Monthly Archives: June 2018

Get Ready for More Debt!

07 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on Get Ready for More Debt!

Tags

, , , , , ,

Maybe the new editors at the WSJ can reinstitute some truth controls. There’s a glaring error in this story:

The Social Security program’s costs will exceed its income this year for the first time since 1982, forcing the program to dip into its nearly $3 trillion trust fund to cover benefits.

This is three years sooner than expected a year ago, partly due to lower economic growth projections, according to the latest annual report the trustees of Social Security and Medicare released Tuesday. The program’s income comes from tax revenue and interest from its trust fund.

The trust fund will be depleted in 2034 and Social Security will no longer be able to pay its full scheduled benefits unless Congress takes action to shore up the program’s finances. Without any changes, recipients then would receive only about three-quarters of their scheduled benefits from incoming tax revenues.

The report also said that Medicare’s hospital insurance fund would be depleted in 2026, three years earlier than anticipated in last year’s report. Absent changes, the program then would be able to handle 91% of costs.

The nation’s aging population is boosting the costs of Social Security and Medicare, while revenue gains lag due to slower growth in the economy and the labor force.

Where, exactly, is this $3 Trillion reserve fund, this “lockbox,” located? My guess would be in that D.C. museum with the Constitution, the dinos, and other things that don’t exist.

The “reserves” are but an accounting trick which, simply put, is just more debt for you and your kids to enjoy in the future.

There is probably some hidden truth in the story if one knows what to look for. Those dates in the late 20’s and early 30’s. Something else will probably fail around that time.

122206295

Found it!

Grit and Steel: Fiction at TPC

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Other Columns

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

And, by fiction, for once I don’t mean a goofy political poem. A short, short story:

It was as delightful a late-October afternoon as anyone could want, cooler and quieter than most. Wendell “Dell” Hubbard looked out the office window as the leaves shimmered in a breeze, their autumnal transformation slowly proceeding. It was a great afternoon, a great Friday afternoon. So far as Wendell knew he was the last man in the building. Friday’s usually meant leaving a little early. And now it was a little late – five past five. ‘No rush,’ he thought as his gaze returned to the stack of files on his desk. His blushing bride and her sister were held up at the family beach house for the weekend. He could afford to take it easy. Stay a little longer. Get a little more done. Later, perhaps, a cigar and a little Scotch was in order.

…

READ THE WHOLE THING AT TPC

*Is this the beginning of the Dell Hubbard chronicles? Who knows?

**TPC fans: the National Affairs shall return in force next week.

IMG_20180605_154936046 - Edited

Perrin.

At Last: A Flying ‘Car’ That Flies!

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

Slowly. And it’s more of a (barely) flying kayak drone than a car. Anyway, you can certainly trust the Google guy who invented those murderous “autonomous” vehicles.

With a gentle touch on a sliding nob, Rachel used her hand to take off inside the Flyer from a dock on Lake Las Vegas, 25 miles from downtown. Using a simple Atari-esque joystick in her other hand, she began to carefully pilot the Flyer around, traveling between three and 10 feet above the lake. (Her speed was capped at 6 mph — experienced pilots can fly up to 20 mph).

As Rachel glided above the lake, Kitty Hawk’s mission control team monitored her flight from a small building nearby and provided guidance through speakers in her helmet. Five minutes later, Rachel returned to the dock, landing the Flyer like a pro.

She threw her arms up in celebration. We all cheered.

20 MPH, a 100 Mile range, and a video game controller. Call George Jetson. Tell him to leave the family behind (no passengers) and set aside plenty of extra time.

At least it kind of flies.

180605231522-kitty-hawk-flyer-thumbnail-780x439

Faster than a sickly snail, able to leap smaller sickly snails with a good running start. CNN.

Meet ‘Norman,’ MIT’s Pet Psycho

05 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Comments Off on Meet ‘Norman,’ MIT’s Pet Psycho

Tags

, , , ,

From America’s and the World’s preeminent tech school comes a project bound to safely provide a happy, secure ending for all. Or, at least, an ending for some…

In one of the big musical numbers from The Life Of Brian, Eric Idle reminds us to “always look on the bright side of life.” Norman, a new artificial intelligence project from MIT, doesn’t know how to do that.

That’s because Norman is a psychopath, just like the Hitchcock character that inspired the research team to create him.

Like so many of these projects do, the MIT researchers started out by training Norman on freely available data found on the Web. Instead of looking at the usual family-friendly Google Images fare, however, they pointed Norman toward darker imagery. Specifically, the MIT crew stuck Norman in a creepy subreddit to do his initial training.

This is just what we need. I was telling the boys at the cigar club just the other day how badly the world needs a dark-minded, no-hearted, psychopathic killer robot running amok in Boston. Forget the duck boats and the Union Oyster House. Come see Norman! And die at his cold, mechanical hands!

Well, I imagine that, right now, he’s confined to a computer in a lab. The Dr. Frankensteins at DARPA surely have a bodily cure for that.

I can’t help but notice that he was trained in the dark arts using existing anti-social media, stock off them internets. How many other non-AI psychos are training there too? You, please stick to this highly respected web log; no Norman here…

Hey! Given his location and disposition, maybe his full name is Norman Kennedy.

norman-625x352

Kennedy/Skynet 2020.

Another Good Alternative to Public “Schools”

05 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Other Columns

≈ Comments Off on Another Good Alternative to Public “Schools”

Tags

, , , ,

Last week’s TPC column on high schools and its predecessor generated heavy readership and commentary. The people, some of them having direct experience in the government prison schools, raised a myriad of issues even I hadn’t thought of – from expenses to parent disinterest to fidget spinners. All seemed willing to explore options in search of real education.

In furtherance thereof, here’s a piece from LRC, today, on Ron Paul’s Curriculum:

…

Of course many parents choose homeschooling as a means of protecting their children from federal education “reforms” such as Common Core. Other parents are motivated by a desire to protect their children from the cultural Marxism that has infiltrated many schools.

The spread of cultural Marxism has contributed to the dumbing down of public education. Too many government schools are more concerned with promoting political correctness than ensuring that students receive a good education. Even if cultural Marxism did not dumb down education, concerns that government schools are indoctrinating children with beliefs that conflict with parents’ political, social, and even religious beliefs would motivate many families to homeschool.

Even when government schools are not intentionally promoting cultural Marxism or other left-wing ideologies, they are still implicitly biased toward big government. For example, how many government schools teach the Austrian economics explanation for the Great Depression — much less question the wisdom of central banking — or critically examine the justifications for America’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy?

…

Another installment of TPC cometh tomorrow – and of a totally different make than the usual. Stay tuned.

A Religious Freedom Ruling: More of an Essay than a Masterpiece

04 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on A Religious Freedom Ruling: More of an Essay than a Masterpiece

Tags

, , , , , ,

The Nine today ruled 7-2 in favor of a Christian baker in Colorado and against the bigoted, anti-Christian, anti-freedom Colorado “Civil Rights” Commision.

The ruling, as lop-sided as it was, was mired in the kind of language employed by judges to maintain their employment in the future. Still, we’ll take what we can get. Also, I sense, here nearing the end, the pendulum beginning to swing back this way. I suspect it may return Poe style; one might hope, for once, that rats are available when needed. Anway, if you’re so inclined,

READ THE OPINION

 

The intelligent discussion begins on page 26 with the concurrences of Justices Gorsuch and Thomas.

As the Court also explains, the only reason the Commission seemed to supply for its discrimination was that it found Mr. Phillips’s religious beliefs “offensive.” Ibid. That kind of judgmental dismissal of a sincerely held religious belief is, of course, antithetical to the First Amendment and cannot begin to satisfy strict scrutiny. The Constitution protects not just popular religious exercises from the condemnation of civil authorities. It protects them all. Because the Court documents each of these points carefully and thoroughly, I am pleased to join its opinion in full.

–Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd., et al. v. Colorado “Civil Rights” Commission et al., 584 U. S. ____, at Slip 27, (June 4, 2018)(Gorsuch Concurrence).

This was not a case about a baker discriminating against gays. It was a case about a government discriminating against Christians. The ruling, murky as it is, is a slap in the face of tyranny and a blow for freedom. That’s needed as the animus is everywhere. Times have changed indeed when traditional Christian beliefs (and associated expression and determinations of association) are declared “offensive.” I find that offensive.

I suspect that the commision membership has changed since the underlying events of this case. The director is newer, innocent perhaps. Still, for the curious, one can find the current Colorado “Civil Rights” Commision, probably held up under a rock, maybe worshiping Moloch, in Suite 825, 1560 Broadway, Denver.

Valediction – from 2015

01 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Other Columns

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Seems appropriate to run this one again:

…

At ceremonies coast to coast these meanings serve a justifiable purpose. The valedictorian speaks first to bid the class farewell to the sheltered academic lives the members have known. The salutatorian then speaks to the promise of the coming years. Or, something like that.

Those acquainted with the works of John Taylor Gatto or who have children of school age, surely understand the decline of quality in American public education. Gatto was formerly New York’s teacher of the year (State and City). His distinguished career spanned decades. Now he speaks and writes of the critical need for drastic school reform. His writing is frequently published at lewrockwell.com. He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling (2000).

Gatto has related the American model of public education to Soviet-era brainwashing:

…

The Original.

Homeschooling Rising in Popularity

01 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in News and Notes, Other Columns

≈ Comments Off on Homeschooling Rising in Popularity

Tags

, ,

For good reasons.

One is avoiding public school culture and violence.

After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida, the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven’t stopped yet.

The Lubbock-based organization has been swamped with inquiries for months from parents seeking safer options for their kids in the aftermath of this year’s deadly school massacres, first in Parkland and then in Santa Fe, Texas.

“When the Parkland shooting happened, our phone calls and emails exploded,” said coalition president Tim Lambert. “In the last couple of months, our numbers have doubled. We’re dealing with probably between 1,200 and 1,400 calls and emails per month, and prior to that it was 600 to 700.”

Demands to restrict firearms and beef up school security have dominated the debate following the shootings, but flying under the radar is the surge of interest in homeschooling as parents lose faith in the ability of public schools to protect students from harm.

That’s violent physical harm, the risk of which is actually, statistically lower than it was 20 years ago. The greater danger, outside an immediate, isolated incident, is the admitted harm the schools do by graduating students who can’t read or calculate.

Five Things to Know Before Getting Started, by Melodie Kennedy.