Patterico's Pontifications

3/11/2019

Patterico at PJ Media: No, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Socialism, not Capitalism, Is the “Irredeemable” System

Filed under: General,Patterico at PJ Media — Patterico @ 12:01 am



I have a new piece at PJ Media. It’s a long one, coming in at over 3000 words. It’s a cri de coeur against socialism — a reaction to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ridiculous comment that capitalism is “irredeemable.” The title is Meet Two Men Whose Lives Were Ruined by Socialism. Here’s how it starts:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom my guest blogger JVW memorably calls “everyone’s favorite daffy socialist niece,” has announced another dopey opinion: that capitalism is “irredeemable.”.

There are, of course, countless ways to refute this incredibly uninformed and ungrateful opinion. One could point out statistics showing that capitalism has brought more people out of poverty than any other system in history. Capitalism has saved billions of lives, even as socialism (the government ownership and operation of the means of production) has killed tens of millions.

But, as a famous socialist murderer (sorry for the repetition and redundancy) once reportedly said: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” So today, I will skip the statistics, and tell the stories of two men whose lives were ruined by socialism in North Korea: Shin Dong-hyuk and Masaji Ishikawa.

These two people share a rare distinction: they escaped the hell that is socialist North Korea and lived to tell about it. I recently finished books about their lives, and I thought I’d share some of the details I learned with you, the reader — because although we all know that North Korea is a bad place, these books provide a compelling picture of the reality that its citizens suffer through, both inside and outside the labor camps. And the books together paint a somewhat less than flattering picture of socialism, to put it mildly.

It is one of the grimmest posts I have ever written, but I hope you read it, and pass it along to others.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

2/24/2019

Patterico at PJ Media: Some Good Old-Fashioned L.A. Times Bashing

Filed under: General,Patterico at PJ Media — Patterico @ 12:09 pm



My column in PJ Media this week goes back to the well, with some traditional bashing of our local paper. The title of the piece: L.A. Times: You Should Feel Sad that You Made a Smaller Interest-Free Loan to the Feds Last Year:

In a typical example of leftist media bias, the Los Angeles Times has an article titled “Shrinking tax refunds are a growing problem for GOP tax law.” Uh-oh! Are people actually paying more in taxes under the new law?!

. . . .

What about the vast majority of Americans? Are they paying more in taxes? The answer is buried in an offhand remark contained in the ninth paragraph of the article … Finding meaningful nuggets of truth in this article is like spotting snow leopards in the wild: if you know exactly where to look and you squint really hard, you might catch a glimpse of one. Yes, there it was: “actual taxes paid … for most people are lower under the new law.” (Republicans say.) So it really is just a question of lower taxes and lower tax refunds — in other words, good news and even better news.

. . . .

Nowhere does the article explain that receiving more money in your paycheck every week, rather than giving interest-free loans to the federal government, is a good thing — meaning that these people who are unhappy over their smaller refunds are simply (and I say this with the greatest respect) morons. The closest the article comes is to quote a Sacramento-based writer as saying: “‘It’s an interest-free loan to the government, but you never have to lose sleep at night’ worrying about a big tax bill.” Even the notion of free loans to the government is spun as a boon to taxpayers, allowing California novelists to sleep well at night knowing that they have allowed the federal government to use some of their money for free.

In the end, the article is nothing more than a way to reinforce Democrat talking points…

Enjoy.

2/18/2019

Patterico at PJ Media: Trump and the “Team of Vipers” Lawsuit

Filed under: General,Patterico at PJ Media — Patterico @ 11:43 am



I have a piece posted at PJ Media titled Trump Courts Streisand Effect in Legal Action Against ‘Team of Vipers’ Author Cliff Sims. Excerpt:

Trump had his lawyers go after Sims, filing an arbitration claim seeking to enforce a non-disclosure agreement. Again with the NDAs? What is it with Trump and stupidly enforcing NDAs? The last time he tried that, it started a chain of events that led to his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen admitting that Trump had directed him to commit a felonious campaign finance violation. Trump’s like the guy in the joke who has bandages on both his ears, and explains to his co-worker that his wife was ironing when his sister-in-law called, and he accidentally picked up the iron and held it to his ear. When the co-worker asks why the bandage over the other ear, he explains: “She called back.”

Yes, Trump learns lessons slowly when he learns them at all. And he has not realized that enforcing this NDA is likely to go nowhere. While Trump might have the ability to muzzle Sims about events on the campaign trail, legal experts tend to be very skeptical about a government official trying to silence public officials about their experiences in government. For his part, Sims is now suing Trump in federal court, seeking a declaratory judgment stating that Trump cannot enforce the NDA to the extent that Sims has written about his White House experience.

I’ll probably be posting pieces there every week or so. When I do, I’ll link and excerpt them here.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]


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