LinkSwarm for February 17, 2017

February 17th, 2017

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Absent from this roundup is who really got National Security Advisor Mike Flynn axed, because there’s not enough time in the world to read all those links…

  • Illegal alien convicted of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exit. Pro-tip: One key to avoiding deportations is to avoid committing felonies… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “If a border wall stopped a small fraction of the illegal immigrants who are expected to come in the next decade, the fiscal savings from having fewer illegal immigrants in the country would be sufficient to cover the costs of the wall.”
  • Revised executive travel order coming soon?
  • Former Democratic Senator Jim Webb has a message for Democrats:

    The Democrats have not done the kind of self reflection that they should have, starting in 2010. And I was talking about this in the ’10 elections. You’ve lost white working people, you’ve lost flyover land, and you saw in this election what happens when people get frustrated enough that they say, ‘I’m not going to take this Aristocracy.’ You know Bernie’s a good friend of mine, Bernie can talk about Aristocracies all he wants.

    You know, the fact that you’ve made money doesn’t make you a member of that philosophy. Look at Franklin Roosevelt. But there is an Aristocracy now that pervades American politics, it’s got to be broken somehow, in both parties, and I think that’s what the Trump message was that echoed so strongly in these flyover communities.

    One wonders if Webb was using “flyover country” for emphasis, or if Democrats actually use “flyover country” seriously when taking amongst themselves. If so, they might add that to the list of reasons middle America hates Democratic coastal elites…

  • Obama vastly increased the NSA’s powers on his way out the door. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • This Politico piece on thinkers that have influenced Steve Bannon (and thus President Trump) is neither to be taken entirely at face value, nor dismissed out of hand. It includes mention of Curtis Yarvin AKA Mencius Moldbug AKA “the Urbit guy” that Social Justice Warriors keep trying to keep from speaking, as well as the author of the much-cited “Flight 93 Election” manifesto. They’re interesting thinkers, but I rather doubt they’re at the center of Trump’s political ideas.
  • Over 100 rioters from President Trump’s inauguration indicted on rioting charges.
  • Trump and the GOP congress have already cut $2.8 billion in regulations. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “The EU country whose brutal crackdown on Muslim migrants makes Trump look liberal.” Spoiler: It’s Hungary.
  • Woman who lived under Hitler says Trump isn’t Hitler.
  • Iowa follows Wisconsin’s lead on reigning in the power of public sector unions.
  • Prominent Jewish Democrats are increasing uneasy with Keith Ellison as DNC chair. “‘It’s almost like the Democrats want to entirely destroy their party,’ [Democratic New York state assemblyman Dov] Hikind said. ‘When someone like Ellison can be a leading candidate to be the head of a major party, we’re in a lot of trouble.'”
  • Pro-Palestinian reporter changes his mind after living in Israel for 18 months:

    Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control.

    The belief that Israel is unjustly bullying the Palestinians is an inextricable part of this pantheon. Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom.

    Snip.

    IT WASN’T until the violence became personal that I began to see the Israeli side with greater clarity. As the “Stabbing Intifada” (as it later became known) kicked into full gear, I traveled to the impoverished East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan for a story I was writing.

    As soon as I arrived, a Palestinian kid who was perhaps 13 years old pointed at me and shouted “Yehud!” which means “Jew” in Arabic. Immediately, a large group of his friends who’d been hanging out nearby were running toward me with a terrifying sparkle in their eyes. “Yehud! Yehud!” they shouted. I felt my heart start to pound. I shouted at them in Arabic “Ana mish yehud! Ana mish yehud!” (“I’m not Jewish, I’m not Jewish!”) over and over. I told them, also in Arabic, that I was an American journalist who “loved Palestine.” They calmed down after that, but the look in their eyes when they first saw me is something I’ll never forget. Later, at a house party in Amman, I met a Palestinian guy who’d grown up in Silwan. “If you were Jewish, they probably would have killed you,” he said.

    Snip.

    Even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100 percent of Israel ‒ not just the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. They simply will not be content with a two-state solution ‒ what they want is to return to their ancestral homes in Ramle and Jaffa and Haifa and other places in 1948 Israel, within the Green Line. And they want the Israelis who live there now to leave. They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion, of taking back “their” land.

  • UK journalists heads explode when Trump’s climate advisor tells them the truth. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Gay liberal New York writer does even-handed profile of Milo…and is instantly ostracized. “I realized that, for the first time in my adult life, I was outside of the liberal bubble and looking in. What I saw was ugly, lock step, incurious and mean-spirited.”
  • The MSM lose their minds when Trump lets outlets other than themselves ask questions.
  • The media spends months complaining Trump won’t let them ask question, then complains when he does because they don’t like the answers.
  • Ann Althouse watches President Trump’s press conference so I don’t have to.
  • The New York Times is very upset President Trump is fighting back. “The constant Moonbat attacks on Trump are one of the reasons Trump won. And Trump knows that the vast majority of the media, which votes Democrat and allows their person political beliefs to color all their coverage, will never give him a chance and or honest coverage so why not fight back?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Islamic State suicide bomber kills 100 at Sufi mosque in Pakistan.
  • Paris burns again.
  • Putin is cozying up Iran just as it’s suffering the same demographic crash affecting so many nations:

    Iran is dying, and no one knows it better than Vladimir Putin, who worked successfully to raise Russia’s fertility rate, unlike Iran’s theocrats, who have failed to persuade Iranians to have children.

    Russia’s relationship to the only Shi’ite state of significance is less an alliance than a dalliance, motivated by Moscow’s fear of Sunni radicalism and its desire to establish a strategic beachhead in the Middle East.

    But Iran is a depreciating asset whose value will disappear within a 20-year horizon. The question is not whether, but at what price Russia will trade it away.

    Snip.

    First, Iran may well become the first country in the world that will get old before it gets rich. Its fertility rate (the number of live births over the lifetime of an average woman) fell from 7 in 1979 to perhaps 1.7 today.

    That produced an enormous generation of people now in their 20s to 40s who have very few children. As this generation ages, the proportion of Iranians over the age of 60 will soar from about 7% today to around 40% by mid-century.

    Other countries face an aging crisis, but with ten times the per capita income: Iran’s nominal GDP per capita is only US$5,300, compared with US$56,000 for the United States, for example.No poor country can care for an elderly population comprising two-fifths of the total. Iran will undergo an economic disaster unprecedented in history. That is baked in the cake, and nothing its government can do will make much different at this late stage.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Louisiana Democrat state senator resigns after repeatedly beating his wife.
  • New York coop provides a microcosm of why Socialism doesn’t work:

    The year isn’t off to a good start for the Park Slope Food Coop. In January, two members of the venerable Brooklyn institution were accused of stealing more than $18,000 worth of goods. Each had been caught shoplifting once, and when police consulted surveillance tapes, it turned out that the two men (one of whom was 79 years old!) had some seriously sticky fingers.

    Snip.

    In 2013, The New York Times reported the shop lost $438,000 in stolen items.

    But that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the value that’s recently been lost from the coop’s pension fund. The fund — which is for staff, not members — had been invested in small, speculative companies and racked up two years of losses.

    According to the Times, “It appears to have gone into hedge-fund mode years ago, when one co-op member, also a hedge-fund investor, made stock-picking his unpaid job.” Last summer, members were told that the coop had to pour in more than $1 million to keep it flush.

    Snip.

    In 2011, for instance, coop members were caught paying other people — notably their nannies — to take over their 2-hour-per-week shifts at the market. As it turned out, the well-heeled bankers and lawyers and psychiatrists in the neighborhood who bill several hundred dollars an hour for their time didn’t think rearranging the broccoli was worth it.

    Hat tip: Instapundit, who also offers up the following illustration:

  • Blocking a road? Expect the NYPD to haul your ass to jail. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • More problems for Bill Clinton’s pal: “Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is accused of luring an underage girl into his elaborate sex trafficking enterprise under the guise of using his wealth and connections to get her into a prestige NYC college.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Bill Maher defends booking Milo Yiannopoulos in the face of liberal boycotts.
  • Dear diabetics: You know that “U.S. ends subsidies for blood sugar testing strips” thing your more credulous friends posted on Facebook? Debunked.
  • Austin health food chain MyFitFoods shuts down.
  • Rare book heist in London: “In the early morning hours of January 30, a gang of thieves, in a carefully coordinated scheme, broke into a warehouse near London’s Heathrow airport and made off with over £2 million in rare books. The books, belonging to three different rare book dealers, were being shipped to the United States for the 50th Annual California International Antiquarian Book Fair this past weekend.” Complete list here. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
  • He contains multitudes:

  • He divided them.

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Regulation, Republicans, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti’s Offices Raided by FBI, IRS

    February 16th, 2017

    Via Dwight comes word that the offices of Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti have been raided by the FBI and the IRS:

    Agents have been confiscating documents from the office of the Democratic lawmaker.

    “I can confirm the FBI and IRS are lawfully present and conducting a lawful law enforcement activity,” FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee told the Express-News.

    Lee also said no arrests have been made so far.

    Uresti is currently facing a grand jury investigation into possible public corruption charges related to his involvement with FourWinds, a San Antonio oil-field services company accused of defrauding investors.

    While Uresti is “innocent until proven guilty,” having both the FBI and IRS lawfully conducting lawful law enforcement in your office is not a good sign.

    When last we checked on Sen. Uresti, he was sharing a bathroom with a female staffer not his wife and involved in the UT admissions scandal.

    Here’s more on the FourWinds story, which I had not been previously following:

    The one-time marketing director for a bankrupt San Antonio frac-sand company with ties to state Sen. Carlos Uresti has been criminally charged in an alleged scheme to defraud investors.

    On Wednesday, Eric Nelson was charged in an information with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly altering a FourWinds Logistics’ bank statement to inflate the amount of money in the account. The bank statement was then mailed by an unnamed co-conspirator to prospective investors, according to the charging document.

    Nelson has agreed to a plea deal, according to sources, but records show that it is sealed. His attorneys declined to comment.

    The San Antonio Express-News in August chronicled the demise of FourWinds, which had more than $14 million in claims against it. Investors have alleged that CEO Stan Bates wasted their money on personal expenses, expensive gifts, exotic car rentals and lavish vacation, according to a court document. Bates has denied the allegations.

    Uresti provided legal services for FourWinds and served as its outside general counsel for four or five months in 2014, he said in an interview this summer. He received FourWinds shares, as well as a $40,000 loan from the company that he failed to disclose initially. He also collected a $27,000 commission on a Harlingen woman’s $900,000 investment in a joint venture with FourWinds. The woman ended up losing about $800,000.

    Really, who of us hasn’t forgotten a $40,000 loan? “Oh yeah! That little thing! Sorry, totally slipped my mind!”

    Uncle Sam’s mills grind slowly, but exceedingly fine. One way or another, I suspect Republicans will view Uresti’s west Texas District 19 as a pickup target in 2020…if not sooner…

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    Posted in Democrats, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »

    Texas vs. California Update for February 15, 2017

    February 15th, 2017

    Welcome to another Texas vs. California Roundup!

  • California Governor Jerry Brown wants to hike gas taxes by 42% to bail out CalPERS.
  • Brown’s pension reforms have failed:

    Since 2012 passage of his much-heralded changes to state retirement laws for public employee, the pension debt foisted on California taxpayers has only grown larger.

    The shortfall for California’s three statewide retirement systems has increased about 36 percent. Add in local pension systems and the total debt has reached at least $374 billion. That works out to about $29,000 per household.

    It’s actually much worse than that. Those numbers are calculated using the pension systems’ overly optimistic assumptions about future investment earnings.

    Using more conservative assumptions, the debt could be more than $1 trillion.

  • And speaking of Brown: Math is hard.
  • Why California can’t repair its infrastructure: “California’s government, like the federal government and most other state and local governments, spends its money on salaries, benefits, pensions, and other forms of employee compensation. The numbers are contentious — for obvious political reasons — but it is estimated that something between half and 80 percent of California’s state and local spending ultimately goes to employee compensation.”
  • Put another way: “Governor Moonbeam and the other leftist kooks in charge are flushing a staggering $10 billion down an unneeded high-speed rail project, on top of the still more staggering $25.3 billion per year they spend on the illegal aliens they have gone out of their way to welcome.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • California can’t afford green energy:

    California has the highest taxes overall in the nation, worst roads, underperforming schools, and the recent budget has at least a $1.6 billion shortfall.

    Moreover, depending on how the numbers are analyzed California has either a $1.3 or a $2.8 trillion outstanding debt. This is before counting the maintenance work needed for infrastructure, particularly roads, bridges and water systems. Yet tax increases aren’t covering these obligations.

  • Three of the ten least affordable cities in the World are in California: Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose.
  • Austin named best city to live in the U.S. But wait! San Jose ranks third! I can only assume that “affordability” was not a significant criteria. Dallas/Ft. Worth ranks 15th (one ahead of San Francisco), Houston 20th, San Antonio 23rd (one behind San Diego).
  • “A sizzling residential real estate market fueled by incoming Californians, low supply, high demand, flat salaries, and local property taxes are pricing people out of homeownership in Austin.” More: “The Texas A&M Real Estate Center examined the Austin local market area (LMA) over five years. In January 2011, the Austin-Georgetown-Round Rock area median home prices were $199,700. By January 2015, that median hovered at $287,000. At the end of 2016, university real estate analysts found the home mid-price point at $332,000.” Of course, in my neck of the woods, $332,000 will buy you a 2,500 square foot house, while in San Francisco, you’d be lucky to find a 500 square foot condo…
  • “An IGS-UC Berkeley poll shows that 74 percent of Californians want sanctuary cities ended; 65 percent of Hispanics, 70 percent of independents, 73 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans.”
  • Of the top 20 cities for illegal aliens, five (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and Riverside) are in California, while three (Houston, Austin and Dallas/Ft. Worth) are in Texas. I’m actually a bit surprised to see that San Antonio isn’t on that list, while Seattle and Boston are. “American citizens who paid into the system don’t receive benefits like long-term medical care because — in part — we’re all subsidizing aliens.”
  • California pays $25.3 billion in illegal alien benefits, or $2,370 per household. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • By contrast, Texas pays $12.1 billion in illegal alien benefits, or $1,187 per household. (IBID)
  • “In testimony provided before the California Senate’s Public Safety Committee, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) decided to admit that “half of his family” is residing in the United States illegally and with the possession of falsified Social Security Cards and green cards.”
  • “California spent on high-speed rail and illegal immigrants, but ignored Oroville Dam.”
  • Pensions are breaking budgets across San Diego. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “Despite California having some of the best recreation spots in the world, we have systematically reduced our business in California by 50%, and I have a moratorium in place on accepting new business (I won’t even look at RFP’s and proposals to avoid being tempted.)”
  • That same blogger on why his company pulled out of Ventura, California. Like this:

    It took years in Ventura County to make even the simplest modifications to the campground we ran. For example, it took 7 separate permits from the County (each requiring a substantial payment) just to remove a wooden deck that the County inspector had condemned. In order to allow us to temporarily park a small concession trailer in the parking lot, we had to (among other steps) take a soil sample of the dirt under the asphalt of the parking lot. It took 3 years to permit a simple 500 gallon fuel tank with CARB and the County equivalent. The entire campground desperately needed a major renovation but the smallest change would have triggered millions of dollars of new facility requirements from the County that we simply could not afford.

    And this:

    A local attorney held regular evening meetings with my employees to brainstorm new ways the could sue our company under arcane California law. For example, we went through three iterations of rules and procedures trying to comply with California break law and changing “safe” harbors supposedly provided by California court decisions. We only successfully stopped the suits by implementing a fingerprint timekeeping system and making it an automatic termination offense to work through lunch. This operation has about 25 employees vs. 400 for the rest of the company. 100% of our lawsuits from employees over our entire 10-year history came from this one site. At first we thought it was a manager issue, so we kept sending in our best managers from around the country to run the place, but the suits just continued.

  • California has some of the highest taxes in the nation, but can’t pay for road maintenance:

    Texas has no state income tax, yet excellent highways and schools that perform above average, way above California’s bottom-dwellers. Yet both states have similar demographics. For example, in the 2010 U.S. Census, Texas was 37% Hispanic, California 37.6%.

    Texas is a First World state with no state income tax that enjoys great roads and schools. California is a Third World state restrained from getting worse only by its umbilical-cord attachment to the other 49 states, a cord the Calexit movement wants to cut, but won’t get to.

    California is Venezuela on the Pacific, a Third World state and wannabe Third World country; a place with great natural beauty, talented people, natural resources – and a government run by oligarchs and functionaries who treat the rest of us as peons.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • “Texas Ends 2016 with 210,200 Jobs Added Over the Year.”
  • All Houston does economically is win.

    The Houston metropolitan area’s population now stands at 6.6 million with the city itself a shade under 2.3 million. At its current rate of growth, Houston could replace Chicago as the nation’s third-largest city by 2030.

    Why would anyone move to Houston? Start with the economic record.

    Since 2000, no major metro region in America except for archrival Dallas-Fort Worth has created more jobs and attracted more people. Houston’s job base has expanded 36.5%; in comparison, New York employment is up 16.6%, the Bay Area 11.8%, and Chicago a measly 5.1%. Since 2010 alone, a half million jobs have been added.

    Some like Paul Krugman have dismissed Texas’ economic expansion, much of it concentrated in its largest cities, as primarily involving low-wage jobs, but employment in the Houston area’s professional and service sector, the largest source of high-wage jobs, has grown 48% since 2000, a rate almost twice that of the San Francisco region, two and half times that of New York or Chicago, and more than four times Los Angeles. In terms of STEM jobs the Bay Area has done slightly better, but Houston, with 22% job growth in STEM fields since 2001, has easily surpassed New York (2%), Los Angeles (flat) and Chicago (-3%).

    More important still, Houston, like other Texas cities, has done well in creating middle-class jobs, those paying between 80% and 200% of the median wage. Since 2001 Houston has boosted its middle-class employment by 26% compared to a 6% expansion nationally, according to the forecasting firm EMSI. This easily surpasses the record for all the cities preferred by our media and financial hegemons, including Washington (11%) and San Francisco (6%), and it’s far ahead of Los Angeles (4%), New York (3%) and Chicago, which lost 3% of its middle-class employment.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • Texas conservative budget overview vs. the 2018-2019 proposed budget.
  • On the same subject: how to reduce the footprint of Texas government.
  • “Berkeley funds the Division of Equity and Inclusion with a cool $20 million annually and staffs it with 150 full-time functionaries: it takes that much money and personnel to drum into students’ heads how horribly Berkeley treats its “othered” students.”
  • New LA housing initiative to undo previous housing initiative. Frankly all of them sound like market-distorting initiatives guaranteed to backfire…
  • “California’s bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more. And that’s just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.”
  • “For the past five months, BART has been staffing its yet-to-open Warm Springs Station full time with five $73,609-a-year station agents and an $89,806-a-year train dispatch supervisor — even though no trains will be running there for at least another two months.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “After studying “tens of thousands of restaurants in the San Francisco area,” researchers Michael Luca of Harvard Business School and Dara Lee Luca of Mathematica Policy Research found that many lower rated restaurants have a unique way of dealing with minimum wage hikes: they simply go out of business.”
  • Meet Gordon, the robot barista. How’s that $15 an hour minimum wage working out for you, San Francisco?
  • “Nestle USA announced today that it is moving 300 technical, production and supply chain jobs to the Solon [Ohio] plant as part of the company’s plan to relocate its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia, from Glendale, California.”
  • Auto dealer AutoAlert is moving it’s headquarters from Irvine, California to Kansas City.
  • Peter Thiel to run for governor of California?
  • The Oakland Raiders may not be moving to Las Vegas after all, because billionaire Sheldon Adelson backed out of the stadium deal, accusing Raider owner Mark Davis of trying to screw him.
  • Now there’s talk the Raiders may rexamine moving to San Antonio.
  • Or even Dan Diego.
  • Lawsuits are flying over the Dallas Police and Fire pension fund debacle. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Democrats, Elections, Regulation, Republicans, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Meetup Doesn’t Want Republican Business

    February 14th, 2017

    Yesterday I got an email from Meetup, the company that allows you to set up group meetings:

    Meetup has always served as an organizing platform for a wide range of political views, welcoming everyone from the Howard Deaniacs to the Tea Party. Meetup will always welcome people with different beliefs.

    But after the recent executive order aimed to block people on the
    basis of nationality and religion, a line was crossed. At a time when core democratic ideals feel under attack, we feel a duty to spark more civic participation.

    Last week, we created 1,000+ #Resist Meetup Groups to act as local hubs for actions on behalf of democracy, equality, human rights, social justice, and sustainability. Already 50,000+ people have joined.

    These #Resist Meetups are open to anyone who want to create a bright future that’s rich with opportunity and freedom for all.

    Meetup exists to connect people so they create opportunity and make the world they want. We hope members take these Meetups forward to be powerful together.

    I’m not going to bother refuting the “block people on the basis of nationality and religion” lie because I’ve done it already.

    What’s notable here is that Meetup has decided it’s an extension of the Democratic Party and doesn’t want any further Republican business.

    I just deleted my Meetup account and suggest that everyone who is not a leftwing agitator do the same.

    I would also suggest expressing your displeasure at this turn of events to Meetup’s Board of Directors:

  • Andreas Stavropoulos of Draper Fisher Jurvetson: @astavropoulos
  • Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures: @BradUSV
  • Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze: @DiAnnEisnor
  • Esther Dyson of EDventure: @edyson
  • Scott Heiferman, CEO of Meetup @heif

    • If you know of a good substitute for meetup, tell people in the comments below.

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    Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 3 Comments »

    Remember When Japan Was Going To Take Over the World?

    February 13th, 2017

    Do you remember those fabulous 80s?

    Reagan was President, cyberpunk was new, and Jennifer Grey had a nose.

    Also, everyone knew that Japan was going to take over the world.

    Giant Japanese electronic companies like Sony, Toshiba and Fujitsu were leaders in their markets, Japan had a big export surplus, and Japanese companies were buying up iconic American assets like Rockafeller Center. Experts assured us that Japan was ascendant and that we needed to follow the “Japan Inc.” model of public/private partnerships, as well as the heavy vertical integration of the Japanese zaibatsu conglomerates, if we wanted to compete in the world market.

    It turns out that almost all that just about every aspect of that prescription was horribly wrong:

    Fast-forward 30 years. When one of Japan, Inc.’s leading corporations makes the news, as often as not it’s the result of an accounting scandal in which corporate profits were grossly overstated for years as a matter of policy–a policy intended to mask the stagnation in the company’s sales, product lines, competitive position and profits.

    What happened to the often-copied, much-vaunted Japan, Inc.? Many observers see Japan’s core problem as demographics: as its birth rate has fallen below replacement levels, the population of Japan is aging rapidly. Since young people start households and spend money, economic growth depends largely on the spending of young people rather than the declining spending of older people.

    While a decline in the youthful demographic certainly impacts growth, this view overlooks the larger problem: Japan, Inc.–its educational system, government, banking and corporate sector–was optimized for the mode of production that existed in the postwar world from the late 1940s to the late 1980s.

    Now that the Digital-Industrial Revolution is remaking the way goods and services are produced and distributed, the system that worked wondrously well in 1960 no longer aligns with the needs of this emerging mode of production.

    In the 1980s, Japan’s optimized-for-industrial-exports system reached its zenith, and many US pundits built careers predicting that Japan would soon eclipse the US in every economic and financial metric.

    But the excesses of Japan’s banking sector and the rise of new technologies that didn’t lend themselves to gradual improvement and vertically integrated corporations disrupted the predictions of Japan’s global dominance.

    Just as Sony ate the lunches of slower, less efficient American companies like RCA, soon the Japanese electronic giants found themselves being beaten by more nimble and disruptive international competitors like Apple and Samsung.

    Toshiba is now so broke they may need to spin-off their semiconductor business, despite it being the most central and profitable business in their company, probably because building a new state-of-the-art 300mm wafer fabrication plant for 10nm process technology can now cost up to $14 billion.

    Many other Japanese companies have been rocked by accounting scandals:

    In the five years since a $1.7bn accounting scandal was uncovered at Olympus, the number of improper accounting cases exposed each year in Japan has nearly doubled. It hit an all-time high of 58 cases in the 2015-16 fiscal year, according to Tokyo Shoko Research, which provides data on corporate failures.

    In many cases, the revelations have shone a light on malpractice and subterfuge dating back years — the legacy of management terrified of failure but left fighting decades of economic stagnation, squeezed costs and a shrinking domestic market.

    And those demographics don’t make anything easier:

    Children accounted for 12.8% of the population, the ministry said. By contrast, the ratio of people aged 65 or older was at a record high, making up 25.6% of the population. Jiji Press said that, of countries with a population of at least 40 million, Japan had the lowest ratio of children to the total population – compared with 19.5% for the United States and 16.4% for China…

    The proportion of people aged 65 or over is forecast to reach nearly 40% in 2060, the government has warned.

    Japan’s government has been running huge budget deficits since 2009, and debt now stands at about twice the size of the economy.

    For a while, the South Korean chaebol looked like they were going to supplant the Japanese zaibatsu as world beaters, but Samsung and LG have started running into some of the same problems.

    The lesson here is not “Merica, fark ye!”, it’s that capitalism works. The creative destruction of capitalism is necessary to keep economic progress moving forward. My biggest fear is that in his efforts to save American jobs, President Trump will prop up the GMs and Boeings of the world at the expense of smaller, nimbler competitors looking to supplant them.

    For the country’s long-term economic well-being, government should get out of the business of picking winners and losers entirely.

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    Posted in Economics, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    Video of French Forces Fighting the Islamic State

    February 11th, 2017

    Here’s a video of French Special Forces operating against the Islamic State, including some mopping up operations in Mosul:

    A few points of interest:

  • In the first few minutes there’s a glimpse of the tunnel systems that have become common in urban warfare where the defenders have had time to dig in.
  • I’m assuming that boxy weapon the French are shown setting up at 5:27 is a grenade launcher, but I’m not sure I’ve seen that make before. The closest would be the Heckler & Koch GMG, but it doesn’t quite look like it.
  • French drones (6:13) look like funky kit planes, and get launched with a tether assist. Whatever works…

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    Posted in Jihad, Military, Uncategorized, video | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for February 10, 2017

    February 10th, 2017

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Here in Texas it’s looking a lot like Spring.

    This LinkSwarm is heavy on border control and jihad issues.

  • “The 9th Circuit’s dangerous and unprecedented use of campaign statements to block presidential policy.”

    By accepting the use of preelection statements to impeach and limit executive policy, the 9th Circuit is taking a dangerous step. The states’ argument is in essence that Trump is a bigot, and thus his winning presidential campaign in fact impeaches him from exercising key constitutional and statutory powers, such as administering the immigration laws.

    This would mean that Trump is automatically disbarred, from the moment of his inauguration, of exercising certain presidential powers, not because of his actions as president, but because of who he is — that is, how he won the presidency.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • When Judge James Robart stated that “no” terrorists had attacked America from the countries on President Trump’s travel ban, he was engaged in the rhetorical device known as lying his ass off. “At least 60 people born in the seven countries had been convicted — not just arrested, but convicted — of terror-related offenses in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Trump’s sanctuary city and terrorist-supporting state travel bans are his most popular executive orders. To quote Mark Steyn yet again, “‘divisive’ appears to be elite-speak for ‘remarkably popular.'” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Rotherham sex abuse gang shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they are jailed for total of 81 years for sexually abusing girls.”
  • Most Europeans oppose further Muslim immigration. Can’t imagine why…
  • Among them: this Swedish cop:

    Here we go; this is what I’ve handled from Monday-Friday this week: rape, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, rape-assault and rape, extortion, blackmail, assault, violence against police, threats to police, drug crime, drugs, crime, felony, attempted murder, rape again, extortion again and ill-treatment.

    Suspected perpetrators; Ali Mohammed, Mahmod, Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, again, again, again. Christopher… what, is it true? Yes, a Swedish name snuck in on the edges of a drug crime. Mohammed, Mahmod Ali, again and again.

    Countries representing all the crimes this week: Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown, unknown country, Sweden. Half of the suspects, we can’t be sure because they don’t have any valid papers. Which in itself usually means that they’re lying about their nationality and identity.

  • Scott Adams abandons all support for UC Berkeley in the wake of the Milo riot:

    I’m ending my support of UC Berkeley, where I got my MBA years ago. I have been a big supporter lately, with both my time and money, but that ends today. I wish them well, but I wouldn’t feel safe or welcome on the campus. A Berkeley professor made that clear to me recently. He seems smart, so I’ll take his word for it.

    I’ve decided to side with the Jewish gay immigrant who has an African-American boyfriend, not the hypnotized zombie-boys in black masks who were clubbing people who hold different points of view. I feel that’s reasonable, but I know many will disagree, and possibly try to club me to death if I walk on campus.

    Yesterday I asked my most liberal, Trump-hating friend if he ever figured out why Republicans have most of the Governorships, a majority in Congress, the White House, and soon the Supreme Court. He said, “There are no easy answers.”

    I submit that there are easy answers. But for many Americans, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias hide those easy answers behind Hitler hallucinations.

  • Just in case you were unclear: President Trump is not Hitler. (Hat tip: Scott Adams, IBID.)
  • #Winning.
  • House Democrats are going on a retreat in Baltimore where they’ll go over an autopsy of the election. Will they learn from their many mistakes? “The Baltimore retreat, which will take place at the scenic Inner Harbor, will focus on the party’s fight for all Americans and feature speeches from top Democrats and various celebrities, including Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Chelsea Handler, as the party looks to get back on track.” Signs point to “No”… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Both Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus want you to know that they are not bitter enemies fighting for influence in the Trump White House. The truth is that they are “rather chummy.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • President Trump’s chess game:

    In the end it would appear that Trump is playing the kind of game that I was taught to play by my coach. His opponents are never given time to mount an attack. Their queen – the MSM has been removed from the board and their favorite piece – the Celebrities are locked in a war of attrition while Trump gets the rest of his pieces on the board. Remember, these are all Tactics but Strategy flows from Tactics. Sooner or later the Left will find itself in some terrible position and the Strategy to drain the swamp will present itself.

    (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)

  • “Leftists said if Trump won, that there’d be violent mobs of hate, and intolerant fascists would try to silence those with whom they disagree. And they were right. It just was by a group of people from which they didn’t expect it: themselves.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • NSA contractor allegedly stole over 500 million documents. The news came out October last year (I guess reporting yet another giant classified data breach was something the media wasn’t too wild about digging into in the election homestretch), but he was just indicted yesterday. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Concision. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Well, with Trump, Modi, Brexit, and now France, there are some similar problems in those countries. What you are hearing is people getting fed up with the ruling class. This is not fascism. It has nothing to do with fascism. It has to do with the faux-experts problem and a world with too many experts. If we had a different elite, we may not see the same problem.”
  • Nikki Haley’s first speech at the UN blasts Russia over their continued occupation of Ukraine. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Secretary of Defense Mattis was a big hit in both Japan and South Korea.
  • Quitaly seems increasingly likely.
  • Is Russia helping the Taliban?
  • “Meet Denmark’s new anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-tax party.”
  • Gun sales finally dip. Obviously gun owners don’t feel like NRA-endorsed President Trump is a threat to take their guns, unlike “World’s Greatest Gun Salesman Obama.” It also suggests that those of us in the Vast Right Wing aren’t even remotely worried about that mythical leftwing “resistance” launching an actual civil war. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
  • Whistle-blower reveals that, yes, the NOAA lied about climate data.
  • Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) shares some of that vaunted liberal tolerance that’s been sent his way:

  • American feminists: Rich White Girl Problems. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Texas Senate passes sanctuary city bill.
  • Tennessee bill: Get off the road, you leftwing lunatic!
  • Can an average engineer earn more in a lifetime than an average NFL player? The study says yes, but I think the engineering pay average ($125,418) is probably a bit on the high side (I suspect California companies were oversampled).
  • Anonymous takes down a ton of child porn sites.
  • Pizza parties for abortion quotas.
  • Infosys sued for descriminating against Americans. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Twitter lost $457 million last year:

    Twitter had decided, in an election year, to surrender control of its platform to a crew of feminist social justice warriors (SJWs) designated the “Trust and Safety Council.” This secretive group of Soviet-style commissars included the notorious anti-male hatemonger Anita Sarkeesian, and soon Twitter began purging conservative accounts…. Jack Dorsey had made his company part of the Democrat Party’s campaign team and four months later, when Twitter banned popular commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, the partisan nature of “Trust and Safety” became transparent. Banning conservatives from Twitter was Dorsey’s contribution-in-kind to the Democrats.

  • And that’s the 10th consecutive quarter of declining revenue for Twitter.
  • Twitter suspends a cartoon, presumably for offending SJW types.

  • FYI: He He Silly Comics are still on Gab. I really should activate my account there…
  • Marvel to knock it off with the Social Justice Warrior bullshit that’s been costing them sales.
  • This lawsuit goes to 11.
  • So Blizzard is worried that the user experience on consoles isn’t shitty enough.
  • “I didn’t say I had mice in my cellar, I said I had moose.”

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Right to Work Signed Into Law in Missouri

    February 9th, 2017

    Missouri joins the right to work parade:

    Republican Gov. Eric Greitens signed legislation on Monday making Missouri the latest “right-to-work” state, as the growing movement sets its sights next on New Hampshire – hoping to break into one of the labor unions’ last remaining strongholds.

    Legislation advancing in the New Hampshire capital, if approved, would make the state the first in the Northeast to go “right-to-work.” The measure, which bars unions from forcing employees to join or pay dues, is set for a vote in the state’s House next week – after having passed the Senate.

    The push is the latest sign of labor unions’ diminishing clout, and how Republican gains at the state level are having a broad impact on policy, amid support for such legislation from the Trump White House.

    Right to work laws help in two ways: They make states more economically competitive compared to their closed shop brethren, and they deprive the Democratic Party of political contributions forcibly extracted from union members via compulsory dues.

    Missouri joins Kentucky, which passed right to work legislation earlier this year, as well as West Virginia (2016), Wisconsin (2015), Michigan and Indiana (both 2012) as states that have recently passed right to work laws.

    That brings the total of right to work states up to 28.

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    Posted in Republicans, unions | No Comments »

    New Frontiers in Poor Life Choices

    February 8th, 2017

    A good bit of education used to be dedicated to helping people avoid poor life choices. “Gallant studies hard to pass tests, while Goofus knocks over liquor stores to feed his meth habit.” But some people go above and beyond the call of duty to make the worst lifestyle choices possible.

    Meet Matthew Stager.

    U.S. Marshals need help tracking down a convicted sex offender recently released from a Virginia prison after he failed to show up at a transitional center in Texas.

    News outlets report authorities say 44-year-old Matthew Ezekiel Stager was released Thursday from the Federal Correctional Complex in Petersburg.

    He was supposed to check into the transitional center that day but never did.

    Marshals say it’s possible Stager is in the Hampton Roads area or has recently traveled through the region.

    Authorities say Stager has known connection to multiple states and has a history of drug abuse and mental health concerns.

    You don’t say.

    Marshals describe Stager as a white or Hispanic man, about 145 pounds, 5 feet 8 inches tall with blond or strawberry hair. He has tattoos on his face, head and neck.

    Anyone with information can contact the U.S. Marshals at 1-877-926-8332.

    So if you see this freak, Uncle Sam will likely make it worth your time…

    Update: As per commenter Roadgeek below, he’s been captured. And another tidbit: “He is known to go by the aliases Moon Black and Jesse Crew.”

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    Posted in Crime, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Brexit and the Perpetual Liberal Trump Tantrum

    February 8th, 2017

    I was going back through some posts in the middle of last year and came across this link on the Brexit aftermath.

    Tell me this bit doesn’t apply equally well to American liberals throwing tantrums over Trump as UK leftists having fits over Brexit:

    Part of the seething fury felt by some of my co-workers lies in that feeling of being hoodwinked, of not being as smart, as omniscient as they, hitherto, imagined. Their self-esteem is bruised. Nobody likes to find out that the world they thought existed turns out to have been built on miopia and wishful thinking.

    Is there any better example of myopia than our political elites enraged at the idea that those mere voters in flyover country they show so much obvious disdain for have rejected their worldview?

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    Posted in Democrats | No Comments »

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