Category Archives: The State

UPDATED (6/5/018): NEW COLUMN: When Merit-Based Hiring Is Deemed Racist, Bridges Fall Down

Affirmative Action, Race, Racism, South-Africa, The State

“When Merit-Based Hiring Is Deemed Racist, Bridges Fall Down” is the current column, now on WND.com and The Unz Review. An excerpt:

As individuals, we want the best doctors treating and operating on us, the best pilots flying the airplanes we board, the best engineers designing the bridges we cross, the best scientists inventing and bringing to market the medicines and potions we ingest.

Yet the American Idiocracy is moving to equate merit-based institutions with institutionalized racism.

Tucker Carlson, likely the only merit-based hiree at Fox News, recently divulged that a member of the Trump administration was overheard (by a thought-police plant) expressing a preference for merit-based recruits for his department.

Egad, and what next!

Google, a tool of the Idiocracy, appears to have scrubbed its search of this latest episode in “The Closing of the American Mind.” However, it’s no secret that the education system already excludes the most naturally gifted, independent-minded individuals from fields in which they’d excel.

Race preferences notwithstanding, requirements for social activism of the right kind, for volunteerism and worldviews of the left kind, for working exclusively toward the best grades: These are things girls do better than boys.

In any event, when the best-person-for-the-job ethos gives way to racial and gender window-dressing and to the enforcement of politically pleasing perspectives; things start to fall apart.

A spanking new bridge collapses, new trains on maiden trips derail, Navy ships keep colliding, police and FBI failure and bad faith become endemic, and the protocols put in place by a government “for the people” protect offending public servants who’ve acted against the people.

As in this writer’s birth place of South Africa, the U.S. government has a pyramid of hiring preferences. Guess which variables feature prominently in its considerations? Complexion or competency?

Consider the procurement pyramid that went into destroying the steady supply of coal to South-African electricity companies. Bound by Black Economic Empowerment policies, buyers buy spot coal, first from black women-owned suppliers, then from small black suppliers, next are large, black suppliers, and only after all these options have been exhausted—or darkness descends, whatever comes first—from “other” suppliers.

The result: An expensive and unreliable coal supply and rolling blackouts.

Everywhere, media are congenitally incurious and corrupt. They aren’t digging. But it’s likely that similar considerations will go a long way in explaining the collapse of a Florida university campus pedestrian bridge, under which people were pulverized.

So far, the attitude of those who’re doing this can be summed thus: S-it happens. Deal.

As for the public; it receives no follow-up and learns to demand none. Hence, “The Closing of the American Mind.”

But if American institutions continue to subordinate their raison d’être to politically dictated egalitarianism, reclaiming these institutions, private and public, from the deforming clutches of affirmative action will become impossible.

It might already be impossible. …

… READ THE REST. “When Merit-Based Hiring Is Deemed Racist, Bridges Fall Down” is the current column, now on WND.com and The Unz Review.

UPDATE (6/5/018):

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UPDATE II (3/26): New Bridge Collapses, New Trains Derail, Navy Keeps Crashing, Police & FBI Fail: Are US Institutions Being Hollowed Out?

Affirmative Action, Government, Intelligence, Labor, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Race, The State

A Washington-State Amtrak train, on a maiden trip, ends up dangling over Interstate 5, at DuPont, after leaving the tracks. The train’s engineer is traveling at 78 mph into a curve, where a 30 mph speed-limit is required and signs to that effect posted. Three passengers die, 62 are injured. Clearly a major systemic failure was afoot.

The public receives no follow up, to date. Media demand none.

Has anyone heard what became of the investigation into another Amtrak wonder, “the train that derailed in Philadelphia, May 14, 2015“? Naturally not. Like the more recent derailment, the train “was equipped with an automatic speed control system that officials say could have prevented the wreck, which killed eight passengers and injured hundreds. But the system, which was tantalizingly close to being operational, was delayed by budgetary shortfalls, technical hurdles and bureaucratic rules, officials said Thursday.”

AND NOW, a spanking “new pedestrian bridge collapses at a Florida university campus.” The “newly installed 950-ton pedestrian bridge that spanned 174 feet over the seven-lane road, also known as Calle Ocho, had collapsed, pancaking vehicles and leading to four deaths.”

People in their cars are pulverized.

Who on earth constructed this shit? Affirmative hires?

At least one kid is asking questions about the authorities in charge (something the ban-guns kiddies refuse to do):

One of the basics about construction is that everything should be tested beyond any doubt before it’s opened,” said Junia, 19, a sophomore at FIU. “Was this even tested before it was opened? This is really disheartening.

The navy has had its share of problems (not least its obscene TV ads which still declare a force funded by American taxpayers to be “a global force for good,” helping to eradicate poverty the world-over. Fuck it. That’s a betrayal of the Oath of Office!).

Are America’s institutions being hollowed out by policy? Is the tipping point being reached? I suspect so. All this here is anecdotal, but you too suspect the same when you give it some thought. (Schools, anybody? Run by anti-white, anti-male, dangerous, not-very-bright females, some with the Y Chromosome.)

Government failure is everywhere apparent. Failure at every level was all over the Florida, Douglas-High shooting. Not uncharacteristically, one offending officer, Scot Petersen, has been rewarded with retirement, not punishment, for dereliction of duty during the massacre.

Wait a sec. US government workers are never punished. (And the kids have been dumbed-down by the educators aforementioned as to the role of government. Thus  they refuse to demand accountability from their overlords. Next they’ll seek to ban beds where rapes occur on them.)

American institutions were once more merit-based. The attitude of those who’re doing the hollowing-out, through preferential, non-merit based hiring, quotas and set-asides, can be summed thus: Shit happens. Deal.

UPDATE I (3/16): GOVERNMENT KILLS. Like South Africa, the U.S. government, in this case the Department of Transportation, has a pyramid of hiring preferences. You can guess which variable features prominently in the considerations. It’s not competency. Certain kind of companies—ethnic lineage and complexion count—are encouraged to bid for government tenders. The “Munilla Construction Management, the South Florida firm” which gave us the Florida International University Bridge, is a veteran of unsafe practices. It’s what happens when political considerations override competency. It’s ALWAYS the case with government, which is why government should do very little hiring. Very little of anything, for that matter.

MORE: “Companies That Built Collapsed FIU Bridge Had Been Fined for Safety Violations.”

UPDATE II (3/26):

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Trade Deficits In The Context Of State-Managed Trade And Systemic Debt

Capitalism, Debt, Economy, Free Markets, The State

THE NEW COLUMN is “Trade Deficits In The Context Of State-Managed Trade And Systemic Debt.” It’s now on Townhall.com.  

An excerpt:

…  What goes for “free trade,” rather, is trade managed by bureaucratic juggernauts—national and international—central planners concerned with regulating, not freeing, trade; whose goal it is to harmonize labor, health, and environmental laws throughout the developed world. The undeveloped and developing worlds generally exploit and pollute as they please.

One of the promises Candidate Trump had made and hasn’t yet violated was to simply make these statist organs and trade agreements work for the American people. To wit, the president believes in reducing trade deficits.

Far be it from me to endorse tariffs as a means of reducing trade deficits. I am only here questioning the totemic attachment free-traders have to trade deficits, given that Americans live under conditions of systemic debt and state-managed trade that is anything but free.

If free trade is an unknown ideal, it is quite appropriate to question the alleged glories of an aggregate, negative balance of trade, in this “rigged system,” as Trump would say.

As to systemic debt: Yes, libertarians ought to oppose tax increases, which is what tariffs are. We hold that voluntary exchanges are by definition advantageous to their participants. Trader Joe’s, my hair stylist and the GTI dealer—all have products or skills I want. Within this voluntary, mutually beneficial relationship, I give up an item I value less, for something I value more: a fee for the desired product or service. My trading partners, whose valuations are in complementary opposition to mine, reciprocate in kind.

Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), there’s nothing wrong with my running a trade deficit with Trader Joe’s, my hair stylist or my GTI dealer, as I do—just as long as I pay for my purchases.

And there’s the rub: The data demonstrate that we Americans, in general, are not paying for our purchases.

Americans, reports Fortune.com, actually have more debt relative to income earned than Greeks. “Indebted U.S. households carry an average credit card balance of $15,706, according to NerdWallet.”

Corporate America is likewise heavily leveraged.

The Federal government is the definition of debt. The U.S. national debt is over $20 trillion without federal unfunded liabilities. Those exceed $210 trillion, by Forbes’ 2017 estimate. Total public debt as a percent of Gross Domestic Product, announced the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is 104 percent.

Our improvident government’s debts, liabilities and unfunded promises exceed the collective net worth of its wastrel citizens.

Given these historic trends, it seems silly to dismiss the yawning gap between U.S. exports and U.S. imports as an insignificant economic indicator.

Because of decades of credit-fueled, consumption-based living, the defining, current characteristic of our economy is debt—micro and macro; public and private. Unless one is coming from the pro-debt Keynesian perspective, is this not an economically combustive combination? …

… READ THE REST. “Trade Deficits In The Context Of State-Managed Trade And Systemic Debt” is now on Townhall.com.

The Mercer Column can be read on WND, as well, titled “State-Managed Trade Is Not Free:” “The defining, current characteristic of our economy is debt.”

It’s also on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.

UPDATED (4/5/018): The Teachers’ Pets Of Douglas High Can’t Think Straight

Constitution, Crime, Education, Family, Government, GUNS, The State

THE NEW COLUMN IS “The Teacher’s Pets Of Douglas High Can’t Think Straight.” It’s now on WND.com. Or, if you prefer fewer pop-ups, on the one and only Unz Review.

An excerpt:

“In America,” observed as Oscar Wilde, “the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.”

So it is with the activist kids who’ve emerged from the Parkland, Florida, school massacre of February 14th, in which 17 of their own were murdered.

Each one sounds like the proverbial teacher’s pet, groomed to take a monolithic message to the media.

Like their educators, these one-track minds “don’t impress me much.” The National Rifle Association (NRA) they invariably frame as big, bad and greedy; government as not big enough, generally good and certainly benign.

There are, indubitably, good arguments to be made against the NRA. The kids—who managed to be, for the most, rude, ungrammatical, sanctimonious and smarmy—failed to muster them.

Trained pets that they are, the dogged media kids of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High seemed capable of focusing only on the one causal factor to the exclusion of all others: guns, their legal purveyors and their law-abiding owners.

The students who were front-and-center on the idiot’s lantern were unwilling to hold the shyster sheriff, Scott Israel, and his notoriously iffy Broward County department, responsible for—there is no way to finesse it—enabling, indulging, even grooming killer Nikolas Cruz over years. To students, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO) was blameless. Lackluster logic led them to the NRA alone.

One young media darling told of his love of Civics classes. This, while refusing to consider the state’s role in what were systemic and systematic failures.

Reliably derelict and criminally negligent, Sheriff Israel and his Broward County law enforcement didn’t “slip-up.” As a matter of progressive policies and philosophy, sheriff and officers had decided against protecting the people they had sworn to protect.

The BSO has been practicing the progressive penal abolition and restorative justice models of crime “prevention.” Yet our auditioning activists have refused to do their basic civic duty: hold this branch of government accountable for its end of the civic compact.

Out of the mouths of babes we hear that officer Scot Petersen and his compadres—they milled about outside Douglas High, while inside children were being riddled by bullets—were mere NRA scapegoats.

Almost unanimously unmoved were the kids by the fact the BSO had received 45 desperate calls over years, detailing homicidal threats made by the killer and violent, deviant altercations in which he was embroiled. Thirty-nine times had the Broward Sheriff’s officers visited the Cruz home in seven years. A critical mass of criminality and pathology was discounted by law-enforcement in ways at once callous, stupid and depravedly indifferent.

The one civic-minded kid could recite the purpose of a bicameral legislature, but cared not a bit about the imperative of government to protect life, liberty and property. Or, about the role of the Second Amendment in mitigating the effects of such a dangerous government. Likewise was the FBI given a pass for being  every bit as criminally culpable as the Broward County sheriff and his lawful crime syndicate.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is a repeat offender. …

… READ THE REST. “The Teacher’s Pets Of Douglas High Can’t Think Straight” is now on WND.com. Or, the Unz Review.

UPDATE (4/5/018):

How about “Che Guava”? (?As opposed “Guevara.”)

The kids are creepy:

Tucker The Great exposes the cult of the kid:

And dumb: