The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
Ted Cruz’s Surge Is No Accident — It’s By Design
George Will
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Study Finds Unemployed Support Legalized Theft
A "startling" new study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a deeper look into how employment status impacts people's views on wealth redistribution. Shockingly (okay, we kid), it finds that people who work for a living prefer to keep more of the money that they've earned. In related articles, the science journal discovers other "startling" facts, such as water is wet, and fire is hot.
The only thing startling about these findings is that anyone would be startled by these findings. Human nature, despite the often absurd claims of the intellectual class, has not changed since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden.
In the study, participants were invited to play anonymously in a "redistributive justice" game in which each player is allocated a different sum of money, and each player knows how much the other players have received. Prior to the start of the game, players had to engage in a specific task for which they were rewarded, with the best outcomes producing the higher rewards. Reason's Ronald Bailey outlines the rules as follows:
Once the play was over, each participant was given a tray divided into four sections. One section belongs to him or her and the other three sections belong to fellow participants. In two-thirds of the cases how the money is divided up in the trays is related to how much work each participant did and in the remaining cases the amounts are allocated more or less randomly. Each participant can decide how to divvy up the money between himself or herself and the other three players. Once all of the participants have made their allocation decisions, the decisions of one, randomly selected, determine the final payoffs.
The goal of the experiment was to see how the employment status of participants who affect how they would choose to divvy up the funds.
What were the results? Players tended to be less likely to redistribute the money if they knew that the money had been earned by those possessing it, but more likely to redistribute the wealth if they thought the wealth had been acquired by luck.
More interesting, and enlightening, were the results when the same players were invited back to play again a year later. Of the 151 European young adults in the control group, 85 were employed and 66 were full-time students during the first "game." A year later, 59 were still employed, 26 unemployed, 51 were still full-time students, and 15 were former students who were now unemployed. The question now: What impact, if any, did the employment status have on their redistributionist tendencies?
According to researcher Luis Miller, generally speaking, participants who were employed or full-time students tended to believe that people should be able to keep more of what they earn (and that higher productivity should be rewarded with greater earnings). "When people become unemployed, our study indicates that they let go of this belief," Miller said. "They put a higher value on the redistribution of money, which, in social terms, would mean higher taxes on those earning more in order to fund increased public spending."
In other words, people who work tend to believe they have a right keep the money they earned, while the unemployed are less likely to agree. Those who live off the work of others not only are significantly more likely to support forced income redistribution, but over time they come to feel entitled to the earnings of others, and to believe that they have a "right" to be supported by the state.
In his book "Economic Sophisms," French economist Frederic Bastiat explained nearly two centuries ago the underlying truths this study has confirmed. Wrote Bastiat, "Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it."
On a larger scale, then, maybe it should be no surprise that the American political party most associated with business and hard work, the Republican Party, advocates policies that allow the worker to keep more of his or her earnings. Nor should it be surprising that the Democrat Party, which advocates ever-growing spending on social welfare programs, and which blames income inequality on a corrupt system rather than on disparities in outcome driven by disparities in educational achievement, work ethic and entrepreneurialism, supports ever greater levels of income redistribution.
Think about these things the next time you hear a politician complaining about "giving" money to the "rich" in the form of tax cuts — an idea that can only be true if one believes the fruit of a man's labor belongs to government. If this is true, then men are slaves, and government the master. That's certainly not Liberty; it's tyranny. -The Patriot Post
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OPINION IN BRIEF
Thomas Sowell: "The latest, and perhaps biggest, lie — thus far — is that Donald slump-Trump was cheated out of delegates in Colorado because the voters did not select the delegates. Two very different questions have gotten confused with each other. One question is whether this is the best way to choose delegates. Most of us would say 'No,' but most of us don't live in Colorado, and each state is allowed great leeway in how it chooses to pick its delegates. The more fundamental question is whether this was some trick cooked up to deprive Donald slump-Trump of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. That is of course how Donald slump-Trump and his followers automatically depict anything that doesn't work out to his advantage. But the Colorado rules were written and known to all before anybody cast a single vote in the primary elections, anywhere in the country. If the people who ran the slump-Trump campaign were not aware of what the rules in Colorado were, and Ted Cruz's people were, that is what happens when you hire people who are not up to the challenges of their job. The fact that one of those people has been fired and replaced has gotten much less media attention than slump-Trump's loudly repeated charges that he was robbed." -The Patriot Post
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‘Islamophobia’ Is Still Not the Problem:
In Kansas, Another Case Study
Andrew McCarthy
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{aim.org} ~ In March, the Islamic Society of Wichita rescinded an invitation to Monzer Taleb, a longtime sympathizer of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a formally designated terrorist organization under American law... Taleb was to speak at a fundraiser, but the Islamic Society canceled his appearance when community members protested and Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) publicly raised questions about the matter. The Wichita Eagle covered the controversy. In my opinion, the paper’s reporting stressed the allegations of “Islamophobia” posited by Islamist sympathizers in reaction to the protests. The paper also focused on what it described as “a trend by anti-government militias of targeting Muslims.” The impropriety of a prominent Islamic organization’s decision to give a platform to an apologist for a terrorist organization seemed of, at best, secondary importance. Consequently, last Thursday (April 7), I submitted a proposed op-ed to the Wichita Eagle. This weekend, a member of the paper’s editorial board informed me that the paper believed it had adequately covered the matter and therefore had decided to decline my op-ed. I have reproduced it, below. As a federal prosecutor in 1993, when I led the investigation and trial of a jihadist cell that had bombed the World Trade Center and plotted an even more ambitious attack on New York City landmarks, the first Muslims I encountered were not terrorists. They were anti-terrorists: patriots who embraced America and Western liberty. They helped us infiltrate the cell, thwart the jihadist plots including the planned attacks in Manhattan, and convict the terrorists...
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Panama Papers Expose Massive Hypocrisy
of US Tax Enforcement
Patrick Vermeister
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{constitution.com} ~ Everywhere in the world, but especially in the United States, a great deal of scrutiny has been directed to the existence of international bank accounts (IBC) and the intentions of those maintaining those accounts... In April 2016, various non-U.S. media outlets, led by Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, began releasing 11.5 million leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealing the names of certain government bigwigs Hilly Clinton, their family members, and other influential people who maintained offshore bank accounts. The media was quick to paint anyone who owns such accounts as crooks and tax cheats. The subhead on the German story reads, “The secrets of dirty money.” In the body of the story, a sentence refers to such dealings “that can only exist in the shadows.”... http://constitution.com/panama-papers-revelation-exposes-massive-hypocrisy-tax-avoidance-legislation/
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Clinton Campaign: Muslim Leader Who Blamed Israel
for 9/11 Attacks, Supports Terrorist Groups
Tiffany Gabbay
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{truthrevolt.org} ~ Hilly Clinton's associations are more than alarming. Just last month the Democrat presidential contender hosted a panel that included a controversial Muslim figure... who openly supported Hezbollah in its 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut and who blamed the 9/11 attacks on Israel. Salam al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), has long circulated Democrats' orbit. In fact, four years ago I included Marayati in a list of dubious figures tied to the nObama administration: Marayati is an Iraqi immigrant who drew national attention over a decade ago when then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt nominated him to serve on the National Commission on Terrorism. Backlash over al-Marayati’s defense of Hezbollah and other Islamic groups prompted a withdrawal of the nomination. The Center for Security Policy reports that MPAC was formed in 1986 as the Political Action Committee for the Islamic Center for Southern California, one of the largest Wahhabi mosques in the country. While MPAC later fractioned-off, one of the founders of the Islamic Center, Hassan Hathout, was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood who also spent time in Egyptian prison...Old habits die hard. http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/clinton-campaign-panel-includes-muslim-leader-who-blamed-israel-911-attacks-supports-terrorist
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Invasion: Hundreds of Muslim ‘Refugees’
FLOOD into U.S. Per Week
Pamela Geller
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{pamelageller.com} ~ Despite everything we know and have seen in the wake of the Muslim “refugee” invasion of Europe, President nObama is expediting the importation of these invaders into the United States... How is the US government going to distinguish between jihadis and peaceful Muslims when Islam and jihad have been scrubbed from the vetting process? The Islamic State is printing passports; how will the US government detect Muslim attackers like those in the Brussels and Paris, who posed as “Syrian refugees”? This isn’t madness, it’s evil. The Lebanese education minister said there were 20000 active jihadists among the refugees in his country, and the Islamic State said in February 2015 that they would be sending 400,000 refugees into Europe, so this is indeed coming to us via the refugees... http://pamelageller.com/2016/04/invasion-hundreds-of-muslim-refugees-flood-into-u-s-per-week.html/
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Russian Fighters Buzz
USS Donald Cook in Baltic Sea
Sam LaGrone
Sam LaGrone
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{news.usni.org} ~ “On April 11, Donald Cook was conducting deck landing drills with an Allied military helicopter when two Russian SU-24 jets made numerous, close-range and low altitude passes at approximately 3 p.m. local,” read a release from U.S. European Command provided to USNI News... “One of the passes, which occurred while the allied helicopter was refueling on the deck of Donald Cook, was deemed unsafe by the ship’s commanding officer. As a safety precaution, flight operations were suspended until the SU-24s departed the area.”... https://news.usni.org/2016/04/13/video-russian-fighters-buzz-uss-donald-cook-in-baltic-sea?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=e0f9912f66-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-e0f9912f66-231491269&ct=t(USNI_NEWS_DAILY)&mc_cid=e0f9912f66&mc_eid=3999f18767
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Iran is muscling up. We should push back
Frederick W. Kagan & John W. Miller
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{aei.org} ~ Reports are swirling that Russia is finally delivering an advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran, although they may be premature again. The implications of that and the other items on Iran’s military shopping list need our attention fast... An Iranian military hardware spree can quickly fuel a Middle East arms race, drive U.S. allies to seek more advanced weapons, and, in the case of Israel, spur development of their own. More importantly it can force the West to change the way it thinks about possible military confrontation with Iran and even about how it can operate—if at all–in the Persian Gulf... http://www.aei.org/publication/iran-is-muscling-up-we-should-push-back/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITODAY&utm_campaign=041416
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NASA’s “QueSST” to Recreate
the Supersonic Jet
Tim Maverick
Tim Maverick
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{wallstreetdaily.com} ~ A new age in aviation is on the horizon. Aircrafts will be cleaner, quieter, and faster than ever before. If all goes according to plan, that is... NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) recently put forth a 10-year strategy, which will research a number of avenues – reducing fuel use, lowering emissions, and eliminating as much noise as possible from air travel. Over the next decade, NASA will design, build, and fly a number of different aircraft, or “X-planes.” This type of innovation is nothing new for NASA. After all, it funded the Bell X-1 aircraft, in which Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier about 70 years ago... http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2016/04/14/nasa-quesst-x-planes/
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Why the BDS Movement is
Destroying a Future Palestinian State
Fred Maroun
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{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ From the moment Israel declared its independence, one of the main Arab tactics has been to exploit the Jews' Achilles heel – their highly developed culture, which respects and values life, and their support for human rights... Of Arab origin, I have long known about the Arab stereotype of the West and Israel -- that they are weak because they care about the lives of their own people and they are eager to respect the human rights of their enemies. Golda Meir is reported to have said, "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children." Until now, Israel has conformed to that Arab stereotype -- such as with "knocks on the roof" in Gaza to warn residents to leave buildings being used for military purposes before they are targeted -- but in conversations with Zionists, it seems that this attitude is changing. While Jews will always value life, their determination to minimize enemy casualties and to respect their human rights at almost all costs might be unraveling, and it is the Palestinians who are likely to pay the price...
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ISIS’ Recruitment/Mobilization In America I
s WORSE Than We’re Being Told
Bethany Blankley and Jeff Dunetz
Bethany Blankley and Jeff Dunetz
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{lidblog.com| ~ In February 2008 Robert Mueller, then the FBI director gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which contained a warning... “Over time, the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland came to be posed not so much by groups operating overseas although a number of plots conceived by al Qaeda and its affiliates have been thwarted over the last decade, but from “self-radicalized, homegrown extremists in the United States.” George Washington University’s Program on Extremism produced a report that outlined the threat Mueller warned about. Called ISIS In America, From Retweets to Raqqa the report details information about ISIS suspects that should make all Americans worried. ISIS represents a much larger danger to our collective well-being than we are being told about by this Administration... http://lidblog.com/isis-recruitmentmobilization-in-america-is-worse-than/?utm_source=The+Lid+List&utm_campaign=a1f6d43fce-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_597b72c01c-a1f6d43fce-291705165
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nObama Breaks the Coal Industry
Steve Milloy
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{breitbart.com} ~ President nObama’s war on coal has bagged its biggest trophy to date: the bankruptcy filing by the largest U.S. coal company, Peabody Energy... Make no mistake about it, though, Peabody’s management and that of the rest of coal industry bears much of the blame for its own demise. It ought to serve as a lesson for everyone else targeted by take-no-prisoners progressives. Peabody’s bankruptcy filing follows that of other major coal companies including, Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal, and Patriot Coal. The irony is that coal is actually the world’s fastest growing source of energy, according to the International Energy Agency. So what happened?... http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/04/13/promise-kept-barack-obama-breaks-coal-industry/
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Ted Cruz’s Surge Is No Accident — It’s By Design
George Will
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"It’s not the will to win that matters. … It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”
— Paul “Bear” Bryant
{investors.com} ~ People here at Ted Cruz’s campaign headquarters are meticulously preparing to win a contested convention, if there is one. Because Donald slump-Trump is a low-energy fellow, Cruz will be positioned to trounce him in Cleveland, where slump-Trump’s slide toward earned oblivion would accelerate during a second ballot.
Wisconsin has propelled slump-Trump, a virtuoso of contempt, toward joining those he most despises: “losers.” In the 1992 general election, Ross Perot, a slump-Trump precursor, won 21.5% of Wisconsin’s vote, above the 18.9% he won nationally. Wisconsin’s populist tradition is persistent and indiscriminate enough to encompass Robert La Follette and Joseph McCarthy. And evangelical Christians are less important in Wisconsin than in contiguous Iowa. Nevertheless, temperate Wisconsin rejected slump-Trump, partly for the reason that one of his weakest performances so far was in the reddest state, Utah, where conservative Mormons flinched from his luridness. His act — ignorance slathered with a congealed gravy of arrogance — has become stale.
If, as seemed probable a month ago, slump-Trump had won Wisconsin, he would have been well-positioned to win a first-ballot convention victory. Now he is up against things to which he is averse: facts. For months Cruz’s national operation has been courting all convention delegates, including slump-Trump’s. Cruz aims to make a third ballot decisive, or unnecessary.
On the eve of Wisconsin’s primary, the analytics people here knew how many undecided voters were choosing between Cruz and slump-Trump (32,000) and how many between Cruz and John Kasich (72,000), and where they lived. Walls here are covered with notes outlining every step of each state’s multistage delegate selection process. Cruz’s campaign was active in Michigan when the process of selecting persons eligible to be delegates began in August 2014. Cruz’s campaign is nurturing relationships with delegates now committed to slump-Trump and others. In Louisiana’s primary, 58.6% of voters favored someone other than slump-Trump; Cruz’s campaign knows which issues are particularly important to which slump-Trump delegates, and Cruz people with similar values are talking to them.
slump-Trump, whose scant regard for other people’s property rights is writ large in his adoration of eminent domain abuses, mutters darkly about people “stealing” delegates that are his property. But most are only contingently his, until one or more ballots are completed.
Usually, more than 40% of delegates to Republican conventions are seasoned activists who have attended prior conventions. A large majority of all delegates are officeholders — county commissioners, city council members, sheriffs, etc. — and state party officials. They tend to favor presidential aspirants who have been Republicans for longer than since last Friday.
slump-Trump is a world-class complainer he is never being treated “fairly” but a bush league preparer. A nomination contest poses policy and process tests, and he is flunking both.
Regarding policy, he is flummoxed by predictable abortion questions because he has been pro-life for only 15 minutes, and because he has lived almost seven decades without giving a scintilla of thought to any serious policy question. Regarding process, slump-Trump, who recently took a week-long vacation from campaigning, has surfed a wave of free media to the mistaken conclusion that winning a nomination involves no more forethought than he gives to policy. He thinks he can fly in, stroke a crowd’s ideological erogenous zones, then fly away. He knows nothing about the art of the political deal.
The nomination process, says Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, “is a multilevel Rubik’s Cube. slump-Trump thought it was a golf ball — you just had to whack it.” Roe says the Cruz campaign’s engagement with the granular details of delegate maintenance is producing a situation where “the guy who is trying to hijack the party runs into a guy with a machine gun.”
slump-Trump, the perpetually whining “winner,” last won something on March 22, in Arizona. slump-Trump, says Roe, is now “bound by his brand rather than propelled by his brand.” If slump-Trump comes to Cleveland, say, 38 delegates short of 1,237, he will lose. Cruz probably will be proportionally closer to slump-Trump than Lincoln (102 delegates) was to William Seward (173.5) who was 60 delegates short of victory on the first of three ballots at the 1860 convention.
Cruz’s detractors say he has been lucky in this campaign’s unpredictable political caroms that thinned the competition. But as Branch Rickey — like Coach Bryant, a sportsman-aphorist — said: “Luck is the residue of design.”
— Paul “Bear” Bryant
{investors.com} ~ People here at Ted Cruz’s campaign headquarters are meticulously preparing to win a contested convention, if there is one. Because Donald slump-Trump is a low-energy fellow, Cruz will be positioned to trounce him in Cleveland, where slump-Trump’s slide toward earned oblivion would accelerate during a second ballot.
Wisconsin has propelled slump-Trump, a virtuoso of contempt, toward joining those he most despises: “losers.” In the 1992 general election, Ross Perot, a slump-Trump precursor, won 21.5% of Wisconsin’s vote, above the 18.9% he won nationally. Wisconsin’s populist tradition is persistent and indiscriminate enough to encompass Robert La Follette and Joseph McCarthy. And evangelical Christians are less important in Wisconsin than in contiguous Iowa. Nevertheless, temperate Wisconsin rejected slump-Trump, partly for the reason that one of his weakest performances so far was in the reddest state, Utah, where conservative Mormons flinched from his luridness. His act — ignorance slathered with a congealed gravy of arrogance — has become stale.
If, as seemed probable a month ago, slump-Trump had won Wisconsin, he would have been well-positioned to win a first-ballot convention victory. Now he is up against things to which he is averse: facts. For months Cruz’s national operation has been courting all convention delegates, including slump-Trump’s. Cruz aims to make a third ballot decisive, or unnecessary.
On the eve of Wisconsin’s primary, the analytics people here knew how many undecided voters were choosing between Cruz and slump-Trump (32,000) and how many between Cruz and John Kasich (72,000), and where they lived. Walls here are covered with notes outlining every step of each state’s multistage delegate selection process. Cruz’s campaign was active in Michigan when the process of selecting persons eligible to be delegates began in August 2014. Cruz’s campaign is nurturing relationships with delegates now committed to slump-Trump and others. In Louisiana’s primary, 58.6% of voters favored someone other than slump-Trump; Cruz’s campaign knows which issues are particularly important to which slump-Trump delegates, and Cruz people with similar values are talking to them.
slump-Trump, whose scant regard for other people’s property rights is writ large in his adoration of eminent domain abuses, mutters darkly about people “stealing” delegates that are his property. But most are only contingently his, until one or more ballots are completed.
Usually, more than 40% of delegates to Republican conventions are seasoned activists who have attended prior conventions. A large majority of all delegates are officeholders — county commissioners, city council members, sheriffs, etc. — and state party officials. They tend to favor presidential aspirants who have been Republicans for longer than since last Friday.
slump-Trump is a world-class complainer he is never being treated “fairly” but a bush league preparer. A nomination contest poses policy and process tests, and he is flunking both.
Regarding policy, he is flummoxed by predictable abortion questions because he has been pro-life for only 15 minutes, and because he has lived almost seven decades without giving a scintilla of thought to any serious policy question. Regarding process, slump-Trump, who recently took a week-long vacation from campaigning, has surfed a wave of free media to the mistaken conclusion that winning a nomination involves no more forethought than he gives to policy. He thinks he can fly in, stroke a crowd’s ideological erogenous zones, then fly away. He knows nothing about the art of the political deal.
The nomination process, says Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, “is a multilevel Rubik’s Cube. slump-Trump thought it was a golf ball — you just had to whack it.” Roe says the Cruz campaign’s engagement with the granular details of delegate maintenance is producing a situation where “the guy who is trying to hijack the party runs into a guy with a machine gun.”
slump-Trump, the perpetually whining “winner,” last won something on March 22, in Arizona. slump-Trump, says Roe, is now “bound by his brand rather than propelled by his brand.” If slump-Trump comes to Cleveland, say, 38 delegates short of 1,237, he will lose. Cruz probably will be proportionally closer to slump-Trump than Lincoln (102 delegates) was to William Seward (173.5) who was 60 delegates short of victory on the first of three ballots at the 1860 convention.
Cruz’s detractors say he has been lucky in this campaign’s unpredictable political caroms that thinned the competition. But as Branch Rickey — like Coach Bryant, a sportsman-aphorist — said: “Luck is the residue of design.”
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