Tuesday, March 13, 2018



DREAMers Go Rogue… Trash Democrat Party in Unprecedented Move

Playing identity politics is a risky game. The Democrat Party no doubt thought it could snag easy votes by pandering to the largely Latino population of “Dreamers” … but the left’s eagerness to blame Republicans for every problem is now causing many in that community to reject liberal promises.

During a recent appearance on Fox News, an illegal immigrant and participant in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program named Cata Santiago had harsh words for Democrats and their inability to work with President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers.

“They don’t walk their talk,” declared the 20-year-old immigrant, who is a Mexican citizen but was taken to the U.S. by her parents when she was only 8.

Trump moved to end the Obama-enacted DACA program after it had been repeatedly extended, based primarily on the argument that, according to the U.S. Constitution, important immigration rules should be passed by Congress instead of created by executive action.

Trump gave lawmakers half a year to pass a permanent solution and said that he would sign it when it reached his desk. A bipartisan bill never materialized

Santiago slammed the left for constantly pointing fingers at conservatives while doing next to nothing to actually build a path to citizenship.

“We’re tired of it. We’re tired of believing them when they say ‘It’s the Republicans.’ They make promises when they’re in an election, and when it’s over they’re done and don’t do anything,” she stated.

A recently uncovered memo from within the Democrat Party revealed that the party was worried about gaining votes from Hispanics and saw Dreamers as “a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”

Many observers interpreted this as an admission that liberals were defending DACA for votes, not for ideological reasons.

Other immigrants also echoed Santiago’s rejection of Democrat politics.

“The Democrats made the calculation to kick the can down the road and allow hundreds of thousands of us undocumented youth to live in uncertainty,” pointed out Maria Duarte, who was part of a sit-in protest at DNC headquarters. “We are anxious and we are scared of being torn away from our homes and our community.”

Even strong advocates of the DACA program are voicing their frustration over Democrats falling on their face when it came to finding a solution for so-called “Dreamers.”

“Democrats have no plan, and once again, Schumer, now the minority leader, is showing that protecting these immigrants … was never his priority,” complained Cesar Vargas, a pro-amnesty immigration attorney.

“The lack of leadership by Democrats, however, is nothing new. In 2009, they controlled the White House and Congress and still failed to bring up immigration reform for a vote,” Vargas pointed out.

He’s not wrong. You could even say that “complain and blame Republicans” has been the de facto Democrat playbook since the Clinton era. As the old saying goes, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time … and even Dreamers may have run out of sympathy for leftist excuses.

SOURCE





Virginia Social Worker: I Was Fired Over My Concealed Carry Permit

The National Rifle Association has filed a lawsuit over Florida’s new gun law, which increases the age to buy rifles in the state from 18 to 21. Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill yesterday.

Yet, the pro-Second Amendment organization should consider joining another lawsuit in Virginia, where a social worker was reportedly fired for being a concealed carry holder. On Facebook yesterday, Storm Durham, a social services worker, described how three Roanoke police officers escorted her out of her office.

She said some of the officers had accompanied her on child services visits. Durham was also not allowed to use the bathroom on her way out due to safety concerns. On Twitter, Durham said that she’s seeking lawyers to fight this:

I was fired today. From Roanoke City Social Services, serving as a damn good social worker. I was fired for having a concealed carry permit. Not the gun, the permit. I was escorted by 3 city police officers bc I am a "safety risk to the building"

“I have a concealed carry permit. I own guns. I hunt. I target shoot. I represent Women hunters and outdoorswomen. Does that make me a criminal? Does that make me a safety risk to others? A big enough safety risk to be escorted by three Roanoke City Police officers?” asked Durham of what appears to be a humiliating ordeal. “So scary and threatening that I need to be treated like a criminal?” she added.

Durham said that she never brought her firearm to the office, and that she bought one for self-protection being a survivor of sexual assault. 

“I am an American, a gun owner, and a proud sponsor of hunting across America, and I, nor my lawyers, judges, or support systems will rest until something is done until someone answers for punishing me and taking away my constitutional right,” she declared.

Well, this is quite an egregious story about one’s constitutional rights being violated.

SOURCE





The Munroe Bergdorf spat confirms how poisonous the new ‘progressives’ are

Bergdorf is a black trannie that thinks highly of itself

Munroe Bergdorf probably hates you. Certainly if you are white she will think you are pretty disgusting. She thinks that you, like ‘all white people’, partake in ‘racial violence’. She thinks you have built your ‘existence, privilege and success’ on ‘the backs, blood and death of people of colour’. In short, you’re scum: you are racially violent and blinkered to your role in the spilling of black people’s blood. Who wouldn’t hate someone like that? I would. And don’t even start Ms Bergdorf on homosexuals who support the Tory Party (‘special kind of dickhead[s]’), the Suffragettes (‘white supremacists’), or homeless people (the white ones apparently ‘have white privilege’ – lucky bastards). For someone who blathers on about acceptance, Ms Bergdorf seems curiously unaccepting of certain groups of people.

That Ms Bergdorf, a trans-woman and sometime model, poses as a promoter of tolerance and diversity and yet at the same time sanctions hatred or at least disdain for large sections of society has got some people scratching their heads. How can this be? This week she stepped down as an equalities adviser for the Labour Party following a media storm over her past hateful comments. (Literally everything you need to know about the Corbynised Labour Party and its trading of class politics for identity politics is contained in the fact that it wanted advice about equality from someone who thinks the white man on methadone who lives in a skip enjoys ‘white privilege’.) Now some people are laughing, and it’s a confused laugh, at the fact that an aspiring equalities adviser could be so mean about certain social groups.

But it makes sense. Perfect sense. Hatred, demonisation and the treatment of large swathes of society as backward are key elements of the politics of identity. It is not an accident that many identitarians hold extremely intolerant views of certain social groups. They are not going ‘off-script’ when they casually write off white people or straight people or Christians as dickheads, supremacists, ignorant, evil, etc. Rather, such a callous painting of ordinary people as ‘problematic’, as creatures to be wary of, is central to this politics that relies for its very survival on the idea that minority groups are victimised and thus require help and flattery from those in authority. For in order to sustain this beneficial status as ‘victim group’, identitarians must continually construct a fantasy army of victimisers. Their social and political status is utterly dependent on their ability to depict other people, ordinary people, you and me, as horrible, hateful, and perilous to their identity or their ‘existence’. The fuel of their worldview is fear and hatred of others, of us.

They’re all at it. Every identitarian activist devotes an extraordinary amount of energy to uncovering and complaining about the alleged backwardness of ordinary people. Witness how gay-rights groups now scour for evidence of homophobic hatred. So desperate are they to prove, against the evidence of everyday experience, that gays suffer horrible prejudice in 21st-century Britain that they have taken to flagging up schoolkids’ use of the word ‘gay’ as an insult to bolster their claim to victim status. Or see how Muslim community groups trawl for evidence of ‘Islamophobia’, gathering every stupid tweet or anti-Koran comment made on a bus into dossiers of dread that they might present to the media and the government. They need this; it guarantees their funding; it grants them access to the sainted circle of threatened groups requiring special resources. To ensure their survival in a politics that rewards those who suffer, they must set out to prove that non-Muslims are a problem; they must encourage hatred of non-Muslims.

Or witness how victim feminists treat everything from a whistle in the street to a sexist tweet as proof that they suffer ‘structural oppression’. Many of these feminists come from well-off backgrounds, were privately educated, and have incredibly relaxing jobs in the media and politics, and yet they must debase themselves by trawling for evidence of misogynistic hatred because this sustains their self-flattering, self-deluded status as victim. Trans activists are the worst on this front. Victimology is so central to their identity that they have come to view midwives saying ‘it’s a boy!’ or abortion charities using the word ‘women’ as evidence that society is a transphobic conspiracy and this will make young trans people kill themselves. To survive, to garner greater influence in public debate, trans activism must depict the rest of society as disgusting; everything in the politics of identity implores it to do this.

This instinct for demonisation, for ‘othering’ ordinary people, doesn’t only express itself in terms of identitarian vs your average member of the public. It also unleashes a process of fragmentation within identity groups themselves. So highly prized is the title of victim that there is now a creepy competition both among identity groups and within identity groups. Feminists and trans-women bicker over who suffers the most. Bisexuals rage against homosexuals for ignoring ‘biphobia’. Muslim campaigners bristle if they feel too much attention is paid to anti-Semitism. And then within groups, new sects are always breaking off, believing they will fare better in the game of victimhood if they go it alone. Witness how ‘white gay men’ are now slammed by black homosexuals. Or how white trans-women are damned as ‘more privileged’ than black trans-women. Black Muslims agitate against Asian Muslims. ‘The black Muslim experience is completely different to… the Asian one’, wrote one recently. And of course he means it is worse. This is the nasty racial, sexual and religious fragmentation unleashed by a politics that celebrates and rewards those who claim to suffer: a competitive victimhood in which solidarity is not only difficult, but impossible.

What does this elitist coveting of the prize of victim status do to public life? It poisons it. It encourages suspicion, hatred. As identity politics becomes the main form of politics, so we the public are increasingly ruled over by a political, campaigning and media class that thinks we are foul; that thinks we are racist, transphobic, Islamophobic, stupid, dangerous. After all, every new piece of research commissioned by identity groups tells them this: that such-and-such a group is still misunderstood by the dim throng and thus it needs more funding and assistance, etc, etc. They spread panic about prejudicial hatred among the public, but in truth it is they who hate us. It is they who demonise Christians, the elderly, ageing feminists, certain gays, white people, working-class people, and anyone else whose views might be held up as proof that certain minority groups still suffer ‘structural oppression’.

Identity politics is the midwife of misanthropy. Imagine going about your daily life thinking all white people are racist, ‘white men’ are trash, most Christians are homophobic, the country is riddled with transphobic prejudice; imagine how fretful you would be, how scared of your fellow man, how consumed by disdain you would become for the citizens of your own nation. This is the identitarian mindset. This is how they view society, how they must view society: they fear it, and hate it.

SOURCE







Foreign Aid Often Hurts More Than Helps

When these corrupt regimes are flush with American cash, it's no wonder that so many poor nations fail to prosper.  

There’s an old saying that charity begins at home. While the spirit of the phrase is controversial in our hyper-political climate, the fact is that sending federal aid overseas is more of a feel-good solution than a long-term way of reducing poverty or increasing the ability of people to become more self-reliant and prosperous.

For decades, the United States has sent aid to countries around the world with the noble intention of helping those unable to access the basic necessities of life such as medicine, running water and shelter. But some Third World countries never break the cycle of poverty, and this often has more to do with their corrupt political leaders than a lack of work ethic, resources or a desire to improve. When these corrupt regimes are flush with American cash, it’s no wonder that so many poor nations fail to prosper.

The best way for people to escape poverty is to implement a free-market economy, support individual freedom and business expansion and fight political corruption. The reason tyrannical and corrupt regimes don’t follow this advice is self-evident.

The data show that free nations are more prosperous than those whose political systems aim for equality at all costs. The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 Index of Economic Freedom ranks 180 nations based on their level of economic freedom and the corresponding level of poverty. Some economic studies send mixed messages, but not this one. The numbers are irrefutable: As economic freedom increases, poverty decreases.

As Patrick Tyrrell writes at The Daily Signal, “This finding should not be overlooked when organizations like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank plan aid for developing countries. Such aid too often ignores economic freedom violations by despots, dictators, and autocrats.”

There seems to be little thought given to where the aid goes when it leaves places like the IMF or World Bank, or how the money is spent if it actually makes it past an entrenched autocracy. But should we expect anything different from organizations that habitually overlook corruption in countries receiving aid?

Tyrrell adds, “Strongmen who disregard property rights or the rule of law to remain in power have been rewarded with billions of dollars in foreign aid from rich countries for decades. Despots and dictators have often used this aid to solidify their grips on power, such as by withholding food aid from groups that do not support them.”

So that’s why decades of American and international aid hasn’t even made a dent in the problem.

Not surprisingly, the political Left is often the driving force behind these global relief programs, and government aid isn’t the only problem. More often than not, so-called progressive aid organizations are plagued by malfeasance while the people in need to continue to suffer. We only need to look at what the Clinton Global Initiative did with contributions from wealthy, progressive donors. Remember the millions that were sent the Clintons’ way in order to help the Haitian people recover from the 2010 earthquake? Haiti still hasn’t recovered, yet the Clintons have rolled in cash.

Another segment of our society pushing for more global assistance is progressive Christians, who use their faith as justification for pouring billions of dollars of government aid into poverty-stricken countries. Once a donation drops into the collection basket, the assumption is that a hungry mouth will be fed and medicines will be delivered.

Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. As The Resurgent’s Peter Heck suggests, “Christians who see their brother in need personally should give generously from their own resources, bank accounts, and wealth to care for them. Christians who see their brothers in need in other parts of the world should support charitable organizations that work to rebuild their lives through missions and relief efforts.”

This sounds reasonable considering that Americans are the most generous people in the world. “Americans out-donate Britain and Canada two-to-one and nations like Italy and Germany 20-to-one,” The Almanac of American Philanthropy reported in 2016. “What’s more, more than half of every single income class except those earning less than $25,000, give to charity. The much maligned top 1% in the U.S. economy fork over one-third of all donations made.”

But Heck adds, “Christians who are interested in results more than political posturing, should encourage and urge their government to spread a doctrine of economic freedom to the impoverished world. That, far more than confiscation and redistribution of wealth, achieves the results we desire.”

The problem with sending money overseas is that it doesn’t get to the needy, and it therefore has a minimal impact on people’s long-term living conditions. Princeton University economist Angus Deaton, who worked for decades at the World Bank, asserts that rich do-gooders may be exacerbating the problem of corruption in the Third World, given that there’s been so little to show for $135 billion in global aid.

What Deaton and other economists discovered was that countries receiving aid actually found their economic situation growing worse because the relationship between the governments and their people changed. This makes sense. A country is less likely to be accountable to its people if the government can rely on a steady stream of international aid.

The U.S. should lead the way toward reform. This includes ensuring that nations receiving aid are working toward implementing policies that expand the economic and political rights of their people, and working directly with aid organizations rather than funneling money through politicians and despots.

We can also apply these standards to our own cities, by promoting entrepreneurship and supporting business-friendly policies that help the downtrodden build independence and wealth. Like Third World despots, Democrat mayors across the country have largely squandered hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars since the “Great Society.”

Only when we battle poverty at its root cause will we break the cycle of political corruption and poverty.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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