Poll: Political Correctness Has Gone Too Far, Majority of Likely Voters Say

More than four out of five likely voters agree that political correctness has gone too far, a December poll shows.

More than 57 percent strongly agreed and almost 24 percent somewhat agreed with the statement, “Political correctness has gone too far. Today everybody is offended by the smallest thing.” Only 13.4 percent disagreed, 4.8 percent strongly (pdf).

The poll was conducted online among 1,000 likely voters Dec. 4–11 by GS Strategy Group, a marketing research company run by former Republican campaign pollster Greg Strimple.

The poll also asked how American businesses should respond to political correctness.

More than 65 percent picked the response, “There is no way for American businesses to make everyone happy. They need to run their businesses in a way that appeals to the broadest swath of Americans.”

Less than 23 percent picked the response, “American businesses should adapt their business models and products to avoid offending certain consumers.”

When it comes to issues the American business community needs to address, 43 percent said the most important, of the options given, was “Ensuring American workers receive competitive wages and benefits.” The next most popular response, at 10.6 percent, was “Upskilling the American workforce to have 21st century job skills.”

Asked about their impression of the business community, more than 56 percent picked the response that businesses are most interested in “Maximizing profits for shareholders.” Less than 20 percent picked “Providing customers the best quality product for the best price,” and only a bit over 9 percent picked “Supporting the communities in which they work.” Less than 7 percent said “Compensating their employees fairly.”

More than 40 percent of respondents identified as Democrats and nearly 34 percent as Republicans. Independents made up about 23 percent.

The results show a stronger opposition to political correctness than a 2017 Cato survey (pdf), which showed 70 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that being politically correct is a “big problem this country has.”

Also in that survey, 71 percent agreed that “Political correctness silences discussions society needs to have.” The results showed a partisan split on the question—78 percent of moderates and 87 percent of conservatives agreed, but only 42 percent of liberals and 32 percent of strong liberals did.

At the time, 70 percent of conservatives and 76 percent of strong conservatives agreed that the political climate prevented them from expressing their beliefs. Among moderates, 57 percent seconded that position, but only 45 percent of liberals and 30 percent of strong liberals did.

SOURCE 






Don't regulate the rail industry

President Trump rightly touts the economy-wide savings from his deregulation initiatives. But one federal agency didn't get the memo. Some members of the Surface Transportation Board, which has oversight over the nation's network of freight railroads, wants to resurrect price controls on the industry.

It is a truly awful idea, and to understand why, it is vital to harken back to the bad old days of the 1960s and 1970s, when almost all modes of transportation operated under the stranglehold of Soviet-style price regulation. These rules nearly bankrupted the freight railroads, and a government takeover of the industry seemed inevitable.

Instead, in the late 1970s and 1980s, Congress acted to lift the price controls on the airlines, the shippers, and the railroads and allow the market to set shipping rates. The Staggers Rail Act deregulated prices and saved the dying freight trains, although it led to dramatic consolidation. Remarkably, these laws were even initiated by liberals such as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and economists in the Carter administration. (Yes, Carter got something right.) The Reagan administration accelerated the process.

Today, nearly everyone agrees that the deregulation movement in the transportation sector was an unqualified success. Airline deregulation cut airfares for passengers by 50%, 60%, and in some cases, 90%. According to a 2000 study by the Department of Transportation, "rail economic regulatory reform resulted in significant economic efficiency benefits, most notably rapid productivity growth, that enabled railroads to become financially stronger while lowering average rate levels." Thomas Gale Moore of the Hoover Institution found that for rail customers, "freight rates fell by 45%," and even though the industry consolidated, it has remained "intensely competitive."

Intensely competitive is an excellent way to describe today's freight industry, and the transport of everything from Amazon deliveries, to oil and gas from the wells to the service stations, to crops and lumber and steel and semiconductors. Consumers and producers are greatly benefited from our world-class delivery of products. Rail competes with ships, truckers, airlines, pipelines, and now drones. That isn't to say there aren't some stranded producers who can face monopolistic pricing, but in 2020, that is rare.

So, it is puzzling that in a Sept. 12 decision, the Surface Transportation Board sought feedback on a plan to "apply a rate increase (price) constraint ... that would apply to long-term revenue-adequate carriers." A recent board staff report suggests that it "create separate rate standards for revenue-adequate and non-revenue-adequate railroads."

It is a backdoor plan to bring back price controls of yesteryear. It would do so through an antiquated provision of the Staggers Rail Act known as "revenue adequacy," which mandates a bottom-floor level of revenue for the industry. It was meant to ensure the survival of the railroads. The board now would turn that provision on its head and define "adequacy" criteria as an excuse to impose not a floor on prices, but a revenue ceiling. Kennedy must be rolling over in his grave.

Under this scheme, once rail shippers reach a specific revenue target, the government could deem them as having "adequate" — i.e., enough — funds and arbitrarily cap the rates on additional products they ship. It is similar to the government telling a diner owner, "Once you sell your 500th hamburger, you can't make a profit on the next 200 that people buy."

Of course, the problem is regulators lack the knowledge and foresight to know what "adequate" revenue is. Rail shippers' profits and operating costs fluctuate year over year and can ebb and flow with the health of the overall economy. Also, because this is designed to limit rail profits, economists at the Phoenix Center found that a revenue ceiling would significantly reduce railroad investment at a time when we should be incentivizing more, especially in automation. Such a command-and-control pricing model characterizes regulated industries such as water and electricity. This has been an enormous failure that shields consumers from the benefits of competition, such as more innovation, better prices, and more options.

It also flies in the face of the economic revival strategy of the Trump administration, which is to deregulate industries aggressively and let markets clear, to the benefit of consumers. Some at the transportation board think Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is president.

Back in the late 1970s, when the airlines were deregulated, the godfather of deregulation, the late Alfred Kahn, who oversaw the Civilian Aeronautics Board, shut the agency down after airlines were allowed to set their prices. It was a clever way to ensure that the regulations would never come back. The Trump administration may want to do the same with the transportation board, which is now trying to justify its existence by bringing back the 1970s regulatory structures. We suspect that some of the shipping industry's customers may be behind the call for price controls to squeeze lower prices out of the rail industry.

Arguably, Trump's most significant legacy is ending President Barack Obama's war on business by allowing firms to achieve more substantial rewards for becoming more efficient. The rail industry is doing just that and should be celebrated for its economic progress and its return to profitability, not punished for it.

SOURCE 






Disputed New York Times ‘1619 Project’ Already Shaping Schoolkids’ Minds on Race

From the moment Fatima Morrell read The New York Times’ 1619 Project last year, the educator embraced the 100-page magazine special issue on slavery and racism as a professional godsend.

Morrell, an associate superintendent in the Buffalo, New York, school district, where 80% of the 31,200 students are non-white, was inspired by the project’s reframing of American history that put the struggles and contributions of black Americans “at the very center” of the nation’s self-understanding.

“I just think it really becomes a curriculum of emancipation, a pedagogy of liberation, for freeing the minds of young people,” said Morrell, who was involved in the decision to adopt the 1619 Project as part of the district’s curriculum.

“Particularly for our black children, it lets them know there actually isn’t something wrong with you. We don’t need to be self-destructive, to hate ourselves. There actually was an institution of enslavement that really put us 400 years behind in terms of where we are with prosperity.”

Since its publication in August, the 1619 Project has been adopted in more than 3,500 classrooms in all 50 states, according to the 2019 annual report of the Pulitzer Center, which has partnered with the Times on the project.

Five school systems, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., have adopted it district-wide. It is mostly being used as supplemental, optional classroom teaching material. By and large, school systems are adopting the project by administrative fiat, not through a public textbook review process.

Even as it is being embraced by schools, the project is facing strong pushback from some leading scholars who say it presents a false version of American history.

They dispute The New York Times’ claim that America’s true founding date is not 1776, the year the colonies declared independence from Great Britain, but 1619, when 20 to 30 enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, leading to the creation of a “slavocracy” whose legacy of racism and oppression has been encoded in the nation’s DNA and hidden in plain sight.

Gordon Wood, a leading historian of the American Revolution and emeritus professor at Brown University, told RealClearInvestigations the Times material “is full of falsehoods and distortions.”

In its current form, without corrections, which the Times has declined to run, the only way to use it in the classroom, he said, would be “as a way of showing how history can be distorted and perverted.”

The 1619 Project reflects disputes about both the facts and meaning of American history at a time when the nation is divided by identity politics, including a movement to transform education in colleges and high schools through “ethnic studies,” an approach that emphasizes teaching about white oppression of minorities and their resistance to “whiteness.”

Proponents of ethnic studies use the term “whiteness” to refer to the political, economic, and cultural power structure imposed by a dominant culture of white Europeans.

Defenders of ethnic studies argue the movement is a necessary corrective to a whitewashed version of history. But critics denounce it as propaganda used to indoctrinate students. And they’re troubled by the endorsement of racial and identity-based histories by prestigious institutions such as The New York Times and publicly funded schools.

The project’s leader, Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, has declared since the magazine’s publication that her goal “is that there’ll be a reparations bill passed”—meaning financial reparations for slavery and subsequent racial discrimination. The newspaper editorial board has never officially endorsed such legislation, but several Times columnists and contributing writers have.

The 1619 Project is also a bold departure from traditional journalism that aims to provide readers with impartial information and a range of perspectives, rather than to unilaterally declare whose perspective is and isn’t true.

Instead of telling readers it is presenting a controversial view of history, endorsed by a minority of historians, the national newspaper of record declares in the opening pages of the 1619 Project: “It is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”

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Australia: Addicts skip jail in prison proposal

DRUG abusers and fine dodgers could sidestep jail under reforms being considered by the State Government to avoid the cost of building new prisons.

Treasurer Jackie Trad last night confnned  the Government had rejected a Queensland Productivity Commission recommendation to decriminalise drugs but would consider the use of more diversionary methods for small-time users.

The commission's 516-page report into imprisonment and recidivism, due to be released today, warned the prison population was exploding and the 'Government would have to spend $3.6 billion in the next five years to increase the capacity of its corrections facilities.

The report found each prisoner cost taxpayers $111,000 in direct costs and a further $48,000 a year in indirect costs and drug users made up an increasing percentage of the prison population.

It recommended moving away from a criminal approach to drug use and devolving responsibility to indigenous communities to curb incarceration rates among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

"These reforms, if adopted, could reduce the prison population by up to 30 per cent and save around $270 million per year in prison costs, without compromising community safety," the report states.

Ms Trad said the commission's proposal for the wholesale decriminalisation of illicit drugs was off the table. But the Government would consult experts about ways of expanding sentencing options so few people who committed minor drug and traffic offences were sent to jail:

"People who commit serious crimes should go to jail — no questions asked," she said. "But given the cost of keeping prisoners in prison, we need to examine whether that is the best option for people who repeatedly fail to pay fines, or are repeatedly arrested with small amounts of drugs for personal use. That's especially true if that prison sentence pushes a small-time offender towards a life of more crime, rather than rehabilitation."

The commission report found Queensland's per-head prison population had increased more than 160 per cent since 1992 and credited improved police detedion methods and tougher justice policies for the rapid rise. It said if the growth continued, Queensland would need to house 4200 additional inmates within five years.

While the Government had to weigh the cost of this rise, Ms Trad insisted community safety was the top priority. "But before we spend another $3 billion on prisons, we need to be absolutely certain doing so is the best way to make Queenslanders safer," she said.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 31 January, 2020

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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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