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What a posh Marin background & a Womyn’s Studies degree will teach you

June 27, 2017 by Bookworm 1 Comment

A posh Marin background and a good heart can’t overcome a social justice education that teaches that wealth creation happens through shakedowns.

Marin IJ Marin background Iris Brilliant Lisa Gray-Garcia

The photo and lede of a Marin IJ article that caught my eye.

Marin is one of America’s richest counties. Mill Valley, in Marin County, is one of the most affluent cities in California, with a median household income of $132,192 (not that this income gets you into the fancy houses in Marin). It is also one of the most politically progressive counties in the United States, with a relentlessly high voter turnout.

Marin Country Day School is one of the poshest, most expensive private K-8th schools in Marin County. For those who don’t qualify for aid, while it’s not quite as expensive as Harvard, it’s right in the middle when it comes to college fees. University High in San Francisco, located in the heart of posh Pacific Heights (Larry Ellison’s and the Getty’s neighborhood) is also right up there when it comes to annual tuition: $44,750, not including another $4,300 in costs. And if you’re the daughter of a well-known Mill Valley physician, you don’t get financial aid when you go as an out-of-state student to the University of Michigan. Instead, you pay $43,000. You pay that $43,000 even if you’re a Womyn’s Studies major.

And why am I droning on with all this data about the affluent lifestyle? Because of a young Marin resident who made today’s local paper:

The 29-year-old daughter of a well-known Mill Valley physician, [Iris] Brilliant grew up wealthy and privileged in affluent Marin County.

[snip]

The daughter of Girija and Larry Brilliant, a co-founder of the Bay Area nonprofit SEVA, Brilliant attended Marin Country Day School and San Francisco’s University High before graduating from the University of Michigan, majoring in gender studies and creative writing. She now works in Oakland as an organizer for the national nonprofit Resource Generation.

Before I go further, let me say right off that, if SEVA lives up to its stated principles, it’s an admirable organization:

Mission: Seva Foundation partners worldwide to create self-sustaining programs that preserve and restore sight.

Vision: A world free of avoidable blindness.

Given my own vision deficits, I can only give thanks every morning that I live in America and can get glasses that enable me to see and function normally. I give to a different vision charity, but this SEVA certainly seems worth keeping an eye on (pun intended).

Although she grew up in an an enclave that capitalism made possible, Brilliant speaks in the illiterate cant of the true social justice warrior: [Read more…]

The Democrat party is hamstrung because it can’t tell the truth about itself

June 26, 2017 by Bookworm 11 Comments

Insiders and observers are giving good advice to the Democrat party, but it all avoids the obvious: Democrats cannot tell the truth about their goals.

Several articles in the news recently combine to highlight a salient point about today’s Democrat party. The first is from Dan Balz, at Wapo, the title of which succinctly states Balz’s points: “Beyond opposing Trump, the Democrats are still searching for a message.” Balz identifies what is slowly becoming obvious to Progressivs — after four special election losses, while opposing Trump is enough for them, it is not enough for everyone else, including people who voted for Trump in 2016. You’d think they would have been quicker to realize that constantly telling voters “I hate you and everything you stand for” is not persuasive. Still, it’s a sign that Progressives can learn that, as Balz notes, at least some are calling for an emphasis on the economy.

For those looking to make a sale to Trump voters and undecided voters, though, a Democrat party emphasis on the economy is going to be a hard sell. It’s only the base that’s honest enough to admit that, from the top down, the only economic goal the modern Democrat party has is full frontal socialism:

For progressives, the answer to this problem is clear: a boldly liberal message that attacks big corporations and Wall Street and calls for a significant increase in government’s role in reducing income and wealth inequality. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been aggressive in promoting exactly that, as he did during the 2016 campaign, with calls for a big investment in infrastructure and free college tuition at public colleges and universities. He has said he intends to introduce legislation he calls “Medicare for All.”

The other article, which comes from The Hill, notes that some Dems, seemingly those not on the hard Left, are pushing their congresscritters to stop talking about Russia all of the time.

Taking these two articles in conjunction, there is little doubt that, subject to a small (and easily ignored) subset of semi-sane Democrats, Progressives (aka the Democrat Party) see talking about Russia as far more edifying than the economy. One can’t help but be fascinated by what the Democrat Party power brokers mean to do if they “turn towards the economy.” How does one push socialist ideas while denying their socialism, even as the base is screaming “We love you, Karl Marx”?

The hard reality that the Progressives face is that Obama pulled us hard Left, with higher taxes and a tsunami of regulations, and he did so with the Democrat Party’s enthusiastic support. At the end of the day, of course, nothing that the Dems did “created jobs.” Indeed, the Dems are currently hoping that nobody notices that, in just the first five months of his presidency, the Trump effect elevated black employment to heights not seen for the last 17 years. So what exactly would their turn to the economy be? [Read more…]

Answers to my questions about America’s opioid crisis

June 26, 2017 by Bookworm 5 Comments

America is indeed in the grip of an unprecedented opioid crisis, with a lot of blame to go around, but not everybody is at risk and there is hope.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post with questions and comments that occurred to me after watching HBO’s Warning: This Drug May Kill You, a documentary about the opioid addiction problem America is facing. Today, I received an email from Neo-neocon directing me to a just-published, superb Sally Satel article about the opioid crisis in America. Briefly, here are my questions and the answers drawn from Satel’s article. I urge you to read the whole article, though.

My first question: Is this really an “unprecedented” crisis, given all the other unprecedented drug crises I’ve been through in my lifetime? Satel’s answer is that yes, it is:

An estimated 2.5 million Americans abuse or are addicted to opioids — a class of highly addictive drugs that includes Percocet, Vicodin, OxyContin, and heroin. Most experts believe this is an undercount, and all agree that the casualty rate is unprecedented. At peak years in an earlier heroin epidemic, from 1973 to 1975, there were 1.5 fatalities per 100,000 Americans. In 2015, the rate was 10.4 per 100,000. In West Virginia, ground zero of the crisis, it was over 36 per 100,000. In raw numbers, more than 33,000 individuals died in 2015 — nearly equal to the number of deaths from car crashes and double the number of gun homicides. Meanwhile, the opioid-related fatalities continue to mount, having quadrupled since 1999.

Honestly, I had no idea. That’s just devastating. I’m so used to discounting media hysteria, and trying to factor in the multiplication effect of the fact that everyone now photographs and videotapes scenes that were long hidden from view, that I wasn’t ready to accept HBO’s unsubstantiated conclusion that the opioid crisis is “unprecedented.” That’ll teach me….

My second question: Who’s to blame? The documentary wanted to blame the pharmaceutical companies; the suffering families want to blame the doctors. Satel’s answer is that it’s complicated, with blame to go around, including the bad effects of good intentions: [Read more…]

[VIDEO] “Orwellian” government is worse than authoritarian government

June 26, 2017 by Bookworm 9 Comments

Orwellian government is not just repressive government; it is a government that seeks to reprogram your brain by controlling facts and language.

With Trump’s election, Progressives have suddenly rediscovered both Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, her turgid 1980s attack on the Moral Majority and George Orwell’s 1984 (Signet Classics), one of the most brilliant, powerful books ever written. As one might guess, Progressives readers of the first book misunderstand American Christianity (as well as Trump’s casual relationship with it) while readers of the second book completely misunderstand Orwell’s point.

Into that gap steps a TED-ed video, which carefully explains that “Orwellian” refers, not to physical force, but to a form of mental tyranny that effectively uses words to allow the government to invade people’s brains: [Read more…]

[VIDEOS] Paul Joseph Watson on Muslims and Leftists

June 26, 2017 by Bookworm 2 Comments

Paul Joseph Watson savagely eviscerates the ignorance, hypocrisy, and self-loathing behind Leftist attacks against whites and support for Islam.

As always with Paul Joseph Watson videos, I have a few content warnings: Obscenity, sarcasm, rampant ridiculing of Leftist ignorance and hypocrisy, a failure properly to appreciate cultural relativism, an obsession with actual facts, and astute analysis that’s impressive in one so young. Be sure to get your binky and find your safe space if any of these things are likely to trigger you.

You can see more here, at his YouTube page. As always, I wish he wasn’t linked with Alex Jones, as the latter’s content and style probably drive away people who would otherwise appreciate Watson. Like Milo, Watson is a stand-alone.

Losing friends and family to America’s opioid crisis [UPDATED}

June 25, 2017 by Bookworm 13 Comments

A decent HBO documentary about America’s opioid crisis raises questions perhaps you can answer and elicits observations based on my own experiences.

Last night, I finally got around to watching HBO’s Warning: This Drug May Kill You, a documentary about the opioid addiction problem America is facing. It’s a decent documentary that looks at four middle class families, all of which lost someone to prescription drug or heroin addictions (with the point being made that prescription drugs triggered the heroin addictions). After watching it, I ended up with three questions and a couple of observations:

Question 1 arose from the very first shot in the documentary, which opened with the stark words that America is facing an “unprecedented” drug crisis. I wonder if that’s true. I mean, I know it’s true in raw numbers, because our population is around 300,000,000. That’s why the Department of Health and Human Services can say “More people died from drug overdoses in 2014 than in any year on record, and the majority of drug overdose deaths (more than six out of ten) involved an opioid.”

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there isn’t a serious problem in the U.S., one made more serious by the fact that smart phones and the internet mean that the problem plays out in front of all of us, all the time, with a never-ending series of photos and videos showing crying children stuck in cars and stores with parents and grandparents passed out from drugs. For example:

I’m just wondering if this current drug crisis really is the worst ever. My life has been peppered with “worst ever” drug crises, from the hippies with their hallucinogenic and opioid overdoses, to the coked-up 70s and 80s, the cracked-up 80s and 90s, and the current meth problem. I just wonder, as a percentage of the population, how bad this particular crisis is. After all, back in the late 19th century, opiates were over-the-counter and through-the-newspaper-ad-section drugs and were used everywhere. [Read more…]

California travel ban: Blatant hypocrisy about LGBTQ (etc.) rights

June 24, 2017 by Bookworm 34 Comments

The California travel ban against US states for claimed anti-LGBTQ laws follows its attack on the travel stay for Islamic countries that routinely kill gays.

In January and then again in March 2017, President Trump issued a temporary travel ban aimed at six countries that the Obama administration identified as terror sponsors. These countries are Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

In each of these six countries members of the LGBTQ etc. (hereafter “LGBTQer”) community are officially and/or unofficially physically abused, imprisoned, and murdered. Specifically:

In Iran, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is punishable by death, with myriad lesser punishments (e.g., lashing and imprisonment) available.
In Libya, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is illegal and is subject to stringent punishments such as limb amputation and flogging.
In Somalia, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LBGTQer conduct is punishable by imprisonment or death.
In Sudan, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer conduct is illegal and, even if the government does not act, vigilante groups are known to attack or kill people accused of homosexuality.
In Syria, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer activity is illegal and, depending upon the territory in which the LGBTQ etc. individual finds himself or herself, can be subject to violence or death, whether administered by state agencies or vigilante groups.
In Yemen, as in all other predominantly Muslim countries, LGBTQer activity is officially illegal, with punishments ranging from lashing, to imprisonment, to death.

The reason behind the universally violent, murderous hostility to LGBTQ identification or conduct in the above countries is sharia law, which is hardwired into Islam. After all, the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack did not happen in an ideological vacuum.

Also in January and, again, in March 2017, California officially and vociferously protested against the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban, a ban that affected terror-exporting Muslim countries that make LGBTQer conduct a capital crime, on the ground that the temporary ban was unconscionable, discriminatory, and ineffective: [Read more…]

At a University of California campus, learning a life lesson about socialism

June 24, 2017 by Bookworm 27 Comments

Not all the lessons kids learn at college happen in the classroom. One young man is learning about socialism thanks to the dorm food policy.

The neighborhood kids are returning from college for the summer. Most of them have spent a happy year at their respective colleges and therefore what they have to say when asked is positive. Those in the STEM programs seem to have learned a lot; those in the liberal arts . . . well, they think they’ve learned something.

Not all the lessons they’ve learned have been in the classroom. One young man was complaining about the dorm food system at one of the University of California campuses. According to him, the food is really, really bad and it’s also expensive when compared to food available in restaurants near the campus.

Given how bad and overpriced the dorm food is, this young man’s preference would be to have his food delivered via UberEats. According to him, if three or more kids get together on a delivery, the cost per person for delivery is minimal. In addition, they get to enjoy good restaurant food of their choice.

Unfortunately, our young students don’t have a choice. If they live in campus housing, they are required to buy dorm food in order to create subsidies for less affluent students.

Yes, you heard that right: At least one UC campus has the equivalent of Obamacare for food. Buying the product is mandatory, even though the quality is poor and the price is high.

Those with means often end up spending twice on food. That is, they pay for the mandatory vouchers and then order in. Those without means are stuck eating poorly made, uninspiring food, stuck in a captive market that has no incentive to compete for price, quality, or convenience.

The kid who told me this story was just a little taken aback when I told him, in an appropriate low-key, smiling way, that he was seeing socialism in action. I hope that planted a seed. He’s a tremendously bright, logical kid and this might be the experience that leads him to appreciate the free market.

Photo credit: Cafeteria, by Shihmei Barger. Creative Commons license; some rights reserved.

What Business Thinks is almost ready for its official roll-out

June 23, 2017 by Bookworm 2 Comments

When I began my What Business Thinks project, my idea was to create an app that allows people to investigate the issues on which businesses have taken a stand and to contribute their own information (properly sourced, of course) to the database.

I quickly figured out that it would take me too long to build an app from scratch (years maybe). I then stumbled across AppSheet, which is an online app building interface that’s mostly intended for businesses to use in-house to manage projects. Using AppSheet, I was convinced that I could quickly have a Google App up and running and that I could include advertisements in the app for revenue.

I was wrong.

Although AppSheet is a stellar service, it doesn’t allow app creators to run ads in the app through Google Play. Moreover, I discovered that, at least from my point of view, Google Play is a pain-in-the-whatsit when it comes to trying to upload an app to sell. In any event, my son (who knows these things) assured me that nobody really wants to buy apps nowadays, at least not until they’re well established. [Read more…]

A quartet of fascinating, informative PragerU videos

June 23, 2017 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

I’m never disappointed with PragerU videos. They consistently and intelligently distill important, complex ideas into interesting, short, accessible videos.

Here is a quartet of excellent PragerU videos on such fascinating subjects as healthcare, tyrannical transparency, capitalism’s virtues, and organic foods’ costs. They’re all typical PragerU products: informative, understandable, and interesting.

If you haven’t yet donated to PragerU, think about doing so. Watching a few of these is better than a $250,000 education at any of America’s Leftist institutes of “higher” education.

[Read more…]

Black lives won’t matter until blacks address the scourge of fatherlessness

June 22, 2017 by Bookworm 18 Comments

The Black Lives Matter movement will be a dead-end until American blacks start focusing on the scourge of missing fathers in their poorest communities.

Buzzfeed, of all places, has an excellent article about the turmoil in the upper echelons of the Black Lives Matter movement. The article was a reminder, if one was needed, that the Black Lives Matter movement is an entirely outward looking movement. That is, it targets non-blacks — in law enforcement, education, employment, etc. — and demands that these people and institutions change for the benefit of American blacks.

As best as I can tell, the Black Lives Matter movement never had an inner focus, looking at the black community to see what changes it can make to improve the quality of black lives, including those black lives that intersect with law enforcement, education, etc. Indeed, at least on college campuses, as one looks at self-segregation and demands that education be brought down to an infantile level, ostensibly to benefit blacks, the Black Lives Matter movement seems to have had a negative effect on blacks, leaving them less, not more, capable of functioning in the world of money and power.

This is a shame because there is one thing above all things that the Black Lives Matter movement can do to ensure that black lives do in fact matter — that thing is to encourage the magical middle class model of education, job, marriage, and family, in that order. Even more, within that model, black lives activists should push for a dynamic in which heterosexual couples have monogamous relationships that see the man stick around to parent his children.

Study after study shows how much fathers matter. When it comes to girls, girls with supportive fathers are happier people who engage in safer relationships with the opposite sex:

The hallmark characteristic of a fatherless daughter is fear of abandonment. Because they never got the direction needed from a father figure, they learn to make up their own survival playbook. This can lead to negative coping skills such as sexual promiscuity, total avoidance of intimacy, isolation, substance abuse, anxiety and depression.

Fatherless daughters report having difficulty in relationships and in the workplace interacting with men because they were never taught how to feel comfortable with a man in their father’s absence. They can also carry into adulthood conflicting issues with their mothers from becoming her caretaker for a time or witnessing so much chaos in the home. Financial distress or poverty often follows father loss, and this can have a significant impact in every area of a girl’s upbringing.

For boys, having an engaged father is also a huge benefit, particularly when it comes to staying out of trouble and having healthy relationships with women: [Read more…]