What is going to happen in the next couple of months?

I guess I am much more naive than Sundance in the Conservative Treehouse. I thought the New Jersey Governor Murphy handled himself well in the interview with Tucker Carlson. However, Sundance, whom I respect greatly, sees some constitutional problems as well as a whole range of other problems.

It seemed clear several weeks ago this was going to happen. East coast blue state governors and West coast blue state governors are united to begin the economic civil war planning to block any White House effort to re-open the U.S. economy. The founders planned for this in Article I, Sec 10 (paragraph 3):

“No state shall, without the consent of Congress, … enter into any agreement or compact with another state”..

The three step plan seems predictable: (1) Get out ahead of President Trump. (2) Defy the ‘all clear’ and shape economic benefit to their political allies. (3) Then use Fauci’s upcoming dossier to hit the administration for heartlessly opening the economy too early.

...♦ On the East Coast the governors of New York (Cuomo), New Jersey (Murphy), Connecticut (Lamont), Pennsylvania (Wolfe), Delaware (Carney) and Rhode Island (Raimondo) have started assembling their economic war council with the intent to keep the northeast region shut down. Controlling critical ports and infrastructure is a key part of their strategy.

EAST COAST — Six Northeast governors will form a working group to come up with a plan to restart [control] the regional economy, they announced on Monday. (link)

♦ On the West Coast the governors of California (Newsom), Oregon (Brown) and Washington State (Inslee) are also assembling their economic war council for similar intents and purposes. Combined with their political northeastern allies, controlling two-thirds of U.S. ports will give them a strategic advantage to keep choking the economy until after they can install their commanding general in the White House.

It appears the Governors rushed to publicity to avoid their enemy, U.S. President Donald Trump, striking strategically against their schemes. As the interview with Governor Murphy highlights, during this economic war residents within the Blue occupied territories will be held captive to the political whims of their regional generals.

The economic freedom and liberty zone will encompass the Red region. The center of the country, mid west, southern region (surrounding the Gulf of Mexico) and south eastern Atlantic region. These areas will be open to commerce and economic freedom.

However, the urban dense populations (Blue pockets within Red zones) will push-back against the efforts of the Red generals in an attempt to retain alignment with their Blue team generals. Depending on the strength of the urban forces there may be roadblocks, sabotage, skirmishes and political violence against the freedom & liberty Red team.

Red captives within the Blue zones will have to be smart and strategic. Big Blue tech will be assisting the totalitarian Blue generals. Direct confrontation against the Blue forces should be avoided, and it will likely be a better strategy to fight stealthily as insurgents.

Any Red team member of the economic freedom alliance, trapped within a Blue region, is warned to evaluate their connection to their electronic devices. Your cell phones could be used as portable transponders expose your movement and your political views.

This is going to be one hell of a battle. A Spring and Summer conflict like we’ve never seen in the history of U.S. politics outside of actual, physical, civil war.

Read more here.

The past is present

Oh my gosh, Bookworm reaches conclusions similar to ones reached by Victor Davis Hanson:

The issues we face today were issues people dealt with in the 1930s and 1940s. The smart ones reached conclusions that we would do well to understand today.

How the US ranks in economic and personal freedom

Innumerable polls taken over the past seven years are consistent in showing nearly 7 in 10 Americans believing the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

Further, nearly 60% think that the next generation will be worse off than they are. And few have any faith that the economic outlook for the country will improve in the near or distant future.

Beginning in the late 1980’s, the cognoscenti declared that expansive government spending, globalization and free trade, combined with a comprehensive and overarching regulatory regime determined to root out so-called corruption and inequality as well as save the planet from the over blown evils of global warming, would be the course the nation should pursue. The result of this foolhardy and myopic scheme:

In 1988 the national debt of the United States stood at $2.6 Trillion, today it is over $19.0 Trillion-- an increase of 635% (and projected to reach $29.0 Trillion by 2026). On the other hand the debt of all the nations on earth has grown by only 135% since 1988.

Since November of 2008 the working age population has increased by over 18 million. However, the number of those employed has increased just 5.5 million. Meanwhile those unemployed or no longer in the work force has ballooned by 12.4 million to a staggering total of 102 million or 40.4% of the working age population.

Another factor impacting on the economic health of the American people is immigration. In 1988 there were 16 million immigrants (including less than a million illegal aliens) living in the United States. Today that number has skyrocketed to 42.4 million (including an estimated 12 million illegal aliens). This enormous increase (165%) in the immigrant population has not only put pressure on a stagnant job market but it has also been a major factor in the decline of median income in the country.

The upshot of all the above is that since 1988 the income of the top 5% has risen 39.3% (adjusted for inflation) and the income of the bottom 50% has fallen by 1.9%.

Since 2008 the Obama cabal has added over 18,000 pages to the Code of Federal Regulations. It is estimated that complying with federal regulations costs the economy nearly $2 Trillion per year and is, along with taxes and innumerable mandates, one of the principle reasons for the lack of new business start-ups and loss of jobs to other countries.

One of the primary hallmarks of the United States had been that of a classless society wherein economic factors allowed the citizenry to take advantage of the marketplace in order to move up or down based on their efforts and willingness to work. However, this scenario is disappearing as the opportunities for upward mobility cease to exist. In its place a class driven society, similar to all other quasi-socialist nations past and present, is now becoming inevitable as even the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits that the level of Americans working and in the labor force will continue to decrease over the next 8 years.

Another of the primary factors in the decline of the United States is that the nation’s elites, rather than view education as the means for the people to attain success in a competitive world, have recast it into a vehicle for their pet theories and political views. Whether it is the promulgation of faux self-esteem, the obsession with the so-called evils of capitalism and the nation’s past, and the theoretical joys of socialism among other inane curricula, the education establishment has assured that the American people are rapidly becoming among the least well-educated populations in the world.

In 2013 American 15 year olds ranked 32nd among industrialized countries in math, 20th in reading and 24th in science. In 1988 this same age group ranked among the top 5-10 nations in the world in these same categories. Further, recent polls have indicated that as a byproduct of the radicalized education establishment, nearly 7 out of 10 between the ages of 18 and 29 would vote for an avowed socialist. Thus it is clear that the future of the country is on very shaky ground.

As for the issue of freedom: in a recent analysis it was determined that the United States now ranks 12th among the nations of the world in economic freedom (6th in 2008) but a dismal 31st in personal freedom (17th in 2008).

Using the cudgel of the mainstream media, the entertainment complex and the education establishment, the Left and its surrogate, the Democratic Party, have successfully inculcated into a plurality of the American people a belief that there are no moral absolutes and that the state can grant any rights that it so chooses to whomever it chooses. Further, the nation’s founding documents are arcane, racially insensitive, and unsuitable for today. Thus religious liberty, property rights and freedom of speech are under aggressive assault. The Judiciary is now almost under the complete control of these same statists, and with the death of Justice Scalia the last line of defense, the Supreme Court, is in peril.

In the current campaign for the next president, there are candidates attempting to tap into the ire of the citizenry by either promising that a purer form of socialism will magically solve the problems or by claiming that they, by sheer force of their will and personality, will part the seas and save the nation. Unfortunately, due to the ill-education of the populace as well as their angst, far too many seeds of this demagoguery are falling on fertile ground. The election of any of these candidates will only exacerbate and make permanent the nations woes.

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World poverty now at record low

Ian Vásquez reports at Cato At Liberty,

This week the World Bank released new data on world poverty, and projects it to fall to a record low of 9.6 percent in 2015. The graph below shows the dramatic decline of global poverty over the past few decades.



Using updated methodology, the World Bank recalculated poverty figures back to 1990. The new data track closely with previous Bank figures, which I use in the graph to show the fall in poverty since the early 1980s when 43 percent of the world’s population was extremely poor. The record on poverty reduction is consistent with the unprecedented progress that humanity has made around the world in the whole range of indicators of well-being, and which researchers and others can explore at HumanProgress.org.

The drop in poverty also coincides with a significant increase in global economic freedom, beginning with China’s reforms some 35 years ago and the globalization that followed the collapse of central planning in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As we celebrate this achievement and strive for further progress, we should not lose sight of the central role that voluntary exchange, freedom of choice, competition and protection of property play in ending privation.

The Pope's ignorance

John Hinderaker writes:

Pope Francis has already caused consternation among knowledgeable Catholics with his criticisms of economic freedom. Some have tried to defend him or reinterpret his words, but it is hard to sugarcoat the fact that he is instinctively hostile to free enterprise. Perhaps this is because, as a native of Argentina, he has never seen free enterprise at work and doesn’t understand what it can do for the average citizen.

Now Francis has taken on the global warming cause. Again, it is hard to interpret his words as representing anything but ignorance of the relevant science.

Read more here.