases they’re already demanding from their participating employers. Equally alarming is the legal and political power CalPERS wields to force payment of these rate increases even after municipal bankruptcies where other long-term debt obligations are diminished if not completely washed away.

Until California’s local governments have the legal means to reform pension benefits, rising pension contributions represent an immutable, potentially unmanageable financial burden on them.

San Marino’s Payments to CalPERS Will Nearly Double by 2025

The City of San Marino, a small Southern California town with barely 13,000 residents, nonetheless offers a typical case study on the impact growing pension costs have on public services and local taxes. Using CalPERS own records and official projections, the City of San Marino paid $3.0 million (not including employee contributions) to CalPERS in their fiscal year ended 6/30/2017. That was equal to 32% of the base salary payments made in that year. By 2025, the City of San Marino is projected to pay $5.1 million to CalPERS, equal to 46% of base pay.

Can the City of San Marino afford to pay an additional $2.1 million per year to CalPERS, on top of the $3.0 million per year they’re already paying? They probably can, but at the expense of either higher local taxes or reduced public services, or a combination of both. But the story doesn’t end there.

The primary reason required payments to CalPERS are nearly doubling over the next few years is because CalPERS was wrong in three critical estimates: how much their pension fund could earn, how much would be paid to retirees, and how much their client agencies had to pay to stay current or catch up. They could still be wrong.

Annual pension contributions are are split into two categories:

(1) How much future pension benefits were earned in the current year, and how much money must be set aside in this same year to earn interest and eventually be used to pay those benefits in the future? This is called the “normal contribution.”

(2) What is the present value of ALL outstanding future pension payments, earned in all prior years by all participants in the plan, active and retired, and by how much does that value, that liability, exceed the amount of money currently invested in the pension fund? That amount is the unfunded pension liability, and the amount set aside each year to eventually reduce that unfunded liability to zero is called the “unfunded contribution,” or, in plain English, the catch-up payment.

Both of these annual pension contributions depend on a key assumption: What rate-of-return will the pension fund earn each year, on average, over the next several decades? And it turns out the amount that has to be paid each year to keep a pension system fully funded is extremely sensitive to this assumption. The reason, for example, that CalPERS is doubling the amount their participating employers have to pay each year is largely because they are gradually lowering their assumed rate of return from 7.5% per year to 7.0% per year. But what if that isn’t enough?

If the Rate-of-Return CalPERS Earns Falls, Payments Could Rise Much Higher

It isn’t unreasonable to worry that going forward, the average rate of return CalPERS earns on their investments could fall below 7.0% per year. For about a decade, nearly every asset class available to investors has enjoyed rates of appreciation in excess of historical averages. Yet despite being at what may be the late stages of a prolonged bull market in equities, bonds, and real estate, the City of San Marino’s pension investments managed by CalPERS were only 74% funded. As of 6/30/2017 (still the most recent data CalPERS currently offers by agency), the City of San Marino faced an unfunded pension liability of $29 million.

As it is, using CalPERS own estimates, by 2025 the City of San Marino is already going to be making an unfunded contribution that is nearly twice their normal contribution. Another reason for this is because CalPERS is now requiring their participating agencies to pay off their unfunded pension liabilities in 20 years of even payments. Previously, in an attempt to minimize those payments, agencies had been using 30 year payoff terms with low payments in the early years.

Nobody knows what the future holds. The following chart shows how that might play out in the City of San Marino. Notice how at a 4% rate-of-return projection, in 2018-19 the City of San Marino would have had to pay CalPERS $10.1 million; at 3%, $11.8 million.

San Marino is a wealthy community. The median household income of $147,960 is more than twice the median for California of $67,739 (ref. City-Data.com, figures for 2016). But with total municipal expenses of $26.2 million in the fiscal year ended 6/30/2017 (ref. San Marino CAFR, page 10), even San Marino’s budget can be stressed by pension expenses. CalPERS has projected the city’s pension contribution will rise to $5.1 million by 2025, which is 19 percent of total expenses.

At what point do these payments become too burdensome? What if investment returns settle down to an average of only 6 percent per year – can San Marino afford to pay CalPERS the resulting estimate of $7.0 million per year? What about at an even lower 5 percent return – can San Marino afford to pay CalPERS an estimated $8.5 million per year? And what about the employees? Will they start to pay more via payroll withholding? In 2017-18, employees only contributed $767,000 out of $3.8 million.

What about the rest of California?

How would a downturn affect all of California’s public employee pension systems, the agencies they serve, and the taxpayers who fund them? In a CPC analysis published in 2018, “How to Assess Impact of a Market Correction on Pension Payments,” the following excerpt provides an estimate:

“If there is a 15% drop in pension fund assets, and the new projected earnings percentage is lowered from 7.0% to 6.0%, the normal contribution will increase by $2.6 billion per year, and the unfunded contribution will increase by $19.9 billion. Total annual pension contributions will increase from the currently estimated $31.0 billion to $68.5 billion.”

That’s a lot of billions. And as already noted, a 15% drop in the value of invested assets and a reduction in the estimated average annual rate-of-return from 7.0% to 6.0% is by no means a worst case scenario.

To-date, meaningful pension reform has been thwarted by powerful special interests, most notably pension systems and public sector unions, but also many financial sector firms who profit from the status quo. Ongoing court challenges, along with growing public pressure on local elected officials, may eventually offer relief. For these reasons, raising taxes and cutting services in order to fund pensions may eventually become a false choice.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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REFERENCES

Moody’s Cross Sector Rating Methodology – Adjustments to US State and Local Government Reported Pension Data (version in effect 2018)

California Pension Tracker (Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research – California Pension Tracker

Transparent California – main search page
Transparent California – salaries for San Marino, 2018
Transparent California – pensions for San Marino 2018

The State Controller’s Government Compensation in California – main search page
The State Controller’s Government Compensation in California – San Marino payroll, 2018
The State Controller’s Government Compensation in California – raw data downloads

California Policy Center – Resources for Pension Reformers (dozens of links)
California Policy Center – Will the California Supreme Court Reform the “California Rule?” (latest update)

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Edward Ring

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Why Libertarians Are Unwitting Enablers of Socialism

October 3, 2019/by Edward Ring

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
– John Rogers, “Ephemera 2009,” Kung Fu Monkey

Libertarians are handing America over to socialists. That’s not what they want, but that’s what’s happening. How can this be? After all, if you want limited government, you’re a libertarian. So where’s the problem?

The problem, as John Rogers alludes to in his unforgettable quote, is with the “real world.” In the real world, America is a two party system, and if a strong libertarian candidate shows up, they take votes away from other candidates who also – despite all their other impurities – oppose socialist candidates.

When the anti-socialist vote is split, the socialist wins.

In the real world, we have nations so that people with a common culture and heritage can govern themselves. This necessitates the existence of governments, laws, regulations, taxes, public spending, and a host of other nasty things. To oppose overreaching laws, bad regulations, high taxes, excess spending, wasteful spending, or inappropriate spending, is the duty of any fiscal conservative. But the role of government is to protect a national culture, not to just get out of the way so corporate multinationals can commoditize the world.

This ought to be embarrassingly self-evident, but libertarians don’t seem to understand the implications of these real world constraints on their ideals.

Thank God the libertarian presidential candidate in 2016 was a befuddled stoner. And pray to God their presidential candidate in 2020 is equally problematic.

Libertarian Influence is Harming America

The Libertarian Party hasn’t yet swung an American presidential election, but their influence is felt everywhere. And while their overall message – limited government – is far better than its opposite, but in its extreme that message can also cause grievous harm. One glaring example concerns the interdependent politics of immigration and welfare.

Libertarians, along with plenty of Republicans, are fond of quoting Milton Friedman, who once said “You can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” Yet libertarians, if they are true to their principles, favor open borders. All the while, they insist that of course they’re also opposed to state welfare.

How many Republicans in the House of Representatives, influenced by libertarian donors, have to-date resisted legislation that would enforce America’s borders, whether through sanctioning employers who hire undocumented workers, or by funding more effective border security?

Other glaring examples include opposition to the war on drugs, where libertarians tend to think it’s just fine to let an entire generation of Americans marinate themselves in a pharmacological stupor, and foreign policy, where wishful thinking libertarians reject the reality of rising nations filling the vacuum wherever Americans withdraw.

When it comes to trade, powerful libertarian donors have actually worked to destroy Republican incumbents who recognize that selling America to the Chinese because that’s “free trade” is a recipe for national destruction, and if tariffs are the only way to get their attention, so be it.

And shall any of these issues be discussed openly on the most powerful means of communication ever known, the internet? Well, maybe. But not too openly. Progressives run the companies that monopolize the online platforms for search and social media, they exercise blatant censorship of views that threaten the progressive narrative, and libertarians applaud.

The Unwitting Libertarian Support for Unpleasant, Unaffordable Housing

Moving beyond the obvious, it is in the area of housing and infrastructure where libertarians also exert a destructive influence. The influence of libertarians in these areas is harder to immediately see, but it is causing, if anything, even greater long term damage to America.

It seems counter-intuitive to suggest that libertarians are against a free market where land developers can easily navigate their way through a streamlined, discounted permitting process so more homes can go onto the market which will lower prices. And indeed, libertarians are calling for those sorts of reforms. But these libertarians are ignoring the most critical variable – expanding the footprint of cities.

Instead of recognizing that housing cannot possibly become affordable unless new construction spreads outside the boundaries of existing urban centers, libertarians are, by default, joining with progressives who want to stack and pack all new residences into already established neighborhoods. The implications of this policy are cruel and far reaching.

Not only is it much harder, if not impossible, to increase the supply of homes enough to lower prices if the only new homes allowed have to be built inside existing cities, but when that happens the quality of life in these cities is tragically diminished. In Oregon, new legislation now permits multi-family dwellings to be constructed in any residential neighborhood, regardless of current zoning laws, in any city of more than 25,000 residents. Similar legislation is pending in California.

It may not be a “libertarian” concept to have zoning laws, but they exist for a good reason. People invest their life savings into a home purchase, relying on zoning laws to ensure the neighborhood where they expect to spend the rest of their lives is going to stay reasonably intact. Clearly this can’t always be the case, sometimes neighborhoods get in the path of dense urbanization, but it is a principle worth defending.

This nuance – how cities are permitted to increase their population – is far more profound than it may appear at first glance. As America’s population grows from an estimated 334 million in 2020 to an estimated 417 million by 2060, the progressive vision is to cram nearly all of those 83 million new Americans into existing cities. They want to do this despite the fact that the lower 48 states in America are only 3.7 percent urbanized, and despite the fact that such a policy will make a detached single family home with a yard unattainable to all but the most affluent Americans.

The libertarian position on urban containment is similar to their position on immigration. Just as they effectively support immigration but ineffectively oppose the welfare state, they effectively support making it easier to get permits to build homes but ineffectively oppose urban containment. The problem, again, is that accomplishing one out of two is not sufficient.

The de facto result is libertarians are offering substantial support to the progressive goal of turning American cities and suburbs into socially engineered, unaffordable, extremely high-density warrens.

Libertarians Prevent Vital Enabling Infrastructure

In a perfect libertarian world, every time you set foot off your personal property onto so-called public space, a meter starts running. The principle at work here is that you only pay at the rate you consume, rewarding the private interests who constructed – presumably at lower cost – social amenities such as roads.

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking plays into the hands of progressives who want to monitor and ration everything, at the same time as it benefits the high-tech companies and manufacturing corporations who sell “connected” appliances that are overly complex, high maintenance, expensive, and rarely perform as well as legacy products. But start the meter. Let the market work.

If forcing consumers to pay the government and their private partners for every vehicle mile traveled were the only innovation where progressives and libertarians affect infrastructure, that would be bad enough. But libertarians often oppose new roads from even getting built, regardless of the funding model. Instead of just letting the government blast new interstate highways and connector roads into rural areas where spacious new cities could be built, some libertarians have begun to reflexively oppose these projects because they don’t want taxpayers to “subsidize the automobile.”

And yes, in the drive to no longer “subsidize the automobile,” there is a whiff of “climate change” hysteria beginning to emanate from more than a few establishment libertarian think tanks.

What libertarians ought to be doing with respect to roads and other enabling infrastructure is fighting to reduce the regulations and environmental legislation that, at the least, has more than doubled the price and more than quadrupled the time it takes to build public infrastructure. Instead they fight against any new infrastructure that might consume public funds, playing into the hands of the progressive environmentalists who don’t want to build any new infrastructure, anywhere.

Libertarians have become pawns of the progressive left in America, and in an ironic twist, both of them have been coopted by globalist corporate interests. When everything is privatized, rationed and metered, corporate rent seekers gain new revenue streams.

When progressives put punitive regulations onto virtually all forms of land and resource development, existing holders of those resources enjoy artificial asset appreciation at the same time as emerging competitors lack the financial depth to survive.

In cities densified by urban containment, land values and rent soar to stratospheric levels, driving out independent businesses and turning every commercial district into a generic multinational corporate slurb.

And of course, when progressives cheer as hordes of unskilled immigrants pour across the U.S. border, libertarian donors applaud the free movement of people and goods – while paying impotent lip service to welfare reform.

The Libertarian Party has never been a serious contender in American politics. But their influence should not be underestimated, nor their role in tilting the political balance in favor of the progressive agenda across a host of important national issues.

The value of libertarianism is to remind us that the private sector performs most functions in a society more efficiently than the government, while preserving more individual freedom. But that’s as far as it goes. The real world is complicated, and culture is not a commodity.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Edward Ring

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edwardring.com

Political Realignment is Coming to America

September 26, 2019/by Edward Ring

Just over three years ago, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, speaking at a fundraiser in New York City, characterized half of Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” And for over three years, Trump, along with everyone who supports him, has been subjected to passionate hatred from nearly everyone who would rather have seen Clinton elected.

It’s therefore tempting to return the favor, and hate back, but that would not only be a tactical mistake – since you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar – but also inaccurate. There are a surprising number of liberals, progressives, and even socialists, who are not only anti-Clinton, but are begrudgingly, and increasingly, capable of seeing positive sides of the Trump presidency.

A very early indication of this was in back in October 2016, when John Pilger published in the London Progressive Journal an influential article entitled “Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump.” Pilger, notwithstanding his socialist leanings, is a world renowned journalist and filmmaker of undeniable courage and integrity.

In an eloquent tirade notable for its many, many examples of how Hillary Clinton is a murderous establishment puppet, this observation by Pilger summed it up, “She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.”

Sound familiar? And wow, how that system has tried, and continues to try to take down Trump. Pilger saw this coming. About Trump, he wrote, “In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is being presented as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism.”

A “media hate figure.” Ain’t that the truth. And liberals eat it up. And along with Trump, they hate us. Or do they? John Pilger isn’t alone. There are millions of liberals, progressives, Democrats, and even socialists who have seen through the establishment’s programmatic hatred, despite (or perhaps because of) it coming from every quarter – entertainment, academia, corporations, politicians, and all mainstream media, online and offline.

Their skepticism is indeed aroused, and not just over Trump.

Loving the Bull

Many Trump supporters cheered his election not because of his pugnacity (about time), or his policies (also about time), but because when you hate the China Shop, you love the Bull.

Trump has exposed the Democrat vs Republican, right vs left, liberal vs conservative paradigms as, if not obsolete shams, at the least, models that have lost most of their dialectic vitality. They remain real and represent important differences, but they are overshadowed by a new political polarity, worthy of urgent and vigorous dialectic, globalism vs nationalism.

Until Trump came along, the globalist agenda crept relentlessly forward under the radar. Issues that can now be explicitly framed as globalist vs nationalist – immigration, trade, foreign policy, even climate change – found deceptive expression when shoehorned into the obsolete paradigms.

It suited the uniparty establishment to engage in phony, ostensibly partisan bickering to keep up appearances. It suited them to pretend that immigration and “free” trade bestowed unambiguous global economic benefits, while claiming that to oppose it was economically ignorant and “racist.” It was convenient to pretend ceaseless foreign interventions were based on moral imperatives, while silencing the opposition as “isolationists.” It was easy to get away with promoting climate change policies based on supposedly indisputable scientific evidence, while stigmatizing opponents as “deniers.”

Suddenly all of that is revealed as almost Ptolemaic in its contrived complexity. Here is Trump’s Copernican breakthrough: if you want open borders, absolutely free movement of capital and jobs, and an aggressive international “climate agenda” enforced by the American military, you are a globalist. If you do not, you are a nationalist.

The impact of the globalist agenda have been acutely felt in America already, but the pain is spreading and intensifying. Unskilled immigrants are taking jobs away from the most vulnerable Americans, and every year, they continue to arrive by the millions. Manufacturing jobs which are vital to America’s economic vitality are being exported to any nation with cheaper labor, costing Americans still more jobs. Policies that are supposedly designed to save the planet have made it virtually impossible to cost-effectively build anything – houses, roads, reservoirs, power plants. In states where the globalist agenda is well advanced, the gap between rich and poor is at record levels, and the cost-of-living is prohibitive.

The rest of the world faces the same onslaught from globalists. With rare exceptions, such as the administrative clerisy and the minute fraction of economic refugees for whom the rudest of welfare benefits in developed nations far exceeds their lot in their nations of origin, the only beneficiaries are the investor class and multinational corporations. Economic development, utterly dependent on cheap fossil fuel, is denied because fossil fuel is denied. African cities that might become inviting metropolises fueled by natural gas and nuclear power are instead hellholes of misery, as a burgeoning population forages into wilderness areas for food and fuel, stripping it of life.

The problem with the globalist vision isn’t just that it denies people their cultural identity as it MacDonaldizes the world. The problem is that it’s not working economically or environmentally. It is an epic disaster, unfolding in slow motion. If globalism isn’t stopped, it will engulf the world in war and misery.

And guess what? There are liberals, progressives, and socialists, who get it. The see how their lives are being destroyed. They see through the platitudes, they see the hypocrisy. They can tell that globalism is not working. They’re looking for new ideas.

Modern American Nationalism Transcends President Trump

Donald Trump may have accelerated nationalist movements around the world, but how they find expression in the decades to come depends on how they are shaped by his followers, including belated, reluctant followers, including many who had been his critics. For many years, there are a lot of smart Democrats who have been rejecting the tactics of globalists, even if they have not been critical of globalism itself.

In California, a crucible of American culture, two respected Democrats offer examples of brave commentary that constitutes rank heresy to establishment globalists. In Berkeley, of all places, Michael Shellenberger, a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and co-writer of the EcoModernist Manifesto, has worked through his organization Environmental Progress to tirelessly campaign for reviving nuclear power in America. Shellenberger in recent years has turned his attention as well to California’s homeless crisis, calling for emergency measures that cut through a web of stultifying, counterproductive laws that have prevented effective solutions.

Another Californian, quite possibly the most intelligent Democrat who’s ever lived, is Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University, described by the New York Times as “America’s uber-geographer.” For over a decade, Kotkin has patiently explained how urban containment (because suburban sprawl supposedly causes excessive “greenhouse gas” emissions”) is strangling our cities and preventing equitable economic growth. Backing up everything he writes with data, Kotkin has exposed the hidden agenda behind extreme environmentalism, and how it benefits a coalition of special interests – investors, tech billionaires, the professional consultant class, and public sector unions – but condemns everyone else to a feudal existence.

Nationalism Can Be a Model for World Peace and Prosperity

What is nationalism? Why does that word have to connote something extreme? Why can’t it simply acknowledge the practical reality of borders, language, culture and history, and the ongoing right of citizens to determine their own destiny and compete in the world?

Why is it that to the establishment in America and throughout the western democracies, “globalism” is still held up as an ideal, and the inevitable destiny of humanity? Why can’t that inevitability be restricted to the technical facts of globalization – communications, transportation, trade, finance – without also requiring a surrender of national sovereignty? Why can’t nationalism be compassionate, benevolent, economically enlightened, and inclusive?

Nationalism can be all those good things. It can be a model for world peace and prosperity.

As for “climate change” mitigation, why are rational criticisms such as those produced by the luminous Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg castigated as denying reality? Shall the reasoned skeptics of the world be swept away by an orchestrated crusade fronted by children? Shall the 16 year old schoolgirl Greta Thunberg’s vapid denunciations of world leaders actually be taken more seriously than Bjorn Lomborg’s impeccable cost/benefit analyses?

Although mass movements of people proceed more slowly, a philosophical realignment is arguably already upon us. In terms of applied political theory, the prevailing opposition today is nationalism vs globalism. Like all polarities, these labels are fraught with ambiguities and contradictions. For that reason, there are virtues to some aspects of globalism just as surely as there is a dark side to nationalism. Moreover, the 20th century polarities of Left vs Right and liberal vs conservative are still potent. But to have a meaningful political discussion today, those 20th century labels are subsumed within the new model.

To be a left wing socialist liberal, most of the time, is to be a globalist. But not always. Not any more. Remember this, the next time hatred comes your way. Realignment is coming.

Don’t recriminate. Recruit.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Edward Ring

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Defining “Keep and Bear Arms” in the 21st Century

September 25, 2019/by Edward Ring

“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15”
– Beto O’Rourke, September 12, 2019

Coming from a native son of Texas, O’Rourke’s statement reflects just how much some parts of Texas have changed. Only a few years ago, before the political map of Texas became dappled with a critical mass of blue and purple districts, such a remark would have been unthinkable.

In 1835, Texans fought the Battle of Gonzales, where the local militia in that town refused to give back a cannon to the Mexican authorities. “Come And Take It,” sewn onto a battle flag by these Texas rebels, is the phrase that launched the Texas Revolution.

“Come and Take It” is now embedded in Texas history and culture. It is a defining element of their heritage. In the original Constitution of the Republic of Texas, written in 1836, the Fourteenth Article in their Declaration of Rights reads as follows: “Every citizen shall have the right to bear arms in defence of himself and the Republic. The military shall at all times and in all cases be subordinate to the civil power.”

But today, in the 21st century, we must ask ourselves: come and take what?

Congressman O’Rourke claims that weapons like the AR 15 should be excluded from 2nd Amendment protections because “the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that so that you would bleed to death on a battlefield.”

O’Rourke apparently hasn’t studied what a Revolutionary War era musket ball, 3/4 of an inch in diameter, would do to the human body.

The other argument against the AR 15, its rapid rate of fire as a semi-automatic weapon, ignores the reality of semi-automatic handguns, which are also capable of launching deadly projectiles at a rapid rate of fire. But these arguments for and against the right of U.S. citizens to keep and bear conventional small arms ignore a more urgent question in these changing times – what is a small arm?

As an effective defensive weapon, the AR-15 is rapidly becoming obsolete. While it shall retain its defensive utility for some time against random intruders or even organized but relatively unsophisticated gangs, against a swarm of weaponized drones or a disabling energy pulse a conventional firearm is worthless.

One may argue that a drone can be shot down with a shotgun. That’s true, but can someone wielding a shotgun shoot down a swarm of dozens, or hundreds of drones, each of them autonomously guided and all of them smaller than a fly? Drones, along with disabling energy pulses, are the future of law enforcement and counter-insurgency.

Which begs the question: Does the 2nd Amendment guarantee U.S. citizens the right to defend themselves with their own personal swarm of weaponized drones, or counter-drones, or radar sensors that monitor drone intrusion onto their property, or electronic gadgetry that can fry the avionics of encroaching drones?

This is a legitimate question on many levels. It won’t just be governments that deploy weaponized drones and energy weapons. It will be corporate security operations, as well as every criminal who can build or buy one of these types of new weapons. A new take on an old phrase may go something like this: If weaponized drones are outlawed, only outlaws will have weaponized drones.

An uncomfortable and often unspoken motivation of gun rights advocates is the notion that an armed populace is a guarantee against government tyranny. This is a legitimate principle but in the 21st century becomes muddled by unprecedented new factors. The first is the asymmetry of weaponry today.

A thousand years ago, a terrorist armed with a spear might manage to kill a few innocents before someone would crack a rock over their head, or stab them with their own spear. A hundred years ago, a terrorist armed with a submachine gun might kill a few dozen people or more before they ran out of ammunition or were stopped by someone who was also armed. But today, a terrorist can release a toxin, detonate a dirty nuclear device, or spread a deadly pathogen. It is theoretically possible today for a terrorist to kill thousands if not millions of innocent victims.

For this reason, governments themselves have to be able to effectively identify and counter these threats. Despite the very real threat that massive government surveillance represents to American freedoms, and despite the potential for misuse, it is a necessary evil. To prevent terrorism in the 21st century, more than ever before, governments require the tools of the tyrant.

The second factor muddling the principle of an armed populace serving as a deterrent to government tyranny is even more problematic. What about corporate actors? Multinational corporations with no allegiance to any particular country now wield power comparable to most nations. Even America might have a tough time fighting an unconventional war against a determined alliance of high tech corporations. Aren’t we already in a cold war with these corporations, fighting to preserve our way of life? Haven’t they already nearly completed their takeover of American institutions?

How does a population armed with conventional small arms defend itself against the creeping imposition of globalist Leftism, an advance being waged by nearly every Fortune 500 company on Earth? As an aside, when will the corporate leftists realize that to the extent they weaken America by suppressing energy development and fragmenting our culture, they’re just handing the world over to Chinese fascists?

If the primary motivation for the 2nd Amendment was to guarantee American freedoms, how does a patriot respond in the 21st century? How do they recognize the need for a powerful central government to prevent mass killings by terrorists, yet continue to rely on the 2nd Amendment to deter government tyranny? How do they respond to high tech corporations which themselves are dominated by globalist leftists from the boardroom all the way down to the AI engineer who programmed a swarm of slap drones?

It would be rational to suggest that defenders of the 2nd Amendment arm themselves with slap drones and drone zapping ray guns of their own. But if American patriots are not well represented in the engineering labs of Silicon Valley, and they’re not, then it’s still an uphill battle. Buying things you cannot make yourself is sort of why Middle Eastern nations will never win a war against a serious adversary. They can buy jet fighters, and they can train pilots to fly them. But they’ll never build one, and they’ll never fly the latest model.

Robert Francis O’Rourke did us a favor, however. He made it very clear what the Left has in mind. Hopefully his candor will stimulate more creative thinking among those Americans who are determined to never compromise on their 2nd Amendment rights, and ensure these rights extend to innovations that use, shall we say, post-gunpowder technology.

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Edward Ring

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Towards A Nationalist Economic Policy

September 20, 2019/by Edward Ring

Suggesting that managed inflation and currency devaluation are pathways to greater national prosperity is bound to invite howls of derision. But critics may be ignoring factors, which, if acknowledged, might point towards consensus. At the least, it might provoke a more useful discussion.

With that in mind, here are four economic realities in America today:

1 – Despite that the word “fiat” is often used as a term of derision, all currencies are fiat unless backed by redeemable commodities. China is stockpiling gold amidst rumors they may try to tie the Renminbi to gold. Good luck with that.

2 – Throughout history, nations with the ability to sustain capital formation through financial innovation are the ones that succeeded. Prudently managed fractional reserve lending, a financial innovation, enables far more liquidity in the economy.

3 – The biggest engine of liquidity is not printing currency – there’s only about five trillion in actual printed US dollars extant in the world – it is debt formation, backed by collateral, that finances massive projects and asset acquisitions.

4 – American has been on a borrowing binge since the 1980s and total market debt – consumer, commercial and government – now stands at nearly 3.5 times GDP. This level of debt is unsustainable.

On this final axiom there should be agreement. As for the others, concerned observers might agree to disagree. Suffice to say that the economic disruption, and unintended consequences, that would accompany transition to a commodity backed currency would dwarf what we may expect in most other scenarios for the American dollar. So how do Americans unwind nearly $80 trillion in hard debt?

If one accepts the premise that this debt is unsustainable, and that further debt accumulation is no longer possible, than broadly speaking, to facilitate the inevitable rebalancing there are only two possible outcomes – inflation or deflation. The problem with deflation is there is no model of deflation that doesn’t include a complete collapse of liquidity and a near cessation of economic activity. A deflationary collapse would not simply wipe out a few big banks. It would wipe out all banking, big and small, multinational and local, because the value of the collateral that backed all their loans, no matter how healthy their reserve ratios had previously been, would have collapsed.

There is a model of inflation, however, that permits America to continue to prosper economically. It is vital to make the distinction between inflation caused by wages increasing faster than asset values vs inflation caused by asset values increasing faster than wages. Understanding this distinction, and recognizing what is at state in the choice between them, cuts to the heart of what constitutes nationalist economic policy vs globalist economic policy.

Globalist Economic Policy

For at least the last 20 years, American wages have not kept pace with inflation. Examining the core elements of this inflation offers clues to why most Americans are worse off economically than they were 20-30 years ago. And the primary driver of inflation outpacing wage growth is the financialization of the American economy. This is the reliance on creating overvalued assets (asset bubbles) to serve as expanded collateral to enable increased consumer borrowing.

Allowing consumers more capacity to borrow took momentary pressure off of consumers to earn higher wages. This served the interests of multinational corporations and international banks whose profits were optimized when they exported jobs and imported workers. By importing cheap products from overseas and stimulating borrowing on inflated home equity values, for a time, most Americans weren’t suffering the consequences of an economy running on debt instead of productivity.

It’s worth considering all the ways that financial inflation was imposed on ordinary Americans, forcing them into debt. Already reeling from the globalist tactic of exporting jobs out of their country, and importing workers (and welfare recipients) into their country, Americans also had to contend with higher prices for everything that couldn’t be imported – which are those items that use up most disposable consumer income – rent or mortgages, and utility bills. Why?

The answer to this exposes the other primary strategy of globalism, synergistic with the tactic of exporting jobs and importing low wage workers, which is climate change mitigation in all of its almost endless permutations. In the name of protecting the planet, artificial scarcity has been imposed on Americans from coast to coast, and in those regions where state and local governments are overran the most with globalists, that scarcity is most acute.

In the name of fighting climate change, globalists – oops, environmentalists – challenge the ability of entrepreneurs to do anything. To the extent new housing developments are permitted, after years, not months, and millions, not thousands, in fees, they must be confined within the boundaries of existing cities.

It is impossible to overstate how misanthropic this policy is in terms of its effect on ordinary Americans. At the same time as millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, continue to pour into the country, draconian environmental laws are cramming all new housing within the footprints of existing cities. Tranquil neighborhoods are being demolished to make room for millions of newcomers. People are being literally piled on top of each other. But the investor class sees their real estate portfolios soar. Collateral grows, enabling more borrowing, enabling more spending.

Renewable energy, also mandated by law in the interests of supposedly cooling the planet which is supposedly warming catastrophically, also creates artificial scarcity. The cost of renewable energy far exceeds that of conventional energy, which itself costs far more than it should because of permitting delays, lawsuits, and excessive regulations.

Renewable energy requires costly upgrades to the power grid. It requires storage assets to make up for the daily intermittent nature of wind and solar power. The lifecycle costs to manufacture, operate, decommission, and periodically replace wind and solar power arrays are grossly underestimated, especially when considering how these systems have to be oversized to account for seasonal fluctuations in renewable energy output. Power management systems at the grid level and within the home, extending to every “wired” appliance, also add stupendous costs. But public utilities earn far higher revenues when they deploy renewables, which, since their profit percentages are regulated, is the only way they can increase their profits. And everyone up and down the supply chain, from green entrepreneurs to high tech companies, exploit mandated market opportunities that would not otherwise exist.

Climate change panic has turned our schoolchildren into manipulated puppets and morphed a generation of environmentalists from sincere activism to militant hysteria. These minions support every piece of legislation and every lawsuit, despite the impact: higher prices for everything, artificial scarcity, and inflated collateral to keep the borrowing party going. Other significant sources of inflation, college tuition and health care in particular, have other primary causes – in particular, unionization and the inefficiencies and higher costs that come with unionization – but the pretext for demanding higher wages and benefits in the first place, or even the drive to unionize itself, stem from the reality of unaffordable homes and unaffordable energy.

Nationalist Economic Policy

It is important to emphasize that nationalist economic policy is not “conservative,” nor is it Republican. The only reason nationalists, or conservatives, for that matter, vote for Republicans is because Republicans are not Democrats. While far too many Republican politicians are still just members of the establishment uniparty, at least they haven’t had their vanguard completely taken over by international socialists and climate change zealots. But to suggest that a nationalist economic policy is further evidence of yet another betrayal of alleged Republican, “fiscal conservative” principles is to miss the point entirely.

A nationalist economic policy should have one goal: unwind American debt in a manner that will avoid a deflationary collapse while at the same time shifting the weight of ongoing inflation from financial asset inflation to wage inflation. To do this, both of the key premises of globalism have to be broken. Immigration must be limited to reduced quantities of highly skilled immigrants, and climate change alarmist legislation must be replaced with practical policies designed to promote private sector development of cheap and clean fossil fuel throughout the United States and around the world.

Reducing the supply of labor via more restrictive immigration policies will cause wages to inflate. Increasing the supply of housing and energy by reforming absurdly restrictive environmentalist laws will cause prices for these commodities to level off or at least not rise as quickly as wages. And this might be enough to slowly allow the real value of debt in the economy to erode via inflation. But why stop there?

Fiat currencies maintain their value based on the underlying economic strength of the nations that issue them. The US Dollar is the reserve and transaction currency of the world because no other large national economy has anywhere near America’s industrial diversity, demographic vitality, wealth of natural resources, top universities, broad and deep leadership in high technology, political stability, and military strength. What if devaluing the dollar would actually increase America’s underlying economic strength, and what if the only way to devalue the dollar were to continue to engage in federal deficit spending, and incrementally lower the federal reserve lending rate?

Cue the howls.

About a year ago, it was leaked to the press that President Trump was asking his economic advisers “what’s better, a strong dollar or a weak dollar?” Literally everyone, from the entire media establishment to every anti-Trump pundit, took this opportunity to ridicule Trump, as if he should have already known the answer to this question. But there is huge disagreement among experts on this question, and Trump, as usual, was displaying common sense by asking to hear both sides of the issue.

Trump’s gut instincts appear to favor devaluing the dollar. A devalued dollar means it costs relatively more to import raw materials than to extract them domestically (note to environmentalists – it’s also less hypocritical). It also means it costs relatively more to import manufactured goods than to manufacture them domestically. This not only creates jobs, it further bids up the cost of wages. These policies will also help mitigate potential negative impacts on Americans of yet another rising mega-trend, automation.

Everything Trump’s doing, restricting immigration, developing oil and gas wells and pipelines, trying to repatriate money, and negotiating better trade deals, is designed to shift the model of inflation that we’re dealing with from a bad inflation model to a good inflation model.

As for deficit spending, it’s very principled to talk about deficit spending as if it’s an evil, and it’s certainly something that’s created a problem, but at least in the short run, it is not possible to eliminate deficit spending. If wages are increasing faster than the cost-of-living, than spending on entitlements including Social Security can be indexed to stay at or below the rate of inflation, slowly reducing its share of the federal budget. Immigration reform can reduce that burden on federal and state/local budgets. Maybe military spending can settle in at somewhat a somewhat lower percentage of GDP than it did during the last cold war. We can certainly use federal money more efficiently, and probably save a few hundred billion there. But precipitously eliminating the federal budget deficit is impossible, and continuing deficit spending might actually help devalue the dollar, stimulate “good” inflation, and diminish the real value of government and consumer debt.

International Globalism vs. Nationalist Globalization

Ultimately the choice of economic policies for the U.S. comes down to only one; inflation where wages grow at a faster rate than assets appreciate. The reverse of that is the financialized economy we’ve lived with, which has enriched the globalist political donor class but impoverished everyone else in America. The catastrophic third option is deflation, which carries a high risk of cascading implosions of collateral, putting the economy into a depression era tailspin.

There is no policy without risk and without downside. Inflation, for example, will victimize holders of fixed income investments no matter what. It might as well be wage inflation rather than asset inflation, particularly since asset inflation can lead to property tax increases that are particularly harmful to people on fixed incomes. And it’s a bit disingenuous for budget hawks to attack economic solutions involving inflation, when these are typically the same folks who want to throw America’s seniors onto 401K plans. Such a strategy would imply a supreme confidence in every American individual’s ability to manage their own personal retirement portfolios, including, presumably, inflation hedged investments.

Americans, along with citizens in every nation, have a choice. They can become commodities in a global marketplace, where the assets they’ve earned and accomplishments they’ve logged have no meaning and no merit. Or they can assert their sovereignty, preserving their culture, their wealth, their independence, and the privileges they’ve earned as citizens. They can compete with other nations, they can coexist with other nations, they can cooperate with other nations, but they can survive with their identity and traditions intact.

In America’s case, the challenge is particularly complex, because of America’s leadership role in the world. The American military doesn’t have to engage in nation building. It can be more judicial in deciding when to engage in police actions. But no matter how much those activities are attenuated, America’s military still has to pursue international terror networks, wherever they are, and America’s military still has to deter Chinese expansionism. Like it or not, America is in an undeclared cold war with China, and has been for decades. This is a war that can only be kept cold through deterrence, and deterrence, while fabulously expensive, is cheaper than a hot, horrific war.

Globalization, to clarify, is not the same thing as globalism. Technological advances make globalization inevitable. Intercontinental travel is now available and affordable for literally billions of people. The internet has made mass communication available from anyone, anywhere on Earth, to anyone, anywhere else on earth. Electronic transfers of funds occur instantaneously from anywhere to anywhere. Trade between nations has never been easier. And multinational corporations and banks have lost their national identities and operate as global entities.

Globalism, by contrast, is an ideology. In the crudest, most accurate terms possible, globalism can be described as the naive belief that turning global governance over to an unelected cadre of corporate and financial elites is the best possible future for humanity. But it’s not, because globalists want to cram humans into congested cities like cattle, erasing cultural and national identities and traditions. They want to ration availability of energy, water, land and raw materials, justifying it in the name of saving the planet. And they’re willing to relentlessly demonize, marginalize, ostracize and silence anyone who questions their agenda, stigmatizing them as racists and climate “deniers.”

Perhaps some globalists are truly naive, while others are cold and cynical. If so, naive globalists apparently think that rampant population growth among the impoverished nations constitutes less of a burden on the planet and its peoples than empowering these nations with cheap fossil fuel which would induce them to voluntarily check their population growth. And perhaps cynical globalists simply don’t care. They just want the power that globalism offers them, and if renewable energy fails to deliver a sustainable civilization and chaos ensues, so what? The great cull would be a violent but very effective shortcut for the elites to establish their breakaway civilization, their privileged Elysium.

The reality of accumulating debt and persistent federal spending deficits will eventually push Americans to a crossroads. Most everyone agrees about that. Hyping the tropes that keep donor dollars flowing into libertarian think tanks is not the same as offering constructive alternatives. Those critics who wish to offer up a solution more realistic that what is proposed herein are emphatically invited to do so.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

* * *

Edward Ring

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The Venice Beach “Monster on the Median” is Corruption Incarnate

September 19, 2019/by Edward Ring

AUDIO: To solve the homeless crisis we first have to recognize that laws and court rulings have been exploited to allow everyone involved – nonprofits, developers, consultants, and government agencies – to charge far, far too much. Homeless shelters should cost 1/10th what they cost. In some cases even 1/100th what they currently cost. Stop building them on the priciest real estate on earth. Stop building palaces when tents would get the job done. The planned homeless housing and homeless shelter in Venice Beach, California, provides a perfect example of this amazing waste of money – 12 minutes on KABC Los Angeles – Edward Ring on the Dr. Pinsky and Leeann Tweeden Show.

Edward Ring

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