Day: March 3, 2020

A despot in disguise: one man’s mission to rip up democracy

Ms. Cat

Buchanan’s programme is a prescription for totalitarian capitalism. And his disciples have only begun to implement it. But at least, thanks to MacLean’s discoveries, we can now apprehend the agenda. One of the first rules of politics is, know your enemy. We’re getting there.
— Read on www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/despot-disguise-democracy-james-mcgill-buchanan-totalitarian-capitalism

Murray Rothbard, at the Cato Institute that Koch founded, had urged the billionaire to study Lenin’s techniques and apply them to the libertarian cause.

Lenin, not Stalin. Grover Furr is one to read about Stalin. I haven’t looked into Lenin, extensively, though.

How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration

Ms. Cat

In the past decade, liberals have avoided inconvenient truths about the issue.
— Read on archive.is/485RY

“In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”

The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.”

[2017] James M. Buchanan: The Architect of the Radical Right

Ms. Cat

Either way, the proximate result of Buchanan’s privatizing scheme was to help prolong the stalemate in Virginia. In Prince Edward County, to cite the most egregious example, public schools were padlocked for a full five years. From 1959 to 1964, white children went to tax-subsidized private schools while most black children stayed home—roughly what some politicians had in mind all along. The episode was, among other things, a vivid early instance of the bait and switch, so familiar now, whereby many libertarians seem curiously indifferent to the human cost of their rigid principles, even as they denounce the despotism of all three branches of the federal government.
— Read on archive.is/wRtYk

[2018] Where Did Donald Trump Go to College? 5 Fast Facts

Ms. Cat

Where did presidential candidate Donald Trump go to college, and what were his grades like?
— Read on heavy.com/news/2016/05/where-did-donald-trump-go-to-college-education-young-biography-news/

“Though Trump rarely mentions Fordham, he often flaunts his degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; he graduated from the prestigious Ivy League school in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, he said in a speech back in July, “I went to the Wharton School of Finance. I’m, like, a really smart person.” He also told Meet the Press, that Wharton is “probably the hardest [school] there is to get into.” 

According to Salon, though, Gwenda Blair wrote in her biography that Trump was admitted into Wharton mainly due to an interview with an admissions officer who was friends with Freddy, Donald’s older brother. Many have also speculated that his father’s prestigious status played a major part in Trump’s acceptance into the university.”