Thursday, August 08, 2019





What We Aren't Hearing About West Baltimore

I have concluded this presidential campaign is going to be a danger to my dental health. Not mental — that bus left the station — but dental. Watching people react to Trump's tweets is causing me to grind my teeth.

One tweet that damaged my dentine, of course, is that tweet about Elijah Cummings' district in Maryland. Since the actual story has long since been forgotten, let's just go back over it.

In the first inning, Kim Klacik — a black woman who is a Republican local official as well as a contributor for the local Fox channel — made a video report on the conditions in West Baltimore.

Now, the report was not actually all that controversial: she showed that conditions in some of the poor neighborhoods were really bad, infested with rats and heavily littered with uncollected garbage. She called out representative Elijah Cummings for paying more attention to things that got on television than his own district.

None of those conditions were really news: they'd been reported by PBS; the Baltimore paper quoted the mayor that "you could smell the rats"; it had been the subject of a documentary; they'd even been called out by Cummings, who called those neighborhoods "drug-infested" years ago.

Klacik's story was then picked up and shown on Fox and Friends, and following that, the story was retweeted by Trump.

That, to quote Roger Zelazny, was when the fit hit the Shan. Trump was immediately denounced for his "racist" tweets. That the tweets were racist quickly went from being some people's opinion to being reported as truth on most television networks and nationwide newspapers.

It wasn't long before Cummings was being feted as a Democrat leader and paragon of morality comparable to Senator Ted Kennedy.

Like, people were saying this seriously, not as the height of irony.

We were told that mentioning the rats infesting those poor neighborhoods — hell, that using the word infesting — was inherently racist. We were told that the average income in Cummings' district was higher than in some of the rural districts represented by Republican representatives.

The average income point is, of course, a demonstration of how you can lie with statistics as long as your audience is innumerate, unsophisticated, ignorant, or just stupid.

You see, if you examine Cummings' thoroughly gerrymandered district, you discover that it includes two populations in a sort of Pac-Man shape devouring the coastal parts of Baltimore. One of those populations is the very poor and dominantly African American section that Klacik was documenting. The others are thoroughly upper-class, thoroughly liberal Democrat, largely white neighborhoods.

Of course, when you take the average of a bunch of really poor people and a bunch of pretty wealthy people, the average is going to be higher than the average for the poor people.

Long ago, when I was an undergrad philosophy major, we learned that to logically evaluate a bit of rhetoric it was useful to see if substituting some of the specifics yields a sentence that still makes sense.

Let's assume — hypothetically, and yes I realize this requires a suspension of disbelief — a city with a Republican mayor who was the most recent of a series of corrupt mayors, a large area with a long-term problem of dumped garbage and rat infestation that had been the subject of many documentaries and a number of previous news reports, and that after another news story, President Barack Obama called out the Republican congressional representative. Would that be obviously racist?

Since I'm not paid by the word I won't belabor the point, but I think pretty obviously not — and if you think it would be, I have some spectacular real estate deals for you in southern Florida as well as a marvelous bridge in New York City.

Since then, it's turned out that a few days before Trump's tweet, the residence that Cummings keeps in his district had been burglarized. That led to people questioning whether Cummings actually resides in that residence (pro tip: don't bet money on it) followed by a few scattered stories on questions about Cummings' wife's self-dealing on money that goes into her nonprofit, and the IRS complaint that went with that.

Oh, and hints that Trump had been responsible for the burglary, which took place days before his tweet.

I think the time-traveling powers of Republican presidents are really not being used very effectively.

So what actually comes of this? We got the usual miniature moral panic, with lots of virtue preening. CNN is now searching for dirt on Kimberly Klacik, the woman whose report started this kerfuffle. A whole bunch of people are demanding that Trump do something — while insisting that the local member of Congress isn't responsible. This cost me a couple of bits of a back molar in itself.

The only thing that seems to have been forgotten in the rush to claim that Trump is lying, that Baltimore is wonderful, and conditions in neighborhoods of one city are the personal responsibility not of the local government but of the president, is that there are a lot of poor people who are still living in garbage-filled, rat-infested, crime-ridden neighborhoods where the problems have been well known for years.

What really makes me grind my teeth is how the virtue preeners have made clear that they honestly don't give a good godd*mn about those people; they just want to score on Trump.

SOURCE 






Italy to fine migrant rescue boats up to €1 million as tough Salvini law passes

Matteo Salvini has scored another victory after parliament passed a security bill which threatens the captains of migrant rescue vessels with fines of up to €1 million if they enter Italy’s ports without permission.

The passing of the bill further bolsters the strong position of the deputy prime minister, who has made combating migration from North Africa one of his main priorities since coming to power last summer.

The security measure means that the skippers of NGO vessels who rescue asylum seekers in the Mediterranean and try to bring them to an Italian port will face fines of up to €1 million.

They will be arrested and their vessels impounded.

That is a dramatic increase on a €50,000 fine which was introduced in a previous security bill, passed in December.

The new bill, which also gives added powers to the police, won approval after passing a confidence vote in the Senate, the upper house of parliament, on Monday night. There were 160 votes in favour, 57 against and 21 abstentions. It had already been approved by the lower house.

A threatened rebellion by Left-leaning members of the Five Star Movement, Mr Salvini’s coalition partner, failed to materialise.

“More power to the forces of order, more border controls, more officers to arrest Mafiosi and members of the Camorra (the Naples-based mafia),” Mr Salvini, who is also interior minister and head of the hard-Right League party, wrote in a tweet.

He thanked “you, the Italians” as well as “the Blessed Virgin Mary” – the latest of several references he has made to his Catholicism.

Opponents of Mr Salvini say the new law undermines human rights and persecutes people with a legitimate right to flee violence and poverty.

The security decrees have been criticised by the Council of Europe and the UN, as well as humanitarian NGOs who deploy rescue boats to the Mediterranean to save people escaping Libya.

In Italy, the opposition Democratic Party called the new law “monstrous”, saying that it “criminalises those who save human lives at sea”.

But Mr Salvini’s uncompromising stance towards migrants and refugees has paid handsome dividends in the polls, with the latest suggesting that the League now has the approval of 38% of Italians.

That is a sharp rise from the 17% that the party won in last year’s general election.

Meanwhile, a fishing boat carrying 48 migrants managed to reach the southern Italian island of Lampedusa after setting out from the coast of Libya.

Some migrants died during the journey, including a five-month-old baby, survivors told the Italian authorities.

The survivors included 27 women, three of whom are pregnant. A Protestant Church charity working on Lampedusa said the migrants are from Mali, Tunisia and Ivory Coast.

SOURCE 






UK: Disgraced former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya struck off as a solicitor



Blacks are notoriously low in ethical restraint, as shown by their very high rate of violent crime. They suffer for it.  But this crime was one that all sorts of prominent people have been tempted by -- Marcus Einfeld, Chris Huhne etc.

Fiona Onasanya, the disgraced former Labour MP jailed for perverting the course of justice, has been struck off as a lawyer for trying to avoid a speeding fine.

The 35-year-old former Peterborough MP was barred from practising law after a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found she had acted dishonestly.

The one-time Labour whip was jailed in January for three months after being convicted at the Old Bailey for perverting the course of justice. Her brother, Festus, who helped her cover up the crime, was jailed for 10 months after pleading guilty to the same charge.

The tribunal sitting in London today found she had acted dishonestly, without integrity and failed to uphold the rule of law or behave in a way that would maintain the public’s trust.

Edward Nally, the chairman of the three panel tribunal, said: “The conviction has led to disastrous consequences for Miss Onasanya, both personally and professionally as a solicitor, albeit not a practising solicitor.

“A solicitor owes a duty to the court, as an officer of that court. While a parliamentarian makes the law, a solicitor must uphold the law and the rule of law. Sadly, in this case Miss Onasanya has failed.”

She qualified as a solicitor in 2015 and worked in property law until her election in June 2017, six weeks before her Nissan Micra was filmed speeding at 41mph in a 30mph zone in Thorney, Cambridgeshire.

Onasanya denied driving the car, instead telling police a Russian man lodging at the family home had been behind the wheel. However, it emerged he was in Russia at the time of the offence.

Onasanya admitted she was a solicitor in “name only.” However, throughout the hearing she maintained her innocence, despite an appeal against her conviction in March failing.

“I maintain and stand by the fact that I didn’t do what I have been convicted of - perverting the course of justice. And, I am pursuing avenues to clear my name.”

She declined to comment as she left the court with her mother, Paulina. Onasanya was ordered to pay £6,562 costs.

Following her conviction in December last year, she was booted out of the Labour Party but continued to serve as an independent MP.

She served just 28 days of a three-month prison sentence and was released from Bronzefield prison in Surrey in February. However, she continued to receive her MP’s salary of £77,379.

She was kicked out of Parliament after more than 19,000 of her Peterborough constituents voted to oust her following her conviction.

She became the first MP to be removed as a result of a recall petition. She decided against running as an independent in the subsequent by-election, in which Labour clung onto the seat.

SOURCE 






Australia's politicians ignoring voters by supporting population growth

At this year’s federal election, there were clear differences in the positions of the two major parties on every significant policy area save immigration on which, except for a few details, they effectively ran a joint ticket.

The Coalition spoke of sending migrants to regional areas; Labor wanted to reduce the number of temporary skilled workers while providing open-slather entry for grandparents. But the parties were in heated agreement in their support for high migrant intakes, both permanent and temporary, and the associated high population growth.

But political support for large-scale immigration does not tally with voters’ views. Support for large migrant intakes has fallen significantly during the past decade. People want immigration cut and slower population growth.

The evidence is in figures collected by Newspoll, Essential Research, the Lowy Poll, the Scanlon Survey and the Australian Population Research Institute. The politicians know what we think. They just act like they don’t.

The lobbying behind immigration is so strong that both parties have concluded the views of ordinary folk can be ignored. These forces include the bureaucracy — check out the Treasury’s reports — big business, property developers, the universities and various interest groups, some ethnically based.

Consider the recent report released by the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia, the only aim of which is to support unrestricted inflows of temporary migrants. It seeks to dispel the proposition that the surge of temporary migrants has been harmful to Australian workers.

There are about 1.4 million temporary visa holders in Australia. The number of temporary migrants has been growing by about 50,000 a year.

What the authors of the CEDA report desperately, albeit unconvincingly, seek to prove is that the increased competition in the labour market caused by temporary migrants has not affected local workers either in terms of their earnings or employment prospects. But the authors’ methodology doesn’t test this proposition.

Not only are temporary migrants not specifically identified in the study but the critical results are insignificant. The best that can be said is that weekly wages and unemployment of local workers appear unaffected by the migrant intake. It may also be that the causation of the model runs the other way. That is, migrants are attracted to strong labour market conditions rather than cause them.

Another point made by CEDA — that the number of temporary migrants is too small to affect outcomes — is wrong. Adding in New Zealanders, there are about two million temporary migrants in a workforce of about 12.9 million — or 16 per cent of the total. This is a sufficient proportion to significantly affect outcomes. Indeed, the government’s own Migrant Workers’ Taskforce notes that the abundant supply of temporary migrants is one of the reasons they are so widely exploited.

It is obvious why businesses would endorse the CEDA study. They don’t want the free flow of available workers impeded; indeed, the report recommends labour market testing for positions filled by migrants be ditched.

But when thinking about the low wage growth during the past five years, one plausible reason relates to the impact of the migrant intake, particularly temporary visa holders. Most temporary migrants operate in the unskilled or semi-skilled parts of the labour market.

This hypothesis is consistent with the material collected by the Migrant Workers’ Taskforce. Many instances were found of workers being exploited, with the conclusion being that “there is a culture of underpayment in some areas of the economy”.

While the taskforce presented several recommendations for ensuring compliance with Australia’s labour laws, it’s not actually clear how this can be policed. That we should have fewer temporary migrants was not canvassed.

Not not all areas of our immigration program are working well. There are clearly games being played with the partner visas program that are not necessarily in our interests.

According to population researcher Bob Birrell, there were 40,000 partner visas issued in 2017-18, down from 48,000. And there are at least 80,000 in the queue. These figures compare with about 112,000 marriages in Australia each year.

The reason there are so many partner visas is because we allow anyone aged 18 or older, including those who have recently been awarded permanent residence, to sponsor a partner — the most generous arrangement among developed economies.

As Birrell notes: “For the large number wanting a permanent residence visa, the partner visa is an attractive option. There are no onerous English language standards or any need to find an employer … For prospective partners living in low-income countries, an Australian partner visa offers the prospect of a huge lifestyle gain with no entry costs, other than the visa fee.”

It is not uncommon for recent permanent residents to return to their place of birth to select a partner known to their family or community. On Birrell’s figures, at least one-third of partners enter this way. A rising number of former overseas students also receives partner visas.

Partner visas now account for a quarter of the permanent migrant intake and most of the partners head for Sydney or Melbourne. But the government plans no changes.

Politicians will continue to ignore our wishes if they can get away with it. They will oversee an immigration program that is contributing two-thirds of population growth and is associated with lengthening commuting times and loss of urban amenity.

But there is always the possibility that quiet Australians could become noisy on this.

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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