Universal Basic Income (UBI), whereby people are given free money just for being a warm body, has often been heralded as an economic panacea. While some such as the laudable Milton Friedman supported negative income tax or replacing welfare programs run by the government with a check the recipient was free to decide how to spend, others look to it as the beginning of a “purple wage”.
An undertaking to demonstrate the benefits of UBI has been undertaken and the results do not paint such a rosy picture.
A lot happened in July.
But, one event went quietly unnoticed.
The result of largest American controlled experiment in Universal Basic Income (UBI) was released.
1,100 randomized households making under $29,900 were given $1,000 per month for three years. Essentially, their income increased by 40%. The UBI participants lived in urban, suburban and rural towns in Texas and Illinois. (3/12)
Result 1: UBI participants ended up earning $1,500 less despite being given $12,000 more annually. For every one dollar received, total household income dropped by at least 21 cents. (4/12)
Many people, particularly on the Right, talk about the “Uniparty”, which is some true elite that rules over the people. There is an underlying and unifying connection between Democrats and Republicans: The quest for filthy lucre.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D—AZ), it turns out, hawked a Chinese “vitalizer”, which brings the type of political baggage that could sink higher political prospects.
“In 2015, former astronaut Mark Kelly rode a motorcycle onto a stage in China, with an American flag on one handlebar and the flag of the People’s Republic of China on the other. After dismounting, he told the audience before him how terrific Shaklee vitamins were, and how he took Shaklee Vitalizer on the space shuttle Endeavour in 2011, an out-of-this-world event honored on the Shaklee Facebook page.
“‘I took Shaklee vitamins and the Shaklee rehydration drink while in orbit aboard the space shuttle!’ Kelly said, pumping his fists before the audience. ‘They worked very well for me in a very demanding environment. Now, it is up to you. It is up to all of you to take those tools that Shaklee and Roger’ — company CEO Roger Barnett — ‘has given you, and turn it into something big! Each and every one of you can create your own successful Shaklee business, and it is the rewards from that business that will help you achieve your own dreams!’”
Of course, this is the “Uniparty” we are talking about. An article over at PJ Media (the former Pajamas Media collaborative of former independent bloggers gone pro) praises a new Trump themed beer!
“If there are any beer can collectors out there, a new offering has hit the market, which should accent your display nicely. You may remember Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right Beer. That company stepped up when what’s-his-name became the spokesperson for that one beer nobody drinks anymore. The company has a new product: Conservative Dad’s “FIGHT.” The can features a black-and-white photo of the wounded Donald Trump rising triumphantly from the platform in Pennsylvania, his fist high in the air. The company released a commercial on X featuring the voice of Sylvester Stallone (or perhaps an impersonator) in his role as Rocky Balboa”
During the 19th Century, the United Kingdom fought the Opium Wars to ensure that opium, one of the most lucrative commodities for the British that century, would be traded to the Chinese, despite the objections by the Chinese to the destructive consequences of this trade to the Chinese people.
The current Communist Chinese regime seems to have learned this lesson well, and is pushing it’s own opoid trade. However, instead of a direct confrontation, they are working through proxies in Latin America—primarily through America’s neighbor Mexico.
A bipartisan report from the House Select Committee on the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is blunt about the facts:
“The PRC, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the ultimate geographic source of the fentanyl crisis. Companies in China produce nearly all of illicit fentanyl precursors, the key ingredients that drive the global illicit fentanyl trade. The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (Select Committee) launched an investigation to better understand the role of the CCP in the fentanyl crisis.
“This investigation involved delving deep into public PRC websites, analyzing PRC government documents, acquiring over 37,000 unique data points of PRC companies selling narcotics online through web scraping and data analytics, undercover communications with PRC drug trafficking companies, and consultations with experts in the public and private sectors, among other steps.
“The Select Committee’s investigation has established that the PRC government, under the control of the CCP:
Directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates. Many of these substances are illegal under the PRC’s own laws and have no known legal use worldwide. Like its export tax rebates for legitimate goods, the CCP’s subsidies of illegal drugs incentivizes international synthetic drug sales from the PRC. The CCP never disclosed this program.
Gave monetary grants and awards to companies openly trafficking illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics. There are even examples of some of these companies enjoying site visits from provincial PRC government officials who complimented them for their impact on the provincial economy.
Holds ownership interest in several PRC companies tied to drug trafficking. This includes a PRC government prison connected to human rights abuses owning a drug trafficking chemical company and a publicly traded PRC company hosting thousands of instances of open drug trafficking on its sites.
Fails to prosecute fentanyl and precursor manufacturers. Rather than investigating drug traffickers, PRC security services have not cooperated with U.S. law enforcement, and have even notified targets of U.S. investigations when they received requests for assistance.
Allows the open sale of fentanyl precursors and other illicit materials on the extensively monitored and controlled PRC internet. A review of just seven e-commerce sites found over 31,000 instances of PRC companies selling illicit chemicals with obvious ties to drug trafficking. Undercover communications with PRC drug trafficking companies (whose identities were provided to U.S. law enforcement) revealed an eagerness to engage in clearly illicit drug sales with no fear of reprisal.
Censors content about domestic drug sales, but leaves export-focused narcotics content untouched. The PRC has censorship triggers for domestic drug sales (e.g., “fentanyl + cash on delivery”), but no such triggers exist to monitor or prevent the export of illicit narcotics out of the PRC.
Strategically and economically benefits from the fentanyl crisis. The fentanyl crisis has helped CCP-tied Chinese organized criminal groups become the world’s premier money launderers, enriched the PRC’s chemical industry, and has had a devastating impact on Americans.
Yet far too many seem to want to downplay this, purportedly for diplomatic reasons. For others who wish for American foreign policy to be more limited to defending the homeland, this is a reminder that foreign powers far away can and do run amok within the United States of America—the interests of America’s enemies are our immediate, not peripheral, interest.
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
With the growing threat to America from places like Communist China—with its multitude of production facilities—and it’s allies, the ability of America to deter military aggression may very well be the technological edge that the United States holds, or is at least perceived of holding. Let us look back forty years when William F. Buckley, Jr. and George Keyworth discussed the Strategic Defense Initiative (i.e. Reagan’s “Star Wars”) a high-frontier concept as one such technological deterrent.
“California’s new ‘Ebony Alert’ law creates a notification, like an AMBER Alert, to recognize missing Black women and children ages 12-25.
“Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 673 into law this week, which allows law enforcement to issue an Ebony Alert and the Department of the California Highway Patrol to update electronic highway signs. Media platforms, like radio and television, are encouraged but not required to participate in Ebony Alerts.
“‘Today, California is taking bold and needed action to locate missing Black children and Black women in California. I want to thank the Governor for signing the Ebony Alert into law,’ said Democrat Senator Steven Bradford, who authored the bill. ‘Our Black children and young women are disproportionately represented on the lists of missing persons. This is heartbreaking and painful for so many families and a public crisis for our entire state. The Ebony Alert can change this.’”
Most people don’t care about the major parties’ platform, not on the National level and certainly not, if they are even aware, on a state/local level. Nonetheless, the party platforms have to a large degree a way for the various factions, interests, and partisan coalition members to make sure that their voices are heard and that they are included valued members of the party coalition (even if the platform is moderate to their interests).
This has been true of the Democrats as well as the Republicans… until now.
The new 2024 GOP platform eschewed any of this and instead was, in essence, a lengthy and slightly more grammatically correct Truth Social post penned by Donald Trump. Many who are part of the Republican coalition, and the Right in general, including 2nd Amendment supporters and Pro-Life groups, were largely ignored. This happened not only with the platform, but with the GOP National Convention where being part of the Right’s, and thus GOP’s, coalition was demonstrated to be of second importance to praise of Donald Trump, regardless of whether the highlighted speakers were pandering or outright antithetical to social conservatives.
It’s not like Trump ever cared about the pro-life movement outside of transactional benefit. The pro-life movement and the religious right all accepted their 30 pieces of silver and has largely gone the way of Judas. Trump could kick a pregnant woman on 5th Avenue to the point where she miscarried and pro-life and/or religious voters would still vote for him. After all, what else are they going to do? Vote for Democrats? Heck, the Trump administration tried to pass Unconstitutional restrictions on bumpstocks during his first term, and pro-2A people are still going to vote for him en masse.
You could argue that aside from a small number of “National Conservatives” who treat Christianity as an identity rather than a faith and those who literally believe that God sent Trump as the only possible savior of America, the religious right has effectively been neutered if not euthanized. And therein the void has been filled.
What we are seeing here is a Hobbesian apotheosis: For the moment, the GOP is Leviathan with Trump as the kingly head.
This is simply the most overt sign of what we’ve seen happen for the past decade: Subservience to Trump the person, and the “MAGA”/”America First™” in which he cloaks himself (or other clock on his behalf). Not limited to the Republican Party, this yoking of the Conservative Movement and the attendant media, think tanks, and organizations to the firm hand of this new Leviathan.
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
What happens when a Republican President secures a second term and becomes a lame duck? What, then, is the future of the party? As many ask this in anticipation of a second Trump term, let us look back forty years ago when William F. Buckley, Jr., Newt Gingrich, and Bill Green debated the question of just where is the GOP headed?
“The bill plays the usual euphemism game, pretending that assisted suicide isn’t really suicide. From H.R. 8137:
“‘Medical aid-in-dying, an authorized medical practice, is not euthanasia, mercy killing, or assisted suicide.’
“Sigh. This tactic is as predictable as it is disingenuous. If a bill referred to a dung beetle as a butterfly, it wouldn’t change the reality of the thing. The renamed insect still wouldn’t fly and would roll in feces on the ground. The same is true here. The term ‘assisted suicide’ is accurate and descriptive. ‘Suicide’ means the intentional killing of oneself. To be “assisted” means to be helped in completing an act. Moreover, ‘suicide’ is a ‘what’ that causes death, not a ‘why.’
“‘Medical aid in dying,’ in contrast, is a euphemistic, culture-of-death catchphrase deployed to shroud the reality of what is done. If we care about integrity in legislation, we should recognize that the term ‘assisted suicide’ is apt — let alone that it is used in the current funding ban.
“The new bill, if passed, would make the current federal law inoperative in states where assisted suicide is legal.”
Palliative care has gone from making dying people comfortable to just killing them and getting it over with.
“[There is a] proposed policy around assisted suicide that has been published by the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA). It is both abject and a betrayal of Saunders’s humanitarian vision for the care of dying people. And the statement contains not a hint of the many problems and abuses that have been associated with “medical aid in dying” (MAID), reasons why the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that access to assisted suicide is not a human right.
“First, the proposed policy position embraces the word-engineering tactic of calling assisted suicide MAID. I have repeatedly criticized this euphemistic deflection and won’t repeat those thoughts here.
“Then, the statement calls participation in suicide a form of palliative care. From the proposed “HPNA Position Statement: Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD):”
“‘HPNA acknowledges that some patients with terminal illnesses may seek medical aid in dying (MAiD) as an end-of-life care option where legally available. Although suffering is not a requirement in order to qualify for MAiD in the United States, some patients may utilize this option to relieve their suffering, which is consistent with the ethical principles of palliative nursing care. Suffering at the end of life may be caused by loss of control; death anxiety; feeling like a burden; and refractory physical, social, emotional, spiritual, and existential symptoms. MAiD is consistent with the fundamental ethical principles of patient autonomy and beneficence.’
“It is actually the opposite. As Dame Cecily knew so well, the proper compassionate approach to suicidal ideation — whether in terminally ill people or otherwise — is suicide prevention, not participation and facilitation by medical professionals, of all people. Indeed, when I trained as a hospice volunteer in the 1990s, I was strictly instructed to alert the multidisciplinary team if a patient ever indicated a desire for suicide or immediate death.”
Remember, it’s not malpractice if it’s intentional!
“The myth that legal assisted suicide is about terminal illness is becoming harder to swallow.
“Evidence can be found in a recent survey of doctors, published in the Journal of Cutaneous Oncology, which asked doctors this question: ‘In addition to adults with terminal illnesses, [which] other groups of patients who should be MAID eligible?’
“…
“Majorities of doctors surveyed answered that they would be willing to be present when the deed is done. Here’s the question: “If it were available (or is available), what is your willingness to be present when patients took MAID drugs?” Again, disturbing results, with 61% either probably or definitely, yes:
Definitely not: 6%
Probably not: 33%
Probably yes: 39%
Definitely yes: 22%
“That’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to willingness to do the deed. And no doctors would definitely refuse to ‘refer for MAID.’”
