Bernie Sanders: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies - By Scott Baker

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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After reading this, our conclusion is inescapable: Socialists are dumb. Stupid, dim, cognitively impaired, idiotic. Period. 

Socialist Bernie thinks that the government should own 50% of AI companies, so he intends to simply take it. That's right, he wants the government to just help themselves. On what basis? He wants the government to redistribute the profits. And the author of the article admires him.

Truly dumb.

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The Battle to Defeat Climate Change: The Dumbest, Most Incompetent War Ever Waged (With More at Stake Than Ever) - By Bernard Starr

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author of this ironic yet colorblind complaint about the lack of progress regarding climate change tries to understand why there is a supposed lack of global organization and central command structure within the climate change movement.

He must be unaware of the

• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
• World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos
• Paris Agreement
• Kyoto Protocol
• COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil
• Montreal Protocol
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Actually, the author doesn't have a problem with the climate change effort or its organization. In reality, he doesn't like the fact that everyone is not on board with The Agenda. 

The Agenda is the underlying continual effort to move the U.S. in particular, and the world in general, to replace or overthrow their governmental systems that do not coincide with one-world government, which which would be Socialism.

Climate change is simply a convenient issue to further the Leftist goal of implementing Socialism.

Power is the real goal. Centralized, global power. The unquestioned power over peoples' lives, decisions, religion, finances, and even children. The implementation of a system of government responsible for the deaths tens of millions of deaths.

The Left don't care about the climate. They care about power.

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Six Ways Zohran Mamdani Can Make New York City Affordable Again - by Kiren Gopal

Found here.
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New York City is a textbook example of repeated leftist intervention into the economy. These interventions have yielded the current destitution that is NYC. Having endured decades of Left wing governance, the city is falling apart, unlivable and unaffordable. 

So what does the author propose? Even more of the same. Astonishing. 

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Letter to the editor: Congress must address climate change, for our children Angie Winter

Found here. Our comments in bold

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The letter writer is a supporter of the Citizens' Climate Lobby. This noble-sounding organization is a leftist advocacy group pushing for more taxes. They want to convince you into consenting to taxing yourselves by dangling a carrot called a dividend. This dividend would supposedly mitigate the impact of the fee. They claim: "A national carbon price, with full revenue return and border adjustments, will do four things: internalize the social cost of carbon-based fuels, rapidly achieve large emission reductions, stimulate the economy & recruit global participation. And it will do so for FREE." Yes, they really believe it is free.

Here's a chart from their website:

Notice in step one they want a carbon "fee" [tax] which would be applied "at the point where they [greenhouse gases] first enter the economy." The point at which carbon enters the economy is not the point where carbon enters the ecosystem. The only point where carbon enters the economy is when oil, gas and coal producing companies sell their products. Therefore, the intent of the Citizens' Climate Lobby is to tax oil, coal, and gas companies with an escalating tax, obviously intended to become confiscatory at some point: "The fee would start out low — $15 per ton — and gradually increase $10 each year." 

Let's try to get an idea what this tax would mean to the oil industry. The government says that burning a gallon of gasoline creates about 20 pounds of CO2, and in the U.S. we used 134,506,764,000 gallons in 2013. That generates 690,135,280,000 pounds of CO2, or 345,067,640 tons. Just from gasoline. So the amount of the tax, just for the first year level, is $5.2 billion. 

The energy business intends to operate a profit, so this additional cost of doing business will be incorporated into the price of energy. This tax will be passed down in the cost of their product, which all downstream businesses will pay, and they will do the same with the price of their products. This will trickle down through the economy until it gets to the end user. You. 

You and I will pay this tax. All of it.

According to the International Business Times, U.S. oil company profits were $33.4 billion, only a part of which is gasoline, of course. "Refineries in the United States produced an average of about 12 gallons of diesel fuel and 19 gallons of gasoline from one barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil in 2013." So this means that gasoline is about 45% of a typical barrel of oil. So roughly, $15.3 billion of that profit is from gasoline.

Now, let's do the numbers. We bring in the $5.2 billion tax and add it atop $15.3 billion in revenue. This tax, at least for the first year only, will add 1/3 to the price of a gallon of gas, minimum. My 2008 Toyota RAV4 uses about 30 gallons of gas per month, or 360 per year. With the carbon tax added in, this vehicle will cost an additional $400 to drive, and again, this is just for the first year. 

Then add a second vehicle, as well as the same tax applied to your home's natural gas, each business's heating bill, necessary wage increases, the cost of manufacturing and transporting goods, and you might as well add 50% to the cost of living. Just for the first year.

Then, tax will increase by $10 per ton each year. At the end of year three, the tax will have tripled. 

Citizens' Climate Lobby tells us that carbon tax revenue would be rebated to the consumer. This is step two, above. As one reads further, we discover each household would receive a dividend from a government "trust fund," which contains the accumulated revenue of the carbon tax. Disbursements from this fund would supposedly cover the increased cost of energy resulting from the tax. 

Step three appears to be price and competition controls.

This continues for the few years until the cost of the tax and the rebate amount are absolutely huge. And yet no one in this circle of death seems to have any incentive to lower carbon emissions. The consumer getting reimbursed, and the producer is charging what he needs to.

In effect, what we now have is a perpetual motion machine. The government taxes energy, energy gets more expensive, the tax money is given to the consumer to pay to the energy company for covering the extra expense, the energy company gets a tax increase the next year of an additional 67%, (existing tax of $15 per ton plus another $10 per ton) which they also pass on in their prices. Even more tax money gets paid out of the trust fund to the consumer.

Hmm.

Now, imagine this plan being implemented. Your income no longer covers the cost of your expenses, because you are hanging on for dear life waiting for the arrival of the rebate check at the end of the year. Surprise, the check is less than you thought. But the next tax increase has already kicked in, and your income hasn't increased that much. Now you're in an even bigger hole than before, again waiting for the next rebate check. 

By year five, you can't buy gas any more, your gas powered vehicle is obsolete and valueless, you can't afford to buy an electric vehicle, which would make no sense anyway since electricity is largely produced by carbon fuels. You can't afford to heat your house or even buy groceries, because everything has tripled in price. The rebate didn't calculate its overall effect on the economy because the government never gets stuff like this correct.

Businesses don't get a rebate, even though energy costs have been passed on to them as well. Some businesses might try to pass on the expense in the price of their products, but this makes them hugely more expensive and people just won't be buying them because their disposable income is being used just to stay afloat. Each year gets worse until the economy shuts down.

This is what Citizens' climate lobby calls a free market solution.

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Social Security has plenty of reserves, and other myths

Introduction

The Left loves its myths. They will shout them from the rooftops every day, and if someone takes the time to refute them, well, it doesn't matter. The same myths will be shouted even louder the next day.

Here are some Leftists myths about Social Security:

• Social Security Trust Fund is a stand alone account with trillions of dollars of assets, and therefore does not have anything to do with the finances of the federal government, or national debt or deficit.

• The assets of the Trust Fund are invested in safe Treasury bonds paying interest to the Fund

• SS is completely solvent and only needs the income cap to be rescinded so that millionaires pay SS tax on their entire income.

• SS has an account for each person that accumulates on their behalf

• SS is like an insurance policy, and

• SS distributions have a multiplier effect.

None of this is true.

As is typical for the Left, they tell partial truths, omit key details, and twist and dissemble until it is impossible to discern the real situation. So our purpose today is clarify.

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How to Raise Revenue without Harming Middle Class - By Joel D. Joseph

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Implicit in this article is the assumption that revenue NEEDS to be raised. We do not assent to this assumption. Government doesn't lack money, it lacks discipline. We have DOGE, and its mission is completely contrary to the author's premise. We agree with DOGE: Cut wasteful spending, stop fraud and abuse. 

In addition, in typical liberal fashion the author's solution for raising revenue is to raise taxes. This has never worked, but it's the sole focus of the Left.

Lastly, the author presumes without evidence that increasing taxes in one area will not affect another area. For example, he recommends increasing corporate taxes. But corporate taxes are just another cost of doing business, and the cost of business is included in the products the corporation sells. The consumer (i.e. middle class) pays all taxes via the increased cost of the product, so raising corporate taxes is a defacto increase in cost of living for the middle class.

We think the author actually knows this, but because he's parroting the Leftist narrative in pursuit of The Agenda, he's quite happy to deceive his readers.

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Guest column: Conventional wisdom is just plain wrong on Social Security - by Terry Minow, Jon Ellingson, Elizabeth Marum, Barbara Archer, Bill Bronson

Found here. Our comments in bold.

How does one know when a Leftist is lying? When words are coming out of their word processors. There isn't a single accurate statement in this entire presentation. Yet these authors present these "facts" without explanation, documentation, or analysis. They are nothing more than a series of assertions.

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Debunking Myth #9: “Inflation is caused by wage increases and too much government spending.” BUNK! - by ROBERT REICH

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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In his latest installment in service of The Narrative, Dr. Reich again tortures logic and reason in pursuit of his hatred of successful businesses. He thinks inflation is companies raising their prices. He thinks government is the fix and not the cause.

In fact, he never discusses the premise posed by the title. He just dismisses it and move son to accuse businesses of causing inflation.

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Debunking Myth #7: America is socialist - BUNK! - by ROBERT REICH

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Dr. Reich doesn't explain what Socialism is, but yet he is able to make mention of many government programs that are Socialist in nature. But the purpose of the article is to claim that America is not Socialist.

Dr. Reich seems unable to put together a procession of ideas. In fact, he explains absolutely nothing.

This article is a logical nightmare. 

Guest column: Inflation Reduction Act: A win-win for your pocketbook and our climate - By Becky Edwards, Guest columnist

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The glib talking points flow effortlessly from the writer's word processor, to the point of ridiculousness. 

It's one thing to favor a clean environment. It's another thing entirely to spout bumper sticker slogans and leftist agitprop in the name of a clean environment. And she is definitely a leftist. Since she is a leftist, we do not accept anything she writes on face value. Leftists never tell the whole truth, they always hide behind fine-sounding phrases, superficial analyses, and obfuscating rhetoric. 

And by the way, to our knowledge, the author is not an economist, ecologist, or credentialed in any field upon which she comments. We can discern no qualifications that would suggest we should accept her ideas.

Let's see what we can pull out of this article.

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The problem with democracy and the Left

Introduction

Democracy at its base is simply rule by majority vote. It is historically based on the power of the common man as opposed to the rich or the nobility, and not based on the principle that all men are created equal. The power of the elite is negated by democracy because everyone votes no matter their wealth or status. All men are not created equal in a democracy because the majority can vote in whatever policy they want, even to the detriment of the minority.

And in fact, those who support democracy often do so because of the power of the majority, who of course is mostly the common man, can be used to target the monied and powerful. Thus democracy can be used as a tool to "even the playing field," at least as far as it applies to class conflict.

The Founders and Representative Government

There is, however, no intrinsic virtue in democracy. The process of democracy does not automatically yield fairness, justice, or even good policy. It is often a tool of brute force, where outcomes are forced onto society by special interests who invest lots of time and money into swaying the vote in their favor.

This "tyranny of the majority" (Alexis de Tocqueville) was held in contempt by the Founders as mob rule. Democracy fails as soon as the majority learns it can vote benefits to itself, especially if funded by redistributive taxation that punishes the rich.

The Founders were extremely suspicious of government power. They had lived under the abuses of Great Britain. They were students of history. They understood tyranny. This is why the Founders instituted a limited representative government. Such a system puts a layer between the vote of The People and the implementation of government policy. It was thought that if The People voted for their representatives, and those representatives could be voted out at the end of their terms, then the decisions of the representatives would perhaps be more circumspect.

PS: A final note on tax day - by Robert Reich

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Marxists need a bad guy, and that is always a person who has more money than them. Dr. Reich intends to create discord, greed and envy based on money. Thus his article is not to inform, but to agitate.  He's an agent of the political Left, with an agenda to promulgate The Narrative in order to foment revolution.

He'd prefer to have people vote themselves into socialism, but be assured that the typical Marxist has no moral problem with bloody revolution, as we saw in the 2020 summer riots. This is the continuing history of Marxism, where only the methods have changed, but not the goals.

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Psst: Want to know why Americans are gloomy about the "best" economy since 1984? - By Robert Reich

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Dr. Reich continues to be a mouthpiece for the far left, pretending to be a truth-teller, but spouting only agitprop. He's rather clever in the way he delivers his message, because the casual reader would nod his head in agreement. But a closer examination reveals logical inconsistencies, the omission of key facts, and a manipulation of events and history designed to promulgate The Narrative.

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Is the Human Species on a Fast Track Toward Extinction? - By Bernard Starr

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author is advocating for complete central control of the entire world, in the name of saving the planet. Aside from the problematic idea of giving complete and total control to an intellectual ruling class, the author never even bothers to explain why humankind should not become extinct. What is bad about the planet dying? Why is it a problem that species die off? 

And why should we survive as a species?

The author is operating according to some unstated moral premise. Extinction may be bad, but it is not self-evidently so. The author would need to explain the moral premise upon which he bases his presentation. 

In actual fact, the author doesn't really believe that we will become extinct. Nope, that is a convenient excuse. What he really wants is a dismantling of capitalism. He wants the installation of a world administration. He is a marxist at heart, and marxists love the utopian ideas of a perfect society governed by wise elders, or whatever these despots would call themselves.

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The Right’s Bad-Faith Argument About Bodily Autonomy - By David M. Perry

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The total lack of awareness exhibited by the author regarding his own irony would be amusing if it wasn't so pitiable. He is libertine regarding absolute personal autonomy, and simultaneously pro mask mandate. He vociferously defends a woman's right to abortion, yet is happy to suggest that violators of mask mandates should have their rights rescinded.

It must take a gargantuan effort to suppress the cognitive dissonance.

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How 'Socialism' Gave us Coronavirus Vaccines and Saved the World From a Worse Pandemic - By Bernard Starr

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author lauds government involvement in the development of the vaccine, but somehow never mentions Trump or operation Warp Speed. 

The author alternately accepts then denies the desirability of government money given to the private sector. 

He doesn't know what socialism is. He doesn't know what capitalism is. 

This article is a muddled mess.

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Parental Rights and Public Education Shouldn't Mix - By Patrick Mattimore

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author makes an exceedingly weak case for excluding parents from the educational process.

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Existing socialism's successes discredit Friedman's core argument - By Rainer Shea

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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When considering the defenses socialists make regarding their beliefs and their indictments of capitalism, we typically find that the cases they make are superficial, misleading, or founded upon false premises. So we were surprised to find the below article, which is none of these things. The author actually reviews the ideas of a free-market economist (Milton Friedman), critiques the concepts presented, and offers a thoughtful rebuttal.

This almost never happens with socialists.

Now, that doesn't mean the author succeeds in rebutting Friedman or negating capitalism. In fact, he is hindered by the typical socialist obstacles: He misunderstands capitalism, he assumes the superiority of socialism, and he thinks this is about competing economic systems.

We also note that the title of the article suggests that the author is going to name the socialist success stories. He does not do that.

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Fascinated by how the behavior of the people who took 3 pieces of pizza at a pizza party

 Posted by a FB friend:

Transcript: Fascinated by how the behavior of the people who took 3 pieces of pizza at a pizza party because they thought it would run out and the people who took 1 piece for the exact same reason is such a perfect encapsulation of American beliefs about community.

Apparently this person is making a statement about greedy rich people taking more than their fair share of the nation's wealth, which means others, the poor, are deprived of what they are owed. And this has something to do with community, and that community (communism?) is violated by people who take too much.

The Left seems particularly bad at constructing analogies, mostly because they build on false premises. An analogy only works when the underlying assumptions are true.

How capitalism made the world sick. - By Sarah Jones

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Here we have another "progressive" attempting to explain economics. Nearly all progressives and leftists begin with a caricature of capitalism, building their entire world view on a lie. They compound the lie by suggesting that progressivism/socialism, or some part of socialism, is the solution.

Capitalism is simply the willing, legal, eyes-open exchange of value. Anything illegal, shady, or exploitative is a violation of capitalism, not features of it. 

The agitprop component of socialism is particularly effective among those who have already accepted the false premise of the caricature of capitalism. A typical leftist will plunge headlong into any pronouncement, factoid, or narrative promulgated by the leftist machine.

The below article is just such a thing.

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